Work Text:
“They have him. They have Carter.” Beth’s voice was filled with so much worry that the words seemed to scrape their way out of her. She stood in front of Rip with her chest rising heavily, every breath shallow and uneven, as though her lungs had suddenly forgotten how to work properly. There was fear in her eyes, naked and unguarded, the kind she would have rather died than let anyone else see.
Carter was out there somewhere, in the hands of people who had no reason to care whether he was frightened or hurt, and every instinct inside her was screaming at her to find him. She had spent her entire life learning how to bury fear beneath anger, how to turn pain into something sharp enough to hurt someone else before it could hurt her. But this was different. This was her child.
“They don’t want Carter. They want us.” Rip gestured between them as he spoke, his voice low and measured despite the weight of what he was saying. He could see the realization settle over her face as the pieces fell into place.
Carter wasn't the target. He was the leverage. They had taken the one person they knew would make Beth and Rip walk willingly into whatever trap had been prepared for them. Rip understood that immediately, understood the calculation behind it, but Beth heard something else in those words. She heard that the boy she had grown to love had been turned into a weapon against them, and the thought made something vicious rise inside her.
“Then they are going to fucking get us.” Beth spat the words back at him like a threat, every single word carrying the promise of what would happen to anyone standing between her and Carter. There was no hesitation in her anymore. The fear hadn't disappeared; it had simply been swallowed by something hotter. Her eyes had changed, the panic still burning beneath them but now surrounded by a fury so complete that even Rip could see how close she was to losing herself inside it.
Something inside Beth snapped. There was no single thought that pushed her over the edge, no conscious decision to move. One heartbeat she was standing beside Rip, trying to breathe through the crushing weight in her chest, and the next she was already walking. Her body seemed to move before her mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older and more powerful than reason.
Carter had somehow reached a special place without her even realizing it. He had become hers quietly, through ordinary days and arguments and meals and all the little moments neither of them had thought would matter. Now that someone had taken him, Beth could feel every protective instinct she had ever denied coming alive at once.
She barely registered Rip's voice calling after her or the startled looks that followed in her wake. His words blurred into the background as she crossed the ranch, her boots striking the ground with a furious rhythm. Her pulse thundered in her ears, drowning out everything except the image that refused to leave her mind.
Carter's face flashed before her again and again: his stubborn expression, the way he looked when he was trying to hide that something had hurt him, the way he still sometimes searched Rip's face for approval without realizing he was doing it. Beth knew that look because she had learned it herself a lifetime ago, the look of a child waiting to find out whether someone was going to stay. The thought of Carter sitting somewhere, wondering whether they were coming for him, made her stomach twist violently.
By the time she reached the barn doors, the smell of blood, sweat, and hay hit her with almost physical force. The air inside was thick and stale, carrying the unmistakable scent of what had already happened there. Her eyes adjusted quickly, and then she saw him.
The prisoner hung where Azul and Zachariah had left him, bruised and bloodied, barely able to hold his own weight. His face was swollen from the questioning, one eye nearly closed, blood dried along his mouth and chin. His breathing came in uneven, exhausted pulls, and his wrists were bound so tightly that the skin around them had turned angry red. He looked like a man who had already been pushed far past his limits.
Beth didn't care.
In that moment he represented only one thing to her, tthe possibility of knowing where her son was. Every bruise on his face meant nothing compared to the thought of Carter being hurt somewhere she couldn't reach him. Every breath the man took seemed like a wasted second when Carter was still missing. Her mind had narrowed until there was only one question left in the entire world, and she was prepared to tear through anyone standing between her and the answer.
Azul looked up first, his expression changing the instant he saw her face. He opened his mouth, perhaps to warn her, perhaps to tell her they were still working on the man, but Beth was already moving. She crossed the distance between them in seconds, her anger giving her a kind of terrifying purpose. The first blow landed before anyone could react, her fist connecting with the man's face hard enough to jerk his head violently to the side.
“Where is he?” The question came out low and vicious, but she didn't wait for an answer. Her fist came again, the force behind it fueled by every second she had spent wondering whether Carter was alive.
