Chapter 1: Cupid's Arrow Strikes
The rain had stopped, but the warehouse still dripped, each drop hitting concrete with a flat, final sound. Annie’s boots squelched in a patch of oily water. The air was a cocktail of rust, mold, and something else—cheap cologne and anticipation.
“He’s here,” Stormfront said, her voice a low hum that cut through the stagnant air. She didn’t look at Annie. Her eyes scanned the labyrinth of corroded conveyor belts and metal carcasses, lit by the sporadic epileptic flicker of a lone emergency light. “I can smell the pathetic little troll.”
Annie said nothing. Her own light buzzed under her skin, a barely-contained charge. She focused on the mission: subdue, cuff, extract. A straightforward Vought op. But her stomach was a knot of wire. Every second beside Stormfront was a performance. She forced her breathing to stay even, kept her gaze forward. Don’t think about the archives. Don’t think about the uniform in the black-and-white photo. Just the mission.
“He likes to play,” Annie muttered, her knuckles white where she gripped a rusted railing. “That’s the profile. He’ll want an audience.”
Stormfront’s laugh was short, metallic. “He’ll get one. A front-row seat to his own obliteration.”
A shuffling sound, then a low, melodic whistle echoed from the catwalk above. They both looked up.
Cupid leaned against the railing, backlit by a cracked, neon-soaked window. He was just a man. Rumpled shirt, soft belly, a face that looked like it belonged to a kindly pharmacist. Everything about him was engineered to be overlooked.
“Ladies,” he called down, his voice smooth and warm. “You couldn’t have sent Homelander? I’m flattered.”
“Get down here,” Stormfront commanded, electricity beginning to crackle around her fingertips, casting stark shadows across her sharp features. “Now. Or I melt the structure out from under you.”
Cupid sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment. “So aggressive. The world’s moved on from your methods, Libby.” He used the name like a spitball. Stormfront went rigid. “It’s all about connection now. About the heart.”
He pushed off the railing and floated down, not with power, but with a gentle descent that seemed aided by the dusty air itself. He landed softly ten feet away.
Annie shifted her stance, power coiling in her palms, casting a clean, white light that pushed back the sickly green flickers. “Your game’s over, Cupid. Turning city councilors into jealous lovers, making traffic cops abandon their posts to chase baristas… it’s childish. You’re coming in.”
“Childish?” Cupid’s cherubic face broke into a genuine smile. “Annie, Annie. I’m an artist. I reveal truths. You lock people in little boxes—spouse, hero, patriot.” His eyes flicked to Stormfront, then back to Annie, gleaming. “I set them free.”
Stormfront took a step forward. “We’re not here for your philosophy. You’re a loose end. And I specialize in trimming those.”
She moved, a blur of black and crackling blue-white. But Cupid was already smiling, his hands coming up not to fight, but to frame them, like a director composing a shot.
“Let’s see what’s in your box,” he whispered.
It wasn’t a beam or a pulse. It was an atmosphere. It washed out from him in a visible, shimmering wave, pink and gold and deeply wrong. It smelled of oversweet perfume and heated skin.
Annie threw up a shield of light on instinct. It did nothing. The wave passed through it, through her, and the world rewired itself.
One second, she was seeing Stormfront—the Nazi, the murderer, the enemy. The next, her breath caught.
The pale, perfect arc of Stormfront’s jawline, suddenly vulnerable in the half-light. The way a stray strand of that black-purple hair stuck to her lip-gloss. The incredible, formidable power in the line of her shoulders, now seeming less like a threat and more like a promise. A heat, thick and urgent, bloomed low in Annie’s gut. A desperate, physical pull. Her mind screamed, a distant, fading siren. No. No, she’s a monster. This is a trick.
Stormfront had frozen mid-stride. The electricity around her fists sputtered and died. She turned her head, slowly, and her ice-blue eyes found Annie’s.
The disgust was there, immediate and volcanic. But it was fighting something else. Her gaze traveled down Annie’s body, a blunt, physical assessment, and lingered. Her lips parted slightly. The hatred in her eyes was now tangled with a raw, confounding hunger.
“You…” Stormfront breathed, the word thick with revulsion. “This… filth…”
But she didn’t look away. Her chest rose and fell faster.
Cupid chuckled, a soft, delighted sound. “See? The truth. It’s so much more interesting than the story, isn’t it?”
Annie’s whole body was a traitor. Every cell seemed to strain toward Stormfront. She remembered the cool strength of Stormfront’s hand from a forced public handshake days ago, and now her skin burned with the memory. She wanted to feel it again, to feel those hands, which had torn through so many, on her. The self-loathing was so violent it choked her.
“Fight it,” Annie gasped, unsure if she was talking to herself or to the other woman.
Stormfront took a staggering step forward. It wasn’t the controlled prowl of a hunter. It was the clumsy step of someone pulled by a string. “You did this,” she snarled at Cupid, but her eyes snapped back to Annie’s mouth. “You little queer puppet-master.”
“I just mixed the paint,” Cupid shrugged. “You’re the canvas.”
Stormfront’s control shattered. With a roar of pure fury, she launched herself—not at Cupid, but past him, her shoulder slamming into a steel support beam. The entire warehouse groaned. She did it again, and again, the metal shrieking, dust and chunks of concrete raining down. She was trying to break the warehouse, break the moment, break the feeling inside her by sheer, destructive force.
Annie stumbled back, the emotional whiplash leaving her dizzy. The compulsive attraction was still there, a live wire in her blood, but Stormfront’s violent rejection of it created a bizarre, painful resonance.
Cupid watched, clapping his hands softly with glee. “Magnificent! The resistance! The drama!”
In the chaos, as Stormfront brought a entire section of catwalk crashing down in a thunderclap of rending metal, Cupid gave a little wave. “I’d stay for the third act, loves, but it looks a bit intense. Do send a review!”
He faded back into the deeper shadows, his whistling fading with him.
The emergency light finally gave out with a pop, plunging the immediate area into near-darkness. Only the glow from the streetlights outside, and the faint, dying crackle of Stormfront’s own power, illuminated the wreckage.
Stormfront stood panting in the center of the destruction, her shoulders heaving. She turned. Her eyes found Annie in the gloom. The primal attraction was still there, a palpable tension in the six feet of space between them, now fused with a new, even more dangerous emotion: a shame so profound it could only be washed clean with blood.
Annie’s own light flickered, weak and uncertain, across the shattered ground between them. The mission was a failure. Cupid was gone.
The real problem was standing right in front of her, breathing hard, looking at her like she was both a poisonous insect and the only source of water in a desert.
“This never happened,” Stormfront said, her voice scraped raw. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Annie just nodded, the motion stiff. She couldn’t speak. Any word might betray the war inside her—the nausea, the fear, the terrifying, unwelcome thrill that still echoed in her veins.
Stormfront turned and walked into the darkness, her steps uneven. Annie didn’t move. She listened until the sound of footsteps was swallowed by the dripping silence, alone with the scent of ozone, crushed concrete, and the ghost of that sugary, sickly perfume.