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one.
In her defense, she meant it when she said she was done with Gotham. It’s a horrible city filled with nothing but crime and corruption and even worse memories. She genuinely hates Gotham and wants nothing more than to be as far away from it as possible.
But.
She knows the city. Inside and out.
There’s not an alleyway she hasn’t ventured down, a fire escape she hasn’t scaled, a roof she hasn’t climbed. Blindfold her, tie her up, and she’ll still find her way to exactly where she needs to be in record time. Gotham is familiar in a way that only home can be.
Which means it’s the easiest score.
Selina’s halfway through cracking the lock when she hears the shuffle of someone behind her. She spins around expecting to find a butler or security guard or whoever else these rich people keep around. Hell, considering the man never seems to leave his penthouse, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been Bruce Wayne himself.
Instead what she finds is him, standing there, watching her in his normal brooding silence. Except not, because in all the times he’s appeared behind her, she’s never heard him coming. He’s getting sloppy.
Or trying to get her attention.
The edges of her lips tug into a smirk. “Hi, baby,” she says playfully. She doesn’t wait for his response before turning back to her work.
“You’re back,” he says and leaves it at that.
She shrugs. “What can I say? I missed the stench. The sewers in Blüdhaven just don’t do it for me.”
The lock clicks into place and the safe opens. Like stealing candy from a baby.
Any sense of victory immediately fades when she sees the contents. It’s not nothing by any means – a few sets of jewels that will cover her for a few months – but far from the score she expected. It’s mostly paperwork – passports, birth certificates, and a few other things that are absolutely useless to her. Seems Wayne is smarter than she gave him credit for.
Asshole.
He’s still standing there when she turns back around and if she didn’t know any better, she would think he was almost smiling. Well, whatever passes as a smile for him. Which is almost as surprising as how little he is trying to stop her. Maybe rich boy finally learned about wealth distribution.
“Why?” she asks, closing the distance between them. “Did you miss me?”
He doesn’t say anything, but she swears his eyes soften. Her hand rests on the left side of his chest, just beside the bat at the center of it all. Slowly, it moves up and down, following his chest with every breath. With all those layers of armor, she can’t feel his heart beating. But, for just a moment, she pretends she can.
But only for a moment, because it’s already a miracle no one’s showed up and she’s not about to press her luck.
He catches her arm when she steps away, not quite pulling her back but not letting her get any further. “Those aren’t yours.”
Her hand cups the back of his head, pulling him down to her, her lips catching his. He tenses for just a moment before he relaxes into her.
When she pulls back, it's just enough that her lips almost, but not quite, still graze against his. He looks down at her and this time she knows exactly what his eyes are telling her.
“Consider it a welcome home present.”
This time when she leaves, he doesn’t stop her.
two.
The money she scores off the Wayne jewels doesn’t even last her the week, because three hours after she pawns them off, she runs into a girl she knew at the club.
The first thing she notices is that the girl is scared. Selina can see it in the way she looks over her shoulder, jumping at any hint of movement. It’s a fear that goes beyond walking down the wrong street in Gotham.
The second thing she notices are the bruises on her wrist that she tries to cover by tugging down the edges of her sleeves.
The money isn’t enough to set her up for good, but it’s enough to get her some new papers, a ticket out of the state, and some cash to last her a month – two if she really stretches it – just enough to last her until she can find work somewhere else. Somewhere far away from whatever she’s running from. Somewhere safe. Somewhere that isn’t Gotham.
Selina doesn’t regret helping her, even when she realizes she doesn’t have enough left to make it to the end of the month. She can take care of herself. After all, the whole reason she came back to this city was because it was the easiest mark. So three days later, she picks another fancy penthouse and gets almost as much.
Except then she comes across a single mom who can’t keep the lights on. Then a teen who's been kicked out of their house. A pregnant girl whose boyfriend died in Riddler’s attacks. On and on it goes.
It isn’t much, but it’s a start.
“Is this what you do now? Steal?”
She nearly jumps when she comes out of the bathroom, hair still wet from her shower, and finds him standing in her room. He’s eyeing the gold pieces in her bag, but he doesn’t actually make a move to take them. He certainly could have when she was in the shower.
