Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steam. 

Rising.

The whole room fills up with a fog from the shower. The water, a notch below scalding, whips her skin. 

Each blow, another strike to her back. 

But she feels nothing. The heat is hollow.

Water shuts off. The cloud dissipates. 

Selina Kyle steps out of the shower. She stands before the mirror, trying to see through the condensation — but the reflection can’t look back at her.

As she gets dressed, the condensation fades. Walking out of the bathroom, the heavy eyes look back at her. 

Another failed attempt at sleep.

“Selina”, Her roommate, Jen, apparently has returned from her night shift. “Did you hear about Wayne Manor?”

“I don’t want to hear about Wayne Manor.” Selina’s words cut through the air. “Or Wayne. Or any of that shit.”

“Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

Selina sighs. “Just because I robbed Bruce Wayne doesn’t mean I want a subscription to the tabloids.”

She heads for the door. “And besides. He’s dead anyway. Doesn’t matter.”

Selina slams the door behind her.

Before the uprising, her life followed a rhythm: find some greedy bastard, case his life, charm her way into it, and rob him for everything he has. It may not have been honest, but it worked. She enjoyed it. There was a pleasure to it — the men turned putty in her hands. She squished them for as much as she could then left them in the fire of their own creation.

But since? Only wandering. No direction.

Sure, she could go back to a life as Gotham’s best burglar. All the federal money flowing into the city is an easy target. The charities too, as foundations from across the world seek to rebuild the city saved only through the sacrifice of the anonymous Batman. Anonymous to everyone.

Except her.

Her morning walk takes her to the memorial. Through these dollars, the people of Gotham erected a larger-than-life statue of their savior. His head looks down, brooding and watching. 

Selina looks into the eyes. Despite having the best sculptures in the world, they couldn’t get his eyes right.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice. Not too different than her own — but older.

Selina turns behind her. No one in particular, just another Gothamite coming by to pay their respects. A mother, with flowers in one hand and a child in the other. She puts the flowers by the statue.

“He was even better in person,” Selina laments. 

“You knew the Batman?” The boy, no older than three, asks her.

“Yeah,” She breathes out. “I knew him.”

“When I grow up, I’m gonna be just like him.”

 Hopefully not just like him,” Selina takes one last look into his eyes. “For your mother’s sake.”

Selina leaves the immortal statue. The day is still young.

The streets are crowded. People going to their jobs, their homes, their families. Everyone has gained a new appreciation for the simple little routines of life. They came so close to losing everything. 

Selina slows. The crowds pass her. She disappears amongst the masses.

They know the story of the Bat, but they don’t know the story of the Cat. She who had nothing her entire life, who had to claw for every scrap she had. She put her life on the line, too. Why didn’t she have a statue? Why didn’t she get a key to the city and a big check?

Instead, she was just another face in the sea of people. Struggling to keep afloat.

Her destination approaches on the horizon. An office building, seeking help in sorting through what remains of the city’s records. Menial, tedious work. The kind of stuff she can get lost in. The kind of stuff that’s the furthest thing from her old life.

Her old name.

Jen calls her Selina, still. She goes by that name amongst those who know her the most. But to the world, she is someone new entirely. Someone with a fresh start. A clean slate.

“Hello,” Selina puts on a mask of pleasantry. “I’m here for my meeting with Mr. Williams?”

The receptionist looks up from their computer. “Who are you?”

Selina pulls out her new ID. “Madeleine Bond. I spoke with Mr. Williams over the phone?”

The receptionist stares at the ID. For a moment, they seem hesitant. All of Selina’s documentations and records are gone with Madeleine’s pristine record in their place, but people’s memories remain. People know the face of “Selina Kyle”.

“I’ll let him you’re here. Down the hall. Second office on the left.”

Selina heads down the hall, averting her first obstacle.

Walking, she hears the busy voices from the surrounding offices. Everyone competing to rebuild a city — secure this contract, get this deal, make this account work. Still greed, still looking out for themselves.

“How long will his peace last,” Selina thinks. “The peace he…”

No. Not yet. 

Days turned to weeks. Soon they’ll become months. She can’t bear saying that four letter word yet.

She arrives at the office. A soft, dainty knock.

“Come in,” An old voice responds. 

Selina opens the door. The office is messy — papers scattered around everywhere, boxes unsettled. As if he’s just moved in himself.

“Hello,”  She raises her voice a half-step. “I’m Madeleine Bond.”

From across a metal desk, Williams extends his hand. The courteous gesture surprises Selina at first. It takes her a beat to respond.

“I looked high and low for anything about you, but I couldn’t find it,” Williams says. “Of course, about ten million Gothamites are in your shoes. Not like this job requires much in the way of technical skills.” 

He laughs. Unsure what to do, Selina awkwardly joins in.

“Well, I’m not one really for interviewing,” He says. “I’ll show you the station.”

Williams leads Selina to an elevator. They stand as the floors tick down.

“So, Madeleine, what’d you do before?”

“Oh, nothing really. Office work. Here and there. Temp gigs. Nothing too permanent.”

“Was a tough job market. Especially for people your age. Were you a graduate?”

“Me? I…” Her voice lowers to its natural state — Madeleine’s mask cracks. “Tried. Money got tight.”

The elevator dings. Door opens.

In the large basement room, almost like a warehouse, several employees stand and sort at various tables. They search through documents, piecing together what they can, and filing back into boxes. Some digitize the paper into electronic records. It all flows like a machine.

“Fairly self-explanatory,” Williams begins. “Take a box, sort through it. Salvage and scan what you can. Discard whatever has been lost to Bane.” Contempt drips from the last word.

“No love lost for the masked man?” Selina asks.

“There’s good and bad ways to try and fix things. Killing and bombing. No way,” Williams leads Selina to an empty station. “Do you wish to start? Think of this as a...trial run. A test.”

Selina scans over the environment again. No talking, no community. Just a monotonous grind.

“It’s exactly what I need.”

The morning turns to afternoon. The ticking clock in the basement is her only connection to the rhythm of the outside world — the basement has no windows, the only light coming from rows of fluorescent tubes humming their song. Between that and the shuffle of the job, Selina lost her sense of anything beyond the papers in front of her.

Take a box. Open. Paper soaked in water or sheets burned in the uprising. Throw away. Another sheet, this one intact. Tear the packet apart. Scan each page, upload it to the database. 

Selina watches her monitor. As she scans the document, boxes on the screen fill in with information from the page. Soon a name appears, a picture. No one she recognizes, but someone. All this information from a few numbers and words on a piece of paper. 

“Wonders of modern technology, isn’t it?” Williams asks — he’s showing another new person the data farm. 

“Put a whole life on a computer screen. Magical.” Selina snides. “Who developed this?”

“Before the uprising, we planned on digitizing all these records. Obviously our plans shifted a bit, but…” He rambles. “Oh! Who developed this…”

He points to a logo on the side of the scanner. 

Wayne Enterprises.

“Shame what happened to him. I heard a rumor they killed him.”

“Yeah,” Selina shifts. “I gotta get back to work.”

Williams leaves, showing another lost soul around. When the coast is clear, Selina breaks from the routine. Clicking around to access the entire database is child’s play for someone who is used to breaking into the security systems owned by Gotham’s elite. 

Shefinds a search query box — enter a name, find information. Simple stuff.

SELINA KYLE.

No results.

She knows this to be the case — the police would’ve surely arrested her by now if they knew she still existed. 

BRUCE WAYNE.

Another expected result. Dead. The first result is a Death Certificate. Opening it, she finds the cause of death listed.

Homicide.

“Those fools,” She thinks. “How’d he pull this lie off?”

This isn’t the first time she believed him to be dead. Once before, she traded Wayne’s life for her own — the only choice she could make. Bane and his invincible army had a target on her head. A target she could only buy off with his life.

But somehow, the bastard came back. 

If he did it once before, maybe he could do it again. Maybe he is on some island, plotting his triumphant return. Maybe he’s far away, under an assumed name trying to make his own new life. Maybe he’s living it up with a model on each arm and a drink in hand.

Maybe…

“No,” She reasons. No one could survive a nuclear blast at point blank range. 

Not even The Batman.

Paper comes in, paper goes out. Paper in. Paper out. In. Out.

Over and over. Round and round.

The working day comes to a close. Some employee, a face Selina has never seen before, pays people for the day’s work — cash. Banks still aren’t entirely operational in Gotham. 

Selina, along with the others, crowd into the elevator to ascend out. The elevator feels claustrophobic. She’s not the tallest or biggest person, but even she is struggling to fit in. The floors tick up. She tries to ignore the chatter beyond her, but a familiar word cuts through —

“Wayne”

Even in death, Gothamites can’t shut up about their favorite son. From birth, he captured the city’s fascination. All this nonsense about charities and money and speculation about how he really died.

Door opens. Ride done. Conversation ceased.

As she leaves the elevator, Williams catches her before she exits the building. 

“So, Miss Bond, can I expect you back tomorrow?”

Selina looks back at the people filing out of the elevator. Their faces are fake, trying to grit through the trauma around them. Force themselves back into a sense of normalcy despite all the pain around them. Her whole life she’s been lying — hell, she’s lying now — but this all seems…

“Yes,” She says, through her teeth. “You can.”

Darkness  greets Selina. This used to be her working hours, where she’d prowl Gotham chasing the mouse of the night. A city full of marks. But now it’s nothing to her but a painful reminder of the night.

Walking down the streets, she can still see him. She, sitting on his motorcycle, pleading with him to hop on and flee the chaos with her. Seek a new life, just the two of them against the world. An impulsive request by an impulsive soul. But he had one last thing he had to give the city — his body, his blood, his life.

The streets are dimly lit. One of the first goals of the city was to rebuild the power grid. It ran into headwind, red tape, and all sorts of obstacles from contractors playing their cutthroat games with each other. Wide swaths of Gotham deal with brownouts, blackouts, and rationing of electricity.

Selina stops under a broken streetlight. She knows this part of town. In the past, it’d be filled with the music of the night — clubs, bars, all the signs of life. But now it sits quiet and silent. 

A moment passes. She resumes her long walk home. 

