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Chapter Text

Twyla Sands wouldn't classify herself as an adrenaline junkie, exactly. She's witnessed different phases of addiction in cousins and friends, watched them fall prey to Miller High Life and molly and wretched partners, and she's cognizant of her less than stable mental chemistry—quite the inheritance gift from her family. As a result, she lives a life of constant vigilance. She has to, as the CEO of Sands Enterprises. Plus, it's good practice for her non-professional endeavors, too.

But then she barely resists the urge to scream as she surrenders to the night sky and takes flight, aided by her trusty grappling gun, and, okay, she might be a smidge addicted to defying gravity.

She brings her legs together and kicks, shatters the glass, and swiftly knocks out the nearest guard with a zap of her modified taser before he can alert the others to her presence.

"Not like breaking a window on the 15th floor of Gotham City Hall was a particularly subtle entrance."

From there, it's the usual exchanges between the remaining goons—the snarled threats of "kill the bat!" and "she'll regret messing with us" and the smug murmurs of, "She thinks she's so tough."

They're nobodies. Generic street scum.

But the baser, crueler part of Twyla's psyche whispers, "They deserve a little cat and mouse hunt."

She's learned from late night boardroom meetings and attempted coups, from all the efforts to discourage her from becoming a high-ranking woman in tech: humiliation is the only impetus to change for some folks.

So she puts her various grappling guns to good measure, yanking one unsuspecting moron up to be decoration next to the outdated, fluorescent lights and stringing another up in the elevator shaft.

"Back to back, circle up!"

It's a terse, panicked command, one stripped of any pretense of bravado, ringing with fear rather than confidence, and Twyla allows herself a hint of a smirk while she surveys the scene below her and tosses a cube of knockout gas into the tightly knotted trio of criminals.

"It's non-lethal," she reminds herself over their concurrent coughing fits, but her mild concern for their well-being vanishes once she drops down from her perch near the ceiling.

Wielding an electric saw as a weapon is quite the way to grab a girl's attention.

She jams it with a couple of Batarangs before the last attacker can get too close, though, and he has the sense to run.

"Probably the best decision any of you made tonight," she muses while she sets a charge to blow the doors to Mayor Hill's office.

It works perfectly—of course it does, as a Sands Enterprises product—and she lets her guard drop for a second, lets herself stroll into the empty room.

It's a second too long, and it's not empty.

A svelte woman decked out in an all-black, skin tight suit with pointy ears turns back from the now-opened safe.

"You know, the whole busting in through a window and blowing the hinges off the doors approach…" she remarks thoughtfully, "I get where you're coming from, for the intimidation factor. But it's a bit much. Didn't your mother ever teach you to knock?"

Twyla grits her teeth. Spits out, "She never really got the chance."

The other woman—probably an adversary, if the way she's handling what looks like a stolen data disk is anything to go by—frowns, then gives a little nod at something over Twyla's right shoulder.

"One more behind you, sweetheart."

She ducks to dodge the spray of bullets, viciously hopes one might nick this…catwoman in the shoulder or leg to slow her down, but none do, and she's dashing for the elevator, leaving Twyla to spar with one final nuisance.

She dispatches him quickly, running on sheer adrenaline and a simmering smattering of rage while she gives chase to this new, mysterious villain.

"Sorry—no room for you here," Catwoman fairly sings just before she snaps the elevator shut with a crack of her whip. "Try the stairs!"

There's a cat's paw attached to the wall—magnetized, maybe—and the woman clinging dearly to it rockets upward as Twyla slams into the now-closed doors.

Her only choice is to follow Catwoman's taunt—the stairs will have to do.

The stairs that the GCPD are now occupying.

"Stay where you are!" an officer shouts. "You're under arrest!"

"Seriously? I'm on your side!" Twyla can't help but insist, even as she flees, firing her grappling gun and taking an express ride up, up, up toward the roof.

She leaps toward the exit sign, hits the ground with a neat tuck and roll, and runs hard for the fire door.

Somehow, Catwoman's still on the roof, examining the datapad, remarking, "Got it without so much as a scratch."

"Not yet, at least."

Catwoman gives a visible start at that, her shoulders hitching up at the unexpected voice.

"That doesn't belong to you."

The woman has the audacity to chuckle, to acknowledge, "No, it doesn't. Silly me, wondering if we'd cross paths when I took this job."

"Well, you broke the law," Twyla challenges her. "Here I am."

"The law?" she scoffs. "C'mon, cut the goody-goody justice shit. Don't tell me that's why you do all…this."

She gestures vaguely at Twyla's getup, at the cowl, and goes on, "You squeeze into a suit, tie on a cape—most people with that kinda wardrobe end up in Arkham sooner rather than later."

"No one else is up for the job."

She remembers the twin bangs of the gun—honestly, the second might've been worse, the way her mom was practically executed while she begged for her life—and three good Gotham cops have already been killed and buried this year and—

Twyla tugs herself back from her trauma. Focuses on the current situation. Adds a layer of steel to her voice.

"I'm the only one built for it."

"Sounds lonely," Catwoman nearly purrs, with what might actually be sympathy.

It disappears just as quickly as it pops up, though, and gets replaced with what Twyla's already terming her default mode: aloofness and cool confidence, with a slight air of flirtation.

"I gotta admit, though—you give a good chase. Maybe you'll catch me next time."

Oh, so she's downright cocky.

"Not next time. Right now," Twyla asserts while she scans the roof's landscape, gauging where to jump, where to land.

"You know it's dangerous to corner a wild animal, right?"

"Then I'll just have to lock you up in a cage."

"Don't tempt a woman with a good time, Bats."

Catwoman winks behind her goggles—or, rather, tries to. She ends up just blinking, and the odd sight almost shatters Twyla's concentration, almost makes her laugh, but this is no time for humor.

"Nor is any other time, according to you, miss sour-puss," Jocelyn's voice whispers in her mind, and she shakes her head to clear it away.

"The Gotham jail isn't too much fun to visit. Trust me."

"A hero and a tour guide? Well, aren't you just the best Gotham has to offer."

Her sharp, talon-like nails clash with her playful tone, and Twyla dodges backward to avoid a vicious slash.

They spar to what's mostly a stalemate for a good couple of minutes, but she takes advantage of the GCPD's sudden appearance, led by Lieutenant Brewer ordering, "Hold your fire, officers," to rip the datapad free from the holster on Catwoman's leg, attaching it to a Batarang and flinging it at the wall closest to Brewer in the blink of an eye.

"Why go to all this trouble for that?" she asks, smugness ringing in her tone as she revels in her victory, pointing at the no-longer-stolen tech.

"Like I'm gonna tell you."

Some idiot on the force shoots at them to end any potential further conversation, and Catwoman's on the move again, on a dead sprint toward the Gotham City News helicopter. Twyla starts running, too, but realizes she won't close the gap in time, and aims a Bat-Stunner at Catwoman's back.

It's a direct hit, sure to stun her and leave her woozy and easy to detain, at last.

Which would be great if she hadn't already launched herself off the roof, jumping for the helicopter.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Twyla curses her own short-sightedness as she hustles up the stairs and across the helipad to follow the other woman's path, skydiving with nothing but her tech to protect her.

For all her earlier grace and slick, calculated movements, Catwoman's nothing but dead weight right now, limbs splayed out thanks to the shock from the Bat-Stunner, making it easier for Twyla to catch her, to pry her cat's paw magnet free from her grasp and slam it against the side of the building.

Her arms scream in protest as they're stretched in opposite directions, the cat's paw in her right hand screeching for purchase against metal and glass while its owner drags her left arm down, and Jocelyn's voice comes back to her once more: "Myths may be forever, but you're flesh and blood. They come with limits."

Luckily, Twyla hasn't found the very edge of hers yet, and she manages to keep Catwoman in her grip. She'd come to faster than people usually do after getting hit with her stunner, but the whole free-fall and being in remarkable shape might have something to do with it.

Catwoman glances down for a second, her eyes popping wide at her precarious position, then back up at her savior. She remarks, with a rueful shake of her head, "Guess I was wrong about you catching me."

Twyla tugs the other woman up with her forearm. "Come on. Don't struggle or you'll fall."

"I know."

Her tone's reassuring, and she's gazing up with some strange mix of concern, arrogance, and pity just before—

"See you around, Batwoman."

"Wh—"

The shock of pain from the scratch, a quick, almost casual swipe of three nails on her left hand across her cheek, is enough to make Twyla drop her.

"No!" she yells, desperately reaching again—surely justice, or even just Gotham's pale imitation of it, is preferable to death—but she's too late.

Until she notices a wire's been shot toward the bottom of one of the high-speed trains passing nearby. She registers a sudden lack of heft on her utility belt and glances down.

"The bitch stole my grappling gun," she registers in disbelief.

She stays where she is for a moment to absorb the night's absurd twists and turns, then calls Jocelyn.

"Could you please boot up the computer and run a search for everything about Catwoman when you have a minute?"

Her long time caretaker's dry chuckle comes through. "Something tells me it'll take more time than that, Twyla."

**

Handling unsavory characters is hardly uncommon in Alexis Rose's line of work, though she's never fully comprehended why. After all, she's thieving valuables—precious gems and jewels, rare sculptures and art, historical artifacts, the occasional billiards table (working off that particular debt had been a literal and figurative pain. There's a reason she makes her clientele pay extra for big-time solo heists). Yet, from white collar criminals to boutique drug dealers, "please" and "thank you" are always in short supply.

"No one in your family's all that nice, either, so maybe money just can't buy manners."

That part of being in Gotham, which is very much not one of her preferred destinations, was expected, but she'd figured the city's reputation for attracting all manner of weirdos, mentally ill or otherwise, was at least a teensy bit overblown.

And then she'd arrived.

Even though she sometimes jokes about having nine lives—she's still unsure how she escaped that beachfront disaster in Mexico without more than a severely sprained ankle—her sense of self-preservation, of knowing which hands to shake and whose jokes to laugh at, runs just as strong as ever, and Harvey Dent's an easy mark.

He's putting a dent in crime, all the lawn signs and flyers for his mayoral campaign say, and she's letting him think he's putting a dent in her walls while she has to be here. He's one of the weirdly wired younger Gotham lifers, along with that reclusive billionaire tech mogul, Twyla Sands. The ones who are convinced that with a can-do attitude and good intentions (and cash, although they'll never say that out loud), Gotham can enjoy a renaissance and rediscover its golden glory days.

Alexis has seen enough to know the promise of a brighter future, of the green light on Daisy's dock, is a sham. Her favorite version of it is a traffic light, the one that says, "You have permission to go, to leave," even if she's often apt to run the red.

For right now, she's on cruise control.

"Except for having to explain this cut to him," she thinks, frowning at the red ring around her eye as she examines it in her compact mirror—damn Batwoman's one punch to her lenses. The makeup's softened it a little, but it's still plenty noticeable.

"Oh, well. Dodging a couple of questions is worth the free meal, and I don't think my client, or any of his associates, will be lurking around Cafe Triste in broad daylight."

She puts a little sashay in her step as she walks toward Harvey—always up for some fun, easy-breezy fun even in Gotham, a breath of fresh air in a city gone stale. It's taking a bit more work than she expects to play this role, but it's doable, even if a fresh twinge of guilt curls in her stomach at how he lights up and calls, "Hey, you."

"Sorry," she apologizes. "I know the reservation was for five-thirty, but I'm terrible at being punctual."

"No, no, it's fine—I'm just glad you could make it."

The second scrape of a chair on cobblestones snaps her out of the dutiful, beautiful girlfriend role long enough to notice they're not alone.

She chokes back her gasp of surprise, but she can't pull her gaze away from the other woman, not even when Harvey hugs her tightly and kisses her cheek.

"You didn't tell me you were bringing a friend to dinner, Harvey."

He turns, keeps one hand on the small of her back to provide a wholly unnecessary introduction. "This is Alexis. And," he rubs the back of his neck and grins sheepishly at his other companion, who's decked out in, naturally, a modest black suit, "well, I'm sure you know who she is already, but this is Twyla Sands. She's a good friend."

"And a good campaign financier, I'm sure."

Twyla extends a hand out. "You know, I think we've met before, Miss…?"

Oh, so she's gonna play it like that.

"Rose," she replies, reaching out to complete the handshake. "I agree. You seem familiar." She glances down at their interlocked fingers and throws Twyla a shadow of a smirk, there and gone in a flash. "And you've got quite a strong grip."

"Sorry, I do a lot of rock climbing."

"Must not be afraid of heights, then."

"Nope," Twyla answers, popping the p as if it'll hide the tightness to her smile. "Guess I'm not."

Alexis settles down in a chair at a slight angle to Harvey and wills herself to not burst out laughing as he explains how she's new to the city, because he's sitting directly across from Batwoman and has no idea.

"I've been showing Alexis around Gotham since she got here, what, a few weeks ago? Helped her establish some connections," he says while he's mulling over the wine list.

"Thanks again." She scooches a smidge closer to him and beams. "The networking has been great for my job."

"Oh, what line of work are you in?" Twyla asks.

"Appraisals. Mostly jewelry and art."

"Interesting," Twyla notes after sipping her water. "Do you handle any requisitions for your customers?"

"Once in a while, sure. In fact," screw it, if Twyla's tossing discretion to the wind, she will, too, "I had just secured quite a unique piece yesterday when some masked freak mugged me," she points to her eye, notices how Twyla's lower lip juts out in defiance for a second before she finds her composure, "and ran off with it."

"Don't worry," Harvey reassures her, "we'll track down whatever idiot did this to you and get your valuables back. I've already reached out to Brewer at the GCPD to look into it."

"Good," Alexis simpers, "because my client will be quite displeased if what they want doesn't get delivered to them soon."

Twyla covers her slight gasp with a cough, and Alexis has to tamp down a shit-eating grin at her discomfort, at Batwoman's obvious unease with working in shades of gray, with putting anyone in harm's way.

People with dumb moral codes are so easy to manipulate.

Harvey suddenly stands up, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his phone. "Ah, it's someone from the police station. Excuse me for a moment."

Alexis hears a fading, "Dent here," as he walks around the corner. Twyla's leaning back in her chair a little, too, judging how far away he is. After another couple of seconds, Alexis comments, "It's nice to meet the real you."

Twyla doesn't answer immediately but, after a moment's careful, thoughtful hesitation, she nods. "Likewise."

Her guard's still up, and Alexis can't resist searching for more cracks to exploit.

"This explains a lot, actually," she remarks lightly. "How you afford the armor and all those fancy toys. Wouldn't Harvey be surprised…"

She allows herself a laugh at the sight of Twyla's jaw twitching and pushes her further.

"Not to mention, I could share your little secret with everyone in this cafe."

"Don't make a scene."

"Don't worry. I won't."

"And I should just take you at your word?" Twyla snarks back.

"For now, yes. I've got a job to do. And speaking of my—our—line of work," she leans in conspiratorially, "how'd you get into it? I do it for the money. But you're Twyla Sands. A literal billionaire. So what's your excuse?"

She's not leaning forward to put on a show of interest anymore, she genuinely wants to know—she's not typically acquainted with people whose causes extend beyond their bank accounts or drug habits.

"I prefer to think of them as reasons, not excuses. It's all very intentional. And personal."

There it is again, that zealous devotion to her ideals, and a sharpness, an edge to Twyla that Alexis just doesn't usually encounter in her brushes (legal and otherwise) with the uber-wealthy. As she herself said, an intentionality, a lack of carelessness.

"No wonder she's not my biggest fan. And in that case, what does it hurt if I disappoint her further?"

"You know what else is personal? That datapad you took from me."

And just like that, Twyla's back on her haunches, as if even an allusion to crime makes her physically ill.

"It's not yours to have. And neither is my grappling gun."

"Trade?" Alexis suggests, putting on her winningest auctioneer smile, more than ready to broker a mildly illegal deal. "One-for-one?"

Twyla shuts her down with a snort. "Please. I can have a new grapple by the end of next week. You're not getting that intel back so easily."

"You sure about that?" Alexis shoots back. "Because I'd be more than happy to tell my client a certain bat has it in her possession now."

Blackmail's practically her native tongue, so why is this double cross tying her stomach in knots when Twyla sighs?

"Just give me the address for the drop point, Alexis."

"Give me the data pad and you won't have to run an extra errand," she tries to wheedle, but steely stubbornness flashes behind Twyla's eyes.

"The address. Now."

"Fine," she mutters. "Guess I'm screwed whether I hand it over or you do. Here," she mutters, scribbling the location down on a napkin. "Thanks, by the way. I'm trusting you on this, and I don't usually do trust."

"I'll take care of it," Twyla promises, with begrudging sincerity, but sincerity, nonetheless, and Alexis might actually believe her.

"One thing: no loud entrance. That's not my style. And they're expecting a cat, not a bat."

"Okay," Twyla nods. "What time's the meet-up?"

Alexis smirks. "Ten minutes ago. With your resources, I think you'll get there quickly."

She scowls after checking the address. "You're just a barrel of fun with all the surprises today."

"I know," Alexis responds with a wink. "People once voted me as most likely to break up a celebrity marriage."

Harvey returns just as Twyla scooches her chair back to get up.

"Leaving already?" he asks. "I thought you were gonna stay for dinner with us."

"Something came up. Urgent business meeting," she informs him. "Sorry I gotta run, but we'll catch up about campaign stuff tomorrow, yeah?"

"Sure."

Twyla's nearly made it to the end of the cafe's sidewalk when she turns back.

"Thanks again for the dinner offer, Harvey. And it was nice to meet you, Alexis."

"You, too, Twyla. And by the way, for that meeting: don't forget to wear your special suit. The one we talked about."

She catches a hint of an exasperated laugh in Twyla's wake, and she has to laugh herself when Harvey notes, "She has a lot on her plate right now."

"I bet."

**

She's desensitized to spilled blood, as terrible as that sounds, given all the shootouts that happen in Gotham. Cutting someone off on a highway can be reason enough for a car to end up sporting a bullet hole or four.

It's the gore that gets Twyla, that sinks into her mind, treacly and insidious, and there's so much, too much, to analyze here: the explosion from what looks like the charred remains of a gas tank, the thug's neck hanging open, his throat clawed out by a now-dead cop who must've been thrown into a frenzy by whatever sick chemicals Carmine Falcone, the city's biggest mob boss and crime kingpin, was after, the fractured limbs, the entrails she nearly slips on in the dark, behind the van.

"Something went very, very wrong between when Catwoman was supposed to get here and when I did," Twyla mutters to Jocelyn over their comms unit while she studies the crime scene.

Clang.

She leaves the front of the warehouse, moves further into the back, searching out what caused a barrel to topple over.

It's one of Falcone's men, maybe one who arrived late, cursing under his breath.

In his distracted state, he doesn't notice anything's amiss, doesn't realize he's being stalked in the shadows until Batwoman's got him in a firm grip from behind, one gloved hand slapped over his mouth.

"You pull your gun or radio for backup, and I add your corpse to this graveyard," Twyla whispers. "Now, tell me: why'd Falcone do this?"

He laughs. "The Bat's gonna kill me? Yeah, right. I ain't tellin' you jack."

Her rage at the entire situation—at Catwoman stealing the data drive to begin with, at her missing this meeting, at Falcone's iron-fisted mob rule over Gotham, at this asshole's cavalier attitude toward causing pain and suffering—boils over, and she stomps on his knee at an angle with her boot, reveling in how he screams and crumbles to one leg.

"I've already had a long day," she tells him while she shoves him to the floor and handcuffs him. "You sure you wanna test me?"

"Sure I'm sure. I won't talk," he snarls. "I'm not gonna rat out my crew to you, you crazy bitch…"

"No?" she asks, taking a quick inventory of the warehouse's accessories, working out how to best extract information from her criminal with sickening speed and ease—what would her mom say if she saw her doing this?

She forces that stray thought back as she ties the thug's boots together and works the metal hook between them, then lifts it so he's dangling upside down, a good five feet off the floor.

"Let's see if this'll change your mind."

His face shifts colors like a broken stoplight, going from red to green quickly before settling on a sickly gray.

"It's—it's true what they said about you! You're a friggin' animal!"

The hysterical fear in his voice is an advantage, but it triggers Twyla's primary worry, too.

What if she keeps going too far for the greater good?

"That's a question for later," she tells herself. Jocelyn will make sure of it.

For now, though, she turns her attention back to this suddenly talkative criminal.

"If I am an animal, then I might as well start living up to my reputation."

She's not planning to physically hurt him again, and as much as she hates herself for it, she registers a perverse, thrilling chill at the power of her words, at how he blanches at her threat.

"Or I could wait to do that to someone else," she mentions offhandedly. "If you were to tell me the plan first."

"That…Catwoman, I think's her name," he recalls, his face reddening from the blood rush, sweat dripping off his forehead, "was s'posed to hand over a flash drive with a container number on it. The one with the stuff Falcone wanted. But she was a no show, so we had to find it ourselves."

"And?" Twyla prompts him.

"Someone must've heard us, called the cops. We got orders not to leave any witnesses."

"What's worth risking war with the GCPD?" she wonders.

"Some chemicals. Like I said, Falcone wanted 'em."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Our job was just to steal the container, not ask questions about it."

"Bullshit," Twyla breathes, punching him in the ribs once for good measure before unlocking the handcuffs and bending one arm back at the elbow until the man cries out, "Jesus, fuck, stop it!"

"Talk more and I will."

"Alright, alright," he gasps. "It's an explosive. Some kinda weapon. He's gonna use it soon. That's all I know, I swear."

She relents and lets him go just before Brewer and an officer burst in through the double doors at the back of the warehouse.

"What the—?"

Patrick's one of the few good cops left, but the disgust in his voice dissuades Twyla from staying.

She still hears him when she's slinking into the shadows, an accusatory call: "We've already got enough torture experts running around Gotham, Batwoman."

Jocelyn offers a similar welcome when she arrives back home.

"You may take on the persona of a bat, Twyla, but you're not an animal," she remarks sternly, polishing her glasses as if she needs to study her more closely. "At least, I didn't think you were. And given all the slander and attacks on your family, I expected you to put more care into showing the world the true nature of the Sands name."

She loves Jocelyn more than she can even express—her parents' favorite housekeeper turned proxy mother and confidante when Twyla was only twelve—but at the moment, between the criminal implications about her parents and, by extension, the entire company she's overseeing, she can't bite back her sharp retort: "What, by giving everything I have to this city and being murdered for it?"

"Well, it's what I expect every time you leave this cave to chase after the criminal of the week!"

Her fear echoes around the Batcave's vast emptiness, a ringing reminder of exactly why they refuse to acknowledge Twyla's mortality even when she comes home sporting deep wounds and gashes and bruises that linger under the surface of her skin for weeks.

"I'm sorry," Jocelyn murmurs. "But you haven't exactly been stopping run of the mill store robberies lately, have you?"

"No, Joc," she shakes her head, "don't apologize—you're right. As usual. We've had a hectic couple of weeks. The run-in with Catwoman, Falcone showing up to Harvey's fundraiser, the whole mess tonight…I have to be more careful. Physically and," she sighs, remembers how quickly she'd strung up that goon at the warehouse, "otherwise."

"You're right. As usual," Jocelyn parrots her earlier response. "And I know you didn't beat that man senseless or anything, but still…"

She turns to the now-shed Batwoman costume, stored on a hanger, but never put away, given how often it's needed.

"Batwoman's a light in the darkness for Gotham. Don't snuff it out by sinking to the level of the people you want to defeat."

"I won't. Promise," Twyla tells her, giving a little smile at the ding from the Batcomputer: the encryption on Catwoman's flash drive has finally been cracked. "And at least I won't need to hit the streets as Batwoman to use whatever intel's on here."

The biggest folder, by far, is simply titled "Hill."

"Definitely a good place to start," Jocelyn observes.

"For sure." Twyla double-clicks the icon and allows herself a grim smile of satisfaction as she murmurs, "Let's see what you're hiding, Mister Mayor."

The folder pops open, followed by several documents and photos. "It's a complete manifest of Carmine Falcone's criminal organization—drug running, arms dealing, rigging bids for city work. Hill must've been keeping this for leverage. But now we have it. And we can use it to take Falcone down for good. Him and his entire team."

"As great as that is," Jocelyn notes, studying the scope of the files herself, "how do we start making that process happen? There's a lot going on here."

"We've gotta do this through the right channels, so…the police should be directly involved," Twyla decides. "They get this proof, they can finally get warrants out, run searches on Falcone's properties, and flip some of his associates, to start."

"And there's only one policeman who we know will do the right thing with all this information."

Twyla nods. "Patrick. I'll set up a meeting right now."

She gets his voicemail, as she nearly always does—the man's almost as busy as she is, most days. The GCPD is no place for slackers.

"Hey, Patrick. I have some intel on Falcone that I think you'll appreciate. Sending it over now. Let me know when you're free to discuss it. Thanks."

"He should be getting it momentarily," Jocelyn informs her as she closes out of Twyla's email.

"Great! Thanks so much, Jocelyn. For this and…and everything, really."

"Of course," she answers warmly. "Now, whaddaya say we close up shop for at least a little while tonight? I think at least a small celebration for our progress is in order."

"Sounds good to me," Twyla grins before she remembers what she'd forgotten to do last week. "Actually…"

Jocelyn's face falls a touch—Batwoman's duties make too many interruptions to good tidings, she's always maintained—but Twyla quickly adds, "I just wanted to skim through the dossier you compiled on Catwoman. It'll only be a couple of minutes, I swear."

Jocelyn's dejection fades at that, but she warns Twyla, "If you're not upstairs with me with a drink in hand in ten minutes, I'm remotely shutting down that computer."

"No worries," Twyla laughs. "I'll catch up with you in a sec."

"Good."

The elevator whirrs smoothly as Jocelyn takes it back up to the manor's main floor, and Twyla quickly pulls up their ever-growing Person of Interest folder and reads the summary Jocelyn's pieced together:

Catwoman (real name/identity unknown)—Twyla erases that with a chuckle, types in, "Alexis Rose," and reads on—appears to operate as an independent high-risk, high-reward thief, working for deep-pocketed clients and targeting much more than trinkets and cash. Something of an information peddler, given the nature of her job, though she herself does not often act as an informant. She has no known criminal associates in Gotham, though is reportedly close to district attorney and mayoral candidate Harvey Dent. Family whereabouts are to be determined.

"Interesting," Twyla muses to herself. It tracks with what Alexis had said earlier, that she was in it for the money, and with Twyla's sense of her—she doesn't seem the type to wreak chaos for chaos' sake like so many other criminals she encounters in Gotham. She's tempted to make more additional notes and see what she can find unearth about Alexis' home life before she tells herself, "There'll be more time later," and puts the computer to sleep so she can join Jocelyn upstairs. They so rarely have such good news to appreciate, after all, and more comes in when they've settled on the loveseat in the living room, as Patrick returns her call.

"Lieutenant Brewer. How are you?"

"A lot better than I was five minutes ago, thanks to everything you sent me, Twyla. The email threads, the photos, the maps and purchase agreements," he lists, "it's all enough to put Falcone and his men behind bars for a long, long time. Even if I don't want to know where you got it all."

"Exercising discretion is a good choice."

"Really? Working in this city's police department, I wouldn't have guessed it," Patrick deadpans. "One thing, though: you know I won't be able to turn a blind eye to the investigation into your family or Sands Enterprises, right?" he asks. "I didn't think you'd engineer this as a tit for tat deal, but, uh…you know how people can be around here. Even ones you trust may turn out to…" he trails off and sighs. "Sorry. Nothing against you at all. Just wanted to do due diligence."

"Of course, I totally get it," Twyla reassures him—while she and Patrick are closer to friends than anyone else she's worked with on the force, it's natural for him to at least wonder if a billionaire with potential family ties to organized crime has ulterior motives. "And everything I sent is strictly for bringing down Falcone's team. No strings attached."

"Great, and thanks again. I don't wanna jinx it," she bets Patrick is crossing his fingers as he says it, "but I think we finally have a real shot at bringing Falcone in and, more importantly, keeping him locked up. We'll have to see if Batwoman's available to assist."

"I'm sure she is."

**

Fighting through Falcone's goons in the middle of a cocktail party is more dangerous and takes more out of her physically than she wants to admit—regulating her breathing to avoid giving Jocelyn any extra cause for alarm proves particularly difficult with so many civilians in danger, especially with how many gangsters love to use the spray 'n pray method of shooting—but she captures Falcone at long last, in his safe room, of all places.

Where, naturally, another string that needs chasing springs to life.

"Listen," he grunts while she cuffs him before the police arrive, "the chemicals were mine, like you said, but I didn't cause that whole mess down at the docks. Someone's tryin' to cut me out of a deal."

"Who?" Twyla demands.

"Who do you think? Follow the money, idiot. It's the Sands. Biggest crime family around!"

"No—no, that can't be."

Falcone snorts into the plush carpet, or what's left of it now. "Oh, please. You think they made billions without gettin' their hands dirty? In this city?"

He jerks his head to the right, and she follows the motion to a shattered picture frame, walks toward it, drops to her knees to examine it.

She'd say it's doctored, but they wouldn't have had the tech back then, and anyway, the details are clear as day, there for her to verify for herself, if she wants, when she goes home.

The bar globe, the chess set, the two burgundy sofas set facing across from one another with a low tea table in between: it's the games room in the manor.

And there are her parents with Falcone and, she guesses, a younger Mayor Hill, all four of them laughing at some joke or witty remark she'll never hear.

And worst of all…Jocelyn, in the background, serving drinks.

**

It's rare that she'll put the Batmobile on autopilot—driving home after a successful mission tends to relax her, for what little capacity she has for decompression—but she doesn't trust herself to obey anything close to the speed limit.

A message from Jocelyn pops up on the car's home screen: "Noticed you're not driving. Everything alright?"

She dismisses the notification with a swipe of her finger, a bark of a laugh, and floors it during the last stretch of road leading back to the Batcave's secret entrance.

Jocelyn hurries over to her after she exits the car, concern etched in the lines of her face and in her careful question, in the way she hangs back just a touch to offer space.

"Are you okay, Twyla?"

"You knew."

The accusation comes out so softly, barely more than a whisper that it almost surprises her, and it clearly catches Jocelyn off guard as she frowns in surprise.

Twyla stalks toward Jocelyn, still feeling like a predator, her voice crescendoing as she repeats, louder this time, with more specificity and venom, "You knew my parents were running around with Falcone and Hill and God knows who else?! I saw the picture," she adds, her nostrils flaring, her chest tightening as Jocelyn opens and closes her mouth to no avail, as her face falls to confirm what she'd foolishly hoped, by some absurd trick, might be false. "In Falcone's office. That he and Hill were here, in this house, having a grand old time. And everyone," Twyla laughs, because it's all she can do, "everyone gave me shit for meeting with him when he invited himself to that fundraiser for Harvey. And there was so much snark, so much derision. I figured it was just from bad optics, nothing personal. But," she cocks her head at an angle, notices Jocelyn's eyes flickering from side to side, searching for a way out when there is none, like so many of her enemies, "there was more, wasn't there? A little bit of unsavory family history repeating itself. That's what they were all thinking. Right?"

Jocelyn nods mutely, buries her face in her hands as tears roll down her face, and Twyla can't stop herself from grabbing her by the shoulders and shouting, "Why didn't you ever tell me?!"

"How," Jocelyn answers shakily, not able to meet her eyes, "how would you have wanted me to start that conversation, exactly?"

"I don't know!" Twyla groans, her answer ratcheting up into a scream as she lets Jocelyn go and whirls away from her to kick a nearby desk chair in frustration. She shoves it for good measure to make sure it topples over, not caring as she feels Jocelyn wince behind her. "But I've done all this," she throws a hand out in disgust at their surroundings, the cave, her weapons and tools, all accessories to her obsession, "for them, and they—they—"

Her vision flashes red for a second as she snatches up one of the few framed pictures she has of all three of them, when they were out at an apple orchard in the country, at least an hour away from Gotham. It must've been curated, that picturesque farm, down to the friendly but unobtrusive employees. All bought off with Sands money.

As much as Twyla wants to, she can't hurl it across the room, but she settles for squeezing it, applying more and more pressure until the glass develops one hairline crack, and another, and another, spider-webbing across the surface and—

"Twyla, stop."

Jocelyn reaches for her arm, but she turns away from her until most of the glass gives under her fingers and falls to her desk.

"Shit," she mumbles at the sudden, throbbing pain in her right thumb.

"Let me get a bandage for you, and then we'll…talk?"

"Yeah. Okay," Twyla relents, tacking on a, "Thank you," that's more of an obligation than usual when it comes to Jocelyn.

"Do you mind if we sit? Or go upstairs?" Jocelyn asks quietly when she comes back, and Twyla suddenly registers the sharp curve of her shoulders, the tightness to her hamstrings.

"I've been treating her like prey since I got home," she realizes, and shame slices through her righteous anger.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. The Batcave's not the most comfortable place in the house."

They end up in the kitchen because, as Jocelyn quotes from her mother from time to time, "Nothing's quite so bad if there's a possibility of a snack attached."

They throw a little charcuterie board together with sliced peppers, blue cheese, prosciutto, and a few variations on cheddar.

"So," Twyla remarks, straining to keep her voice even, "I don't know how or where you want to start, but," she sighs, "I'd really like some answers."

"Okay." Jocelyn takes a deep, slightly shaky breath. "It's…God, it would be easier if your parents had just been awful people, but they weren't. It was complicated. Things started off small. And with good intentions. Your dad, Falcone, Hill," she ticks them off on her fingers, "they wanted to improve Gotham through…non-standard channels, let's say. Local government's always been awful here," she adds for context.

"Alright," Twyla answers, frowning at the opaque response. "So what did they do?"

"Well, besides building Arkham and donating to every reputable nonprofit in town, they were very supportive of local unions, promoted Gotham's family businesses, those sorts of things."

"They pretty much bankrolled Gotham's version of the Sopranos, is what you're saying."

"Your father did, yes," Jocelyn clarifies between bites of a Kerrygold cheddar. "Your mother rarely had any immediate involvement in his less legitimate business dealings. More and more of those cropped up as the years went on, until I finally couldn't ignore what he was doing. I was planning to leave, but then—"

She swallows hard, blinks back more tears, and tries again. "When I was going to resign, that weekend was when—the night they were killed. And I couldn't possibly abandon you to whatever random family member might have taken you in, or Gotham's orphanage, if no one did. I always told myself I'd let you know the truth eventually, but I never figured out how."

She finally breaks down fully at the admission, and Twyla's last reserves of fury break at the sight. She slides off her chair, comes around the kitchen island, takes a seat next to Jocelyn, and wraps her arms around her.

"I can't exactly say that I get it," she admits, "but you were put in a pretty impossible situation, having to raise me by yourself when you'd just turned, what, thirty?"

"Yeah," she nods, still sniffling, and Twyla goes on, "We're still family, no matter what—you're the only one who's been there for me practically my entire life."

"So…so you can forgive me?"

"Of course," Twyla affirms. "I'd be crazy not to."

Jocelyn beams at that and promises, "No more secrecy about their pasts. Though if you'd like to get more intel about some of the, ah, activities your father was involved in, Falcone would probably be a better source than me. And for once, we know exactly where he is."

"I'll go see him now, before he finds any of the corrupt cops at the station and finagles his way out of a trial."

Thank God she's clocked this six mile drive more times than she can count, because her mind's a jumbled mass of turmoil, insisting she go back and examine half-remembered snapshots, digging for clues to her parents' corruption.

"Except I'm no Cam fucking Jansen," she recognizes glumly. "And I was just a kid."

The ongoing veneration of her mythic, missing childhood heroes, her stubborn, almost deluded insistence that they couldn't have been responsible for any atrocities, that they must have been ethical billionaires in a city where even freshly fallen winter snow seemed preset to gray—those were all a kid's beliefs, too.

"I probably should've known better," she laments, letting one last flash of anger at being the last to find out burn in her chest once she's pulled into the GCPD parking lot.

Harvey carps about how he had to pull some strings to let her in to see Falcone, but she's too focused on figuring out what more she can learn from him to be concerned, and anyway, between her donations to the force and her nighttime excursions, she does more than enough to help the police already.

"They're keeping him in one of the higher quality holding rooms here. Good security detail. You got ten minutes," Harvey informs her.

"Thanks again. I really appreciate it."

"No problem," Harvey says. "Hope you find what you're looking for."

Falcone wheezes out a laugh when she comes in. "You must have some kinda clout, kid. They won't even let my wife in to see me."

"Owning the Sands family name comes with its perks," Twyla acknowledges. "Something you know a whole lot about."

"So you finally worked it out, huh?" Falcone smirks. "That your old man and I were on real good terms?"

"Until you sent Joe Chill to kill him," Twyla shoots back.

"Look at you, diggin' up ancient history. And since you have opened that little Pandora's box, you should know I wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Sure you wouldn't. 'Cause you're such a good guy."

"I've got plenty of blood on my hands," Falcone admits, "but I always took good care of my people. And your parents and me, along with Hill…we ran this city. Now, tell me, why would I wanna take out the folks who helped me legitimize my businesses?"

Twyla's missing a puzzle piece, and she knows it, so she stays quiet.

"Exactly," Falcone answers her silence. "Did I work with Joe Chill here and there? Sure. Would he kill someone if you asked him to and ya paid up? Yeah. But I didn't order the hit on your parents."

"Then who did?" Twyla asks, struggling to keep her voice down.

