Chapter 135: Ryan’s Choice
Homelander stood where he was, his blue eyes fixed coldly on Becca.
Becca’s chest heaved.
Her gaze moved past Homelander’s shoulder and landed on the motionless human shape lying more than a dozen meters away.
Butcher lay flat on his back in the road, the blood at the corner of his mouth already dried by the wind.
Her lips trembled hard. Tears spilled uncontrollably from her eyes, carving two wet tracks down her face.
"Homelander!"
Becca broke down and shouted, "If you kill Butcher, I swear I’ll..."
"Shut the fuck up!"
Homelander roared. He took one step and was right in front of Becca, looming over the woman who was a full head shorter than him. At last, a clear emotion appeared in those blue eyes, a furious rage that had burst out after someone crossed his bottom line.
"You bitch. You’re trying to steal my son from me! You hid him for eight years. Eight fucking years! And now you want to take him and run off with that British asshole? You’ve got the nerve to beg for him right in front of me?"
Becca flinched from the outburst.
Her cries jammed in her throat. Staring into Homelander’s eyes, burning with rage, she suddenly realized that if she said one more word, if she spoke up for Butcher even one more time, the man in front of her really would kill her without hesitation.
He might not care anymore about what Ryan thought, or what the consequences would be.
She shut her mouth. Tears were still sliding silently down her face, but her voice was gone.
Her hands hung at her sides, clenched tightly into fists.
Just then, a small figure stepped out from behind her.
Ryan spread his arms and stood in front of Becca.
He barely came up to Homelander’s waist. His blond hair stuck up in a messy tangle, his eyes were red, and his chin trembled slightly. But his legs stayed firmly planted on the ground, not backing up even half a step.
Ryan lifted his head. Those blue eyes, exactly like Homelander’s, stared straight at the towering man before him, a man so tall he almost seemed to block out the sky.
Ryan was protecting Becca?
Homelander stopped moving.
He lowered his head and looked at Ryan, standing there with both arms spread wide in his way, and his heart twisted with complicated emotions.
Homelander had treated him well. He had taken him flying into the sky, told him stories, and sat by his bed whenever he had nightmares, staying there until he fell asleep.
Ryan remembered all of it. Every single thing.
But Ryan had been raised by Becca since he was little. From the first day he opened his eyes and saw the world, Becca had been by his side, feeding him milk, teaching him to talk, and holding him through the night as she paced the living room whenever he was sick.
Eight years. All those days and nights together could not be erased by a few months of companionship.
So Ryan still chose his mom.
"Ryan..."
When Homelander said the name, his voice suddenly became very soft.
His lips moved, as if he still wanted to say something, but in the end, he only shook his head and said nothing more.
Benjamin leaned against the wreckage of the SUV, arms crossed, frowning as he watched the scene play out.
His gaze moved back and forth twice between Homelander, Ryan, and Becca. The look on his face slowly shifted from confusion to a kind of speechless disbelief.
What the hell was this?
Was Homelander really about to do the same thing as in the original series, going soft just because Ryan stood in front of him?
Then let Butcher go?
Then let Butcher recover, come back, and finally land a killing blow at some critical moment?
Benjamin suddenly had a hard time keeping it together.
In the original series’ finale, Homelander had basically brought half of his own death on himself.
Time and time again, Homelander let Butcher off, until Butcher finally teamed up with everyone else, dragged him down from his pedestal, and smashed him to pieces.
Of course, if Homelander had burned Butcher to ash with one blast of Heat Vision right from the start, the whole series would not have had anything left to film. After all, Butcher was the protagonist.
But the problem was, this world was not a TV show, and Benjamin had no intention of playing that stupid "I’ll let you off this time, so you can come back next time" bullshit with Homelander.
"So," Benjamin’s voice cut in abruptly, his tone dripping with open mockery, "you fucking went soft? Just because your son took his mother’s side? He throws out those little arms and suddenly you can’t do it?
"Did you forget what the Brit lying on the ground did tonight? He broke into your turf, pointed a gun at your people, and tried to run off with your son."
"And now you’re really thinking of letting him go because some kid glared at you?"
Homelander turned his head and looked at Benjamin.
He did not answer right away. Then he glanced at Butcher, unconscious on the ground, and hatred reignited in his eyes.
That man had tried to take Ryan away from him.
That alone was enough reason for him to die a hundred times over.
But right after that, his gaze slipped helplessly back to Ryan, to that small face as tense as Becca’s.
His face twitched. The muscles in his jaw bulged beneath his cheekbones, then loosened again.
Homelander was still hesitating.
"Forget it."
Benjamin stopped wasting words on him. He pulled a pair of specially made metal restraints from his waist, walked over to the unconscious Butcher, and neatly cuffed his hands behind his back.
Then he walked over to Mother’s Milk and Frenchie, who had already been thrown to the roadside by Homelander, and cuffed their hands behind their backs as well.
Once that was done, he took his phone out of his pocket, dialed a number, and gave a few brief instructions into the receiver.
Send a transport vehicle. Vought’s highest-security transport. It had to be here within half an hour.
And Benjamin planned to escort it personally, just in case Butcher woke up halfway and smashed his way out of the transport.
Once the twenty-four-hour effect of V24 wore off, Butcher would go back to being an ordinary person.
Holding three ordinary people was more than enough for a Vought cell.