Kate Kane

The water under the pier wasn't deep enough to drown in, she knew that her feet should be hitting the mud of shore; it didn't matter, Kate was still drowning. Cold water rushing into her mouth and up her nose and into her lungs, her chest heaved but every gasp for breath just made it worse. Above the rushing water was the desperate thudding of her heart as she tried to swim up even though her limbs weren't obeying her commands. Come on, Kate. You're not a corpse to be fished out of the river. Push.

Then the wail of la llorona, the weeping woman, pouring all that grief and violent, tremendous sorrow into her soul. It hurt, she hurt, worse than the unbearable pressure in her lungs. Then it was worse, it wasn't la llorona's grief, it was Kate's somehow dredged up from that dark closed off part of her mind. The loss of Beth, her sister, her other half, gone and wrong. Twisted into something unrecognizable, and Kate had let that happen to her. Kate had let that happen to her then Kate had killed her. Kate could hear it whispered in her sister's voice: it would be better for her to die, it would be justice because her sins were beyond atonement.

For just a flickering second, Kate believed it. And then there was darkness.

Then, an impossible time later, she woke up to a deep ache in her lungs and the immediate need to cough. She sat up and started coughing, deep enough to shake her shoulders and make her chest ache, but no water came up and finally she took a shuddering breath and leaned back. She forced herself to focus on the present and take stock, slipping into Batwoman just like pulling down the cowl. Not a hospital. Prison? Possible. Her suit was gone, so her i.d. was compromised, replaced by strangely comfortable clothes.

Her mouth wavered into a trembling, worried frown before forcing it into a thin, determined line. She wasn't dead, she was, improbably, not drowned in the Gotham Harbor. Everything else was manageable.

She searched the...it had to be a cell. Top to bottom and looked for answers, an escape, maybe a weapon of some kind. Shouting herself hoarse to get answers from someone didn't get her human contact. Finally, Kate settled in for the long haul.

Hours passed. She was perched cross-legged on the bed trying to meditate when there was a strange, unfamiliar sensation and then she's abruptly sitting somewhere else altogether.