A/N- Hi all. Here's chapter 3 of our humble collaboration, as promised. Reviews are always appreciated... Enjoy!
...
For years, the rooftops of Gotham felt like they were the only place where Alex could find any sort of peace. Piper had dropped from her life as suddenly as she'd stumbled into it. Diane was fading away slowly and painfully in a hospice bed. It was a viciously cruel irony that the medical care had been funded by Piper before she'd left, inextricably linking her mother's situation with the vanished blonde.
When the weight of it all got to be too much, Alex would retreat into the cold Gotham night.
The streets of Gotham weren't exactly safe, and besides, everywhere she might have chosen to go reminded her of Piper. Places they'd gone to regularly, where they'd poured their hearts out to one another, where they'd fallen in love, where Alex had helped her through... what had happened. The rooftops on the other hand... there was nothing to tie them to Piper and they were generally blissfully free of intruders, especially in the dead of winter.
Learning how to navigate the city from ten stories up had worked to keep her distracted for awhile, but then Diane had finally succumbed and Alex's life had descended into a black hole for longer than she cared to admit...
After she came back from the brink, she'd gone back to the rooftops and had found a new calling there. They were part of her domain now, they allowed her freedom, gave her an escape... so it's just her luck that that's where she's finally gotten caught.
The rain is falling fast and hard, being driven sideways by the gusts of wind. There's so much that even the supposedly waterproof material her "fancy pajamas" are made out of can take, and she's starting to get soaked through, despite the fact that Piper is on top of her, a solid weight on her legs and a forearm across her throat (Alex is still wrapping her mind around the fact that Piper is the fucking Bat).
Piper's eyes are as hard and cold and as closed off as Alex had ever seen them. Piper could conceal a lot of things from a lot of people, but by the time she'd left, Alex could (or had thought she could) read her pretty well, no matter who she was trying to be or how she was trying to act. Now she can't tell what the hell's going on in the blonde's head, but the hard set of her mouth and the muscle Alex can see twitching in her jaw don't seem like good signs.
For her part, Alex isn't sure what the fuck she ought to be feeling. As of four hours ago she was still trying to work through the disappointment of seeing that Piper had become a vacuous alcoholic blonde drone, that her years abroad had done nothing but transform her into exactly what her parents had wanted her to be. She thought that maybe becoming the Bat (who had single handedly done more in a month to destroy Kubra's operations than the cops had in the years she'd been gone) was better... but it wasn't any easier to reconcile this Piper with the one she had known...
It was a hell of a lot to process in the space of ten minutes, and it was all tangled up with the fact that she'd just been caught with her hand in the damn cookie jar for the first time. She sure as shit didn't want to go to prison, but Bat-Piper had her dead to rights... She had to shove all of her conflicted feelings about Piper and who or what she was now concentrate on finding a way to keep herself out of jail.
She takes a stab at trying to move her arms, but Piper's got her pinned down pretty efficiently. There's a joke to be made here about compromising positions, but Alex isn't entirely sure it wouldn't get her punched in the face. Actually, given exactly how Piper has been taking care of business lately, and how close she came to knocking Alex out mere moments ago, Alex is confused as to why she isn't unconscious and trussed up for Gotham's finest yet. Instead Piper is just staring at her, letting water drip onto both of them, time seeming to slow as she contemplates Alex's face.
Before either of them can say a word, the door leading from inside the highrise to the roof bursts open and a half dozen gun toting thugs come running through. The bullets start flying, though not particularly accurately. Piper shifts her grip, grabbing Alex by the shoulders and somehow managing to slide forward and turn at the same time, all so fast that Alex can barely track what's happening.
All she knows is that one second she's on the ground, and the next, she's being shoved behind one of the heating units spaced at regular intervals across the roof (a bit harder than she thinks is strictly necessary, but she's willing to let that bit of pettiness go, at least until they've managed to survive this). Piper is now crouched at the corner, looking back towards the door. At some point she must have dropped a smoke grenade. Alex hadn't seen her do it, but she can see the spreading cloud of white, being quickly dissipated by the rain, and she can hear the men shouting and coughing.
