Work Text:
When Neal asks Kate what her favorite painting is, she lies. The truth is that it's an old love, an old haunting—something she first saw in a faded textbook a long time ago. Mary Untier of Knots. Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner's Mary. (Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Always ringing in her head.) Baroque, 1700s, beautiful and old and strange. Her eyes would catch on the white ribbon winding down (like a tapeworm, someone in class once muttered), and then she would fall into the deep blue of the mantel Mary wore, such a dark blue it was almost black, like a void, the detail of the painting lost in the printed page. So, so blue, it drew the eye to it above anything else in the painting, like a black hole pulling your gaze toward the center. And unbothered by it was Mary, her slim fingers untying and untying knots forever.
Their brief lesson on Mary Untier of Knots came from St. Irenaeus of Lyons, and Kate's teachers parrotted it without question. "The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith." Bullshit. Obedience and disobedience—it was all bullshit, all designed to make them perfect and subservient, unquestioning and doe-eyed and dumb. Kate, at sixteen years old, was smarter than that. She saw Mary, really saw her, and she knew her hands were at work untying all the little knots the Church had tied in women, and in Eve. The Church keeps tying more knots, trying to twist them all up in their soft ribbon prisons, and Mary is caught in the painting, laboring to free them from it all, forever untying.
(Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Behold the handmaid of the Lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word. And then repeat the prayer again. And again. And again.)
"Rebellious Catholic schoolgirl" might be a bit of a cliche, but Kate loves the classics. Upending or subverting something traditional, or taking the ancient thing and making it her own.... She's always had a bit of that spark in her, but nothing to light, no real rebellion, no twisted secret. Some of the girls sneak cigarettes, but Kate hates the smell. And, sure, she's made out with a guy or two from the boys' private school, given the occasional handjob here or there, had a warm palm find its way up her skirt, but everybody does that. She's not the only girl trying to slip free of that particular set of restraints.
She stumbles into her own little secret on accident. Even then, she keeps its flame in her cupped palms for only a few weeks before forgetting it entirely (losing it in the ups and downs of Christmas break—lonely hallways, arduous Mass, arguments with her father). But don't get caught up in Christmas break. She actively tries to forget that, though she can't, not really. Whatever. She's getting ahead of herself.
Back in mid-November, Kate gets the flu. She misses school for a week, and when she returns in late November, she finds out that she missed the Sentinel and Guide testing.
Sentinels and Guides haven't been discussed much in her Catholic school curriculum—they blanket the foundation of the gender roles she finds so outdated, more subconscious and unspoken layers to the "biological" restrictions that define her life. In art history lessons, there was a large unit on the depiction of marriage of women (the Church) and men (God / Jesus Christ), and Guides and Sentinels were occasionally peering up at her from the pages of her textbook, too. Guides were among the cloistered women, Guides wrapped themselves in purity and piety, Guides served their Sentinels, men who were essentially Michael's flaming sword made flesh and blood. Men and women and women and men. The whole thing drove her crazy. Guides and Sentinels were a small subset of that and not the full target of her ire, if only because most of the time they didn't stand out in her mind at all.
Her teacher tells her to go to her parents and have their primary care physician arrange something. She doesn't, though, either forgets to or it's just one little thing in a string of little things that she chooses not to do in order to feel less like an obedient little child. The school sends a slip home about the test a day or two later, and she forges her mother's signature. They call the landline once and she pretends to be her mother to get them off her back. Her father hates the phone ringing at odd hours. At her annual check-up, her doctor notices that she's overdue to be tested.
"They did the testing at school," she says, "but I didn't bring the form today, sorry."
"Not a problem, sweetheart," her doctor says. He's an aggravating, patronizing man, but she usually tries to turn it to her advantage. He asks about the result of the test at school, which she is, of course, lying about having taken.
"I'm ordinary," she says.
"You're anything but ordinary, Kitty," he says, and it's meant to be flattering or reassuring, so she pretends to take it that way, ignores the vaguely creepy undertones.