"You can't trust anyone in Gotham, 'specially not your friends," Falcone responds, turning introspective. "They learned that the hard—"

The first bullet goes through Falcone's chest, exits through his back, even carries partway through the back of the chair he's sitting on. The second ends up buried in his forehead. 

Chapter Text

"C'mon, Harvey," Alexis wheedles, every syllable dripping with sympathy, encouraging him to confide in her. "You can tell me what's going on. Maintaining confidential information is a key part of my job, and you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you."

Making that false promise here, while she's relaxing in the man's bed, doesn't sit right with her, and she shifts tactics, aims for something closer to the truth: "Besides, most of my connections are strictly business. Who am I gonna share this little secret with?"

He relents after a few moments of silent deliberation, admitting, "Yeah, you're right. And I'm sure you'd find out about this soon enough, anyway—it'll be all over the news."

"Was there a break in that case about Twyla's estate? Any updates on whether the accusations against her parents are true?"

"No." Harvey hesitates and Alexis debates giving him another nudge in the proper direction when he mumbles, "Falcone's dead."

"What?"

"Shot by a police officer," he reports, shifting into D.A. mode. "We strongly suspect the person who did it was drugged. They seemed out of their mind when it happened, and they have an injection mark on their neck from some type of needle."

"Shit!"

"I know, it's horrible."

Of course he assumes she's a normal person, sickened by this unlikely turn of events, by a chemical manipulation warping someone into a murderer.

She is, for the record, but that reaction is secondary to the knowledge that, based on Harvey's descriptions of events, her client won't need her anymore now that they've acquired their drugs, and unneeded cats get tied up in bags and tossed into rushing rivers to drown.

"Yeah. Really awful," Alexis agrees grimly. "Listen, Harv, I've got a client pestering me about a big project, so I've gotta go. Catch up with you later, and if you hear anything more about this mess with Falcone that can be shared with the public…"

He catches her drift. "I'll be sure to keep you in the loop. Still can't believe it happened here, in the police station, of all places. I swear, Alexis, Gotham is better than this."

"I know. And I know you're working hard to make it better," she tells him, trying to buck up his spirit.

"Even if that's a lost cause," she mutters to herself after she hangs up.

Such doomed enterprises are always framed as noble, for reasons Alexis can never quite comprehend. After all, if someone had kept the Titanic afloat for one or two more minutes before it fully sank, would it have really made a difference in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. So why not use that time and energy spent fighting for failure on something that could actually change?

That pessimistic, cynical perspective explains why she's sending feeler texts to former clients and reaching out to potential new ones—friends of friends, deep-pocketed former paramours, tech geniuses she hasn't yet connected with—within five minutes of getting off the phone with Harvey. If she can spot a storm coming, she'll do anything within her power to get out of its way and leave facing it head-on to the naive. The idyllic. The foolhardy.

Unfortunately, with her main job in Gotham on pause and her mysterious client on the lookout for her, Alexis can't go around relieving many of the city's upper class citizens of their ill-gotten old money. Instead, she holes up in her apartment for the next few days when she's not with Harvey, researching the latest innovations on commercial and residential security, plotting where she may want to hit next for a potential black market trade. Not getting paid for research time sucks, but her clients always make a big stink about that part of her fees, anyway—as if she could just waltz into a jewelry store or a museum and steal Swarovski crystals or 19th century Venezuelan artifacts without even an ounce of prep work.

Her phone buzzes with a text about a week into her self-imposed, quasi-isolation.

"Should've figured you'd be the one to draw me out," she murmurs under her breath once she reads it.

This is Twyla. We need to meet. It's urgent.

Always the heightened sense of drama. It's not a shock, not after what Alexis had heard from some of her associates who'd passed through Gotham and had run-ins with Batwoman, but really…she could use a tropical vacation, a few mai-tais, and some time to work on her tan. All black austerity isn't good for anyone.

Alright, she texts back. Come by The Stacked Deck around 6. No capes, no masks.

Twyla's getup is casual—dark green sweatshirt, blue jeans, sneakers—but she's way too aware of where she is, from Alexis' vantage point in one of the corner booths. Strolling into a dive bar before, say, 9:00 P.M. requires a semi-defeatist, semi-cavalier "I don't give a shit" attitude, and if there's one quality Twyla lacks, it's apathy.

Kate, one of the regular bartenders, picks up on it as she approaches, and Alexis hears her half-joke, "You want somethin' to drink, or directions to a better watering hole?"

"I'm looking for Alexis Rose. Heard she hangs out here a fair bit."

"A lotta guys ask me the same thing, but I gotta say…" Kate bares her teeth for a second in a grin. "You don't really strike me as her type. So what's your angle?"

"Who says I have one? And I think I can run with her just fine, but if you want proof…"

Twyla pulls two crisp fifty dollar bills out of her wallet and slides them across the bar, and her sheer, unexpected audacity has Alexis up and on the move.

"She's cool, Kate," she says after she's sashayed over. "Awfully nice, too, buying drinks for the house. Now," she takes her usual Moscow Mule in a glass, quietly longing for the days when she had steadier access to Belvedere while she leads Twyla back to her booth, "what exactly was so important to discuss? Because if I remember right, you were going to take care of a little problem."

Twyla lets out a frustrated sigh. "Yeah, well, that was before your client and his people decided to cause a scene down at the docks."

"Heard about that. And the whole mess with Falcone. I've had rats on my tail ever since, and I've gotta say," she wrinkles her nose, "I don't love that for me."

"More will probably be on the way," Twyla answers heavily, following her proclamation with a healthy slug of Blue Moon. "Oswald Cobblepot won't take kindly to any delays of his incoming social revolution."

"Cobblepot?" Alexis asks. "That name sounds like something outta Cinderella. I've never heard of him."

"Okay, then. Have you heard of Penguin?"

She sputters and chokes on her drink. "That guy's involved? You've gotta be kidding me. I didn't think I'd run into him here."

"He can't beat both of us," Twyla answers, with what sounds an awful lot like false confidence. "And I'm not going anywhere. So," she glances past Alexis, out the window, then fixes her gaze back on her, "I take it you know him?"

"Anecdotally—a friend of an enemy, that kinda deal. He was involved in a lot of organized crime in England, from what I remember." A hint of a frown twitches across her face. "My days there were more hectic than I usually like."

"Then Gotham can't be your favorite place," Twyla deadpans.

"Between my job going sideways and Penguin showing up, to say nothing of almost plummeting to my untimely death a few weeks ago, you're right. Which is why I'm bailing."

Twyla's eyes widen at her sudden announcement. "You're leaving? Right before Penguin's going to unleash some crazy chemical weapon on Gotham?"

"That's the plan," Alexis confirms breezily, though the edge to Twyla's voice makes dismissing a do-gooder harder than usual. It's easier to bounce when people are ready for her to disappoint them. "Getting caught in biological warfare isn't all that high on my to-do list."

Twyla fixes her with a steely glare. "Whatever Penguin's going to do—innocent people will get hurt because of it. You'd be fine with letting that happen?"

"You might want to be Gotham's savior, sweetheart, but you don't get far in my line of business by looking out for other people first."

"Wow. I've met a lot of thieves in my time, but you're the least decent of them all."

The words sting less than the outright disgust, the near revulsion, that's marring her usually attractive features, and Alexis wracks her brain for something, anything, to counter that biting analysis—it's not really off-base at all—when the Stacked Deck's front door creaks open.

It's rare for people to come in more than one at a time here, so five guys arriving at once makes her ears perk up.

None of them being at all subtle about wielding crowbars is a pretty big tip-off that they're trouble, too.

Still, best to play as though nothing's amiss for as long as she can.

Alexis beams at her audience and spreads her arms wide. "Gentlemen. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The one getting off the phone glares at her. "Penguin sends his regards."

"He didn't need to go to all this trouble for me."

"'S gonna be no trouble at all, taking care of you," one of them sneers before pointing at Twyla and hooking a thumb towards the door. "Beat it. We're only here for Miz Rose."

"Alright. I'll be on my way, then."

Twyla finishes the last of her beer, scoots out of the booth, and Alexis barely manages to bite her tongue, to avoid betraying her disbelief, to ask Twyla what the fuck she's thinking.

"Am I so bad that Batwoman's willing to let me get…?"

She cuts herself off from finishing that question—she's made it out of scrapes like this before with nothing more than bruises and scrapes to show from it. She can do it again.

Even if she doesn't have any help or any of her favorite tools at her disposal.

"One question, before I go: can I grab you all something to drink?" Twyla asks the group at large, and Alexis can't keep from gawping. Not helping her is one thing—but now she's offering to fetch stolen booze for these scumbags?

"No. That won't be necessary," one of them assures her as he takes her seat.

"Oh, but I insist."

She breaks her beer bottle over the goon's head, then slams him against the booth's wooden paneling, probably concussing him, and all hell breaks loose.

The guy closest to Alexis makes a clumsy grab at her, ducking his head while trying to bear-hug her.

She plants her hands firmly on the table like it's a balance beam, swings her hips and legs out from under it, to the right, and manages a solid kick to his jaw—she smiles grimly at the resounding crack and his scream of agony as he topples to the floor.

They're not out of the woods yet, although escaping the booth's close quarters is quite a help.

She notices Twyla's eyes flickering frantically between the three remaining enemies, almost like she's panicking, not identifying her next move, and Alexis remembers, "No gadgets. No cowl. She might be a bit out of her element."

She takes stock of their surroundings, too, appraising the dingy, grungy bar for potential makeshift weapons, and finds one on the left.

"Twy."

Her name, or half of it, really, comes out as a bit of a bark, but she saves a syllable, and the sound clears her mind a bit, based on how she blinks and narrows her eyes.

Alexis tips her head to her left, hoping Twyla picks up on her wordless cue while their attackers stalk toward them, taking a much more careful approach than their predecessors.

"Gotcha," Twyla murmurs. One of the goons flips a switchblade open, snarls, and charges, and Alexis yells, "Now!"

Twyla shoves one of the high-back chairs from the closest table toward her, and she grabs at it with her left hand to fluidly swing it at her adversary, bashing him in the face and left shoulder to knock him off balance.

The surprise attack works, but the jolting force of the impact makes Alexis lose her grip on the chair as someone else with a crowbar runs at her from the side.

"Dammit."

She backs up, preparing to evade, when Twyla calls, "Lex! Catch!"

Twyla dodges her own attacker, shoves him into the bar's tattered, scratched up pool table, and chucks a pool cue in Alexis' direction. She catches it cleanly, lets it take the brunt of the crowbar's blow instead of her forearms.

The cue is cleaved in half, but it's not a clean break, thankfully—all the splinters sticking out from one end are a delightfully painful addition, based on how this particular thug howls when Alexis stabs him in the crook of his arm.

"I think they're done," she pants when sirens and blue and red lights playing on the bar's walls announce the GCPD's presence.

"C'mon," she grabs for Twyla's hand, "we gotta hurry. There's a back way out."

"Just a sec."

She pats down one guy's pockets, then another's.

"I think he'd made the call—yep, there we go!" she confirms, snatching his phone and finally following Alexis.

She crouches and sneaks behind an abandoned car to take cover, tugging Twyla again so she'll move faster, and not a moment too soon, as an officer calls out to his partner to check the alley.

"No one here," he reports back after a second, turning to walk back to his partner, and she feels Twyla exhale next to her. Going under the car would've been Alexis' next suggestion to avoid detection, but she's glad they didn't have to resort to it.

"Are we alone?" Alexis asks softly.

Twyla sneaks one more peek out around the edge of the beat-up Corolla. "Yep. We're alone."

Alexis lets herself breathe a touch easier, too. "Good. And thanks for the help, by the way. When you got up after those guys came in, I thought you were gonna…"

"Leave?" Twyla counters, and Alexis winces at the call-back to their conversation before the bar fight. It's kind of funny that, compared to a bat, she'd rather be the first to fly. But, then again, her familial abandonment issues run deep, despite her insistence otherwise; the biggest reminder, besides her parents' and brother's whole presence-in-absence thing, is how far she has to scroll down in her phone to get to their last text message.

She's definitely not sharing any of that with Twyla, though, so she just says, "Yeah. You could have."

"No." Twyla shakes her head. "We might not see eye to eye, but you're not like Penguin. And I wouldn't have left you to suffer whatever his goons had in mind. Although," her gaze turns more calculated, "since I did get you out of a jam, can I ask for a favor in return?"

"Ooh, look at you, leveraging your kindness," Alexis murmurs. "Color me impressed, Twy—I didn't think you could resort to emotional blackmail." Twyla blushes, and being flustered for a second looks good on her. Too good. "And that depends. What do you have in mind?"

Twyla falters for a second, clearly considering her options, then settles on, "Will you stick around long enough to at least try to help me stop Penguin?"

"I'll say probably," Alexis answers, "but only because he's trying to kill me. And if that's all, then," she grimaces at the grime and garbage surrounding them, "I'd like to head home. I'll take the rooftops, you call your car."

Twyla won't let her question go that easily. "Avoiding death is a pretty good reason to say yes, isn't it?"

"It is," Alexis allows, turning back toward Twyla with a smile tugging at her lips, "but you know I'm a wild card. So trusting me can be a mistake."

There's that blush again, and it only encourages Alexis even more while she studies the side of the apartment building across from the bar and maps out her escape route. She slaps her cat's paw on, makes sure there are no fire escapes in her path—she's only ever hit one, but that was enough for the lesson to stick—and says, "See you around—maybe," just before she's whisked up, up, up and away from Twyla.

She should be looking up, too, but she can't force herself to do it quite as quickly as usual.

**

Having a job to do restores Twyla's sense of normalcy, at least for a moment, as she pops her bluetooth earbuds back in.

"Hey, Jocelyn," she finally greets her favorite person now that the cops have officially headed elsewhere, "I'm uploading the contents of a smartphone to the Batcomputer. Can you check if there's anything useful there?"

"Sure, it'll just be a minute while it processes. By the way, is everything alright? Noticed a lot of police activity by your location."

"Yep, just a false alarm," she lies. At least she doesn't have any bruises or wounds to hide, for once. "I'm leaving now, I'll be back shortly."

"You may want to visit City Hall, instead. There are a bunch of messages from Mayor Hill on here," Jocelyn informs her. "Forwarding you the latest voicemail now."

Twyla taps on it to read the transcript.

"I gave you everything I have on the Sands family, especially the parents. That's my part of the bargain done, so you need to get your end in order ASAP."

"Of course he's in cahoots with the Penguin. I should've known." She jabs the unlock button and slides into the driver's seat.

She remembers just how quickly she'd judged Alexis for wanting to disappear, but on the other hand…

"How bad is Gotham, really, when a thief who's only been around a few weeks is ready to turn tail and run?"

Her reaction might've been spiked with jealousy, too. Because getting a fresh start elsewhere, in a city where corruption isn't embedded in every retaining wall, has never been on the table. She owes too many people, to say nothing of her family, and she wouldn't be able to enjoy life elsewhere if she abdicated her responsibility on that particular debt.

"Maybe a little vacation somewhere would be nice, though," she reflects, letting herself take a turn towards hope for once, even if it's laughably fruitless to do so while she crosses the threshold of City Hall. Everything runs on greased palms—a bright smile and a vague promise of an internship at Sands Enterprises to a couple of secretaries and she's gotten a meeting with Mayor Hill arranged in about five minutes.

He musters up a smile faker than his admin's anti-nepotism policies. "I must say, Miss Sands, I'm surprised to see you here, considering you're backing my opponent in the upcoming election. Be that as it may," he claps his hands together, swinging them back and forth, "what can I do for you?"

She shoots a sickly-sweet grin of her own right back and pulls her phone out of her jeans pocket. "For starters, Mayor Hill, you could explain why you've been chatting with the Penguin lately."

She clicks play on the voicemail and he visibly deflates for a second, retreating behind his desk to settle into his oversized chair. The move restores his confidence, and he laughs. "It sounds like me, sure, but good luck proving it in a courtroom. That's why I pick my own judges."

"Still," she won't be deterred, "why talk with Penguin? And why drag me into this?"

He has the audacity to look amused. "Blame your father."

Twyla feigns nonchalance even though she'll never really get used to waving away her family's past. "I heard. I know. You and him and Falcone were all buddy-buddy back in the day."

"Oh, that wasn't it. No, it was more personal for Penguin." Hill pauses what sounds like a grandiose speech, looks torn between sick, prideful glee at lording this information over Twyla and pity that another shoe is about to drop, and she forces herself to take a deep breath and ask, "What was it, then? What information did he want?"

"He contends that Arkham Asylum isn't broken. That it's working exactly as Thomas intended. As a place to ruin people through psychological torture. People like Esther Cobblepot." Hill's sympathy runs out, and his smile turns twisted. "Did you ever wonder how your family was able to buy their estate—much of which became the land for Sands Tower—for a song?"

"Because Tucker made some bad investments and Esther was too unwell to oversee their funds," Twyla responds. "It was a sad affair, from what I remember of it."

"Yes—but not for the reasons you have in mind," Hill corrects her. "Who do you think advised Tucker on what stocks to buy and sell? Who had Esther committed to their shiny, new, state-of-the-art mental hospital?"

He leans in as another disturbing puzzle piece falls into place. "Billionaires don't exist to help anyone but themselves. God knows your father didn't."

"No!" Twyla shoulders Hill away from her. "He wouldn't do that!"

"I know you're trying to prove there's a new path forward for your family. It's commendable, really, but…" there's that smile again. "It won't change anything. Not in the long run. And I'd say I'm more qualified than you to speak on what Thomas would or wouldn't do."

"You're lying!" Twyla insists, more to attack her own doubts than to trash Hill, and Jocelyn's whisper of, "Not now," in her earpiece helps her recenter on what she needs to do.

"So you gave Penguin what he wanted—all that dirt on my parents—and…?"

Hill stares blankly at her. "And what?"

"Is there a security detail on him? Did you confiscate his weapons? Is he under house arrest?" Twyla asks, her desperation growing as the mayor refuses to answer yes to any of her questions. "How are you making sure he holds up his end of your deal?"

"He'll be a dead man if he shows his face at the debate. My team's got it covered," Hill brags. "Now, would you mind being on your way? I'd rather not have to call security and make a fuss."

Twyla grits her teeth. "Fine. I still think you should stay away from the debate."

"And miss an opportunity to publicly humiliate Harvey Dent on my way to another victory? Not a chance," he scoffs.

"There's that strong dedication to public service that Gotham needs."

She somehow feels even slimier walking out of his office than she did when she arrived, and coming home doesn't provide much relief, either. Even the Batcave, which had once been something of a sanctuary, a place where good and bad stood in stark black and white contrast, has turned less comforting and more claustrophobic. The shift doesn't escape Jocelyn's keen eye, but then, not much does.

"I'm sorry Hill insisted on sharing the news about your father in the most unpleasant way possible," she remarks, her voice barely audible over the hum of the Batcomputer.

"It's been difficult," Twyla acknowledges for a second, "but I'll deal with it later, when we're not…"

She shrugs, almost hopelessly, at their current predicament, and Jocelyn nods, but also says, "Make sure you take time to cope, or grieve. Whatever you need, Twyla. You have to take care of yourself sometimes. The city can't always come first."

"Just most of the time," she half-jokes, though the reality settles in her stomach like a Five Guys milkshake while she takes her customary seat at the console. "Mind bringing me up to speed on what we have here, Jocelyn?"

"Four camera feeds from the debate at the old Monarch Theater," she answers promptly. "Though there hasn't been much activity on this screen lately…oh, never mind, there was a police officer walking through."

Twyla rotates her attention between each screen, occasionally checking her phone for texts from Lieutenant Brewer, when Jocelyn gasps behind her.

"What?"

"It's—wait for it," she points at the one screen. "There."

The same officer walks through the same exact corner of the frame again.

"It's on a loop. So—"

"Penguin's men may have hacked the cameras," Twyla finishes the sentence for her as she springs up, knocking her chair backwards in her haste. "Warn Patrick that there might be some unwelcome guests. I have to get down there."

She changes at top speed, not even caring that her clothes are discarded in a messy trail on the way to her suit, not when every second is precious.

"Don't forget to call, Harvey, too!" Jocelyn shouts after her while she's dashing to the Batmobile.

"Thanks!"

That particular check-in doesn't go how she plans at all, with Harvey dismissing her concerns about security, much like Hill, and giving her some political BS about how his advisors are recommending he "distance himself from her due to her family's scandal."

Only Twyla Sands the person, though. Not her money.

"So I'm not supposed to associate with you, but I'm still the cash cow for your campaign."

"That's less delicate than I would've put it, but when you get down to brass tacks, yeah," Harvey concedes. "So…can I count on you, Twyla?"

"More like can I count on your money," her less forgiving side whispers.

"Remember, it's for Gotham," Harvey notes when she doesn't answer right away.

"Screw it. Better the devil you know, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure, Harvey. You know I've got your back."

"Thank you so much," he sighs, almost laughing in relief. "God, I—I owe you one. This'll do wonders for me—for the city, I mean. Seriously, I don't know how to repay you."

"Just be a good public servant. That's really all I'm asking," she replies firmly.

"Of course, you know I—oh, sorry, gotta run. The makeup people are here to put my face on. Thanks again, my friend."

There's a click, followed by the disconnect tone, and it takes Twyla a second to relax her grip on the steering wheel.

Scaling the old retail building across the street from the theater helps get her adrenaline in check, and seeing the ever-reliable Patrick waiting for her on the rooftop calms her nerves a bit, too.

"Got off the phone with your assistant a few minutes ago," he says, stubbing his cigarette out with the toe of his shoe. "Look, I get that you're worried, but we have security at every door and any checkpoint you could think of. I just don't see any way Penguin could infiltrate the theater without getting caught."

"You have someone watching the basement?" Twyla presses him.

Patrick nods. "'Preciate the assistance, Batwoman, although this isn't the first event I've overseen—"

"Sorry, I know, it's your jurisdiction," she cuts him off, "but—could you call someone on your ground team and check in? I'm sure everything's fine. It's just—"

"I understand. You wanna cover all the bases." Patrick lifts his portable radio to his mouth. "Alpha team, status report."

Silence.

"Alpha team, please confirm your position."

Nothing.

"Alpha team," Patrick tries again, concen edging its way into his voice. "Do you read? Over."

More static on the line.

"Fuck," he breathes, pacing back and forth now. "How'd you know something was gonna—"

"Lucky guess," Twyla lies; she and the Lieutenant are close, but there's no way she's about to divulge the extent to which she's turned Gotham into her own personal surveillance state. "I can go in now, see what's going on."

"Be discreet," Patrick warns her. "No busting in windows or anything. We can't have this turn into a high-profile event for the wrong reasons. The debate will already be contentious enough, I'm sure." He gives her a bit of a once-over, squinting, trying to read the expression under her cowl. "You sure you're up for this on your own? We don't have much intel on what might be waiting for you."

"I can give her a hand."

Catwoman vaults over the chimney near the side of the building and executes a neat somersault to land.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Patrick demands, reaching for his pistol. "You were part of that robbery at the mayor's office—"

"That's ancient history," Alexis pipes up.

"It was less than a month ago," Patrick scoffs, but Alexis interrupts him before he can get going. "As for why I'm here, well, you really aren't in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth, are you, Lieutenant?"

"She's right," Twyla notes after a tense, silent handful of seconds before addressing Alexis directly. "If you were going to cause havoc for us, either we'd be fighting right now, or you wouldn't have announced your presence."

Another one of those two-eyed winks. "Hunny p, Batsy."

His eyes ping-pong back and forth between each of them with suspicion until he gives up with a sigh. "This better not come back to bite me," he mutters under his breath before trying one more radio call. "Alpha team, come in."

He lets go of the button after a few seconds tick by without a response. "Enough waiting. You two should go."

"Now aren't you glad I'm here?" Alexis snarks at him before she aims the stolen grappling gun at the theater and shoots.

"Make sure she stays quiet," Patrick tells Twyla. She nods just before tapping out a coded command for one of her drones, sending it ahead for some clandestine recon.

Patrick shakes his head in disbelief at their tech and mumbles, "The GCPD is seriously underfunded."

Twyla lets out a hollow chuckle at his observation. "Sounds like a vote for Dent, Lieutenant."

She takes flight from there, following Alexis' lead. Thankfully, she's waiting outside the door on the roof. Without her trademark bravado, to boot.

"Um, about that whole mess at the bar," she says, shifting on the balls of her feet. "It's kinda why I'm here. You had my back. Figured I'd repay you."

"Well, look at you, doing the right thing for once," Twyla replies approvingly, but Alexis bristles at that response.

"Nope. Debt is just its own kind of cage, and I'd rather not owe you anything. Now," she pulls open the door, "shall we?"

Twyla sends in the drone first to gather some intel on the scene.

"Place is crawling with guards in the back rooms and hallways," she notes. "And they've taken hostages. But," she pauses the video feed and zooms in on one of the highlighted entrances, "this area hasn't received much surveillance. Only two guys to deal with."

"Then what are we waiting for?"

It's easy enough to sneak in unnoticed, to drop from the building's rafters, tackle the inattentive guards, and knock them out before they can call for backup.

They've just snuck behind a pallet of folding tables, plotting out their next move, when the moderator's introduction of each candidate suddenly gets interrupted, and another voice is being broadcast over every speaker system in the theater.

"Sorry to intrude, ladies and gents, but there's been some changes to tonight's program."

Twyla's blood freezes, and Alexis whispers, "It's Penguin," next to her.

"So much for Hill saying he'd stay away," Twyla answers as Penguin declares, "First order of business—firing the moderator!"

Bang.

Alexis shivers. "I've run with some bad people before, but this guy's unhinged."

"It's ok." Twyla almost reaches for her arm to comfort her. "We'll stop him." She hopes her confidence is infectious, or at least comes through as genuine, but it definitely wavers when Vicki Vale, one of the top reporters at the Gotham Gazette, gets pulled from the back room closest to them to apparently oversee the debate.

"Now, Miss Vale, unless you'd like to face the same fate as your predecessor, start asking some questions!" Penguin prompts her. "You're a reporter, after all—this should be a walk in the park for you."

She starts stammering something about Arkham Asylum, but the words fade out while Twyla contemplates the scene in front of her.

"I'll go up top," Alexis whispers, nodding to the far side of the room, closest to the stage. "There's an exposed vent. I can drop through it and take that guy out."

"Good plan. Wait for me to go after the one near all the video equipment. If we hit our marks at the same time, the third guy won't have enough time to react."

Alexis nods and slinks into the shadows, blending into the darkness as she climbs a catwalk ladder to get back up to higher ground.

Twyla flicks her night-vision on to follow her, but even with it, she's hard to track, at total ease in the pitch black.

"I adopted the dark as a friend, but she made her home in it," she recognizes, and her mind flicks back to Catwoman's file. "What was home for you before this, Alexis?"

The question lingers longer than Twyla expects, but then she's on the move, dashing toward her prey, and adrenaline overrides everything else.

She grabs the heavy tripod camera by its legs without breaking stride and gives it a ferocious swing as the guard turns toward the noise. The camcorder connects with the side of his neck, knocking him to the ground, and as she punches him out, she hears the other guard hit concrete, too, courtesy of Alexis' surprise attack from above.

The third one risks a charge at Twyla, raising his shotgun, but she knocks him backward with a well-thrown Batarang, and Alexis ropes him in with her whip so she can sweep his legs out from under him with a spinning kick.

"This way," Twyla urges the campaign workers, leading them toward the exit and radioing Patrick on the way. "Lieutenant? I'm leading some hostages out, on the east side of the building."

"Getting a team to meet them now. Thanks, Batwoman."

She makes sure they're safe and secure before hurrying back to find Alexis transfixed by whoever's on the screen.

"Great, another anonymous crusader," Twyla observes while the unknown person, decked out in a mask with glass eyeholes and a slit for a mouth, plus a steampunk coat, intones, "We are the Children of Arkham, here to end the masquerade and expose the corruption and rot that's taken root in our home."

"Reminds me a little bit of someone I know," Alexis quips while the person continues their speech.

"These spineless, self-serving leaders have never had your best interests at heart—and now, you'll know their truth."

The video ends, cuts abruptly back to the live view of the debate.

"Go on, love," Penguin urges Vicki, forcing something into her hand while pressing his gun to the back of her head.

"My methods aren't this cruel," Twyla shoots back, and Alexis offers a chastened nod while they both watch, horrified, at what Vicki's being forced to do.

"Apply it right in the back of the shoulder," Penguin encourages her. "A good sharp jab."

"What is it?" Twyla wonders, recoiling a little as Mayor Hill, then Harvey, receive identical stabs.

"Dunno, but I doubt it's an early administration of this year's flu shot."

Twyla remembers, with a jolt that mirrors Harvey's reaction, the injection site on Officer Montoya's neck, and how she'd confessed, "I don't know what happened to make me shoot Falcone—it was like…like I lost all control. Like my worst impulses got pulled to the surface and I wasn't worried about the consequences of my actions at all."

"Let's open the debate with a popular topic—poverty," Penguin chooses, clearly relishing in the spotlight. "Mayor Hill, as our incumbent, what would you do for Gotham's poorest citizens?"

"Not a damn thing!" he shouts, spittle flying from his mouth. "They're a blight, a scourge on our great city!"

"We've gotta get this mess under control," Twyla comments, darting out to the backstage area, surveying the environment for a way to get the drop on Penguin.

After a brief round of searching, she finds one.

"The stage lights," she whispers to Alexis, pointing up. "Here, hold onto me."

Alexis latches on at her side, gripping tightly with sharp nails as she fires her grappling gun. They manage to stick their landing, but the lights wobble a bit. Fortunately, Penguin dismisses it amidst his fun of torturing the mayoral candidates, even as Harvey tries to fight whatever drug he's been given.

"I believe in Gotham's goodness," he concludes his speech, his voice shaking. "In the goodness of our everyday citizens, of the people who built this city. And while we're by no means perfect, we're better than you'd have us believe."

"You really think that, don't you?" Penguin asks, not unkindly, before laughing, mocking him, and pointing at the overhead screen. "Roll the tape! We'll see if this little bit of Gotham's wonderful history changes your mind."

A small, dim room. A doctor with a clipboard. A woman strapped down to a bed.

"Subject nine. Esther Cobblepot. You've been declared criminally insane, and, as such are to be committed to Arkham Asylum indefinitely, as a ward of the state."

Another man walks in.

"Dad?" Twyla breathes.

"Please," Esther begs, "I'll give you the land outright—you don't have to do this—"

"No. But I can. Since you didn't agree to the deal we offered initially," Thomas intones, his tone business-like, cruel, so dead it makes Twyla's blood run cold.

"That's your dad?" Alexis whispers next to her. "Wasn't Arkham meant to be a haven for mentally ill people and, yanno, not like it is now?"

"Yeah," Twyla manages despite her disbelief, "that's—that's what I thought."

Try as she might, she can't tear her eyes away from the screen.

"Th–Thomas," Esther tries again in the grainy video, "we're friends—our kids have grown up playing together. You're practically family—"

"Enough," he dismisses her, the word acting as a slap. "You won't change my mind." He turns to the doctor. "Give her a full dose."

The doctor injects something into her upper arm, sends her into convulsions, and Twyla has to grip the support beam right in front of her to keep her balance through a horrifying wave of nausea. She dimly registers Alexis' light, hesitant touch on her forearm, a quiet, "Sorry," from her, and all she can do is nod.

The video fades to gray static, and the masked villain—Penguin's boss, or maybe his associate—is back on the screen.

"Now you know how the elites of Gotham behave. Now you'll see how we respond."

One of the remaining GCPD teams kicks in the main door in the back of the theater, but half of them are immediately shot by Penguin's men, lying in wait in the wings. Before they can unload on any of the civilians who'd come to watch the debate, Twyla drops one of her smoke bombs into the fray, then drops down from the overhead light fixture onto the stage.

"Batwoman!" Penguin crows in delight, offering her a round of applause. "You certainly know how to make an entrance. Hopefully not too late for Miss Vale, here."

He wiggles his gun at her face, but before Twyla can do anything, Vicki elbows Penguin in the ribs, then stumbles in Twyla's direction. She reaches around the news reporter, shielding her with her cape and shouting, "Go! Head for the side exit."

"Thank you!" Vicki yells back as she leaps off the stage and runs.

Twyla stalks toward Penguin, gets an unexpected smile just before he nods toward someone over her left shoulder. "Beat her up for me, would you?"

Her cape only partially deflects the blow of the debate table heaved at her back, and she's knocked to her knees from it while Penguin turns his attention toward Mayor Hill, slowly walking toward him with his pistol aimed dead at his chest.

"No—don't kill me—I tried to stop Thomas!" he cries. "I ordered the hit on him—he'd gone too far."

The revelation stuns Twyla long enough to keep her from doing more than parrying her attacker's blows.

"Too bad your efforts won't bring back my dearly departed mother," Penguin sighs, making a show of cocking his gun and clucking his tongue. "Such a shame, how weak you supposedly powerful figures are when threatened. A sign you know you've offered nothing to society."

Twyla redoubles her efforts to get to Penguin, but another one of his men has joined the fracas. She risks a glance toward Catwoman, hoping for help, but she's occupied, too, between dodging punches and knives.

"No! I won't let you kill anyone else!"

Harvey's yell gets everyone to turn and watch as he bum-rushes Penguin, but he neatly dodges the larger man, trips him, and snarls, "Wait your turn, Dent! Now," he offers Hill a nasty grin, "where were we?"

"Please—"

One shot to the chest and two to the head silence Gotham's corrupt mayor permanently.

Time's torn in half from there, speeding up and slowing down simultaneously. Twyla's attention gets split down the middle, too, as Penguin's hoisted up an oversized, hyper-bright stage light, getting ready to attack Harvey, and Alexis is about to be under siege on stage left.

It shouldn't be a hard choice. Harvey's the D.A. who cut Gotham's crime rate in half. Alexis is a thief, one who's all but admitted she can't be trusted, one who was fully prepared to abandon Gotham at the first (okay, more like the fourth or fifth) sign of trouble.

Yet there's some minute pull toward the woman, one that keeps Twyla from immediately running toward Harvey, and she wishes she could be in two places at once before she makes her decision.

It's for Gotham. Always for Gotham.

She risks one more glance at Alexis, whispers, "I'm sorry," and sprints toward Penguin, taking him down in a flying tackle before he can smash the massive light on Harvey's face.

Penguin backpedals away from her, crab-like, before getting to his feet and running.

"You okay?" Twyla asks Harvey while she helps him up.

The sound of another gunshot interrupts, though, and she barely registers Harvey's stunned, "I—yeah—thanks" because she's already running back toward Alexis. She hurls a Batarang at one shooter, hitting him in the middle of his back, making him drop his weapon, before the few remaining police officers finally storm in and start shooting.

Alexis slips out the nearest exit, trying to staunch the wound blooming near her shoulder as she leaves, and Twyla catches a grimace of resignation before she's gone.

"Hold your fire, dammit!" Patrick shouts as he rushes in, gesturing downward with his hands. "We need to find that masked freak."

His wording triggers an unsettling question in Twyla's mind: "Which one are you talking about?"

Chapter Text

Alexis rarely regrets her zest for an independent life, but the sharpest pangs for companionship come through whenever she's dressing her own wounds. Upper body ones, especially, with how much movement is required to pick buckshot out of her shoulder and clean, sanitize, and stitch before a potential infection can set in.

She has trusted doctors on call in some of her favorite cities—New York, Toronto, Chicago, Gothenburg, and Glasgow, among others—but none even remotely close to Gotham. Just her beloved black calico cat, Felix, aka the only constant in a world of unknown phone numbers and unending variables.

Right now, she's juggling three of those—Batwoman, Harvey, and her pesky, still pending job—and really, that number could be four.

It had been annoying enough to deal with Batwoman when she'd just been an abstractly known, run of the mill hero with an unnatural dedication to justice and rampant, unaddressed mommy and daddy issues. But seeing more and more of the woman beneath the mask has proven intriguing, to say the least. Because some of Twyla's fighting moves, like smashing a man's head into a wooden booth, suggest she's familiar with inflicting brutality on her foes, with causing pain for reasons more complex, more problematic, than simple desperation or self-defense.

"Still, she's beating up the bad guys. I'm doing business with them."

Speaking of…

She flips open her ringing burner phone with an impatient sigh after checking the caller ID. "What?"

"Learn some manners, cat, or you'll end up like Mayor Hill—or would it be ex-Mayor Hill now?"

"Y'know, I'm a lot more pleasant for clients who stick to the terms of my original contract or pay up for extra work," she answers, dipping into her ever-present reserves of snark.

"We can talk terms when you bring me that final container of absorbing agent to mix with the Arkham drug."

"And that'll be the last we see of each other," she coolly dismisses Gotham's latest menace with a click.

If only getting Lady Arkham off her back could be that quick and easy. Her years of doing business with criminals has hardened her, but she's pretty sure she'll need to make an especially creative exit soon—a fact that's further complicated by Gotham's newly elected mayor wanting to date her, and its preeminent superhero wanting to eventually lock her up in a jail cell.

"You could've gone to see Harvey at the hospital," her conscience needles her, while another part of her says, "That's something a good girlfriend would do. You're not trying to play that part anymore."

It's probably (alright, definitely) not healthy that she can't recall the last time she had more than a one-night stand with someone out of genuine attraction, that her previous six partners were either quarries or conduits for contacts or her next contract.