Alex moves into a crouch, and for a moment she considers bolting. Piper is distracted, and the thugs are disoriented. The edge of the roof isn't that far away... but before she can move, Piper turns back towards her, locking eyes with her. There was a time when she would've done anything for those eyes, when she had done anything for them. Of course, back then she'd also thought Piper would've done the same for her, and clearly that hadn't been the case...
"Those guys aren't cops," Piper says, interrupting her train of thought.
"Figured that one out all on your own, huh? And I thought the Bat was supposed to have some sort of magical fucking intuition."
"A bit rich coming from the petty thief I just caught..."
"There's nothing petty about my thievery..." a burst of gunfire... it sounds like the thugs are getting their shit together. Alex hears something about fanning out, flanking them... they've seen Piper, they know who they're dealing with and Alex can hear the tension in their voices. "Who are they?"
Piper glares at her, her gaze hard. Alex feels her temper rising. Seriously? Playing secrets now...? "They're shooting at me too..." she snaps.
"They're Kubra's guys," Piper growls, her voice pitching down suddenly, evidently remembering she has to be gruff and serious.
Alex feels a thrill of raw fear crawl up her spine. She's stayed off Kubra's radar for four years and for very good reason. She doesn't need this shit now, "What the hell are Kubra's guys doing here?"
Piper narrows her eyes, even as Alex can see her hand hovering over one of the pouches in that belt of hers, "You don't know?"
Alex gives her a look.
Piper grimaces. She opens her mouth to answer, but then her eyes flick to a point behind Alex, and with that uncanny speed, she whips her hand up from her belt and hurls something in Alex's direction. Alex looks back just in time to see a heavy black object hit a guy in the head. He groans and collapses. "Priorities," she grates out.
"We could just get the fuck out of here... there's only half a dozen of them..."
They hear more gravel crunching, more men streaming onto the roof. Well shit...
"More like a dozen and a half now..." Piper frowns, "And they all need to be in prison..."
"Seriously? You think that..."
Piper pulls open another pouch, "Might want to avert your eyes."
She takes a small object from the pouch and rolls it out towards the door, where the men are concentrated. Alex closes her eyes and looks away just as the flash grenade goes off. When she looks up again, Piper is gone, and she can hear punches and kicks and profuse swearing.
Again she considers bailing, but then a bullet goes sailing past her from behind. She spins around and growls a curse as she sees three of the men have flanked around and are advancing on her... one of whom she knows.
Holding out hope that she might be able to talk her way out of being on Kubra's shit list, she says, "Oh hey there Ahmad..."
Ahmad ignores her greeting and keeps his gun trained on her as he says to the others, "He's going to want this one alive if possible..." he narrows his eyes, "Kubra warned you what would happen if you crossed his path again..."
"I didn't know it was his path I was crossing! I don't even know what the fuck is going on here..."
"He said he did not want to see you again..."
"And I've stayed out of his way for years... I paid my debt I..."
"You can discuss that with him..."
Ahmad begins advancing towards her slowly, the other men following behind. Alex moves into a defensive stance. She knows she can't let herself be taken. She knows Kubra will never understand... not that beating the shit out of these guys is much safer, but at least she's got options if she's free...
Cursing her luck, she charges towards Ahmad, taking him by surprise. He gets a shot off that grazes her arm. Her adrenaline is up and she barely feels it, but she knows it'll probably hurt like a bitch later. She slams into his chest at full speed with her uninjured shoulder. He's a solid guy, so he doesn't fall, but it staggers him, jarring the gun loose. And luckily his two friends were close enough behind that he slams into one of them. That guy actually does fall down, his head smacking into the corner of the heating unit. He doesn't move again.