A car, far too nice for this neighborhood, is parked on the streetside. Selina gets close and takes a peek through the window. Inside she finds the telltale sign of someone with too much money: unsecured electronics, a car with seemingly every option, and jewelry lying in plain sight.

She focuses on the jewels. A large golden necklace, adorned with diamonds. She could get it in and out of the car in a matter of seconds, leaving no trace behind. Within an hour, she could fence it for more money then she’d make in a year doing so-called work. 

Lingers. Watching. Waiting. Contemplating.

A car passes. Another. The unlit streets conceal her from view. Someone could be standing across the street and they’d have no idea she is there. 

Selina kneels on the ground, inspecting the door closer. She knows this particular style of door mechanism like the back of her hand. The slightest tug with the grace of a master would render the lock meaningless. Her hand reaches out....

And pulls back.

“No,” She says to herself. A voice echoes in her head.

“There’s more to you…” 

Selina knows the answer. She’s tried to deny it for so long. But the pressure of the shadows created a diamond. She can’t steal anymore. It wouldn’t be right.

She makes her way back to her apartment. In a way, the old chaos was better than the new quiet. At least there was life then. Action. Now everything is stagnant and barren.

She opens the door. Jen is nowhere to be seen — whatever dead-end job she has these days has her working nights. On their table is an envelope. No address. Just a name:

“Ms. Kyle”

The penmanship indicates someone with an elite background. This is not the chicken scratch of a coal miner. But as she picks up the envelope, she notices it is constructed. Not something bought in a store, but something improvised. Folded over paper held together by glue.

With a knife, Selina tears it open. Inside is a note:

“Our paths crossed many times before, but we’ve never seen each other. I know what you did to the city. You deserve a reward. Go to where we met first. Do what you did again. I’ll be there.”

At the bottom, a series of numbers: 9902-3157-2716

“The hell is this supposed to mean?” She says to herself. She takes a seat at the table, rereading the note over and over again. The handwriting inside is rougher than the outside. Whomever wrote this seemed to be in a hurry — ink streaking across the page, words bunched tightly together. 

Selina leaves the note on the table and heads to bed.

Washes up on a beach. Daylight. She wanders around. Bare feet digging deep in the sand. Alone, no one with her. A noise. Loud. She turns her head.

Light. Heat. Powerful. Bright. It envelopes everything. Blinding her.

A noise. In the distance — a scream. As if someone is experiencing the greatest pain known.

“NO!!!!” Selina bolts awake. A sweaty mess. 

Another failed attempt at sleep.

It’s different each night. Some nights she can never get to sleep, tossing around in bed as the hours pass on her clock. Some nights the slightest noise wakes her up. The worst are the nightmares. Whenever she does manage to find restful sleep, the demons creep out.

Like tonight.

She checks the clock. Three in the morning. She tries to get back to sleep. Every effort is futile. The breathing exercises, the mind stuff, even the pills — nothing can lull her soul.

Heads out. Whatever she does in bed would just be a waste of time.

A short walk. Or long. The sense of time gets lost when one has no circadian rhythm.

She hears noises in the darkness. Selina, with eyes accustomed to seeing in the night, finds the source of the noise. In the distance, a band of delinquents — nothing too remarkable. Garden variety of thugs. 

Then another noise. A scream. Pain, terror, loss. A woman screaming in pain. 

Selina ignores them. Continuing on her stroll. She could do nothing to help. Sure, she’s fit enough and skilled enough that she could dispatch those beasts with one hand tied behind her back. But she needs to keep a low-profile. If a random Gothamite took up the veil of nighttime vigilantism, it would raise eyebrows. And a few people — including some in high places — would get suspicious that a person who seemingly disappeared is back.

As she gets further away, the screams stay as loud as they were before. Reverberating in her mind.

She arrives at a drainage pipe in an industrial park, overlooking the bay. The waters stir, the moonlight bouncing off the surface illuminating the area. She stares off into the distance, not really thinking of anything in particular. Just being.

In her hand, the note. Having grabbed it before she left.

Selina pulls out a lighter. It takes a few tries, but the paper ignites. The ashes sprinkle into the bay below. She lets go of what’s left, letting the sea claim it.

“Go to where we first met…” She reads aloud. “A reward…”

Nonsense.

Chapter Text

Water.

Flowing.

She remembers a time when this was all she coveted in life. A young girl, living in shacks and tenements throughout Gotham. Her mother, no more than a girl herself, struggled to keep a roof over their heads. To keep them a life.

Water would go on. Water would go off. Trips to public bathrooms, with a wagon of empty cartons. Kids in school, giving her strange looks. The isolation in the halls. 

And that kid. The one all over the news since birth. With a dead dad and a dead mom. She heard the stories of the city weeping with him. Mourning with him.  But she knew the reality. He still had money. He still had a house — big enough for all the children of Gotham.

He still had water.

Selina shuts off the water. Lines of stalls extend down, with sinks mirroring them. Standing in one mirror is her reflection. Madeleine Bond. Gone are the dresses, heels, and jewels of the past. In their place, the plain clothes of a plain woman living a plain life. An invisible life.

She steps in the elevator, sinking back into the basement. Another day pushing paper, sorting through the wreckage. She gathers they must be selling the information in their database: police departments, governments, banks. Any institution designed to track and control people. No matter what happens, they’ll always keep their eyes on the masses.

On everyone but her.

To the world, “Selina Kyle” isn’t even dead. She never even existed. A dead woman has proof of a life. But she has nothing. A complete blank slate. Emptiness. In her place, the saccarchine life of Madeleine Bond — without even a traffic ticket to her name. None of her new documents could be described as fake. They all trace back to the beginning, even a new birth certificate that is legitimate. The greatest fraud examiners in the world wouldn’t be able to crack the software. She has a new chance here. A new life.

Thanks to him.

“Madeleine,” One of the others says. She doesn’t know their names. She doesn’t want to. “You’re here today? How many days in a row have you worked?”

“Oh, you know…” She forces out a chuckle. “Another day, another dollar.”

Her mind wanders. The note. Some message she couldn’t decipher.  But it made one thing clear — someone out there knew who she was back then and what she did. And a reward…

At the beginning, stealing was survival. Need some soap or milk? Go to the store and sneak it out. Look like you bought it. Act confidently. Half the battle was believing it. 

As time passed, the items got bigger and bigger: clothes, shoes, electronics, cars. The city didn’t care about her mother or her, why should she care about them? 

These brought big payouts. She didn’t use the money for anything. Mom was long gone. Rent was cheap in this part of town. She just hoarded it.

Just as she hoarded risk. Falling into a bad crowd. Caught in the act one time too many. Had debts to pay back, work to do. Steal for someone else. Steal information, ideas. 

Steal fingerprints.

Now she steals a life. Living as someone else.

“Madeleine,” At first, Selina doesn’t look up. “Hello, Madeleine?”

Her name. Her other name.

“Yes? What is it?” She sees Williams, her boss, looking down at her.

“I have an errand I need you to run,” He drops a stack of papers on her station. “Gotham PD requested these files on old inmates. Trying to cross reference and track down as many as they can.”

Selina, acting casual, thumbs through the documents. It’s a massive list with thousands of names covering all manners of crime.

She looks for a name. Her name. 

Nowhere to be found.

Selina knows the police stations of Gotham well. No one’s perfect, even the greatest cat burglars get caught once in a while. What really mattered was not getting stuck inside. A couple nights in jail is just an overdue vacation with free meals, but that’s not a hotel one wants to stay in for too long. 

But entering as a civilian? With a legitimate reason to be there?

“Hello,” She stops at an information desk. “I have this stack of papers to give to your Information Bureau.”

The officer takes the papers, looks through them. “The inmate logs.”He puts the papers down. He looks at Selina’s face for a moment. A moment too long.

“Is something wrong, sir?” A hint of nervousness paints the edges of her voice. She knows all her identification is perfect. She knows that “Selina Kyle” only exists in distant, fading memories. But dealing with the law still unnerves her. 

“No, it’s just…” The officer keys something into his computer. Selina can’t see what he typed, but his reaction — shock and perplextion — gives it away. “What’s your name?”

“Bond, sir,” She pulls out her ID card. “Madeleine Bond.” The officer snatches the card out of her hand, inspecting it thoroughly. 

“Are you from Gotham?”

Time creeps to a halt. She has only a beat to answer. If she waits a beat too long, the truth may slip out.

“No, moved here a while back,” She answers just in time. Adopting a new identity requires total mastery of the character. What makes them tick, their history, their life story — everything. It must become second nature. Instantaneous. But not too much, can’t appear forced or rehearsed. Completely natural. As if it is her life, her only life.

“Hmm,” He doesn’t seem to be buying it. “Your face, it looks like…” 

“A lot of people tell me I look like someone they used to know,” The tiniest speck of a laugh. “Guess I’m kind of generic looking that way.”

“No, it’s not that,” The officer gets up. Standing up, he dwarfs her in size. She needs to regain the upper hand.

“Are you from Gotham?” She asks.

He doesn’t answer. He takes a document, an old arrest report, out of a filing cabinet. A 1969 GTO stolen from the garage of one of Gotham’s numerous collectors of automobiles. Allegedly stolen by a 17-year old girl with a quickly growing rap sheet. At the top of the page is her mugshot. Young, but the face is unmistakably the one before him.

Selina Kyle.

An interrogation room. One she knows all too well. The officer, along with another, sits across from her. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” She plays up ignorance. “I’m not Selina Kyle.”On the table, a document comparing the recorded fingerprints of Selina Kyle with the fresh prints of Madeleine Bond. “You took my prints. I went along with you. They aren’t the same.”

Of course, replacing fingerprints remains a trivial enough matter for her. She’s done it many times before. But the officers don’t need to know that.

“Maybe she’s right,” One of the officers says to the other. He’s whispering, but Selina can hear every syllable as if he’s right next to her. She spent years honing her hearing, to detect even the slightest noise while she was working. “That cat burglar’s like every other crook in the city. I’m sure Kyle fled during the chaos.”

They continue to debate amongst themselves. A  steady back and forth on whether or not it would be legal to hold her indefinitely.