"Then again, I've built up this life," she thinks. Full of wild adventure and spontaneity and more cash than she ever could've earned through legal means.

"But also…look where it's led you. To Gotham, of all the godforsaken places in the northeast, cutting deals that'll help a budding psychopath drug a massive portion of the population."

"So what? You won't be around to deal with the fallout."

Her instincts for self-preservation typically win out, but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Twyla's whispers, "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Alexis frowns and tries to will it into silence, into submission, with her own warped brand of positive thinking.

"One more meeting, one more item delivered," and isn't that a way to compartmentalize, "and I'm done. After Friday, I'll never have to set foot in Gotham again."

**

The elevator dings weakly as it reaches the first floor and, not for the first time, Twyla wishes she wasn't quite so familiar with the particular sights and sounds of Gotham City Hospital.

"At least Harvey seemed…okay," she settles on the neutral term. Considering what he'd been through, he could've been in a much worse state—both physically and mentally.

"Except for that fixation on looking weak because Penguin punched him out," she reflects. "And his anger about Batwoman and the GCPD not apprehending him yet." Harvey's always had a strong bent for justice, but he tends to focus it outward, to examine ways to make Gotham safer for all its residents and visitors.

"Then again," Twyla argues internally, "he did just get attacked, and being Mayor here is no walk in the park at the best of times. Maybe some self-interest is deserved. I doubt he'll take it as far as Alexis."

At that thought, she pulls out her phone again, wondering why she still has a half-composed text to her in her drafts. It's a disjointed jumble, just snippets of thoughts colliding, ranging from Sorry you got shot to Thanks for helping to What are you doing here?

That last question is by far the most fruitless to ask, but it's also the one that's been bugging her the most. Associating with potential flight risks isn't her usual style, especially not when they've explicitly broken the law in Batwoman's presence. And Alexis' skills, combined with her presence cropping up here and there in heists and other thefts that Twyla's researched in her spare time, all suggest she's a seasoned expert in her field, which should be as good a reason as any to want to arrest her and make her pay for her crimes, either here or wherever her home might be.

For some reason, though, she can't glean any satisfaction from picturing Alexis in jail. The thought of delivering proper, orderly, court-meted justice drives her, as Alexis herself had once said, "to do all this." And yet, the prospect of locking her up doesn't offer the usual swell of pride at a job well done, at the belief that she's making Gotham safer.

"Maybe it's because I kind of actually know her compared to most of the people I put away."

Twyla wouldn't stretch to say they're close friends or anything, but they could pick out each other's drink orders at a bar, and she knows Alexis is quick to flirt, but even quicker to deliver a backhanded quip. And they'd played off each other surprisingly well in that fight. As themselves, no less—no tech, no gadgets, no traps, just their own wits and bodies and the environment around them.

"And I don't think I've done that with anyone else before. I've never had reason to."

"Because Alexis is a wild card," she continues her train of thought. "And she said so herself: trusting her can be a mistake."

She deletes her incomplete message, and her phone rings with a call from Ronnie, the company's board president, before she can tuck it back in her purse.

"Ronnie?" she answers, a little confused—they tend to work over email together, and by texts every once in a while. Never over phone calls.

"Hi, Twyla. Would you be able to come in to chat?"

"Uh, sure." She glances at her watch. "Now? At Sands Tower?"

"Yes, if you could, please."

"Yeah. I'll be there in fifteen or so."

"Great. Thank you."

"What's—"

The call ends before she can get her question out, and her follow-up text to Ronnie goes unanswered, too.

Everyone's eyes track her while she's walking through the courtyard to the main entrance, and sure, she's not the most present CEO ever, but her popping into the office on a Wednesday afternoon shouldn't cause this much consternation.

She gives a nod to the security guard at the front door, and he narrows his eyes at her like she's coming in to steal company secrets, although she has plenty stored here, if you know where to look.

Another call.

"Hi, Lucius."

"Twyla, listen—you know how the Children of Arkham were able to rewire the cameras at the debate?"

"Yeah," she answers, deciding to skip the elevator for the longer walk up the stairs to her office. Whatever Ronnie wants can surely wait an extra few minutes for a meeting with her number one tech man.

"I infiltrated their system since they couldn't wipe it after you and Catwoman showed up and spoiled things. And…" he sighs. "I mean, it's good that we know the extent of their reach now. But…"

"What is it?"

"They managed to hack the GCPD's secure radio channel, from what I can tell so far. That's how—"

"They've been one step ahead of the cops the whole time," she finishes his sentence. "We'll have to let Gordon know."

"Absolutely," Lucius agrees. "There's some other information you might want to see, too, if you could swing by Sands Tower."

Twyla frowns. "I'm already here. Ronnie called me. Something about a meeting?"

"...huh. First I've heard of it. Catch up with me afterwards if you can, alright?"

"Definitely," she promises. "I'll be down right away."

She hangs up, jogs up the last couple flights of stairs, and swipes the keycard to her office before realizing, "I don't think Ronnie said where to meet her. I'll just sit for a minute and call—"

Her voice dies when she slips into her office.

Ronnie's already there, standing by her desk, studying one of the pictures of her parents she keeps on it.

"To what do I owe this surprise, Chairwoman?" Twyla wonders aloud, putting as much brightness as possible into her voice. "I know you wanted to talk, but I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here," she continues, gesturing rather grandly at her office. She'll admit, it's gaudy, more of a penthouse apartment than a workspace, but it's one of her few personal luxuries.

"Well, to be honest, I didn't expect to be here," Ronnie remarks, looking Twyla in the eyes with more effort than it usually takes her. "I was called in for an emergency board meeting."

"Emergency board meeting? Was I not on the email chain?" Twyla jokes, but her laugh falls flat when Ronnie doesn't join in.

"It's…it's about your place in the company, Twyla. Between the recent hints of financial scandals and connections to organized crime in the city, and the more recent video of what your father did to Esther Cobblepot…"

Ronnie trails off, letting Twyla fill in the gaps as part of her world cracks apart.

"The company's bigger than any one individual. Even you," Ronnie notes, though her tone and the tight set of her jaw suggest she wants a different resolution. "The board believes it's important to save face."

"And the best way to do that is to remove mine," Twyla responds, her mouth fixed in a grim line. "Even though I'm not my father."

"I know. And I'm doing my best to remind them of that fact. But the public wants a reckoning and, fair or not, some of our other members are listening to them."

"Well," she forces out a laugh, "Jocelyn's said I need to take something of a sabbatical for years. No time like the present."

Ronnie turns to walk out, but stops to pat her on the shoulder. "I'm sure this will just be a temporary measure. You're a good CEO, Twyla, and a better person, even if some of my…less perceptive colleagues are convinced otherwise."

"Thanks, Ronnie. Good luck with everything."

Her laugh is similarly joyless. "God knows we could use it."

"That we could," Twyla whispers to herself as she texts Lucius to say she's on her way downstairs. "That we could."

As usual, she finds him in front of his oversized computer monitor, typing away to crack an encryption or troubleshoot a problem.

"Would you rather hear the good news or bad news first?"

"Bad news. Let's just keep piling on," Twyla tells him, pulling up a chair to take a look at the screen. "Seeing as I'm probably," she checks her watch, "ten minutes away from being ousted as head of the company."

"What? No! The board would be crazy to do that!" Lucius protests.

"I tend to agree with you, as does Ronnie, but they're well within their rights. It'll be another challenge to contend with," she concedes, "but we've dealt with worse before."

Lucius gives her a skeptical look. "We have?"

"Okay, we haven't," she grimaces, "but I was trying to stay optimistic. Anyway," she looks back to the screen, "what's the latest on the Children of Arkham?"

"I figured out how they got in. It was a backdoor into Sands Enterprises."

"Isn't that good news?"

"Well, yes, it would be. Except," Lucius hangs his head, "I'm the reason it exists in the first place. Because when we started your crusade as Batwoman, we needed a way for you to access as many cameras as possible around the city. And most of the tech for those cameras comes from…"

"Here, of course," Twyla recognizes. "How much do they have access to?"

"Not a lot, fortunately. They seemed largely focused on the GCPD rather than Sands Enterprises. I've re-encrypted all our files, but the police department's basically a lost cause."

"Patrick's not gonna be too happy about having to scrub most of their comms equipment, but I'll let him know," Twyla says, texting him an update as quickly as she can. "And, if you don't mind my asking, how'd they piggyback onto our network in the first place?"

"That was the one thing I didn't understand," Lucius answers thoughtfully. "Even if they had a tech whiz working for them, they'd have to know exactly how to enter a digital system riddled with false pathways and validations designed to kick intruders out. It's damn near impossible to do it without direct access."

"Like, say, on one of my computers that Mayor Hill had the GCPD seize during the raid at the manor?"

"That would do it," Lucius replies, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes for a second.

"Anything else from the bad news pony express?"

"For now, at least, that's it. As for the good news…" Lucius sweeps an arm out toward the table in the center of the room. "I've enhanced all your gadgets with utility and hardening upgrades."

"Thank you so much, Lucius." She examines a few of the changes, already planning out how she can deploy her new and improved toys. "These'll be great."

"I'm glad I got it done before you have to officially leave." He casts a wistful look around Batwoman's unofficial R&D headquarters. "Place won't be the same without you, Twyla."

"I'll be back soon," she promises with as much faith as she can muster.

"Hope so." He hands her a flash drive. "Here's all the information I've gathered on the Children of Arkham. Figured Batwoman could use it more than me."

"Thanks." She clears her throat, trying not to wonder when she'll next be here. "I'll see you around, and if you need anything, you know where to find me."

Lucius gives her a solemn wave, and taking the knight off the chess board after she exits the secret passage to the lab to ensure no one else can access it feels eerily like the end of an era.

It officially arrives with a knock at her office door and a call of, "Twyla? You still there?"

She opens them to let Ronnie back in. "I just had to chat with Lucius. How was the meeting?"

"It went as expected," Ronnie says while Twyla takes a seat at her desk for the last time for the foreseeable future. "You're being asked to step down as CEO of Sands Enterprises. Effective immediately. At least until everything blows over."

Twyla lets out a low whistle. "Guess letting me have the title until the close of business today was too damaging to the precious stock price."

"It does seem a bit severe," Ronnie allows, and Twyla deadpans, "Removing a company's namesake to install some to-be-determined figurehead? Nah, that's totally reasonable. Definitely happens all the time."

"Your name is the reason we're having to make a change at all," Ronnie shoots back. "It seemed like you understood that earlier, but maybe I was mistaken."

"No, you're right," she mutters, chastened. "I'm just frustrated—I didn't mean to take it out on you. This whole situation's a mess, is all."

"Mmhmm," Ronnie hums in a note of commiseration. "And there's one more thing. Actually, two."

She hesitates, and Twyla jumps on it with what little motivation she still has. "What is it, Ronnie?"

"First, there'll be a press conference tomorrow morning to cover your resignation."

"Of course. And the second item?"

"What you said about the next person in charge…" Ronnie rolls her eyes. "The board already had someone in mind for the position. I was outvoted."

"Who is it?"

The doors to her office swing open again, and Twyla laughs at Gotham's latest joke as Ronnie announces the entrance of Sands Enterprises' new CEO.

"Oswald Cobblepot."

"They're putting Penguin in charge here," she fires off a quick text to Lucius while Cobblepot's busy strutting in.

"Twyla! Regina! So good to see both of you again," he calls, much too loudly for how close he is to both of them. Twyla forces herself to vacate her seat, to greet him with a hearty handshake and a shit-eating grin.

"Great to see you, Oz."

"Likewise, my friend, likewise." He turns to address Ronnie. "Have you had a chance to bring her up to speed yet?"

"I was getting to that." She glares at him, then explains, "Given that Oswald's parents were…well, victims of your father's actions, and that the company was built on land stolen from the Cobblepot family, the board thought this might be a fitting recompense. And Oswald's resume detailed numerous business successes in England."

"Did it, now?" Twyla grits her teeth in something like a smile.

"It'll be a great PR move," Oswald comments as he moves past Twyla to check out the view. "People aren't much in favor of the Sands name at the moment, and it's hard to blame them. What better way to rehabilitate it than by showing you're committed to righting the wrongs of the past?"

"I'd be more than happy to donate to charity," Twyla trills, earning an elbow in the ribs from Ronnie, but she's not quite done antagonizing the criminal who's now received the keys to her family's business.

She beams at her old childhood friend before asking, "Are you sure you'll have enough time for the company, Oz? You've been quite busy these days with your social activism projects."

"I can absolutely multi-task, but I appreciate your concern. Now, if you wouldn't mind…"

He pulls her chair out and takes a seat at her desk, although that possessive no longer applies, and tilts his chin up toward the office door.

"Of course," Twyla nods, all false modesty and understanding. "I'll be on my way."

"Thank you very much," Oswald schmoozes. "Lots to do to get up to speed, I'm sure you know how it is. And I'll see you tomorrow morning for the press conference?"

Already with the suggestive questions to confirm his power over her.

"Wouldn't miss it," she promises. "We'll have to make sure everyone has a chance to really see you in the spotlight."

He chuckles lightly at the veiled threat. "What's to see? I'm just like you, Twyla. A hard-working citizen who wants what's best for Gotham. Right?"

She'll play his little game for now.

"Right."

**

She knows it's happening, but hearing it on the news still feels surreal: "Twyla Sands will address the public during a press conference tomorrow morning, where we'll learn more about her decision to step down as CEO of Sands Enterprises."

"I still can't believe it," Jocelyn remarks as she looks up at the broadcast on the Batcomputer, too. "I just…" she bites her lip. "I wish life were easier for you, Twyla. It's always one thing after another."

"It'd be nice, for a change. But at least you're on my team, Jocelyn."

She lights up at that. "Always. By the way, Lieutenant Brewer got in touch while you were out. He said Oz's record is spotless and, while we know that's not the truth, we'd need hard evidence of any wrongdoing on his end to even think about ousting him."

"He'll slip up at some point, but I don't love his proximity to all our tech, even with Lucius still at the company."

And," Jocelyn unfolds the early evening edition of The Gotham Gazette and passes it to Twyla, "I thought you'd find this interesting."

"An expose on the Children of Arkham: an interview with their leader," she reads the headline. "I wonder how Vicki managed to score that…"

"Maybe Batwoman could get some answers," Jocelyn suggests. "That could be a valuable lead on learning more about the Children."

"Good idea, Jocelyn." She finds Vicki's work number on the Gazette's website and calls through her computer so the source is scrambled.

"Vicki Vale here."

"I saw your story, Vicki. Would you be willing to chat with me?"

"Who is this?"

Twyla contemplates letting her dangle for a few seconds, but she needs the intel.

"It's Batwoman."

"Thought so," Vicki hums. "Thank you, by the way, for what you did during the debate. I'm not sure if I would've gotten away from that crazy guy otherwise, so I definitely owe you one. Meet me at Cobblepot Park. Tonight. Say, 7:30?"

"Deal," Twyla answers simply before disconnecting.

"A nice and easy transaction," she thinks, and Alexis' voice, unbidden, pops back into her head: "Debt is its own kind of cage."

"Not bad, saving someone only to keep them ensnared," the darker part of her psyche whispers—maybe she can't completely outrun her father's influence.

"I'm not trapping anyone. That's not why I do this. This instance was just…coincidental."

"Twyla?"

She tears her unseeing gaze away from the Batcomputer's black screen. "Sorry, Jocelyn, what were you saying?"

"I'm saying you could stand to have dinner at a normal hour for once before your meet-up with Vicki. Thoughts on salmon with a roasted vegetable medley?" Jocelyn offers.

Her stomach growls. "Yes, please."

**

Vicki's waiting for her since she'd nearly forgotten to put on the Batsuit—she's used to interviewing as herself. It's odd, how a well-put together reporter looks so at home on an unstable bench, looking almost relaxed amidst graffiti and smashed beer bottles and stolen shopping carts, but then again, being on the investigative side of things probably brings her in close contact with the city's underbelly more often than not.

Twyla doesn't mean to assume weakness on Vicki's part, but she can't help but ask, anyway, "Why here? There are…safer options."

Vicki smirks. "This felt topical."

"Fair enough." Twyla spots the flicker of movement of Vicki adjusting something in her pants pocket. "And is this all going on the record?"

"An interview with Batwoman? Of course," she laughs. "If something more personal comes up, we can cross that bridge and change course. But something tells me it won't happen. Unless you want it to…?"

A hint of hopefulness creeps into her voice, in the uptilt at the end of her question, but Twyla purses her lips. "Nope. Sorry."

"Eh," Vicki shrugs, "I'd be a lousy reporter if I didn't ask. Onto a more relevant topic: the Children of Arkham. They seem to be your latest target."

"Turning citizens into hostages will make that happen fast."

"Sure. Their methods are definitely extreme," Vicki agrees. "But what about their message? Their leader claims that Gotham's elite have been abusing their power, often at the expense of ordinary residents. Do you think there's any validity to what they're saying?"

"It's a fair concern," Twyla acknowledges carefully, not wanting her words to get twisted, "given some of the challenges Gotham has faced in the past. But the way they're confronting the issue is only making things worse."

"And who would you name as Gotham's elite?"

"Well," Twyla blows out a breath, "Public perception would probably say Falcone and Mayor Hill. After them, I'm not sure."

"Interesting," Vicki quips, loud enough that she could hear it even without her cowl on. "That you wouldn't list Twyla Sands in that category when she's a billionaire and, as we all know, money is power in Gotham. As her parents demonstrated time and time again during their heyday."

"Miss Vale—Vicki—" she goes for the more personable approach, "what exactly does this have to do with the Children of Arkham?"

"It's tangential."

"Then it's off the record," Twyla tells her, crossing her arms.

"Fine," Vicki huffs, but she clearly presses the pause button on her phone's recorder, anyway. "Like you, the Children claim to want to put an end to corruption," she responds. "Talking with them revealed the standard grandiose quotes and ideals, but," her grin is sharp, calculated, "it's the kind of material that the public loves. And considering how much money Miss Sands has acquired through, let's say, less than legal means, I find it hard to believe that she's not on your radar at all."

"Believe me, I've looked into her background," Twyla asserts. "If I had any reason to think she was following in her father's footsteps and flouting the law, I'd be after her immediately."

"Still," Vicki clucks her tongue, "she benefited from their cruelty and crime, didn't she, up in that manor? What's she doing to make the city a better place now?"

"She's working to clear her ledger. And if she ever stops, I'll be sure to visit her and offer a reminder of the advantages she had. You can count on it."

Vicki brightens up at that quote. "Gotham will be glad to hear you're not beholden to anyone, Batwoman."

She gets up off the bench and reaches out for a handshake; Twyla gives it reflexively, despite her confusion.

"Thanks for your time," Vicki tells her. "I'll make sure your message reaches the masses. And," she scribbles something down on one of her notebook pages, rips it out, and hands it to her, "good luck with the Children of Arkham, too."

Twyla looks at the note.

"Skytrain depot, highland line."

"If you wouldn't mind ripping up that paper before you throw it out, that'd be great," Vicki calls over her shoulder while she's leaving. "I'm assuming you'll…"

The roar of the Batmobile's arrival drowns out whatever else she has to say.

**

The depot's dead silent and totally deserted when Twyla breaks in through one of the side windows.

"I'm in the depot," she whispers to Jocelyn, glad to have a connection to a friend in the eerie environment. "Seems empty right now."

"Really? No sign of the Children of Arkham?"

"Not that I can see." Twyla scans the building for any heat signatures, but doesn't find any. "That suits me just fine—I can do some investigating while it's quiet."

"Good idea. Just be ready to hide," Jocelyn advises her.

"Yep."

She hurries down the stairs to the main floor to search for evidence, and it's a potentially fatal goldmine: a timer that, thank God, isn't counting down, but seems frozen at 27 minutes, 13 seconds. A map of the city's sky train system.

"Huh," Twyla murmurs as she picks up the timer from its perch on a table beneath the oversized, blown-up map. A terrible hypothesis pops into her head.

"Hey, Jocelyn," she references the map again, "could you look up what train stations or depots are roughly 27 minutes away from the highland line?"

"Sure, just a moment while the train schedule loads—mark highland line as the starting point—hmm. How about that," Jocelyn comments.

"What is it?"

"There's only one that fits your criteria. Mercy Street Station."

"It's one of the busiest stations in Gotham," Twyla notes, her vague sense of unease growing. "Thousands of people use it every day. They've gotta be planning something big."

She hurries over to a workstation that reminds her of high school chemistry courses, uses the tech woven into her gloves to scan the traces of chemicals that are bound to be more dangerous than baking soda and vinegar.

The results are even worse than she'd initially feared.

"They've mixed that impulse-blocking drug they stole from the docks with small quantities of a dermal absorbing agent, so there's no more need to inject people with it," she quickly informs Jocelyn.

"But how are they planning to administer it without touching the drug themselves?"

"I'm not—oh, fuck."

"Twyla? You ok?" Jocelyn asks, her voice scaling up in a bit of a panic. "Are they back?"

"No," she answers grimly. "I figured out their distribution method."

"Which is…?"

"They've retrofitted one of the sky trains to be able to carry gas tanks and added a sprinkler line to it. And then—"

"They'll time it to spray and infect everyone at Mercy Street Station," Jocelyn gasps. "My God, we—we can't possibly contain something that widespread. It would be devastating."

"I'll—"

The familiar squeak of an old, run-down sky train pulling into the station interrupts their conversation, and Twyla fires her grappling gun to take to a hiding spot up high, where, she hopes, she won't be spotted.

The masked villain, the one who'd introduced the Children of Arkham at the debate, steps out of the train, onto a catwalk converted into a platform, followed by a few goons and one other person—Twyla can't quite make out who it is.

"If I'd known you were going to make me lug this thing around myself, I would've stolen a backpack."

Twyla's breath hitches, but between the hydraulic hiss of the still-cooling train and the Children of Arkham leader berating Catwoman, the small noise goes unnoticed.

"The Children of Arkham are back—or their head honcho is, at least, with some company," Twyla reports to Jocelyn in a whisper. "Along with Catwoman."

"Catwoman?"

"She brought more of that dermal absorbing agent."

"Well," Jocelyn replies, "she must have a good reason for being there, right?"

"She could be playing both sides, but on the other hand, she doesn't seem particularly thrilled to be here."

"Needs must as a criminal," Jocelyn notes, with a dark undertone marring her words, although it slips past Twyla's notice when she picks up Alexis' voice again.

"We're done here, aren't we?" she asks Gotham's latest masked menace. "I got you those chemicals."

"Not quite yet. We have a bit more to get accomplished," they answer, directing traffic

"Okay, see, this is what I was talking about with the whole honoring a contract thing," Alexis responds, waggling her pointer finger. "I never agreed to any extension of our work. I delivered the product you wanted, and you paid me, so our relationship is over. If you ever need a reference—"

The other person—it's difficult to say if it's a man or a woman—lifts the oversized staff they've been carrying to hook it around Alexis' throat.

"God, she never shuts up, does she?" they call to the rafters.

Twyla refuses to budge for a moment, but then the villain adds, "Give it up, Batwoman. I know you're here."

"No way!" Alexis squirms as her captor retrieves a syringe from her pocket and presses it to the side of her neck, nearly injecting the horrendous cocktail into her bloodstream. "I didn't bring her, I swear! I stuck to the terms of our deal!"

"I know. But you're a loose end, so you need to be tied up."

They call up to Twyla again, this time with just one word, to start: "Surrender. Unless you'd like to witness first-hand what a critical does of this new mix can do to a person in about twenty minutes. The pretty little cat will make poor Esther Cobblepot look downright lucid by comparison."

The invocation of her father's moral failure, along with the mortal threat to a thief who deserves better than to suffer drug-induced insanity, gets Twyla to give away her position, if not her strategy.

"I know your plans," she threatens her current enemy. "And I'm stopping that train."

"I'm not sure how you'll manage it when—"

She interrupts with a well-thrown Batarang, knocking the syringe away, and Catwoman takes advantage of the distraction to duck out of her enemy's grasp.

"Thanks, Bats."

She flashes a grin, dodges another attacker, and…stays.

Twyla stares for a second, convinced there's some trick she's missing, sure that Catwoman will make for the nearest exit, but she's not running away.

"Don't focus on her. Take out Batwoman!"

Twyla neatly hurdles a pallet of boxes to climb the stairs leading up to the train-turned-biohazard. Her cape shields her from most of the damage, but a couple of bullets graze her right shoulder and forearm. Nothing too terrible in the grand scheme of things, especially not when a sticky EMP grenade will short out the train's controls at the other end of the catwalk and render it immobile before it even leaves the station.

She throws it at the fuse box and follows it at a run, ready to smash the thing to bits if she has to, when a swing of a staff alters its flight path.

The Children of Arkham's leader stands in her way.

They wield their staff with a troubling, exacting blend of aggression and patience, keeping Twyla on the defensive, unable to do anything except look for a potential opening to attack until she gets a grip on the weapon.

Her attacker chuckles. "Thanks for doing that."

"Wh—"

They flick a previously unseen switch at the bottom of the staff, and not even the Batsuit can absorb and redistribute a massive electrical shock at point blank range, nor can it prevent what feels like some pretty extreme rib damage from a heavy landing.

"Face it, Batwoman. You can't save Gotham from itself," her assailant says, the precise, measured clanking of boots on metal announcing her approach. "Falcone, Hill, the Waynes, every other stinking rich family in this godforsaken city—they all helped light the fire that's gonna burn this place down. We're just here to fan the flames."

"Gotham won't fall," Twyla rasps, slumped against a support beam, defending her home even though forcing the words out just exacerbates her injuries.

"Sure about that?"

The person raises their staff again, either to hit her already bruised chest or to smash her across the face and maybe knock her unconscious, and the pain's sapping what's left of Twyla's focus.

For once, she doesn't have a solution, or a plan, or even a "pla"—she's just a do-gooder in a costume.

"Batwoman! Catch!"

The cry comes from below, from Alexis, and she register's the cat's paw in her peripheral, quickly enough to catch it and clumsily slam it against the beam.

The attacker swings and misses, thankfully, though the bone-jarring acceleration of the cat's paw cannot be good for any part of Twyla's body. Gritting her teeth, she launches herself off the tower, flicking another electrical weapon free from her utility belt, and punching her assailant with it as she descends.

It's a direct hit, finally, and Twyla takes advantage of everyone's distraction at the big boss being down to complete her sabotage.

The one thing she didn't count on: the train being taken offline leads the gas tank compartment to automatically open, but thankfully, the tank itself doesn't fall out.

The other thing she didn't count on: Getting shot from behind while standing near the edge of a catwalk.

The shock does it just as much as the impact. She woozily registers, "That's the railing," as her world turns upside down while she's falling, falling, falling…

Chapter Text

She figured death would come more softly, with considerably less concrete, and that her body wouldn't ache in the afterlife—after all, how can she have one?

"C'mon, here we go."

And that angels would be nicer, or devils would be meaner.

"Jesus, Twy, how much does all your gear weigh?"

The nickname sticks out in her mind, and she realizes that the woman with her is a little bit of both. And that she might somehow still be alive, in a rather loose sense of the term.

"I'm gonna get you somewhere safe. Thank God that nutcase went postal on all her goons after you sabotaged the train—I'm pretty sure she thought you were…but you're not."

"Thanks," Twyla manages, and she's too out of it to say if the noise Alexis lets out is a sob or a laugh.

"Wait on that til we're outta this hellhole."

They stagger outside like a pair of drunks, and Twyla mumbles, "Keys."

"What?"

"Never mind. This might be easier."

She swipes away on the omni-tool on her forearm brace until the Batmobile pops up, and she presses "Retrieve."

Jocelyn might know she's in distress, or maybe the car does, somehow, because they only have to wait a few minutes for it to arrive.

Alexis whistles. "Bet Tesla wishes they had this kinda autopilot technology."

Twyla wheezes out a laugh as she folds herself into the passenger seat, wincing the entire time while Alexis enters the address to her apartment.

"You're lucky they fixed the elevator earlier this week," she observes dryly once they get there. "I'm on the fourth floor."

"Small victories," Twyla agrees with a grimace, clutching her side, trying not to calculate just how much trauma her body's suffered as they make their way through the lobby.

"Okay," Alexis murmurs. "Just a l'il walk, Twy. Not too much further."

She unlocks her apartment, nudges the door open with her shoulder, and helps Twyla to the couch in a rather graceless collapse.

"Shit, sorry," she apologizes at Twyla's gasp of pain when her shoulder bumps the couch. "Here—lemme help you out of all this so I can see what needs taking care of."

"Mmhmm." Twyla tugs her cowl off, lets it fall to the floor with a thump as Alexis unhooks her cape before studying the top half of her armor. "How do you…?"

"Over my head," Twyla tells her, yanking her forearm braces off and discarding them carelessly, as well.

Alexis frowns. "This is gonna hurt."

"I'm used to—oh, goddammit," Twyla's breath hitches as she lifts her arms up to help with the process.

"There's definitely a little bit of a bullet lodged in your shoulder. Not a full slug, thank God, but it'll have to come out. What's your poison?"

"Anything but tequila."

"How's bourbon?"

Twyla's nodding before Alexis even makes the suggestion.

"Here's this," she hands her the bottle from a small, shoddily-made bar cart, "and," she retrieves some Frankensteined cross between a toolbox and a first aid kit from beside the couch, "I'm glad I always keep this out. I'll clean the wound and pick out what I can, okay? If it hurts too much, I can stop and we can go to the hospital."

"Honestly," the truth flows faster than the liquor, "having been there a bit too often recently, I trust you more."

"Appreciate it," Alexis answers with a shy smile. "We'll see if you feel the same afterwards."

Between the pain, the booze, and her adrenaline high finally crashing into a wave of exhaustion, everything goes a bit hazy for Twyla, but one detail stands out: the painstaking movement of Alexis' hands, the way she uses her fingers to deftly manipulate the tweezers to extract bullet fragments without inflicting unnecessary pain. Jocelyn's good at wound cleanup, too, a fact that makes her sick, but Alexis might be a hair better.

"She's always had to look out for herself," some dim part of Twyla's mind registers, calling back to her dossier. "She hasn't had anyone else there to patch her up. Physically, mentally, or emotionally."

It's surprising, then, just how caring Alexis is. How she makes Twyla feel safe even when she's receiving amateur wound-dressing in a rundown apartment in one of Gotham's seedier neighborhoods.

"You know that was stupid, right?" Alexis asks softly while she's wrapping tape around her ribs.

Okay, maybe not too caring.

"What?"

"Oh, I dunno, showing up at the train depot at all, taking on the Children of Arkham's leader alone, not even thinking of calling the GCPD for backup when you have Brewer on speed dial…" she lists. "Repeat after me, Twy: I'm not invincible, and painkillers don't solve every problem. You're a hell of a fighter, but you weren't gonna take down everyone on your own."

"Says the woman who'd teamed up with those kooks again."

"I had a plan," she answers defensively. "And I wasn't on their side or anything."

"Kinda thought you were," Twyla replies, just as stubbornly, though it's difficult to come off as tough when she's having to bite her lower lip to not hiss at the burn of rubbing alcohol on her shoulder.

"Nope. That was gonna be my final job to get the goons off my back, although their leader had other plans."

"I noticed," Twyla deadpans. "And I hate to sound like a broken record, but you don't know Gotham like I do. The criminals here want to drag everyone down with them. There's no 'one last deal' with any of them."

"Hence why I wanted to get out. But that's delayed now." She shoots a glare at Twyla for half a second. "Again."

"We can take them down together," Twyla tries. "We make a good team."

Alexis brushes her cheek with her thumb. "It's cute how you still think that, despite," she nods at Twyla's current position, "all this evidence to the contrary. There's a reason I operate alone."

A meow breaks the moment.

"Except for Felix. He's always around." A smile flits over Alexis' face for a second. "C'mere, buddy," she calls gently, patting the floor next to her. "You were so good, keeping out of our way while I patched up our friend here."

Felix digs his claws into the couch to stand up and paw at Twyla's leg before giving an indifferent meow and curling up into a ball.

"That's better than he usually is with strangers."

"Better than I'm doing with most of Gotham right now," Twyla jokes.

"About all that—" Alexis looks back at her with something like concern after she pets Felix and he slinks off toward his favorite patch of carpet for sleeping, "this really hasn't been your week, huh?"

"Well, my reputation's shot, my company's been taken over by a criminal harboring a grudge against me, and I find out my father…"

"Wasn't the hero you thought he was?"

"More than that," Twyla responds as she hoists herself up to a seated position, letting Alexis sit next to her. "I—sure, I idolized my parents to some degree," she finally allows, "but my dad was outright bad. Cruel. And I never expected that."

"No offense, because family can be a touchy subject," Alexis acknowledges, "but not everyone, and especially not every billionaire, has your heart. Or your moral compass, whatever you wanna call it. We all have things to hide, though. Even the so-called good guys. I mean," she gazes at Twyla's battered body, then the pieces of her suit strewn around the living room, "need I say more?"

"You're probably right. And if that's the case, then what are you keeping in the dark?"

"All kinds of things," she responds with a wink and a shoulder shimmy. "Jewelry. Gems. Gold. Fancy dresses."

"Talk any more and I might have reason to get Patrick in here with a warrant."

"Oh, I don't doubt it. You're one of the good ones, Twy. But good women—or good men, I'm fine with either—don't lie with thieves. I know what I am," Alexis continues, her voice dropping low, a siren and a warning all at once. "And why I do what I do. For the thrill. To break into things that supposedly can't be hacked. To take what I please, rules and security be damned."

She should let those comments lie. She should tell Alexis she's exhausted, leave, get into the Batmobile, and let it take her home.

That might be what you want people to believe, but," she's traded the bourbon for a glass of water, and she takes a sip now as she considers where to go next. "Someone who's just a thief wouldn't go out of her way to save me and fix me up like this."

"I don't like owing anyone, that's all," she repeats her mantra from their last rooftop encounter. "And you put a lot of faith in someone who doesn't deserve it."

She looks away from Twyla, her confidence replaced by quiet introspection just before she confesses, "I've stolen from corrupt jerks like Hill a lot, but I've taken plenty from good people, too. It's landed me in some pretty nice places in life, don't get me wrong. On the flip side," she sighs, "and no offense to Gotham, but I'm in a crappy apartment on the edge of town, hiding out from a bunch of people who want me dead. Which is why I'm trying so hard to leave. And because that high, the moment when I bust a safe or escape a museum with a bunch of valuables and without anyone knowing I was ever there? I'm not gonna find it sitting around here."

"I get that," Twyla murmurs quietly. Cautiously. It's a change, to finally see Alexis drop her guard, and she's torn between running and wanting more, wanting to expose more chinks in her armor. "After everything we do, coming home should be a relief, but it's more of a…"

"Letdown?" Alexis suggests quietly.

"Yeah," she agrees. "There's, um, one of those things I was hiding. I've never told that to anyone before. Not even Jocelyn."

"Well," Alexis leans into her, "lucky for you, I'm good at keeping secrets. If you have any others that you wanna share with me."

She nearly purrs that last sentence and her gaze is coy and calculated—she's done this before, undoubtedly, and done it well—and Twyla's nearly there, nearly about to give in and see where a kiss could lead when some of Alexis' warnings play back in her mind.

"I'm a wild card."

"Trusting me can be a mistake."

"You put a lot of faith in someone who doesn't deserve it."

It's enough to make Twyla pull back, to wonder if this isn't just some part of a bigger scheme. It certainly doesn't feel that way, but then again, deception is second nature for Alexis.

She deflates a little on the couch next to her and shifts a tiny bit away. "So you're saying you didn't wanna kiss me just then? Or you did?"

"No—yes—sort of—it's just, between everything with you and Harvey and the whole mess we're in, the way we're sometimes allies but also not, it's…complicated," she eventually settles on, leaning back with a small groan, wondering how this woman's rendered her so inarticulate.

"It's okay," Alexis tells her, and that gets her to pop open her eyes, to stop regretting every single one of her moves. "I get it. You're probably right, not to move things in that direction. Being mixed up with me usually ends badly for everyone involved."

"I'm sorry," Twyla apologizes after a few seconds of stilted silence, "I'll go—"

"Excuse me?"

Twyla stares. "I mean, since we're not—I can go home—"

Alexis sighs with a teacher's long-suffering patience. "Do you know how much your body's been through tonight? Just stay here. We can share my bed. Strictly for sleeping."

"...okay?"

"C'mon, we're both adults—this only has to be awkward if we make it awkward," Alexis reasons. "You're beat up to hell, even worse than I am. I'd be awfully cruel to make you sleep on a couch, given all your injuries. And I'm pretty sure Lady Arkham has everyone on her crew looking for the Batmobile, anyway, but I doubt they'll scope out this neck of the woods."

"Okay," Twyla repeats, following Alexis to her bedroom, and her body makes the decision for her once she gets settled on the mattress. "Yeah. This is a good idea. Thanks, Cat."

"Sure thing, Bats."

Back to the monikers they go. That's it with anything personal. It's only professional now. A screwball marriage of convenience.

"You should know, though," Twyla says, and why, why can't she help but tease this impossible woman, this ever-enchanting shadow, "I don't really like owing people things, either."

"I take checks, cash, wire transfers, and stock options if you ever wanna repay me."

The fond lilt in Alexis' voice loops in her mind until she falls asleep.

**

She must be going soft in her old age. Worrying about her mortality, her soul, which side of the ledger she'd find herself on if Anubis weighed her heart, whatever goes through the minds of those who can afford to focus on the future.

