*knocks head against wall*
So, this wasn't going to continue. I was going to stop at the one chapter, but then the whisper of an idea distracted me, so I sat down to write a paragraph this afternoon to get it out of my head before starting on some other writing. Except then I didn't stop for 3,000 more words.
psa: I'm not going through the labor of editing any of this, so spelling and grammar errors will remain; apologies for that, but I know if I edit this I won't ever get to anything else (Batwoman related or not).
Cheers,
EQT.95
It shouldn't have surprised Kate when Jacob found out. She'd been cautious, but even that was never enough to let things slip past her father. He had finally pieced it together in the aftermath of Sophie being taken. His focus had been hijacked by months as the Crows collected whispers of a new organization setting up shop in Gotham. It was a result of this obsession that Sophie became a victim of a botched search.
Jacob was beside himself with grief when he learned she'd been nabbed. Memories of a warehouse years earlier flooded his mind, and he made a commitment to see this one end differently.
He'd come to see Sophie as a surrogate daughter of sorts. While she'd never replace Kate or Beth, he felt a paternal bond to her as she moved through the Crows. There was also the factor of being Kate's ex that made him keep a watchful eye on her. She'd joined the Crows immediately out of Point Rock, and carried the heartache into her first few months as a Crow. That she even joined straight out of school was an exception intended for Kate, and, when she'd left the Academy, Jacob had no intention of making an offer to anyone else. That was, until he ran into her on campus when he returned to help Kate move out. They'd interacted only a few times, but he already held her in high regard: if Kate approved, and she had managed to put up with his daughter for three years, that deserved consideration.
She was sharp, detail oriented, and had the dry humor reminiscent of Kate that appeared without fail to call Jacob out when he was being particularly bullish and irrational. This no-nonsense approach to leadership was a quality that quickly lifted her to his second in command. It was an unprecedented move, but she was an atypical hire. His strategy for years had been to surround himself with brawn and leave decision-making to him, but he quickly discovered that the two balanced each other out: he was often quick to draw from his years in the field while she preferred a more diplomatic approach. That they respected each other helped with the worst of confrontations which were often met with raised voices of disagreement, but never once had they not been able to find common ground.
Until recently. They'd had spats before but had never not met compromise. That had changed with the discovery of a new crime syndicate making Gotham its new home months earlier. This underground group became known as the Religion of Crime, and it sent Jacob on a warpath to uncover anything and everything about them. The vetting process to hire new Crows had been sidelined to bulk up 'for war' as Jacob put it. The timing was noteworthy as many from the task force had begun to retire. Even for the hired gun, there was only so much of Gotham a Crow could take before being drained and stepping down.
The task force hadn't been this slim since its creation, and Jacob took the threat of the Religion of Crime to forgo traditional training and background checks. It was the first time he and Sophie left the table at complete odds, and the impact of the decision swept through the force in no time. Unproven and questionable hires introduced the flavor of corruption that the GCPD had spent years fighting to detain. This made Sophie's job all the harder as Jacob took the increased quantity as a reason to pursue each and every lead.
Chaos ensued. The Crows were no longer focusing on everyday Gotham needs and instead spent nights leaping from one abandoned warehouse to another. At one point Sophie and a squadron spent three nights navigating the sewers to check on a tip. It turned up empty, much like every other piece of intel that had been found.
Finally Sophie demanded a split in the task force.
"We can't keep this up; we can't exist only for this. We haven't made a single arrest in weeks."
"Don't you understand? This could be the downfall of Gotham."
"You sound mad, sir," Sophie scowled. Jacob had taken to expressing these ambiguous claims that, to Sophie, sounded like nothing more than a conspiracy theory. "We keep chasing these leads that end up nowhere. We need to reorganize and refocus our energy on verifying intel. The task force is burning out, and we have nothing to show for it."
"I'm not giving up on this."
"I'm not saying we should," Sophie said. She didn't believe this, but after weeks she knew logic didn't apply when discussing this topic with Jacob. It would remain a thorn in the Crows side for as long as this obsession remained. "But there needs to be progress. The city is getting nervous. Last month's numbers aren't good."
The introduction of doubts from the city and performance numbers persuaded Jacob to reassign part of the task force to regular. It wasn't nearly as many as Sophie wanted, but it was better than nothing.
That's when the seeds of corruption from dodgy hires began to sprout. Arrests were botched, missions went sideways, and a feeling of distrust took root in association with the name 'Crows'. In a matter of weeks, the good the agency had brought to Gotham took a complete one-eighty back to business as usual.
