Chapter Text
First of all, to be perfectly clear: none of this was Rowan's fault. It wasn’t his fault that his old nemesis, Crescent Moon, had died, and it definitely wasn’t his fault that the man’s successor had just fallen out of the sky in front of him as he was walking home from a dinner at a nice restaurant. Of course, it would be his fault if he just let her lie there; a card-carrying member of the Supervillains' Guild he may have been, but he wasn’t a monster.
So he hurried to her side. It was actually quite unusual that she’d fallen here; for all the flying he’d seen her do, she’d never crashed down like this before. And she always got back up, at least during fights.
Not so now. Now she was curled awkwardly on the pavement in a dimly lit alleyway, bright red bloodstains blossoming across her white leotard. Carefully, Rowan crouched down next to her and rolled her onto her back. She whimpered at the motion, but didn’t try to stop him; that was worrisome enough by itself, without even accounting for the three deep gashes on her side.
“Hey, Kitten,” he said softly. She didn’t protest the nickname, which was another worrying thing. “Don’t you have a healing factor that’s better than this?”
“Mm,” she said. “’Snot working right.”
“You crashed,” he said. “Was that your flight failing, too?”
“Don’t think so,” she mumbled. “Just tired. Dizzy. Cold. Why is it cold?”
“It’s not,” Rowan said. It was a warm June evening. “I’m going to put pressure on your side, okay? This may hurt.” He didn’t have any bandages in his bag with him, but he did have an old dark sweatshirt; he pulled it out and pressed it to her side with one hand while checking her pulse at her neck. It was too fast, even considering she was a child; her skin was cooler than it should have been.
“That hurts,” she said.
“I know.” With his free hand he fished in his pocket, and pulled out his phone to dial 9-1-1; this was far beyond his expertise. To his surprise, he found his wrist held in an iron grip before he could get there. When he looked up, he found that Kitten looked afraid, eyes wide behind her mask.
“No hospitals,” she said. “You—you can’t—”
“I have to,” he told her. “I can’t treat something like this, and your own healing factor hasn’t kicked in yet; we don’t know if it’ll kick in at all. Kitten, you’re bleeding out. If I call them, I can at least keep you from being identified, all right?”
She blinked rapidly. “Okay,” she said finally, voice very small. She released his wrist, and he quickly called for an ambulance, giving them his location immediately.
“My niece ran off earlier,” he said. “I tracked her down, but she has deep wounds on her torso—she’s lost a lot of blood. She might have fallen from some height, but I’m not sure. I’m putting pressure on the wounds.”
They told him to stay on the line, that an ambulance was on its way; he agreed easily enough, and promptly settled the phone between his shoulder and ear while he set about removing the most damning parts of Kitten’s costume.
First he pulled off her gloves; those were easy enough, and so was his removal of the various gadgets strapped to the outsides of her boots. All of those went in his bag; after that he had to get her belt off—by far the trickiest part, but he’d seen her pull some rather unusual things out of it. Things it wouldn’t be normal for a cosplaying twelve-year-old to have on her person.
After that, there was only the mask; there he hesitated, but only for a moment. They’d take off her mask at the hospital, after all, and it would probably be better if only he knew that her mask was a professional-grade thing perfectly fitted to her head and not part of a child’s costume.
She looked younger without the mask—she always looked young, of course, but not to this degree. He didn’t recognize her; then again, he’d not really expected to recognize her.
Then the ambulance was arriving, and he stepped away to zip up his bag and let the paramedics do their job.
“Can you contact her parents?” one of them asked; Rowan grimaced a little.
“Not immediately, no,” he said. “They’re—up in the mountains. Out of cell service, and they’re not expecting to be back for a week or so.”
“And who are you to her?”
