Chapter Text
“Please save this dog!” Kate Bishop burst through the doors of the emergency vets, stumbling towards the counter while trying to protect the precious bundle in her arms.
The woman behind the counter got up fast, scattering the plate of chips she was snacking on across the floor, as she opened the small door and raced towards Kate. She reached out to take the pile of fur and blood from Kate’s arms but her arms clenched tight. Tears burned from her eyes as the woman knelt down so they were eye level.
“Hey, we’ll do the best we can for your friend, okay? But you have to let him go first.”
Kate’s grip weakened just enough for the woman to pull the shaking dog to her arms. A man stood behind her, Kate hadn’t even heard him approach, and he gently took the dog and headed into a room at the back without so much as a backwards glance. The woman lead Kate to one of the plastic chairs near the doors, sitting her down and stepping away for a moment. Kate’s hands shook, she watched tiny rivulets of red drip from her fingers, creating morbid fireworks on the linoleum floor.
The woman returned, pulling Kate’s hands towards herself and pressing several damp wipes against her skin. She didn’t look up at her, gently wiping away the blood with a soft hum as Kate struggled to regulate her breathing.
“That’s a lot of blood,” the woman mused, without a hint of accusation in her voice, “you wanna tell me what happened to that dog in there?”
Kate flexed her hands, grimacing at how cold they felt without the dog’s soft fur to warm them. At least they were free from blood now, reddened only by the vigorous scrubbing that had been used to remove it.
“He saved my life,” Kate said, “so I have to try and return the favour if I can.”
It had been an odd sort of day. The weather during winter in New York was changeable at best and downright unpredictable at worst. She’d dressed warmly, a long black coat and purple beanie as she’d made her way towards her childhood home. One did not ignore a summons from Eleanor Bishop. At least not more than once. Kate managed to make it to a third summons before her mother angrily rang her eight times and demanded she take a train across town and meet her at the penthouse. Snow had started falling in silent clusters as she’d arrived.
The doorman greeted her with a smile, he’d known her since childhood and had often aided in her mischief when she used to run away from home. Usually to the park across the street. Her dad would mysteriously find her soon after, taking her home before her mother had a heart attack at finding her missing.
“Shall I let Ms Bishop know you’ve arrived?” he asked, a playful glint in his eye like he’d heard all of the voicemails Kate had to delete earlier in the day.
“No thanks, John. I’d like to keep my hearing for as long as possible.”
A few people milled around the entryway as she walked towards the elevator in the middle of the area. Mrs Perrin, who’s wealth rivalled that of the Bishops’ was trying and failing to get her teacup poodle into her handbag. It looked like Truffles was winning today’s battle, as Mrs Perrin sighed and began dragging her towards the door by her pink, jewel-encrusted leash. Kate chuckled to herself, catching the eye of a man she’d never seen before and sharing the laugh.
He was bald, with blue eyes so light you almost lost them against his sclera. He wore an expensive looking tracksuit, one of those branded ones celebrities tried to make look chic on red carpets. He nodded to her, lips upturned slightly in what Kate thought was his attempt at a smile, and picked up one of the free papers that got left inside each morning. He settled against one of the leather seats, crossing his feet at the ankles, and opened the paper to read. Kate caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the side of his head as the doors of the elevator closed and she was rocketed up to her parents’ penthouse.
Eleanor Bishop didn’t even let her knock. The door was opened as Kate raised her hand, the stern silhouette of her mother waiting on the other side with crossed arms and a frown so deep Kate was sure if the weather turned it would be permanent.
“Hi Mom,” Kate said, ignoring the look on her mother’s face as she removed her coat and threw it over the marble table in the centre of the entryway because she knew her mother hated her doing it, “how’s the planning for the gala going?”
Eleanor scoffed, Kate couldn’t see her face but she knew her mother was rolling her eyes.
“Why, Kate? Do you suddenly care about the charity gala? Or are you once again trying to distract me so I don’t talk to you about your behaviour?”
Kate grimaced.
“What talking, Mom? You were just gonna skip straight to the yelling anyway.”
Kate turned to face Eleanor as her mother threw her arms into the air.
“And why do you think that is? You punched a man on the subway! We’re lucky he didn’t press charges!”
