ARIC!

The mental scream struck him like a lightning bolt and his reaction was immediate, and without conscious thought.

Owing to his dimensions, Aric had relinquished custody of his bed to the economy sized police captain; while the smaller detective was sleeping in the guest bed, that portion that was not occupied by Tyler, who had apparently adopted her, at least temporarily. That left the sofa for Aric, and it was on that piece of furniture that the plea for help found him.

He was off the couch less than a second later, his body already picking up speed as he hurled himself in the general direction of his living room ceiling and the South Atlantic Ocean. His feet, by that time already a foot above the hardwood floor of his living room but gaining altitude quickly, were still bare as the portal formed slightly above him, and his flight path intersected it a moment later. He failed to notice the significant change in temperature when he emerged at his destination, the arc of his flight bringing him back to floor level, because all of his attention was focused on the two women, clad identically from neck to toe to fingertip. Kate's cowl was still in place, but she had removed Beth's in her attempts to stem the flow of blood from her sister's shattered face and jaw. Aric realized quickly that it was Beth's blood coating the front of Kate's armor, but that the woman herself was uninjured.

"Please," Kate said, her appeal for help sobbed out in keening words of desperation, "please help her."

Kate was kneeling by Beth and had propped her sister up so that Beth was supported by Kate's legs, her torso held up by Kate's right arm as her left hand pressed a blood soaked cloth to what remained of the left side of Beth's face.

Aric didn't recognize any of the other women who were standing nearby, spectators to the evolving tragedy. His focus was now only on one person.

She was still conscious, he could see that immediately as he looked at her, her chest moving in ragged breaths. Her eyes locked with his, and her tears began to flow as she cried silently. Her right hand sought Kate's where it rested behind her, and Kate reached forward and completed the effort.

Aric smiled softly as he spoke. "You are a mess."

Beth's head nodded gently in agreement.

"OK, let's get started," Aric said to her, knowing that she would understand.

But Beth shook her head no. She reached out with her free hand to him and he took it in his. Like the rest of her, it was covered in blood.

Aric had been about to start, but her answer stopped him; stopped his healing her before it had even begun, and almost stopping his heart.

"No? Are you saying you don't want me to heal you?"

"NO!" Kate screamed, "That's not what she's saying!"

What are trying to tell me? he asked her. When her answer arrived Aric realized that they weren't alone, and that the call for help hadn't come from Beth.

Please say yes, he could hear Kate beg of her sister, please don't leave me again.

Isn't this better? Isn't this what I deserve after everything I've done? Beth asked, her voice, at least the projection of it in his mind, unaffected by her ruined jaw.

Death never atones for anything, Aric answered, not yours, not mine, not anyone else's. You know that I know that, but you don't know how I learned it, not really. You don't know how many deaths I've caused out of anger.

Listen to him! Come back to us. If you leave when you could have stayed I'll never forgive you! Will you still go, knowing that? Kate asked.

I'm sorry for before, for being such a mope. I can work on that, or we can go our separate ways, no harm, no foul; your dying won't fix anything, and it will only make me hurt more. If you need a written invitation to stick around, I'll give you one. But I'm asking you to stay, and you'll have to choose soon, or your body is going to decide for you, Aric said.

Kate's face was spotted with Beth's blood, her tears leaving tracks from her eyes to her chin. Their mental conversation had lasted less than ten seconds, but whatever Kate was still pressing to Beth's face was saturated and dripping blood onto the floor.

Fine, Beth said, since you both ask so nicely, I'll stay.

Aric's smile returned. I'm glad, he said before the three of them were consumed by golden light.

"Jesus, what the fuck happened?" John Dorazio asked. "Whose blood is that?"

The three of them had reappeared in Aric's living room just moments before, and Aric was placing his sleeping girlfriend down on the couch when the question appeared unannounced from the hallway behind him.

"Jesus Christ..." John began as his eyes got a good look at what Kate and Beth were wearing.

"What happened?" Meg asked from beside her large superior. "Is she OK?"

Kate pulled her cowl and wig off and simply let it drop to the floor as she knelt next to her twin sister. Beth's face was peaceful, and perfect. The blood...Beth's blood, and the tiny bits of bone stuck to it...had dried, lending the skin on her cheek an alien texture; but neither Aric nor Kate had any intention of disturbing her while she slept off his healing.