That must be why she'd saved Twyla. Why she'd brought Gotham's most wanted vigilante back to her apartment (she refuses to call this place home; a commonality that links together just about every place she's lived for the past six years or so).

"This is quite the expansion of the whole 'don't owe anyone anything' mantra," Alexis thinks after she's woken up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "I'm sure the Batmobile could've gotten Twy back to her manor without my help."

"So she's Twy now? Not Batwoman? Not Twyla? Even after she didn't go for you last night?"

She grumbles at herself, at this stupid development of both a conscience and an interest in a woman who's fully off-limits for too many reasons to track, and Twyla mumbles into her pillow, "Since you're awake now, do you have any breakfast food here?"

"There should be bagels in the pantry. Cream cheese is in the fridge. Make sure it's not expired."

"Thanks."

The mattress springs squeak with Twyla's departure, and Alexis sets an alarm to go off in fifteen minutes, figures she can sneak in a little cat-nap before she drags herself into the land of the living.

A knock on the door and a call of her name derails that plan.

"Just a sec, Harvey!" she answers as brightly as possible while Twyla dashes around the room, gathering up every disparate piece of her gear before popping back into Alexis' bedroom to hide.

"Hey, I—I brought breakfast," he says when she finally opens her front door. "I wanted to talk to you, actually, about some of the stuff that's been going on around town."

"Like what?"

"How about we discuss it over coffee?"

Just what she needs—a panicked, too-nervous mayor in her apartment with Batwoman one room over. Unfortunately, Harvey's blocking her from closing the door now, and they're still together in his mind, based on the increasingly clingy texts he's sent following the debate.

"Okay." She takes a deep breath, plasters a smile on. She's faked her way through most of this relationship—she can put forth one more effort.

"So, what's up?"

"I just wanted to let you know, since your financial consulting work brings you in touch with some of Gotham's bigger players," he leans in conspiratorially, "I wouldn't trust any of them. Batwoman, in particular."

"Really?" Alexis arranges her face carefully, going for surprise and concern. "You've always seemed at least open to working with her."

"She's been evasive, at times, recently. Been avoiding me. And she's weak. Unwilling to do what's needed to truly make this city safe. It's time for a change."

His voice transforms into a snarl, and he pounds her table so strongly with a fist that the coffees spill. He gives a start at that and laughs tightly. "Sorry. Don't know what came over me. Being mayor has been, uh, a lot. Especially since I'm not one of the elite's puppets. Not like Mayor Hill was."

"Of course not," Alexis reassures him quickly and, trying to steer the conversation toward safer grounds, asks, "How are your other initiatives going? You know, increasing low-income housing, reviving the parks and recreation board?"

"It doesn't matter. None of it matters until," he lifts a finger in the air, "we get all of the lunatics running around here behind bars or buried in the ground!"

"Harvey!" Alexis gasps. "What—where's this coming from?"

He breaks again. "I—I don't know, Alexis. I'm sorry. I've—I gotta go. Always something to do when it comes to Gotham, right?"

He's muttering under his breath as he leaves, barely even noticing how Alexis hangs back until he's gone.

She locks the front door for good measure, waits a few seconds, then calls to Twyla, "All clear."

Her eyes reflect Alexis' own uncertainty, and so does her blunt assessment: "Something's off with him."

"Yeah. It has to be that drug, from when he got stabbed at the debate, right?"

"For sure. Harvey and I have been acquaintances for a while—I've never known him to be this erratic or irrational before. Even when he was working extra hours or dealing with difficult cases in the D.A.'s office, he never sounded that…"

"Unhinged?" Alexis offers up guiltily, considering her role in the whole "super-villains acquiring a destructive drug" fiasco.

"Yeah. I'll go talk to him. As Twyla."

She sounds doubtful, though, and Alexis answers, "While that's kind of you, I think he might need professional help, too."

"I'll broach the topic," Twyla agrees, checking her phone and frowning at the home screen.

"What is it?"

"I gotta get in touch with Jocelyn, and I have this stupid forced resignation press conference to attend. Oswald Cobblepot, of all people, has been tapped to take my place as CEO of Sands Enterprises."

"As in, the Penguin?! That scumbag is being put in charge of your business?"

Twyla flashes her a twisted smile. "One and the same, all thanks to the company's board of directors—may they all choke on their filet mignons at dinner. Except for the Chairwoman. She actually has common sense, but the other four members outvoted her. So," she grabs a bagel, quickly slices it, smears cream cheese across each half, "I gotta run. Thanks for breakfast. Along with everything else."

Alexis nods, keeping her focus on Twyla's eyes and not the expanse of bare skin on display between the bottom of her sports bra and the top of her sleep shorts. "Sure. Same to you."

"I think we're even after that."

"Yeah." Twyla turns back to her at the door. "I hope you make it out okay, and I know you said teaming up isn't your thing, but…" she offers a warm smile, one that's testing Alexis' resolve to remain still, just standing at her kitchen table like everything's normal. "If you wanna help me take on the Children of Arkham and whoever else might be involved in Gotham's latest disaster, the offer's still on the table."

"Appreciate it," Alexis tells her with a little wave as Twyla turns and leaves.

She knows she'll run. The urge to flee is written in her bloodline, as evidenced by her family being stretched all over a continental map of the U.S., split asunder between Chicago and L.A. and New York and wherever work takes her.

But for just a second, for the first time in a long time, she'd imagined what it might be like to stay in one place for more than a heist.

**

Twyla calls Jocelyn, scarfs down her bagel, and runs a comb through her hair on the way home—thank God for the Batmobile's autopilot—and has just enough time to throw one of her newer business suits on before she's due to meet everyone at Sands Tower for the press conference that will mark a "transitioning period" for the company.

"More like a coup d'etat," she silently fumes as she parks and walks toward the courtyard, but she's already decided there's no sense in making a scene and bringing up (entirely valid) accusations against Oswald, not with everyone predisposed to assume the worst about her before she even opens her mouth.

"Ronnie. Oz," she greets each of them with a brief handshake.

"We're glad you could make it, old pal," Oswald answers with a smug smile. "Cutting it a little close here, but," he winks, "no matter. All you have to do is follow your cues."

"My cues?" Twyla frowns. "I have a speech ready." She pulls out her note cards with her main talking points. "Just run of the mill stuff about a new era of prosperity, looking out for the good of Gotham, blah blah blah."

"I'm sure it's great," Ronnie cuts in, steering her away from Oswald, "but we put together a damage control statement, of sorts. To—to make this easier."

"Damage control?"

"On the teleprompter. It'll come up after I introduce you," Ronnie notes quietly. "And then you'll turn things over to Oswald."

Twyla clenches her jaw, takes a deep breath, and tries to let her righteous anger go. Most of it leaves on her exhale.

"Alright," she tells Ronnie. "If this is how you all want things done, then I'll fall in line. I don't want to make your job, in particular, any more difficult than it can be on its own."

Ronnie releases a breath of her own at that, and her shoulders settle in relief. "Thanks, Twyla. None of this was fair to you in the slightest. This won't be easy, but your cooperation means a lot. I won't forget it, and I'll be sure to remind the board, too."

"Happy to help you, Ronnie."

"Great," she pats Twyla on the arm. "I'll get this show on the road."

Oz slinks next to Twyla, well back of the podium. "We're going to make quite a splash here, aren't we, Miz Sands? Quite the memorable day on tap for us both."

She puts on her best schmoozing tone. "Absolutely. I'm happy to play a part in all of it."

"This all makes sense, really," Oswald goes on, eager to dig the knife in deeper while Ronnie's still talking about the company's history. "Your family stole from mine. I'm stealing this company back, and relegating the Waynes to what they should have been: a forgotten footnote in Gotham's story. I'll usher in a new era of wealth for this city."

"For the city, or for yourself?" Twyla snarks back. "I'm sure the Children of Arkham will happily fade away and let you play at being an entrepreneur once you get this position, too. Face it, Oz: you're a pawn to them. One they'll be more than happy to sacrifice when the time is right."

"It'll be a sight easier to stop that uprising with a bunch of Sands tech—or Cobblepot tech, excuse me. What'll you have to keep them at bay? Your nanny?"

"Let yourself think that," she whispers back just before Ronnie announces, "I'd like to introduce Twyla Sands to the stage. Please, hold your questions until after both she and Mr. Cobblepot have spoken."

The teleprompter is littered with lies and falsehoods, but she rattles them off with as much gravitas as she can muster, ranging from "I'm voluntarily stepping down as CEO of Sands Enterprises in light of recent allegations against my family" to "I have complete faith in the board as they work toward righting the wrongs of the past" to "I'm excited for Mr. Cobblepot to join Sands Enterprises to help create a better, safer Gotham for all."

"Thank you," Ronnie whispers to her again as she exits and walks down the steps, off to the side. Some members of the press swarm her, but Twyla puts a hand up. "I have no more comments. I said everything I wanted to say up there."

They all trickle away, grumbling about the lack of any fireworks or shots fired at the company or the board, but one lingers.

"That was an awfully impressive display of restraint. Kudos to you, Ms. Sands."

She turns toward the source of the compliment. "Thanks, Ms. Vale."

"Please," she waves away the formality, "we've known each other long enough. Call me Vicki. And I was wondering…could I ask one more question of you? Just to clarify something? I won't even jot it down, I swear."

"Fine," Twyla relents with a sigh. "One question, off the record. That's it."

"Thanks." She suddenly bends down. "You dropped your pen."

"I did?" Twyla asks, surprised, feeling in her pocket. "I didn't think I—ow!"

A few reporters turn toward her sudden cry, but then turn their attention back toward Oswald's grandiose speech.

"What the—"

She grabs her hand, shakes it, and studies the oversized fountain pen that Vicki just used to stab her in the hand.

It's not a pen.

It's a disguised syringe.

"Great. Now that we've got that done," Vicki goes on, as if she's just flipped to a new page in her notebook or exchanged pleasantries with her interview subject, "let's get to my question. Can you feel the drug taking hold of you?"

"You—" Twyla struggles to catch her breath as her heart rate suddenly spikes, as tiny white stars pop at the edges of her vision. "You're with the Children of Arkham. That's how you arranged the interview."

"You've got it backwards, dear—no wonder the company doesn't trust you anymore," Vicki chuckles. "The Children of Arkham are with me. I'm Lady Arkham."

Twyla's reality rips for a second and Vicki Vale's suddenly decked out in her villain garb, mask and coat and all, in the middle of the business park.

"And you're already familiar with the Penguin, of course." She nods toward the stage. "Look at him up there. Taking everything that belongs to you. Mocking you. The smug, insignificant, self-serving bastard! Nothing more than a pawn, without the awareness to realize it."

"I knew it!" Twyla growls, still keeping her voice low, still keeping some slim degree of control, but her hands are balled into fists and she's not sure how that happened.

"He thinks he can get away with it," Vicki whispers in her ear. "And, bless his heart, why wouldn't he? After all, none of them know who he really is. Even if you told the press or the board, do you think they'd listen to you after happily dragging your name through the mud over crimes you had nothing to do with?"

"No," Twyla answers firmly, unsure if she's responding to how Vicki's egging her on or if she's trying to fight off the drug and the haze that's taking over her brain, telling her that for once, violence might be the best option available to her.

"It would be so easy to expose Oswald's true identity. Right here, right now," Vicki tells her. "And if you don't do it, who will? Who else is as committed to seeing justice through as you are?"

"Now, to conclude the conference, let's have a big round of applause for our woman of the hour, Miss Twyla Sands!" Oswald urges the assembled crowd.

"Get back up on that stage." Vicki gives her a gentle push forward.

Even by Gotham's standards, it all goes to shit from there.

Chapter Text

A persistent pain throbs behind Twyla's temples, along with flickers of a scene she half-remembers. A fight; no, a sucker punch, an assault, on Oz.

The kind she usually tries to prevent.

This time, she'd carried out the attack.

Lady Arkham's whispers of encouragement—justice and retribution and fairness—swirl in her head, worse than any sugary mixers she'd tried during college.

Harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights exacerbate her headache, and she finally props herself up on her elbows to examine her surroundings.

"I'm not in the manor," she mutters, in what might be the understatement of the year, seeing as the space she's in looks more like a dingy bathroom in any one of the underfunded, outdated public schools in Gotham, down to the blue tiling on the floors and the marks all over the walls.

"Breakfast's getting delivered in five. One of the doctors will be along after that, so get dressed pronto."

"Okay. Thanks."

Standing brings its own challenges: nausea, weak, shaky legs, and another flash of pain behind her eyes.

She finds what passes for clothes here, wherever that is, on a chair in front of her bed. It's more of a tan jumpsuit, really, and not a fashionable one.

There's a large letter on the front, and a small script beneath it. Twyla squints to make out what it says.

Her stomach drops.

"Arkham Asylum."

She takes in her awful appearance in the mirror, pokes at her face once or twice just to make sure she's awake and not trapped in some hellish nightmare.

"This can't be happening."

A sad breakfast of flat pancakes and dried-out sausages being delivered through a small cut-out space in the door says otherwise.

The doctor arrives shortly after Twyla chokes down one of the pancakes.

"Twyla Sands," she states, flipping through a couple of pages on her clipboard for details on the Asylum's newest patient. "Nice to meet you. I'm Dr. Leland—feel free to call me Joan. Your file says you're in for disorderly conduct and assault against one Oswald Cobblepot. Does that sound familiar?"

"Yes, but I wasn't myself," she argues. "Lady Arkham drugged me."

"Ah, yes, the orderlies noted that particular delusion when they brought you in." She ticks a checkmark next to the page. "You were screaming about how she made you lose control. Something about being injected with a serum before you beat Mr. Cobblepot to a bloody pulp on live television."

"Because I was." Twyla digs her nails into the palms of her hands. "Oz and I weren't on the best of terms, sure, but how would that possibly be motivation to do something that would get me landed here?"

"That's what we'll have to work together to learn, and to treat. To start with, let me ask you some pretty standard questions."

It's a basic personality inventory test, and she goes along with it as quickly as possible.

"And now, since we're all set with those, how about I give you a little tour so you get more comfortable with your new surroundings?"

"Do I have a choice?" Twyla grumbles.

"Of course you do." Joan flashes her a coercing smile. "But I'd recommend getting the lay of the land. That way you won't be caught off guard by any of our other patients' eccentricities during your free time here."

One of those patients, a man with a shock of green hair, pale skin, and shiny teeth that stretch his mouth out just a bit too wide, bounds up to them while Dr. Leland's showing Twyla the way to the rec room.

"John," Dr. Leland greets him cordially. "Good to see you." She explains to Twyla, "John's been with us for a while now. I'm sure he'd be happy to help show you around, as well. Right, John?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely!" he answers brightly. "More than happy to do it. After all, it's not often we have a celebrity here."

Twyla laughs weakly at the joke as her stomach turns over—of course she'll have to deal with some creep's special attention while she's stuck in Gotham's resident nuthouse.

John doesn't try anything, though, at least not in the doctor's presence. He asks her a few questions about her company's tech, and while his interest is intense, it's not at all sexual—not that too many men get fresh with her, but the ones who don't know her are the most likely to make an attempt, in her experience.

Dr. Leland drops them off at the rec room. "You've got some time to yourself now," she informs Twyla, "and John, I expect, will help you get to know everyone. He's really got his finger on Arkham's pulse."

"Yes, I do," he nods happily. "Stick with me, Twyla, and you'll know the whole nine yards in no time."

"One thing," Twyla interjects quickly. "I noticed a phone on the wall back there. Is that available for our use?"

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, dear," the doctor responds. "Only for staff members."

"I've gotta get in touch with Jocelyn somehow," Twyla thinks. "Sooner rather than later."

For now, her only option is to study her fellow patients.

John lowers his voice to a whisper. "Believe it or not, but some of these people are crazy."

There's a group of four men playing cards at a circular table. Two are engrossed in a game of chess that's just begun, judging by how few pieces have been discarded. A woman is sitting in an oversized chair in the corner, turning a page of a well-thumbed copy of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

They all seem fine, at least for now. Well-adjusted.

"Everyone's friendly," John adds while Twyla takes the scene in. "Mostly. I'd avoid the two playing chess for now, though. They don't take kindly to disturbances. Losing focus can really set them off."

"How so?"

"C'mon, Twyla—use a little imagination! This is Arkham, for pete's sake. We're talking about screaming matches, stabbings, a little arson. The usual."

"Alright, then. Noted," Twyla answers, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. "Thanks for the warning."

"Of course. We were all newbies here once," John tells her, with a surprising dose of empathy. "It's not exactly dangerous if you have context, but the staff members aren't always the best about offering up those details. Take Sane Lewis, here," he gestures to a man staring intently at a small TV screen full of static. "They don't understand that this is his favorite show. He watches it every day. Although he sometimes needs a reminder," John addresses Sane loudly, with a hint of a demand, "that the news updates come out every half-hour, and some of us like being informed about the goings-on in Gotham."

Sane grunts, but relents after a second, shifting over on the couch to give them room.

"Where's the remote?" John runs his hand under the couch cushions, gets up, and moves aside a couple of books on the old coffee table, but the cursory search comes up empty. "An orderly must have taken it," he surmises. "I'll ask the one on duty."

He bumps Twyla on the way back over there, and she instinctively grabs at whatever object John's pressed into her palm to keep it from falling to the floor. It's cold metal, and she sneaks a glance down to avoid drawing any more attention to herself.

It's an oversized, ornate silver key.

"What the—?"

"Got it!" John announces, flipping to channel 3 and blowing on the remote control like a smoking gun. "You know, politicians usually bore me to tears, but this Harvey Dent—he's got a fiery personality. And, oh—" John taps Twyla's forearm repeatedly in his excitement, "look at the caption that's coming up. They're talking about us, here! The freaks in Arkham!"

Sure enough, Harvey announces, live at another press conference, "It's true, I did have my good friend—my former friend—Twyla Sands committed to the asylum, where I hope she can find the help she so desperately needs. Because in my Gotham, no one's above the law. That's why I've authorized the creation of my enforcement teams to crack down on—"

"That two-faced ass!" she snarls. "I back him through hell and high water when his campaign wouldn't have gotten off the fucking ground without me and—"

"My, oh, my," John breathes. "You do have a bit of your father's temper, don't you? It's nothing to be ashamed of, you know, despite what some people might tell you."

That comment saps her anger—some trace remnants of Lady Arkham's drug must still be circulating through her bloodstream—and replaces it with intrigue.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because anger is part of what makes us human!" John crows. "Betrayal—pain—anguish—they all make beautiful, broken tapestries of stories! You may not have been completely yourself when you beat up Oswald at that phony baloney resignation, but Vicki's drugs only amplify your emotions," he goes on. "Some part of you must have enjoyed it."

She ignores his final conclusion and doubles back to jump on the previous sentence. "You said Vicki—you know she's—"

"Yes, Twyla, I know she's a popular lady in the city," he winks. "Little Vicki Arkham, all grown up, avenging her parents' deaths by going after you. Why do you think she teamed up with Oz in the first place?"

"She's an Arkham?"

John cackles at her disbelief, his high-pitched laugh echoing off the barred windows and attracting the curiosity of the other patients.

"Jeez, crack open one of your fancy laptops and run a genealogy search," he says, recovering from his laughter with a small hiccup. "Vicki can't bury everything about her past, though she's certainly tried. Hard to blame her, to some extent."

Twyla opens her mouth to ferociously argue against John's point, until he continues, "Grief and tragedy can do crazy things to a person. Can get a grip on their soul and just not…let…go. And that, my friend, is why we must get you out of here."

All of a sudden, all she can do is miss key points. "Why?"

"To set up your and Vicki's delightful clash, of course!" John claps his hands together. "Two sides of the same coin: losing your parents to senseless violence at a young age. Or, I suppose, not so senseless, given Gotham's history," he muses. "Nevertheless, you two being on a crash course for a fight sounds spectacular. It'll really give all those newscasters something to talk about."

"Sure," Twyla agrees, mostly to humor him. "I'll bust out of one of the most heavily guarded mental facilities in the U.S. Piece of cake."

"Of course," John nods, and, oh, wow, he's serious. "You're Twyla Sands. Your family always gets what they want. You just have to carry on that tradition. Honor your lineage, so to speak. And all it would take is a phone call," he points to the payphone in the hall, just beyond the secure gate, "to whatever fancy, high-priced lawyers you have on retainer, and poof!" Jazz hands. "Gone as if you were never even here."

"Except that phone's only for staff, and they won't let us use it," she counters.

John pshaws at her objection. "Assume I can take care of that little issue. But it'll come at a price."

Naturally, whether she's in a ritzy boardroom or a fraudulent mental hospital, the people around her always want her power. Her influence. "What kinda price are we talking, John?"

"Ooh, a willing negotiator—the best kind! As to my request: when I get out of here," he begins, "you'll owe me one small favor. Future repayment for this one I'm doing for you, essentially, and what's a little tit for tat between friends?"

"Sure," Twyla lies. "A one-for-one trade. Seems fair."

He's never getting out of here, so she'll never have to abide by those terms, though John seems to think otherwise.

"Excellent. A true pleasure doing business with you." He gets up and performs a regal bow before promising, "This distraction is sure to make that phone available. Just be ready to run before they lock the gate down with the metal doors. Otherwise, that key won't work."

"Got it," Twyla nods. "Thanks."

She walks slowly toward the gate, hears John start his plan into action with a question that sends shivers down her spine: "Say, Szasz," he approaches one of the chess players, "settle a bet for me, wouldja: what happens if you mark a tally on yourself before you kill someone?"

"Why would I ever do that?"

John bluntly swipes a knife—no idea how he got that—across his face, slashing his cheek open.

The man's demeanor flips on a dime as he scratches at the cut and gets up in a hurry, knocking over his chair, lamenting, "No! I—I don't match anymore!"

John holds the knife out in front of him by its point, dangling it back and forth like a pendulum. "You can fix that right now, buddy."

He snatches the knife and lunges across the table at his opponent, bringing yells of, "Guards! We need a sedative!"

"All this…for me," Twyla recognizes. "Am I gonna just let it happen?"

The gate opens, and her legs are carrying her towards it automatically, even before John cries, "Run, Twyla, run!"

She jams the key in the lock, turns it, and doesn't look back at the carnage wrought on her behalf until after she's spoken to her lawyers.

The competing scents of spilled blood and cloying ammonia claw at her insides until she's almost ready to puke, but that might be the guilt, too.

"Guess I'm more like dad than I thought," she thinks as her selfishness plays on a loop, even cutting into the relief that runs through her tired bones and weary mind when her release from Arkham is officially processed all of two days later.

**

Twyla doesn't really give Jocelyn a hug when she pulls up in front of Arkham in a company car, more just collapses into her the way she had so often as a child.

"Are you alright?" Jocelyn asks, pulling back and giving her a once-over.

"Eh," she grimaces, slipping into the passenger seat, reclining it an extra couple of inches so she can lay back. "At least Lady Arkham's drug has mostly worn off."

Another car's sudden honk draws out an involuntary wince, a reminder that it's not fully gone, and Jocelyn's mouth creases with worry.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," she mentions as she smoothly accelerates onto the highway, out of the poverty-stricken neighborhood surrounding the Asylum, "but Gotham has become even more unstable during your, ah…hiatus. And the public's opinion of you…"

"I can't do anything about my reputation right now, but Batwoman can try to handle some of the other issues."

"It'd be nice to not have that be the optimal choice for problem-solving once in a while."

"You're telling me," Twyla mutters when a phone call comes through the car's bluetooth.

"Harvey," she responds, instilling a bit of a curt edge to her voice.

"You should have stayed in the asylum. I put you there for your own good—the streets of Gotham are dangerous for someone like you right now."

"They're only dangerous because you've put armed guards on every street corner."

"I'm only doing what's necessary to keep my people safe from the Children of Arkham," Harvey intones, his twisted conviction becoming clearer with every syllable. "They're plotting something. People are frightened, and I need to show them that we're done being pushed around. By terrorists and by the elites. By people like you and your family, Twyla."

"Would you listen to yourself? This is insane!"

"You're one to talk about insanity after what you did to Oswald. Watch your back—my enforcers would be more than happy to repay the favor."

The call ends with an ominous click.

"Alright. Well, Harvey's gone around the bend and turned Gotham into a police state, the Penguin's taken over my company, and the remnants of a psychopath's drug are still in my body," Twyla summarizes moodily. "Happy Wednesday, am I right?"

"Things are going to hell in a handbasket," Jocelyn agrees when she pulls in the driveway. "And your instinct in such times is always to tackle any and all problems head on, no matter the cost."

"Yes," Twyla responds cautiously—Jocelyn's patched her up enough over the years to make her opinion of that particular strategy crystal clear.

"In this case, that involves taking a break," Jocelyn continues. "You're exhausted," she continues, a maternal sternness coming out—Twyla relinquishes her too-tight grip on the railing as she walks up the front steps leading to the manor's inner courtyard, ahead of the entrance, but it's too late. "And Batwoman won't be able to help the city if her mind and body are compromised and she gets herself injured."

"Or worse" is omnipresent, even if they never actually acknowledge it.

"You're right," Twyla acknowledges, quirking her lips up in a bit of a smile as Jocelyn quips, "Too right—you'd do well to remember that more often."

"I'll try."

Even though she'll always end up giving herself up for Gotham in the end.

**

Synthesizing a makeshift antidote to Lady Arkham's drug takes the better part of two hours, and Twyla, for the first time in decades, takes an actual nap afterward, her first proper sleep in much too long. It helps clear the cobwebs of her brain and rejuvenates her, but with the state Gotham's in at the moment, low-level anxiety keeps ticking in the back of her head.

It becomes a second pulse when Jocelyn comes into her room.

"I didn't want to disturb you, Twyla, but—"

She's immediately on alert. "What is it?"

"Lucius called a few moments ago. Oz has enlisted a team of hackers, and they've started introducing bugs into your tech. He's doing all that he can, but," Jocelyn's voice turns even more concerned, "there's only one of him versus however many people Oswald has at his disposal. With enough time, Penguin could hack all of our systems."

"I'll head out for my office right now," she declares, swinging her legs out of bed, already ready to bolt down to the Batcave, but Jocelyn shakes her head sadly.

"There's—there's more, I'm afraid."

She pulls up a news clip on her phone, a video of Harvey at the podium in his office.

"Reports of Children of Arkham activity are down, but these victories do not come without a price. That's why I am formally seizing the Sands family estate, so their corrupt wealth can go to the betterment of Gotham and increase safety and security for its residents."

"What?!" Twyla gasps.

As if he's speaking directly to her, Harvey delivers his ultimatum. "Ms. Sands has twenty-four hours to cooperate, evacuate her property, and turn it over to the city, or she will be forcibly removed from the premises."

"It's the worst Sophie's Choice we've ever encountered," Jocelyn concludes, closing the video.

"I'll try talking to Harvey as myself," Twyla tells her, more so she has something to do immediately rather than contemplate either new horror for too long. "Batwoman wouldn't be able to convince him to help me."

"Smart idea," Jocelyn encourages her. "And the two of you were on good terms for so long—perhaps you can get him to see some reason."

She nods grimly. "It's worth a shot. And if this doesn't work…"

"I'm still handy with a shotgun or a pistol," Jocelyn reads her mind. "The manor will have at least one defender."

"You're its best one, Joc," Twyla compliments her before she leaves, disobeying speed limits as much as she's able with Harvey's enforcers patrolling every major street in the city.

Harvey's pacing in his office, fidgeting with a quarter, muttering, "Was that the right decision? Don't screw this up!" to himself when she arrives.

"Come to tell me you're turning over your home?"

"No," Twyla answers. "Is there some kind of agreement we can come to? I donate a certain amount of money to the city for its protection fund?"

She can barely restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Harvey chuckles, though it's not at her invocation of The Sopranos.

"Everything's a negotiation to you," he notes, still flipping the coin and turning it over and over. "But there's no price that will stop me from doing what's necessary to clean up Gotham. That's why I'm taking your money. Your home. Everything. It's time you started paying your debt to the city."

"It's not my debt to pay, and you know I've done plenty to help Gotham already!" she insists. "I can't undo the hurt that my parents did, as much as everyone wants me to."

"Nobody cares, Twyla," Harvey snarls. "Not when you're sitting pretty on billions of dollars of blood money. I promised the people I'd weed out crime and corruption. Starting with you."

"I'm not the enemy," she protests, groaning in frustration, at Harvey's inability to see past a sudden obsession. "The Children of Arkham are."

A grotesque, lopsided, jack-o-lantern grin distorts Harvey's features. "Don't you worry. I'm taking care of them, too." He picks up a walkie-talkie from his desk and leads Twyla out to the balcony attached to his office. "Is everyone in position?"

"Yes, sir."

"Alright," he rubs his hands together, "time to blow Lady Arkham's drug supply sky high. Do it. Now."

A blast no more than seven or eight blocks away lights up the night sky.

"Harvey?" a nervous voice comes through on the other end. "That explosion was way bigger than we'd planned initially. The apartment building nearby—oh, God!"

The unmistakable sound of rubble falling comes through on the other end, but all Harvey does is ask, "Did we hit the Children of Arkham?"

"Yeah, but—but how quickly can we get a fire truck here—"

"That's all that matters. Leaders get results," Harvey states before stopping the transmission.

"You're out of control." Twyla runs her hands through her hair, still struggling to comprehend that this is Harvey Dent now. The once fresh-faced, warm, affable D.A. who supported those most likely to need aid in the city, who tried to create new systems that helped them instead of ensuring their continued suffering. "You might have just killed people in that building!"

"But consider how much suffering I've prevented by destroying Lady Arkham's supply of drugs," he counters with warped logic. "And I had to make a statement—prove that I'm doing anything and everything it takes to guard against people who would do this city harm."

"You're harming it, too," Twyla accuses him. "This has to stop."

"I figured you'd say something like that. So predictable. It'll make your ending all the more believable."

She frowns. "My ending?"

"Tragic death by suicide," Harvey answers, so quickly that Twyla almost doesn't believe it. "In Crime Alley. The same place where your parents died. You couldn't take the humiliation of losing your wealth and your company, and after your little stint at Arkham Asylum, everyone will assume you'd gone off the deep end."

A couple of his guards are on her and get her handcuffed before she can do anything. Though one of them makes sympathetic noises to her increasingly desperate but still cogent arguments to stop listening to Harvey, to think for themselves, on the short walk over to Crime Alley the other overrules him.

"We're doing this to create a better Gotham," he asserts, steadying his aim, gripping his pistol tight with two hands.

Two shots come before Twyla can squeeze her eyes shut.

"Drop the weapons, you bastards, and let her go!"

She's never been more grateful to hear Patrick Brewer's gravelly voice in her life.

The less aggressive one manages to flee, but Twyla trips the other guard before he can grab for his gun again, and Patrick cuffs him.

"If you ever need a favor—shit, favors, plural," Twyla tells him after the criminal has been taken in by another officer, "you have my number. How'd you even find me?"

"We've been keeping tabs on Dent since he started pursuing more hostile means to deal with the Children of Arkham," Patrick reports. "We stole a page from their book, actually. Hacked his comms. Thank God we did, or else…"

"Yeah," Twyla murmurs, shuddering at the thought. "I—I really believed I could get through to him, but the Harvey I once knew is gone."

"He's become just as big a terrorist as the ones he's trying to stop," Patrick analyzes. "Although a lot of Gotham's still backing him. Of all my years on the force, I've never seen a mess like this. The system here is broken beyond belief."

"At least we've got people like you trying to make things better," Twyla offers some optimism, but Patrick waves it away, sparks up a cigarette instead.

"I don't know how Batwoman does it," he says, glancing up as if he's hoping she'll drop out of the shadows. "To show up night after night for no tangible reward, to fight as hard as she does…it's hell on a person, I'll tell you that."

"Well, tough times don't last," Twyla comments. "Tough people do."

She has worlds more than that platitude to give, but Patrick needn't know it. He's a brilliant detective—no need to accidentally drop any clues he could use to souse out Batwoman's true identity.

"Guess you're right," he answers after a minute, as if he expected her to say more. "Need a ride?"

"Thanks, but I'm all set."

He nods. "It's not easy these days, but be safe."

"You, too."

The Batmobile comes screeching around the corner no more than a minute after he leaves to go put out another fire, and Twyla has one to face herself, courtesy of another harried call from Lucius—no formalities.

"Where are you?"

"Just got outta Crime Alley. Long story. Why? What's happening?"

"Penguin's on the verge of breaking through all our encryptions, including the ones for the Batcave," Lucius informs her. "He's holed up in IT. There's no way I can reach him, despite my access credentials, but if Batwoman can make it here shortly…"

"On it," Twyla answers, pulling a sharp u-turn. "Sorry, Lucius, Jocelyn's on the other line. Just a sec." She hangs up, answers her call. "Talk to me, Joc."

"Harvey's arrived at the manor. With company."

"Already?! He said we had twenty-four hours."

"Integrity seems to have gone out the window with his common sense and morals," Jocelyn responds. "Can you make it back soon?"

"I—"

The Batmobile jerks wildly from side to side, its usual reliable autopilot failing miserably, and the wheel requires a much harder touch to respond appropriately.

"I can't, Jocelyn. I'm so sorry, but Lucius called me a moment ago—Penguin's nearly cracked through all our security," she relays his message, "and if he can access everything, we'll have to go completely dark, maybe even destroy all our tech to ensure he can't weaponize it against us. So I'm heading to Sands Enterprises to stop him."

"A prudent choice," Jocelyn offers, but her disappointment comes through anyway.

"Get down to the Batcave, Jocelyn. Please. You'll be safe there. I—I can't lose you."

"On that, we agree. Take care, Twyla."

"I will," she promises, with even more conviction than she'd extended to Patrick when he'd given her similar advice. "See you soon."

**

"I've gotta say," Twyla whispers to Lucius, who's been offering navigation tips over their comms line before it's compromised, "I never thought I'd have any need to sneak around my own office building, but I'm glad you have all the old blueprints on file."

"Being a digital hoarder pays off once in a while," he admits. "We should probably go dark—you're only a floor below your office, correct?"

She cross-references the old and new maps, checks her progress on climbing up an old, out of service elevator shaft that Penguin wouldn't have known about. "I think so."

"Okay. Oz's phone is still there, at least, so he should be nearby. I'll help you out if I can. Good luck, Twyla."

"Thanks." She cuts off their comms link and continues her ascent, sneaking through the main hall because she'd only put in the one entrance to her space, not wanting to risk a security breach with multiple access points.

A spray of machine gun rounds from a reprogrammed drone welcomes her, and she dives to the side of the doorframe to avoid taking any damage.

"That's no way to treat a guest!" Oswald snaps at someone else from inside the room. "Even one as annoying and do-goody as Batman. Come on in," he addresses Twyla. "Promise we won't kill you immediately, because where's the fun in that?"

"You sure know how to sweet-talk a woman, Oz," she comments, sticking her head out for a second, but when no more gunfire greets her, she absconds from her hiding space and crosses the threshold, tracking the number of threats—one maniac, two garden-variety guards, and two drones. "Is that how you ended up working with Lady Arkham?"

"Oh, that partnership came together easily. Between wanting to crush you and realizing how easily we could get the rest of Gotham to fall with your company's technology at our fingertips, we worked things out in a jiffy. Communications, surveillance, military weapons…we can control it all, and sell your goods to the highest bidders."

"That's not happening," Twyla threatens him, refusing to activate the mapping tool in her cowl to plan out her attack since it's undoubtedly compromised by now.

"No? Sure you don't want to switch sides and reap the profits?" Oz asks.

"Go to hell."

"Y'know, given the number of people you've terrorized, you might end up there yourself."

"Enough," Twyla snarls, doing her best to dislodge that intrusive dig from her head as she makes her first move, shooting her grappling gun at a chair behind one of the guards and yanking it forward so it takes him out by the backs of his legs.

The other one's taken aback by her sudden movement, and his fumbling with a shotgun gives Twyla an opening to charge him, knock him off balance with a shoulder to the chest, and she grabs his head and slams it against her beloved chess board to knock him out, sending three rooks, two knights, and a bishop flying.

"My turn!" Oswald chimes in.

A new, oversized drone swoops down out of the shadows and, in her haste to dodge it, she can't evade the flurry of punches Oz throws, and she's backed up…

"Too far."

Her body's familiar with every inch of her office, with all the hours she's spent in it, and it suddenly hits her, why she's been able to retreat so far.

She's in the lift that leads to R&D.

"Heading down," Oz pants as they grapple, and try as she might, Twyla can't keep him from pressing the button.

He slaps what looks and feels like a small magnet on her as the lift finishes its descent, and an unexpected electrical shock makes her cry out in agony, leaves her prone for a second as Oz stumbles toward one of the work benches.

He straps a pair of giant metal fists on, punches them together in approval. "This how you feel when you put the costume on? I've gotta say, I can really see the appeal. It'll be quite fun, beating you to a pulp and discovering all your secrets in," he turns back toward the giant computer screen for a second, "a bit under five minutes."

"You've developed quite a lot of arrogance from our younger days," Twyla observes. "And none of it earned—"

Oz stuns her with a punch to the gut, knocking the breath out of her, sending her stumbling backward into a rolling supply cabinet.

"Shutting up's never been a strength for you. Lucky thing is, I'm here to help with that. Permanently."

Twyla fumbles for one of her sabotaging Batarangs, but its usual glow, a telltale sign that it'll interrupt any nearby electronics, fades away.