“I’m Michael Evans,” he said, the lie rolling easily off his tongue. He really did have documents proclaiming him to be Michael Evans, age 26, too—one of the benefits of being a Guild member. “She’s Sophia Evans—my sister’s daughter. I’m taking care of her for the week. She really looks up to White Cat, but she wasn’t supposed to run off like this—”
After a bit more back and forth, they agreed to let him go to the hospital with them; even Rowan wasn’t sure why he was so invested here, except—
Someone had murdered Crescent Moon. Someone who wasn’t him, but had put in a great deal of effort to make it look like it was his doing. And now White Cat’s healing powers—and probably her toughness, too, if he was any judge of things—had failed her in a time of great need. There could be a reasonable explanation, but…
Until Kitten woke up and could explain to him why her healing powers had failed her so thoroughly, Rowan had to assume that someone had just tried to murder his young, unofficial nemesis. And that was completely unacceptable.
While she went into surgery and he was left to wait, he went to the bathroom to clean himself up as best as he could. There wasn’t much he could do about the blood that had soaked into his shirt and jeans, but at least he managed to get it off his skin. He also made a quick phone call to one of his non-Guild contacts, getting them to add one Sophia Evans, age twelve, into the electronic records of Michael Evans’ family. Anyone who went looking electronically would see that he really was her uncle, as far as any computers were concerned. She was maybe a little younger or older, but he was confident that twelve was a close enough guess to her actual age that no one would be too suspicious of it. And of course if they checked paper records they would see that Sophia Evans didn’t actually exist, but that wasn’t particularly likely here.
At some point that night, a nurse came to talk to him.
“You said Sophia didn’t take any medications,” she said.
“Not daily ones, no,” Rowan said. “I don’t have her full medical history—none of us really thought it would be necessary, I must admit.”
“Well, next time you need to take your niece to an unfamiliar hospital without her medical records, do try to at least tell them she’s a trans girl so they’ll know what to expect,” the nurse said dryly. “And do think about getting those records as soon as you can.”
He blinked, then nodded. “Of course,” he said. “My apologies. It rather slipped my mind, in all the excitement—it’s been such a long time, you see.” Maybe that was part of why she hadn’t wanted to come to the hospital.
“It’s all gone remarkably well, by the way,” the nurse told him. “She’s a resilient kid. We should be able to transfer her into a post-surgical ward to wake up soon enough, though she’ll have to stay the night at least.”
Rowan wasn’t even tempted to smirk at the nurse’s comment about Kitten being resilient, too relieved that she seemed to be recovering at least a little from whatever had been done to her.
“Can I be there when she wakes up?” he asked instead. “It’ll probably be… good for her, I suppose. Calming.” Or maybe not, but he needed to be there if he wanted her to corroborate his story—it wouldn’t be any skin off his back if she wanted to give his ruse away, normally, except he had the feeling that she wouldn’t want the hospital digging up her real identity and contacting her actual guardians. If that was to go smoothly, she’d have to agree with the story he’d already given them.
“Of course,” said the nurse. “We’ll come get you when it’s time for that.”
He was left alone to wait once more.
Katya woke in a hospital bed, raised so she was sitting most of the way up. She blinked; she didn’t remember coming here. She’d been… fighting Sphinx, right, that was it. Sphinx, who’d somehow torn open her side, and she’d fled, but she’d… she’d fallen.
She’d fallen in the alley, and there had been a man there, and he had called her Kitten. He hadn’t worn his mask, but there was only one person who called her Kitten; so it must have been Eclipse, then.
Exactly why he’d save her when he’d given Crescent Moon no such consideration, she wasn’t sure, but it seemed he had and it was rather difficult to put too much thought into it at the moment. Instead she looked around the room. Sitting in a chair next to her bed was… the same man, she was pretty sure, and not just because his clothes were covered in blood ( her blood, and wasn’t that odd?) but also because she had gotten at least a little bit of a glimpse of his face in the alley. Eclipse.
“Hey, Kitten,” he said quietly, and she scowled at him. Definitely still Eclipse.
“I told you not to call me that,” she said. He didn’t argue or ignore the request like usual; instead he held up his hands.
“Right you are, Sophia,” he said, and Katya blinked. Sophi—oh. He’d promised to keep her identity a secret, hadn’t he, somewhere in there.
