The Devil You Know

Cate saw it happen in real-time.

The mental calculus clicking into place.

Gale was getting there—the shift from fear to resolution, the moment where revenge became a strategy instead of just an impulse.

Good.

But she wasn’t there yet.

Cate had been in too many broken minds, too many spirals that looked like clarity but weren’t.

And Gale?

She wasn’t making a plan.

She was planning to burn everything down.

Cate sighed.

“Alright, cool. Love the energy,” she said, fingers tapping idly against the bar. “But see, here’s the thing, Gale.”

She leaned forward slightly, voice calm, controlled, but inescapable.

“If you go after Homelander alone, you’re going to die.”

Cate let that sit, watching for the first flicker of resistance, the denial, the blind confidence.

She tilted her head.

“You’re powerful. But so was Stormfront. And we all know how that ended.”

She could feel the shift—the instinct to snap back, to defend herself, to insist she wasn’t Stormfront.

Cate lifted a hand, stopping it before it started.

“I know, I know,” she murmured, softer now. “You’re not her. I believe you.”

Cate tapped a gloved finger against the bar, thinking.

“You want to kill Homelander? Great. So do we. But here’s the thing, Gale…”

She finally met her eyes fully, gaze steady.

“We don’t need another self-righteous idiot running off on their own. We don’t need another corpse.”

Cate leaned in slightly, just enough for her voice to drop into something quieter, heavier.

“We need people who know how to survive.”

She took another sip of her drink, eyes still on Gale.

“You want to stop being an accomplice?” Cate gestured vaguely, as if offering something invisible but tangible. “Then join the people actually fighting back.”

Starlight, who had been silent until now, finally spoke up.

“You want to burn Vought to the ground?” she asked, voice steadier, more grounded. “Fine. But you’re not getting anywhere near it unless you play smart.”

Cate smirked slightly. “And believe it or not, we play smart.”

She let that hang in the air.

It was Gale’s move now.

The door was open.

All she had to do was step through.