"You keep forgetting: I'm controlling the toys now, Batwoman," Oswald gloats.

He's an annoyingly good fighter, too, keeping her on her toes, unable to land too many solid blows against him, and she can't afford to waste too many more precious seconds, not with her entire network on the verge of being hacked so every last one of her secrets gets spilled to the Internet, never to be hidden away again.

"If he's going to take advantage of my tech, I might as well steal his tactics. Play dirty for once."

Twyla backs up against the supply cabinet again, lets Oz think he's establishing a firm upper hand, then reaches back for what she'd seen earlier: an industrial-sized wrench.

It dents one of the metal gloves on her first swing when he goes to throw another punch at her, then breaks it apart on the second one.

"No!" he cries out, his concentration broken by the removal of one advantage, and Twyla pounces, driving forward and twisting his arm behind his back in a ruthless, predatory move, and she improvises her next attack from there, reaching into the back pocket of his suit pants.

"Still smoking? That's quite the nasty habit, Oz. Unbecoming of a true white collar professional."

Before he can yank his arm away, she sparks the Bic lighter, burning the back of his arm, keeping it pressed there for nearly a minute even as he jerks wildly, trying to break free of her grasp, even as he screams when the burn turns clinical.

She finally relents at his last howl of agony, but it's only to run over to the R&D computer while he's distracted to rip the black box out of its hookup so it stops leeching into the system. The glowing red "firewall breach" notification drops away.

"You absolute bastard!" Oswald shouts, lunging at Twyla, his cool demeanor and confidence shattered.

She ducks low, shields herself and her movements with her cape, so he won't know what's happening until…

Crack.

She feels his kneecap dislocate through the reverberating metal of the wrench and almost feels bad as she rips the other metal fist off of his arm.

Almost.

"You psycho!"

Oz clutches at his uselessly straight leg, gathering in breaths in shaky gasps.

"This isn't the end, Batwoman! You can't stop us!"

"Really? Because I think I just did."

Reveling in someone else's pain, in suffering she caused, shouldn't bring such exhilaration, but…

"Admit it," a voice that sounds a bit like John's whispers. "You can take some satisfaction in a job well done."

"Lady Arkham's plan is already in motion. This doesn't change anything!" Oz insists despite his face blanching—he looks much, much more like the boy she once knew than the hardened criminal he grew up to be.

"Keep telling yourself that. And if you want to make things easier, tell me where she is."

"No way," he shakes his head resolutely. "I'm no narc."

"For someone who claims to be smart, you really can't see that you're only a pawn to her?"

"I'm not a pawn, you prick," Oz answers, somehow puffing out his chest, despite the circumstances. "I'm a soldier. I'll never give up the cause."

"Well, then," Twyla rolls him onto his back and handcuffs him, "enjoy your extended stay in Arkham's prison system."

A simple, two word text from Jocelyn brings the curtain down on their fight.

He's here.

**

The smoke clouds come into focus even though she's nearly hitting triple digits on the drive back. Black plumes, displays of extreme heat, rising up into the night sky. It's too light, too, by the manor.

"Please be in the batcave. Please be in the batcave," Twyla repeats in her mind, over and over, as agonizing minute after agonizing minute ticks by without any response from Jocelyn.

Prepping for the worst has been her life motto ever since her thirteenth birthday, but even all the years of practice don't have her ready to see her family home scorched and ransacked after she rips off her Batsuit, with burn marks all over the walls and at least half the front windows blown out.

Even worse: Harvey, standing on the second floor landing with a gun pointed at a cop's head.

"Twyla!" It sounds something like his normal, friendly greeting—or, it would, if he wasn't now aiming his pistol at her. "You finally grow a backbone?"

"Harvey," she raises her hands up, "put the gun down. Let these people go. They've done nothing wrong."

He barks out a laugh. "That's where you're wrong. This one," he grabs the cop, shoves him against the railing, "refused to obey my orders earlier, and I didn't say anything then. So now," he grabs his lucky coin out of his pocket, "we let fate decide. They say tails never fails."

There's nothing Twyla can do but watch, horrified, at Harvey's new master.

"Ah. Heads. Bad luck."

"No—"

Blast.

Splatter.

Justin Hooper's corpse over the banister.

"This isn't you!" Twyla insists, despite the ever-growing mountains of evidence—like his erratic behavior at Alexis' apartment the other day, like the six hostages lined up along the back wall, like the fucking dead body splayed out three feet away from her—that it is. "You can fight the drug!"

"I thought I could," he whacks his own head with his fist, "but I can't. This other side of me—the monster—he's too strong."

"You were the fiercest D.A. the city ever had! You took on plenty of tough battles then." Twyla cautiously walks up the first floor landing, ready to duck for cover in case Harvey's other persona comes back out. "What's one more?"

"You're right," Harvey mumbles. "Of course. This isn't me. Go," he shouts, his voice suddenly rising, "get away!"

A few of the hostages manage to flee down the stairs before he turns, but his assistant, Deborah, isn't so fortunate.

"You were killing my campaign from the inside, leaking information to Hill, weren't you?!" he accuses her.

"No," she gasps, "no, I—why would I do that? I didn't—"

"It doesn't matter," Harvey grumbles, his attention shifting back to the quarter. "Your life, Twyla's life, my life—it all comes down to chance."

"You know it doesn't, Harvey," Twyla answers, aiming for compassionate yet firm understanding. "You've always had a strong moral compass. Leaving everything up to chance is just a cop-out."

He shoves Deborah aside, like the others, and there's a glimmer of hope.

"You once said you wanted a better Gotham," Twyla reminds him. "Remember? Here, in the foyer, on those chairs," she nods at the charred remains, "when you told me you were seriously considering a campaign."

"Yeah," Harvey answers. "Yeah. A better Gotham. A safer Gotham. Maybe," he exhales, "maybe you can find it. If I get rid of him."

The note of disgust is different this time, directed inward, not outward, but Twyla's momentary sense of relief makes her miss it.

Until Harvey's got the gun to his head and that dastardly coin is flipping, flipping, flipping in the air…

Twyla darts forward, snatches at it, catches it between her pointer and middle fingers, and presses it into her palm for safekeeping.

Harvey's eyes pop wide at her daring, at the unexpected break in his 50/50 decision-making process.

"Twyla," his voice shakes, "I need the result."

She backs up slowly, raises her arms above her head again. "No, you don't."

And now she's staring down the barrel of a pistol.

"GIVE ME THE DAMN COIN!" Harvey roars, nearly spitting on her, his face a tortured, anguished mask of uncertainty.

"Without it, I can't—" his breath hitches, and he tries again, "I—I can't—"

Twyla eases her arms down as slowly as she can manage before pocketing his "lucky" quarter.

"Make your own call, Harvey."

"Please—I don't know what to do. I can't decide! It's too much. I can't—" he repeats, dropping to his knees, dropping the gun, too, and Twyla moves it away from him with all the discretion she has.

"You did choose," she consoles him gently. "You let those people go. You helped make a safer, better Gotham just now. Just like you wanted."

He nods miserably, having finally come back to himself, at least temporarily, and Twyla stays with him until the cops arrive on the scene to transfer him to a mental health facility a couple of towns over.

"You'll have access to the best doctors," she tells him, going for optimism. "And they should be able to flush Lady Arkham's toxins out of your system."

"Can't be worse than Arkham." Harvey's face clouds over, nonetheless. "But nothing's going to stop Two Face from emerging again. It's just a matter of time. He's part of me, now. I'm sorry," he adds, glancing down at something on the floor, frowning at it, "that it all turned out like this."

"Me, too," Twyla tells him, crouching down to pick up whatever he'd seen.

It's a campaign business card, back from before his mind turned into a house of horrors, when there appeared to be an actual plan and vision to move Gotham forward, and it makes Twyla wonder, "Is there any hope for this place when all the better days are tied up in the past?"

Considering the circumstances—her family's mansion torched to a crisp in several places, Gotham's ex-mayor being led out in disgrace, with the survivors of the attack all bound to be scarred by severe mental trauma—a "yes" has never felt further away, even after she reunites with Jocelyn in the Batcave, hugging her tight.

"When you weren't answering your phone—I wasn't sure—"

"Of all the times for the reception here to go down," Jocelyn jokes, wiping a tear away. "With how unstable Harvey had become, I didn't know what would happen when you arrived. I'm just glad you're safe. Or as safe as can be, these days."

"I know," Twyla murmurs as she settles in at her computer, pulling up their various files and news clippings on Lady Arkham's latest activity. "These past few weeks have been difficult, to put it mildly."

"Are you alright, given everything that's gone on?" Jocelyn asks, with enough concern that Twyla looks away from the screen. "Between hearing about your dad's actions, then facing off with Harvey and Oswald in such short order after that first bout with Lady Arkham, you've been through the wringer. Both mentally and physically."

"It's been a lot, but," she turns her attention back to the task at hand, "hard to say it wasn't all worth it, since now there's only Lady Arkham left to handle."

"For now," Jocelyn mutters.

Twyla's ears perk up at her snark. "What was that?"

"It's just—lately, it feels like being Batwoman is becoming more and more of a full-time job for you, and I can't tell if it's from necessity, or because you like it that way."

"If the city could harbor less fugitives, freaks, and criminals, believe me, I'd be the first person celebrating. It would be a nice change to just be Twyla Sands, everyday tech mogul billionaire," she deadpans.

The comment has its intended effect, lifting some of the worry lines away from Jocelyn's forehead even if Twyla's cringing at her own commentary, at her need to lie to her best confidant.

"Because really, who am I without Batwoman? Do I only want to be known for my family's name, for designing tech that's mostly been a means to an end for myself more than Gotham?"

The internal monologue doesn't sit well with her—reflections threaten to unexpectedly turn into whirlpools in the best of times, to say nothing of when her body and mind are beaten and bruised—so she pushes it back for another time, another week, another month, when she's not busy keeping the city off the brink of self-destruction.

At the moment, that work can be done from the relative comfort of the Batcave, as she and Jocelyn review Oz's drunken spending spree during his brief reign as CEO and chase after the few leads on Lady Arkham's whereabouts.

"Small victories," Twyla tells herself until her phone pings with a new notification.

"Huh." She taps it and has to laugh at the map that comes up to display a steadily blinking, moving dot. "Looks like someone is taking one of Lucius' new motorcycle prototypes for a joy ride."

Jocelyn frowns. "I thought he locked everything away."

"He did, but," she gets up and grabs the keys to one of her "normal" rides, a sea-green BMW Z4, "he didn't account for Catwoman."

**

Intercepting Alexis is easy enough, seeing as there's only two ways out of Gotham, and they split in opposite directions.

And, with Twyla's access to her tech restored, she hacks into the pilfered bike to cut it off at the city's lone rest stop.

Alexis walks the seemingly faulty motorcycle into a parking space. "How's one of these going on the fritz?"

Twyla pulls up from a little ways away and parks next to her. "You could've asked to borrow it."

Alexis has the audacity to grin. "Hey there, Twyla. Should've known you'd be behind this lil sabotage."

"I really should've known better than to trust you, Alexis," she retorts. It's stupid, feeling any pain or remorse or regret over this selfish, pain in the butt criminal.

Alexis keeps smiling, reaches across the rolled-down driver side window, taps Twyla lightly on the nose. "Kinda told you that all along, girl. Not my fault you're only learning your lesson now. And speaking of lessons, the advanced hacking I needed to unlock this baby?" She pats the motorcycle fondly. "Great practice for whatever else I might do next. Your security systems are a bitch to infiltrate."

"Thanks," she answers begrudgingly, "but we'll still need to upgrade our protocols to stop the likes of you."

"Don't sweat it—I've got no plans to come back to Gotham anytime soon. It's turning into a house on fire, and I'd rather not burn alive. You don't need to, either," she adds. "This city loathes you. Why not leave it behind?"

The question's never seriously crossed her mind before, not with how her family's roots touch every part of her home.

That used to be a comfort. The idea that she was preserving the Sands family legacy.

Pruning it sounds more prudent now.

But letting that vine wither and die without even trying to save it?

That's not her style, no way, definitely not.

"I don't run away from challenges," Twyla answers coolly, and a hint of a defensive blush colors Alexis' cheeks.

"Maybe you should, once in a while. It's good to understand your limitations. That's why I've never gotten my ass kicked so badly that I can barely walk," Alexis counters, with a hint of sharpness coming out to play.

"Some causes are worth it."

"If you say so, Bats."

There's a renewal of that bemused resignation Alexis had when they first met, a near disbelief that anyone's morals could be so uncorrupted.

"Yeah," Twyla nods, opening up the close of their…

She can't define what they are, exactly. Not strictly enemies, nor allies, nor just friends, not with that near-kiss after the train depot debacle.

"It doesn't matter, anyway. She's leaving for good."

Alexis recognizes it, too, in how she takes a softer tone. "I gotta say, it's pretty cool of you to let a master thief and criminal go free."

"I owed you," Twyla offers by way of explanation, not wanting to dig too deeply into her thought process. "And you're not—okay, this is gonna sound awful, but you're not scum. You're not Cobblepot or Lady Arkham or Joe Cool."

"I'm more like them than you wanna think," Alexis tells her, crossing her arms, rolling her eyes at how they're having this conversation again.

"Well, if that's the case," Twyla replies, "then I hope you can stay out of trouble." A pause. A correction. "Stay out of big trouble."

Alexis grins at the adjustment. "I'll try, but no promises." She revs the bike back to life and looks back at Twyla. "Same goes for you."

"Same answer."

Alexis laughs at that, gets back on the road with one final glance to her rearview, and Twyla wonders if her ties to the city are nothing but an anchor hitch.

"Packing up and leaving would be absurd," she reassures herself on the drive home. "My life's not that transient. I can't pack everything I need into a duffel bag. Plus I have the company to consider, and Jocelyn. She's gotta be at least somewhat relieved that Lady Gotham is the only person on our radar now."

"Alexis officially headed out, Jocelyn," Twyla calls when she gets home. "So things are kinda back to normal—or as normal as they get for us."

The tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the main hall is the only greeting.

"Jocelyn?"

The double doors to the lounge are cracked open, and Twyla steps in, expecting to find her cleaning, perhaps.

The only traces of her in the room are her reading glasses on the pool table and a bloody handprint on the fireplace mantle.

Chapter Text

A FaceTime call from Jocelyn interrupts Twyla's panic.

She swipes at her lock screen, curses her trembling fingers for failing her, then manages it on a second effort, opening her screen recorder app just before answering the call.

"Twyla Sands." Lady Arkham's disembodied, distorted voice comes through before she steps into the shot. "You should be rotting in a padded cell. Instead," there's a harsh scraping sound as a wooden chair, with a clearly rattled Jocelyn handcuffed to it, gets dragged into the frame, "your housekeeper, the woman who raised you like her own daughter, will suffer in your stead. But don't worry," she whacks her with her staff, and Twyla gasps as if she absorbed the blow herself, "you'll get her back eventually. Piece by bloody, broken piece."

The light in wherever they are—it looks like a dingy basement—flashes in Jocelyn's glasses as she adjusts them and sits up with her mouth drawn in a thin line, refusing to give Vicki any satisfaction by crying out in pain.

The call ends there, and Twyla's legs know what's going to happen before the rest of her does, carrying her to the kitchen so she can retch into the sink.

"I've always thought I'd be the one getting kidnapped or beaten or tortured—not—never—"

Twin waves of nausea and guilt make her spit again before she collapses, before Jocelyn's voice comes to her, as it so often does in a crisis.

"Worrying only prolongs suffering. Taking a step to solving your problem, even a tiny one, is the better move."

She starts with going down to the Batcave, but can't bring herself to make tea to calm her nerves.

The video uploads to the Batcomputer without a problem, and Twyla slows it to a crawl in her media player, studying the scene for any identifying signs—a window with a view out to a street sign, perhaps, or an easily recognizable landmark, like Knotting Hill, but Lady Arkham's too clever to make such a simple mistake.

Twyla winces as the video replays Jocelyn getting hit, but the parts just before and after intrigue her.

"Jocelyn's adjusting her glasses an awful lot, and they don't look too askew despite the contact," Twyla notes. "I know she got new ones recently, so I can't imagine the fit is too bad."

The flash of light bouncing off the lenses, illuminating other parts of the room, sets off a cartoon lightbulb above her head.

"Of course! She knows the computer can use multiple reflection angles to recreate a model of the room. It's brilliant."

Her burst of pride drowns under regret that Jocelyn needs to apply her smarts in such dire straits to begin with.

"Still," she thinks as she compiles all the clips of Jocelyn fiddling with her glasses, "it's a start."

She scans the virtual version of the room for leads, but can't find any—Vicki or her minions must've scrubbed the place of any personality at all, removing any possible means to track their location, and Twyla's losing hope at a dangerous clip until a square of metal on a back wall catches her attention.

"Looks like a furnace or fuse box," she mutters, zooming in, "and…"

Finally, something comes up.

"Rogers HVAC. Must be the servicing company. I can use their records to find home addresses for their clients."

There's also a mason's stone in one corner, across from stairs leading up to the first floor.

"Built in 1945 by the Gotham City Order of Stone Masons. Ok," Twyla nods, willing herself to accept her progress, "that'll at least narrow things down."

She texts Lucius to pull Rogers' files ASAP and cross reference them with houses built by the masons in the 40s. Realizes she'll have to say why exactly she wants him to do that.

It's marginally easier over text. She can't bring herself to say the words aloud.

Can you cross-reference some items for me? Lady Arkham's got Jocelyn. I'm searching for her now.

His call comes through a minute later.

"Lady Arkham kidnapped Jocelyn?!"

"Yeah," Twyla answers dully, still slightly stunned that she's confirming such awful news, that her life's been ripped asunder in all of an hour or so. "I was out since Ale—Catwoman took something of mine."

"Did you get it back? And is she involved in this?"

"No and no—she's on her way outta Gotham, not that it matters now."

"Of course not," Lucius agrees, the slight whirr of a laptop cropping up in the background. "What can I do to help?"

"How soon can you get here?"

"On my way."

She quickly relays the information and Lucius talks her through developing a rudimentary map while he's driving, but it's not quite focused enough for her needs.

"Hey," Twyla beckons to him as he rushes into the Batcave. "Sorry to be a pain, but I've got too many results, still."

"Let me check the video, see if there's anything else."

He clicks play, gasps much like Twyla did at Vicki's cruelty, but pauses the video just before it cuts out, at a spot Twyla hadn't dissected.

"There," Lucius points at the small window, enlarging the still image. "I think that's a bus stop. So if we add that to the search filters…"

He selects "city bus stops" as an additional parameter, and a good fifteen properties vanish off the map.

"Four options," Twyla notes, breathing a small sigh of relief. "Thanks, Lucius."

"Sure. Let's see what we've got to work with." He plugs the approximate addresses in quickly. "We've got one historically preserved building in Gotham's historic village—that's on the museum's property, I can't see Vicki accessing that without anyone knowing about it."

"One down," Twyla notes, running searches herself to save invaluable seconds. "One is a bowling alley, so that can't be it, either, and the other—"

"They're at her childhood house. The one I'm looking at right now," Lucius brings it up on the Batcomputer, "is registered to Vicki's parents. Bob and Diane Vale."

"Her foster parents," Twyla corrects him automatically.

"Wait, what?"

"Long story," she tells him. "I gotta go."

She turns to go retrieve her gear, but Lucius catches her arm. "Your newest suit isn't over there."

He retrieves another all-black outfit from where he'd draped it over a chair.

"Thank you," Twyla murmurs reverently as she takes it in. "Sorry I didn't notice."

"It's understandable. I'm just glad I got this done before you face Lady Arkham again—it's been a while since you upgraded. This version has improved aerodynamics, more tightly woven armor, and improved shock absorption," Lucius explains, pointing out the new features.

"Feels great," Twyla notes after she's put it on. "Like I've already been wearing it for a while."

"Great to hear. And Twyla?"

"Yeah, Lucius?" she asks just before she gets into the Batmobile.

"Say hi to Jocelyn for me when you get her back."

She manages a smile at the unspoken vote of confidence. "I will. Tonight."

**

It's surreal to pull up to a generic slice of sleepy, tree-lined suburbia in the Batmobile, but it's Gotham—a city-sized personification for Hemingway's iceberg theory if ever there was one.

Case in point: the first basement step in the Vale house is booby-trapped with a shotgun slotted in behind the wooden stairs.

Twyla presses on the side of the second step to trigger it, relieved when only one bullet fires. She dodges the rest of the staircase and leaps down to the basement floor, landing gracefully thanks to her new cape.

"Anyone there?" Lucius asks, his voice coming through clearly in her earpiece.

"Nope. No Vicki, no goons, no Jocelyn. I'll see what I can find."

Another bloody handprint on a wall sends her stomach churning, and the chair and the camera from the video are still in place, but otherwise…

"There's not much so far," Twyla murmurs, scouring the environment slowly, painstakingly, not wanting to miss anything. "More blood here, on the floor." It's still somewhat wet, and there's an unmistakable boot print in it.

"Looks like they shoved or dragged Jocelyn up against this wall. And," she bends down, "actually, the trail goes under the wall."

She lines herself up directly with the blood stains, squats down so she's a bit shorter than Jocelyn's height, and knocks.

"It's hollow," she confirms. "They had to come through here!"

"Why would the Vales have a fake wall in their basement?" Lucius wonders.

"I have no idea, but," she feels along the side of the wall, finds a lever in a hairline crack, gets enough purchase to pull it down, "I'm gonna find out."

It's a small, completely unremarkable storage room with a few cans of paint, a toolbox, a broom, and a shovel, and a couple of buckets.

"Seems normal. Maybe they just didn't want guests to see a messy storage area," she comments, her heart sinking before she spots the grate on the floor—it's not set in properly. "Or not. I think there's some kind of passageway down through here—they must've just come through."

She slides it off and drops down a small ladder.

"So you're underneath the house?"

"Sort of," she tells Lucius. "It's almost a cave. A tiny one."

She reaches up to activate her cowl's night vision, but there's a bare fluorescent bulb on to illuminate the space, and her breath catches as she takes everything in.

"Are they there? Did you find them?"

"No," she answers Lucius after a moment. "But I think I found out why Vicki turned out how she did. So consumed with anger and hate."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm switching to my video feed so you can see it."

She pans across the shackles, the blood-stained belts, the heartbreaking, messy scribbles of "Help!" and "I'm sorry" in purple chalk, followed by black and red scrawls of "Cut them…hurt them."

"Jesus. The Vales tortured their own foster child?"

"Sure looks that way," Twyla confirms, shutting off the feed, trying to restore her concentration to the task at hand. "And she did the same to Jocelyn." She picks up her fallen glasses and stores them in one of her pockets.

"Is there anywhere else to go from there?"

"No, there's no other path or anything. But Jocelyn helped me out before. Maybe she managed it again."

She examines her surroundings closely, grimacing at a doll with its eyes stabbed out, before picking up a piece of blue chalk.

"This is the only one out of the box," she mutters. "So maybe…"

She turns her attention back to the walls, searching for the distinct, lighter color against the drawings, pleas, and threats from Vicki's youth, and finds it in the form of stick figures.

"Stick figures?" Lucius echoes her after she reports back.

"Yep. It looks like they're all heading in the same direction. Running, almost." Twyla frowns, studying the scene from left to right like a book. "And there's…"

She gasps at the crudely drawn but still distinctive building, at the misshapen letters reading free them all.

"Arkham. Vicki wants to break everyone out of Arkham Asylum," she realizes. "Call Patrick and the GCPD," she tells Lucius as she starts her hasty climb out of the homemade torture chamber. "And I'll be there as fast as I can."

"On it."

Twyla shudders as she takes one look back at the hidden room, then whispers, "Thanks again, Jocelyn," just before she leaves.

**

The asylum's never looked particularly inviting, given its Gothic makeup of dark brick and hastily added prefab expansion wings to accommodate more and more patients, but tonight, standing against a backdrop of driving rain and heavy fog, it's even less welcoming than usual.

"Once more unto the breach," Twyla tells herself during her B&E. Fortunately, it's big enough that even Lady Arkham can't have guards stationed throughout the entire building. She's just snuck through one of the main psych corridors when a speaker crackles to life.

"Batwoman to the recreation room, please. Batwoman to the recreation room."

She grits her teeth and follows the villain's missive.

"Good of you to show up so quickly," Lady Arkham responds from the middle of the room, with folding chairs arranged around her as if she was just leading a group therapy session.

"This ends now, Vicki. Where's Jocelyn Schitt?"

She laughs. "Well, well, well, who would've guessed that Twyla Sands would have the bat on her payroll?"

"Answer me!"

Twyla's fury surprises even herself—she normally prides herself on her control, on her steadfast refusal to ever bite on to bait as anything more than a means to distract her enemies, but normally, Jocelyn would be several miles away, safe and sound in the manor.

"Although that wouldn't spare her from being concerned about my well-being," she reflects, thinking of all the nights she'd arrived home nursing a bone bruise or cuts to her face, along with the nights she hadn't, when her street fights lasted into the next morning because there's always someone else to handle.

"You sure about that?"

The thought sounds an awful lot like something Alexis would say, but Lady Arkham's cruel, calculated barb gets her out of her own head.

"Jocelyn's whereabouts don't matter," she explains calmly. "She'll be dead soon. Another corpse to join the collection in the Sands family."

"No one's dying tonight."

Her declaration elicits another laugh. "Your confidence is impressive. Foolhardy, to be sure, but impressive. It won't be enough to spare the housekeeper, though. Or the rest of Gotham. A lesson needs to be taught," Vicki tells her, curling her free hand, the one that isn't gripping that damned electromagnetic staff, into a tight fist. "They won't look away from atrocities—not again."

Her voice drips with more venom than usual, a bit of heat sticking to her otherwise steadily delivered monologue, and Twyla latches onto it. "When did Gotham look away from you, Vicki?"

"Trying to psychoanalyze me, are you? That's cute," she sneers. "You have no idea what I've been through. What I've done to be here right now."

"I know you suffered. In ways that no child should ever have to. At the hands of parents who were supposed to love and protect you. I don't know how you survived," Twyla empathizes, but her last sentence is a mistake.

"They weren't my parents!"

She blasts Twyla back with a pulse from her staff, then snarls, "You want to know how I survived? Off of my dreams. Dreams of the revenge I'd take on them, and this whole broken, forsaken city!"

She bolts, running back through the high-security psych ward, and Twyla gives chase, ready to run, but Vicki's already come to a halt at the end of the hallway.

"Just in time for the show," she announces, looking up, away from Twyla, into one of the cameras that her followers have undoubtedly taken over. "Release the prisoners!"

A mechanical buzz and the uniform, outward swing of eight sets of steel doors follows, and Vicki engages with their former occupants immediately.

"Children of Arkham: listen to me!" she commands, pulling her mask off and discarding it on the ground. As much as Twyla hates to admit it, she cuts an impressive figure. "Freedom is yours. The only thing standing in your way," she points her staff down the hall, "is Batwoman."

Shit.

They charge in a frenzied stampede, which makes it easier to incapacitate most of them with a single smoke bomb so she can resume her cat-and-mouse game with Vicki, running through the next corridor to the cafeteria, weaving through chaos and decking the few prisoners who are attacking the cowed orderlies. Most of them are just fleeing Arkham, though, neither fighting anyone nor chasing a lunatic further into its depths, so she leaves them be to pursue her quarry.

"Come on, Batwoman! If you want to see Jocelyn alive one last time, you'd best pick up the pace!" Vicki's taunt echoes in the tightly spiraling stone staircase, leading down, down, down to…

"Welcome to Arkham's catacombs. Fitting for your final resting place, no?"

Her sing-song voice bounces off the walls and shadows flicker in dim overhead lights.

"You really need some professional help, Vicki."

"Says the woman dressed as a bat."

A gasp of pain from Jocelyn cuts through her.

"I did warn you not to make me wait."

"I'm coming!" she cries out desperately, cursing their location—she can't orient herself with any sort of digital map, not with being so far underground, so her only chance is to keep Vicki talking. "Just let Jocelyn go!"

"Sure. Bring me Twyla Sands first." The response is almost too calm—Vicki knows her advantage. "If anyone can find her, it's you."

"Release Jocelyn first," she barters, "and I'll do it. I'll bring Twyla to you."

"Oh, no, no, no," Vicki clucks her tongue. "We're in my family's territory. We negotiate by my rules. And besides, I'm intrigued. You're doing all this—risking life and limb—for one middle aged woman! The reporter in me has to ask: why?"

"Because she's innocent," Twyla grasps for a straw, and Vicki rejects it with a derisive snort.

"Bullshit. She was the Sands' secret-keeper. Their sin-eater. Thomas Sands tortured plenty of innocent people until their minds broke, until they were just shells of themselves. His daughter's lived with a silver spoon in her mouth all her life because of it, and for some reason, you're attacking me, rather than her!"

"You've killed people, Vicki!"

"You should be thanking me for it!" she hisses. "Carmine Falcone, Hamilton Hill—they deserved to die."

"They deserved their day in court!" Twyla insists, even if she almost doesn't believe that herself, even if it's good to hear the other woman's voice growing louder as she picks her way through this underground maze, and she can't say she fully disagrees when Vicki retorts, "What, so they could bribe corrupt judges and get everyone to look the other way? No. My justice is final, and absolute."

"It shouldn't be," Twyla tries, hoping to get another response, but Vicki only says, "Your ideals will always make you an outcast here, Batwoman," before going silent.

Fortunately, whether it's by design or sheer luck, she only has to walk about another four minutes or so before rounding a corner and spotting a massive, open room, with—her pulse spikes at the sight—Jocelyn tied to a chair (a sight that's become all too common all of a sudden).

Twyla runs the final twenty-five yards or so to her, disregarding that there may well be a trap lying in wait for her, and immediately starts hacking at the metal shackles keeping her bound.

"Hang on, Jocelyn. We'll be out of here soon."

"Know we will," she mumbles, dazed from exhaustion and the day's pain that Vicki inflicted on her. "Knew you'd come—come get me. We—I raised you right."

The single, personal pronoun comes out with no small hint of pride, and Twyla agrees, "You did. Now, did you happen to see where Lady Arkham went? Because I don't think she wants us to leave right away."

"No. She'll do that. Disappear. 'S creepy."

Jocelyn's stupor breaks for a second, and her eyes focus on a point near Twyla's shoulder. "Behind you!"

She dodges Vicki's attack, readies herself to fight, but has to drop her fists immediately.

Once again, she wasn't the target.

Once again, Jocelyn is.

Vicki's got a firm, cruelly possessive grip on her shoulder, and she's pointing her deadly staff at the underside of her chin.

"Interesting, how the two of you are so familiar with each other," she observes. "I wouldn't have guessed Batwoman would be on a first name basis with Twyla Sands' help. Almost as if you've met before."

"It's called compassion," Twyla half-lies.

"Sounds more like deflection to me. It makes me wonder—do you really care about this woman?"

She deals Jocelyn a heavy blow across the face, and Twyla's charging at her without a plan, no better or more in control of her emotions than an Arkham prisoner.

"Batwoman—no!" Jocelyn gasps.

"Let her make her decision. Reveal her true character, her true self, like I have. Take off the mask, or…"

"No!" Jocelyn cries again.

Twyla ignores her adversary, addresses her greatest defender directly.

"I've always said I'd do anything to keep you safe, Jocelyn. I'm not going back on my word now."

"No. It has to be a trick," Vicki breathes after Twyla's removed her cowl, her eyes shining bright and wide in surprise. "You could never be the kind of person Batwoman is. Twyla Sands—she's only ever looked out for herself. It's in her blood."

"Would I be here if that were the case, Vicki?" she asks quietly. "If I only cared about my own well-being, would I be underneath Arkham Asylum to rescue a…what did you call Jocelyn? A middle aged housekeeper?"

The staff drops away from Jocelyn's face a bit, and Vicki turns toward her.

She's listening. This might actually—

She flips her staff with alarming speed, blasts an energy pulse at Twyla's face.

No cowl means no protection means her right ear is gushing blood.

"Of course you'd do all that," Vicki gloats, having cracked a code in her warped mind. "You wanted to trick me so you can keep preying on the weak. The defenseless. Just like your father!"

"You're right about my dad. I can't defend his actions, and I won't try to. But I'm trying to make up for his crimes, for how he mistreated people who needed him to help."

"Enough lies. Enough justifications. You can't talk your way out of dying down here."

Vicki crouches, then springs forward, and Twyla can't parry her attack quickly enough, gets driven into a giant stone pillar—one of the foundations of the entire asylum.

Vicki charges again, eager to quite possibly impale her, but she dodges the staff, grabs it, and slams it into the concrete. Vicki yanks it out, but it comes free with an unsettling unsticking noise, bringing a sprinkling of dust and debris down from the high-arching ceiling above.

"Enough," she says, taking her eyes off Vicki to risk a glance upward. "This place is becoming less and less stable—"

Vicki attacks again, swinging her staff downward, aiming to blast a hole at Twyla's feet, but she's ready for it and steps on the weapon, interrupting its power flow and reversing it back on Vicki, making it her turn to slam heavily into another pillar.

The ceiling shakes again, more forcefully this time, as if it's trying to deliver a warning before completely collapsing, and Jocelyn has to literally tip her chair over and fall onto the floor to avoid suffering fatal head trauma from falling stone.

"You don't have to do this, Vicki!" she calls. "We can walk out of here."

"Yes, I do!" she snarls, her hair all out of place, undoubtedly obscuring her vision. "The sins of the Sands family end now, with both of you!"

The threat to Jocelyn turns her vision bubbling, seething red for a second, then hones it to a single point, one she'd made herself.

"I'd do anything to keep Jocelyn safe."

She finds the fallen staff reflexively, waits until the last moment to snatch it up, until it's too late for Vicki, in all of her obstinate, juvenile, blind rage, to defend herself from a heavy energy beam to the chest.

She hits the far wall with a sickening thud and slides down slowly, like a bug down a windshield, but she stirs as the catacombs start making good on their promise to cave in.

"Come on, Jocelyn," Twyla urges her with as calm a murmur as she can manage, fumbling with the metal restraining her, cutting at it with a Batarang until the shackles fall away.

"Twyla—is she—?"

"No," she shakes her head, hustling over to Vicki as fast as she can, but the pace is slow-going with her supporting Jocelyn's unsteady gait.

"This way!" Twyla yells over the cacophony of rubble, hustling for what's left of the exit, but Vicki shakes her head.

"I've seen your true face, Twyla Sands, and I'll never trust you! Never!" Vicki's own visage is contorted with pure, unadulterated hate, and she's sprinting for what must be another way out.

A horrified scream, cut off by a collapsing pillar, is the last Twyla hears from her.

**

"We've more than earned the right to crack this open, haven't we?" Jocelyn asks a week later over dinner, after they've both weaned themselves off enough pain medicine to feel fine about enjoying a glass of wine.

"Absolutely," Twyla agrees, grabbing a wine opener from an island drawer. "Lemme open that for you."

"Cheers," Jocelyn raises her glass after Twyla gives her a generous pour. "To ending the Children of Arkham's reign of terror."

Twyla chuckles after taking a long sip. "If only the public knew the half of it."

"Better that they don't. Especially what you told Vicki down in the catacombs. That was an awfully big risk to take."

"You're family, Jocelyn." Twyla gives her a small smile—grand displays of affection have never been part of their rapport. "Believe me, if I had to choose between saving you or saving Batwoman…I'd pick you every time."

Jocelyn looks away, swallows hard.

"You don't know how good it is to hear you say that, Twyla. Especially after everything that's happened…everything you learned about…well, my role in what your family—what your father did…"

"Water under the bridge," Twyla assures her. "Unlike him, you've done plenty to make amends."

"As have you. Don't lose sight of the fact that you've preserved plenty of good for Gotham—and spared its residents from quite a bit of harm."

Twyla waves off her praise. "It's not just me. It's our team. You, Lucius, Patrick, even Alexis—not to mention plenty of officers who gave their lives trying to stop Hill, Falcone, and Lady Arkham."

"Despite your modesty, and whether you're wearing a cape or not, I'm still honored by all you've done for this city, and by the fact that I can count you among my closest friends."

"Consider that honor reciprocated."

Twyla clinks their glasses together once more before her phone rings.

"Speak of the devil," she muses. "Commissioner Brewer. What can I do for you?"

"I'm only Acting Commissioner for now," he reminds her. "Wish I could've gotten the job under different circumstances than those Children of Arkham bastards killing D'Angelo, but you know how it is here—next man or woman up. We're all trying to make the best of things for now. Take it day by day."

"I know you'll do well in the role. Few people care for the city as much as you."

"Thanks, Twyla. And speaking of the city, are you gonna be able to make my emergency press conference tomorrow? I know you've been going through a lot lately, what with the business at the manor and Harvey, but it'd be nice to have some of Gotham's high-profile leaders there. Show that the city's behind me, that kinda thing."

She's gone back and forth on it since he floated the idea earlier in the week, a few days after the big fight brought down the asylum, debating between appearing as herself or Batwoman, but now, she has her mind made up.

"Yep," she promises. "You've got my support."

"Great. See you tomorrow."

She arrives at the GCPD's headquarters at quarter past six the next day, and the station's comms director leads her to Patrick.

"Twyla's here, Commissioner."

Patrick grimaces at the introduction, takes a drag of his cigarette, shakes Twyla's hand. "Still feels weird to hear that title attached to me. Thanks again for coming down to do this, by the way. I wouldn't have blamed you for lying low."