“At least you can keep a promise, I suppose,” she muttered. “Who’re you supposed to be then?”
“Your uncle,” he said. “Michael Evans—your surname too, by the way.”
“Why’re you doing this?”
He shrugged. “Like you said, I guess. I keep my promises. And I didn’t think you wanted your guardians to have to pick you up from the hospital—though you should probably stay the night, unless you absolutely must leave.”
Katya frowned. “I can heal fast, though,” she said.
Eclipse raised an eyebrow. “And you were healing so fast earlier? I’d recommend staying, were I you.”
“Fine,” she mumbled, because he did have a bit of a point and her head was still fuzzy from whatever they’d given her. It probably wouldn’t be too bad; it wouldn’t be the first time she’d stayed out all night, and maybe they wouldn’t even notice if she got back early enough.
He nodded, and brought his chair closer to her bed so he could lean down to murmur in her ear. “Your parents are meant to be on a backpacking trip, out of cell service for a week,” he said. “You’re twelve years old, and a big White Cat fangirl—that’s why you were in a facsimile of a White Cat costume when they brought you in. I have your gloves, belt, boot add-ons, and mask—I’ll give them back when they discharge you. I’ll bring you some clothes too; the fabric of your costume is ruined, I’m sorry to say, though your boots should be fine.
“But you need to be careful, Sophia—unless you know what made your powers go on the fritz today?” He pulled back a little, and lifted an eyebrow; Katya wasn’t sure how to respond, except to say that she wasn’t twelve, only eleven, but that wasn’t the main point.
“I—no,” she said. She wasn’t thinking quite well enough to process all that, but she was pretty sure she’d gotten all the main points. “No, I don’t.” And maybe (probably) she shouldn’t be admitting that to Eclipse, but lying seemed like so much effort in that moment.
He grimaced, and muttered, “That’s what I was afraid of,” under his breath, before blinking at her. “Oh, one other thing—you’ve been transitioning long enough that it slipped my mind when they asked for your medical information.”
Katya flinched, but only a little. She’d kind of figured he’d found out, what with him impersonating her guardian and all. “You better not start treating me any different,” she said instead.
Eclipse shook his head quickly. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
She looked at him suspiciously, but he didn’t seem to be lying; that was something, at least, even if it was far less than she’d have liked. Then again, she didn’t trust him in general, so probably he’d have to show that anyway before she accepted it.
Then a nurse came in, and told her she needed to walk around for a few minutes if she could manage it. It turned out that her fuzzy-headedness wasn’t just her head, per se; her side was sore and she was a little dizzy, but with the nurse’s arm to hold she did fine. She was already exhausted by the time they’d finished a short circuit of the place, and was unusually grateful to be directed to a wheelchair so that she could be taken to a different ward to spend the night.
“Good night, Sophia,” said Eclipse, sounding unnervingly gentle. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night,” she mumbled back. “See you then, I guess.”
When she woke up in the morning, her head was much clearer; her side ached more, but since she was pretty sure she’d been on some heavy painkillers the night before that made sense. Reviewing it all in her head, she almost groaned aloud.
She’d been an idiot last night, and she’d definitely told Eclipse more than she should have. Not as much as she could have, at least, but it was still… vexing. At least him having brought her here and taken such care to hide her identity was a good sign. He probably wasn’t trying to murder her, then. Apparently only Crescent Moon could elicit that from him.
Katya shook her head. There wasn’t much point in mulling it over now. Whatever she’d said last night, whatever she might have given away—she couldn’t exactly undo it, so she’d just have to live with it.
After that they brought her an early breakfast, and checked over her wounds; they were pleasantly surprised at how well she was healing, but Katya herself only frowned. She should not have gotten those gashes in the first place, and they should’ve healed in minutes even then. Much as she hated to admit it, Eclipse was right. There was something strange afoot.
“Your uncle's here to see you,” they told her. “If nothing changes, you can go home this morning.”
