2019.

Stephen and Danny stood waiting for them at the steps of Finn Manor when the Taurus drove itself up to the door. Kevin was not doing well, with that gunshot having gone off only inches above his head following the Blue Banshee’s sonic assault. He was still a bit woozy and seemed to have a hard time finding his feet as Stephen helped him up to his room.

Danny said to Gracie, “That was some seriously bad-ass superhero action you pulled out there.” Even with Betsy’s bodypaint distorting their cameras, he had been able to get a general image of what happened on the SnyTech rooftop.

“Thanks,” said Gracie. 

It didn’t feel bad-ass. Somehow she thought being a superhero was supposed to leave someone feeling more triumphant.

Danny walked with her as she climbed the stairs to her room. “I mean it. You did something special out there. Kevin was right to bring you in, completely. You belong here. You were born for this.”

Born for this? That was some seriously fucked up shit. And you think I was born for it? Thanks, pal… 

But she didn’t say that. From the look on his face, she could see how much he appreciated her bringing Kevin back alive, and that he just wanted to help. 

If he wanted to help, there was something he could do. There at the doorway to her bedroom, Gracie threw her arms around Danny, shoved her face into his neck, and squeezed. 

She wanted to feel something warm and solid right then. Danny’s torso would do. And as she held the embrace, she felt his hands hesitantly take hold of her waist. Gently, he patted her side.

Gracie’s eyes were wet when she released him. She didn’t know when she had started crying. Maybe she had never stopped. There were waves of tears shed on the ride back home. 

“Thanks,” she said. “Sorry, I should have asked…”

“It’s okay,” he said, a little too quickly. “All good.”

“Thanks,” she said again. “Good night.”

Everything felt jangly in Gracie’s head as she lay down. The images of the fight kept flashing across her mind’s eye, and her muscles twitched as if they were wrestling with Betsy still. It was not a restful night for her.

An anonymous tip alerted Titan City Police to the SnyTech factory where gunshots had been heard the night before. There, they found the body of Elizabeth Declemente, who had been a person of interest in a case of arson at her apartment complex. 

Her obituary in The Titan Gazette described her as a loving and selfless caregiver and spoke glowingly of her service after Zero Hour and her years at Sunset Gardens. There was no mention of suicide, arson, or the murders at Bobby D’s, and no connection made to the death of Edward Finn, which to all the world still seemed to have been natural causes. 

For two days, Kevin remained sequestered in his bedroom. Stephen asked that Gracie and Danny keep from playing music or engaging in loud conversation anywhere near that part of Finn Manor. 

Kevin finally left his bedroom on the night of Halloween. He had his ears bandaged with gauze and carried a dry erase board to communicate with them through writing. His first message was, I’m so bored. Movie? 

They watched some old black and white horror films with the sound off and subtitles on — not at all scary, which suited Gracie just fine. Stephen had been handing out candy to Trick-or-Treaters at the Finn Manor front gate and brought them the remains of the candy bowl to share.

Later in the week, Captain Villagrana came by Finn Manor in an unofficial capacity. She and Kevin spoke privately for some time. His hearing was starting to recover enough for him to have conversations. 

Gracie didn’t know what they spoke about, but she noticed they didn’t go down to the Crypt, just stayed in his office. Maybe a Captain of the TCPD wasn’t supposed to go down to the secret lair of the Crimson Wraith, even if she used to be a Wily Wisp.

Danny spent long days in the Crypt examining the device Betsy had used, trying to figure out exactly how she had managed to control Crimson Wraith technology with it. 

“It’s all from old SnyTech hardware,” he eventually explained. “Which is what I used to build all of our equipment too. Building off of that, there are a limited number of bands through which we can broadcast and encryption codes we can use. 

“If she knew that’s what we have, then she could have eventually figured out how to hijack the signal our devices use to communicate with each other. It would only have allowed for basic commands, like shutting off the cameras in Edward’s apartment and causing that feedback shriek over the audio. 

“I’m going to have to rebuild everything from scratch to make sure someone can’t do that again, but the scarier question is, how did she know that’s what we were using?”

Gracie asked, “Was that how she made herself look like a blinding blaze over the cameras too?”

“No, for that, she used a bodypaint loaded with an isotope that emitted infrared light when electrified. The device in her hand sent the electrical signal and her skin carried the charge all over her body. That’s why she couldn’t just pour it over her clothes. But the Crimson Wraith mask, the Haunts, and any other device looking at her with night vision would have lit up like staring right into the sun.”

“Wouldn’t that, like, hurt? For her, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah. She was basically giving herself a really bad sunburn just to fuck with us. Considering everything else she did, I guess she figured it was worth it.”

It was well into November before Kevin was at anything close to full capacity. While he relied on his image as an irresponsible millionaire playboy to dodge direct involvement with Snyder-Finn financial dealings, Gracie rounded out the end of her semester with a B in one class and A’s in all the rest. 

When Kevin felt well enough to get back into Gracie’s training, she was more than happy to. After working a half-day in the Snyder-Finn courier pool, she came back to Finn Manor and joined Kevin for several laps around the manor grounds. 

It was a beautiful day for a jog, with the sky the dark blue of an autumn afternoon, the air cool on her cheeks as her body temperature rose from the exertion. Somewhere, someone must have been burning wood, and the acrid bite of mystery smoke was delicious.

Once they had finished their run, they sat on one of the stone benches by the rose bushes to rest and rehydrate. And Kevin said to her, “Would you like to say what’s on your mind?”

“What?”

Kevin smiled. “You are going to have to get used to not being the only person in the room capable of reading other people.”

He had a point. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he continued. “But you can if you would like to.”

Saying something had never mattered much in her life, either at home with her parents or after. She had learned to do something about what she felt instead of saying something. 

But Kevin had been totally different from anyone else Gracie met before, had been from day one. He asked about what she felt in a way that made her think he actually wanted to hear it.

“Well, I guess, I’ve been having some questions about, you know, what went down… with Betsy.”

“What questions?”

“Was that… I mean… I don’t want to put down what we did or anything. It was hard. We tried our best but… What happened with her, was that… justice?” 

Gracie pushed her fingers through her hair. Really, she wanted to push them into her skull. Her thoughts still weren’t sitting right inside of it. 

But this had to be an area where his crimefighting expertise could help her, right? Somewhere, along with the knowledge of how to investigate a crime scene or deliver a kung-fu kick while wearing a bunch of high-tech gear, he had to be able to give her some kind of perspective, something to answer the unease that gnawed at her still.

But instead of an answer, Kevin gave her a question. “Do you feel bad about our part in what happened?”

“No, I… We couldn’t have done anything else, right? I mean, could we?”

“I think probably not. But the fact that you aren’t sure about that means you care, and that’s a good thing. It’s important to care. And it’s important to keep caring.”

“But we didn’t fix it, did we? Edward is still just as dead. Now she is too. And whoever she may have been working with or working for, she took that information with her.”

He nodded grimly. “She did.”

“And that’s it. That’s all. She’s gone. It’s not like she’s going to get to go sit in prison and think about what she did, and, I don’t know, deal with her shit, maybe try to be better on the other side. Like, I don’t know what prison is supposed to do, if it’s supposed to punish someone or teach someone not to be a criminal anymore, but Betsy isn’t having either of that. She’s just fucking gone.”

Kevin hefted a sigh. “She is.” And the weight of the sigh told her that Kevin wasn’t so used to all of this masked vigilante business that the loss didn’t mean anything to him.

“So, what was the point?”