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There was only one light on in the entire building. Kate could see just a pinprick of it coming from under a door at the far end of the very long hallway.
She crept closer and closer, listening carefully, but the only sound was her own breathing under her mask. Even Luke, in the comm in her ear, had gone silent.
She knew Alice was in there, waiting for her most likely. She always seemed to be. It was the first time she was going to confront her after Alice’s attack on Mary the week before.
Not that Alice hadn’t been trying to go after Mary for months now, ever since she successfully killed Catherine, but Kate had a feeling Alice’s first attempts weren’t very serious. A way to make Kate mad, perhaps, or to make her choose between the two of them. Tying Mary up and leaving her in a closet but with her binds so loose she was easily able to slip out of them. Sending one of her minions to chase her but when he finally captured her in an elevator, the goon just disappeared. Or setting a trap for Mary in her clinic but sending Kate advanced notice that it was going to happen.
But this past time had been different. Kate and Mary had been together, at a gala for a foundation Catherine had supported. Kate had been trying lately to be there for Mary, after the death of her mother. She did, after all, understand more than anyone how losing a parent felt. And if she were honest, she was in some way trying to make up for her own role in Catherine’s death — killed at the hands of her sister who she couldn’t save in time, a sister who she did choose again and again over the stepsister she had never asked for and never wanted but who had been a better friend than almost anyone else in her life, even if Kate hadn’t actually admitted that to anyone.
It had happened similarly to how Alice started when she killed Catherine. Mary had just started giving her speech, honoring her late mother, when the lights flicked off, plunging the huge ballroom into complete darkness.
And then a spotlight, out of nowhere, circling above the crowd and shining light on confused faces, on terrified faces. And then Alice, appearing in the back of the room, in a dress that made her look a bit like Cinderella.
Everyone had been looking at Alice; no one had even seen the goons grab Mary until her scream pierced the room.
“That was for you, Katie Kat,” Alice had said, and then she had laughed.
Kate had almost gone after her, every instinct in her body screaming at her to go after her sister, to confront her, to try to reach the innocent, good girl she still believed was in there somewhere, but then Mary had screamed again — or maybe she hadn’t and it was just an echo — and Kate knew there was no choice.
She barely got to Mary in time, finding her tied to a contraption so tightly she could barely move a finger, forced to watch a knife creep ever closer to her neck.
“What did I do to her?” Mary sobbed to Kate later that night, as she and Luke let her curl up on a couch in Bruce’s old place. “I had nothing to do with you and your dad thinking Beth was dead!”
“I know,” Kate said. “I’m going to make her stop this.”
“No one can make her stop this,” Mary said, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “She won’t stop until I’m dead.”
But Kate wasn’t going to let that happen. And now she was here, getting closer once again to Alice. To stop her. By any means necessary.
She kept closer, listening carefully, eyes focused.
“Luke,” she whispered into her comm. “Do you see anything on the monitors? Luke?”
He didn’t answer. She didn’t even have time to think about why, before lights were blinding her.
Her hands lifted instinctively to cover her eyes, and that moment of cowardice was all it took. She thought she heard Alice laugh before pain filled her senses and she knew no more.
--
Kate blinked awake to a blinding light, a groan escaping her lips before she could help it.
“Kate! Hello!”
That wasn’t Alice. Kate tried to focus.
“Mary?” she managed. Her head was killing her. Her entire body ached.
The light moved away. Kate squinted. She was in Mary’s clinic, lying in a bed. And, oh, …
Kate’s hand moved instinctively to her face.
“Looking for this?” In Mary’s hand was Kate’s mask. In her other was the red wig.
Kate remained silent, trying to decide how to best handle the situation. How mad would Mary be that she hadn’t told her?
Mary dropped the mask and the wig on to the bed and squealed. Literally squealed. It made Kate’s ears hurt.
“I can’t believe it’s really you!! I mean, of course it’s you! It makes so much sense! The whole mystery thing, the cousin thing, the Bruce mansion thing. But ahhhhh!” Mary squealed again. “This is so exciting! Does this make me, like, a Batwoman sidekick?”
Mary was grinning at her. Truly grinning.
Kate squinted and looked closer, worried maybe she had been hit harder than she thought and was hallucinating all this. But, no, Mary looked genuinely happy and excited. There was no trace of anger that she could see.
“You’re not mad?” Kate asked her.
Mary cocked her head to the side, like it was the first time she had considered it. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe a little. But no one knows, right? You’re not telling people?”
Kate shook her head. “No one knows. Except Luke.” And Alice, she didn’t add, but that was different.
“Then I’m not mad!” Mary said. “This is great actually! I can be your sidekick … I can be your sidekick, right? The cool, life-saving one who is always there in a pinch? Like right now when I brought you here and saved your life. By the way, you’re welcome.”
Kate had so many questions. Like what the hell happened, how Mary found her, how she was even here right now, but Mary was still grinning and chattering, and she looked happy — really happy — since the first time her mother had died and Alice had decided to terrorize her, and it was … nice, Kate realized. It was nice to see her happy. It was nice to have someone not angry with her, to have someone want to be on her side.
“Okay, yeah,” Kate said, sure she was going to regret this sooner rather than later but not really caring either. “Fine. You can be my life-saving sidekick. Or whatever.”
Mary squealed. Again.
This time Kate covered her ears.