Chapter Text
She does not want to kill.
She does not know many things, but she knows that. She knows what someone looks like moments before death, knows every inch of their reaction, how their muscles tense and quiver against the inevitable, how their eyes scream even louder then their throats, how blood gushes warmly with life that leaks from their form in time with-
She knows all of that, and she knows the way He looks when he's proud of a job well done. She knows He will forget his pride quickly, replace it with more pain and insist she wasn't perfect. She knew, deep in her bones, that the moment of pride wasn't worth all that killing entailed.
It was hard to come to terms with. She'd never had a thought like that, so starkly opposed to everything she's been told and taught. Never had a thought at all, really. She was a tool. She was nothing until she was perfect, and then she'd be used to perfection until she broke. Everything she knew, it all boiled down to that, until-
This was wrong. This was WRONG, she couldn't do this, she couldn't! The thought was as tiny as it was certain; she COULDN'T do this, but she couldn't have thoughts couldn't disobey orders couldn't STOP herself either, she-
She was stopped abrubtly, held against a frame twice her size. She couldn't see the body around her, her head pressed down to look away from both them and the woman bleeding on the floor, but she could still feel them. Could feel how their grip was firm but not painful unless she struggled. Not cruel, just stopping.
It stopped her. It knew, it KNEW she was wrong, and it stopped her!
She struggles on reflex more then anything else; her thoughts didn't really follow her actions, as she thought they always must. She was acting one way, and thinking another. It was...surreal. Her struggles were imperfect- sloppy, really, without her thoughts to back them up and help them finish the goal. She struggled because- because there was a part of her that was SCARED of what would happen if she didn't finish her mission, didn't follow orders. It was big, but it wasn't the part of her that could think. The part of her that knew it was WRONG above anything else, knew that was all that mattered.
Until she wakes up in a strange, small room. There is no one to read, in the room. No one to tell her what to do. No mission to fufill- she isn't going to kill that woman, it's not her mission anymore. She explores what little she can. The little room reminds her of traveling with Him; sometimes, He would stay in big-buildings-with-many-rooms, and she would have to sneak into the room he slept in. Without being caught, of course.
She was never caught, before. But now, she was in this room- a room like the smaller rooms off of the sleeping rooms she found him in, a room meant for cleaning and nothing else.
That couldn't be right, though, because she woke up in here, which meant she slept in here. It was mostly-dark but still easy to see, and the smooth basin that ran water for cleaning was cluttered with soft-soft-soft-warm-soft things that were usually on His bed. She'd never woken up in them before, always told to hide under the bed or in a closet in case he was attacked in the night. She spent much time just there, picking through the soft things carefully and daring to indulge them while she had them.
She might fall asleep like that, again. She isn't quite sure. But she does eventually move through the rest of the room. By the soft-filled-tub, there was the waste-flush thing she'd expect, and then a water-maker she was too short to reach. That was fine, she could easily leverage herself up. She turns the water on and cups it into her hands to drink- she was so thirsty. And, she realized, she was hungry too.
There was an exit, next to the water tower. She took a deep breathe and tried to open it- no matter who had put her here, she couldn't stay. She couldn't stay with Him; he'd punish her for not killing, he'd try to make her kill again, and she wouldn't. She wouldn't, so she couldn't stay with Him. If it was anyone else then....she didn't know what she'd do. Didn't know what they'd do. Who could it be? No one who knew about her would want her for anything but killing. He made sure of it.
(She'd only known how to think for herself a very short while, and was honestly still figuring it out, but she already thinks she might hate Him for making her a killer as much as she hates the act itself.)
So she had to leave. But, when she reached over to open the exit, it wouldn't open. When she kicked at the opener, it barely made a sound. The exit was thick and heavy, like exits to rooms like this usually weren't. No matter what she did, she couldn't get the door to move.
She wasn't only caught for the first time ever. She was trapped.
--
It would be lying to say that checking on the Row family was the first thing Stephanie thought to do, once they gave up on going back and decided to use time to their advantage. It was up there, though, and soon enough her and Tim had their semi-permanent identities tied to a semi-permanent apartment across the hall from the Rows. It was a rather urgent matter; if their timeline was right, Cass would be dropping in for her first-and-last kill any month now. Tim was keeping as close an eye as possible on David Cain's movements through the holes he poked in the LoV, and Stephanie was being annoyingly friendly to her new neighbors. With any luck, it wouldn't look a hair out of place for them to happen to be over, the night that Miranda Row was supposed to die.