“He was harassing a woman, he’s lucky she didn’t press charges!”
Eleanor pinched the bridge of her nose, walking deeper into the penthouse without waiting for Kate to follow. Kate dropped her hat next to her coat and chased after her mother.
“He was an asshole, Mom, he deserved worse than what he got,” Kate continued as she caught up with her mother in her seldom-used living room.
It had been many years since her mother had ‘stored’ her father’s record collection somewhere Kate had never discovered. Every trace of Derek Bishop had been cleansed from the apartment that he’d inherited from his father in the months following his death. The records, his small act of rebellion against his financier father, sent away in favour of stained bookcases filled with rows upon rows of pointless leatherbound books nobody in the house would ever read. Even her dad’s couch, a rust-coloured leather monstrosity he’d ‘recovered’ from an alleyway when Kate was about four, had been carried away during Kate’s first year of college. It had been replaced by a grey corner unit that Kate hated. She refused to leave her room that Christmas break until her mother apologised and yet still the sofa was never recovered.
Where her father’s record player had sat, a glass case had become the most recent addition to the room. Atop the mahogany unit, on a velvet cushion that probably cost more than Kate’s college tuition, was a curved sword. The sleek weapon had been polished to the point it near blinded anybody who entered the room. It wasn’t perfect, there were small divots along the length of the blade itself. A jewel was missing from the pommel, most likely a ruby if the rest of the colourful gems that adorned it were anything to go by. Kate stared at it for a moment before her mother’s volume pierced her focus.
“You are not a superhero, Kate. You’re the heir to a massive security corporation, and that comes with certain responsibilities. You barely passed last semester, I can’t keep bailing you out every time you do something stupid and reckless.”
“What if I don’t want to take over the company? What if I just wanna do my own thing, travel the world and help people?”
Eleanor scoffed.
“Is punching people on the subway helping people, Kate? Is burning down half the library on your campus helping people? You are a child, and while you live under my roof you will obey my rules.”
Kate laughed humourlessly.
“Ha. I didn’t even know that candle was real. And it’s a good thing I don’t live under your roof then isn’t it? Though I’m sure Jack must love you being a control freak.”
Eleanor froze, Kate could only tell she was breathing from the movement of her nostrils as she attempted to work through probably wanting to strangle her only child. She raised a single finger.
“One more chance. You put a single toe out of line and you’ll see how much of a ‘control freak’ I can be. Now go, and remember you’re helping with the charity auction set up.”
Kate had the good sense not to groan at the prospect of having to shmooze with fifty of the most bland millionaires in New York for hours on end. She simply nodded, making her way back to the entrance to grab her coat and her beanie.
“I’ll be there,” was all she said in terms of a farewell before she raced back out into the elevator.
“Well, that went well.”
Mrs Perrin was dragging Truffles the dog back through the entrance as the elevator doors slid open and Kate could make her way back outside. Talking with her mother was a fine balancing act when Eleanor was in a good mood. Today it had been a disaster. It wasn’t that Kate tried to raise her mother’s blood pressure every chance she got. It was just that her mother’s blood pressure seemed entirely dependent on Kate not being herself. She sighed, exhaling a breath of smoking frigid air before resolving to jog at least part way back to her apartment. Inappropriate outfit be damned.
Maybe a run in the freezing cold will clear my head.
As she began to jog through the park near the penthouse, passing by several groups of people who were also forced to be outside in the dismal weather, Kate found a consistent blot in her peripheral vision. Behind her, staying far enough away that Kate almost had to turn to see him, walked the man from the lobby. Kate hadn’t seen him as she’d left, but she’d been too caught up in her own thoughts to really take stock of who was sitting around waiting for the elevator. Mrs Perrin and that little dog were very distracting.
Kate slowed.
The man slowed, leaning down to swat some gathering slush from the front of his sneakers.
Kate began running again.
The man started walking, eyes trained directly on Kate even as he shouldered past other people on the path.
Kate felt her heartrate tick up. She looked ahead, nothing but a vast expanse of trees and grass. Plenty of people around. There was no way he would be able to try anything out in the open like this. She reached upwards, turning slightly so she could get a proper look at him while feigning a stretch. He didn’t change his path, whether he’d caught her looking or not she didn’t know. What she saw, however, was his hand reach into the pocket of his tracksuit jacket.