John Dorazio and Meg Changer stood in stunned silence at the scene playing out before them. Not one Batwoman, but two. Two women in identical armor, covered in enough blood that Meg was certain that the woman on the couch had bled out. She had sat with these two women. She'd shared a meal, and drinks, and information about what was going on with three dead men, and a WMD.

I met you once, she thought, one of you anyway. At a distance. You were on a roof taking down four men. I was on the fire escape, huffing and puffing my way up to you with my partner Benny. You looked right at me just before you made your exit over the far edge of the building.

what the fuck happened?

Kate leaned forward and kissed Beth's forehead. "I love you," she whispered softly before standing. Her tears continued to trace lines down her face, but they were now tears of sadness mixed with joy. Aric was keeping Tyler at bay, least the large mutt take the task of cleaning Beth's face onto himself.

"She's fine," Aric said finally in response to the question that seemed to have been asked a lifetime ago, "she'll sleep most of the day away, but she's fine."

"So there have been two of you all this time?" John asked. "What, do you take shifts?"

Kate shook her head as her hand came up to wipe the tears from her eyes, which only accomplished smearing blood from her glove to her face.

"Jesus, I'm head to toe covered in blood."

"You, we can do something about," Aric said. "Use the outdoor shower in the back. You can rise off your armor. You can wear something of Beth's after that."

Kate looked at her sleeping sister and simply nodded before looking up at the man who had saved Beth's life. She reached up with her left hand and squeezed his right shoulder, leaving a bloody hand print behind which caused the two of them to laugh. She didn't need to say the words out loud.

Thank you.

Aric's response was just as silent. You're quite welcome.

Kate turned and walked through the kitchen to the back door. Aric knelt next to Beth and then began gently to remove pieces of her blood stained armor.

"Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?" John asked.

"Slow the fuck down or she's not the only one who's gonna need healing!" Laurel yelled loudly as she gripped the armrests of her seat.

Trish took her foot off the accelerator and let the van's speed drop to below ninety. "Why the fuck didn't anyone tell me sooner!?"

Laurel still wasn't sure how it was that Helene knew to call her, except that one of the three women had recognized Beth and/or Kate. It had been Helene's description of the man who had appeared to heal Beth Kane that had sealed the deal for Trish.

"They hadn't cleared the building yet, and it took time. Slow down! Where the hell are you driving to anyway?"

They were trying their utmost not to use any names, but both of them were on the raggedy edge of failing.

"Where do you think I'm driving to? Where else would I be driving to?"

Kate's, Laurel knew.

"They might not be there! What if he didn't take her there? SLOW DOWN!"

"FUCK!" Trish screamed.

She was losing it. She knew that. But there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it. She tried the Litany Against Fear and she couldn't remember anything past I must not fear.

I must not fear, I must not fear, I must not fear, FUCK!

Laurel was trying to project an image of calm, a false one to be sure, but what did anyone expect? "Take a fucking breath, would you please? She's fine. He healed her. Huntress said when the light was gone she was totally healed. But if you slam this van into a bridge abutment, there's nobody around to put either of us back together. So would you for. the. love. of. God. slow. down."

Trish's chest muscles finally relaxed enough for her to take in a deep breath, and then another. With each breath their speed seemed to diminish until finally they were traveling a relatively sedate forty-five miles per hour.

She'd never seen him do it, she'd only ever heard about it; and what she'd heard was pretty hard to believe. But if Beth was really OK, if he had done what Laurel said he'd done, what Huntress had said she'd seen him do, she'd never doubt him again.

Trish's brain began to work again a few seconds later. "If he didn't take them back there, where did he take them?"

That at least Laurel could help with. "He was protecting the two cops. He took them someplace safe. That was where he was when he got the call."

"Then whoever called him can call him back and ask him where he is."

"It must have been you know who that called him. It wasn't Lady Shiva, or Huntress, or Batgirl," Laurel said.

"Jesus, with him he could have taken them anywhere on the planet."

"Well, think about it. If it was you, and you were taking an injured woman somewhere to rest, where would you go?"

"A hospital, but that's out of the running given what they were both wearing. Next would be home. Did he take her back to New York?"