Now their plan had worked almost perfectly, but- well. Cass was eight-maybe-nine, but she was still Cass. She got a stab in on the woman before Tim could get a good hold of her, and now Stephanie was left to deal with the fallout of that.
"Oh, oh my god, I- Miranda!" She blubbered for effect, crowding her friends bed. Her throat had been slit while she was sleeping; a practiced motion Cass must've pulled in her hesitation.
Stephanie could save her. She would.
"Minnie?" Miranda tried to grasp, head trying to turn towards her. Stephanie nodded, grabbing the woman's hand with one of hers, but the other was already applying pressure. It was a thin line to walk, between stemming the blood flow and chocking the woman out. Miranda gasped under her hold, and Stephanie's flinch wasn't entirely fabricated.
"Yeah it's- sorry, it hurts but I'm gonna save you I promise, I'm- I'm here, Miranada. Al- he heard something and then you screamed, so he came to check on you while I checked on the kids, but he took it, took it outside, and-" Miranda's full body twitched at the mention of her kids, and Stephanie nodded. "They're safe, don't worry I made sure, Al, he's got it handled, I just need you to breathe." She insisted, pushing a little harder for effect. Miranda tried to nod, but Stephanie still couldn't let her move her head. Still, her breathe got more and more even, until she was asleep. Her skin was noticably paler, but the bleeding had mostly stopped.
She should be in a hospital. Stephanie could do the stitches and blood transfusion, sure, but not without the right supplies. They planned for this, didn't they? Where was-
The door creaked behind her. Little footsteps shuffled in.
"She's gonna be okay." Stephanie promised little Harper, glad the lights were off so she couldn't see the reality of the situation.
"But-" Harper whimpered, looking at the wet cloth on her mom's neck. It smelled thickly of blood in the room, and Harper had always been smart. Stephanie wondered how much of the situation she'd put together in her head, how much of it her tiny eight year old brain could really comprehend.
"She's gonna be okay." Stephanie insisted, "But I need you to do something for me, okay? The first aid kid Al bought you guys for Christmas, you know where that is?" Harper nodded quickly, and darted out into the hallway before Stephanie could even properly make her request. "You've got a good kid there." She whispered to the sleeping woman under her hands.
Miranda's blood was still warm. Her nose was still whistling softly with every breathe. She was still Alive.
"Here." Harper whispered, lugging the kit that probably weighed about the same as herself into the room.
"Good job. Now go watch your brother, you hear? I'll take care of you're mom." Stephanie dismissed, taking a deep breathe.
Harper hesitated, but obediently scampered off again. Stephanie sighed. This would be hard on her own, but not impossible. Stitches and bandaging; a blood transfusion if she needed it. They'd go to Leslie's in the morning.
Miranda Harper was going to live.
--
Miranda Harper was alive.
David Cain paced the room, glancing at the evidence again. It didn't change. He had dropped his daughter off in Gotham two weeks ago. It shouldn't have taken her more then a day to slay the woman and slip back to their rendezvous point, but she had yet to do either. He had assumed she had at least killed Harper, and gotten lost in the city; his daughter was many things, but adaptable wasn't one of them yet. They were going to work on that next, make sure she knew how to keep her wits about her and rewarding her first kill with a brief reprieve of some travel. She was a curious thing, interested in new places and things and people. She was his.
And now she was a failure, because Row had checked into work that morning, and his daughter was still missing.
He scoured every inch of the accursed city, to no avail. He pulled some strings to get access to security cameras in and surrounding the Harper residence on the night his daughter was meant to do the deed. That shed a little light on the situation; there was clearly a struggle there that night, reports of screaming and another woman helping Harper limp down the street the next morning.
He stared at the grainy image from the few angles he could find it at, but it didn't change the longer he looked at it. His blood boiled as he realized the truth of the matter, and shifted his mental parameters of his search. This was no longer a retrieval; it was a hunt.
Because his daughter didn't get lost.
She ran.