"Happy to be here," Twyla asserts. "I think it's time Gotham knows who I really am. And that I'm dedicated to making this city a better place to live."

"I see you've got your talking points down," Patrick answers wryly. "We'll start in a couple minutes. I just wanted to see—"

He scans the crowd milling about, and Twyla asks, "Looking for someone?"

"I was kinda hoping Batwoman might show up," he admits. "Would be nice to know she's keeping an eye on things. Plus," he chuckles, "she makes one hell of an impression on people."

"Wherever she is, I'm sure she's keeping Gotham safe," Twyla answers, trying not to smile at her secret. "And does this mean you trust her?"

"In a manner of speaking. She plays by her own rules sometimes, and if that turns into a problem, I'll be sure to tell her. But in terms of trusting her to fight for this city? Hell yes."

"Commissioner?" the comms person interrupts. "They're ready for you."

Patrick's speech hits all the right notes, striking a solemn yet hopeful tone, somber and realistic and positive all at once.

"Thanks for getting 'em warmed up for me," Twyla whispers as the applause fades and she takes to the podium, and Patrick flashes her a grin as he shakes her hand.

Twyla clears her throat and launches into her own dialogue, noting that, "I'm here to show my support for the Acting Commissioner, and for you, Gotham. My city. My home. I know many of you, or your loved ones, suffered due to my father's actions, and I want to apologize for that, and to let you know I'm committed to doing right by my own name."

It feels good, stepping out from behind her surname, and she continues, "My recent incident with Harvey Dent showed me that I can no longer sit on the sidelines when it comes to our revitalization. And to that end, a strong investment in Arkham Asylum will make it a premier mental health facility that helps the community's most underserved citizens, rather than harming them. Because the people of Gotham deserve to be safe."

She beams at the rousing cheers, basks in the sound for a moment, registers something else under it—the turning of a motor—then asks, "Please…there's just a bit more I want to say—"

The screech of car tires poisons the ambient noise, and shocked yells follow, with reporters scrambling out of the way of a news van that's banked up the GCPD's steps to run her over.

It's almost in slow motion as it goes airborne, and Twyla's reflexes finally kick in—she dives to the side and covers her head with her arms as broken glass showers her, tinkling against the sleeves of her blazer.

The attacker leaps out of the van after it's crashed into the building and levels his gun at her, but gets tackled by a cop before he can shoot.

Screams fill the air as Commissioner Brewer barks, "Clear the area, get that bastard to lockup, and for God's sake, turn off the fucking cameras!"

**

The TV feed at the Stacked Deck cuts out and switches back to one of GCTV-8's anchors.

One of the bar's patrons—a tall, lanky man with almost alarmingly shiny teeth and a shock of bright green hair—chuckles into his martini glass. He's careful to keep his voice down, to not attract attention, just like how the good (or not-so-good) doctors at Arkham taught him, but it's difficult.

After all, the idea of a better, safer Gotham?

That's just madness. Lunacy, even.

"I'll give you this, Twyla," he mutters under his breath, as if his new friend can hear him through the television. "You clean up better in a business suit compared to a jumpsuit. But for someone who's lived here her entire life…"

He allows himself one more giggle at the irony.

"You really oughta know better. And if I have to be the one to tell you, then so be it."

He tosses the rest of his drink back, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"After all," a grin twitches across his mouth, just for a second, "you do owe me that one little favor."

Chapter Text

Gambling's never been one of Twyla's vices, so a few heads turn her way when people clock her late night arrival at The Virago, but excessive wealth is a hell of a shield from prying eyes.

No better proof of that than her current target.

"Rumi Mori," Jocelyn supplies his name through her earpiece as Twyla watches him win two, make it three, consecutive games of roulette. "Import-export magnate, former Pipex CEO, and international arms dealer. Not that anyone knows about that nasty bit of business, not with all his philanthropy work."

"It's a great way to dodge taxes," Twyla observes, taking a sip of her gin and tonic, not taking her eyes off Mori as he snatches up his winnings. "Have you heard back from Patrick about the bugs they planted?"

"Nothing incriminating from the ones in Mori's home or his office, so we can surmise…"

"He's conducting his illegal enterprises here," Twyla finishes her thought. "Now, to just get a bead on something with a microphone nearby. Security is sticking awfully close to him. Gonna be hard to come up with a distraction or something."

"Gun runners do tend to have more enemies than friends."

"True," Twyla notes before she sees her way in. "There we go—he's left his phone out on the craps table. Looks like it's a standard iPhone. Should be a piece of cake to hack."

She fiddles with the tech built into her watch, and Jocelyn tells her, "You're in. Our signal's heavily encrypted."

"He's on a hot streak, and he's already been chatty with his entourage," Twyla answers. "He's bound to let something slip soon."

Sooner than expected, as a squall of static comes through with a panicked, "You?!" from Mori.

"What are—you're not supposed to be here!" he sputters.

The roulette wheel grinds to a halt, stopped by yet another person in a costume, this one with a cane—is it any wonder why Gotham All-Access started a "Freaks of the Week" segment on their show?

He lifts his hand off the wheel, but grabs the roulette ball and holds it out in front of Mori. "I'll let you keep playing if you can answer my question."

"Riddler!" Jocelyn gasps in recognition. "He was from your parents' time."

"Got any intel on him?"

"I'd have to do some research to see where he's been lately, but he's bad news," Jocelyn reports back, and Twyla turns her attention to him.

"I begin and have no end," he says, "and I end all that begins. Who am I?"

"I don't give a damn," Mori answers, approaching the masked man and almost poking him in the chest with his finger. "I told you at least five times, our arrangement is over."

"Oh, wrong answer," Riddler answers coolly before hissing, with sudden urgency, "Death, Mori. I am death."

"Okay. Sure, pal," Mori pats him on the arm, humoring him. "Listen, you know I own the casino, right? House always wins." He gestures to a security guard. "Get this clown outta here, please."

"C'mon, buddy, let's go."

Riddler smirks. "For you, mister brawn, an easy one: what's the one question you can never answer 'yes' to?"

"I don't know, and I don't care."

"Ooh!" he winces. "Incorrect. The answer is: are you dead?"

He clicks a button on the side of his cane, a scythe-like blade in the shape of a question mark pops up, and the guard is left gasping, grasping at the gaping hole where his throat used to be as he slumps back onto a table with his life spurting out onto red felt.

"It's good to be back, Gotham," Riddler sighs. "I've missed you. Now," he snaps his fingers, and a couple of associates brandishing machine guns slip out of the shadows, "let's kick this reunion off right."

Eight months of peace—okay, relative peace, interrupted by standard, low-level crime, but for Gotham, that's practically nirvana—shattered in an instant.

"Jocelyn? Get Commissioner Brewer on the line ASAP," Twyla commands as she slinks away from the main floor's bright lights, instinctively seeking out the most inconspicuous exit. "And I gotta get my suit."

**

Mori escaped Riddler's gruesome death trap having only lost two fingers instead of his life via grisly decapitation, no civilians were killed, and they recovered whatever surprise puzzle Riddler had wanted to set off. All in all, it could've been worse.

"You tear gassed a casino floor full of civilians. What the hell were you GCPD cowboys thinking?!"

Okay, not much worse, Twyla will admit, but still, this Director Amanda Waller from the Agency acts like they should've expected a deranged villain to pop up in the middle of a ritzy casino—although it is Gotham, so maybe she has a point.

If she does, Patrick's about to ignore it, but Twyla intervenes.

"You can't put this on Commissioner Brewer. I called for a distraction."

She folds her arms across her chest and stares down her glasses. "Then maybe you're not as smart as I thought, Batwoman. In the future, I hope to ward off such poor decision-making before it happens."

Rumi Mori's feeble moans of agony get the Director's attention, and she pinches the bridge of her nose. "Another bit of work: getting Mori a security detail while he's at the hospital. For now, my second in command will fill you in on what we know so far while I take care of that. Consider it a token of interdepartmental cooperation."

"Always nice when the government is so eager to work with us, isn't it?" Twyla murmurs as she leaves.

"She's got some nerve." Patrick scowls at the director's retreating figure, then tells Twyla, "Listen, I'd really prefer if you didn't share too much with Waller's lackeys. Especially when it comes to that puzzle. This is our town. We know it best. We'll catch Riddler."

"I won't give away too much, especially the puzzle, but I'm gonna play nice with them."

"Fair enough," Patrick agrees, heading out to meet up with the remaining GCPD squad members to plan their next move—and to probably respond to the three or so calls they could've missed during the fight with Riddler. "I'm sure we'll be in touch soon, Batwoman."

Fortunately, the other agent comes across as more reasonable and less domineering, less severe, an informed guess that's confirmed when she deadpans, "This is my first and only apology for Director Waller's behavior, because she's like that…" she glances back at her coworker. "Would you say seventy percent of the time, Agent Blake?"

Her barks out a laugh. "You might be on the conservative side."

"Appreciate the apology," Twyla chuckles. "And the warning." She steps forward for a handshake. "Nice to meet you…?"

"Special Agent Stevie Budd," she introduces herself. "Field agent on the Riddler case. And my partner," he steps forward, shakes Twyla's hand, too, "Agent Jeff Blake."

"I'm Batwoman, in case the suit didn't give it away."

"Yeah, definitely wouldn't have guessed that one," Stevie banters back before turning serious. "So, I put together this psychological profile of Riddler." She holds out a thick manila folder. "You'll see that he's, uh, changed from when he was last running wild around Gotham. And there's some pretty sensitive intel in there. The kind I'd rather not see shared, if you catch my drift."

"Believe me, I understand the importance of discretion," Twyla reassures her.

Stevie visibly relaxes at that, the shoulders of her well-tailored blazer dropping from where she'd been keeping them held up close to her ears, and long, silky black hair falls down over them. "Alright, glad we're on the same page. Now, to turn to Rumi Mori—any idea what Riddler wanted with him?"

"It sounded like they had some deal together," Twyla recalls. "And he was telling Riddler that, as far as he was concerned, they were done, and he'd finished his part of whatever they were working on. That was right before everything went to hell."

"What kind of deal?"

"I'm not sure," she answers carefully, trying to provide some assistance while still keeping her promise to Patrick. "Rumi's in a lot of sleazy business enterprises—guns, drugs, gambling. Could've been just about anything."

Stevie nods, jots down a note. "And, uh, just one other thing. Well, two. And they're both kinda personal, if you don't mind?"

Twyla inclines her head, but adds a bit of wariness to her response. "Go ahead."

"First off, I'm—I'm from here," she stammers a bit. "Gotham born and raised, before I left for college."

Twyla finds herself smiling a little at that. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Stevie smiles, too, at the prompting. "My aunt owned one of the little motels near City Stadium. So I know this area better than most, even people who've studied Gotham way more carefully than me. And I think I know you better than the average agent, too. And…"

She hesitates again, and Twyla waits her out this time. Finds herself wondering what may come next.

"About the criminally insane—Two Face, Penguin, Lady Arkham, and now Riddler," Stevie lists off some of her most recent enemies, "you're drawn to them, aren't you?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

Stevie winces. "I know, I know, it sounds bad, but," she goes on, "there's something in you that's pulled toward or attracted to the danger. The chaos. The energy."

"If anything, they're attracted to me," Twyla protests sharply, doing her best to disguise any reaction to Stevie's all too accurate analysis. "I'm putting the most conspicuous effort into lifting this city up, so naturally, I'm their first target. Believe me, I'd much prefer not having to go to these lengths to stop them."

"Mmhmm." Stevie makes another note. "Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, I really appreciated it. If you find anything else about Riddler…"

She hands out her card. Twyla takes it, tells her, "I'll be sure to get in touch with you."

She's ready to head out and get home when Director Waller calls out, "Batwoman."

She turns, manages a civil, "Yes?"

"Gotham's your city. I respect that. And as a sign of that respect, I'm letting you take the lead on hunting down Riddler."

"Thanks."

Waller's not done.

"However, if you start keeping pertinent details from us…well, let's just say our courtesy calls will become a lot less courteous. There's a lot of ways this could go, depending on your response."

"I thought you'd be smart enough to realize that threatening me isn't your best choice," Twyla tells her before grappling away, glad to leave before the director can get a word in edgewise.

She goes home, gets changed, then goes back out to meet up with Lucius and drop off Riddler's present.

"Huh," he murmurs, examining the item, which looks like an old-timey vinyl record, "it's giving off a micro-pulse waveform. It shouldn't take me too long to figure this out," he reassures Twyla.

"Great. Thank you."

She's about to leave her office when the door cracks open and a small drone flies in. Twyla instinctively looks at Lucius, master of all things technological at Sands Tower, but he returns her look of surprise.

"That's not my design."

A voice from seemingly inside the drone intones, "I come in peace." It strafes to the side, targeting Lucius. "Hi, Dad."

"Ha! Rachel?"

His adopted daughter follows her invention in and waves shyly. "Hi, Ms. Sands."

"Please, it's Twyla," she answers warmly. "Even though I haven't seen you in…gosh, I don't even know how long."

"Figured it wouldn't hurt to show my new boss what I can do with a drone," she laughs.

"Even though you're supposed to be at orientation?" Lucius asks.

"Is it okay if I'm giving Twyla a present?" she asks back before bringing the drone to alight on her desk. "It's a mini prototype I built in my spare time. High-end audio-visual, black-shell stealth, programmable for autonomous observation. It's small, quiet, and brilliant. Just like its designer," she adds with an unmistakable hint of pride.

Twyla smiles. "Thanks, Rachel. It's really sleek. But a word of caution: maybe tell people to look out for drones before you fly them into offices here."

"Noted."

She spots the Riddler's toy on their desk, curiosity lighting up her face even as Twyla and Lucius close ranks so she can't grab it.

"Don't—" Lucius warns.

"Too late. I'm interested." She re-establishes control of her drone and remotely lifts it off the desk to get an overhead view of the object. "What is this thing, anyway?"

"That's above your paygrade," Twyla tells her just as Lucius says, "That's what we're trying to figure out."

"You're trying to unravel a tech mystery and you wanna leave me on the sidelines?" Rachel asks.

Twyla defers to Lucius, who gives a small sigh. "You're sure you want in on this?"

"Absolutely." She turns toward Twyla. "If that's okay with you."

"Sure," she decides after weighing their options. "We could use all the help we could get with this little project."

"Great!" Rachel beams. "I'm gonna go tell the orientation leaders I won't be doing any more icebreakers."

She looks back as she leaves the office and calls out, "Thanks again! Catch you both later."

Twyla and Lucius both nod and wave before returning their attention to the disk, and Lucius carefully secures it in a briefcase.

"I'm gonna get started on this. I'm sure Rachel will be along in a bit."

"Did you ever…?"

The question hangs for a moment before he shakes his head.

"No. I—she doesn't know what I really do here at Sands Enterprises. What we do. But if she's going to be part of this Riddler project, then why not bring her into the fold?" Lucius suggests. "Going beyond regular 'I love my daughter and I'm proud of her' dad-speak…she's a marvel with tech, Twyla. Better than I was at her age."

"Our work can be dangerous," Twyla counters, "but she's got a good head on her shoulders. Comes from a good family. I'd be happy to at least extend an invitation to support Batwoman on a more regular basis."

"She'd almost certainly say yes and, as you mentioned, we could use the help."

"For sure." She walks over to the decoy chess board. "Do you have time to go to the lab?"

"Actually, the equipment we'll need is in my office. We can at least make some progress on cracking this before Rachel joins us."

Twyla pulls open her office doors. Finds Agent Budd on the other side of it, her fist raised, about to knock.

"Hello there. I'm Special Agent Budd, and this is Special Agent Blake." Her partner nods hello, same as he did the first time Twyla met him. "We're with the Agency."

"Nice to meet you," Twyla answers as politely as possible, hoping the feel of her handshake isn't at all familiar to Stevie. "What can I help you with?"

"We'd like to have a chat with you, if it's not too much trouble," Agent Blake says.

"Well, I am in the middle of a work project with one of my research associates."

"It'll only take a few minutes," Stevie volleys back just as sweetly.

"Okay, then. Just a few minutes," she repeats, and Lucius steps around the pair of agents, tells her, "I'll get started on this thing by myself, then."

"Sure. I'll catch up with you as soon as I'm done here."

Stevie and Jeff take a good long time meandering around her space, studying her office's personal effects, to the point that Twyla clears her throat and comments, "I'm sure you've got a lot going on today, and I don't want to keep you here too long, so can we get started on why you're here?"

"Yep. Absolutely," Stevie answers, but her tone's almost too calm, to the point that it's calculated, an idea that's further cemented when she says, "It's interesting, though, how much you put your love for Gotham on display here. All the photos and memorabilia. Didn't the city despise you not too long ago?"

"Despise is a strong word," Twyla tries to breeze past her analysis. "And I wasn't gonna redecorate because of a few bad weeks."

"No, of course not. Not with so many connections to your past," Agent Blake chimes in.

Twyla's smile turns to a sour simper. "I'm sorry, but I still don't know why exactly you're here, and as I said before, I've got to help my colleague with something."

"Well, to start with, I've been developing a psychological profile on the Riddler," Stevie explains.

It's almost too easy to fake confusion. "That crazy guy on the news? Attacked a…casino, I think it was?"

"So you've heard of him?"

"Yep. As has most of the city," Twyla snarks back. "So I'm rather at a loss as to how I fit into your equation, since I don't associate with criminals or terrorists."

"Really?" Stevie raises her eyebrows. "Interesting, considering you helped the GCPD capture Oswald Cobblepot last year. And you've been linked to other psychopaths in the past. They seem drawn to you."

Twyla's laugh rings hollow. "Welcome to the perks of what money and fame get you in Gotham."

"Funny thing about that," Agent Blake notes. "No one else seems to know who this guy is." He holds up a picture of the green-haired John Doe. "Except for you. We understand you two met while you were in Arkham and became fast friends."

"I'd say we got along fine," Twyla allows. "To me, that doesn't equal friendship. If you asked John, he might have a different opinion."

"Unfortunately, we haven't been able to," Blake responds. "He was released from Arkham months ago, but no one's seen him. We thought maybe you have."

"Nope. Can I ask why?"

"Because he listed you as his emergency contact," Stevie throws down her ace. "Which makes it sound like the two of you were closer than you want to admit."

"I never agreed to that, and that behavior sounds like the work of someone who'd be in Arkham." Her slight concern for his well-being gets the better of her. "Is John in some kind of trouble?"

"He's a person of interest," Stevie replies. "See, all the psychopaths in Gotham—Two Face, Lady Arkham, Penguin, now Riddler—are linked by these little webs. And you seem to be right in the center."

Stevie holds up her phone to display a picture of Twyla with Harvey and Vicki at one of the campaign fundraisers at the manor.

"So I was on good terms with an old D.A. and a reporter. You gonna arrest me for that?"

"No, of course not," Stevie answers, just as frosty. "But you know more than you're letting on, Ms. Sands. Either that or you're just extremely unlucky. Or…you really are a criminal, just like your father."

"First off, don't make accusations like that when you don't have firm proof. Second of all, get the hell outta my—"

An alarm blares, with a matching flash of a strobe light.

"Evacuation warning. You should leave," Twyla supplies, glancing at her laptop's notification: incoming video call from Lucius Fox.

"We'll pick this up another time," Agent Blake promises. She finally answers once they're gone.

"Lucius? What's going on?"

"Twyla! Get Rachel out of the building, and get yourself out, too!"

He's typing furiously, glancing back at his own oversized monitor to track something, and Twyla finds enough common sense to ask, again, "What's happening?"

"I—I solved Riddler's puzzle. He pulled one over on us."

"I'll be down in a minute to help."

"There's no time," he responds quickly, almost serenely. "Tell Rachel I love her. That I'm sorry I wasn't around more. That I wish I could have found her sooner."

His words, more than the alarm, trip her internal panic switch.

"Lucius—why—"

He beams at her, even with tears running down his cheeks. "We made a great team, Batwoman. Keep up the good fight, won't you?"

The screen cuts out seconds before the bomb detonates, and she runs out to her balcony to look down, to survey the damage, to let out an inhuman scream that might as well have been ripped from an animal.

**

Sands Enterprises Chief Technology Officer Lucius Fox died last Tuesday in what is being described as an industrial accident. Fourteen others were injured. A small service is being held for the tech giant, devoted husband, and loving father of his adopted daughter, Rachel…

Those words, or some slight variations on them, keep looping themselves around all of Twyla's thoughts, choking them off, leading her back to the inevitable conclusion over and over: "This is my fault."

She does her best to banish it away at the funeral.

"I'm gonna take care of your family," she whispers the promise. "And I'm gonna miss you, old friend."

"Well said," Jocelyn murmurs solemnly when they've stepped away from the casket.

"He—he loved working for you. I hope you knew that."

Rachel's sidled up next to her, but her words are barely audible, and Twyla puts an arm around her shoulders.

"I'm afraid I might have asked too much of him," she admits, and anger flashes behind Rachel's eyes.

"Considering what I saw of the remains…"

Her fire burns out.

"I'm s-sorry to ask about this right now, Twyla, but," Rachel soldiers on, blinking back tears, "it's hard to buy that this was just an industrial accident. So," she stands as tall as she can, all five foot two of her, "what were you guys working on? Please," she adds as Twyla stalls, weakening her already crumbling resolve, "it'd help to know. To have some kind of closure."

This was going to come out anyway, but…not like this. She'd envisioned a small gathering, almost a celebration, even. Not sharing the news in a church, standing over an almost empty casket.

She leans in, drops her voice low. "I'll tell you soon. Just not here."

"Why not?" Rachel demands, her voice rising.

"It's complicated," Twyla parries. "I know that sounds lame, and it's not what you want to hear, but it's true."

"Fine." Rachel grits her teeth. "How about a simpler question, then. Did that weird disk thing—was that what killed him? Did you put my dad's life at risk for that?"

"Rachel—I—we tested it, we thought it was safe—"

Revulsion, disgust, hate—Rachel goes through all the emotions for a second before she lashes out with a fierce whisper.

"I hope you can eventually forgive yourself, Twyla. Because I can't."

She shoves past her, toward her family, and Twyla and Jocelyn find a secluded pew for the service, slip out a side exit after it ends.

"Twyla!"

Whoever's calling to her is unexpectedly cheery, considering where she is, and the cadence to the greeting gets her to look up despite the misting rain.

It's John, from Arkham, decked out in a purple and black three piece suit that clashes horribly with his hair, waving jovially like they're leaving a wedding.

"John? What are you doing here? How'd you get out of Arkham?"

"I told you I'd see you again, didn't I?" he responds with his own question, as if they were former coworkers who ran into each other at a local bar. "We're two threads in the same stitch, you and me. And I got out when that crazy Lady Arkham broke in. What with all the mayhem and the fight with Batwoman, everyone who'd be in charge otherwise was too preoccupied to account for me—and some of my friends, too."

"What kind of friends?"

"Oh, all types!" John replies eagerly. "Ones in high places, low places, some locals, some who've been away. But some of them, like that smarmy Riddler," his face clouds over with the suddenness of a late spring thunderstorm in Gotham, "aren't exactly making life easy for the rest of us."

His mention of Gotham's latest criminal of the week piques her interest. "He's not?"

"No, of course not! Nothing's straightforward with him. We'd rather he just stay in his hidey hole by Mineo's Pizza and let us take care of things."

"You know where he is, then?" Twyla asks, feigning nothing but curiosity. "Where he lays low when he's not wreaking havoc on the town?"

"I know the general neighborhood," he mutters evasively, not meeting her gaze for a second. "But my other friends," he suddenly bows, "are why I'm here. I'd really like you to meet—I think you'd get along great with them. Plus," John flashes a sickly sweet smile at her, "it'd be a little favor to me. You do remember that, right? I know things at Gotham can be hazy, between the drugs and the repression and all—"

His laugh scales up too far, and Twyla nods, says, "Yeah, I remember," just to get him to quiet down.

"Great! So you'll come meet them?"

It's a tenuous lead at best in terms of getting to the Riddler, and her intuition's screaming no, but John's capable of gleeful torture and murder, so…

"I'd be open to it. Could you give me a couple of days to consider?" she asks. "Plus, I want to make sure they're all open to meeting me."

She holds her breath at the switch-up, but John nods agreeably and taps his temple. "Good thinking, Twyla! The doctors at Arkham told me I could be a wee bit impulsive, so I don't always stop to plan things like that. I'll be in touch after I check in with the guys and—and Harley." He blushes as he says her name, loses his train of thought, and Twyla files that reaction away before wondering, "How will you reach out to me?"

John laughs again, much more normal this time, thankfully, and slaps his knee. "You have to have a cell phone—you run a tech empire! Here," he's grabbing at her phone with startlingly quick reflexes, and she's too shell-shocked from the day's events to stop him, "let's take a picture to add to our contacts."

"Okay."

She plasters a fake smile on her face, and John's face falls at it.

"You don't look too enthusiastic."

"Just came from a good friend's funeral," she responds shortly, hoping it'll get John off her case.

"Lucius Fox, right? At least he went out with a bang!"

"Hey," Twyla snaps, staring daggers at him. "No making jokes like that about friends. It's disrespectful."

"Ah," John nods. "Of course. My apologies. I, uh, still have trouble in social situations sometimes. Knowing how to read them, that sort of thing." His own phone buzzes with a new message. "Listen, I've gotta go now, but it was so good to catch up, Twyla."

"Definitely," she lies.

John offers another wave and struts down the block.

"He's rather eccentric, even for Gotham," Jocelyn observes. "Do you think you can trust him?"

"I'm not sure, but he did just give me a lead on Riddler's whereabouts," Twyla points out. "Call Brewer and tell him to check GCPD's records for any unusual activity on the East End. Maybe we can get a better bead on Riddler's trail."

Jocelyn's already punching in his number. "On it."

**

"I gotta say," Patrick mutters as he glances down again, observing the city from their unexpectedly high perch, "this job's taken me to a lot of weird places, but an abandoned water tower is new."

"First time for me, too." Twyla uses an arm to shield her face against any possible attack as she tugs open the latch on top of the building.

She drops down, using her cape to slow her descent, and her arrival confirms what she'd guessed based on her heat vision.

"No one's home," she informs Patrick as he climbs down the ladder and jumps off the final rung. "Not that this place can really be called a home."

There's a spartan bed and desk, but otherwise, the dark space reflects the Riddler's madness, complete with several oversized televisions, a stacked pyramid of safes with cutouts of the madman's face on them, a replica of the torture machine he'd used to make Mori part with two of his fingers, and—

"Shit," Patrick says, pointing. "He got someone else already."

Twyla flips over the body, grimacing at the blood crusted around their ears and the burn marks on one foot.

"It's one of Waller's people from the Agency." She checks the name badges. "Agent Hernandez."

"Jesus. Is there anyone Riddler hasn't attacked since he's gotten back?" Patrick wonders, but his worry soon shifts elsewhere: namely, upward, as the latch on the roof gives an ominous clang.

His face falls. "That shouldn't have shut."

"And you shouldn't be in my home, Commissioner. Nor should you, Batwoman."

The sound of Riddler's voice makes both of them jump, and so, too, do all of the dormant screens that come to life, each providing a single message.

"Wanna leave? Get inside," Patrick reads.

On cue, the door to the death trap swings open.

"We're not doing that right away," Twyla decides. "We need more clues."

They comb through Riddler's personal effects and study the agent's body, plus his fallen body cam, to figure out how to proceed.

"So the trouble all started with the heated grates in the murder box." Patrick puts his hand near it. "Still warm. That must've set Hernandez's shoe on fire…"

"Which kept him from using the polarized glass to decoding which safe to open from the clues on the screens," Twyla follows his train of thought. "None of that explains the burst eardrums, though."

"Maybe Riddler did that to him before, somehow," Patrick suggests.

"Could be. He's crazy enough. Anyway," Twyla walks toward the death trap, "guess there's no time like the present. At least my armor's heat-resistant, so I should have time to work out the clues."

"Don't stay in there a second longer than you have to," Patrick tells her.

"Definitely not."

The door shuts with a sealing, eerie hiss and she starts cranking the wheel on the inside of it as fast as she can to reveal the hidden messages on the screen; even with her armor, she's pretty sure blisters are already forming on her feet.

"One won't see trouble, one tells no lies, ask the third if he's hiding the prize," Twyla recites as she stops turning the wheel and stumbles out.

"See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil!" Patrick summarizes. "We're looking for one with the ears missing—"

The speakers come blasting to life.

"Congratulations, you're almost done!" the Riddler cheers. "If you can withstand the short-range ultrasonic sound waves, that is."

Patrick drops to his knees and claps his hands over his ears—Twyla falls, too, but crawls toward the now-unlocked wall of safes, repeating Patrick's response over and over in her head: the one with the ears missing.

She locates it, grabs blindly at whatever's inside, and the noise dies when she pulls two items out.

"Whatever that is," Patrick says shakily while he's recovering his hearing, "damn well better be worth it."

"It's a homing missile," she realizes.

"Good God. Homing in on what?"

She scans it once, then again, but the unexpected result seems accurate. "A—a radio signal. And there's an iPhone," she grabs the other item from the safe off the floor where she'd dropped it. "An older model."

There's a new text: Open the emails.

"Dirt on Mori," she informs Patrick. "Details on how he and Riddler were working together."

"Why would he give you those?"

"Because," Riddler's ugly mug fills up the screens again, and he gives a loud, dramatic sigh, "it seemed as though you needed a reminder, Batwoman."

"A reminder of what?" she snarls.

"That, for all your talk of justice, you save plenty of terrible people. Shame you couldn't do that for Lucius," he chuckles, mocking her even more. "Or for the next victims."

"Next victims?"

The puzzle snaps into focus at once.

"Of course. Radio signals. That's—that's how he—"

"There you go, you've figured it out!" Riddler exclaims, clapping his hands. "Now multiply that death by roughly how many Agency members are patronizing our great city right now—or, rather, my great city—and you'll have most of this week's body count estimated in no time!"

Twyla bares her teeth at him. "Not if we can help it."

**

Getting the location of Mori's weapons cache is a cinch: one threat about hacking his precious computers and spilling his digital trail of illegal activity and he gave up the name and dock where his freighter was kept in an instant.

"Make sure you tell Waller what's happening," Twyla urges Patrick over the phone; they'd split up after surviving the world's worst escape room.

"Oh, I'll be sure to keep her informed," he reassures her; Twyla can nearly hear his smirk. "It's not every day that the GCPD finds out the location of a notorious criminal mastermind before the feds."

"Whatever gets you to loop her in on things. I know you're not doing it because you want to." Twyla exits the Batmobile, uses her enhanced vision to study the names of the ships. "Okay, Mori was telling the truth, his freighter is here. I'm gonna go dark now."

"Got it. We'll get backup there as soon as we can. Good luck, Batwoman."

"Thanks, Commissioner."

It's easy enough to sneak aboard the ship, to beat up the goons playing at guard duty, and to zap the Riddler with a Taser-esque Batarang, one of the final inventions Lucius crafted for her.

"Two hostages," Twyla reports to Jocelyn. "Getting one out of another Riddler trap now."

She gasps in surprise.

"Agent Budd?"

"Help!" she yells, the sound barely escaping the thick glass. "The floor in this death trap is heating up!"

Twyla cranks the wheel on the outside as fast as she can and yanks the door open, catches Stevie as she nearly leaps out of it.

"Thanks, Batwoman," she breathes. "Glad I swapped out my flats for sneakers earlier."

"You okay?" Twyla asks.

"Yeah, relatively, all things considered—"

A giant creak interrupts her sentence.

So does the floor of the ship falling away underneath them.

Twyla manages to pull Stevie on top of her to soften the blow a little bit, but she lands hard on her back, and her protective cowl isn't enough to keep her from seeing stars for a second after the impact.

It gets worse: bars shoot up around them, forming a massive prison, and they're suddenly being hydraulically lifted back to the ship's surface.

"I designed this cage for you, Batwoman. You oversized vermin. Running after all this bait," he gestures around him. "The missiles." He points to the massive weapons cache. "The hostages."

Riddler's insults come out calm, measured—he's in total control of the situation, which only becomes more apparent when he says, "The heroine who never compromises will die knowing she couldn't save everyone. See, this little game is lose-lose."

"Get on with the explanation, asshole," Stevie sneers, trying to hide her fear and pain with bravado.

Riddler tsks at the profanity. "No need to be impatient. As I was saying, it's quite simple. I'll ask three questions. Get them wrong, and these agents," he points to the people trapped inside each of his other two murder machines, "get torn to pieces. But answer correctly, and," he flashes Twyla a nasty smirk as he presses a button, "well, you're plenty familiar with this, aren't you, Batwoman?"

"What—"

The rest of her question gets buried under short-wave ultrasonic soundwaves.

Stevie collapses to her knees, just as Patrick had when he'd been exposed to the sound.

"No!" Twyla yells after Riddler cuts off the speakers.

He smirks. "Then which agent do you want me to kill first?"

She tries for a bargain: "Let Stevie go. She has nothing to do with this."

"Au contraire, you caped freak. She's part of the game," Riddler spits. "You can handle the sonic blasts with all your armor, but her? I estimate she can take four or five more at most before her insides completely rupture."

"I'm okay," Stevie grimaces, but there's already a trickle of blood coming out of both ears. "Just—just answer him, Batwoman."

"Fine." Twyla takes a deep breath. "What's the first question?"

"This one should be easy. Close to the heart," Riddler taunts her. "I solved a puzzle box for Batwoman. Now I'm dead. And I mean "dismembered, closed casket for sure" kind of dead. Who am I?"

"Lucius Fox," she growls.

"Correct! You saved one life. However—"

Another sonic blast, but this time, she's ready for it, wrapping Stevie in a bear hug as she falls, hoping her armored body and cape can provide some bit of protection against the sound.

"Thank you," Stevie gasps through the pain, but Agent Blake yells from his box, "Batwoman! Don't answer any more questions!"

"No," Stevie denies him, "I won't let you die."

"So touching," Riddler deadpans. "On to question two. Again, quite simple. I'm black and blue and bleeding from the ears. Who am I?"

Nothing comes to her for a second, but the horror dawns on both of them.

"I—he means me," Stevie mumbles.

"Don't answer!" Blake repeats.

"Tick-tock," Riddler murmurs. "Time's almost up."

She makes another shitty choice.

"Stevie. Agent Stevie Budd is the answer."

"Yes, indeed! You're good at this, Batwoman. Or are you?"

"Enough," Twyla snarls after she's gotten to her feet and helped Stevie up, trying and failing to ignore the deep bruises on the sides of her neck. "You've made your point."

"Almost," Riddler counters. "You just have to answer one final question, and it'll all be over."

"I'll distract him," Stevie whispers. "Just find a way to break us out of here."

Twyla nods, her eyes flickering around as she studies the environment.

"I'm the smartest mind you'll ever meet, the original genius with Gotham at my feet," Riddler tells them. "Who am I?"

"You're Riddler," Stevie responds immediately. "Riddler's the answer."

"Well done, Agent Budd. You got it so quickly, you nearly deserve not to get the blast."

While he's mocking her, Twyla mentally works out the escape plan.

"I can use my drone's capabilities to activate the missiles with the audio from Lucius' call right before he died since it included Riddler's missile activation. Make my phone the target so it's aimed at the bars. Get myself and Stevie into the murder cage and close the door so we're protected from the explosion."

It's risky. It'll require a small string of miracles.

But it's better than nothing.

"Batwoman. Your answer, please."

She activates her drone and, despite everything, feels a ghost of a smile twitch to life for a second.

"No more questions, Riddler."

"Well, then. I guess you want to share the suffering—"

"Missile armed. Ready to fire."

Riddler looks up in a panic at the sound of his own voice. "What—what are you doing?!"

One rocket gets shot almost straight up in the air, then comes down, streaking straight at the cage.

"No, no, no!"

Riddler still activates another sonic boom, anyway, and Twyla has to nearly fireman-carry Stevie into the cage.

She slams the door shut just before the missile hits.

Like a cockroach, Riddler survives the blast and, incredibly, starts applauding Twyla.

"Really, great job," he tells her. "You saved yourself and the agents. But you're still a fool to think you can save everyone, Batwoman."

He presses a button on his ever-present cane, and the missile launcher hums back to life, turns toward a new target.

"He's going to hit the city!" Jocelyn gasps in her ear piece.

"You're still a godsend, Lucius," Twyla thinks as she plays the radio signal through her drone—it's still fully functional—and flies it directly into the ocean, sinking it halfway between the city and the boat. The missiles all follow to suffer a watery death.

"This can't be happening—"

Riddler's lamentation abruptly ends, and he's gasping for air.

"You—" he points an accusing finger at Twyla before sinking to the ground, and she finds what's causing his distress: a poison dart lodged in the side of his neck.

"That wasn't me."

She rushes over, wondering what she can do to help, if there even is anything, when Riddler shakes his head.

"My friends were supposed to be here, but—that white-faced freak might've…" he coughs.

"Might've what?"

"They broke the pact," he rasps.

"The pact?" Twyla repeats just before Riddler lets out one final gurgling breath and keels over.

A bright searchlight from a helicopter above illuminates his now-dead body, and Twyla instinctively springs back from it, into the shadows, before she remembers: "Stevie!"

She's still seated in the cage, curled in on herself with her hands over her ears, but she's conscious, and Twyla drops to a knee, helps her stand.