“Where's my son?” she demanded, her voice cracking around the word ‘son’ as though even saying it aloud exposed something too tender inside her. She struck him again, then grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him toward her with both hands, forcing his battered face up until she could see him clearly.
“Where is Carter?” she screamed. The man's head lolled slightly as he struggled to focus on her, blood running from the corner of his mouth. He tried to answer, but whatever words he managed were swallowed by another furious demand.
“Where the fuck is my son?” Beth's voice filled the barn, raw and ragged, carrying none of the polished control she wore like armor everywhere else. Tears had begun gathering in her eyes, but she didn't seem to notice them. She was shaking from the sheer violence of everything moving through her at once.
Azul and Zachariah stood frozen nearby. They had seen violence before. They had seen men beaten, threatened, broken down for information. They knew what fear looked like and what desperation could turn people into. But this was different.
Beth wasn't behaving like someone trying to extract information from a prisoner. She was behaving like a mother whose child had been ripped out of her reach, and there was something terrifying about watching the realization of motherhood arrive in someone like Beth all at once. The woman who had spent her life convincing everyone, including herself, that she didn't need anyone was now willing to tear apart the world because one boy needed her.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the barn floor.
Rip.
He took in the scene in a single glance. The prisoner hanging from the chain, already beaten and barely conscious. Azul and Zachariah standing rigidly to one side. Beth in front of him, her hair disheveled, her breathing ragged, her hands trembling with a fury so complete that she seemed barely aware of her own body anymore. Rip had seen Beth angry more times than he could count.
He had seen her furious, vindictive, reckless, and utterly merciless. But this wasn't any of those things. This was something deeper. Something instinctive. Something born from the terrifying realization that someone had taken the boy who had somehow become their son.
Beth's fist swung again.
Rip caught her wrist before it landed.
His grip was firm enough to stop her cold, his fingers closing around her wrist with the kind of strength that left no room for argument. Beth immediately twisted against him, trying to pull herself free, her eyes still locked on the prisoner as though Rip's presence was nothing more than an obstacle between her and the only answer she cared about.
Rip didn't let go. He stepped closer, his expression hardening as he looked at her, because he knew that look in her eyes. He knew she was no longer thinking clearly. And right now, with Carter's life hanging in the balance, he couldn't let her lose herself in the rage.
“Beth.” His voice cut through the barn, low and unmistakable, but she barely seemed to hear it at first.
Her entire body was still angled toward the prisoner, every muscle tense with the need to get back to him, to force an answer out of him before another second could pass. Her breathing came fast and shallow, her chest rising beneath the weight of panic she could no longer contain.
Rip watched her face and saw the battle happening behind her eyes. The fury, the terror, the desperate need to do something when there was nothing she could physically do to reach Carter. He knew that feeling because it was tearing through him too. The difference was that Rip had spent his entire life learning how to bury fear beneath control. Beth had spent hers learning how to turn it into a weapon.
She finally looked at him.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Rip held her gaze, his hand still firmly wrapped around her wrist, his grip strong enough to remind her that he was there and that she wasn't going to simply tear herself apart in front of him. There was no softness in his expression yet. She needed someone strong enough to stand between her and the edge she was racing toward. Rip knew Beth better than anyone alive, and he knew that if he allowed her to keep moving on instinct alone, the rage would consume whatever judgment she had left.
Carter needed both of them. That was the only thing that mattered.
“Beth.” She jerked against him immediately, the sound of her name seeming to ignite another burst of resistance rather than calm her.
“Let me go!” She shouted, wrenching her wrist against his hand. Her free hand came up again, instinctively reaching toward the prisoner, desperate to get back to the only person in the room who might know where Carter was. Rip moved before she could take another step, placing himself directly between her and the injured man.
His hands closed around her forearms.
He wasn't hurting her, and she knew it. Rip would sooner break his own hands than deliberately hurt her. But he was refusing to let her move, refusing to give her even an inch of space in which to turn that fear into another blow. Beth fought against him anyway, her boots shifting against the dusty barn floor as she tried to push around him.
“He knows where Carter is!” She shouted, her voice breaking halfway through the sentence. The desperation in those words hit Rip harder than the fists she'd thrown.