He marks down in her medical history that she's neither a Sentinel nor a Guide, and that's that.
For a little while it's really fun, having a secret that's all her own, hiding something from her parents, her private rebellion. But she's a teenager and her mind is eventually occupied by other things, and she forgets the whole thing, lets it fade to the back of her mind until it disappears.
Kate attends school and wears her uniform and goes to Church and does what she's supposed to and seethes. She has to do something, she has to be more than this, she has to get out. College is her shot, her chance at escaping her parents' surveillance and having the freedom to break all the rules she'd lived under before. College is time away without throwing her life away, freedom without losing her meal ticket, her way back into the trappings of wealth and respectability if she decides she needs to trade her wings for a cage again.
She has a string of boyfriends, some smart, some unbearably stupid, and she's with one somewhere in the middle, a blonde guy majoring in business, when she lands the opportunity that will change her life.
Kate is twenty-one years old. She's approaching the end of her junior year at college and she needs an internship, has a few in the wings but knows this one she's waiting on is the best of the best, the newest financial superstar to go into accounting for. She's nervous about it, her mind summoning passages of Daniel heading into the lion's den, which she tries to drown out in Joan Jett albums. Her boyfriend isn't helping her nerves.
"When's your interview with Adder?" he keeps asking.
"Adler," she corrects, every time, but the idea of the snake stays with her.
Adler is, in fact, a thin, smiling serpent of a man, charismatic and dangerous in equal measure. She'll later think of it as a privilege that he hinted how dangerous he could be at their first meeting—her third interview with the company, but her first time meeting him. She'll see him meet others later, in the months of her internship and the year or so she spends working for him after graduation, and he's always honey-sweet, lulling people in with that false sense of security, harmless and respectable. But with her, he's more himself. She thinks so, anyway. He's still elusive, still a dark and reflective surface, but he has shed one false skin to reveal something truer underneath.
The third interview is the last, she knows, before they'll choose someone for the internship. She has to knock this out of the park. She wants this one more than any of the others. She expects to be asked about her resume, her coursework, her skillset, how she handles pressure, her strengths and weaknesses, all the bullshit corporate questions she's been asked so far in prior interviews. Adler opens with a different question, one that catches her off guard.
"Why did you lie about your status as a Guide on your application?" he says.
Kate doesn't even remember that being a question, but she supposes it must have been, can imagine the Please check one list. She always checks "I am neither a Guide nor a Sentinel" on autopilot, the way she would automatically write "Female" in the M/F box or automatically fill in her phone number when asked.
"We're not the government; we have a 'prefer not to say' option for a reason," Adler says. "But you lied and said you were mundane, even though you're a Guide. Why?"
"I didn't lie," she says. "I'm not a Guide."
He raises an eyebrow at her. He doesn't give up the line of questioning, and between one moment and another she remembers it, the test she never took, the one everybody else must have taken that year. She's a Guide? She's a Guide? He weasels it out of her, this truth, and then she's put on the defensive, she has to explain herself. It's vital, absolutely vital, that she says something right, not just for the internship, because the window of normalcy is closing, her ability to live a normal life, every preconceived notion subtly filtered to her through literature and television and school flooding to her now in absolute clarity. If Adler's right that she's a Guide, if he's not fucking with her, then he cannot tell anyone, or she'll be shoved into that box forever. All she can think of is those cloistered girls in the old paintings, locked up until they're ready to wed their Sentinels. Worshipful, weak girls, locked up until they're needed to serve.
"I'm not interested in handholding or nursing somebody," Kate says.
"What are you interested in?" he says.
"Finance," she says.
"Let's talk finance, then."
Kate's bewildered by his acquiescence and smooth transition into business, but she handles the change well, answers every normal interview question asked, takes his compliments on her intelligence and her resume with exactly the right amount of humbleness.
