. . . 1983 . . .
"I'm nervous," Brooke says, her hand around Soldier Boy's tightening. It's the first time she's ever let herself admit fear out loud, she thinks, and especially in this suit.
Soldier Boy squeezes her fingers tightly. Almost painfully. It reassures her, though, grounding her in the moment. "This is what you wanted, right?"
"Of course," she answers immediately. "And it would mean we'd get to be together, right?"
Soldier Boy's stupid face contorts into his horrible, arrogant grin. "Is that what you're focusing on?"
She does him one favor and elbows him in the ribs. Someone has to keep America's Son humble, and if it must be her making that sacrifice, so be it. God Bless Brooke Riley.
The elevator keeps rising. So does the bile in her throat.
"It's not what I'm focusing on," Brooke says slowly, "it's just a factor." She glances up at him, seeing his masked face already turned down to look at her. It's disarming. "I want this so I feel like I actually have a purpose, and it's not all for nothing. But I also am tired of meeting you in alleys and in my house like we're teenagers, for fuck's sake."
"You wanna show me off?" His thumb rubs circles over her knuckles, shoulder nudging against hers. "You wanna be the trophy wife of Soldier Boy?"
Brooke cannot roll her eyes hard enough. "I want you to show me off. I want you to be the trophy wife."
"And goddamn, I would be," Soldier Boy says, the elevator doors dinging open.
Brooke is more than familiar with all of the faces that greet her.
There's the man that calls himself The Legend, high in the rankings and a staple amongst the authority. There's a newer face, Stan Edgar, young and fresh and relentless. He has to be to have gotten so high up so quickly for his age. Grace Mallory, just as young but just as fierce, stands next to them.
She is the one to glance down at her hand conjoined with Soldier Boy's, and she is the one to frown.
Brooke does not let that deter her. She doesn't even let it break her spirit, ruin her confidence.
For once, Brooke lets Soldier Boy lead them into the room. Lets him guide her up to the table. This is his domain. These are his people. Truly, he's their brain child. If anyone is going to work a miracle, especially when one third of the odds are already working against her, it would be him.
"Soldier Boy," The Legend says around a long, drawling sigh, a little smile playing on his aging face. He then looks over at her, and the smile only grows. She tries to not balk under the scrutiny. "Rose Quartz. As rare to see you as the gem you're named after."
"What is this about?" Stan Edgar asks, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. His head is tilted back in an easygoing assessment, but Brooke knows that he's calculating.
She knows that he's seen their hands.
Brooke tries so hard to keep from pulling away from Soldier Boy. This whole purpose is to present a united front. If she cannot do that, how does she expect to in front of the public?
She hopes Soldier Boy doesn't mind that her palm is sweating.
"I've fallen in love, that's what this is about," Soldier Boy says, his cadence confident and deep. Is it true? Does he really love her? They never talked about it except in their perusal of how to present this plan.
Brooke's demeanor crumbles when The Legend begins to laugh. Gravely from cigarettes and God knew what else he did, he practically doubles over wheezing with the force of it. "Soldier Boy in love."
"Why is that hard to believe?" Brooke can't help but chime in. She can't help but feel the need to defend herself and her honor. Why is it hard to believe she can be loved? Her face is beginning to flame up, embarrassment and shame coating her cheeks pink. She feels Soldier Boy's eyes on her, knowing this wasn't part of their pitch, but she can't. She can't. "Tell me."
It's Grace Mallory that speaks. "Not necessarily hard to believe," her voice is so gentle but her tone is so firm, and her smile is so sympathetic that Brooke might just be sick, "it just is so... out of character for his cultivated image."
"That's not a bad thing, is it?" Soldier Boy laughs softly, his voice sounding so hopeful compared to Brooke's. "Change?"
Brooke pries her hand free from his.
"Of course not." Stan Edgar's smile is laced with something so double edged that it might as well have been a sword. When he turns his eyes onto Brooke again, he's still talking to Soldier Boy. "Soldier Boy, will you go wait in HQ?"
She must be imagining the concern that washes his face. Why would he be worried over what they say to her without him, when they aren't in love, not really? She doesn't even yet know his name. It's only been weeks since her breakdown in her home to him, the start of the new year sneaking up on them.
But Soldier Boy nods. Ever the obedient soldier.
He disappears into the elevator. The doors ding closed.
And Brooke is left alone with vultures.
"Vought-American is only just now starting to control everything. It's an empire in the works. People trust it, they love it. They eat it and they shit it out, breakfast, lunch, dinner. But it's a very weary line that we all walk, and we need to not scare them, Rose." The Legend does not even wait a second. A second. Before he's peeling his mask off and the true colors are peering out from behind it. No more Mr. Nice Guy in front of their brain child.