Alex knows Ahmad's other backup guy must be recovering from the shock of her charge. Almost the second she thinks it, she hears the gravel behind her crunch. She spins around while Ahmad is still recovering from the blow, and lashes out with a vicious roundhouse kick. It catches the third guy solidly in the chest and he goes down hard. Alex delivers a second hard kick to the side of his head and he goes still... just as Ahmad grabs her from behind, his meaty forearm solidly around her neck, applying wicked pressure as his other arm goes around her middle, grunting as he lifts her off the ground and then leans back, both of them falling heavily onto the roof, Ahmad is large enough to take the impact with barely a grunt.
She's on top of him now, back to front. He's shifted his grip into a sleeper hold, right arm curled around her neck apply pressure, left bracing it. Alex panics as she feels her air being cut off, her vision going blurry around the edges. The rain is making her feel like she's drowning... every time she opens her mouth she sucks in more water than air... She follows her instincts and tries to claw at his arms and kick her legs to free herself, but he's not letting up. She know he's done this before, and she knows she was an idiot for turning her back to him.
Calm down goddamit... she thinks to herself, trying to make her brain work again even as she feels it shutting down. You're armed you dumbass...
Her right arm goes to her thigh, scrabbling around desperately until she finds what she's looking for. She pulls a nasty looking throwing knife from a holster concealed there and stabs it into his right arm.
Ahmad grunts a curse. He doesn't let her go, but he loosens up his grip enough that she can pull in a gasping breath. Before he can react properly, she plunges the knife in again even harder. This time he bellows and his left arm withdraws, flailing towards the knife. Now that the grip isn't iron, Alex has enough room to move and she slams her left elbow back, hitting Ahmad in the midsection.
She uses the momentum from this move to roll off him. She's gasping for air, coughing, on her hands and knees, but Ahmad is trying to get to his feet, his right arm bleeding profusely, the rain mixing with the blood as it drips off his arm in sheets. She scrambles over to him before he can fully recover and punches him hard in the face. It's not enough to knock him out, but it puts him flat on his back. She throws herself forward, landing on him with one knee on his left forearm and another on his chest. She grabs his right arm, holds it down and then slams the knife through the palm of his hand, effectively pinning him to the roof.
Ignoring his bellows of pain, she staggers to her feet, she starts back towards where she'd left Piper. She feels light headed and sluggish, the air still struggling into her lungs... She finds the blonde is in the process of taking care of what appears to be the last two thugs. The others are either unconscious or wishing they were, rolling around groaning. Watching her now, Alex can't quite believe she managed to escape their fight unscathed. Piper seems to have some sort of uncanny sixth sense, moving to dodge blows almost before her opponents (both taller and broader than her) even know they're going to throw them. The rain and wind have both intensified, but it doesn't seem to be slowing Piper down, she's sliding through the water like she can't even feel it...
Lightning splits the sky, followed almost immediately by an tremendous crack of thunder. It doesn't seem to affect Piper or the thugs she's taking care of, but Alex is startled out of her trance, and in the flash sees one of Kubra's boys has managed to raise his gun (in spite of what looks like a hell of a black eye and a twisted and broken right arm) and is pointing it towards Piper, who chooses that moment to put down one of the thugs, leaving the man with the broken arm an unimpeded line of fire.
Alex takes off at a dead run, kicking the man in the side of the head just as he's about to pull the trigger, altering his aim. He ends up hitting the other thug Piper is fighting square in the leg and he goes down like a sack of potatoes.
Piper delivers a final elbow to the head of the last thug and then turns to look at Alex. Their eyes meet again and Piper looks like she's considering whether or not to take a run at her. This goes on for what seems like an eternity but is probably closer to thirty seconds before they hear the distant wail of police sirens. Alex frowns. She has so many questions... but she can't go to jail, and she's pretty sure Piper would be happy to put her there...
She turns and sprints towards the edge of the roof, propelling herself off of it before hooking on to the one opposite... trying not to think too hard about the fact that if Piper had wanted to stop her, she very well could have...
...