"You'll recall that you signed an NDA prior to this interview with me," Adler says, "and you're a smart girl; you know that if I wanted to I could sue you six ways to Sunday. So I'll let you in on a little secret. I reject every Sentinel, Guide, or 'prefer not to say' sort of applicant. Not that there are many, mind you. But I do."
Kate's pretty sure this is a discriminatory hiring practice, but she's also pretty sure less powerful people have gotten away with worse, so she's not really surprised by this, nor is she sure what that has to do with her NDA.
"I'd like to hire you," he says, "on one condition."
That condition is Guide training. He's not going to require her to register as a Guide, so the training would be unofficial, but it's training he'd require nonetheless. Another confusing thing about this interview, but she wants this internship, so why the hell not?
The internship is brilliant, like she knew it would be, and then she graduates college a semester early and he hires her full time, and a few NDA's later she finds out what the whole thing had really been for: Vincent Adler is an UnRegistered Sentinel. He has a "home Guide," and Adler wants Kate to be his "work Guide," in addition to her traditional responsibilities. Kate gives it some thought. She stays.
The work is challenging—her real work, not the Guide shit, though that is also very new to her—the work itself is challenging and rewarding, and the world Adler introduces her to is a whirlwind. Kate has always been well-off, but Adler is on another level entirely. The expensive dinners, the slow dances, the company parties, the dresses he has tailored for her.
And the sex. God, it's good. Office sex, mostly, and in limousines. Occasionally he takes her home. But what really makes it special is that they link during sex, this linking thing, this Sentinel-Guide thing that for as long as they're fucking makes the whole weight of a "Guide" role more than worth it. It's the best. There's nothing like it.
Kate serves Adler because their dynamic isn't exactly what she expected from the whole powerful Sentinel with a submissive, handholding Guide dynamic that's all she's ever heard of. Adler doesn't coddle her. Kate performs exactly what he needs. And during the times when she has to coddle him, or when she does feel owned in a way that she hates, she reminds herself how well he pays, and how he delights in confiding in her, his little accountant/personal assistant/secretary, and how he delights in how malicious and scheming she can be. (He knows better than anyone how his rivals in business underestimate a young, pretty face.)
Kate isn't going to be anybody's sweet girl, she isn't going to do what everyone expects, she isn't going to play second string for anyone. She's going to be independent and live her own life and take what she wants. Kate can be hard. She can be selfish. She can have a life. No one could deny it to her.
And if they can tell she's a Guide, the way Adler did, but make the mistake of underestimating her—it'll only feel all the better when she steals everything they fucking have.
Adler is the one who tells Kate that Nick Halden is a Sentinel. Nick, too, knows that Kate's a Guide, apparently. She can't sense it herself, not in Nick or Adler or anybody. It frustrates her, even when Adler assures her that it's common for someone to be the way that she is, a Guide who can't sense it. She doesn't want to be common. But she smiles at Adler and lets him assure her.
Nick sees Kate as Adler's Guide, so even though Kate can tell Nick is drawn to her, he never encroaches on Adler's "territory." She hates the idea of being "territory," but she grits her teeth and moves on; even ordinary employees outside the Sentinel-Guide dynamic have to surrender bits and pieces of their independence to their boss. (Especially if they're fucking him.) But Adler gives Nick the go-ahead, and Nick starts trying to court Kate.
It's at the same time that Adler tells Kate, in private, that Nick Halden isn't a real man at all. Nick is trying to steal from them, he says, and he's trying to figure out what Nick's real name is.
"I want to see if he's any good," Adler says. "Bring him into the fold, maybe. Even Jesus forgave the thief, hmm?" He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear; he knows she went to Catholic school. "I'm not that generous, but a would-be thief I could forgive, maybe, if he's smart enough. Let's see if our boy is smart."
Adler trains her further to attune herself to a Sentinel's lies. It only works, he says, if she becomes attuned to the Sentinel himself, so it wouldn't be useful on any random Sentinel on the street, but it would work on Nick if he got close to her. If she let him get close.
It would work on Adler.