These concerns fell on deaf ears as Jacob removed himself entirely from day-to-day operations, instead leading the charge of the Religion of Crime task force. It was in this obsessed state that Jacob misjudged the intel that would send the entire Crow operation out into Gotham and put Sophie in the hands of the crime organization.
It was only in this moment that Jacob snapped out of his haze. He understood, perhaps too late, that his actions had jeopardized lives, and he fought off the grief simmering at the edges of his mind to coordinate a search and rescue.
The next twelve hours were a blur. One lead after another was proven a fabrication, and the Crows were struggling to pick up any scent. Blinded by fear, he directed the entire task force into the field, leaning heavily on his intel team to discern fact from fiction. Seconds turned to minutes turned into hours, and a reality of Sophie not returning safely gripped at him. He imagined with horror the thought of telling her parents; the shattered worlds that would follow if they didn't find her in time.
Then suddenly it was over. A radio call over the coms announced she'd been found. She was bound and beaten but conscious and responsive. Jacob breathed for the first time in hours. Sophie was safe. She was safe and not one iota of that fact could be attributed to Jacob. He'd messed up, and it had almost cost him dearly.
Sophie was debriefed, and she described what she remembered which wasn't much. A sack had blindfolded her, so she couldn't identify her kidnappers. She was perplexed by the entire experience: she didn't understand what they wanted, and she certainly didn't understand why she was alive. They didn't interrogate her, and there was no violence beyond the beating she took when initially fighting off the kidnappers. She'd remained bound and isolated for hours until a hurried moment when shouts in the hall of wherever she was being held broke into her room and dragged her out. She fought the hands that gripped her and after a few moments she felt the cool breeze of the outdoors hit her. The sound of a car engine was the backdrop to the hurried breathing and grunts from her kidnappers. She was pushed down onto a surface that she concluded was the floor of a van. She kicked wildly, fighting to delay their ability to close the door when a cry of pain distracted everyone.
Suddenly there were no hands on her and the shouts had migrated toward the cry. A rattle of bullets peppered the air, and Sophie instinctively curled into the van. She couldn't determine the source, but she hoped it was enough to dodge getting hit. The rain of gunfire ended just as quickly as it started, and shouts followed:
"-leave her-"
"- but the High Priestess said-"
"- can't be taken-"
"- no casualties-"
"-run!"
The voices diminished, fleeing toward some unknown distance, and for a brief moment Sophie relaxed. This quickly disappeared at the sounds of footsteps running toward her. She twisted and, with perfect timing, launched her legs into the torso of her assailant.
The gasp, curse, and cough of surprise that followed confused her. The voice wasn't a male.
"I deserved that," the voice gasped. "Probably should've…" coughs "...announced myself first."
"Who's there?"
"Relax, you're safe," the voice choked out.
"Who are you?"
"Are you injured?" it asked in concern.
"Wh-no," Sophie scowled in frustration. "But I can't see either."
"Uh, right," the voice hesitated. Why did the voice hesitate? Why did it also feel so familiar? "Your guys will be here shortly. Hold tight till then."
And then the footsteps fled. It didn't take long for Crows, Jacob and Sophie included, to speculate that the voice was the new vigilante in town. Unfortunately the lack of CCTV in the area couldn't help them verify this.
Sophie and Jacob both took the week that followed to reset. For Sophie, the shock and memories of her kidnapping fuelled sleepless nights, and for Jacob, the fear of losing Sophie drove him to his own form of the same. He spent those nights pouring over intel surrounding this vigilante. There were rumors of two, but proof of one.
He hadn't been so closed off not to have heard about the vigilante making Gotham her home, but he'd previously waved it off as another idealist playing superhero. He hadn't paid the stories much attention… until now.
Kate returned home from a night of rooftop-hopping to find him sitting in the dark. It had been a week since the incident with Sophie, and things were slowly returning to normal. Even before she saw him she knew something was amiss in her flat. Her eyes scanned the darkened room and found him sitting on the sofa. Part of her was anxious, but part of her wondered why it had taken him so long to figure it out.
"Two years of training is enough to make you a Crow. It isn't enough to make you Batman, Kate."
"I'm not trying to be Batman."
"Tell that to Gotham's mob bosses, because I don't think they see a difference."
"I don't care what they see."
"You're putting an end to this."
"No."
"That is an order, Kate. You're in over your head, and it's getting too dangerous."
"I am not, and, with all due respect, you aren't my commanding officer, sir."
"Enough. You've stolen from me, you've endangered your own life, and you're giving Gotham false hope that things will change."
"Can't they?"
"What?"
"Why can't they change? The GCPD isn't doing it, and meanwhile you're fighting off corruption in your own ranks. This is my way to serve."
"Become a Crow if you want to serve."