“Maybe I was trying to get your attention,” she says, fighting back a yawn as she leans against a wall. It’s nearly four in the morning and she’s exhausted.
Even though he doesn’t smile, for just a split second, he almost seems amused. “You weren’t,” he says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Which, to be fair, it is. If she wanted his attention, there are far easier ways to get it. “You haven’t been keeping the money either. So what are you doing?”
Instead of answering him, she takes a few steps forward, closing the distance between them in the very small room. Her knuckles tap against his torso, the pressure so light that she doubts he even feels it through all of his armor.
“Tell you what, baby,” she says, practically purring as she looks up at him. She leans forward, pressing her weight against his. He shifts slightly under the pressure, but stands his ground, more than willing to take the weight of her body against his. “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”
Her hands still pressed against his torso, she leans up, the gap between them so small that she feels his breath against her skin.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
So perfectly even that it has to be intentional. Focused.
His control gives him away.
She smirks, her lips almost but not quite brushing against his when she asks, “Was I your first kiss?”
A beat passes.
Then another.
He doesn’t answer.
Selina bites back a smile and taps his torso again before taking a step back and turning to her bedroom. She doesn’t bother looking back as she waves over her shoulder. “Goodnight, Vengeance.”
three.
It wasn't that she was sloppy before – her track record before him was pretty much spotless – but ever since he caught her breaking into that safe, she's been a little more conscious of where she's going and who could possibly be following her. If she hadn't been then maybe she wouldn't have noticed the man following her.
"What do you want?"
The words barely make it out of her mouth before the man starts to slip away, likely realizing he's been made before she even spoke.
There’s no shortage of men Selina’s pissed off since she’s returned to Gotham. The list is even longer if she goes beyond the last few weeks. So the man could be pretty much anybody. But if he’s actually a threat, if he’s someone trying to stop one of the people she’s trying to help escape Gotham, it’s probably better to deal with him now. And if he's not, if he's just a random man following her down the street, then it's definitely better to deal with him now.
He’s fast. Unfortunately, faster than even her. Which means she only has one shot before she loses him.
She dives at him just before he can get out of reach, crashing into him just as he looks over his shoulder to see if she’s there. And the moment he hits the ground, taking the brunt of the impact, he twists and turns in an attempt to get away. She doesn’t let go, holding onto him with all her might, fighting back every time he tries to escape.
They land with her on top of him, pinning his arms down so that he can’t push her off of him. And it’s just as she’s about to demand to know who he is that she takes an actual look at him. On top of the ridiculous ballcap, there’s a bandana wrapped around the lower half of his face, an attempt to hide his identity that might have worked if there wasn’t black paint smeared over his eyes clearly giving him away.
Somehow he looks more ridiculous than he does with the cowl on.
“Why am I surprised?” she groans, because of course it’s him. She should have known. “Why are you following me now?”
He looks at her down to his torso that she’s still straddling. As he does, his chest rises and falls, and she realizes that his breath is perfectly in sync with hers. Up and down, up and down, each breath heavier and harder than it needs to be. The edges of a hoodie peek out from under his jacket and she thinks if she were to reach down – if she were to touch his chest, bare from all that heavy armor – she would feel him. Feel his heart in her hands.
When he finally looks back up at her, she thinks that even if it weren’t for the stupid disguise or the messed up eyeliner, she would have known it was him because his eyes give him away.
There is only one person who looks at her the way those eyes are looking at her now.
For a moment, she considers staying there on top of him. If they were anywhere other than a Gotham alleyway, she would have. But the last thing they need is to draw even more attention to themselves, so she sighs and climbs off of him, finally allowing him to stand.
“Talk.”
He pauses as if he’s contemplating his words before he admits, “The last time I didn’t know why you did something, I made assumptions. Wrong assumptions.”
He tried asking her back at the motel, but she refused to answer him. So, rather than making another assumption, he decided to find out the answer for himself.
It’s considerate – you know, in a completely disregarding healthy boundaries kind of way. But she already knew that about him.
She should just tell him the truth. If he was going to stop her, he would have done it already. Hell, he might even encourage – well, approve of – it if he knew exactly what she was doing with all the money she’s been scoring. After all, isn’t that his whole thing? Doing whatever he has to in order to save this city?