(She never gets to test this theory with him. Either it doesn't work with Adler, or Adler never lies to her. Not in exact words. He's a wordsmith; he has other ways of manipulating the truth. He can lie without lying.)
Adler didn't need to be attuned to a Guide or Sentinel to tell if they were lying—most, he said, were an open book to him, his skills that sharp, that precise. She believed him, if only because she'd seen him in action, a deft businessman, an eel, a snake. Adler says to her that he could tell when he and Nick first met that Nick Halden's introduction of himself was a lie, and it amused him that Nick sensed that Adler was a Sentinel without knowing enough about Sentinels to know that some have been trained to sense lies.
Adler is too territorial (and egotistical, she thinks privately, though she would never say it) to work directly with other Sentinels. He goes out of his way to avoid them. He tells her it's because he's UnRegistered and doesn't want to get caught out, but she knows it's his pride and his stubbornness winning out, the way he stiffens and then swans out of a room if he can tell a Sentinel is there.
"Nick isn't like any other Sentinel I've met," Adler says to her.
Kate knows it's meant to make her interested in Nick, since Adler wants her to play Nick in favor of Adler's interests, but it does genuinely interest her a little bit. She can't help but see that the way Nick submits to Adler (which strokes Adler's ego, keeps Nick from being expelled from this tiny circle of trust) as a weakness, but this uniqueness in him scores points in her book; it evens out. Nick the gentleman, Nick the smiler, Nick the giving-way, Nick the bowing-down. Nick the would-be thief.
Saint Nick, patron saint of thieves—she has to steer herself away from the Catholic allusions that sneak their way into every facet of the way she views the world. It's these roads that lead to Adler as a snake in the grass, in the Garden of Eden. Kate is certainly no Eve. Though she has long thought that, without an Adam, Eve and the Serpent might have gotten along alright. Who would Adam even be? What sort of man? She can't think of one. Nick? Or whoever he really is? Kate doesn't know him the way she pretends to know him, Adler's "loyal" errand boy, and he definitely doesn't know her. Kate refuses to submit to a man, anyway, will never devote herself so wholly, will never believe she's made of his rib. Her working relationship with Adler isn't like that, and she's never played good girlfriend for any other man either, not a single one of her boyfriends.
(And that's what Nick is becoming, isn't he? Her boyfriend?)
Kate chooses Neal Caffrey because Adler was right about him—he's unlike any Sentinel she has ever met. And she chooses him because he's fun. Here is that whirlwind, that exhilaration, and all without that Sentinel-Guide babysitting, not even the things she'd had to do for Adler. Kate doesn't think Neal has ever had a Guide to help him. When he does need something, he has no idea what to ask for.
Kate never "Guides" Neal. She links with him for sex (and it's incredible to lock eyes with Neal as he experiences linked sex for the first time), and she links with him when they need to run after a job and his senses are acting up. Otherwise, he handles it on his own, and she lets him. Kate could almost feel bad for him sometimes. He asks for so little, and he adores her. But she can't deny the rush of power she feels whenever she chooses not to help him as much as she could. It's like the thrill of being Adler's unconventional Guide, but stronger. Adler still saw her for what she was, but she's fooling Neal. She could never trick Adler, didn't even try; she always provided whatever service he needed, and he had specific needs. She could never con Adler like she cons Neal. Finally being the one with the power and the truth—it's a bit of a rush.
Neal's chivalry and gentle handling of Kate would be grating—too much like treating her like a delicate flower because she's weak, because she's a woman and a Guide—if he knew anything about Guides at all, but he doesn't. He doesn't know anything. He's not babying her, he's not infantilizing her. It helps, too, that even though he's teaching her the ways of conning and thieving, he's not condescending (the way Adler had often been). Neal trusts her to do her job right. He knows her skillset and he values it. He's almost putting her on a pedestal—not quite that level of worship and devotion; he's not her servant. But he is truly, hopelessly in love.
