Alice (Young Justice)

The Sage Family

How to describe the Question?

As a man, he had been frustrating. Not a member of the League, yet someone who had saved countless lives without a second thought. Not superpowered and hardly combat-trained, and yet managed to almost bring an end to the great Luthor. Someone who brought globe-spanning conspiracies to their knees and rooted through people's trash on the weekends. And even after all that, it wasn't any assassin that got him. It was lung cancer.

The man laying in a bed at Hub City Central Hospital wasn't the Question. He was just Vic Sage, red hair, thin, pale face, every breath siphoning in and out of his lungs made by the machine at his bedside. The Question was the woman who sat beside him, featureless mask hiding tears, or maybe just tiredness.

"I almost got killed today."

Vic Sage didn't respond. He never did. He hadn't been awake in eight months.

"Twice."

The first Question had loved someone once, or at least, it might've been love. Helena Bertenelli, better known by the League and the Underground alike as the Huntress, had been his partner. What a pair they made, two people who were never satisfied, not with the world, not with each other. It may have been love, yes, but it was a miracle it lasted as long as it did.

Of course, such a wild romance had consequences. Three big ones, in fact.

The first (and, as such, the eldest) of these consequences was currently somewhere in China, breaking into an underground facility disguised by a grand temple to find the DNA origin of her half-husband/baby daddy, with said baby strapped to her back.

The last of the trio was enjoying an early retirement at the ripe old age of 21, living in a suburban home with her long-time boyfriend and trying to ignore how much the closet where she'd locked away her bow screamed at her to take off the lock and put on the mask.

The middle child, the problem child, The Question, Alice, whatever you wanted to call her, was sitting at her father's bedside, the only one who had bothered to visit the dying man, and wondering why she kept coming back. He hadn't been a great father, even she could admit that. He was paranoid. He hadn't let her enroll in school, and even if he had, she wouldn't be able to. He had taken her from the hospital before the staff could fill out a birth certificate. Outside of a few local papers on that particular incident, Alice Sage didn't exist. It was one of the last things her parents had fought about before her father left and took Alice with her, leaving Jade and the as-of-yet unborn third child behind.

The Question felt herself becoming sentimental again and shook the feeling off, standing quickly and returning the chair to the hospital hallway. If any of the staff working the graveyard shift were awake enough to notice her lack of facial features, they didn't open their mouths to ask. Why bother the only daughter of the dying expose writer, Vic Sage? Why bother the middle child of the dangerous hero The Question?

Alice crumpled up the ticket on her windshield and tossed it out the window. In a city with so much crime, how could anyone care if she drove a car without plates? It was a half hour to Blüdhaven, plus an extra five minutes for picking up dinner at the Get-'n-Split on the way, but still the apartment was dark when she entered. Good ol' bird-brain, probably on the phone with his bat-brained father somewhere she couldn't interrupt. Batman always hated when she did that.

The Question put her platinum-clad case down on the couch with a sigh, not bothering to check on the supercomputer of hers locked inside. A kidnapping and a party-crashing wasn't enough to let her secrets slip, she'd made damn sure of that. She left her keys on the hook by the door, she knew it annoyed her little Robin when she didn't, before pausing at the mirror in the hallway to take a look at herself. Her head was pounding from one of the hits she'd taken back in California, she'd need to take a look before dinner. The old, battered hat came off first, letting her hair frizz out a bit before reaching to her scalp. If you knew what you were doing, taking off the mask was as easy as anything.

She heard footsteps in the bedroom.

The man who had broken into the heroes' shared apartment had been hoping for a few things. He'd likely prayed that the Question would make her appearance before Nightwing, and he knew he needed her to come home alone, without a cellphone in her hands or a knife within grabbing distance. He got all three.

"Nightwing isn't here to save you now."

Alice didn't so much as stiffen when she felt the gun press to the back of her neck.

"...shame." She decided as the man began to pat her down, looking for blades. He found a few clips of ammo, but let them be. After all, she had no guns. Nobody in league with the Bats did.

"Look at you, such a pretty young thing. Without a utility belt or a comp signal directly to the Bats..." Alice recognized the mask the man wore, she could see his reflection through the mirror. A rubber clown face, one anyone could buy at the nearest Party Palace. The Joker, then. A bit far from his usual targets... must've been the Light jerking him around. He really had gone downhill since Harley dumped him.

"Yeah. You know what else Nightwing has that I don't?" She asked, turning slightly to face the man. The gun pressed harder in her skin. "...a code against killing."

And just like that Alice spun around and snatched the gun from the goon's hands, sliding out the clip for a moment, noticing just one or two shots left, and sliding her own replacement in. The barrel was right beneath the rubber-clown-faced fool's chin in a matter of moments.

"...bang."

Nightwing entered his apartment with a hum, street clothes making him relax even as the mask stayed on. Even as they shared an apartment, even as they knew who each other were, faces were strictly off-limits. He saw the maker of the rule reclining on their battered couch, right next to a man with a noticeable indent in his chin.

"Q. You didn't kill him, did you?"

The woman in question looked up, the tv in front of her turning off the moment she heard the accusation.

"Of course not, we'd never get the stain out of the carpet." She turned to the man with the obviously fractured mandible under the clown mask. "Frangible rubber bullets."

"But Q. Guns."

"I know, I know. I respect you don't use them, and I know your dad doesn't like them either, but this man walked through our security like it was nothing. He wanted to use me to draw you and the Bats out." She stood up from the couch. "And besides, I didn't bring the gun in. He did that all on his own."

"You've still been keeping bullets in our house."

"You'll never find them all."

A brush of the rubbery mask against his jaw implied a kiss of someone who couldn't let her guard down enough to give him a real one. They'd get rid of the crony later. Right now all he could think about was dinner.