Except she’s not saving the city – she’s saving the people from the city. She’s giving them the escape she needed once upon a time. Because she hates Gotham with the same passion that he loves it with. They are as different as they could possibly be without maybe not being so different after all.
Her finger traces the edges of the bandana that's guarding his identity. It would be so easy to take it off, to reveal the face under the mask, to see the man always hidden away in the shadows. It would almost be fair considering exactly how much he knows about her. But she won’t. Not when it clearly means so much to him.
“Tell you what, baby,” she says. “I won’t ask about your secret if you don’t ask about mine.”
He studies her for a minute and then another. She can see him calculating, weighing out all the possibilities, all the risks. But more than that, she can see him considering what she is telling him to do – to trust her. Enough to let her do what she needs to do without question. It’s a big ask for anyone, much less him. Then again, she isn’t exactly asking.
Selina smiles and pats his cheeks affectionately, taking his lack of protest as a tentative agreement, before slipping past him and walking out of the alley. He won't follow her this time, she knows, and she's got a millionaire to rob.
bonus.
The three men get the jump on her while she's on her way to pawn off her latest score. They're young, inexperienced, and clearly terrified of what they're doing. Which is almost worse than anything else, because scared people are the most unpredictable.
One of them gets one good blow in, scraping her arm with a knife, before they realize this won't be the easy hold up they expected. They take off, stupidly deciding whatever injuries she gives them won't be worth her stash. She half considers chasing them down, but it's been a while since she's gotten cut and it hurts like a bitch.
Fortunately, she knows a safe place nearby.
This time she hears him coming. Partially because the only way up to this rooftop is the elevator so it’s practically impossible to not hear him coming. Partially because this is his spot, the one where his stupid signal is hidden away. But mostly because he has a tendency of popping up exactly when she doesn’t want him around. Which, unfortunately, is sometimes when she needs him the most.
“You’re injured.”
She rolls her eyes, finishing wrapping the medical tape around her left arm. It isn’t a particularly deep wound so she knows it’ll heal fine, but it hurts like shit. “Great detective work there, baby.”
Almost as if it were out of instinct, his hand reaches out and, for just a moment, she thinks he will touch her. She imagines the way his fingers will feel caressing the edges of her injury. He must too, because he pulls back at the last minute, as if he were only just realizing what he was doing.
This man, she swears.
“Selina.”
His voice is level when he says her name, but when she looks up at him, his eyes give him away. There’s something that wasn’t there before – an almost tenderness. It should look strange, seeing so much softness tucked away under all the hard edges, and maybe it would if it wasn’t him and it wasn’t her. But it’s them and, somehow, it just works even if it shouldn’t. So he looks down at her, letting his eyes speak for him.
If she isn’t careful, she could lose herself in his eyes.
She lifts her right hand, gently taking hold of his chin, and her thumb traces his lips, relishing in the way her bare skin feels against his.
She swears she feels him tremble under her hand.
It’s a dangerous game she’s playing, she knows, falling for a man whose name she doesn’t know, whose face she’s never actually seen. Allowing herself to fall for someone whose sense of duty will always come before her. Who may never trust her with his secrets. It’s a dangerous game falling in love with someone who will only ever put her second.
Lucky for them, if there’s one thing Selina’s good at, it’s putting herself first.
“You talk too much,” she says, her voice low.
The edge of his mouth tugs up forming a small but definite smirk.
Careful, baby, she wants to say, look at a girl like that and she might think you like her.
Except she doesn’t get the chance, because he leans downs, closing the space between them, and kisses her. His lips just barely graze hers at first, almost tentatively at first, as if he were testing the grounds first. The grounds pass, thank god, because the second time he kisses her, it’s deeper and full of… something. Something that his words don’t say.
His lips linger near hers afterwards, almost as if he were afraid to pull back fully, as if he were afraid of losing this moment. Because they both know the moment he does, the second he steps back, everything will go back to the way it was before. This doesn’t change anything.
Her fingers curl around the back of his cowl. “Shut up,” she says, pulling him back to her.
This doesn’t change anything, she knows. But, for now, that doesn’t matter.
For now it’s just them.