At one point, Kate did wonder if she was jealous of Sentinels, but it's with Neal that she figures out for certain that, no, she isn't jealous. Neal is very independent for a Sentinel—somehow he manages well enough on his own that he can get by asking very little from her—but he still needs her in a way she never wants to need anyone. She wouldn't be able to stand that level of dependency. If anyone really knew the two of them—and no one really knew Kate—they'd think Neal was the softie Guide, not her. He was so affectionate and dependent. Kate never realized the power Guides had until she met Neal. It made her reflect that even Adler, who was powerful, like all other sentinels, had a dependency on Guides that Kate didn't want to ever have. Kate could stand to be his right-hand man—she even did a good second-fiddle, even if she didn't like it—but the way Adler had to seek comfort from her... She would never want him to ever see her that vulnerable, she would never want to need him. She would rather drop dead.
Even poor, stupid, sweet, devoted Neal, with his Guide's temperament, even that, Kate wouldn't be able to stand. He'd make a good Guide, he'd be awfully nice about it, but it would still be a power over her that she would despise. She would resent him. She wouldn't just be mildly indifferent, she would loathe him, and he'd just sit there and take it, wouldn't he? They never really have fights as it is now, because Neal's so non-confrontational.
Neal was lucky so lucky he wasn't born a Guide. Kate wouldn't want to be a Sentinel, wouldn't want to be him, but she resents him a little. Neal has no idea how lucky he is that he didn't get the bad lot in life of not only being sweet and gentle and dumb, but also being a Guide. He would've been so fucked.
Kate's father dies.
Neal asks Kate if she wants him to go with her to the funeral, and she says no, but she does give him her parents' address in case something urgent comes up. She's gone for two weeks. Neal doesn't come to get her during that time. She doesn't think of him much while she's at home, caught up in the grief for her father, her first protector, her first jailor. Caught up in the Church rituals she had abandoned but which return to her like swimming would if she suddenly found herself thrown in the River Jordan. But when she does think of Neal, she decides that it's a good thing that he doesn't come to get her. It's good.
She shuts down conversation of her father or her absence when she returns. He doesn't ask about it again.
When Neal is arrested, Kate prays for the first time in a long, long time.
It doesn't help.
Standing to the side during the arrest, and sitting in the courtroom pews during the trial, she is Mary Magdalene watching the crucifixion. She is helpless. She can do nothing but watch. That is all she is good for. That is all the power she has. Witnessing. She starts grinding her teeth in her sleep.
Kate is Magdalene at the sentencing hearing, the burial. Neal goes to prison, and she is Magdalene waiting by his tomb.
She waits. Magdalene didn't know there would be a resurrection. Kate doesn't know that she won't be there for Neal's.
She stays by Neal longer than she should. She's not in love with him, but she does love him a little. She really does like him, the poor dumb sap. Kate can't wait to get back to their rush of a life together. She is attached to him, in her own way. She would've left sooner if she hadn't been. (Visiting someone in prison consistently, for four years, every week—give or take a few—is agonizing. It's hell. It's not fun. Kate had to grind her life to halt and get familiar with the ugliness of the carceral system in a way she had never been before. It makes her all the more determined to stay away from it—to run so far, so fast, with so much money, that the government could never touch her. Never send her to prison, never force her to be anyone's Guide. Kate would be herself, look out for herself. And she wanted to do it with Neal.
She used to think Neal was weak for a Sentinel, but the real reason he asked so little of her was more complicated—yes, he doesn't use his extra senses too much, but it's more than that, she can tell. Kate thinks he'll escape jail as soon as possible to get back to her, but he survives jail and the judicial system and makes it all the way to prison. Kate assumes then that he'll escape prison, but he doesn't. He survives prison for years only seeing her through plexiglass once a week. He is stronger and more independent than any Sentinel she's ever heard of.
And then he breaks her heart: he wants to get out of the life.
It takes a few weeks to sink in that staying with Neal would mean Kate would have to surrender everything she wanted. She makes plans to leave him. She has no other choice.