"Maybe. But if he was still protecting those two cops he probably went back to wherever they are."

"Which, again...anywhere. You're sure he didn't take them there."

"No, I'm not sure. But were there now, so we should check."

They had indeed arrived at the Kane Building, still in one piece. Trish stopped directly in front of the entrance of the building. If any fucking door man came out to protest she'd hit him so hard he'd see stars. When he woke up.

"What about them?" Trish asked as she nodded her head to the back of the van to indicate the bound men.

Laurel turned to look at Detective's Louis Alvarado and Donald Sternberg where they lay on the floor of the van. They'd been awake for the last part of the ride. God knows what they must have thought of Trish and Laurel's screaming conversation.

"They're not going anywhere."

"So what you're telling me is you can do some pretty amazing shit, but you can't get blood out of a fucking sofa cushion?"

"That is more or less what I'm saying, yes."

Aric had washed the blood off of his hands, and knees, and feet, but not before leaving footprints on the parkay flooring of his living room. Kate had left her own set, the treads of her boots clearly defined.

Beth was still sound asleep on the blood stained sofa, as was Kate where she lay with her right side pressed to the bottom edge of said sofa, her left side occupied by a dog that was almost as long as Kate was when he stretched out in full snooze mode. Aric had moved to the porch, as had John Dorazio; and both had enjoyed, courtesy of Aric's eastward looking home, a beautiful sunrise with hot coffee and Bolos Lêvedos. That event was almost two hours in the past, and neither of the Kane sisters (or their dreaming guard dog) showed any sign of stirring. Meg Chander made a brief appearance before taking her breakfast down to the water's edge, along with a beach towel to protect her from the damp sand. Healing Beth had taken a fair amount of energy, and if Aric hadn't been on the verge of a panic attack he would have used his own stores of dark energy and then slept it off just like Beth was doing now. But panic was almost what he did as he tapped the infinite well that was there for the asking, a constant temptation to him to overindulge, even if it killed him. But he'd stopped well away from the danger zone, and all he felt now was tired.

Julia had still not texted or called, which meant that none of the other women who had raided Fredo Giancona's hideout had informed her of what had occurred. Aric had not asked Kate, and Kate had not offered, so everyone currently under his roof in Quilmes was just as in the dark as he was about what happened there. But the details weren't important, not when weighed against Beth's health and well being. They could wait to find out what happened, and give the sisters time to process it themselves. Aric was also in need of time. Time to do his own processing. Time to get his anger at whoever did this to Beth under control. Time to think about what he would do to them if he ever found them.

Something had happened in that moment of extremis when Kate, either by going through Beth or taking a direct path, had reached out to him. Beth's brush with death, and Kate's grief as she watched, had triggered something in one of them, possibly both of them. And as far as Aric could tell, it wasn't going away. It might do, given sufficient time, but Aric didn't think so.

Maybe twins really do have a special connection, he thought. He hadn't met many sets of twins, so he didn't have any data to speak of; but he was certain that Beth and Kate had a connection, now and, maybe, always. He'd felt it in that empty brewery as he knelt beside the two of them, Kate's voice in his head sounding so different than Beth's. It had been a surprise at the time, and he still marveled at the fact. But they were only twins in the physical sense. Their lives had been so different...he should have expected..he wasn't sure what. They certainly looked alike. The way Kate tilted her head, the way Beth smiled right before she laughed, the two of them shared so many mannerisms it was hard to remember that they'd been separated for twenty years.

Aric took a slow breath as he began to reach out to the former location of Godfrith Old English Brewery overlooking the Fox River in North Aurora. He could close his eyes and pinpoint the structure's location to within a millimeter in space, but he'd had to go online and look up the physical address that Kate had given him to know what it was, and what it had been. It had been owned by the mob even when it had still been producing beer in the early twentieth century. Now it was just another site where men could scream for mercy without being heard, or where mobsters could hide from whoever was looking for them. He could still feel the vibrations of the altercation in the skin of the universe. It had lasted for well over thirty minutes before he'd arrived. From the feel of it, it had continued another twenty minutes after he'd departed, Beth nestled safely in his arms, Kate only steps behind. If he focused down very hard he could pinpoint individual gunfire, and if he wound backwards slowly he might even identify the shot that had almost taken the woman he loved from him. He stopped that effort when he realized that his anger was returning, as well as the physical manifestations that had startled his guests.