"We need to not scare them, Rose. Do you understand? The most powerful Hero of our time, and the most powerful woman Hero of our time. They can't be together. Not in the public..."
They did not tell her what floor HQ was on when they sent her away. It was such a disrespectful dismissal, one they wouldn't dare to enact on Soldier Boy – hell, wouldn't dare enact on any member of Payback for that manner.
But she was not Payback.
She was now, actually, an understudy to a member of Payback, and with the confirmation she was about to seek from Soldier Boy, the sidepiece to him.
Sidepiece.
Because he was about to enter into a public, fake relationship with his coworker Crimson Countess.
It was laughable. So laughable that Brooke couldn't help but break into hysterics in the elevator, bouncing between floors, waiting for the doors to open to reveal Soldier Boy's form in the open room. She was met with a few concerned businessmen, never him, as she cackled and howled in the elevator.
Her fifth stop was him.
And by then, she'd calmed considerably. The tears that sprung in her eyes were not from laughter anymore but furious rage.
Soldier Boy's face contorts in confusion. He blinks a couple of times, crossing the distance from the open conference room he's standing in to the elevator before the doors can close.
Brooke's hands are shaking so, so furiously at her sides. Oh, would you look at that? In quick succession, one after the other, two rose quartz stones fall onto the elevator floor. She promptly kicks them into the conference room right as the doors finally shut.
"What happened?"
She must look like a maniac when she meets his eyes. He doesn't flinch, but his eyebrows shoot to the edge of his mask.
"You are talking to," her voice sounds like it's on the brink of laughter, and she can't rein it in, it's laughter or tears and she'd much rather laugh because if she cries she will turn the Vought building into a crystalarium, "the new understudy of Crimson Countess."
Soldier Boy's mouth drops then. It shuts. Opens again. "No."
"Who is also," a little laugh slips out, holy shit, she is losing her mind, "your new girlfriend. For the world. I'm serious. You are not allowed to let it be anything but a public relationship."
"I won't–"
"You have to." She looks at the elevator buttons, scanning through the options. So many floors. They were going to let her go through all of them, searching and searching for the man they wanted her to break up with, to leave, the only thing to ever make her feel something, all because she was too strong. All because of their drug.
She laughs. Laughs again so loudly that the tears break from the dam in her eyes.
Brooke wipes them with the back of her palms, shooing away the hand that Soldier Boy puts on her elbow.
"What's your name?"
She tilts her head up at him when she asks, and his face melts. Stupid, stupid face. Always so soft around her, even behind that mask.
Soldier Boy moves the hand he tried to touch her with and lifts it to that mask, lifting it off of his face and his head. A spoof of mussy brown hair breaks free from it. He looks younger instantly; the hair combined with the shaved face. Charming, even.
"Benjamin," he says softly, as if the little boxed elevator they're in isn't private enough. Brooke wouldn't even doubt it. The eyes and ears of Vought are everywhere, prying and poking. "Benjamin Anderson."
She runs her tongue over the taste of his name in her mouth. Forms it wordlessly. Benjamin. It doesn't really suit him, does it? Too formal, and he is not the formal type. At least, she doesn't hope so. Not for what she's about to ask.
She snakes her arms around his neck, looking at that sweet, devastated expression in his eyes. It's endearing to her that he's so torn up about this, maybe even more than she is.
Who would have thought that Soldier Boy's heart would have been made of gold? Or is it Ben's heart that's made of gold, and Soldier Boy's that hardened with iron, impenetrable?
"Ben," she says, voice sultry and foreign in her own ears. Brooke is so afraid of herself right now that she locks her fingers behind his neck to stop the shaking. She needs to be reminded that she can feel. She needs to know again. She needs so many things, and no one is there for her. Except she's hoping that he can be, even if it has to be secret. "Tell me we're making the right choice."
Ben's palm flattens on the small of her back, pulling her body flush to his. "We are," he says, his nose brushing against hers. "We are."
It's reassuring. It settles the anxiety building at the base of her stomach. But it isn't enough to make her feel. She feels so powerless.
How is it possible to be belittled and made to feel so small by being shamed for being too powerful?
Her hand reaches backwards, grazing the buttons on the elevator. She can feel the wires inside, aware of the power within them just as deeply as she is within herself.
It's so easy to snuff that power out. To crystallize the wires and then shatter them without even having to see them.
And yet, she is not good enough to be on Payback. And yet, she is too good to be someone's girlfriend publicly.
It's too much.
"In that case," Brooke whispers softly, closing that gap enough to taste his breath and breathe him into her lungs, "I'm going to need you to fuck me in this elevator."
She hoped with her entire being that there was some sort of hidden camera or device in here, if only so that they could see the middle finger behind her back as she screamed his name.