[Warning: Target’s core abandonment trauma triggered!]
[Warning: Target’s intent to kill locked onto the host!]
[Survival protocol activated…]
[Death countdown: 30 seconds.]
The cold system prompt and a violent sense of suffocation detonated simultaneously in Lynn’s mind and body.
Homelander’s hand was like a vise forged from super-alloy, clamping down relentlessly on his throat.
It was not a power any mortal could withstand; Lynn could feel his neck bones groaning under the unbearable, sickening pressure.
Air was completely cut off, sending a searing, burning pain through his lungs.
His feet dangled off the ground, his entire body weight suspended by his fragile neck.
[29 seconds.]
[28 seconds.]
Starved of oxygen, blood surged wildly into his brain, and black spots began to flutter across his vision.
Yet at this exact moment, Lynn’s brain entered an unprecedented state of cold, calculating clarity.
He couldn’t struggle.
Any physical resistance in front of Homelander was as laughable as a baby’s wailing; it would only accelerate his death.
He couldn’t beg for mercy.
Begging implied weakness, and what Homelander excelled at most was toying with and crushing weak things.
He had to speak.
Use words to defuse this primed nuclear bomb within these thirty seconds.
Homelander brought his godlike, handsome face agonizingly close.
His blue eyes held no trace of sanity, filled only with the all-destroying madness and pain of being abandoned by the entire world.
“You hesitated,” he snarled under his breath, every word dripping with cold malice.
“You’ll leave too. You’re all the same!”
[25 seconds.]
Lynn found his breakthrough.
Homelander wasn’t passing judgment on his “hesitation”—he was venting his despair that “everyone leaves in the end.”
He wasn’t truly looking for an explanation.
He was waiting for proof—proof of how Lynn was any different from the people who had abandoned him.
“I… hesitated…”
The grip on Lynn’s neck didn’t loosen in the slightest, but a flicker of anticipation glinted in Homelander’s eyes.
[20 seconds.]
Lynn stared into those crazed eyes and continued, “…Not because… I wouldn’t save you.”
The words were like a small pebble tossed into the heart of a storm.
They didn’t calm the winds, but they caused an imperceptible pause at the storm’s core.
The hand choking his neck stalled for a fraction of a second.
He wanted to hear more.
[17 seconds.]
Grabbing this precious moment of respite, Lynn’s mind raced as he forged a second sentence.
Instead of continuing to explain his hesitation, he threw the question right back at Homelander.
“It’s because… you… don’t want to be saved at all.”
For the first time, confusion replaced the madness in Homelander’s eyes.
“You just want to prove,” Lynn said, his breath growing increasingly ragged as he forced himself to finish, “that anyone who gets close to you… in the end… will fail.”
This sledgehammer of a realization struck right at Homelander’s psychological defense mechanisms.
Hadn’t everything he ever done been a constant test of others, using their failure to repeatedly validate his twisted creed: *I don’t need anyone, because no one can be trusted*?
Homelander’s grip unconsciously loosened a fraction.
[12 seconds.]
A meager trickle of air refilled Lynn’s lungs.
He coughed violently, greedily gulping down oxygen, before pouring every remaining drop of strength into a third, fatal line.
“You aren’t… afraid I’ll betray you.”
“You’re… hoping I will!”
Lynn’s voice wasn’t loud, yet it exploded like thunder in Homelander’s head.
“Because that way… you won’t have to risk… trusting me!”
Those words shredded Homelander’s defenses entirely.
He used violence and threats to test loyalty, but in truth, he anticipated betrayal.
“Trust,” on the other hand, was the most foreign, terrifying abyss imaginable.
[8 seconds.]
Homelander’s hand visibly unclasped from his throat.
Lynn slumped to the floor.
Clutching his neck, he broke into a fit of violent coughing, greedily pulling in icy air, every breath tainted with the iron taste of blood.
He had survived.
But the crisis was far from over.
Homelander stood over him, looking down.
The murderous insanity in his blue eyes had faded, replaced by a complex turmoil of pain, confusion, and shock at having been completely read like an open book.
He didn’t apologize or say a word.
He simply stood there silently, staring at Lynn as if getting to know this “doctor” he had almost choked to death all over again.
[5 seconds.]
[4 seconds.]
Just when Lynn thought he was out of the woods, Homelander slowly crouched down to meet his gaze at eye level.
He reached out and gently traced the darkening purple finger marks on Lynn’s neck, his touch as delicate as if handling fragile porcelain.
Then, in a tone barely above a whisper, he asked the final, most deadly question.
“So… will you?”
He didn’t specify whether he meant “betray me” or “leave me.”
But in that moment, the two words meant the exact same thing.
There was no clever rhetoric left to dodge this question.
Saying “I won’t” was a lie—Homelander would hear his heartbeat betray the deception.
Saying “I will” was suicide.
[2 seconds.]
Lynn lifted his head, meeting those nearby blue eyes filled with a final sliver of hope intertwined with a desire for destruction.
[1 second.]
He spoke, his voice raspy yet remarkably steady.
“I won’t lie to you like they did.”