"They were firing hollow point semi wadcutters, the motherfuckers," Kate had said as she continued to dry her armor several hours earlier, "they're a guaranteed catastrophic injury on soft flesh. Regular hollow points don't always expand, depending on what they hit."

"They weren't expecting armor," John concluded, "or they'd have been loaded with anti-armor rounds. You got lucky."

"Beth didn't," was all Kate said in reply.

"They won't make that mistake next time," Meg had added, "if there is a next time."

"There will very definitely be a next time," Kate had said, "Freddy's still in the wind."

That had been the moment that Kate got a glimpse of Aric's face, and it seemed in that moment that there was fire behind his eyes, that they were burning with some internal combustion, like the glow from when he'd healed Beth. His eyes were burning, and his face...Kate had never imagined what the face of death looked like, but in that moment she had a fair idea.

"What the fuck...?" John asked before stopping.

so i didn't imagine it, Kate thought as her heart beat hard against her chest muscles.

But Aric blinked, and it was all gone. He inhaled deeply before exhaling slowly.

"Sorry. I'm just upset. Nothing to worry about."

Meg's eyes were still wide, her breathing still rapid. If she'd been wearing a side arm she'd have reached for it already.

Everyone had been silent for a moment before John Dorazio responded. "If you say so."

Trish had been pounding on the door on and off almost twenty seconds. She'd detected motion almost immediately, but it took thirty seconds before the door opened a crack.

"Are they here?" Trish asked without preamble.

"Is who here? Julia asked as she opened the door all the way. She was wearing a robe as she looked at Trish and Laurel.

"Aric and Beth and Kate. They're not here?"

"No. Why would they be here."

"Beth was hurt. Bad. Aric healed her and took her somewhere. We don't no where."

"How bad?"

"Very."

"Oh, God," Julia said as she started to cry, her eyes overflowing quickly, "oh, God. Beth."

"What is it?" said a man's voice that quickly had a body attached to it as he came into view.

Oops, thought Trish and Laurel together.

"It's Beth," Julia managed to say before burying her face in Bruce Wayne's naked chest and sobbing uncontrollably.

Bruce wrapped his arms around Julia Pennyworth as his eyes silently asked the two women, still wearing their Canary identities, for an explanation.

"OK," Laurel Lance began, "the short version. Then we have to take our stolen van full of human garbage someplace safe."

"Hey, doll...it's gonna be OK. OK? Jessica Jones asked, "Let me know when you get a hold of them. She's safe, right? She's healed. Right?"

Jess had to wait a few seconds for Julia to get a grip on her emotions before hearing the answer. "Right. I'll let you know as soon as I talk to them."

Jess placed the phone on the end table but sat at the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

"Motherfuckers," she said quietly, even though she knew Luke was wide awake. "Motherfuckers."

"Who?" was all Luke asked. He'd gotten the gist of the conversation, but not the particulars.

"Beth," Jess said as she continued to sit. She felt the mattress shift as Luke sat up, and his arms were around her a second later.

"How bad?" he asked. He'd heard the words healed and safe, so he knew she was still alive, and not in danger, but that something was still seriously wrong.

"They blew off a chunk of her face," Jess said, her voice growing thinner with each word before disappearing completely as her throat closed up tight. They stayed like that for a minute, his arms around her while she cried.

Jessica Jones took a deep breath as she straightened her back to sit completely upright. "But she's fine now. Aric has her. Somewhere. But their phones are still at the same location as their motorcycles, where they parked them before heading into...those fucking assholes...I'm gonna dig a deep hole and throw them into it, and let them watch as I fill that fucking hole in again with them in it. Fuck with me and mine? I'll bury you alive, motherfucker."

Luke knew that the world had a whole other set of problems to think about if both of them went off the rails at the same time, and right now it was his turn to be the calm and collected one.

"We'll find them, and we'll make sure they pay. That is if Beth's sister doesn't find them first. Right now, let's be glad that everyone is OK. Come to church with me tomorrow. We'll sit in the back. You'll feel better, I promise."

"Today," Jess said as she wiped her eyes, "It's already Sunday."

Luke kissed the side of her head. "So it is."