She misread Jacob's tone as a commander ordering a subordinate. What she didn't hear was the fear concealed by the years of experience in hiding it. Kate shook her head in frustration. Part of it was her pride, unwilling to take command from a superior again, but part of it was the change she was seeing her night's out made. She wasn't taking down the likes of the Joker or the Riddler, but she was making a difference. She was interrupting muggings and burglaries.
One thing she hadn't accounted for was nabbing the bad guys to get booked by the GCPD or Crows. That track record for catching wasn't great, but she was learning. In that learning, she discovered not all GCPD was thrilled by her prowling the night. A handful were indifferent, a few actively pursued her, but a couple fell into the category of allies. She was building a rapport with these few GCPD duos who had stayed on from the Batman years. If they were out on patrol, it made booking the thugs easier, but if they weren't, well, the best Kate could hope was that she taught them a hard-learned lesson.
Her methods were unsavory; training in Serbia had assured that flavor in her fighting took hold. She hoped this was enough to make criminals think twice before stepping out into the shadows again, but if there's one thing growing up in the city had taught her, it was that pride and stubbornness was bred into every Gothamite.
"You're less forgiving than the other guy."
"Other guy?" Kate asked, squatting from the fire escape overlooking the alley. While she was beginning to trust this Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya GCPD duo, she wasn't ready to offer up anything to them.
"At least I think he's a guy. Montoya?" Bullock said, zipping a set of cuffs in place of the zip ties Kate had applied on one of the three burglars. They'd attempted to break into a hardware store. The storefront glass was demolished, but beyond that mess, nothing was out of place. The shopkeep had been called and more GCPD were on their way to help board it up which meant Kate didn't have much time to linger and chat.
"I've never seen a woman with shoulders that broad," Montoya growled. Kate had been prowling for nearly four months at this point, but this was the first she was hearing of the possibility that there were more vigilantes scouring the same turf for baddies.
"We thought it was you for a while," Bullock continued. He was clearly the more friendly of the two, and Kate wondered if the good cop-bad cop was real or these two just happened to fit the stereotype. "But he looks…" he trailed off, trying to find the words to articulate his thoughts.
"Cooler," Montoya finished for Bullock.
"Cooler?" Kate scowled, her voice betraying the surprise hit at her ego.
"He has a suit. You have… a ski mask," Bullock explained. "He doesn't stick around to chit-chat like you though, and most of the force doesn't believe he's even real. We've only seen him what… twice?"
"He's not Batman," Montoya said unprompted. Kate noted that Harvey Bullock's face fell slightly, and she couldn't help but wonder how many times the partners had gotten lost in the speculation of this 'cool' mystery man being the OG of vigilantes.
Before she could ask anymore questions, the sirens of incoming back-up was her cue to leave. Kate wasn't sure how to take this news. A part of her was excited to know another shadow was lurking in Gotham and fighting for the same thing she was, but another part of her was nervous. There was a schoolyard worry about whether they'd end up friends, indifferent to each other's existence, or at odds.
As luck would have it, it didn't take long for Kate to have her first run-in with this other vigilante. She had been chasing after a mugger when she turned a corner and found the broad-shouldered form taking down her target. After the first second of shock passed, she couldn't help but agree: he did look cooler.
Three quick and successive strikes had the mugger on the ground. He quickly adjusted his stance into a defensive position at the sight of Kate, and she noted it was reminiscent of a boxer. She stowed this nugget away and quickly spoke to clarify the situation.
"I'm not with him."
The figure didn't say anything, and her words only caused his stance to relax slightly.
"You're that woman the cops talk about," he said. His voice was surprisingly soft spoken for the presence his form had. He only had an inch or two on Kate's height, but he had the fitness of a well-tuned machine. The added bulk of the suit only enhanced this.
"And you're that shadow in the cool suit."
"Batwing."
"What?"
"The name's Batwing."
"You gave yourself a name?" Kate asked in disbelief. A groan from the mugger at Batwing's feet brought their attention back to the task at hand. She watched Batwing reach toward his waist where a utility belt blended seamlessly with the black suit.
Renee was right, he wasn't Batman, but the suit could have fooled anyone. With the exception of a cape, it was reminiscent of the full-bodied armor adorning Batman in the final years. She remained a few feet back, but even from that distance and in the shadows, she couldn't help but notice the bat emblem branded on the chest. A million questions raced through her head, and she had half a mind to ask them when Batwing looked up at her.
"You going to just stand there?" he scowled, using the zip tie he withdrew from his belt to quickly bind the mugger.
Kate quickly phoned in the location as Batwing located the discarded handbag that had been tightly clutched in the mugger's hands until moments earlier. He tossed it next to the barely conscious figure before stepping back and reaching once again toward his belt. He extracted a gun-like shape and pointed it toward the sky.