She told herself it was probably his fingers. That maybe he had seen her and was trying to intimidate her. But the way the mass in his pocket moved gave her no room for doubt. She felt her muscles lock as she tensed, looking ahead for any way she could safely get off the path.
If she could get close.
If she could get close then she could take him out.
Her mother told her to stay out of trouble, but was she really getting into trouble if she was saving herself from a rando who was following her?
A turn in the path prompted her to pick up the pace. She could sense the man still keeping pace as she darted across a busy intersection. She fled into the nearest alleyway, ducking behind a trash can to wait for the inevitable. Her blood roared in her ears, she had to will her heart to slow down so she could hear anything.
The crunch of branded sneakers onto the icy sidewalk made her breath hitch. They stopped, a slight slip of one shoe and a shout in a language Kate didn’t understand but was almost certainly a curse word, before beginning to creep along the alley.
Kate forced herself back against the brickwork of the nearest building, fighting off a gag as her coat pressed against something unidentified and slimy. A drop of something that was definitely not water slid between her coat and her shirt and she bit her lip to stop herself from shouting. A shadowy head appeared next to the trash can, slinking closer to her hiding spot. Kate clenched her hands into fists, trying to remember what her coach had taught her.
“Relax your posture, stay light on your feet and hit ‘em hard and fast, Kid.”
As soon as she saw the shadow of his feet cross the underside of the trash can, Kate leaped into action.
Or, at least, she should have.
As soon as she showed herself, the man who was following her pulled the trigger on what Kate had assumed was a gun. A short snick, not the explosion Kate had expected, and Kate was sent spasming onto her back. Her mouth clenched as she fought to cry out, the rest of her muscles tensing against the waves of electricity pulsing through her body. As she slowly began to reclaim control of her faculties the man stood over her.
She barely had time to croak out a “please don’t” before his boot slammed into her face.
The receptionist gasped as Kate relayed the story. Her hands had been cleaned and she had handed Kate a warm cup of the worst coffee she thought she’d ever smelled.
“Christ, you’ve had a night of it. Drink that up and you’ll feel better.”
Kate wanted to say the coffee might have been making her feel worse. Instead she smiled in a way she hoped looked thankful, though she felt a wave of nausea pass over her as she took a sip. The receptionist took the chair next to her.
“So how did you meet your furry friend, then?”
Kate sighed against the headache competing with the nausea for worst feeling in her body.
“Like I said, he saved my life. And he paid for it.”
She leaned heavily against the wall behind her, pinching at the bridge of her nose to will the sickness away. The receptionist sharply took in a breath.
“Good God you’ve been shot!”
Kate looked down at her thigh. She’d wondered where the numbness had come from. She had been so focused on getting the dog the care he needed she hadn’t given much thought to her own well-being. She glanced down, shifting her grip on the horrific coffee to reveal a blooming red rose on the fabric of her jeans. Angry, frayed denim imploded in the centre of the morbid flower.
So maybe she hadn’t imagined that second shot.
She had come-to in the trunk of a car that stank like weed and tobacco. Intense, thumping bass and lyrics in a language Kate didn’t know rattling through the speakers. A tiny red light was all Kate had to see by, she’d been stored painfully on her front and her hands had started to go numb behind her back. She tested the ties they’d used experimentally, the ones on her feet were loose enough she felt she could slip through them if she could shimmy out of a sneaker first. The zip ties on her wrists were a different story. They’d been tightened over her coat, tight enough that she couldn’t comfortably pull her arm out of a sleeve.
The car tanked its way over a pothole and Kate was thrown against the door of the trunk. Her face slammed back into the carpet, her nose smacking painfully against the rough fibres. The car lurched as it accelerated around a corner. Kate rolled against the back of the car, her fingers grazing across cold metal. She curled them around the jutting piece of what seemed like the lock, shifting so the plastic ties were hooked underneath it. As the car turned another corner Kate kicked off the side of the trunk and pulled until she felt the satisfying snap of the ties as they broke. Her arms slumped to her sides, pins and needles beginning to set in as the blood flow returned.
Something clicked on the car radio as a call was accepted.
“Mamy dziewczynę, szybko wyciągnij pieniądze od jej matki-suki. Jest strasznie irytująca,” the driver said over the muted music.