She makes her move. “If you need me, you can call the office where I work. But my boss is probably wondering where I am. And if you want to keep me, then keep me. Arrest me. See if that will stick…”

Selina opens up their folder. Reports, newspaper articles, and other documents about break-ins and thefts attributed to the Cat scatter across the table. “Because there’s nothing you have on me.”

“We don’t?” The door opens. A voice — full of power — enters. The two officers stand up, get all nervous. Selina turns around and sees the police commissioner, Gordon, standing in the doorframe.

“You two,” He motions to the other officers. “Leave.” 

They head out. Gordon takes their spot across Selina.

“Whatever tale you spin may work on everyone else, but it won’t on me,” Gordon says. “I’ve heard it all before. Especially from you.”

“Suppose you’re the only person I can’t lie to about this,” She answers.

“Yeah,” He inspects her ID on the table. “Madeleine Bond. A new name, new everything. I’ve checked our records. It seems the great Selina Kyle never existed”

He looks across the table at her. Selina notices how intently he stares at her, like he’s reading her. 

“Except in memory,” He puts the card down. “No one else in this town knows what you did. They know the Batman saved us from the bomb, but they don’t know if it wasn’t for you none of that would’ve happened.”

“He gave it to me,” Selina reaches to grab her — Madeleine’s — card. “A second chance, a clean slate. I did horrible things looking for this. Turns out all I needed to do was care…”

She chokes back a tear.  Feeling the full brunt of her reality.“What a hokey load of bullshit.”

Gordon offers her a tissue. She refuses.

“He always did have a flair for the dramatic. And sure as hell had his own vision for how the world worked,” Gordon contemplates. “You have the new life. If you go somewhere else, no one would ever know who you were. Why are you still here? You’d be completely invisible.”

A silent moment passes. Selina debates her response.

“Why are you still here?” She chooses defiance. “Thought you were retiring. Especially after what came out. You. Dent. Surprised they even let you in the building.”

“Just because he gave you a fresh start,” Gordon pulls out a pair of handcuffs. “Doesn’t mean I have to do the same.”

“How do you think he’d feel if you did that?” She asks. “Could go check out the statue. Ask it. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

“I was there when they dedicated it,” Gordon sinks back in his chair. “Never again. They...No. I can’t.” 

Selina stands up, gathers her things. She’s right about to leave —

“Selina!”

She stops. The sound of her name, her real name, does that to her.

“You may be safe from the cops,” He says. “But sooner or later, the mobs will return.They’ll remember the cons and the stealing and the shame they felt when they got fooled by Gotham’s biggest crook.”

“Biggest crook...” She forces a smirk. “Since when did I work in the government?” As she leaves the room, a look of fear bubbles on her face. 

Walking down the street, Selina checks over her shoulder. Behind her, nothing out of the ordinary. Just people walking about and going through their lives.

Gordon’s right. After a while, normalcy will return to Gotham. People would forget about the trauma of the past and slowly transition back to their old ways. They’ll all want to settle old scores.

In the back corner of her eye, nearly out of frame — but visible all the same — she sees a couple walking down the street. They come to halt. A sudden, unsettling halt.

Selina walks towards the scene, keeping her distance but getting closer to see more. She can only vaguely make out what’s going on. She sees two, a man and a woman. They are dressed nicely, suits and dresses. A third stands opposite them, wearing the clothes of a struggling man. He holds a weapon to them.

Selina gets even closer, standing in the middle of the street. A car screeches to a halt. Then another. They honk their horns, but she can’t hear them. Her focus only on him. Them.

He demands something. She hands him her purse, he his wallet. The thief searches them, unsatisfied by what they offered. Nothing appeals to him except a necklace on the woman’s neck.

Beautiful pearls.

He snatches the pearls right off her neck. Runs off. The two, in their nice clothes, kneel on the dirty pavement collecting their scattered belongs.

Traffic clogs in the street. All lanes blocked by Selina. She does nothing but stand. She could’ve done something. But she didn’t.

She keeps letting him down.

Just another job. Break into a mausoleum. Steal the mark of a dead prince. Take his wealth, spread it among the masses. All that gold sealed away isn’t doing anyone any good. 

Brave the trials. Sneak through the guard. Get his mark. Easy stuff…

She wanders, unsure how she got here but knowing her purpose has been fulfilled. Explores the tomb. Artifacts, relics of a life lived but now gone. She feels drawn to it all. Curious to learn more…

THUD.

Selina bolts up. Another night, another dream. No terror tonight — besides the noise.

THUD.

She gets out of bed. The noise isn’t in her dream, it’s—

THUD.

Putting on her robe, she creeps through the silent apartment to her door. No more thuds, no more noise. She opens the door and looks through the hallway. No one there, no sign of anyone…

Except…

Stuck in her door, a strange item. An arrow, with an envelope attached to it. The same handwriting as before.  Using the arrowhead, Selina cuts it open and pulls out the note inside:

“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you. I know what you did today. Or what you didn’t do. That’s ok. I still believe in you. I still have your reward, I’ll always have your reward. But you have to find me. Where we met. I want to see you with my own eyes.”

On the bottom, another series of numbers. 6838-5327-4876.

Outside her apartment, Selina slumps up against her wall. Slides down to the floor. She exhales. She rips up the note into a thousand pieces. Slowly, the pieces all fall to the ground like the season’s first snow.

Unable to go back to sleep, she begins her day. The water beats against her skin. Tonight, or this morning, she feels a little more — the pain of the heat, the strike of the pressure.

“Waiting,” She paces around in the shower. “For me.”

With only a towel around her, Selina steps out of the shower. Buried deep in her closet, a trunk — no locks. Inside the trunk, her old tools: a leather suit, heels to die for, night-vision goggles. All the little trinkets one would need to break into anywhere and take anything.

Water drips from her hair onto the wooden floors. She looks into the chest, feeling the suit. The smooth leather rubs against her hands. She grabs it, placing it on the floor. Empty. 

“I could’ve done something,” She thinks. “I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve fought harder. But I…”

Her suit is completely black, except for one spot. A brown mark, the stain of dried blood. A stain she can never remove.

Water drips onto the stain. She touches the mark. Wet, but dry.

“Sucker,” She whispers to herself. “You fucking sucker.”

Another work day passes. Might be a week, perhaps a month. Time blurs into one amorphous blob. The only sign of the changing days are the constant noises of rebuilding she hears on her walks. 

Madeleine goes to work. Selina stagnates. Madeleine gets paid. Selina struggles. Madeleine goes home. Selina goes anywhere but. 

She smiles. She weeps.

The apartment. A day off — a rare one where she and Jen are both off. She's going on and on about her various temp jobs, the perverts who eyeball her, and the perverts who she likes eyeballing her. Selina doesn't pay much attention, filtering the words through as they come.

"Hey," Jen barks. "Hey!" She snaps her fingers.

"What?" Selina doses off.

Jen inspects her. "You don't look so good. You haven't for a while now."

"Guess my time in the box did that to me," Selina pushes out a smile. 

"No, it's not that. You've gotten a lot worse since then…" She pauses for a moment. Thinking. "You need to get out."

Selina scoffs. "Out? To a club where I've robbed everyone there. Really smart."

"It's not you," Jen says. "It's Madeleine."

"She has my face."

"When you worked before, you put on a costume," Jen stands up. Opens a dresser. She pulls out some of her clothes — completely different from Selina's old, more elegant style. "Just put on a costume."

She is right. One wears the clothes the job requires. All to give an advantage.

"A costume…"

At night, the city comes to life. More and more clubs, bars, and places where children of the night gather are reopening. Outside one, stand Jen and Madeleine. Her hair is up, her makeup extreme and loud — nothing Selina would ever wear. 

“Are you ready?” Jen asks. “Can you do this?”

“Of course I can,” She looks around. She’s been in this club before. “Who would ever hate Madeleine?” As the two enter, they go their separate ways. 

The music, some electronic dance thing, is blaring — loud enough to dull out her racing mind. The neon lights synchronize their changing colors with the beat in the mostly-darkened venue.  

People dance, they drink, they mingle. They live. There’s an energy to this all. An energy the city missed for a long time. An energy where everyone throws the past and the future behind them to just live in the moment.

Except her.

Selina takes a seat at the counter. Gets a drink, stiff. She nurses it, content to watch the energy flow around her. A few men come by, unable to resist their lecherous desires. Selina brushes them off easily. When one used to make a living controlling men by the strings of their heart, they master the skill in the opposite direction as well. A few words, some body language — they leave. Whether via intimidation or having their ego thoroughly stomped on, they can’t stand being around her anymore. Their desires shatter.

Except him.

He is no more than another schmuck who came by her seat. Dressed in the same hipster clothes as the other guys: layers, long-sleeves, long pants. His hair is all over the place, brown and with a bad cut to it. He’s tall, kind of big — but seems to lack grace. He moves with all the fluidity of a rock and the finesse of a bear. 

The oddest thing was his sunglasses. Sure, the occasional douchebag tool would wear sunglasses indoors. But his glasses are massive. Between that and the darkness of the room, she can’t get a good sense of what he looks like.

“Why are you still here?” She says. “I’m not interested.” She turns back around to the counter, finishing her drink — adding the glass to her growing collection.

“Why are you still here?” He asks. The first words he says. His voice sounds cracked and craggly, like he’s forcing it into an unnatural pitch. 

“Trying to enjoy my night,” She takes a sip of her new drink. “It was going fine. Until you showed up.”

He turns to her. Through the glasses, it feels as if he’s staring into her soul. “Why are you still here?”

She tenses up, getting all stiff. “Who are you?”

He gets closer to her. Speaking in a low whisper that’s somehow louder than the music. “Why are you still here?”

“Get lost!” She tosses her drink in his face. Hurrying away, she locates Jen.

“Whoa, what,” Jen begins. “What happened?”

“This big, tall creep in the sunglasses,” Selina points in the direction of the man in sunglasses. “Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Jen looks in the direction. She searches and searches…

“I don’t,” She looks even more. “I don’t see anyone. There’s no one there.”

Selina looks back.

He’s gone, disappeared into the dark.

After the night passes, the two leave the club. Jen goes on and on about the men and the drugs and how the city feels normal again. Selina mostly listens, only giving the briefest comments about how the bartender spent too much time flexing his arms and not enough time keeping people from reaching over the counter to grab bottles.