“I know he does.” Rip answered.
His voice remained controlled, but there was something underneath it now. Something darker. His eyes flicked briefly toward the prisoner before returning to her, and for the first time Beth could see the fear Rip had been hiding. It wasn't loud. Rip's fear never was. It lived in the tightness of his jaw, the way his shoulders had gone rigid, the slight tremor of tension running through the hands holding her. Carter wasn't just Beth's boy. He was his. The thought of him being somewhere in the hands of people who had already proven what they were capable of was tearing Rip apart just as surely as it was tearing her apart.
“Then let me make him talk!” Beth screamed.
Rip's jaw tightened.
For one fleeting second, something flashed across his face. Anger, fear, frustration, perhaps all three tangled together. Not anger at her. Never that. Anger at the situation. At the men who had taken Carter. At the fact that their son was somewhere out there and neither of them could reach him yet. He understood exactly why Beth wanted to tear the answer out of this man. Part of him wanted to do the same thing.
But wanting wasn't enough. They needed information and they needed Carter alive.
Beth tried to push past him again. Rip didn't budge. She put both hands against his chest and shoved, but he stood there like a wall, absorbing the force without moving backward. She tried to step around him, and he shifted with her, keeping himself between her and the prisoner. The movement was almost maddeningly calm, as though he had all the time in the world, even though every second Carter remained missing was a second that terrified him.
“Beth.” His voice dropped lower.
It was the voice that could bring an entire ranch to attention without ever becoming a shout. The voice that meant there was no argument left to be had. Beth knew it. She had heard it when things were going wrong on the ranch, when Rip needed everyone around him to stop reacting and start listening. She had heard it when danger was close enough that emotion became a liability.
“Look at me.” Beth refused.
Her eyes remained fixed over his shoulder, locked onto the prisoner as if she could somehow force him to give up the location of Carter simply by looking at him hard enough. Her chest continued to rise and fall rapidly, and her fingers curled into fists against Rip's shirt.
“Beth.” She shook her head.
“No.” There was something almost childlike in the refusal, and Rip felt his chest ache at the sound of it.
This wasn't the woman who could walk into a boardroom and dismantle a man with three sentences. This wasn't the woman who could stare down an enemy without blinking. This was Beth terrified that the worst thing imaginable had already happened to the boy she loved.
“Look at me.” Rip tightened his hold on her arms just enough to bring her attention back. This time, it wasn't a request. Beth's eyes finally snapped to his. Rip held her gaze without blinking. And she saw it.
The fear.
It was buried deep, underneath years of violence and discipline and the hard shell he had built around himself, but it was there. His eyes were darker than usual, his face drawn tight with the same terrible uncertainty that had been eating at her since the moment she told him Carter was gone. He wasn't calm because he didn't care. He was calm because he cared too fucking much.
“This isn't helping Carter.” He whispered.
The words were quiet enough that they almost disappeared beneath the sounds of the barn, but Beth heard every one of them.
Rip's hands remained around her arms, but the pressure softened slightly. His thumb moved once against her skin, an almost imperceptible gesture that reminded her that beneath the firmness, beneath the command in his voice, there was still the man who loved her standing in front of her.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Beth could feel the warmth of his hands through the fabric of her clothes, grounding her in a way nothing else had been able to. The frantic rhythm of her heartbeat hadn't disappeared, but it was beginning to slow. Not because she was less afraid, but because Rip was reminding her that fear didn't have to make every decision for her. Somewhere beneath the panic, she could still think. Somewhere beneath the rage, she could still be Beth.
Rip glanced toward the prisoner, his eyes briefly narrowing as he took in the man's battered state. Whatever information was left to be pulled from him, Rip would get it. He had no intention of walking away from this barn without knowing where Carter was, and the determination in his face made that clear. But then his attention returned to Beth, and the look he gave her changed again. There was something almost painfully tender beneath the hardness now, because he knew what sending her away would cost her. He knew she would hate every second of being somewhere else while he questioned the man who might know where their son was.
“Go home.” The words landed heavier than she expected.
“What?” Beth's expression immediately tightened, as though he had struck some invisible nerve.