“Dobra robota. Nie martw się, jeśli kobieta nie zapłaci, możesz ją po prostu zabić. Tak czy inaczej, dostanie to, czego chce,” a deep-voiced reply rumbled through the entire vehicle.
Kate began rapidly shaking her feet, willing at least one of her shoes to give way. Her left shoe came off and Kate had to stop herself from cheering. The tie slipped out easily with it.
She was officially free.
The conversation on the phone seemed to have dissolved into a high intensity argument, she heard the driver slam his palms on the steering wheel at least twice. Eventually the call was dropped, the familiar thump of the bass threatening to give Kate a headache. Kate took a deep breath, exhaling and watching her foggy breath dissipate against the freezing metal of the trunk door.
She was free.
Now she had to escape.
Tentatively, she tapped on the door with her palm, pressing it to see if it had any give. It stuck tight. Cars passed them, their lights offering a little extra light as Kate worked her way through her, admittedly very limited, options.
The lock? Stuck fast, no chance of turning it from the inside.
Crawling through into the back seats? The car had been modified. A metal bar had been screwed across the back of all three seats, making it impossible to push the middle seat through.
The car had clearly been used for attempted kidnappings before.
She felt it slow, the relatively smooth tarmac fading onto the gritty juddering of gravel. Kate got onto her back, readying herself to come out swinging against her kidnapper as soon as the trunk was popped.
The driver’s side door opened. Feet crunched across the tarmac, stopping in front of the trunk. Faint growls somewhere behind the car made Kate pause. Gravel scattered, the driver of the car kicking it towards the noise.
“Pieprzony pies, zawsze tu pieprzę,” he spat against the trunk, plucking the keys from his pocket at the same time he grumbled “Ułatw mi to dziewczyno, na litość boską.”
The lock clicked. The trunk popped open with a crack. Thick, white light blinded her as the lid was lifted on her captivity. Kate struck out as soon as she had space to, narrowly managing to connect with the bald man’s nose and sending him sprawling against the gravel clutching at his face.
Kate rolled from the trunk, landing heavily. She forced herself to her feet, spinning wildly to look for the closest place she could run. As she spied an exit behind her, a click in front had her whirling back around.
“Do not test my patience, I have been told to kill you if you do not cooperate.”
Gun.
Real gun.
Kinda small, actually, but very real gun.
The man pressed the gun closer to Kate’s head as she froze. He smiled wide, breathing so heavily Kate could smell his rancid tobacco breath even at the distance they still had to each other.
“Good girl. Now, come quietly, we will wait for your mother to pay up.”
As Kate moved to raise her hands a yellow streak flashed across her vision. She fell backwards as the man screamed in pain. The growls she had heard earlier had become a full roar as a golden retriever jumped towards the gunman, sinking its teeth deep into the flesh of the man’s arm. The man flailed his arm, screaming in the same language he had been talking on the phone as he attempted to dislodge the canine.
Kate turned to sprint in the opposite direction.
Bang.
A shot rang out. Kate’s hands flew down her body to check for damage. They came up clean. She looked across the parking lot. Through the thick falling snow the shadow of a second man stood. Kate couldn’t make out any of his features, perhaps slicked back hair, not that much taller than she was. It didn’t matter anyway. She watched in horror as the dog released the bald man’s arm and fell awkwardly into the snow. A thin red line drizzled from the poor animal’s face, a soft whine as it struggled to breathe.
“Fucking asshole! That is what you get!” The bald man yelled, kicking the dog in the stomach to punctuate every word.
Both men were distracted. Kate’s route out was clear. All she had to do was run. The dog cried quietly, turning so Kate could see the ugly, gushing hole where the poor creature’s left eye used to be. It took a deep breath and sighed, shaking as the cold started to take hold of it.
All you have to do is run, Kate.
And run she did, she shouldered the bald man away from the dog, forcing him onto his back in the quickly gathering snowfall. She turned her back, scooping the dog into her arms and pushing off on her heels to peel out of the parking lot as fast as her rubbery legs could carry her.
The receptionist hummed as she passed Kate a small pile of antiseptic wipes.
“That musta been when the guy shot you. You wanna call the police?”
Kate shook her head.