“People,” She responds. “Or you.” Selina laughs. An authentic laugh. A feeling she hasn’t had in a while.

On their way home, they hear people spilling out of the clubs and onto the streets. The party goes on even when the night comes to an end. Some of this turns rough, aggressive. They hurry their pace. The aggression turns up. She hears a scream. Not from her or Jen, but a woman. Far away.

“What was that?” Selina asks.

“I don’t know, but we gotta get out of here,” Fear sprinkles her voice. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah, but,” Selina gets conflicted. “You go on ahead. I gotta go.” 

“What? Selina, are you crazy?”

“Probably,” Selina runs to the scream. 

Arriving, she sees another mugging: a few hounding a group of women. The muggers circle around them. The women hand over all they have — money, shoes, rings, jewelry.

“Hey!” She yells. The thugs all look at her. In their distraction, she snaps into action. Gripping their wrists, their knives drop to the ground. She flips them around onto the ground, incapacitating the group of them. One straggles behind the back, charging at her with a knife. With the coordination of a dancer, she dips out of the attack. The straggler stumbles on his own feet and falls to the ground.

Selina takes everything back from the thieves, giving it back to their rightful owners. The women head off. As they leave, Selina notices one of the men’s fists clenched. She goes over to him and pries open his hand.

Inside, he conceals something — a set of pearls.

“Next time you decide to steal,” She lectures. “Don’t do it like that. That’s dirty. Rob someone when they’re gone. No one gets hurt. And don’t target single women. That’s just rude.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” One of them, struggling to speak, utters.

“That’s a good question,” She bashes him on the head — knocking him unconscious.

Dusting herself off, Selina runs to the women.

“Excuse me,” She says, nearly out of breath. “One of you forgot this.”

“Thank you,” One of the women steps out of the group and grabs the pearls. “They’re very important to me.” The women fade away back into the night. Selina looks off into the distance, watching them leave.

After they depart, she notices someone else.  A man, standing under the only lit streetlight.

The man in sunglasses.

Chapter Text

Ice.

Falling.

A cold winter’s day. Chaos dominates the city. People do as they please with no regards for their neighbor. Everyone goes from place to place, taking what they want with no care for tomorrow. He calls this liberty, but deep down she knows what this is — pain.

She walks. There’s nothing to do but walk through the slow passage of time. Nothing matters anymore, every waking moment is regret. She traded his life for hers. He meant nothing to her. He was just another patsy, another mark. Another one for her to get something from. 

Turns out, he was the one who stole something from her. 

A child. Screaming. Two men beating him. She stops them, gives the kid back his apple — foolish boy stealing without a plan. Never rob from someone bigger than you unless you’re quicker than them. A cat can do whatever they want. No one is quicker.

The boy leaves. 

The man arrives.

Selina wakes up. The first night of restful sleep she’s had in a long time.  

An image, one burned in her mind. She sees it clearly, as if he stands in her bedroom. The man in sunglasses. With his messed-up hair and bad sense of fashion and commanding size. His presence, well-intended condescension lurking in the shadows, repels yet allures her.

She needs to find him again.

The sun, bright and full, breaks through her window, illuminating her dark bedroom and bringing in the warmth of a new day. Selina rolls over in her bed, pulling a blanket over her eyes to conceal herself from the light. Not wanting to get up.

Beneath the covers, light still comes through. The light shines on the opposite side of her bed. The empty side. A bed for two with only one. She reaches out to touch the glow of light. 

Men drift in and out of her life. Selina’s never been one to hold onto feeling. Romance is just another emotion to manipulate. Opening up a heart is just an invitation to get burned. 

She knows this. Others don’t. 

Sure, she had experience. Nothing serious, no commitment. Everyone in a relationship is just looking to screw over the other — literally or figuratively. She had to win before she lost. Love is a lie in a world full of struggle and turmoil.

But he is different. Somehow. She hates it, but it’s true. The memory, the feeling is carved into her heart. No matter how much time passed, she couldn’t forget that look in his eyes. That look of peace, purpose, and contentment. Of total commitment to something greater than himself. 

She lingers in bed. The glow of light fades as the sun continues to rise. The bed grows cold. 

Empty.

Under the other pillow, she feels something. It’s hard, stiff. She gets out of bed, tosses off the blankets.  Paper, sticking out from under the pillow. An envelope. The third. With the same “Ms. Kyle” written on it. 

This one isn’t even sealed, the note peaks out its top. Selina sits back down on the bed and reads it.

“Selina,” Unlike the others, this one started out with her name. Her real name, not the false one she lives under now. Something about how the word is written on the page feels like a harmony coming off her tongue.

She takes a moment to pause. Catches her breath before resuming.

"We shared a glance tonight. A brief moment in time. I saw what you did. There's more to you..." 

She skims over the rest of the note. Reaching the bottom, a line separate from the rest:

"The time has come for The Cat to return for one last job. The last treasure. Hidden away in a cave. Find it. Then find me”

Another series of numbers: 5289-4526-3710.

Note in hand, she leaves her bedroom. Jen sits in silence, feeling the total weight of her decisions of the night before. 

“Do you have to be so loud?” She moans.

“I didn’t say anything,” Selina responds. “You need to stop going so hard.”

“Yeah, well, we all make mistakes,” She sips her coffee. Selina sits next to her, showing her the note.

“This is the third one I’ve gotten,” Selina says. “Found this one under my pillow.”

“Thought the tooth fairy leaves money, not…” She reads the note. “Sappy riddles.” Selina takes the note back from her, stuffing it into her pockets.

“You know how it got there?” She asks, entirely ignoring her attempt at humor.

“I got home, I went out cold. I don’t even remember you coming home,” She takes a big sip of her coffee, trying to shake off the pain. “Let alone some creep in the night.”

Frustrated, Selina gets up. Not responding.

“Hey wait!” Jen snaps as the caffeine kicks in. “Why aren’t you feeling like me? How are you so...normal?”

“For one, I know my limits,” Selina heads over to the sink. She fills up a pitcher of water. “And two, water will do you a lot more good for you than coffee.”

Water. Always back to water.

The basement, as barren as ever, becomes increasingly claustrophobic. Selina could put on the mask of Madeleine well enough before, but she can’t stand it now. It feels odd on her. Unreal. Uncomfortable. There’s something out there. Something she has to solve. Something that only Selina can do.

She pulls the note out of her pocket. A phrase. No, a clue — “Hidden away in a cave.” Too specific. Whoever sent this put that in there as his footstep for her to track. Like any city by the sea, Gotham had lots of caves and underground passages but not that many. It’s a clear detail.

She thinks back to the previous notes: they’ve met before but haven’t seen each other. He’s mentioned this twice.

Where to start. If only she had a computer with unlimited access to a database containing every piece of surviving information about the city in front of her.

“Oh wait,” She says. “I do.”

Caves. Search for charted and mapped caves in Gotham. Too many come up. For the clue to work, if it even is a clue, it’d have to be something she knows. Somewhere she has a memory attached. Searching further, narrowing it down. A few options come and pass — something off the bay, an abandoned mine outside the city. 

One comes up that draws her eye.

A massive cave. First scouted out in the 18th century in the far outskirts of the earliest settlements. Containing nothing of value, it only received attention hundreds of years later when it became known as a stop along the Underground Railroad. In secret, the man who owned the property used it as a refuge to help escaping slaves go to the North to find freedom and a new life. His name would become synonymous with Gotham.

The man’s name…

Selina can’t believe it. She reads the newspaper article telling the story. She reads it again. And again. She still can’t believe it.

Wayne.

The cave is beneath Wayne Manor.

“This can’t be it,” She says. Loud. Those around her notice, but her tunnel vision blocks out their curious eyes and ears. Her heart races. Wayne. How could it be Wayne? How could the reward, the man, all of this be associated with Wayne? This has to be a joke. The work of a bitter mark or a long-forgotten enemy. Someone who knows her deepest secrets and is taunting her.

“What can’t be it?” Her boss, Williams, comes over. He turns off her computer. He grabs the note off her station. She fights for it, tugging it out of his hand. Right before it rips in two, he lets go.

“It’s come to my attention, Ms. Bond,” He begins. “That you’ve been working...outside the bounds of your duties. This is a simple job. I explained it. In and out. That’s all it takes.”

“I’m...I’m sorry, sir,” She raises her voice to Madeleine’s pitch. “I’ll be better.”

He shakes his head. “No, no you won’t.” 

Selina looks at him, not understanding. He pulls out of his phone, plays a recording:

“Well, Selina Kyle,” Time stands still. Selina’s eyes widen — a voice. His voice. Wayne’s. She isn’t even thinking about how her boss got this recording, how her cover has been blown, how the life she pretends to live is falling to pieces. She’s just enjoying hearing his voice one more time.

The recording plays on. She remembers this night. A night that began like any other, trying to run a basic con to steal some diamonds from some rich, stuck-up socialite. But then he showed up. Knowing everything about her.

“You’re in deep with the wrong people,” The recording ends. Williams looks at her, waiting for a response.

“What can I say,” She answers. “Do I look like a master jewel thief?”

“This message came with proof. Clear and obvious evidence that the woman mentioned on this recording is in fact you.”

“I’m no lawyer, but shouldn’t I get to see the evidence?”

“You don’t,” He says. “At-will employment. I don’t know how you’ve escaped the law for so long, but I won’t tolerate criminal scum employed here. Get out. Now.”

“Fine,” She takes a big breath. Full of confidence, she heads for the elevator. Right before the door closes, she gives the whole floor a one-finger salute.

The streets are tighter. Even more than the prior days. She knows the cracks are going. Madeleine’s days are growing shorter and more perilous. The balance between the two is off. 

It’s all primed to blow.

Her mind bounces back and forth with thoughts. Unwrapping the events. The note, the recording — it all links back to him. Wayne. They have to be coordinated. It’s all pointing her in a direction, but she doesn’t know where it goes. Or who it’ll lead her to.

The butler? A cop? Someone else? It had to be someone who knew of Wayne, knows her, knows their connection and past. Someone she wronged that now seeks revenge. Someone that is trying to hurt her. 

Someone trying to screw her over.