Piper watches Alex disappear over the edge of the roof and her brow furrows. Seeing the brunette had thrown her badly, and not just because she'd been attempting to rob the home of one of Kubra's attorneys. She'd had spent years honing her mind and body in preparation to do what she needed to do to when she returned to Gotham, to do what no one in the city's festering wound of a DA's office or police force could. Kubra Balik was a plague, a disease that kept Gotham anchored firmly in the dirt and grime and corruption that had killed her brother. Removing him from the equation wouldn't solve everything, but it would at least give the decent cops and the new, still relatively untouched DA a fighting chance.
Part of her training had been mental conditioning that was supposed to help her process fear, to calm herself and not react to it. She could face a dozen armed men without batting an eyelid but when she'd laid eyes on Alex... for a split second she had found herself paralyzed, the memories she had tried to block out for years had all come flooding back into her brain. It wasn't constructive or helpful to the mission to dwell on things like that... on what she had left behind and how she had done it... but one look at the brunette and it felt like she was fifteen again and no time had passed...
She hadn't been able to focus for the rest of the night. One of the thugs she'd been fighting had nearly clipped her... would have if not for Alex's timely intervention. It's not a comfort to know that Alex can still affect her like this, especially since Alex is clearly still the type of person she's sworn to clear out of Gotham...
She shakes her head hard, once and then glances around at the groaning men at her feet. Even distracted she'd made short work of them. From the sound of things, the police are almost here and she can't be around when they arrive. The men aren't going anywhere.
She'll think about Alex later...
...
Piper considers Alex the whole ride home, her scowl getting deeper and deeper as she does. By the time she pulls into the tunnel leading to the cave, her thoughts have spiraled into extremely dark territory.
She gets an idea of what her face must look like when she hops off the bike, rips off her helmet and throws it at Polly, who is leaning against the hospital bed they've had installed about ten feet from garage. Their whole operation is relatively new, the cave in various states of half built disarray, but one of the very first things they'd realized is that having the medical bay close enough to stagger to from the garage was key. Claudette had a bad back and Polly hadn't appreciated having to manhandle Piper to the room when it had been three times as far away.
Polly has opened her mouth to say something cutting about Piper's comm unit shorting out (again) or the fact that she hadn't exactly managed to stay stealthy (again), but she shuts it fast when she gets a good look at her friend's glowering face. She remembers when she first met Piper in elementary school, before she'd figured out what her parents were and started roaming the streets, before Cal had been killed. The girl had always had a smile on her face, it was like a perpetual thing, a sunny grin that lifted the mood of everyone around her. That smile had stopped coming so frequently as time went on, but Polly still thought of it, especially at times like this, and she resented the world for having made her this way.
Piper storms over to the table, yanking off the cape one handed and pulling the well concealed fasteners on the damn suit's heavily reinforced top. by the time she takes a seat, she's stripped down to her sports bra and Polly can see a gunshot wound to the left shoulder. The blonde continues glowering straight ahead as Polly sighs and examines her arm. Aside from that she can see nothing more than a few cuts and bruises that Piper will be able to take care of herself.
After she's done with her initial inspection, Polly glances at Piper and risks a question, "What happened, Pipes?"
Piper doesn't reply, her eyes are focused on a point on the far wall of the cave where the bats that still live here (contributing to the lovely smell and what Polly considers highly unsanitary conditions) are now clustered after being shooed out of the main chamber.
"Pipes..."
More silence. Polly has begun restricting herself to two tries to get Piper to speak to her. When the woman's not in the mood to talk, she just won't, which is another contrast to the Piper she first met. That girl couldn't shut up. Just when Polly has resigned herself to not knowing what the hell happened until Claudette comes down and prods the blonde until she speaks, Piper says, "I saw Alex."
Polly is so stunned she nearly drops the syringe full of local anesthetic she's about to inject, "What?"
"Alex was going through the safe when I got there."
"Was she... was it... Supercunt was there?"