“I’m sure my mother already took care of that. She’s probably tracking my phone as we speak.”
The woman frowned.
“You do stuff like this often? Is that why your mom tracks you?”
Kate laughed.
“Yes, and no. You’d be surprised how often these situations find me but my mom is also a control freak. Owns the biggest security firm in the city. Guess who tested the new technology at college?”
Before the receptionist could ask who her mother was, the light from the surgery room flickered off. The vet who had taken the dog from Kate’s arms entered the reception area, wiping his glasses with a tissue before replacing them on his face.
Kate tensed.
Their eyes met and the vet smiled.
“He is going to be okay.”
All the weight Kate didn’t know she was holding released from her body. She slumped back against the wall with a thud, tears welling in her eyes before she could control it. Thick watery lines peeled down her face as she laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
The vet stood a ways off, hands in the pockets of his white jacket. He waited for Kate to at least midway compose herself before he spoke again.
“His eye is gone, the bullet grazed the cornea from what we can gather, he was lucky the eye didn’t completely implode from the impact. Other than that he sustained a lot of bruising to his stomach and ribs but the damage is mostly superficial. We’ll need to monitor him for a new more days to make sure his wound is healing properly but you should be able to take him home early next week.”
Take him home?
“Oh,” Kate said, wiping the last of her tears on the back of her sweater sleeve, “umm he’s not, actually mine.”
The vet frowned.
“Ah. That is unfortunate. He’s not microchipped so if you don’t claim him we’ll have to reach out to the local shelters to see if anyone will take him. Would you like to see him?”
Kate clenched her fists. She shouldn’t. She should let them take him to the shelter where he had a chance to be adopted by someone much more put together than a twenty two year old fresh out of college. But still, he did save her life. She probably owed him a goodbye at least.
“Okay,” she said finally, standing and immediately regretting it as her thigh screamed.
First, say goodbye to the dog that saved your life. Second, uber to the nearest hospital before lead poisoning sets in.
The vet lead her through a different door than the one he had come out of. They headed through one of the consultation rooms, through a labyrinth of thin hallways chock full of boxes of supplies. He stopped them in front of a white door with a glass panel in the top.
“He’s just coming around from the anaesthetic so he’s probably going to be a little out of it. Just talk to him, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
He turned the handle and held the door open for Kate. As she walked through, the vet gently closed it behind her.
There was a quiet hum in the room. The smell of antiseptic reminded Kate of when she’d broken her wrist as a child, which in turn reminded her of her mother screaming at her that if she didn’t want the consequences she should stop being so reckless. A tiny grey kitten pawed at the plastic door to its cage, muted mews making Kate chuckle.
“Sorry, sweetie, I have other patients to see.”
The dog was curled into the corner of the largest cage in the room, two thick IV lines pulled through the small holes in the cage door. Dripping a cocktail of pain relief and fluids into her new friend.
A large head sluggishly untucked itself from the rest of his skinny body. His one good eye seemed to wink at her as it watched her, the other side of his face coated in at least an inch of thick gauze. Kate’s heart clenched.
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His tail unfurled ever so slightly, tapping against the plastic door as he wiggled it. His tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as he drunkenly smiled at her.
Kate knew she was gone in that moment.
She suspected the vet had planned it.
She put her palm against the door and the dog attempted to crawl towards it with a whine. Kate laughed quietly, trying not to disturb the relaxing aura of the room.
“Okay,” she whispered, “I get it. I’ll be back for you in a few days, that alright with you boy?”
He patted a front paw on the floor of the cage with a short boof.
“God, you’re one lucky boy.”
The door to the recovery room opened, the smiling receptionist on the other side this time.
“Everything good in here? There’s someone waiting for you in reception.”
As Kate stood her head swam. She looked down and saw the rose of blood in her jeans had turned into an attempt at tie-dying the denim. She leaned heavily on the door and the walls as she followed the receptionist back through and into the entrance. As she walked through the door she didn’t even have to look up to know who her visitor was.
“KATHERINE ELIZABETH BISHOP WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!”
Kate tried to smile at her mother but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Every part of her body either felt too light or much too heavy.
“Mom I can ex-”
She had barely managed to lift a finger before her entire body fell crashing to the floor. The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was her mother’s scream.