“Great,” she said.
Not long after that, Eclipse showed up at her door with a backpack slung over one shoulder. Katya took the opportunity to look him over more carefully; she hadn’t had much of a chance to do so the night before.
He was of a middling height, with the same stocky build she’d always known he had. His hair, cut short, was red. With his face clean-shaven, she’d have taken him for a college student, not a supervillain.
“You look more awake today,” he said. “I got you some clothes—only your boots and gear really survived, I’m afraid—all of it should fit well enough for you to leave here in it, at the very least. I’ll just… leave it here.” With that he set a small pile of clothes down on the bed next to her and retreated from the room.
When she reached over to examine the clothes, Katya nearly groaned aloud. Almost everything Eclipse had gotten her was cat-themed; there were knee-high cat socks (which would at least be good for keeping her legs from chafing on her boots, not that she’d be telling him that), a loose drapey cat tank top, and a zip-up cat sweatshirt. At least the sweatpants—with a drawstring waist—were a plain dark grey.
After she’d gone through all that, Katya discovered that on the bottom of the small pile were underwear in four different sizes. The only thing that kept her from burying her face in her hands was the way her side ached sharply when she briefly attempted the motion, so instead she just sat there and felt her cheeks burn.
Eventually, though, she had to push her embarrassment aside and set about the painstaking task of getting dressed without aggravating her injuries. She did, after all, want to get out of the hospital as soon as possible, before her body started doing things that went from merely unusual to alien, and if Eclipse was her ticket out of there… well. So be it, then.
An hour or so later found her standing next to Eclipse at the discharge desk, listening as best as she could to the instructions they gave him—she was the one who’d have to follow them after all. They handed over a small paper bag of medications and told them to return for a follow-up next week—they were bound to be disappointed there.
She was still tired, though, and as the conversation droned endlessly on she burrowed into the sweatshirt Eclipse had gotten her. It was surprisingly nice, fluffy and soft and warm, and she could admit to herself at least that it was kinda cute. Kinda.
Maybe she’d keep wearing it, after this was all over.
Finally the conversation ended and Eclipse led her out to the parking lot where his car, a beat-up-looking truck, waited. When she balked at getting in, he raised an eyebrow at her.
“If I wanted to hurt you,” he said, “wouldn’t I have already done it? There’s been ample opportunity after all. And how else are you planning to get home? Surely you don’t mean to fly there in broad daylight in civvies, with you still injured and your powers on the fritz?”
Katya hesitated a moment longer before scowling. “Fine,” she said, and gingerly climbed into the car.
They drove off in silence for a while. After some time, Eclipse pulled the care over on a quiet side street next to a lush green park.
“Maybe you’ve figured out something I don’t know,” he said slowly. “But were I a betting man I’d wager that it was no coincidence that your healing and toughness both glitched out in the same fight, with such disastrous consequences too.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she muttered. “No, I don’t know. Not that I’d give you specifics if I did, but—I don’t.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Damn,” he said. “That’s what I was afraid of. In that case, Kitten, I’m pretty sure someone powerful just tried to murder you.”
A chill ran down her spine at his words—it fit far too well for comfort—but aloud she scoffed at him. “I don’t know why you should care, anyways,” she said. “Seeing as it was you that murdered Crescent Moon in the first place.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t. Kill Crescent Moon, that is. I wasn’t even in the country all that week.”
“But I saw you do it!” Katya snapped. “I saw you kill him. I may be eleven, but I’m not stupid and I know what I saw that day.”
Eclipse had gone very still. “You saw it,” he said.
“That’s what I said.” She couldn’t cross her arms, so she settled for glaring at him instead.
“I take it my doppelgänger didn’t see you, then.”
“If you’d seen me I probably wouldn’t have lived myself,” she said. A doppelgänger? She supposed it was possible. In times like this, she wished very much that Eclipse’s mask could be something other than a featureless black void-disc.
“Well then,” said Eclipse, breaking her out of her reverie, “if not for witnessing a crime, have you any idea why someone might want to kill you?”