Her first plan is to wait until Neal's out of prison and then break up with him. This is the one that makes the most sense. She avoids talking about their future plans anymore during their prison visits—she hopes that he'll remember these visits and think, "That wasn't out of the blue, then," and won't waste either of their time by chasing her the way he'd chased her after their first break-up. (That breathless, relentless, infuriating, delightful chase. How valued she'd felt, how exhilarated. And what a disaster it was when it ended with Neal in a Fed's handcuffs.)
But she gets a call from Adler.
He wants to work together again. And the offer—the offer is too good to pass up.
The arrangements for her exit take a week or two, which is all well and good. Despite herself, Kate's wondering if she can really leave him. They'd broken up for a long time after their fight about Alex Hunter, and he'd survived his subsequent pursuit of Kate—i.e., he'd survived for a time without Kate there as his Guide—but prison seems to be a tougher strain on his senses than gallivanting through upper-class Europe.
He's going to die in here, Kate realizes. He's going to go mad and die.
Kate looks for alternative Guides for him. She does. But she doesn't turn up anything in that brief period between Adler's call and her departure date. Kate comes to her senses. If Neal really can't last the few more months before his prison sentence is up and he's released, then it's Mozzie's turn to step up to the plate as a friend. Mozzie could probably find a Guide to pay to visit Neal. Or Neal could always come up with an escape plan himself. He's resourceful—for all the times she's remarked to herself that he's a dummy, that's really only when it comes to his feelings about Kate, his naive belief in settling down or the American dream or whatever fantasy he's cooked up now. Neal is a con and an escape artist; he's brilliant at what he does; he'll be alright.
And the fact that Kate is this worried about him is another sign that she has to leave. She cannot prioritize him over herself. She has to stay resolute, stay independent. She also has to consider how well she knows herself—any lingering affection she has for Neal would be buried under resentment if she turns down Adler to stay here.
Kate could just disappear, but Neal might misinterpret that and worry—he'd either malinger too long waiting for her to come back, damaging his health, or he'd break out trying to rescue her from whatever is holding her up; neither option is helpful to either of them. Kate decides to visit him one last time to break up with him.
Neal's an idiot and breaks out to chase her anyway.
At least it's a normal, "sad ex-boyfriend is trying to get his girlfriend back" pursuit, rather than what it would've been if she'd never returned to break-up with him at all, which would be the desperate, "her life might be in danger, someone has her" scenario. Kate needs to send a stronger message that this break-up is for good, that he may be sad, but he needs to move on. She leaves an empty bottle of Bordeaux at her apartment, hoping that will finally get it into his head when he inevitably turns up there. If that's not enough, she'll either avoid his pursuit, or she'll demonstrate to him that she's with Adler now, and maybe he'll finally understand that she means it, it's done, it's over.
Kate, in her own way, is helping Neal, even if, for now, he refuses to see it. Someone has to teach him how the world works. Kate's not like that bastard Keller, who shot someone in front of Neal, who's so vicious and violent (and crass and too happy being lowbrow—Adler may be as deadly as Keller, but at least he's got some class, she says to herself). Kate tries to give Neal a clean break. She keeps leaving him openings. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. I've left you abruptly, left harshly. She wishes she could thread it through his ears until he listened. I've left you. Hate me. It'll be easier.
Neal is not and will not be her responsibility. Kate is her own person. She is not her father's, not Neal's, not anybody's. She is only Adler's when it suits her—and Adler knows that, too; they suit each other's purposes, he's got enough money that if he was dissatisfied with her services, she's sure he could find someone else. Adler knows she's only there because she wants to be. They're useful to each other but not dependent. It's more like a work arrangement. Kate knows he'd leave her at the drop of a hat if it meant saving his own skin, she has no illusions on that. Adler knows the same about her. She can leave whenever she wants.
Kate is making her own choices. She is choosing, she has chosen, she chose. It's her net she weaves and casts out and reels in. Her web of knots. She fishes for gold; she glitters under the weight of the sun.