“Go home.” Rip repeated, quieter this time, but no less certain. He released one of her arms and let his hand settle briefly against her shoulder, holding her gaze as he spoke.
“You need to get out of here.” Her eyes flicked toward the prisoner, then back to him. The instinct to refuse rose instantly inside her. Leaving felt impossible. It felt like abandoning Carter. Like sitting somewhere safe while her son was still out there, waiting for them. She shook her head slowly, her lips parting as though the word no was already forming.
“I need you somewhere I know you'll be safe,” he said, his voice carrying that same quiet authority that had stopped her in her tracks moments earlier. But there was something softer beneath it now, something only she would have recognized.
He was speaking to his wife, the woman he loved, the woman whose fear was tearing him apart because it mirrored his own. His hand rose slowly to her face, his rough fingers brushing gently along her cheek. The tenderness of the gesture nearly undid her. After all the violence and shouting, after the blood and the panic, that simple touch reminded her that she wasn't standing in this alone.
Beth's eyes closed for the briefest moment beneath his hand. She leaned into his palm instinctively, allowing herself one fragile second of comfort before the reality waiting outside the barn came crashing back in. Rip looked at her with an expression that held more emotion than he would ever put into words. He was scared too. Terrified, if she was honest with herself. But he had learned long ago how to carry fear without letting it control his hands, and now he was asking her to trust him to carry some of hers.
Without another word, Rip pulled her against him. Beth went willingly this time.
His arms closed tightly around her, drawing her against his chest until she could feel the steady, powerful rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her cheek. She clutched the back of his shirt, her fingers curling into the fabric as though some part of her still wanted to hold him there, to keep the one person who made the world feel less frightening within reach.
Rip lowered his head, his cheek resting against her hair, and for a moment neither of them said anything. They simply held each other in the middle of the barn, surrounded by the evidence of the nightmare unfolding around them, pretending for just a few seconds that they were allowed to be nothing more than husband and wife.
Everett appeared in the doorway, his expression immediately sobering when he saw the two of them holding each other. He didn't interrupt. He simply waited until Rip gave him a small nod. Beth felt Rip's arms loosen reluctantly.
For a moment, she didn't move.
Then Everett stepped closer and gently gestured toward the door. Beth looked at Rip one last time, her eyes searching his face for reassurance. He gave her a single, firm nod, the kind that said everything he couldn't say aloud.
Everett walked beside her as she left the barn, and Beth didn't look back until she reached the doorway. When she did, Rip was still standing exactly where she had left him, watching her go with a look in his eyes that made her chest ache.
***
The house was quiet when Rip came through the front door, but it wasn't the kind of quiet that came with peace. It was the kind that seemed to magnify every absence, turning the familiar rooms into reminders of the person who wasn't there. He closed the door behind him and stood still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness and his mind catch up with the silence.
Rip's eyes moved instinctively toward the hallway. He already knew where she was. He didn't need to search for her or call her name. The hallway light was on, casting a narrow strip of warm light across the darker floor, and Carter's bedroom door stood open. Something about seeing it that way made his chest tighten.
He had walked through that doorway countless times without thinking about what it meant. It was simply Carter's room, one more room in the house, one more part of the life they had built. Tonight, it looked different. The open door felt like an invitation and a wound at the same time.
Rip stopped in the doorway.
Beth sat on the edge of Carter's bed with her shoulders slightly rounded, her posture completely different from the woman who had stormed into the barn earlier. The fury that had carried her across the ranch had burned itself out, leaving behind something infinitely more fragile. She wasn't angry anymore. There was no fire in her eyes, no sharpness in the set of her jaw. What remained was the thing underneath all of it, the thing she had been fighting so desperately not to feel.
Fear.
Real, helpless, devastating fear.
She was holding one of Carter's shirts in both hands, the fabric gathered loosely between her fingers. It was probably something he'd left behind without giving it a second thought, another ordinary piece of clothing tossed onto his bed because he had been too impatient or distracted to put it away properly.
Carter probably wouldn't have remembered where he'd left it. To him, it was just a shirt. To Beth, sitting there in the silence of his empty room, it had become something precious. Something that still carried the faintest suggestion of him, something tangible she could touch while he was somewhere she couldn't reach.