"I—I didn't think we were gonna make it," she confesses as she lets her arms drop, shivering against the cold air whistling through the semi-wrecked boat. "Didn't know if that trap would hold up against the blast. I…"

She trails off in uncertainty, squinting at the light.

"The GCPD or the Agency is here—one of them has the helicopter," Twyla supplies. "You'll be okay. You were incredible. I'd probably be dead if you weren't here."

More squinting—maybe residual trauma from the blast.

"Stevie? Are you alright?" Twyla asks gently.

"I—" she takes a shaky breath, takes a look around like she's trying to confirm something, points at herself, and apparently verifies whatever she's thinking.

And Twyla finally registers the twin rivers of blood running out of her ears, down either side of her neck, and she knows before the words get out.

"I can't hear."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Twyla whispers uselessly, catching Stevie in an embrace as she slumps forward.

"There's gonna be hell to pay for this!" Director Waller threatens after she and Commissioner Brewer have come aboard and assessed the situation. "Agent Budd is deaf, Riddler's dead, and I'm not sure what role you," she points at Twyla, "played in this mess, but I'm certain you bungled things somewhere, Batwoman. And as for you, Commissioner," she rounds on Patrick, "I haven't found our partnership particularly fruitful to this point."

"Likewise," he snipes.

"Therefore, I'm taking control of the GCPD, effective immediately, and I'm demoting you to Deputy Ops."

Patrick's jaw drops. "You can't do that!"

"I assure you, it's well within my authority." She holds out her hand. "Your badge, please."

"You're making a mistake," Twyla warns as Patrick surrenders it. "Commissioner Brewer's been one of the good guys for years. The city's safer because of his efforts."

"Thank you," he tells Twyla, "but it's not worth your time. What our dear old Director wants, she gets, no matter the cost." A grim smile crops up. "Isn't that right, Amanda?"

"In this instance, yes. And what I want is for you to get the hell away from my crime scene."

"Sure." He turns back to address Twyla once more. "Keep her in check, if you can."

She offers an imperceptible nod before he stalks off.

"Not gonna stick up for your buddy?" Waller asks after he leaves.

"Right now, my priority is stopping whatever pact Riddler was a part of. If that means working with you, it means working with you," she replies coolly. "Every once in a while, the ends justify the means."

"Indeed they do," Waller agrees before heaving out a sigh. "About the pact…it's a pretty tight-knit criminal network, but they're not the most stable folks. Riddler was already having issues with one other member: Harleen Quinzel."

Waller pulls up her file on her phone and passes it to Twyla. "My plan was to turn Riddler and have him operate from the inside," she explains. "He's spent enough time working solo that it would've been possible. But now," her smile glints in the night, "I rather think you'd do the job just as well."

"Me?" Twyla asks.

"Oh, absolutely," Waller nods. "You're a woman who lives on both sides of the line. You know when to step back. When to cross it."

She mentally replays the many, many instances she's manipulated criminals and their associates with cash, with booze, with empty promises, with violence, and can't help but loathe herself a little as she says, "Yeah. I can do those things."

Waller beams, but her expression has none of Patrick's or Jocelyn's brightness when a mission goes right.

"So I was correct," she continues. "And since that's the case, you and I will be working together very, very closely, Twyla Sands."

Chapter Text

"I can't believe Director Waller knows who you are," Jocelyn repeats, still unable to get her head around it, even though they've been discussing that particular bombshell while she patches Twyla up.

"Me neither, but considering all the intel at her disposal, I guess it's not a complete shock. And from what Patrick said, she wouldn't have any moral qualms about exposing me if I don't go along with her plan."

"So you're going undercover as yourself to infiltrate the Pact?"

Twyla nods firmly. "I don't have much of a choice. And it is a reasonable plan," she admits.

"Still," Jocelyn cautions her, "be careful. About more than just the physical danger, although," she peers sternly over her glasses, "given how often I've been treating scars and using forceps to get debris out from under your skin to prevent infections, you'd do well to stop acting so invincible."

"I know I'm not," Twyla insists, wincing at the sting of rubbing alcohol as Jocelyn treats a laceration on her left shoulder blade. "And how else do you mean?"

She sighs, and in the Batcave's harsh fluorescent light, Twyla notices the worry lines creasing her face have gained more depth recently. "You've been moonlighting as Batwoman more and more often lately, and now taking part in this deception…I just want to make sure you don't lose yourself."

"I won't," she promises. "I don't give myself over entirely to my personas. You help with that."

"Glad to," Jocelyn smiles as Twyla checks her phone.

"It's John, confirming our plans," she says, quickly texting back. "I'm meeting him at the Stacked Deck, and we'll go from there to their hideout, where he'll introduce me to the rest of the group."

"That sounds…" Jocelyn's voice trails off. "Well, not good, exactly, but it makes sense as a plan, like you said. It would be nice if the other members of the Pact were a bit more…emotionally stable, shall we say."

"One can hope," Twyla agrees before she leaves, abandoning the Batmobile a good three blocks away from the Stacked Deck and setting its directions to home before walking the rest of the way to the bar.

It's easy enough to establish a repartee with John, to feign interest in what he's been up to since Arkham, to agree that he and his (most likely) criminally insane friends are nothing like the criminally insane Riddler.

"I don't mean to sound like I'm glad he's dead," John notes as he finishes his beer, "but he wasn't the best leader. So intolerably smug and annoying. But…I wish I hadn't hidden that from you. I should have told you about that connection back when we were at the church."

Twyla can sense his self-loathing is turning on, based on the low growl that's edged into his tone, and she heads it off quickly.

"It's fine, John. I get it," she reassures him. "You weren't completely sure you could trust me, or if I'd definitely be meeting your friends."

His mood flips. "But now you can trust me, and you are meeting my friends! And I can trust you, right?"

"Of course."

"Pinky swear?"

She downs the last dregs of her own beer to keep her sigh to herself and agrees. "Pinky swear."

John nods happily. "Now it's official: no more secrets between us." He grabs his phone out of his pocket. "I'll let everyone know we're on the way."

He leads them out the back exit, and an electric blue sports car is parked in the alley.

"Nice ride," Twyla notes.

"Thanks! I'm, uh, borrowing it. Wanted to impress Harley. She's meeting us here before we head over."

He's blushing again, and before Twyla can even offer up the bait, he does it himself: "I really like her, Twyla. So much that it feels kinda disgusting. Is that normal?"

"With someone you really like, or a crush?" She grins despite herself. "Sure."

"Phew! At first, I thought it was just some kinda disease." He glances down the alley, making sure they're still alone, then leans in closely. "If you wouldn't mind putting in a good word for me with Harley, that'd be great."

"Sure," she repeats. "I'd be happy to help you out. That's what friends do."

He lights up at that and high fives her. "Thanks, Twyla!"

Jumping the car doesn't take too long—as John points out, "the security on the old ones isn't quite so good."

The back door opens as the engine finally turns over, and a thunk—some rather hefty object, tossed on the back seat—follows.

A woman in clown makeup glides in smoothly, her fingers brushing the back of Twyla's head as she grabs her headrest for support, and there's suddenly cool metal pressed to her temple.

"Alright, Miz Sands," she almost purrs. "Ya got my attention. Now," she leans in closer, "gimme one good reason why I shouldn't redecorate this windshield with your noodle."

"Harley…" John tries to intervene, but she shushes him.

"Quiet, Puddin. This is my bit of negotiatin', got it?"

He nods and she relaxes a bit, and Twyla steals a glance at her grip.

Her finger's been off the trigger the whole time.

She takes a calculated risk—a poorly calculated one, to be sure—and grabs for the gun, bending Harley's wrist back a bit. Gets it.

"That a good enough reason?" she asks, returning the pistol to her.

"Definitely," she nods slowly, as if she's savoring the introduction, a giant grin splitting her face. "I like a girl who's good with her hands. 'Specially a rich one. And anyway, I couldn't do nothin' to ya. Chamber's empty."

She cocks the gun and a bullet pops out.

All Twyla can do is stare as she simpers, "Oops."

"Harley's funny like that," John pipes up as he backs the car out of the alley. "A real hoot, right?"

"Yeah. Definitely. Nothing like a little Russian Roulette to get to know a person," Twyla laughs, hoping her nerves aren't obvious.

"Ooh, I like her," Harley comments, leaning forward from the back seat to pat John on the shoulder. "You picked a good one, John," she compliments him. "I think Miss Twyla's gonna fit right in with us. But…I wanna be sure first. How's about we have a little test? I'll make it fun. Promise."

John's nodding like a bobblehead, and Twyla's dreading the possibilities, but asks, as pleasantly as possible, "What kind of test?"

"We're gonna get ourselves a little present. From there."

She points ahead.

"From Sands Enterprises," Twyla confirms, praying she's wrong.

"Yep! They got all kindsa great hacking tools there. Includin' a little something called a Phalanx Key. It's s'posed to open all sorts of tech. Get that for me, and I'll know you're on the level."

She tries not to imagine what Jocelyn's thinking on the other end as she says, "Sure. One Phalanx Key, coming right up."

**

It's frighteningly easy to get to the elevator that leads to R&D without raising any concern, but then, she's the CEO.

"A CEO who's about to rob her own company."

Is this for the greater good?

Waller would say yes, undoubtedly, but Twyla's plagued by uncertainty.

Those concerns only multiply at a yell of, "Wait for us! We changed our minds."

"You said you were going to stay in the car," Twyla hisses at Harley as she holds the elevator.

"We were bored," John apologizes. "And anyway, when else would we get to see a titan of industry in the grand Sands Tower? Can we have a tour?"

"John's just so impressed by you," Harley hums, a threat lying in wait. "You don't wanna let him down, do ya?"

"No," Twyla lies, again—she's lost track of how many times. "We can do a mini-tour since we're on a tight schedule."

"Mini tour! Mini tour!" John cheers.

She shows off the wings connected to R&D as quickly as possible, popping in and out before finally arriving at their destination, and she suddenly remembers, "We have a problem."

"What kinda problem?" Harley snarks.

"The Phalanx Key is in my old tech assistant's personal office," she explains. "His door has a fingerprint scanner."

"I'm sure you'll think of a way to get in," John vouches for her, trying to keep Harley off her back, and the answer comes to Twyla as she studies the rest of Lucius' domain.

"I can get bits of prints from his personal effects and recreate it as a digital image on my phone."

She proceeds as quickly as possible while also wondering how she can possibly stop time, as well.

"Maybe the scan won't work," she hopes briefly, but the door whirrs open.

Lucius' key card is resting on a shelf across from his desk.

"What the hell is going on here, Twyla?"

"Rachel? What—how—"

"I wanted to figure out what my dad was doing. He'd given me a key card a long time ago. Hadn't thought to use it until today. Now," she whispers fiercely, "can you explain why the hell he's got a room full of weapons built into his office?"

"I've thrown caution to the wind a bunch of times lately. Might as well stay consistent."

"This isn't how I wanted to tell you, or how I wanted you to find out, but," Twyla risks a look back to make sure John and Harley aren't getting antsy and wanting to help her search for the Phalanx Key, but so far, they're just enjoying their time in the workshop, touching everything when she'd expressly told them not to do that, "I'm Batwoman. Your dad helped me with everything. Tech, comms, weapon development, you name it. And right now," she continues, since Rachel's too stunned to speak, "I need to get the Phalanx Key. I'm undercover. It's a whole mess, and I'm sorry I can't explain more."

Rachel's shock works in her favor, as she lets her pass by, but Twyla still advises her, "Stay here til we're gone, okay?"

She nods, and Twyla slips back out as quickly as she can.

"There we go!" John cheers.

"Well, whaddaya know. Miss moneybags can roll with us. Welcome to the club, Twyla. And by the way," Harley points to an EMP disruptor, "let's take that, too. Looks useful, or at least expensive."

Twyla can't bring herself to look back at the room as they leave. Not when she's betrayed Lucius like that.

**

"I know our lives are usually one thing after the other where Batwoman's involved," Jocelyn remarks during a late-night powwow, "but this whole masquerade with John and Harley is exhausting. Having to wipe security tapes of them being there, not to mention your run-in with Rachel…there's been a lot to handle to keep things under wraps, Twyla."

"I know," she apologizes. "And I appreciate you taking care of all that. But this seems to be the only way to get to everyone in the Pact at once without raising their suspicion."

"I'm aware. And I want to see them delivered to justice as much as you, for what they've done to our friend and what else they could do. But…" she slumps down on the couch. "It's taking a toll."

"I owe you a solid two-week vacation after this," Twyla responds. "Wherever you wanna go, all expenses paid, nothing to worry about."

"Sounds like a dream. But for now," she takes a fortifying sip of tea, mixed with a light splash of brandy, "there's plenty to do."

"Yep. I'm meeting up with everyone in the Pact later. There's supposedly something big going on."

"I'd rather there wasn't," Jocelyn mutters. "But keep me in the loop, as always. And be careful."

That's been said too often even for Twyla's liking, lately.

"I will."

Wayne Manor doesn't always feel homey in the best of times—it's just too large, too impersonal, too austere—but lately, it's even more of a stranger to her.

"At least they said they wanna lay low for a bit after this to avoid drawing the GCPD's attention," she rationalizes. "And Batwoman can share that with Patrick."

Adding a third mask to her usual two has been more of a juggling act than she'd anticipated, both for herself and for Jocelyn, especially with Lucius gone.

Still, she compartmentalizes (not that she needs much practice at it) as she approaches the group. John, Harley, Freeze, and Bane are all gathered together, a rarity in their little hideout, and they call Twyla over as she arrives.

"We've recovered him," Bane murmurs solemnly as Harley uses the phalanx key to unlock what looks like a giant sealed coffin, and it is.

Twyla gasps at the sight of the partially cryogenically frozen Riddler.

"He will still play a role in finding the way to defeat the virus and turn it into a cure," Freeze proclaims.

"Virus?"

Twyla's question echoes in the silence.

"Oh, right, you wouldn't have known." Freeze delves into the explanation. "Riddler got infected with a crazy, weaponized virus a while back. He was supposed to die, but it actually enhanced his physical condition. His work will live on and help us treat our various illnesses, both mental and physical. So long as the thief delivers her piece."

Someone drops down behind the group. Lands lightly on their feet.

"I'll deliver whatever you want—for the right price."

**

If the news about Riddler's demise had come through the grapevine even a day or two earlier, Alexis would've bailed on the job. Hunny p. No doubt about it. Some headaches aren't worth the money.

Her loyalty rested with Eddie, but he's now permanently resting in a plastic excuse for a casket, and there's no way the Pact will let her just leave now.

Plus, there's a familiar face around, even if seeing said face confuses the fuck out of her and reminds her of something a friend had once said.

"You visit that city once, it sinks its claws into you. And they stay in long after you leave."

Ain't that the fucking truth.

Alexis takes in the view of the underground subway station turned hideout, curses, "Goddamn you, Gotham," in her mind, and approaches the Pact's "new recruit," as Bane calls her, then thinks better of it.

"Nice place you got here," Alexis comments, shooting a coy smile at everyone and shimmying her shoulders to avoid some falling sewage water. "Was the vermin included, or did you have to pay extra for it?"

"Enough chatter," Bane grunts. "Do you have the tech?"

"Would I be here if I didn't?" She takes the thin, pen-like device out of her secure pocket and proudly holds it aloft. "Now, about my payment—"

"Make sure that thing works first," Harley snaps.

"Ugh, fine," she pouts, rolling her eyes. "I don't know why you'd distrust me—I came highly recommended and I'd hardly risk my own skin to deliver you a faulty product—but whatever villainy floats your boat is cool with me." She finally makes a move. "By the way, is anyone going to introduce me to the fresh blood? She wasn't in the file Riddler sent over about the job."

"Ah, yes." John steps forward. "This is Twyla Sands. She joined our operation a bit after Riddler's passing."

"Twyla, you said?" she repeats, faking like that name hadn't gotten a little too familiar in her mouth the last time she was here. Alexis steps forward to her and extends her hand. "Charmed."

"And you are…?" Twyla waits for a name, mirroring her own false introduction etiquette, and it's enough to get her to crack a smile under the circumstances.

"Catwoman. My friends call me Alexis."

"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Catwoman," Twyla replies, offering a firm grip.

"My, my, my," she purrs. "I didn't expect this party to be so formal."

"Alright, alright," Harley mutters. "You two are acquainted now, let's move this along."

"Sure," Twyla nods, frowning after a second. "Um…what are we doing, exactly?"

"We're using this," Alexis holds up the device again, "to scan Riddler's eyes to get past a retinal scanner at his old job to put onto a pair of goggles. He built a backdoor into their computer systems. We get into that, we get all his intel about the virus and get closer to finding a cure."

"Alright."

It would be a surreal gig for anyone to take on, let alone Gotham's harbinger of justice, but that seems to be the plan, as Harley barks out, "Twyla! Head over to Riddler's old place and see what you can find. Here's the address." She hands over a slip of paper. "Bastard encrypted his laptop or I'd just use that to see what intel he's got."

"He's probably rigged it with all kinds of traps," she answers. "This might be a two-person job."

"A'right. Take John with ya, then, but don't get him hurt. That's my job."

"Road trip? Count me in!" he cheers.

Twyla purses her lips for a second, and Alexis can't exactly blame her: sneaking doesn't seem to be a part of John's skillset.

"I was actually thinking of taking Catwoman," she says. "After all, she knew him."

"Okay," Harley concedes. "She can go along, too."

Alexis steps in to try and wheedle with her. "Three people might be a bit of a crowd—I'd be fine with John staying here. Keep him out of harm's way."

Harley comes over and pats her on the cheek, and she flinches at her touch; it's both compassionate and a warning. "Sorry, sweetie. I can't trust you as far as I can throw you. John's goin'. Non-negotiable. And anything you find about the virus, any information—it comes back to me. Comprende?"

John offers a snappy salute, and Alexis adds, "Totes, Harley," with as much brightness as she can manage.

**

She knew Riddler had gone 'round the bend recently, but…

"This is even worse than I imagined," she murmurs, observing the absurd quantity of torture devices, the chalk outline of a body, the blood stains where a person's head must have contacted the concrete. "The Riddler I knew was vicious, but still capable of some warmth."

"Sounds like a completely different guy than the one I met," John gripes. "I wish he'd never come back to Gotham."

The guy's a weirdo, but Alexis has to agree. "Me, too."

"I don't think any of us are beyond reach or beyond hoping for," Twyla reasons.

She rolls her eyes at Twyla's optimism, especially considering they're inside an ancient water tower to gather intel for some people who are nearly as deranged as Riddler himself.

"I know we've only just met," she comments, not bothering to hide her sarcasm, "but somehow, I knew you'd say that."

John giggles at their little tiff and Alexis starts studying the newspaper cutouts and bulletin boards Riddler left up for potential clues.

"Nothing up here," she murmurs, and John dashes ahead, calling, "Let's check downstairs!" as he bolts down the spiral stairs.

"Careful!" Alexis and Twyla both respond reflexively.

"Glad you already know how he operates," Twyla jokes, laughing a little.

"Yeah, I can see why you wanted to come here with just me."

Twyla glances back as she walks down the stairs like she's gonna bring up their history, or her belief that they actually work well together, and she can't say if she'd rather have that happen or not. Working solo's been safer for her. Better. It always is.

But goddamn if it's not a bit lonely, too.

"I figured, y'know, even if you don't have all nine lives, you probably have five or six left. Couldn't hurt to ask for some spare ones."

She won't smile. She won't laugh. She won't.

"I forgot how you're, like, the lamest tech billionaire ever."

"Totally not giving yourself away, Lex," she snorts. "Smooth as always when operating around attractive women."

"I think I found something—we might need to touch it!"

"Let's see if there's a safer way to do that," Twyla intervenes quickly, tracking where John is pointing with her gaze.

"Good eye," she tells him. "That's definitely a pressure point under that, uh, device."

"It's a murder mystery machine," John decides, and Alexis laughs at the apt alliteration as she retrieves a dolly from the far wall.

"It's wedged under there pretty well," she grunts. "John, Twyla, can you…?"

They push it onto the dolly, and she tips it far enough backward that the pressure plate lifts up, followed by the wall of television screens turning on.

"You work, you sleep, you die," Riddler's voice booms. "One foot in the grave at all times until the second inevitably follows. You have to work hard and sleep hard to earn your way six feet under."

"For being such a supposed genius, this one's not too hard," John mentions after they've all spent a minute or so mulling over the clues. "Work," he points to the desk, "sleep," he points up to the second floor, toward the cot, "and…" he gives a grand, sweeping Price is Right gesture to the murder box, "die!"

He laughs maniacally at the end of his little joke.

"Avoid enclosed spaces with John," Alexis whispers in her head as his outburst comes to a close. She smiles at him, though—no sense being like Riddler and alienating your coworkers. "Good job with the first two clues! I'm not totally sure about the last one, but it's a strong start."

They all investigate the desk area first.

"Anything on his computer?" John asks eagerly, but he frowns at the home page asking for a password.

"What's with the pressure plate here?" Twyla points at the one underneath his chair, then crouches down to study something else. "And why are there shoes under his desk? That's kind of a weird place to keep them."

"One shoe—one foot in the grave," Alexis summarizes. "Let's try putting one on the pressure plate."

They follow suit with the cot, then Twyla steps on the first plate that they found under the murder box.

"Goody!" Riddler's voice comes back. "You have two feet in the grave now."

A mechanical clanking and whirring soon follows.

John frowns and looks down. "It sounds like it's coming from…underneath us?"

Part of the floor drops a tiny bit.

"It seems like an elevator," Twyla murmurs, studying it, shining her flashlight into the minute cracks to try and see. "Yeah, I can spot a pulley system. It's an elevator."

"Down we go!" John announces, but Alexis' intuition screams it'll be easier to get her job done without him interfering.

"Maybe one of us should stay here. Keep watch," she suggests, subtly shifting next to Twyla.

"Good idea, Catwoman! Twyla and I will go down and be right back."

"Actually," Twyla cuts in, stepping toward John so he backpedals away from the elevator, "I was thinking you could stay."

"Oh, no," he shakes his head vehemently. "Harley gave me an assignment, and I intend to complete it."

Alexis groans internally at his persistence, but Twyla counters with, "Harley also told us to keep you safe. So we'll go down first and make sure there aren't any traps or anything."

John weighs the option for a second. Responds slowly. "That's…"

He's gonna call bullshit and blunder through her elaborate, carefully constructed spiderweb of a plan without even realizing it's there.

"Such a thoughtful gesture! You really are a good friend, Twyla," John answers warmly. "Be sure to send the elevator back up when you can, and don't die before I get there!"

His cackling echoes off the elevator walls as it descends, ensuring his presence is felt even when he's not there.

"He's…interesting," Alexis observes. "Unsettling and a wee bit charming all at once."

"He's got more social skills than most people who get out of Arkham, if you can believe it."

"Since I can ask now, why are you slumming it with him and the rest of Riddler's group?"

"I'm undercover with the Agency. They—the Pact—don't know about that. Or all the rest."

Alexis turns to really consider Twyla for the first time since they've become reacquainted, and she looks…tired. Like, bone-weary, close to running on fumes tired, in a way Alexis hadn't witnessed when they'd last teamed up.

It'll make her current task easier, in a way, so she supposes she's thankful for it.

"More power to you," she hums. "Big government sucks, though."

"Their top dog is a piece of work," Twyla admits as the elevator comes to a stop in a small room with a giant computer, "but they have access to resources that the GCPD can only dream about. And it's just this one job with them. I'm out after that."

"One gig and you're out?" Alexis grins. "You sound like me."

"Speaking of, what are you doing here? You're actually working with them? Or is there some angle I'm missing?"

"So many questions, and all of them come back to money. Beyond that, who knows, who cares. The world's a complicated place."

"That it is," Twyla concedes after a beat, to Alexis' surprise. "Now…" she looks up at the oversized screen. "Let's see what we can find before John invites himself down."

Alexis takes a seat at the monitor, wheels the chair over to a storage rack. "Can't hurt to try a flash drive."

She plugs it into the main USB port, and a voice intones, "Accessing SANCTUS Project Lotus files."

There's no way Twyla missed her little gasp of recognition at that information.

"Retinal scan required," the computer says.

"Dammit," Alexis bangs her fist against the keyboard. "I haven't made the goggles yet."

"Access denied. Security protocols engaged."

Sparks shoot out of the keyboard, catching fire, and Twyla just manages to pull the flash drive out before it burns, too.

She breathes a sigh of relief as she pockets it. "Well, at least we got this. And you know what SANCTUS is, don't you?"

Lying will delay her too much, so she says, "Yeah. I mean, I've heard of them from jobs. They're kinda underground now, but they're…put it this way: 'up to no good' is being generous. They're downright scary."

Twyla barks out a laugh. "Great."

"That drive. It'll work on Harley's laptop, right?"

Alexis keeps her tone as casual as possible, moving slowly behind where Twyla's taken a seat at the computer.

"Sure. I don't see why not."

"Then…I'll be taking it."

"What the—?"

Guilt assaults her at the shock in Twyla's voice, but it's not enough to stop her from handcuffing one of her wrists to the chair and knocking the flash drive out of her hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Sorry, Twy," she apologizes, and she kinda, sorta actually means it. "You just got caught in the crossfire of my li'l crusade. I should've gone after Riddler earlier," she explains. "But now, knowing that he was mixed up with SANCTUS, hearing what he did to Lucius," Alexis ticks the atrocities off on her fingers, "I've got a lot of red to clean off my ledger, and I know we don't see eye-to-eye about how to clear debts." She tries to wink, fails. "By the way, for the record…if I'm gonna collaborate with anyone, the Pact is pretty far down the list. So I'll see you around."

It's a smooth exit until Twyla almost takes her legs out with the chair.

"You're not going anywhere with that flash drive," she threatens, and Alexis' flight response kicks in automatically, helping her dance out of the makeshift weapon's range so she can slap her trusty cat's paw on the wall.

"Babe," she taunts Twyla, blows her a kiss, "I'm already gone."

She leaps as she arrives at the top of the elevator shaft, ready to bolt before John can do anything to stop her, when Twyla comes flying out the top of it, too, with Riddler's cane in her left hand and broken handcuffs hanging off her right wrist.

"Do you have to be that resourceful?"

"When I'm dealing with people like you, yeah."

"Aww, am I special?"

"Especially annoying."

It shouldn't be so easy to fight someone—or, no, wait, that's not the right word; Twyla's an absolute pain in the ass in hand-to-hand combat, agile and quick and strong.

It shouldn't be this natural, this well-coordinated. It's more like a dance where they know about 75% of their partner's steps.

Alexis goes for a new one after she absorbs a punch with her forearm, after Twyla pulls her close to try and land another blow.

"You've always been good with your hands," she whispers.

She hasn't teased anyone during a fight in ages—having a bounty on your head in some states and provinces makes survival your only priority in a hurry—but she's delighted to see it working in how quickly Twyla blushes. In feeling her grip loosen for just a second.

It's just long enough for her to get out of it, to trip Twyla and shove her toward the murder box on the dolly. It does its job, wobbling off its perch, forcing Twyla to steady it before she can give chase.

"Was that flirting?" John wonders aloud as she runs past him, ducking under his clumsy attempt at grabbing her.

"Yep! You're catching on, buddy!" Alexis calls over her shoulder, taking the stairs two at a time before leaping onto and climbing up the ladder to escape the Riddler's lair.

"Wait!" Twyla shouts, and she does—long enough to deliver an update on her plans.

"Sorry, Twyla, but I'm taking Harley's laptop for myself. I wanna finish this my way."

It's a victory, for sure.

So why does she feel so bad about it?

Chapter Text

John insists that they "talk things over" at a cafe after Alexis spills that she's gonna steal the laptop, which is how Twyla ends up paying for a small black coffee and a giant Oreo frappe at 11 P.M.

"So you're saying you need the laptop to protect it from Catwoman?"

Twyla nods. "Exactly."

"But…why not warn Harley to be on the lookout for the cat?" John wonders aloud. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm usually the first guy to resort to stealing! Just—not from her."

"I know a bit more about how Catwoman operates—she came to the group through Riddler, remember?" Twyla reminds him. "She's an excellent thief, which is great when she's on your side. But if you have something she wants—"

She grimaces, and John sighs. "I'm in a really tough spot with this. On the one hand, we're friends, and I understand your perspective on this idea. But on the other hand, there's Harley, and she's—she's Harley. The most intriguing creature to ever grace me with a demeaning insult! But I want more than that, Twyla," he says between healthy sips of his oversized sugar bomb. "I want what you and Catwoman have. That—that essential chemistry. It was so obvious when you two were fighting, and even earlier on, when you thought I wasn't listening."

Twyla stares at him over the rim of her coffee cup. "When you were what now?"

"It's habit—from Arkham. Always having to listen out for orderlies or other patients. I have a keen ear. Anyway," John dismisses her concern, "what are the two of you? Like, outside of here, I mean."

"We're not really anything," Twyla shrugs, hoping her easy, unbothered tone will help keep the substantial wave of Alexis memories at bay. "But we've been thrown together a lot recently, and there is some spark between us, I think."

"That's what I need to start with Harley." John snaps his fingers. "A spark, and then a fire—a big one! Like, five-alarm fire, call the brigade, the house is burning down! Do you—how do you think I can make that happen?"

He asks so earnestly that Twyla lets her guard drop, figuring, "Even the criminally insane deserve to find their person."

"For a price."

Alexis' voice makes that little suggestion in her head, and she runs with it, suggesting, "Maybe we can come to an arrangement of sorts. I help you with Harley, and…"

John fills in the blank. "I help you with the laptop. Yes, I see. I'm glad you're up to bat, then, Twyla."

That has to just be a turn of phrase. He can't possibly know.

Her slight panic subsides when his attention circles back to his object of affection. "How can I get Harley to see me and—and really engage with me?"

Twyla considers his question for a minute, takes her own interactions with Harley into account, and says, "You just need to be genuine. Make her realize how special you are."

"I dunno," John mumbles around a less peppy slurp of his frappe. "I get that a lot, but…how can I be myself when I don't really know who that is yet? How did you figure that out, Twyla?"

"I don't know."

Easily the most honest she's been with herself in weeks.

"People can deceive themselves without trying, and who we are can vary across different contexts," she goes on. "Like, being myself when I'm with you isn't exactly the same as being myself with a business associate at a work event."

"Sure, that makes sense. And maybe it explains something I've felt recently," John responds.

She didn't sign up to play therapist tonight, but: in for a penny, in for a pound. "What's that, John?"

"There's someone pacing around my mind. A few layers deep, like they're underwater. Or like they're an animal, shaking in a cage, and they just want to get. Out."

His right leg's twitching so hard that it makes his knee bump the table, and a bit of Twyla's coffee sloshes over.

"Sorry. Lemme help with that."

He hands over a couple of napkins, and she's glad for the distraction so she can figure out where to steer the conversation.

"I'd recommend maybe finding a healthy, non-destructive outlet for that, um…feeling. Say, working out, or running, or painting," Twyla offers. "And those could be ways to bond with Harley. She has to have hobbies."

"Besides murder, torture, and psychological warfare."

"That's not a bad idea, but," John stares up at the moon and laments, "I already have trouble talking to her. So how to get around that…"

He drums his fingers on the table, then points at Twyla. "I got it! We can roleplay. You be Harley, and just start by saying something, uh…Harley-like!"

She blows out a frustrated breath—getting the laptop may not be worth the hassle. "This is ridiculous, John."

He claps his hands. "Perfect! She tells me that all the time!"

"No—I didn't mean—"

"Now, try something that would come up on a date, like we're going out to paint the town red," John encourages her.

"Okay, um…" she summons up her best impression, manages not to laugh at her own bad Bronx accent. "Say, John, I hear there's a carnival in town this weekend. You wanna take a little trip?"

"I'd do anything so long as you wanted to do it, Harley! Just say the word!" he answers proudly before snapping back to his (relatively) normal self. "How's that? Pretty good, huh?"

"Not bad," Twyla tries to lay the truth on gently, "but it might be a little too eager for Harley. Try for a bit more subtlety."

"Subtlety," he mutters to himself. "Got it. Okay. Hit me with another."

"Tell me your favorite thing about Arkham, Puddin'."

"You've really got her cadence down and everything!" he exclaims. "Alright, so, uh, I most enjoyed…the lights."

"The lights?"

"Yeah. They had a hum to them. Felt like a blanket. A nice fuzzy one. I miss that on the outside," he says, turning wistful, leaning in close, and it's difficult to tell if he's talking right to her or still pretending she's Harley. "It doesn't feel as real here, you know? Out here, chaos seems to rule the day. It's loud and uneven, not always my cup of tea," he shakes his head in a twitch, almost a spasm, "but you, Harley," his grin turns equal parts warm and sinister, and she's not sure which aspect is more frightening, "you thrive on it. And I think I could learn from that because…you're kind of like my light outside of Arkham."

"Wow."

Okay, so John's still nuts, but he's also absurdly articulate.

"That was really poignant. And personal," Twyla reacts after a moment, fumbling a little for her words. "If you share yourself with Harley like that, she'll definitely see you in a different light."

"Heh. Light," he giggles at her accidental pun. "And…and you really think so? It felt kinda strange to say all that stuff out loud."

"Yeah. Yeah, definitely," she nods just before the bat signal behind him catches her eye. "Uh, listen, given how late it is, I really gotta run. Business doesn't stop for anyone these days, and I need some sleep before tomorrow."

John shakes off his disappointment after a second. "Alright. And since you were so good with helping me, I guess I won't tell Harley about what happened with Catwoman."

"And would you be able to help me get the laptop?"

"Oh," John laughs, "if this is what it's like when you're in a boardroom, I wouldn't wanna be one of your competitors! Plus, we are friends, and your talk has me really motivated to find my true self. So," he sticks out his hand, "you've got yourself a deal."

"Thanks, John," she responds gratefully. "I appreciate it more than you know."

"Sure thing."

She walks away as fast as she can without raising his suspicion, and, as soon as she's out of his sight, calls for the Batmobile.

It's another GCPD rooftop meeting with Patrick, though between his demotion, Waller's prying eyes, and Twyla's additional responsibilities, he and Batwoman haven't seen much of one another recently.

"Evening," Twyla murmurs.

"Thanks for stopping by. Finally."

There's rarely such frostiness in his voice, and Batwoman has to care about it. "Finally?"

"You missed the last time we put it up. Earlier this week, when the Pact hit that convoy to steal back Riddler's body. Unless you're tellin' me different?"

She can hardly remember what day it is, let alone who she's supposed to be at any given moment, but she musters up a degree of indignation, anyway. "I can operate in the shadows, Brewer. You know that. And I'm getting orders from Waller, too."

"I know. Sorry," he grunts. "We ask a lot of you and—well," he studies her through cigarette smoke, "I can't remember another time you were MIA when we needed you. Anyway," and thank God, it sounds like he's moving on, "I just wanted to pick your brain about something. Or someone, rather."

"Who is it?"

She's intrigued—they tend to be more or less in lockstep with their targets.

"Lucius Fox."

Her eyebrows pop up at that, and Patrick might notice the movement beneath her cowl, because he puts his hands up in reconciliation. "Look, I know he was your friend, and I'm not one to speak ill of the dead, but…" he sighs. "I think he mighta been up to some shady stuff before Riddler's attack on Sands Tower."

"What kind of shady stuff?" she shoots back. "And before you answer, think carefully."

Patrick lets out a dry chuckle. "I've been doing that since I lit up the bat signal. You oughta realize you're not doing yourself any favors responding like this, though. Not to mention, Waller shut down any investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. There's gotta be something more at play, and if you ask me, it all leads back there, to his employer."

He points across the way to her building.

"So," Patrick concludes, "how much do you really know about Twyla Sands?"

"She's another friend," she answers cautiously, beginning to tiptoe through a potential minefield. "One who's helping our cause."

"If she is, she's got a real funny definition of help," Patrick counters. "'Cause there's more going on here. A Sands Enterprises security guard comes to us saying he saw Harley Quinn and someone else from Arkham waltzing through the building like they own the place, but the security footage is replaced by some amateur cut-up job. Convenient, huh?"

He's trapping her masterfully and the worst part is, it's all true.

"And, if that wasn't enough, some security cameras placed Twyla herself down by Riddler's old workshop the other day. Why on earth would a woman of her status be hanging around there?"

"I—I can't say," she lies.

"If you can't, then she has to. Waller's been stonewalling me on all this stuff, even with the evidence I just laid out. I know it's a big ask, but," Patrick takes a deep breath, "I need you to bring Twyla Sands in. At least to talk. Get her side of things. But I gotta admit, it looks pretty bad for her."

"I can keep an eye on Twyla," she offers weakly, hoping it's enough.

Patrick's patience finally runs out.

"I'm not asking for you to watch her, dammit!" he yells. "I'm asking for her to be brought in, here, to GCPD custody! Gotham's slipping back into chaos, and I won't watch it go down when she might have something to do with it!"

"She doesn't—" she tries again.

"I need more than your blind faith and empty assurances on this one, Batwoman! Unless you've got intel on her that I'm missing…"

She stays silent, and Patrick shakes his head in disgust before turning away.

"I thought you were better than that," he mumbles, walking toward the rooftop door.

"I am," she confirms, but the words ring hollow without any action, and subterfuge has become a more comfortable second skin than her armor lately, and this might be stupid, but she wants to live up to her own standards for once. "Patrick!"

