Chapter Text
They didn’t make it far before the cult came hunting.
Kate had expected it—the ROC wasn’t going to let their “Twice Named Daughter of Cain” slip away so easily—but expectation didn’t make the reality easier. Every town, every rented room, every borrowed car felt like it might be the last.
Kate learned to live in the margins. She dyed Beth’s hair. Burned IDs. Slept in abandoned houses with her gun pressed against her thigh. Sometimes they stayed three nights in one place; more often, just one.
Beth was there but not there. Her body had been returned, but her mind drifted in and out like smoke. She flinched at light touches, didn’t answer most questions, muttered strange fragments in her sleep. When Kate pressed her ear to the wall at night, she could hear Beth’s nightmares breaking through in whispers.
And Kate killed. She didn’t keep count. Numbers didn’t matter—only the faces. A dozen times, a cult tracker or handler thought they had cornered her. A dozen times they ended up dead. Kate buried the bodies when she could. When she couldn’t, she left them in the dirt, blood drying under her nails.
Eventually, she realized hiding wasn’t enough. Running meant they’d never be free; it only prolonged the inevitable.
So Kate turned the tables.
Her hunts became deliberate, her traps calculated. She sought out whispers of ROC safehouses and cut them down cell by cell. Beth would wait in a bolted motel room while Kate returned drenched in blood, exhausted but alive.
In Milan, she ambushed a convoy. In Prague, she torched a hideout. In Vienna, she slit a cult handler’s throat while his men scrambled in smoke.
And sometimes—rarely, but enough to remind her she wasn’t alone—help came.
Zatanna appeared once, a blur of light and words, breaking a binding spell before it snapped Kate’s ribs. Black Canary crossed her path another night, her scream scattering an entire ROC ambush like leaves. Neither stayed long. They were brief intersections, lives brushing against hers before disappearing into the larger war.
But the mission was hers alone.
By the end, there was only one cell left. Kate stormed it without hesitation—gunfire, blades, blood, the ritual chamber burning behind her. She didn’t stop until every masked face was gone, every whisper silenced.
Standing in the wreckage, chest heaving, armor soaked through with sweat and gore, Kate whispered into the flames:
“It’s over.”
She hadn’t told Jacob much. Just that she was alive, that he didn’t need to look for her. Short messages scrawled on postcards, unsigned but unmistakable. She hadn’t told him about Beth—not until she was sure she could bring her back.
Gotham felt the same and yet unrecognizable. Dirtier somehow, smaller, after everything.
Kate knocked on her father’s door late at night. She didn’t know what to expect—anger, grief, maybe refusal.
When the door opened, Jacob froze. His face collapsed from disbelief to raw relief in seconds. His arms went around her like he might never let go.
And then Beth stepped forward from the shadows.
His knees nearly gave out. He gathered Beth against him, shaking, choking out her name over and over. Beth didn’t answer. She just stood stiff in his arms, silent, letting herself be held like a doll.
When Jacob finally pulled back, his eyes snapped to Kate. They burned.
“Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you ask for help? What were you thinking, Katherine?”
Kate, exhausted, hollowed out, snapped back before she could stop herself. “This was mine to handle—my responisbility. My failure. I needed to. I needed to do this. I—”
The silence that followed was heavy. Jacob’s jaw tightened, like he wanted to say more, like he knew she was hiding something but couldn't handle talking about it then. Beth trembled. Kate stared at the floor, blood still under her fingernails.
The three of them sat together in the dim light of Jacob’s living room. No words. Just the sound of the city outside, faint and restless.
Beth was fragile, silent, scarred. Jacob’s hand never left hers. Kate sat apart, watching both of them, her chest aching with the knowledge that she hadn’t really brought her sister back—just the shell of her.
Still, they were together. Broken, yes, but together.
Beth wasn’t every missing girl. She was the one Kate brought home.
It'll be okay. We'll be okay.