Katya drummed her fingers on the door handle and considered the question for a while. “I mean,” she said slowly, “I did start some… investigations… into the whole affair. Looking at your record it didn’t seem like you could’ve pulled off what I saw without help—I was trying to find them.”
“That’d do it,” said Eclipse slowly. “Now, let’s assume it wasn’t me but an impostor who killed Crescent Moon—can you tell me what you saw? If it really was me, it’s not like you’d be telling me anything I didn’t already know.”
Katya hesitated, mulling it over for several minutes—but he knew so much already. He knew her face and her age and what she’d set out to do even, and he hadn’t hurt her yet. And it wasn’t as if he could use her to infiltrate a Guild she wasn’t old enough to properly join in the first place. “All right, then,” she said finally. “My mom sent me out to the corner store for cough drops one day…”
Rowan listened intently as Kitten spun her story. It was a long, unfortunate string of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed. He wished she’d not had to witness all this at such a young age, but since she had… well. He was not at all above exploiting that knowledge.
Crescent Moon, it turned out, had died in a poorly-lit alley, his speed mysteriously failing him even as he kept Rowan’s imitator from noticing the little girl hiding in the shadows.
“I suppose it’s my fault, a bit,” said Kitten glumly. “If I hadn’t been there… I don’t know. Maybe it would’ve gone down differently.”
“Maybe it would have,” said Rowan, who wasn’t going to lie to Kitten about such a heavy thing. “And maybe it wouldn’t. You can’t know—his speed failed him, you said, so certainly there was something beyond your control affecting him that way. Even if it would have gone differently, though… it’s not your fault. He made his own choices, and the impostor made their choices. There are far more responsible parties than you, who happened to be there at the wrong time.”
Kitten gave him a suspicious glare. She’d been doing that a lot today, but he supposed he couldn’t really blame her. He was a supervillain, after all, and her nemesis to boot.
“Look,” he said, “you don’t have to listen to me if you don’t want to. I’m not your real uncle, after all. But that’s the way I think of things, and from all the years I knew Crescent Moon I’m fairly sure that he’d make that choice over again in a heartbeat if it meant saving someone else.”
“Whatever,” she said after a long pause. “Can I go home now?”
“Sure,” he said. “Which neighborhood d’you want me to drive to? Before you go objecting to me knowing anything about where you live—you’re still hurt, and I still don’t think you’d do well flying across the city in broad daylight, much less walking there. I’m not asking you to tell me where you actually live either, just… something nearby. Okay?”
“Fine,” she said. Her arms twitched like she was going to cross them, but she didn’t, instead turning to look out the window as she rattled off an address of a small café.
He drove them there in silence. Once they arrived, he reached into the back of the car and grabbed a reusable shopping bag holding her gear from the night before.
“This is yours,” he said, then took the small paper bag containing her medications and the instructions to go with them. “And so is this. You’re not supposed to have these yourself, you’re supposed to have an adult administer them to you, but since you’re running around as a superhero, I figure you can follow simple instructions. Do me a favor and don’t take too much of anything, and don’t get yourself hooked on the opiates in there—try transitioning to the other pain relievers when you can.” He reached into his pocket, grabbed a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper, and scribbled out the phone number for his burner phone—not the one he used as Rowan Rhodes, unremarkable civilian, nor his official Guild-issued fancy supervillain phone, but one removed from either of those. Having one had always seemed like a good idea, though he hadn’t had too much use for it. Then he put the paper in the meds bag, and the meds bag in the gear bag. “If those wounds still haven’t healed on the surface in six days, please call me. I won’t ask any questions, and I can take you back for the follow-up appointment you’re supposed to do. If you want to tell someone else so they can take you, the appointment information should be written down along with the medication instructions.”
“Right,” she mumbled. He wasn’t at all sure if she’d actually do it, but it had been worth a shot at least. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and then she opened the car door and clambered out, and was off down the sidewalk in silence.