Selina walks. She could find a new job, go to a different part of town. Even if suspicions rise, the lack of any paper trail makes it difficult to connect the dots. It wouldn’t be impossible to find more menial, repetitious work. She could lie well enough about her skills and education to get something bigger, too, if she wanted.

But for now, she just walks.

Until she doesn’t.

A man bumps into her. Then another. Then a third. They all stop, encircling her. Before she can respond, they grab her — pulling her into an alley. They push her down on her knees.

“Kyle,” A man, dressed in an expensive suit with a large amount of oil in his hair, looks down at her. “Remember me?” 

Selina looks at him. For a while. A long while. She’s seen a lot of faces in her life. Usually she remembers them…

“No,” She says. “I have no idea who you are.”

The man kneels down. Slaps her across the face. Hard.

“That jog your memory?” He snides. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“Little bit,” Selina’s head snaps back into place. “You’re the kind of upstanding gentlemen who slaps around women.” 

“You would know,” He responds. “You came to me. Spun me a weave of lies. I gave you everything, falling for your damned con. You took it all. Left me with nothing. My family left. My house, my kids. My wife. Everything. And you just kept walking along.”

“Look, buddy,” She puts down his clenched fists.”You’re gonna have to be more precise. I’ve done that to a lot of people.”

“I don’t have to give you anything,” He commands. He retreats back into the shadow of the alley. The alley gets silent. Dead silent. Noises of the street fade away. 

Silence broken by a snap — his fingers. The goons get the message. With fists and boots, they inflict their boss’s wrath. She collapses onto the ground, feeling the weight of all their blows. They strike, not to kill but to hurt.

They raise her up, holding her up by both her arms. She struggles and tries to break out, but their grip tightens. The man comes out of the shadows, with a pair of brass knuckles on his right hand. He cocks his fist back, delivering a forceful punch to her lower abdomen.

The world fades, her vision disappears…

  A dance. People flowing around the hall in pairs. The room moves in time with the music.

She’s there. So is he. Together. Hand in hand. She’s wearing some pretty black dress, he in a powerful suit. Their faces, uncertain but happy. Words go unsaid, yet they share a feeling. They share a breath.

The music slows down. So do they. They linger in each other’s arms, getting closer. Inseparable.

It stops. A pain. A pain in her side, a pain in her heart. He lets go. The world grows black. He fades away into the darkness. She chases him...

“NO!” She awakens, looks around. She’s alone in an alley. Her clothes are dirty, covered with the grim of the street. She’s bruised up and in a great deal of pain, but otherwise fine.

Slowly, she gets up. The vision stays in her mind. He faded away, she was left behind. For too long she’s been stuck living a false life. Denying the truth. 

He’s dead. Nothing can change that.

But he doesn’t have to be gone. No one does.

She knows what she has to do.

In her room, she gets out her secret. Once more, she opens her chest. Once more, she lays out The Cat on her floor. Once more, she looks down at her old life.

“I could’ve gone anywhere, I could’ve been anything,” She says to herself. “But I stayed here.”

The empty suit looks back at her. Peering over her, as if she is a defendant being interrogated. Selina picks up the suit, holding it up to a mirror. She sees the blood stain, the one blemish on the otherwise black suit. 

It will always be there.

“One last time,” She gazes at her reflection. The face in the mirror hurts. The face in the mirror is tired. But the face has no more conflict, no more confusion. “Then we’ll go.” Her hand slides down the suit to the blood stain. She tightly grips that spot.

The suit still fits like a glove. Perfectly designed for her body. Flexible enough for her to contort into all manner of shapes, yet rigid and strong enough to provide a barrier from any attack. She puts on the shoes and snaps on the last piece, her goggles that rest on her head.

Before she leaves, she remembers something. Taking out a pen, she leaves her own note:

“Jen. I am leaving. I’ve gotten too hot around here. The money I’ve left is yours. I don’t need it.”

At the bottom, she leaves the combination to her safe: 12-08-50.

Waiting. Never-ending waiting.

The Cat is best at night. Evening comes, the sun sets — then her work begins. 

A self-storage unit, just another in a long line of them. Honest and authentic. For years, she has kept one of these. A safe and legitimate place to hide stolen goods to cool off. Bury them in actual, legally acquired goods to wash away any suspicion if anyone came knocking. But no one ever did.

Now, it sits empty. Or rather, nearly empty. One object remains. A motorcycle, from him. She takes her seat on the bike.

“To start it, you —” A voice from the past echoes. She starts up the bike, reacquainting herself with the controls. 

“I still got it,” She smiles.

A long ride out of Gotham. The cold, night wind rips at her as she speeds down the roads. Alone. Few travel at night these days. There’s a fear of venturing too far beyond the known ever since the uprising. A fear of going out onto the streets, now unprotected by The Bat. A fear everyone has.

Everyone except her.

The bike comes to a halt at the base of a hill. A large, private driveway awaits her. At the top — Wayne Manor. A new sign out front, christening it as a home for orphaned children.

“They let him keep the house,” She reads the sign. “And he gave it away.” She leaves the bike in the bushes. Under the cover of night, she can silently sneak into the home. 

The Cat creeps across the yard. Graceful, with long strides, she avoids any detection. Security surely is sparser than when the home housed Gotham’s most reclusive shut-in billionaire, but she can’t take any risks. 

She arrives outside the home. The cave is beneath Wayne Manor, she remembers. Perhaps there’s an outside entrance that wouldn’t involve breaking into the home. 

“But where’s the fun in that?” She thinks. 

The gloves on the suit are uniquely equipped to scale walls, with microscopic rigids that allow her to grip to surfaces. She starts climbing up the house, arriving in an unlit window. Activating her night-vision goggles, she checks to make sure the room is empty. 

No one.

The window is a snap. Most people aren’t locking windows this high up on a building. Wouldn’t make sense to lock them, no one can get this high anyway. And if they were locked anyone, she knows the trick to unfasten the lock — equal, forceful pressure on all directions. She slides the window open and climbs inside.

The floors are wood. Old wood. The kind of wood that barks and howls with each step The Cat takes. She must be careful. Not even walking on the floors, but gliding — using all of her grace to slowly move to minimize the force she applies. 

From her previous theft here, she remembers a key detail. The blueprints for the structure gave no information about a secret cave, but they did have one thing — an elevator that seemed to go to nowhere. The house had a basement proper, but the elevator wasn’t connected to it. When she traced the blueprints back to construction permits, it appeared a shaft was constructed but never finished. Perhaps for an expansion that never happened.

But now, with the information of the tunnel…

She heads to the study. In the east wing. Where the shaft seemed to be connected to. With her goggles, she scans around. Walls of bookshelves, a few pieces of furniture brought in by the charity. But nothing. No elevator shaft, let alone access to a cave.

She paces around the room, right up against the bookshelf. Searching for any idea. As she does this, she notices something — one side of the room reverberates more than the other as she passes it by. A normal person with normal hearing wouldn't notice this, but she’s anything but normal. There’s an echo, a hollowness to a section of the back wall.

“Well, there’s the shaft,” She thinks. Standing in front of the section, she considers her options. Smashing through the wood wouldn’t do her any good. Everyone would wake up. Carefully, she begins to unload books from the shelf. Setting them gently on the ground to alert no one.

With the shelf empty, she contemplates more possibilities. There doesn’t appear to be a button or trigger to open it up. No sensor or identification computer. Nothing. 

She feels the underside of the shelfs, searching for anything. No switch, but something else. A sticky note. No words, just shapes. Musical notes. Three chords.

“Good thing I was in the choir,” She quips. “But no one to sing with.”

An idea. Strike an object, it puts out a frequency. Everything does. The books on the ground will have to do. In three stacks, she piles up the books in varying lengths. Striking them risks giving her cover away, so she has one shot at this.

“Here goes nothing,” She sings half the chord and plays the other half.

Nothing.

“Great, just fu—” The wall turns in on itself. Revealing her elevator.

“Great.” She steps inside.

Descending down, the elevator crashes to a halt. She looks up the shaft, going up hundreds of feet. A one-way trip. 

The cave is quiet. Dark. Damp.

Full of bats.

“Figures,” She walks through the cave, minding the holes and cracks for her heels to get caught on. In the distance, she hears something — a voice. A man.

“What are you doing here?”

Him. That cop, the one who arrested her when she nearly escaped Gotham before.

“What are you doing here?” She asks. “Officer.”

“Not anymore,” He gets out of his chair, in front of a massive wall of computer monitors. “Now just my name. John. Or Robin. Whichever you prefer.”

“Well, Robin,” She takes off her goggles. Something about the boy reminds Selina of him. That shared fire in their eyes. That desire to change the world. “I’ll answer you if you answer me.”

“He left this to me,” He clicks a button on the computer. It pulls up an equipment rack — the suit of The Batman, all his gear resting inside. “All of this. Mine”

“Holy shit,” She walks up to the rack. Feeling his armor. Taking in the moment.

“I see you’re back in your outfit,” He interrupts.

“Like the way it looks on me, do you?” She says. “Don’t look too long, or I”ll show you its claws.”

Robin laughs. “What did he see in you?”

“Who?”

“You know. Him.”

She pulls away from the armor. He presses the button, sending it below.

“Do you think you can do this?” She asks. “Put on his cape and cowl? Become him?”

“I can’t be him,” Robin sits back in the chair. “I’ll never be him, but...the city needs The Batman. They need hope. His sacrifice, I won’t let it be in vain.”

She smiles at him.

“I came here, letters I got. Pointed me in the direction. But I don’t know why. Or who sent them.” She pulls out the note, the last one. Robin looks over it. 

“Wasn’t me, but…” He reads it closely. “You must be who I was to wait for.”

“Wait for?”

“When I found the cave, there was this message on the computer…” Robin plays the message.

A figure sits in the same chair. With the messy hair and bad clothes and that aura.

Him.

“Blake, it’s me,” He says. “If you’re seeing this, that means I’m dead. You probably wonder why I sent you here. I need someone to keep the spirit of hope alive. The city needs it. The city needs you. Bane and the shadows may be gone, but evil remains. Someone needs to inspire…”

The passion in his voice. It enchants her just as it did back then.