Her fingers moved slowly over the fabric, smoothing a wrinkle that didn't need smoothing. She ran her thumb along the sleeve, almost absently, as though her hands were searching for something her mind knew wasn't there. Rip watched her for a long moment, and his heart ached with an understanding that needed no explanation. He knew exactly what she was doing because he was fighting the same instinct himself. She wasn't holding a shirt.
She was holding onto Carter.
"I know now." Beth said quietly.
Rip stepped into the room but didn't interrupt her. He moved slowly, giving her the time she needed to acknowledge him rather than forcing her to look at him. His eyes moved around the room as he came closer, taking in the small traces of Carter's life scattered everywhere. A pair of shoes pushed beneath the bed. Something sitting half-open on the nightstand. The blanket rumpled from the last time he'd slept there. Ordinary things that had never meant anything until the person they belonged to was suddenly gone.
"I know what Monica felt like." Beth said as she kept her eyes on the shirt.
"When Tate was taken." She continued, her voice quieter than before.
He understood immediately, and the comparison struck somewhere deep inside him. He remembered what had happened to Tate, remembered the fear and helplessness surrounding it, remembered how impossible it had been to make sense of the world while a child was somewhere out there and the people who loved him couldn't get to him. Beth had always been capable of looking at someone else's pain from the outside and understanding it intellectually. But this was different. Now she wasn't imagining it.
Now she understood it.
"That helpless feeling." Her fingers tightened slightly around the shirt.
"Like your whole body is screaming at you to do something, but there isn't anything you can do." Rip moved closer until he was only a few feet away. He wanted to reach for her, but he didn't yet.
There was something almost sacred about the way she was sitting there, finally allowing herself to say aloud what she had been trying to outrun since the moment Carter disappeared. He knew Beth didn't give vulnerability easily. She would rather bleed than admit something hurt. She would rather turn grief into rage than let anyone see how much she cared. So Rip simply stood there and listened.
"You spend your whole life thinking you can handle anything," She whispered. Her eyes remained fixed on the shirt, but her voice had begun to tremble.
"That nothing can break you. You convince yourself you're tougher than everyone else because you have to be. Because if you aren't, somebody gets close enough to hurt you." She swallowed, her throat working painfully around the words.
"And then someone takes someone you care for. Someone you love." The last word came out differently.
Love.
She almost seemed surprised by it herself. She took a shaky breath and looked at Carter's shirt again, smoothing the fabric between her fingers as though she could somehow make it hold the shape of him.
“He's not even supposed to be mine.” She whispered. The sentence seemed to surprise even her, and the moment the words were spoken, Rip felt something inside his chest fracture.
“Beth.” He said quietly, but she shook her head before he could say anything else.
“No. He wasn't supposed to happen.” Her voice trembled as she tried to explain something she had spent years refusing to examine.
“I wasn't supposed to be someone's mother.” A small, humorless laugh escaped her, but there was no amusement in it whatsoever. It was the sound of someone looking at the shape of her own life and realizing how different it had become from everything she once believed.
“God knows I never thought I'd be good at it. I never even thought I'd get the chance to be bad at it.” Rip remained beside her, close enough that she could reach him but still allowing her the dignity of choosing to do so.
He didn't interrupt. He knew this wasn't a moment that could be fixed with a few comforting words. Beth had spent too many years carrying this particular wound alone, and if she was finally going to open it, he wasn't going to rush her through it.
“I spent my whole life thinking that part of me was gone.” She continued, her voice becoming quieter.
“That whatever could make someone a mother was taken from me before I ever had the chance. I thought that was just something I was supposed to live with. Something I deserved, maybe.” Her fingers tightened around the shirt until the fabric wrinkled beneath them.
“And then this kid walks into our lives.” A fragile smile appeared at the corner of her mouth, so faint that Rip almost missed it.
“This stubborn, angry, scared little kid who didn't know where he belonged. He was so fucking determined to make everyone believe he didn't need anybody.” Rip looked down at his hands, remembering Carter as he'd been when he first came into their lives.