Piper glares at her. So apparently that nickname is still off the table. Not that she's had to use it much. Piper never talks about Alex Vause. She barely talked about her before she left when she was running all over hell and gone doing God knows what with her. Well at least she knows why Piper looks so pissed.
She tries again, "Did Su... Alex know... about Mindy?"
"No. I don't think so. I think she was just..." a bitter laugh, "...engaging in some plain old cat burglary. Some things never change."
"And what happened to her?"
"She got away."
Polly injects the local and frowns, "Got away?"
"I fought of a dozen guys single handed. She... saved my life... then she left."
"You let her leave?"
Piper's glare intensifies. Polly sighs, "Right, right. The Bat doesn't let anyone do anything..." she picks up the scalpel and doesn't bother telling her friend this will hurt, she knows about pain. Piper doesn't say anything more, so Polly just figures she's settled into full on brooding. "Good talk," she mutters, frowning as she concentrates on what she's doing.
She wonders about it, Piper letting Alex go when she would've gone after anyone else, no matter how tired she was or whether the person she was after might have saved her life. The Bat wasn't usually all that concerned with extenuating circumstances... She hopes Piper knows what she's doing...
...
Alex doesn't go straight home. She doesn't want to face Nicky and the questions that she'll ask when she figures out Alex is empty handed. She doesn't want to have to discuss what she feels with someone else when she can barely figure it out herself. Somehow, she ends up on the outskirts of the city, crouched on the hill behind the abandoned Wal-Mart, a place she hadn't even come near for years because of how strongly it reminded her of Piper.
The worst of the storm has passed, and the rain has tapered off to a light drizzle. Her clothes are damp, soaked almost all the way through. It's just cool enough that she begins to shiver as soon as she sits still. The adrenaline from the fight is fading, and her brain feels like it's been put through a blender and hastily reassembled. Even as her body wants nothing but to collapse, her mind is racing, and she can't pin down any one thought for longer than a second.
There's too much to take in. Piper is running around dressed like a damned Bat, taking out a dozen men in the time it took Alex to barely survive three... but she's also running around with Bitsy and Betsy and Snookums pretending to be a brainless bimbo, allowing the papers to portray her as an airhead who lets her CFO run her father's company while she sleeps off hangovers and fucks a different celebrity every night. Both personas seem ironclad, and neither of them appeared to have much in common with the girl who'd shredded her heart.
On top of that, she still had no idea why Kubra's guys had appeared on the roof, how they'd known where she and Piper would be... why they would even give a shit. Obviously the Bat had been fucking with Kubra's operations, but Alex had nothing to do with that... The thought of being back in Kubra's sights made her sick to her stomach...
After about an hour, the chill finally penetrates into her bones and her thoughts have been flitting around like so many terrified butterflies, going around and around until she knows there's no point in thinking about it anymore. It's getting close to three in the morning. Maybe if she sleeps it'll all make sense when she wakes up. She scrambles to her feet, tries to shake the feeling back into her limbs and heads towards home.
All she's thinking about when she reaches her fourth story fire escape is a warm drink and her bed, possibly with a hot bath thrown in... so she doesn't notice that the lights are all off and the apartment is deadly still when she opens the window and crawls in.
She reaches up to pull off her hood and goggles when a lamp in the corner turns on and a terrifyingly familiar voice says, "Well, this makes things awfully convenient..." Her head whips up and she sees Aydin...
"Jesus!" she exclaims.
He's smiling at her, friendly, casual, a toothpick perched in one corner of his mouth. "I came to pay you a visit, Vause... just like Kubra promised I would if you ever fucked around in his business again..."
"I promised I would stay out of his way and I have!"
"Well you did... I mean you were doing so well, and then you had to go and fuck it all up..."
"Aydin, if I interfered it wasn't intentional..."
Aydin didn't look armed, but Alex knew that didn't make him any less dangerous. When Kubra wanted to send a real message, he'd have Aydin fuck people up with his bare hands... He shrugs, telling her just how little he cares about her intentions.