“I need you to be that hope. You have the talent, you just need practice. Everything I know is in these computers. Work and you will become far greater than I ever was. But there’s one thing.”

His demeanor changes. She feels it through the recording.

“One day, a woman will come by,” A new regret paints his voice. Sorrow. “Don’t put on the mask until she does. When she arrives, make sure you show her this message.”

Selina breathes deeply. Her. She is the woman.

“Ms. Kyle. I’m sorry things ended the way they did. But I have something for you. Something you’ve always wanted. More valuable than the clean slate. Go to my grave. Take this shovel. Start digging.”

Black.

“Shovel?” Selina asks. Robin presents her with a shovel. Nothing remarkable, just a normal one available at any old hardware store. 

“Follow the moonlight out,” Robins directs her to a spark of natural light shining through the dark. “I don’t know what’s in there. I don’t even know about desecrating a man’s grave, but, I guess he’s ok with it, so...”

“I don’t really have a choice.” She holds the shovel in her hands. Both hands. Firm.

A hike out of the cave. Going through the waterfall, the forest, the hills. Arriving back where she began. Arriving at the graveyard.

One stone for Thomas. One for Martha. One for Bruce. A family together for all eternity.

She looks down at the three. Her first time at his grave. It feels real. Too real.

“I always let you down,” She laments. “But you always gave me another chance. Even in death.”

The moon sits at her apex. The night goes on. She begins digging. It takes all of her strength to dig up the nearly-frozen dirt out of the ground. The pile grows larger and larger. The hole gets deeper and deeper.

She hits something. She diggers faster. More intense. She sweats, grows weak. But she goes on. 

A hole, six feet deep, now in the ground. Fully exposed, a casket. A casket fit for Gotham’s fallen prince. 

“Never thought I’d be a grave robber,” She says. “First time for everything.” She opens the casket.

It’s empty.

The Batman’s armor inside. But no body. Nothing. 

She takes apart the suit. Piece by piece, she tosses them up onto the ground. 

“What the…” All that remains is the mask. And something inside the mask.

A set of pearls.

His mother’s pearls.

“Wear them,” A voice from above says to her. 

Selina looks up from the hole. A man stands above the grave. A man with a cane, slowly staggering up to the hole before kneeling on the ground.

A man hiding his eyes behind sunglasses. Despite it being night.

He takes off the sunglasses.

“They always did look good on you.”

Chapter Text

Breath.

Racing.

The only sound.

Hers and his — rising in tandem.

“This can’t be happening,” Selina exhales. She saw him fly off in a broken helicopter carrying a nuclear bomb to the sea. There was a funeral, there was a ceremony. A big statue memorializes him in city hall. His will was read. She viewed his death certificate.

Hell, she stands in his grave.

“I guess it is,” He exhales.

Selina clutches the pearls in her hand. Those damned pearls. 

If she just took the fingerprints and got out of there, she would have never met him. He would have never sought her out to get them back. She could have lived just as she did before. 

But she couldn’t. She took a different path. She stole the pearls and ended up with more than she wanted.

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my time,” She sighs. “But you…” He extends his hand into the grave. 

“Why don’t I just pull you in?” She takes a step back in the grave, away from his hand. An uneasy balance between humor and fear in her voice. 

He laughs. That laugh — no, it’s different. She only heard him laugh once before. But it was fake. Stiff. Like he wore a mask, like he was pretending to be someone else. This time it is real. Full. Alive.

“I went to all that trouble to stay out of that hole,” He cracks. “And besides, you tried to send me to a grave once before. How’d that go for you?”

“Still bitter about that?”

“Wasn’t back then, still not now” His hand reaches out. Big, calloused. But inviting all the same.

Pleading.

Selina takes a deep breath. Her whole life she’s been running. Running from the law, running from the mob, running from marks. Hiding like a stray, nowhere to settle down. Nowhere to call home.

No one to call home.

No one ever cared before. No one stopped and worried about her before. 

No one. Just as she liked it. 

She didn’t want the burden of anyone. With the heat from all her enemies right around the corner, she had to be able to leave everything at a moment’s notice. She couldn’t get attached to anyone or anything. Anyone tying her down would get her target on their back. It wouldn’t be fair to her. It wouldn’t be fair to them.

But now...

“You don’t want this,” She whispers. Holding back.

“I do,” He responds.

“You don’t know me,” She starts. Voice brimming over with emotion. “You don’t...you don’t know who I really am. You just have an idea of me in your head. I’m not the hero. I’m not the one who would give everything.”

“You are,” He responds. “You gave your everything, too. Just as I did.” 

She stares at his hand. The hand that fought off the worst of Gotham. The hand that kept peace in a city. The hand that saves…

“It could have been anyone,” She trails off. “Why me?”

“We both know why,” He responds.

He tilts his head down. Despite the pitch-black night surrounding them, Selina feels his eyes in hers, deep and strong.

“Please,” The voice echoes in her mind. A voice simultaneous in the past and the present.

Her hand trembles. The pearls dangle freely from it.

She reaches out…

...And pulls back.

Confusion.

Total Confusion.

He died once before. But he returned. He crawled out of whatever hell he was thrown into and emerged stronger. He could’ve fled everything, but he came back here. Wanting to go right back into hell to face down the shadows again. 

And now here he is. Ready to save the city. Ready to die twice.

He makes no sense.

“You could’ve gone anywhere,” She says. No thought. Time is short, can’t dwell on words. 

She sneaks a quick glance at him. Beneath his mask, she can barely see anything. But she feels something — peace. For the first time in a long time, he’s content with the path before him.

“Been anything,” She continues. The tick of the bomb accompanies them. The looming threat. “But you came back here.”

She stops. He begins. Looking right into her eyes. Deep, strong.

“So did you,” He says. Cutting to the truth. They have more in common than they’d like to admit.

She looks right in his eye, giving him a wry smile.

“I guess we’re both suckers,” She answers.

The moment is all she has left. 

She wraps herself around him. Making them one. In body. In lips. In spirit. 

The moment feels like forever. It could — would be forever. If it wasn’t for the truth.

He still had something to give the city.

His everything.

Selina tosses the pearls out of the grave. She climbs up the hole, kicking up dirt and dust. The grime clings to her suit, dulling and muting the rich black leather. Out of the hole, she kneels down where the pearls landed. Picking them up, she grabs them. Holds them to her chest.

The open grave sits in front of her. All that’s left is his mask — the other pieces of the suit scatter around where she threw them.

A beat of silence. She looks across the grave. He kneels, head bowed. Like he’s asleep. She watches him, sizing up her next move.

“My mother never liked me staying out too late,” She says. “Especially in the woods with strange men.”

He takes a deep breath. Raises his head up. Selina gets a clear look at his face — weathered and worn, yes, but just as he was before. A rugged mystery to him, a man whose face said everything about him. He would go to the ends of the world for what was important to him. A face of trauma and courage, exhaustion and tenacity.

“I’m no stranger.” He exhales the breath. Releasing it back into the world. “Who am I?”

His words, his voice, his presence — they have this way with her, this way of breaking down her façade and bearing out her soul. Reaching into depths that she even didn’t know. “What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one,” He answers. “Who am I?”

“You’re the prince of Gotham,” She responds. “The heir to a fortune.”

He shakes his head. “A dead man has no money.”

She rolls her eyes, exacerbated. “Then I guess you’re The Batman, the Dark Knight. Vengeance, or whatever nonsense you used to ramble to the muggers and muscle you picked up on the streets.” 

“Perhaps I used to be,” He speaks softly in a voice that carries with the breeze, flowing through into her ears. “But not anymore.” He staggers up, supporting himself with his cane. Revealing his diminished strength.

Selina notices him struggling to stand, how feeble he's become. “Kind of dangerous for an old man to be standing next to a deep hole.”

“Think I’ll fall?” It takes a moment, but he stands straight. 

“Not without a push,” She snides. The power still dwells within him. Just dormant. Eyes back up to him. He cracks a thin smile at her remark. 

“Who am I?”

A question she’s been reckoning for a long time. She barely knows him, yet from the moment she laid eyes on him it was as if he had always been there. Waiting. A voice in her head that knew who she could become yet gave her the space to be who she was. A presence that thought the world of her yet still considered her as a woman and not a god. One who believed in yet respected her.

Selina gives the only answer she can. She points to the headstone bearing his name — Bruce Wayne.

“No one special, no one unique,” Bruce touches the stone. His stone.  “Anyone could do what I did.”

“Fake humility all you want, Mr. Wayne, but no one can do what you did,” She looks down at the pearls in her hand. The moonlight glistens on their surface. In each pearl, her reflection looks back at her. A reflection concealed by the mask of The Cat.

Selina takes off her mask. Throws it down into the grave. Her hair flows down her face, partially lit by the stars yet half shrouded in the dark of night. She catches him taking a glimpse of her face. His eyes shift down from her head, glancing over her everything. Reacquainting himself.

The way he looks at her, a yearning. Deep yearning. Like a man climbing a mountain, inches from the summit. But unknowing what to do if he reaches the top.

“And what did I do, Ms. Kyle?”

“Bring me here,” She answers. “Bring me back to you.”

“You did that yourself.”

“You set the trail,” She pulls out the note, the one she still has. “It all adds up. It was you. It had to be. No one else would know enough. No one else would be obsessed enough.”

“Maybe the obsession is shared,” He begins. “Something kept you here for all this time. You had money, you had your new life. You had everything you wanted. But it wasn’t enough for you, was it, Ms. Bond?”

Her name. Her other name. 

“We all can’t be like you, Mr. Wayne,” A hint of anger in her words. “We can’t all be born in the lap of luxury. Some of us can’t rest on a famous name.”

“Is that what I am to you,” A sadness matches her anger. “A name?”

Another question. One that cuts as deeply as the rest. She had a clearer picture on who The Batman was, but knows little of who Bruce Wayne is — let alone who he is to her. Connection meant risk, meant heartbreak, meant pain. She strayed from that forever. Keeping as many people at a distance as she could.

The only way to live in such a bitter, twisted world.

“Spare me the judgement,” She answers. “I couldn’t keep the water on. You had everything. You had…” She stretches her arms as far as they’ll go, as if she’s trying to grab the whole estate.