Rowan sat there for a few minutes, pondering his options, before getting out himself. If nothing else, he could find out if the Sundial Café was any good, and he desperately needed his morning caffeine.
Katya walked most of the way home—it was only a few blocks from the café, and Eclipse, much as she might not like him, had at least been right about how conspicuous a girl flying around in broad daylight would be. When she got there, she slipped into the side yard and carefully flew up to her window—she never left it locked unless they were going on a long family trip—and slipped inside. It was still morning, at least, and her parents had learned that it was beyond pointless to try waking her before noon on weekend days, so hopefully they wouldn’t have noticed her absence.
She could go through her gear now, but beyond checking that it appeared to all be there she found she was too tired to do much else. Instead she shoved the bag to the back of her closet and fell into bed.
In only a few minutes, she was fast asleep.
She woke two hours later with her mom sitting on the edge of her bed, gently running a hand over her hair. Her side ached, and she wasn’t any less tired than she had been before falling asleep.
“Hey, Katya,” her mom said. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” said Katya before she could stop herself. She needed some of the painkillers they’d given her, she was pretty sure, but those were buried in her closet right next to her gear and she couldn’t tell her mom about either thing, nor the thick bandages taped to her side.
“You feel warm,” said her mom. “Are you up to coming down for breakfast, do you think?”
“In a little bit,” she said. Really she just wanted to lie there and sleep, but the doctors had definitely told her that she needed to walk around. Something something post-surgical complications something. While her healing would normally have exempted her from something like that, there was absolutely nothing normal about this situation in any respect, and she figured it’d be better to follow their advice and it turn out to have been unnecessary than for things to go the other way around.
“All right, then,” said her mom. “Let me know if you change your mind—I can make you something, though. Does French toast sound good?”
“I’d like that,” she said, and brought her arm—on the uninjured side—out from under the blankets to rub her face. The movement led to the covers sliding off her shoulders, and her mom raised an eyebrow.
“Is that a new sweatshirt?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
Katya’s brain stalled for a moment before she remembered that this was the same sweatshirt Eclipse had given her at the hospital. With the white cat on it, because he apparently liked to think he was funny. “Yeah,” she said. “It was a… gift. From a… from a friend.”
Her mom’s whole face lit up at that. “A friend? Oh, that’s lovely. I’m glad you’re making friends again, you know. You’ll have to tell me all about them later.”
“I… uh… yeah, I guess I—”
Her mom laughed and gently patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You don’t have to go into detail if you don’t want to, though I’d love to know of course. Right now I’d better get started on that food, though.”
“Thanks, Mom,” said Katya. After her mom left the room, closing the door gently behind her, Katya rolled onto her back and closed her eyes.
She hated lying to her parents, but needs must sometimes and she’d been doing it for half a year now. And what did it say about her, that the only person she knew who she could even come close to calling a friend was her supervillain nemesis, a criminal who’d sooner fight her than keep her company?
Her family was new to this city—they’d only moved in nine months before—and that was because of her, too. Because there wasn’t a place in their old town for her to live her life as the girl she was, and not even one of her old friends wanted anything to do with her now. As for her new school… well. Everyone seemed perfectly nice so far, but it turned out that having a whole town turn on you could instill some trust issues later on.
And Eclipse wasn’t even her friend! But she could hardly explain to her mom who’d really given her the sweatshirt, and… well. He’d accepted her without question, without hesitation, like it was nothing at all for him to do so. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She shook her head. It was pointless to dwell on this; she had to get out of bed, and go down to eat a second breakfast. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was really rather hungry.
So she carefully pushed herself up, doing her best to not aggravate her injuries, and shuffled over to the closet to get out her medication bag. It had been long enough since she’d left the hospital, apparently, that she was allowed another dose of painkillers.
Katya grabbed one of the pills and went downstairs. She’d probably have to take at least a little bit of a break from being White Cat, but… that might not, after all, be so bad. It might even help her out a little, let her clear her head.
A girl could hope, at least.