"You're saving me a lot of trouble finding you. I thought I might have to actually make some effort after your little friend wouldn't tell me anything..."
Alex feels her blood turn to ice. "...what...?"
"The girl with the hair. Feisty thing. Had quite an impressive vocabulary, and the kind of loyalty you don't see a lot in this world... everyone needs a friend like that, I think. You'll be hard pressed to find another one..."
"What did you do..."
Aydin gives her a look. It was a stupid question and they both knew it. Aydin had done what he always did.
For a moment, she loses all power of rational thought. She feels as though she's been blinded, an image of Nicky broken and battered and drowning in a pool of her own blood flashing behind her eyes... The weight of it hits Alex in the center of her chest, all feeling draining from her limbs as though she's been paralyzed. She feels like she can't breathe, like Ahmad is choking her out again, the rain flooding down her throat...
He shakes his head, "Ah well... don't look like that Vause," he says, shifting his toothpick around to the other side of his mouth as he cracks his knuckles, "You won't have to be sad about it much longer..."
Before Aydin can advance a step, the front door crashes open and two men burst in, guns drawn. "Nichols!?" bellows a familiar voice. Vasily. Aydin's smile doesn't waver and his gaze doesn't leave Alex as he says, "Your lucky day... see you around Vause..."
By the time Vasily and his friend get down the short hallway and into main room, Aydin has disappeared back towards the bedrooms. Alex runs after him, not to catch him, but to find Nicky.
She doesn't have to go far. Nicky is just inside the entrance to her bedroom, tied to a chair, so still Alex is certain she's dead until she feels her neck... the pulse is weak and slow. Aydin has clearly done his worst to her. Alex gets the distinct impression she interrupted him before he could truly finish, but that's barely a comfort considering that Nicky's face is a wreck, and every bit of her exposed skin is covered in cuts and bruises.
Alex hears Vasily in the hall behind her. His friend (she recognizes him as Konstantin) goes to the window, looking to pursue Aydin, but then turns and shakes his head. Alex is crouched next to Nicky and wants to touch her, to untie her from the chair but is terrified of making it worse. Her heart is beating hard, her blood rushing into her ears. It isn't until Vasily put his beefy hand on her shoulder that she realizes he's been trying to speak to her.
She looks up at him, and sees he's got his phone to his ear. He nods as he says, "Da. I'll tell her..." He disconnects the call and steps into the hallway, gesturing with his head for Alex to follow. Reluctantly, Alex stands, her legs weak, and follows him out of the room.
"You need to go."
"What? No. I'm not..."
"He only left here because he was alone, you understand? He will come back with more. To find you. To finish..." his eyes dart to Nicky and away quickly, a shadow passing over his face... Alex realizes he may be just as upset as she is. Vasily has known Nicky for most of her life, "... you cannot stay."
"I'm not leaving her..."
"Anywhere you are, they will come," he says, his voice isn't entirely unsympathetic, but it's also unyielding. The implication is clear: you're a danger to Nicky... to anyone near you...
Alex stares down at the hall rug that Nicky had filched from one of her mother's barely used multimillion dollar condos. Her fists clench and unclench reflexively, making the gunshot graze on her right arm ache. She knows he's right, but God she hates it... almost as much as she hates herself... because she knows she's responsible for this.
After a long moment she nods tightly and turns without a word, going to her room to gather what she can fit into her pack. When she emerges, she can hear commotion by the door. Konstantin admitting someone else...
Alex heads towards the window she entered through and when she looks back she sees Red, standing in the entryway, staring at her. There's raw emotion on her face, the kind that the old Russian usually keeps locked up tight. The force of the grief and anger in even more intense than Alex had feared it would be, and she knows most of it is justifiably aimed towards her. The moment passes quickly and Red hurries towards the bedrooms. A man Alex recognizes as the Family doctor trails after her.
Vasily stays standing in the hallway, his eyes on Alex until she slips through the window and disappears into the night.