“Everything.” The word spreads through the air.

“But I didn’t have the only thing that matters,” He points to the other two gravestones — Thomas and Martha.

“Everyone has their pain, not everyone has the resources to deal with it,” She retorts. Jealous.

“Look where all the money got me,” He says. A powerful seriousness fills out his voice. Somewhere between Bruce and Bat. “Beaten. Broken. Starved and bloodied. Drained of everything I have. Dead.”

Selina pulls back.

“The people of Gotham, what have they done…” Stares off into the night. Ferocity boils in his voice. “About The Batman.”

“They built a statue,” She says with confidence. No fear in facing him down. “But they fucked it  up. Eyes are wrong. They think you’re the hero, the hero who saved them.”

“What do you think?” Face serious. Deadly serious.

“I think it takes a man with a few loose screws to put on a mask and tights before going into the night,” She cracks a grin. “I would know, after all.”

“I couldn’t buy what I needed,” He continues. “I chased and fought for so long, I shut myself out. There was a screw loose. Way too loose. But I figured it out. The only thing I needed.”

He stops. Looks at her. Right at her. Waits for her to say something, but she has no words.

“Do you know what you need?” He asks.

“Don’t you know everything about me already?” She responds. Unable to accept her answer.

“You’re wrong,” He shakes his head. “There’s so much I don’t know about you.”

She sighs. Deeply. Her heart beats faster than ever. The leather suit becomes a prison.

“We all put on a mask sometimes, don’t we…” She trails off. Looks down into the grave, at their masks on top of each other. “Or should I speak to your powerful friend.”

“He wore the mask to protect those he cared about,” Bruce’s voice turns fully to The Bat’s. “Who do you wear a mask for?”

“The same as you,” She takes a step. Her feet hit the edge of the grave. The wind cuts between them. The hole feels like it spans miles and goes down to the center of the Earth.

“Well, you’re wrong, too,” She looks up from the hole to him. Her voice cracks with uncertainty and fear. “You’re not broken. Or drained. You’re not...”

The visions. The dreams. The nightmares. All the signs of a wounded soul dealing with pain, but maybe something else. Maybe a sign from something deep within her. A sign that life isn’t lost. A sign that things can get better. A sign to not give up on hope. To give up on…

“Dead,” The weight of the word sinks in the air. Sinks down to the grave.

He smiles. Thin, weakly. The wind catches his hair, blowing it all around. It’s long — longer than Selina remembers. Unkempt, messy. A man lost and exiled. A man who has been journeying. Searching. “That depends on something…”

Confusion.

Total confusion.

“On you,” He says. “Help me, one last time.”

“Last time I helped you…” He struggles to stand, the wind knocks him unsteady.

No time for thought. She crosses over the grave to his side. She reaches out her hand.

A simple request — take him to Bane. Do this and she would get everything. She would get safety, her new life. Everyone in the city wants her dead. This would be her out.

She’d been with a lot of rich men before. Watched their actions, learned their behaviors. She was the tiger and they were her prey, nothing more. They made this city suffer. They made her suffer. They were only getting back the hand they dealt. They were objects, not people, to her. Just as she was to them.

But him…

She pities him. They stole his everything. They put him in this bind. Something caused him to hide away for eight years. Something caused him to tank his company into nothing. Something broke him.

She knows sending him to Bane would mean one thing — death. Trading his life for hers. 

The power is in her hands. 

The power of life and death.

"I was ready to die," They walk around the grounds of Wayne Manor. Unlike the family cemetery, the path is lit. He balances one side with his cane and the other gripping her arm. "I accepted it."

"But you didn't," The in-ground lights line the path. Their light emanates onto the surrounding trees and shrubs, so meticulously maintained. He has, or rather had, his own corner of the world all to himself. But he kept being pulled back into the community to help them. Despite the pain, he jumped right back in every time. 

She stops. His face is tired, so tired. Just walking this little bit has drained him.

“I understand if you can’t answer, if you don’t want to, if you don’t trust—”

He raises up his hand. Puts it to her lips.

“I’ve trusted you with everything,” He answers. “What do you want to know?”

“Take a guess,” Forces another laugh to hide her fear. “How are you standing here, next to me?”

“You played my little game,” He says. “I’ll be honest. The plan wasn’t great. Worst of all, I had to lie. To everyone I cared about. They all had to think I was dead. It was the only way I could get out of all this.”

“You planned this all?”

“I didn’t know if it’d work,” Grimness in the voice, regret. “The autopilot, the Bat, the suit…there was a way I could live. But it wasn’t guaranteed. I open my eyes and I’m on a beach. I didn’t know whether I was alive or dead. If this was heaven, hell, or somewhere between.”

“Do you know now?”

His hand, tightly gripped to her arm for support, slides down to her hand. 

“Still figuring that out,” He locks his fingers into hers. 

Selina doesn’t know how to respond to the tenderness. She has nothing for him, he has nothing for her — yet here they are.

“But I knew, I was given another chance…” Selina notices a tear welling up his eye. “Another chance to make things right.”

She locks her fingers into his. Pulling him a bit closer than required.

“I found my way back to Gotham,” He relays the details — a voyage from some unknown beach to home. Medical treatments under assumed names, hitchhiking, keeping as low a profile as he could. “Then I found you. No one but you.”

He points to where she put the note earlier. She takes it out again, handing it to him.

“The numbers on the bottom,” He stares at the paper. His lifeline. “Did you give them much thought?”

She doesn’t really answer.

“The reward, a choice…” He takes a deep breath. “Account numbers. For three secret bank accounts in Europe. In your name. Your real name. Enough money for you to be safe forever.”

“I don’t need the money,” She pleads. “I need…”

They turn to face each other. The breeze can’t pass between them.

The lights illuminate her body. Bruce brushes off some of the dust from her, restoring the deep black of her suit. He looks at it, looks at her. A mark that won’t come off, a stain…

“Blood,” He breathes out. “My blood.”

“From that day, the day you…” She stops. “You left.”

“I would have died for real if it wasn’t for you,” He touches the bloodstain. “You’ve saved my life more times than you’ll ever know…” Selina looks into his eyes. She lifts up his shirt, feeling the scar where the blood came from.

Its ridges and bends curve down his abdomen. It came from the knife that cuts the deepest — the knife of trust. He opened his heart once, twice, who knows how many times before. Gets hurt every time, but ends up diving right into the water.

“Does it hurt?” Her voice, soft and wispy. Like a soothing cream. She starts to pull back, but he grabs her wrist — keeping her hand on the scar.

“Not recently,” His eyes into hers. Moving as one. “Not tonight.”

The silent house, his massive monolith sits on the hill. Despite the night, it casts a shadow over them. Cool, weighing heavy. They linger in stagnation on the path, caught in the shadow.

“What do you need,” His voice echoes. Penetrating into her mind, into her very being. Enveloping her in the night. “Selina?

Her name. It rolls off his tongue, resonating in his throat. A tone she feels in her chest. The way he says each syllable sends ripples through the air. Ripples through her.

She can't stand how much she needs it.

She couldn’t escape it. The past always finds its way back to her.

Sitting on a cot, reflecting on all she’s done. She knows she’ll never get out of this place — one robbery isn’t a lengthy sentence, but hundreds add up. All she’ll have now is time. Time and solitude.

The first one comes in prison. One night, her first night. He appears — just as he did then. Beaten. Broken. Split in two.

Dead.

She brought him this fate. Now she deals with the consequences. Reliving it each night. Seeing him die, over and over and over and over again. The pit in her stomach grows deeper, more intense, every time. It all tumbles to nothing: her life, her energy. She loses her everything.

Her everything.

Him.

What she needs.

They circle around the path, back at the grave. The open hole in the dirt.

She knows what she needs. Whether he’s illusion, real, or somewhere between — no more running. No more hiding. No more names. No more lying.

Just living.

A breath. A look. Right into her eyes.

“What next, Bruce?” Desperation in every breath. “Where do you go now?”

“Back in the hole, I suppose,” He knocks on the empty casket with his cane. “Unless…”

He grabs her arm, raising it up — the pearls, in her hand. He takes them, holding them up to the night sky. They still shine like they were new. Some of the pearls catch his reflection, others catch hers. In one pearl, the two reflections blur into one.

A breath. A look. Right into his eyes.

Selina takes the pearls out of his hands and puts them around her neck. They fit perfectly. Coming back alive after sitting in a box for decades.

“They do look good on you,” A voice relieved, rejuvenated. 

“Feel as good as they look."

They stand behind his gravestone. In the horizon, the sun begins to peak out of the night. A new dawn.

“I have to leave now,” Echoing from his sorrowful voice. 

“You aren’t leaving me,” She pleads. “You aren’t dying. Not this time. You already gave them you’re everything, but you still owe me something…”

She pulls him in. Close. Inseparably close.

The moment is all she has left. 

She wraps herself around him. Making them one. In body. In lips. In spirit. 

The moment feels like forever. It could — would be forever. Because of the truth.

She still had something to give Bruce. He still had something to give Selina. 

His everything. Her everything.

Together.

Chapter Text

Time stands still.

A knife. How crude and barbaric. She never steals with a knife — that just adds another level of risk. But this bozo acts with all the elegance of bull and the precision of a shotgun. He’s not a professional, just something the sewer spat up onto the street.

An alley. Corned. Alone. A scream would do nothing. The crazed look in his eye makes her think he’s the type to stab and let her bleed out. And she’s not dying for the pocket change in her wallet. Thank goodness her job earlier today was a bust.

Perhaps she could fight him — she has been taking a few classes — but that doesn’t change the knife. Hand doesn’t beat a knife, not at her level.

“Here,” She pulls out her wallet. “Just take it. Take it and let me go.”

“It’s not the wallet…” A lecherous slobber. He pushes her into the wall.

And someone pushes him back.

“What are you doing here?” A voice. A voice cracking into a thousand pieces. Deep. Powerful. Frightening. A voice in the shadows.

“You…” The man looks up from the ground, with fear capturing his voice. Two eyes in the darkness. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Too bad,” A hand reaches out. Pull the man off the ground and into his realm. A cry of pain bounces off the walls of the alley. Then, just as fast as he went in, the man is thrown out of the darkness. He runs away into the night.