The boy had arrived carrying grief far too heavy for his age, wearing defiance like armor because it was easier than admitting he was terrified. Rip remembered the distance he'd kept between them at first, the suspicion in Carter's eyes, the way the boy seemed to expect every kindness to come with an expiration date.
He remembered watching him slowly change, one ordinary day at a time, until the ranch stopped being somewhere Carter was staying and became somewhere he belonged. It hadn't happened with a declaration. There hadn't been a single moment when Rip could point and say, ‘That's when he became my son’. It had simply happened while they weren't paying attention.
“I didn't choose him.” Beth whispered.
Rip looked at her. She finally lifted her eyes to his, and there was something unbearably vulnerable in them.
“But somehow he chose me.” Her voice nearly disappeared on the last word. She swallowed hard, trying to steady herself, but the tears had already begun slipping down her cheeks.
“And I don't even know when it happened. I don't know when I stopped seeing him as some kid we were helping and started seeing him as...” She couldn't finish the sentence at first. Her gaze wandered around the room, taking in all the little pieces of Carter's life that suddenly felt sacred.
“When did he become mine, Rip? When did he become my son?” Rip couldn't answer immediately, because the truth was that he didn't know either.
There hadn't been one moment. There never was with something like this. It had happened in the quiet spaces nobody thought to remember: in the lessons Rip gave him, in the arguments Beth pretended weren't important, in meals shared around a table, in the way Carter started looking toward them before making decisions because somewhere along the way their opinion had begun to matter to him. It had happened every time Beth told herself she wasn't watching him and then watched anyway.
Every time Rip acted irritated by Carter's mistakes while quietly making sure the boy understood how to do better next time. It had happened in a thousand small acts of love that none of them had ever bothered to name.
“I should've been there.” Beth whispered as she looked down at the shirt again.
“No.” Rip's answer came immediately, firm enough to stop the thought before it could take root. He turned toward her fully, his expression hardening with the kind of certainty that left no room for argument.
“You listen to me, Baby. This isn't on you.” She looked at him through her tears, and for a moment he could see her trying to fight the words, trying to find some way to make herself responsible because guilt was easier for her to carry than helplessness.
Rip knew that. He knew she would rather blame herself a hundred times than admit there was something she couldn't control. So he reached for her hand and closed his fingers around it, holding on firmly enough that she couldn't retreat into that darkness.
“You didn't put him in that situation.” He said.
“You didn't make them take him. You didn't fail him.” His voice softened, but his conviction didn't.
“You loved him. That's what you did. You gave him a place where he could belong. You gave him a family.” He squeezed her hand and held her gaze.
“He's my son too.” That was what finally broke her.
There was no scream, no rage left to disguise what she was feeling. For the first time in her life Beth simply seemed to run out of strength. Her shoulders dropped, her face crumpled, and the tears she'd been fighting finally came freely. She leaned toward Rip as though her body had made the decision before her pride could stop it, and he caught her immediately, wrapping both arms around her and pulling her against his chest.
Beth clung to him.
Her fingers twisted into the back of his shirt as she buried her face against him, and Rip held her as tightly as he could without hurting her. His own eyes burned, his throat tightening as he felt her trembling against him. He wanted to tell her that everything would be fine, but he wouldn't lie to her. They both knew better than that. They had lived long enough to understand that promises about tomorrow were fragile things. What he could promise was something else.
“We're bringing him home.” He murmured.
Beth closed her eyes, her cheek pressed against his chest as she listened to the steady beat of his heart.
“Promise me we’ll find him.” She whispered, though the words came out broken by tears.
Rip lowered his head and pressed a long, gentle kiss to the top of her hair. His arms tightened around her, his chin resting against her head as he stared across the room at Carter's empty bed.
“We’ll find him Baby, I promise. We’ll find our boy.” he said again, quieter this time.
They had no idea what waited for them. He didn't know how far they'd have to go or what they'd have to do to bring Carter back. He didn't know how badly this would hurt before it was over. But he knew one thing with the absolute certainty of a man who had already lost too much in his life: they weren't finished fighting.
Not while Carter was still out there. Not while their son was still waiting for them.
They will bring him home.