"If I have to compromise my morals as Batwoman, if I play fast and loose with the truth…then I'm really not that different from a lot of the people I'm chasing."

"Patrick, wait!" she calls once more, getting him to stop. "You wanted to know if I have intel on Twyla Sands?"

He turns back toward her, arms crossed like he's not expecting much. "That's right. Do you?"

"Yeah."

She tugs her cowl off.

"Holy shit," he whispers. "You're…"

"Don't even say it," she orders him. "This goes nowhere, okay? This never happened."

He nods.

"And as for what I've been doing…"

She lays out Waller's light blackmail and her role in it as quickly as she can, and concludes with, "I gotta stay undercover. It's the fastest way to bring down the Pact."

"For sure," he nods. "We're actually moving on one of their folks in the next few days."

"Who?"

"Catwoman. I know she and Batwoman have worked together before. Not sure how personal that relationship is, but I'd appreciate you staying hush-hush about our plan," Patrick confides in her.

Like so much of her life lately, the question cleaves Twyla in two.

"Alexis is the only person who's known both sides of me without having to be told. Who understands why I do what I do on a fundamental level," she reflects. "And I'm drawn to her."

The multiple times she's nearly kissed her, spending the night in her bed even though nothing happened, her witty banter and sarcasm, her unapologetic grip on her own life: "I'd be hard pressed to say that she's not attractive to me in some way."

On the other hand, there's the whole lack of a moral code, extremely questionable taste in sidekicks, and her all-too-healthy capacity for betrayal.

"The woman handcuffed you to a chair to further her own vendetta. She's made more work for you and the GCPD in terms of stopping the Pact."

Recency bias and a tiny desire for revenge win out.

"I won't tell her," Twyla confirms, though her heart drops for a second as she does.

**

The next few days go smoothly—no fires to put out as Batwoman, no business emergencies to tend to as a tech CEO, and no death threats from Harley.

"Guess John can be sneaky in a pinch," Twyla muses when she comes home after meeting with him to acquire the laptop and swinging by work to check in with Rachel, who's now fully onboard with filling her dad's shoes after a lengthy chat. For once, she'll have breakfast at a normal hour, settle into her day, and enjoy some blissfully mundane activities: catching up on the news, answering and organizing some emails, checking in on the latest meeting minutes from her family's foundation, and…

Figuring out why the fuck there's a trail of blood leading into the games room.

She shoulders the double doors open, finds a heavily bandaged Alexis sitting on her couch.

"Alexis?"

"I had nowhere else to go. I should've known better than thinking Gotham could be even remotely safe."

She's never sounded so small, so defeated, before, but another question pops to Twyla's mind: "How'd you get in?"

"I didn't break in, genius. Jocelyn saw me on one of your cameras."

She bustles in, right on cue. "Glad you're back, Twyla. I trust Ms. Rose filled you in regarding her motorcycle accident?"

She fumbles the Advil bottle and quickly scoops it up, apologizing the whole time, and Alexis tells her, "It's no problem, Jocelyn, thank you. And I was just going to explain everything."

"Alright. Call if you need anything."

"So, uh, what happened?" Twyla asks after Jocelyn leaves, but Alexis is still staring at the doors.

"Is she okay?"

"Honestly…she's been pretty stressed lately," Twyla admits, hating herself for being the cause. "I was hoping today would be a quieter day, but—"

"Well, apologies for ruining your plan," Alexis snaps, "but the GCPD ambushed me in my fucking apartment without a search warrant. You know anything about that?"

"...Gordon might've mentioned it, yeah." She glances at the pool table, the bookshelves, anywhere but Alexis' eyes or all the bruises that demonstrate police brutality's unfettered existence in Gotham.

"So you just gave me up to the pigs? Really?"

She's received looks of incredulous disgust from plenty of criminals and villains over the years, but never someone she might actually care about.

"I thought we were…"

Alexis trails off, and Twyla interjects, "Friends? Because if I recall correctly, the last time we were together, you handcuffed me to a chair to steal a flash drive and a laptop."

"Okay, okay," Alexis concedes, "that was my bad. I wanted to get payback for Riddler—then kinda on him—on my own terms. This job is way more personal than most, and I let my emotions run a little wild."

"Fair enough," Twyla agrees. "I've done the same once or twice, given who was involved."

"But this whole mess got bigger than my vendetta," Alexis goes on.

"Same for me."

It's oddly therapeutic, admitting that some degree of vengeance is driving her forward, that she's not just devoted to her mission. That she can let people in far enough that losing them makes her irrational.

"Then we have to find that SANCTUS black site before anyone else does, right?"

Twyla waits for more of an explanation, realizes one isn't forthcoming, frowns at the missing intel. "What black site?"

"I can explain some of it, but it'll be easier if we hack Riddler's shit."

"You know," she points out as a smug grin plays over her lips, "I'm suddenly hearing an awful lot of we from someone who likes working solo."

"Yeah, well," Alexis blushes, "given how the universe keeps conspiring to put us together, maybe I can admit that we make a good team."

"Maybe I can, too," Twyla agrees softly, pulling Alexis close to her, careful to avoid touching any of her deep cuts or scars.

"Then…are we gonna crack this laptop together?"

"Let's do it," Twyla tells her, and watching the fear and uncertainty fade from Alexis' features is a bit of beauty she didn't know she could want.

"Where to? I'm assuming there are at least a few ornate studies and libraries in Sands Manor."

"There are," Twyla nods, "but we're going somewhere else. Downstairs."

"Downstairs?" Alexis repeats, with no small dose of skepticism.

"Yep."

Twyla walks over to the grandfather clock in the games room and laughs as Alexis slowly follows.

"What?"

"You're cute when you're confused," she answers as she opens the face cover and manipulates the hands to set the time for 10:47.

The wall behind the clock swings open.

"Oh."

She still doesn't move for a moment, and Twyla reaches back, beckons to her with a smile. "You coming?"

**

"Ho-ly fuck, Twy."

Alexis lets out a low whistle, startles a little at the sonorous echo.

"So this is Batwoman HQ." She casts her gaze around the entire cave, though it lingers on the sea-green BMW Z4 long enough that Twyla notices.

"I swear, if you try to steal anything—"

"Screw you," Alexis replies affectionately, giving her a little shove. "I don't have sticky fingers all the time. Just most of the time. And I wouldn't—"

She silences herself after that, and Twyla finds, for the first time in ages, she wants to pry into someone else's thoughts. "You wouldn't what?"

"This is, like," she gestures all around, "your sanctuary. I try not to steal stuff that's obviously sacred to people."

"Look at that: Catwoman has some nobility to her."

"I suppose I'm not all bad."

"Just most of the time?" Twyla teases.

"Something like that."

It's smooth, lush, and for all the times she nearly caught Catwoman, none of them compare to having Alexis looking at her like this, with a soft warmth and a gentle hunger that's more intimate than her usual, showy flirting.

Until she's looking past Twyla.

"Um," she approaches her little wall of trophies, "what's my stuff doing on display in your cave, next to a bunch of mementos for the psychopaths you've locked up?" She points toward her broken goggles and the photo that had been part of her file. "I mean, I know you're not really normal by any stretch of the imagination, but," her frown grows more pronounced, "why's my space next to Harvey Dent's? Ew, Twyla. You better have a good explanation for this," she warns.

"Like—like you said," she stammers, "they're mementos. Keepsakes. Reminders from each of my cases, of why I do what I do. Would you, um, like your items back?"

"Nah," Alexis decides after a moment. "You can keep 'em. It's kinda sweet, in its own weird way. Knowing I have a spot down here. And since we're here," she nods at the super-computer, "let's get to work."

Even with the computer's horsepower, it still needs a good ten minutes or so to process everything on Harley's laptop and break through a few of Riddler's remaining firewalls, and Alexis takes the time to explore the rest of the Batcave.

"It's very you," she says as Jocelyn comes down, stepping off the elevator. "You as Batwoman, though. For Twyla, it feels kinda isolating. Cut off from the world."

"That's kinda the point. My tech is safe from being hacked since it's so far underground, and I have instant access to Gotham's waterways. The set-up needs to be here."

"Mmm." Alexis doesn't sound convinced. "At least install a wet bar or a fridge or something. Or have a kettle so you or Jocelyn can make tea."

"An excellent suggestion, and one I've made plenty of times myself," Jocelyn chimes in, giving Twyla a knowing look. "Maybe she'll listen to you, Ms. Rose."

"Maybe," Twyla acknowledges, not wanting to give Jocelyn the satisfaction that she's probably right. The space is meant to be impersonal, but it's almost barren. Everything here is designed by and for Batwoman, and everything in the manor is linked to her family, but not much is connected directly to her. Twyla.

"Whoever that is these days."

Her computer's capabilities save her from too much introspection, though, as the downloads are complete.

"Media files, emails, reports," Twyla murmurs. "Let's start with emails. See who Riddler might've been talking to."

Most of them are with various criminals around Gotham—nothing too exciting, just arranging plans and making threats—but the subject of one catches Twyla's attention.

"The Agency?"

"You're working with them, right?" Alexis asks.

"Yeah. What would he want with them?" Twyla wonders, clicking on the message.

It reads like a standard rant, but it's deeply personal.

"They'll be exposed. They will pay," Alexis reads. "I'm losing it, I know I am, all because of them. They've been hiding in plain sight in Gotham for too long, but with the videos—there's proof."

Twyla's already pulling them up in her file finder. "Let's check 'em out."

The first one is horrible, a flashback to watching her father dispassionately observe Esther Cobblepot being injected with drugs.

"They're using human test subjects," Alexis breathes as one video plays out in grainy black and white. "But to what end?"

The answer soon follows.

A scientist reviews a data pad. "Virus mutation is tracking with expected outcomes. Increase dosage."

Whoever's strapped down is writhing, trying to avoid getting jabbed with the needle, but the shot is administered, anyway.

"It sounds like biological warfare. And Harley and the Pact are after it," Twyla concludes grimly.

"But why? To infect their enemies?"

"No. Sadly, it's the opposite. They thought the virus helped Riddler, and it may have, for a time, but that email sure makes it sound like it eventually exacerbated his conditions."

"Maybe his medical reports have more information," Alexis suggests.

They do.

"Okay, yeah, so they should absolutely not wanna inject themselves with whatever that virus is."

"Whatever virus the Agency made," Twyla highlights, pointing at their name in small print in the corner of the video. "And some of these early files, the ones that came before the Riddler escaped and started self-reporting his symptoms, sure look like official government documents with how some of the materials are redacted."

There are a few signatures on the final pages, and she quickly searches the names.

"We've got a former director and a head of medicinal technology. Both from the Agency."

"He was right," Alexis whispers. "They were in on it."

Twyla's mouth sets in a thin line. "I think I owe Director Waller a call."

Waller denies knowing anything, of course, and insists it was before her time.

"We ended SANCTUS years ago, but Project Lotus had some, shall we say, devoted followers," she explains. "We've spent ages trying to run them down and end them entirely and, actually, one of the agents you saved on the boat just came through with a tip. Try taking a visit to the Lotus Spa."

"The Lotus Spa?" Twyla repeats dubiously.

"Agent Blake confirmed there's a chance that they're operating out of it," Waller says. "And Agent Budd recommends you head over there, too."

"Can I hear that from them directly?"

"They're both out, but I can send you our communications so you know it's legit."

"Alright. I'd appreciate that, Director. Thank you."

"No, Twyla. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We weren't 100% sure if the Lotus Spa was worth investigating, so if you could do some recon…"

She catches her drift. "Sure. What about the Pact?"

The call cuts out, leaving her question hanging.

"Weird. I'd think government phones would be more reliable than that," Alexis comments.

"Waller's not exactly the warmest person, either. She might've assumed the conversation was done once I said I'd do her bidding. Better get there ASAP."

She considers where to go from there with Alexis. Settles on, "You can stay here for a bit if you like."

"I wouldn't wanna overstay my welcome," Alexis murmurs, batting her eyelashes. "But I might just take you up on that offer."

"Don't worry about it."

"This is kinda weird," Alexis continues, drawing nearer and nearer to Twyla as she approaches her car. "Not wanting to run. Feeling like I might wanna stay."

She remembers telling John to play it cool with Harley. Almost laughs as she disregards her own advice.

"What could I do to help with that?"

"We've almost kissed twice already," she answers, running her hand through Twyla's hair, curling a hand possessively around her waist. "Don't leave me hanging again."

"I'd like to think I'm pretty good at catching you," Twyla whispers, mirroring Alexis' movement, brushing her thumb over the three or four helix piercings in her left ear, and sealing her status as Catwoman's prize with the first kiss she's ever given anyone in the Batcave sends her high and low all at once.

It's a thrill, for sure, an adrenaline rush to hear Alexis' shaky breath echo through the cave, to know the softness of a mouth that delivers plenty of sharp quips and snappy remarks, to feel Alexis' shoulders relax under her touch, but it's also somehow…familiar. As if nearly taking this step to intimacy before served as an introduction, as if all the physical closeness in battle transferred over to this much, much more refreshing context.

Alexis tips her forehead against Twyla's with more tenderness than she expects. "You are. Don't let it make you too cocky, though."

"How about a little cocky?"

"That's allowed."

Twyla steps out of her grasp, though she hardly wants to. "Sorry I gotta head out. I'd rather stay, too."

"That's good to hear for once," Alexis muses. "Gonna have to get used to it."

"Same," Twyla murmurs, giving Alexis one more slow kiss for good measure.

"Be careful, Twy. And Bats, if she has to come out."

"You, too, Lex. And Catwoman. I'll see you later," she promises before she drives away.

It's strange, to carve out space and emotions for someone who's with her, to reflect on memories and know they'll have the chance to make more, but it feels nice.

**

Alexis does see Twyla later, at yet another Pact meeting, as she'd expected.

She hadn't counted on seeing her handcuffed, or getting bound and gagged herself.

It's an occupational hazard, one she's encountered a handful of times, but never at the hands of such a merciless crew.

"So," Harley starts what's apparently the world's most dangerous sentencing process, if the giant glacial box is anything to go by, "you told Bane that I sent you to scout out the black site, didja, Twyla?"

"That's right," she lies, staying resolute.

"See, funny thing is," Harley chuckles, "I didn't know where it was, or else we would be there already. The location was on the laptop. And the only way you coulda used it was with those special goggles that you were makin'." She rounds on Alexis. "Didn'tcha both say you'd report back to me with anything? That I'd be kept in the loop? Because that step seemed to get lost somewhere."

She picks up her baseball bat, extends it out, and boops Twyla on the nose with it. "Normally, when people ignore my directions, their faces get smashed in. But Puddin' here," she smiles at John, loops her arm around him for a second, "convinced me to try and be a little more compassionate. Says it'll be better for me. So. Here goes."

She looks between her two potential betrayers for a second.

"Twyla."

"Yes?"

"Did you steal my laptop, or did Catwoman do it? And remember: you're already on thin ice. Answer wrong, and you might get even colder."

Cats might have nine lives, but she doesn't, and she wants to say she wouldn't sell Twyla down the river, but what good is honor if it only gets you killed?

Alexis tenses herself, prepared to at least fight to the bitter end and make it hell for everyone to capture her, when Twyla responds.

"I took it."

"Case closed! Sentence is death by cryogenic chamber!" Harley announces, treating her baseball bat as a gavel and slamming it against the ground as Bane lifts Twyla like a sack of potatoes and throws her bodily into the freeze chamber. "You were right, John. It does feel better to choose compassion. And to do this proper, with a hearing and everything."

"But—but—Twyla's my friend! Can't we punish her without, y'know, killing her?"

"Mmm…" Harley pretends to consider his request. "Nope. Enjoy Antarctica, sweetheart!" she calls to Twyla, who screams, "I still got you what you wanted! Fuck you, Harley!" before the door slams shut.

"Ooh, hope you keep some of that heat," Harley coos, plunging the temperature inside the box down even further with the press of a long, blood-red fingernail. "You're gonna need it."

"Don't uncuff the cat, either," she orders Bane as they start heading out to invade the black site. "I don't trust her."

Alexis forces herself to walk away. It's automatic. Right, left, right, left.

She's turned her back on carnage and tragedy before. She's even delighted in creating it once in a while, not unlike Harley. And sure, she's mourned friends and colleagues and acquaintances, but never someone who'd gotten this close to her. Never someone she wanted to see for more than an evening, for more than a transactional relationship.

"And this is why you don't bond with people. Not in this line of work. This is the last time I'm making that mistake."

Her path's littered with plenty of those, but none sting quite like this one.

Chapter Text

She's got maybe a minute to do anything before hypothermia sets in, and she studies the room through the frosty window for something, anything, that can free her from this fatal predicament.

Harley's penchant for shiny things and her refusal to plan ahead might be Twyla's salvation, because the EMP device is still out and no one took her phone.

"It'll fry the automatic locks on this chamber."

She fumbles with her phone, tapping ineffectually with freezing fingers, but she manages to prime it and activate it.

And she waits, and she waits, her body already succumbing to the cold, dropping into a slumber…

The pulse shorts out the power throughout the building.

"Thank G-G-God."

One, two, three, four slams of her shoulder against the door before it gives way, and she stumbles out, dropping to her knees and immediately wrapping her arms around herself for warmth.

"Twyla! Are you still there?"

"Hi, J-J-Jocelyn. Yeah, I'm back."

"I'm sorry—you never go offline and it got me spooked."

"Just a little power outage down here," she lies, not wanting to alarm her even more. "I'm fine."

"So the Pact is still in the subway station, I presume?"

"No, actually. They're headed to the Lotus Spa to break into the secret SANCTUS facility. It's a long story," she adds quickly, heading off any potential questions. "I'm going over there now. Could you call Waller and Patrick, let them both know?"

"Sure," Jocelyn replies impatiently as she moves to a more pressing point. "I heard enough to know Harley distrusts you now—you'll be shot on sight!"

She moves the phone away from her ear, swipes her way to her favorites section, taps Activate Batmobile.

"I'm not going as Twyla."

**

She's never visited the Lotus Spa before, but something tells her the lights aren't supposed to be smashed and flickering. Tranquil ambient music still plays through the speakers, creating one hell of a break with reality, considering the first employee she finds is (a) dead and (b) nearly decapitated.

"They're getting even worse," Twyla reports. "Bane and Harley must be feeling especially vengeful today."

"More death and destruction, sadly."

Twyla follows a bloody trail down a hallway to an elevator.

"Guess I'm following them."

She presses the scarlet-stained B for basement, races out as soon as the door opens, and finds a key card on another victim of the Pact's rampage to access the outside of the lab.

The sounds of Harley, John, and Freeze all arguing carries into the hallway, and she's debating how best to approach them when someone whispers from nearby shadows.

"They've got three gunmen waiting for you."

Alexis steps out, her jaw on the floor, and her voice comes out broken and awed.

"And by the way, how are you still alive? They asked me to stand guard, so I've been watching you on the computer here."

Twyla shrugs. "I'm resourceful, remember? And," she points up ahead, "thanks for the tip."

"Wish I could've given one to everyone else here." She bites her lower lip. "Harley encouraged Freeze and Bane to be creative."

Twyla shivers at the thought. "God, that's awful."

"I should've done something more to stop them before, but," she retrieves her whip from its holster, "I'm gonna make up for it now. With you. They're not getting that virus."

"Great. Backup's on the way, but," God, she'll finally admit it, she's something of an adrenaline junkie, "I'd rather wreak some havoc before they arrive, wouldn't you?"

Alexis shimmies her shoulders at the call to action. "You sure know what a girl wants, Bats."

They slowly approach SANCTUS' inner sanctum, and the Pact is still bickering.

"Freeze, your wife moves faster than this, I swear," Harley gripes. "Get the damn virus and let's go! And Bane, don't touch anything, we don't know what half this stuff does."

"The extraction is an automated process," Freeze protests. "I can't rush it along."

"Got any toys?" Alexis whispers as they study the group and their goons from their hidden position.

"Just the usual: Batarangs, a taser gun, some smoke grenades. Should be enough to cause some problems."

"Let's go with distractions first."

"Definitely," Twyla agrees. She waits for the goons to pass by the doorway where they're lying in wait, then tosses a grenade out behind them.

They're choking before they even get tackled, and they're crawling away to relative safety, though the cavalry should be arriving soon.

"No!" Freeze exclaims at their sudden intrusion. "This is a variable we didn't need!"

"Well, well, well," Harley drawls, raising an eyebrow at Twyla and Alexis' arrival. "Switchin' sides on us, kitty cat? Gonna waste one of your lives on the bat?"

"I'm not, like, the best judge of character," Alexis acknowledges. "You don't even wanna know who I hooked up with to score an all-expenses paid vacation to Argentina during college, but I'm pretty sure I can trust Batwoman a lot more than you all."

"Listen to me, please!" Twyla urges. "Riddler was using all of you. The virus might've been a cure to begin with, but it was destroying his mind as time went on."

"And why should we trust you?" John interrupts.

"You tell 'em, Puddin," Harley encourages him. "I'm curious, Bats: how're you planning to stop all of us?"

"Because I know your tricks. And because I've got plenty of firepower backing me up."

The Agency's men and women burst in, led by Waller, who commands everyone, "Don't move! All parties, I repeat, do not move, or we will shoot to kill! You don't want to test our firepower."

Bane's instinct, as always, is to disregard orders, and one of the Agency's long-range snipers clips him with a bullet that actually does some damage to him—a clean shot in the arm—and he yells in pain, trying to staunch the blood from the new wound.

"Anyone else want to try their luck?"

Waller approaches Twyla directly.

"I'd like to thank you for everything, Batwoman. For keeping the members of the Pact alive. For confirming that the virus is still in mass-production stages. For noting its efficacy."

"Of course. All part of the job. Will the Agency take this site over and figure out how to safely shut it down?"

Waller's smile sets her on edge.

"We'll take it over, alright. As for shutting it down—not a chance. Not when you consider what this virus could do for the military as a biological weapon. And that's not even touching on the possibilities of creating mutations from it."

She'd questioned Waller's methods before, to a certain extent, but she'd always operated on the assumption that she was fundamentally promoting the greater good, even if she came off as a bit cold. This, however—this is the work of a warped mind, a sick psyche, one that's just as damaged as that of any Pact member.

"What?!"

"C'mon, Batwoman," Waller laughs. "Just because you're a knight in shining armor doesn't mean we all are. Sometimes, we've gotta use bad people to do good things."

"I—" she looks at the massive extraction machine, "I'll break it."

Waller smirks. "And risk exposing everyone? I don't think so."

She pauses, weighing the possibilities of her next move, and Twyla takes advantage of the stoppage to whisper to Jocelyn, "Did you get all that on your end?"

"Yes," she confirms. "Saving the audio to your computer now and storing it in the cloud. I'm sure the higher-ups at the Agency will be interested to see Waller's true colors."

"Definitely—"

"Attack them!" Waller orders, pointing at Twyla and Alexis.

To their dismay, the four or five Agency employees that came with Waller follow her bidding, too, firing their pistols.

"You can run if you want!" Twyla shouts to Alexis as they retreat, doing everything in their power just to dodge bullets, Harley's mallet, Bane's fists, and Freeze's ice cold grasp. "This is more dangerous than even I expected!"

"You know how I feel about owing people things—I'm not going anywhere!"

The tide turns as Patrick charges in, bringing a couple GCPD officers, Stevie, and Agent Blake with him.

"This ends now, Waller! The security cams are catching everything!" he shouts.

"We'll be sure to tell the Agency exactly what you did," Stevie threatens her.

"In that case," Waller's smile grows even more twisted, "I have no reason to worry about keeping any of you alive."

The fight rages on, although both sides grow more judicious about their gun use, not wanting to shatter the giant glass centrifuge containing the virus doses for fear of creating a catastrophic mass exposure event.

Alexis manages to knock John off balance, steal his gun, and threaten him into submission, and Stevie and Patrick get the drop on Freeze, pulling him to the ground and handcuffing him without suffering more than minor frostbite.

Waller bolts for one of the exits, and Twyla disengages from the fracas, just for a second, to hack the security system to lock down the nearest door.

"Go after her!" she directs Agent Blake. "But be careful, she's—"

She's dumb.

First rule of fighting: always maintain awareness of the biggest threat.

That assessment doesn't always correlate to physical size, but in this case, with Bane, it does.

A forgotten fact that becomes even more apparent as he doesn't even bother punching her, just runs through Twyla like a linebacker trucking a blocker.

It's perfect form, too: shoulder to chest, drive with the legs, finish with violent hands.

Twyla gets a view of the railing as she flips over it, same as what happened at the train depot after the fight with Lady Arkham.

This time, the drop's a good twenty feet, and she went over backwards.

She reaches for her grappling gun, but the movement creates a new shockwave of pain—Bane running her over like a Greyhound bus broke at least two ribs—and even with her suit, even with her mental fortitude, even with her tolerance for physical trauma, her body finally breaks, and her vision fades to black.

The sounds—gunfire, shouted updates—bring her back first.

"John and Harley escaped!"

"We've got Waller!"

"Officer down—two bullets to the right leg, one in the chest!"

"Twyla. Please, Twyla, please be—"

She can't blink her eyes open yet, but it feels like Alexis is kneeling over her, fearing that she'll only ever get to use her name in mourning from now on, and she reaches a hand up from her prone position, or tries to.

Pain courses through her body, beating just as steadily as her pulse.

"Lex," she rasps.

"Oh, thank God," she whispers, almost hugging Twyla before she thinks better of it, and Twyla groans, "Bat—mobile. Call it. My—"

She points to her useless arm, broken at the elbow, and Alexis taps at the omni-tool on her forearm as quickly as possible.

"Okay, okay, we're okay. It's only a few minutes out," she murmurs, the gentility in her tone somehow soothing Twyla amidst the chaos. "I—you're gonna need to get up. And," her voice shakes, "get that internal bleeding taken care of pronto."

She nods.

"I'm not dying here."

She locks the thought in her head until it becomes synced to her breathing, to each step in the process of regaining her footing: sitting up, resting on her haunches, collapsing to her knees, and finally, finally managing to stand, with Alexis helping the entire time.

"You're not. You're not," Alexis whispers back, and she hadn't realized she'd been repeating the mantra aloud.

"Stay with me," Twyla pleads as Alexis nearly pours her into the Batmobile.

"I will, but I—I can't. Not right now. While you were out, Waller's team hit each of us with tracking darts."

"Tr—tracking darts?"

Alexis somehow finds it in her to laugh. "I told you big government sucks, right? So I need to go somewhere else to remove it, to keep you safe."

Twyla nods again, but the movement hurts too much, and she can't stay awake any more.

**

Gotham's best doctors, plus a few international specialists, restore Twyla's body to better condition than she deserves, in her estimation.

"I've been treating myself so cruel," she thinks during day three of her convalescence.

"But you're going to keep doing it. To keep Gotham safe."

Recovery's slow—slower than she likes—so she's glad for a distraction when Jocelyn tells her to come to the games room to chat.

Using the railing, taking the steps one at a time: she's never experienced such fragility before.

"Hey, Jocelyn, what's—"

The packed suitcases at the side of the couch grab her attention. So, too, does the opened bottle of whiskey.

"I needed the good stuff, the single malt, for courage," she explains.

"Courage for what?"

"To say goodbye."

"For—for that vacation we talked about?" Twyla answers, trying to keep her panic at bay, because the alternative is—

"No." Jocelyn takes a slow sip. "No, I think it will be a good deal longer than that."

"But why?"

The question shoots out of her mouth like a bullet, and she holds her hands up in apology. "Sorry. I'd still like to know why, though. If you're comfortable sharing."

"I am. I owe you that, certainly." She drains her glass and sighs. "Our battles, our war, our crusade against all things bad in Gotham—it's not what it once was. It used to be smaller. Simpler. And I don't have the stomach for what it's become."

"C'mon, Jocelyn," Twyla wheedles, still not quite processing that this conversation is happening. "You know I can't do what I do—what we do—without your help."

Jocelyn gives a bit of a pleased hum, the way she always did when she'd correctly anticipated Twyla's moves in chess, and asks, "Who says you have to do it at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"Our mission used to be so clear: catch the criminals and lock them up," Jocelyn replies. "But lately, with all the subterfuge and secrecy, the way you exploited John's friendship, going undercover with the Pact for the Agency—everything's become grey, going with this whole 'the ends justify the means' approach."

"I did what I had to do to protect Gotham," Twyla pushes back, but she's not actually sure of that, and neither is Jocelyn, based on the lift to her eyebrows and her incredulous tone.

"You think the city's protected? It's just as bad as when we started targeting Mori and then encountered Riddler, if not even worse off. From my perspective," she continues, "it seems as though Batwoman's presence only nurtures the evil she means to destroy."

"I'm not without blame," Twyla accepts, "but the good must outweigh the bad. Think of all the lives we've saved."

"And what of the ones we've harmed? Lucius and Rachel. John. Selina. Countless GCPD officers," Jocelyn lists, each name making Twyla's stomach tighten in knots. "Everyone who comes into contact with Batwoman suffers sooner or later. Leaving her behind may be the only solution."

Twyla can't formulate a response, as much as she wants to, but Jocelyn keeps the discussion going by raising her left arm, extending it, and holding her hand out. "Look. Notice anything different?"

It takes Twyla a second, but then it clicks. "The tremors—they're gone?"

Jocelyn nods.

"And the shooting pains in your arm?"

"Gone as well. And it happened as soon as I made the decision to leave," Jocelyn informs her, and whether it's intentional or not, it wedges the knife of guilt deeper into Twyla's gut. "I'd thought they stemmed from the whole kidnapping business with Lady Arkham, as some sort of residual trauma. But," she sighs heavily, "it's been the job. The long hours, the constant worry, the feeling of powerlessness that I first felt when your father's ambition began to grow too large—the mental pain manifested itself with physical symptoms."

"I'm sorry, Joc," Twyla whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks now. "I'm so sorry. I always knew I caused you pain, but I never thought it would be so much suffering."

"No, no, Twyla—I'm sorry," she murmurs back. "I'm not saying this to upset or insult you, just to—to try to explain."

She takes a deep breath to compose herself, then carries on.

"The powerlessness was the biggest trigger for me. Your father ran headlong into darkness when he began exploiting Arkham and its inhabitants for financial gain. Before that, even, but it became more pronounced then. He thought himself invincible."

Twyla catches the parallel and wants to pummel it, punt it into the fireplace to burn. "I'm nothing like him! I fight against the darkness in Gotham, for good."

"That you do," Jocelyn agrees, but with a steely resolve that indicates she isn't done arguing her point. "But while your paths diverge, I fear they will ultimately return to the same spot. First your father, then you, lying face down in an alley in some godforsaken corner of Gotham, shot dead by a criminal."

Jocelyn breaks at the harshness to her own words, tears springing to her eyes. "I—I won't bear witness to that, Twyla. I won't bury you, too. You remember, I'm sure, my speech on how much I regretted doing nothing while your father destroyed himself and harmed so many people in his way?"

Twyla manages to nod.

"I enabled him through my inaction, much like I've been doing with you. But no more." She stands up straight, grabs her bags, walks toward the doors. "I'll do what I could not back then, and make my stand. I owe it to you. And myself."

"You're sure?" Twyla asks.

A flash of light outside catches their attention.

It's the bat signal.

Jocelyn, for the first time in her life, regards it with distrust, bordering on disgust.

"There are other ways of doing good in this world than running the risk of getting yourself killed every night, but you've chosen your bloody passion."

Twyla's only living family, the person who's loved her the longest out of anyone she's ever known, is about to walk out of her life.

"And over what? A vigilante crusade that I won't be able to physically keep up for more than a few years, at most?"

She's already thirty-two, and while she might be in great shape, losing even a sliver of her reaction time or her flexibility by next spring could be the difference between life and death.

"Jocelyn, wait. Please."

She stops and turns back, crosses her arms.

"What if I didn't choose it anymore? What if I stopped?"

She's silent for a second, clearly surprised that Twyla even made a hypothetical offer.

"Would you be able to give up being Batwoman just like that without regretting it?" she turns Twyla's question back around on her. "Or without resenting me?"

Twyla nods once. Twice. Searches for the right words and recalls them, oddly, from a rather threatening night.

"It's like I told Lady Arkham down in the catacombs. I'd do anything to keep you safe. To keep our family together. Plus," she lets herself admit her weakness, too, and realizes it's actually a bit of strength, and common sense, "I've been exhausted. Absolutely drained. Mentally, physically, emotionally, you name it. Being Batwoman has never been that good for my health, but these last few weeks were brutal. And on that happy note," she chokes out a laugh, "please tell me you'll stay."

"...well, maybe one more night, at least," Jocelyn relents, releasing her grip on her suitcase, and Twyla hugs her tightly despite her own body's pain, only letting go when her phone rings.

"Alexis?"

She'd wanted to reach out, but hadn't, just in case Waller or someone from the Pact still had tabs on her, although from Jocelyn's updates, the Director was no longer part of the Agency, and the Pact had disbanded.

"Still, villainy tends to reign in Gotham."

She's not sure what to expect, especially when the other end of the line stays quiet.

"Maybe she's decided to leave after all. I wouldn't exactly blame her."

"You asked me to stay, after the fight at SANCTUS," she says quietly. "When you were…"

"Yeah," Twyla murmurs. "I remember."

"It felt like you meant just for that night, but, um…Harley torched my apartment before she got out."

Twyla claps a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry."

"Felix and I have been house-hopping since then—it's crazy how many people with big houses don't believe in security systems—but I'm tired of running. Could I come stay with you, Twy? At least for a few days?"

"Yes."

A peal of disbelieving laughter comes through. "Really?"

"Of course." Twyla has to laugh herself. "After all, we have more than enough room. We can come pick you up if you want."

"Love that for me. Thank you. Both of you. Tell Jocelyn she's a right peach for everything."

"I will. Definitely," Twyla promises, beyond grateful that she'll have that chance. "Lemme know where you are. See you soon."

"Will do. Bye, Twy."

"Bye, Lex."

She's grinning like a fool, and Jocelyn remarks, with a slight raise of her eyebrow, "I can make up one of the guest rooms for Ms. Rose before we retrieve her, but based on your expression, I take it you'd be more than happy to share your bedroom?"

"Yes," Twyla responds as casually as possible. "But we should still clean up one of the other bedrooms in case she wants her own space."

"Smart thinking."

As they walk through the manor toward the residential hall, Twyla really studies it for the first time in years. She's not seen much of it aside from the grand hall, the games room, and the kitchen, given her nighttime activities.

It's lonely. Empty. A home for memories and ghosts, preserving a familial legacy she doesn't particularly want, packed with gauche excess—the resplendent chandeliers, the commissioned paintings, the statues in the back garden—that's never spoken to her, and for what use?

"Two people—and now three, at least for a little bit—having this much space feels wasteful."

She contemplates how she could repurpose it to do good in other ways, as Jocelyn mentioned. Pictures what it might be like for local Gotham City Public School students to access the manor's various libraries, rather than wealthy glad-handers and politicians who have no interest in books.

An inkling of an idea comes to life.

Turning the manor into some type of grand youth development space.

"God knows the public schools don't have enough funding to pull it off by themselves."

The thought doesn't bring the adrenaline spike that she associates with being Batwoman, but something calmer. Gentler. Better.

Jocelyn turns back to look at where she's stopped. "Penny for your thoughts, Twyla?"

She can almost picture it, and she's pretty sure Jocelyn will go along with it.

"I'm gonna run this by Alexis when we pick her up, too, but…what do you think about downsizing our lifestyle a bit?"

**Seven months later**

Alexis gasps at the revelation as they board the private Sands Enterprises jet.

"You haven't been on anything more than a business trip in six years?!"

Twyla shrugs. "Batwoman always had to watch over Gotham. Plus I didn't have anyone I wanted to travel with besides Jocelyn. And something tells me she wouldn't be up for windsurfing in Cancun," she chuckles.

"No, probably not. Has she taken her long-awaited vacation yet?" Alexis asks as she beelines for the cocktail bar.

"No, but she said that having a week of Jocelyn time will be delightful. She might pop over to the manor early in the week to visit with the kids and help out with story time for some of the younger ones, but otherwise, she'll be pampering herself."

It had been easier than she'd expected to part with the place, with plenty of memories and trinkets, to transform the manner into an out of school time youth development and community center.

"It sat almost empty for so long—I'm glad it finally has a purpose for Gotham."

"Love that for her," Alexis comments, passing Twyla a martini. "And I'm just gonna do one final email check for my peace of mind. The bank's IT guy has been bugging me about sending their diagnostic results back, but I told him I needed a week to collect enough data to analyze their system's strengths and weaknesses."

"Think if you mentioned you used to be Catwoman, he'd trust you more?" Twyla jokes.

"Ha ha, very funny," Alexis mutters, but she can't hide a smile at her girlfriend's teasing. "Like I always say, though: who's gonna know how to stop a thief better than an ex-thief? And," she lights up as an app notification dings, "there's his precious report. Gonna send it over now," she attaches it to an email and types out a message, "and if he has any issues with anything, he can take it up with Rachel. Might as well copy her on it, too."

"All done?" Twyla asks after another minute.

She puts down her phone and picks up her champagne glass. "Hunny p, babe! Officially on island time."

"Me, too, Alexis," she confides before pulling her into her oversized lounge chair, unable to keep her hands or her mouth to herself, luxuriating in the sound and feel of her favorite ex-con giggling into their kisses.

After all, why even be a tech billionaire if you can't enjoy some of the finer things once in a while?