“Did he hurt you?” The voice asks.

“That depends,” She answers. “Who’s asking?”

He steps out of the shadows. Entering the light, he towers over her. She knows him. From the newspapers, from the TV news.

Him.

The Batman.

Dream. Reality. All blurs together.

Screen goes dark. Room lights up.

In the back of a lecture hall, a student sits up in her chair. She’s the only one in the back row, sitting right by the door. Everyone else congregates towards the front. All the other students fritter with their notes, trying to recall what they just witnessed. Kon’s “Paprika” — not the easiest nut to crack. Not for an amateur.

She flips around her in her notebook. Nothing about the film they saw, just a scattered collection of ideas. A few words tossed around and crossed out. In the middle, a phrase circled:

“Did I have the dream or did the dream have me?”

She looks down at the phrase. Something about it...

A question, from the front. Everyone struggles to answer. The room sits silent. She hates the silence — reminds her too much of back then. She has to break it.

“There’s a chaos to it,” The student in the back answers. “Bounces from place to place. Makes it difficult to keep up, but it’s by design. To fit into the dream. Blending dream and reality, difficult to tell which is which.”

She can barely see the academic in front, but she can see enough. Her answer satisfied him.

Out of the hall, after the class, a few of the younger students chase after her.

“I just don’t understand,” In that whiny, condescending tone she used to hear from all the rich bastards of Gotham. “How can someone, an American, someone of your age...what do you have that we don’t?”

“Life experience, a few wrinkles,” She quips. “Someone who made me watch all his weird favorites until I liked them.”

“Could you teach us sometime?” Another student asks. This one less whiny.

A smirk. “Do what I did.”

The streets of the city — so foreign, yet she feels right at home walking them. These people may be vaguely familiar with the stories from Gotham, but have no real knowledge of them. No feeling. It could easily all be a make-believe world. Something ripped from the pages or the screen. But for those who lived it, those who bore those scars, it will always be real. 

Too real.

In Gotham, her face meant escaping death every moment of every day and night. But here, she is just another person. Another face in the crowd, another person trying to live and love. No one special, no one remarkable.

These late-afternoon walks after class are her favorite moments of the day. She takes in the surrounding buildings — ancient relics of a distant time, something the non-stop development of Gotham lacks. The pathway, stone lined next to a river, feels like something out of paradise. 

And the best part is what comes at the end of the path.

A cottage, not too large. On the outskirts of the city, next to various farms and fields. A little garden in the back, with a stone well going down into the ground.

Perfect for the two of them.

The door swings open. He stands in the doorway, knowing the rhythm of her day. His body fills up the frame.

“Mr. Kyle,” Bruce’s eyes light up when she calls him that. At first, just a cover for their travels. A cover for why she could be in the hospital rooms and physical therapy sessions. A cover for hotels and hostels that wouldn’t rent to unrelated men and women.

But after a while…

They got used to it. Too used to it.

"How was your class?" His injuries have mostly gone, though he still walks with a slight hitch in his step. To him, a reminder of how far he's come. To her, a reminder of how she nearly lost him. 

"Oh, you know,” All she cares about is his leg. The way his knee buckles. It got worse before it got better — times he couldn’t walk, couldn’t get out of bed. The wounds add up. No one can escape their past. 

But through enough care, it can be healed. He claims that tending to the garden is just a way of this healing. A low-strain physical work to build his strength back up, but the look of pride on his face when his tomatoes come up says differently.

Selina throws down her bags, takes a seat by their lit hearth.  

“Could’ve gone anywhere in the world,” He laughs a bit. That laughter. She’ll never get tired of it. “And you chose to go school.”

“Never had the chance before, but I came into some money,” Smile back at him. “Who said letters from princes promising money are always scams?”

“The real scam here is how you got into a graduate program, last I knew those required...graduation.”

“Stealing a degree is a lot easier than stealing a...” She reaches into her bag on the ground. Presents him with a little box, the kind from a fancy jewelry store. He opens the box, revealing a watch. High end. Intricate. Expensive. 

“Selina,” He tilts his head down at her. Takes a tone in his voice — an uneasy balance between genuine concern and light-hearted ribbing.

“I was gonna pay for it,” She stands up and takes the watch out of the box in his hand. Puts the watch on his wrist, a perfect fit. “But then I saw how he treats his employees. Didn’t like that.”

Snap. Clicks the watch band together. 

“You have your justice,” Silver, adorned with diamonds. A black dial. “And I have mine.” She tilts her head back. Stands up, bridging their height difference. They get close. 

Very close. 

Sharing their breath.

She knows him from the papers. The stories spread fast after what he did to Falcone and his syndicate. Stories turned to rumors. Rumors turned to myths. People seeing him at the same time in two places. People hearing him outside their window when they even thought about doing something wrong. People feeling his presence lurking in every dark corner of Gotham.

“Is it true what they say about you,” She asks. “About the mask?”

“What do they say about me?” Through the bark, a man’s voice.

“That you’re a monster, something that’s crawled out of hell,” She answers. “I don't believe it. You’re just another one of Gotham’s freaks.”

Another step. He gets closer to her. Casts a shadow over her.

“You never answered,” He growls. “Did he hurt you?”

“I don’t make a habit of letting men hurt me,” She clenches her fist. Hard. “Including you.”

The stories always end with him disappearing just as soon as he came. In a blink of an eye, it’s like he turns into thin air. The cops, the mob — no one can trace down this guy. No one knows who he is.

If he is a man at all.

But tonight, he lingers. Fixated by her. 

“The only truth about me is vengeance,” He reaches for something on his belt. “I am Gotham’s vengeance.”

A cloud of smoke. Quickly dissipating — just as he did.

The woman looks up to the night sky. A signal, cutting through the darkness. A light, with a bat in the middle.

A mask. A suit. If some crazy clown could put it together to prowl around the streets roughing up petty criminals and scaring mob bosses, surely she could do it too. Wouldn’t be spotted on the job, would have everything she needed with her. No risk. No failure.

And hell. She looks good in black.

The rooms of the cottage can be counted on one hand: a living area with an adjoined kitchen, a small bathroom, a little sunroom, and a bedroom. Not much in that room: a couple dressers, a tiny closet, and a big bed.

And two tangled as one.

The light of their afterglow breaks through the darkness of the unlit room. She lies under her arm, hair spreading loosely across her pillow. He laments how weak and small he’s gotten, but it’s enough. 

Enough for her.

“Do you remember the first night?” He asks, in that soft voice he now has at night.

“That first night?” She says, through a laugh. “When you--”

“No, no, not that one,” He holds her close. “The one we met.”

“They said you were a monster, with scars and claws.” She traces up his body with her fingers, stopping at his one lasting, deep scar — the one that nearly killed him. “But there’s just the one.”

“Hasn’t hurt in a long time,” A soft moan. He reaches underneath, grabs her hand. “What do you think of Florence?”

“Florence?”

“A city in Italy,” He begins. “A promise I have to keep is there.”

“Oh,” She dejects. “Well...I can watch over th--”

Bruce pulls her hand out, puts it up to her lips.

“You’re coming,” He replies. “You’re the promise.”

Another night. The same as every other night.

Back into the cave — to become Bruce Wayne again. First comes off the mask, then the rest of the suit. The seclusion of the cave, surrounded by the rest of his kind, provides a safe space. No one will ever find this cave. No one would ever want to find it.

“Master Wayne,” Alfred, his loyal friend and confidant, greets him. “Home so soon?”

“Heard from Gordon,” He keys something into his computer, searching the database. “That bank robber did it again. None of the bank’s staff were killed this time, but they were…”

“They were what, sir?”

“They had no idea what was going on around them. No memory. Too busy laughing.” On the screen, the blueprints of the bank. “Look at this. He used the ventilation system to pump a gas in the building to incapacitate them. Nitrous oxide.”

“Laughing gas,” Alfred says. “Seems like the man is a bit of a joker.”

“You could say that…” His voice trails off. 

“Something wrong?”

“Alfred,” Bruce turns around and faces him. “Am I a monster?”

“I don’t believe I should answer that.” He speaks in a paternal voice. He is the closest thing Bruce has to a father. “What brought this up?”

“A woman,” He says. “In an alley. She was getting attacked, I saw it. She wasn’t scared at all. She said they call me a monster, but she thinks I’m a freak.”

“Consider it from her perspective, sir,” He answers. “A man who dresses up like a bat does not come off as the most...normal.”

“Rachel,” That name. Not gone, but lost. Somewhere in Gotham, living her life. Independent of him. “She doesn’t think I could give it up. Doesn’t think there’s room for normal in my life.”

“Being both a prince and a knight is a lot,” He says. Always with the right words. “I hope one day you’ll be able to hang it all up. For all our sakes.”

Bruce shuts his computer off.

“I can’t,” He laments. “Not until a light shines through Gotham.”

“It’d have to be a very bright light, sir,” Alfred responds. He heads back up to the penthouse. Bruce stays back, continuing to transition back to Man from Bat.

In the black monitor, his reflection looks back at him — tired. 

Florence. A little café by the Arno.

Bruce stares into her pearls. She knows why he does this, in the right light and angle they catch a perfect reflection. They shine like nothing else she’s ever seen.

“How’s the writing going?” He asks. In her new life, she chose film — all the thrills and tension of the old job, but less of the moral questions. Danger, but a different kind.

“Have an idea, a dream,” Selina swirls around the wine in her glass. “There’s a woman, strong and cunning. A man, less strong and a little broken. On opposite sides of the same idea. Forced to work together and…”

“I think I know how this goes,” He smiles. “I’m no expert, but Mr. Wayne had some people who I’m sure would be interested. You’ve got the money, got the time, got the…”

He stops. Looks across the café. Selina can’t tell what he’s looking at, but she knows the look in his eye — searching. Searching for something gone, but not lost. 

At once, his eyes come to a stop. He nods. A nod that he’s been wanting to make for a long time.

“Who was it?” She asks.

“An old friend,” He answers. “He made me realize what was important. What I needed. He deserves to know I listened to him.”

“And what was that you needed?” She knows the answer, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to hear it all over again.

“You,” A weight comes off his shoulders. “Only you.”