"You aren't going to stay?" Kate asked. "What if he gets away-"
"Of course not," he said simply. "But unlike you, I don't need to make myself seen."
So it was going to be like that, Kate thought with a scowl as he pulled the trigger and, in an instant, flew up toward the nearest rooftop.
She'd never sought him out, and, as far as she knew, he'd never sought her out, yet they managed to run into each other frequently. A handful of these interactions over the next few weeks gave Kate enough to go off. Batwing worked alone; this suited her just fine - she'd have rejected a cross-over appearance if offered anyway. Their run-ins were cordial enough, and in these moments Kate was beginning to distinguish obvious differences between the two: Batwing, for one, had the Batman's toolbox at his fingertips while she was limited to whatever she'd 'borrowed' from the Crows and managed to purchase second hand. Kate knew better than to ask, and he didn't volunteer any particulars, but there was an obvious connection between him and the dark knight.
One other key difference was their fighting styles: she was better, and this pleased her. Yes, he was bigger and could throw a harder punch, but his wheelhouse was limited. She chalked this up to her training; Batwing clearly leaned into a preference for boxing while Kate had an arsenal of moves and techniques she'd acquired over the years. The boxing and takedown techniques reminded her of days at Point Rock, and she couldn't help but wonder if he had a military background.
Weeks went by like this until an occasion came up that couldn't
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh drop the act. I know you have connections to Batman. Does he have any other forms of city surveillance you can tap into?"
Batwing paused for a moment in thought. "What would you need something like that for?"
"Someone's been kidnapped."
"It's Gotham. Someone's always being kidnapped."
"This is different. This is… this is personal."
"No."
"What? Why?"
"That's not what the symbol is for. It's not for personal gain."
"What? First, it shouldn't matter the relation: it's a human being. Second, it's not for personal… " Kate asked, a flare of urgency in her voice. "If this was your… your mother or your dad would you just stand by and let it happen?"
"That's different."
"No, that's this. This is that kind of personal. We have a chance of saving someone's life."
Numbers were exchanged, and within an hour she heard a chime notifying her that Batwing had found something. They met on a rooftop, confirmed the information, and in less than five minutes, had silently made a pact to raid the warehouse.
The fight that ensued wasn't really a fight at all. By the time they had snuck into the space, they had little time to execute an attack before the gang fleed. They pursued from opposite directions and converged at the exit, attempting an offensive strategy to catch who they could. Unfortunately, it was clear that their goons' orders were to avoid just that: they scampered in every direction, abandoning Sophie for the sewers.
Batwing pursued two while Kate stayed back to check on Sophie. Much like Jacob mere blocks away in the back of a Crows armored truck, she let out a breath she'd been holding ever since she'd heard of Sophie's capture over the radios.
It was three days before Kate caught sight of Batwing's silhouette leaping across an alley. She followed and found him waiting for her on the parapet.
"Did you take the fire escape?" his voice called.
"Only because wall crawling is for Spiderman," she joked.
"Spiderman?"
"Different universe," Kate waved away.
Silence fell between them as Kate climbed onto the parapet next to Batwing. Together they stared out onto the city.
"Thanks," Kate said after a minute. "For, you know…"
"You don't do this very often, do you?"
"Fight bad guys?"
"Say 'thank you'."
"Is it that obvious?" Kate admitted.
"It's definitely hard to miss."
"A little bit like a dozen bad guys fleeing from a warehouse."
"Are you accusing me of being sloppy?"
"I'm just saying maybe next time you can catch one of them," Kate smirked.
"And maybe next time you'll pick the mission over your girlfriend," Batwing replied coolly.
"She was my mission."
Batwing considered her words for a moment. "How was she?"
"Rattled, but fine."
"Good," he said, hopping down onto the roof. "Did she see you?"
"No."
"Good," he repeated. "You need a better mask."
"Yea? Maybe I'll swap a ski mask for a bat cowl."
"No. But here," he said, extending his hand to her, and she realized he was holding out a grappling hook. "Best to practice before you try it in the field though."
"Really?" Kate asked in surprise, taking the gun into her hands.
"Yea, if you do it wrong you'll dislocate your arm."
"No, I just meant… thanks."
"Not bad, you're getting better already," Batwing replied dryly. "Get good enough and maybe next time I won't have to wait twenty minutes for your ass to get up here."
a/n: I'd say this is the last chapter, but I want to dig into the Kate/Sophie side of things in this alternate telling. There's also the whole Renee Montoya and Batwing storylines that could be fun, but I need to deep-dive into the comics to get it right.
