Work Text:
"Did you know that hummingbirds remember every flower they’ve ever visited?"
11-year-old Selina Kyle blinked, caught off guard by the random trivia spouted by the other girl. They seemed to be around the same age, but this one was a new face to the Narrows. Her eyes were still kind and bright and full of hope. Yep, definitely new.
"Uh… no. Had no idea." Selina's response was dry, as she had no reason to pretend to care about hummingbirds. Were there even hummingbirds in Gotham? She shrugged off the thought and continued on her way, but the new girl stopped her again.
"Yeah! Isn’t that cool?"
Selina paused for a moment, pretending to think it over before shaking her head. "No, not really." She tried to take her leave, but the girl moved in front of her, and would shuffle from side to side when she attempted to walk around. "Look kid, what do you want?" The question came out a bit harsher than she intended, but she rolled with it.
"Oh, uh— nothing! I just…" There was a subtle tremble to the girl’s voice as it trailed off, and her gaze turned sheepish as she looked away. "I don’t know anyone… I don’t mean to be a bother. I just thought maybe… we could be friends?"
For a brief moment — a very brief moment — Selina thought she could feel her heart stir, but it was quickly overtaken with anger. "Don’t do that," she suddenly hissed, causing the other girl to nearly jump out of her skin, "don’t you put that shit on me. You flash anyone else those dumbass doe-eyes asking to be friends and they’ll eat you alive. I’m not gonna be responsible for you and I’m sure as hell not gonna put a target on my own back by hanging around you, so… y’know. Get lost."
Striding forward with a quick pace, she forcefully shoved past the girl and kept going. Keep walking, she told herself, it’s for your own good. But when she heard that whimper — that faint little sound of a muffled sob — she froze. Don’t turn around, she told herself, before slowly turning around to see that lost, frightened little girl doing all she could to choke back tears.
Turn around. Walk away. Forget her.
Her inner monologue pleaded and begged for her to do the sensible thing, but her chest tightened and her feet froze in place, as if her heart held her body hostage until she very reluctantly complied. Slowly walking back to the girl, she crossed her arms and sighed. "Got a name?"
The girl looked up, her wide glossy eyes brimming with tears as she sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "...Emma."
"Alright, look Emma. Maybe I can help you get on your feet or something, but that’s it. Out here, you gotta survive on your own. We’re not friends, okay? So don’t get attached."
Selina said that last part more to herself than her new acquaintance, but as she watched Emma relax and blink back her tears before giving her a grin and a shy nod, she already knew it was hopeless. Befriend a stray cat and they never leave.
She would come to curse that moment with every fiber of her being only weeks later, as she held Emma in her arms, those big dumb doe-eyes staring up to her with a terrifying emptiness as she gurgled and gasped for air, her lips gushing thick hot blood against her leather jacket. A makeshift shiv still stuck out from between the girl’s ribs, sticky crimson pooling across the asphalt around them. Selina wanted to chase down those boys and rip out every single one of their throats with her own teeth if she had to, but as they ran down the alleyway and disappeared, she could only hold that warm, twitching corpse against her and cry out for help that never came.
She shouldn’t have gotten attached. Next time, she wouldn’t.
Next time arrived months later, in the form of a younger boy. He couldn’t have been much older than 8 or 9 years old, and no one else seemed to give a damn about his existence. You shouldn’t either, she told herself. Just keep walking, don’t turn around. Not your responsibility.
But she heard him whimper as he held back tears, his stomach growling. He hadn’t moved from his little nest of soggy newspapers in days, so she knew he hadn’t eaten. Maybe she could just get him some food, and a new dry spot to sleep, but that was it. He had to survive on his own. She didn’t even ask for his name, she refused to get attached.
He began to follow her around like a puppy. Frail and sickly, he slowed her down, but what was she supposed to do? Once he started eating more, he’d get better, then she could tell him to fuck off and find his own way. He was dumb and annoying, and she had to look out for herself, too — the sooner she could get rid of him, the better.
And yet she couldn’t stop throwing up the day she came back to find him slumped on the ground, cold and lifeless.
She shouldn’t have gotten attached.
Then there was Robbie, a year or two older than her, who ran around with a few other teenage thugs. He was mean and a bully, and she couldn’t stand him, but one night when she found him alone and crying under the bridge, she couldn’t help but quietly sit next to him. Neither ever said a word; she never asked, and he never told. It was easier that way. There was no attachment, just silence between two strays who understood that the loneliness was sometimes too much.
The next time he saw her, he acted differently. He smiled, and offered her a Kit-Kat he’d swiped earlier from a drug store, and got flustered when he said he wanted to share one with her sometime. Her chest tightened, and she knew what it meant, and she hoped things could be different.
That sometime would never come, she realized, perched on a fire escape as she watched an officer shoot him down right in the middle of the street. He’d snatched some asshole’s wallet and ran, and unfortunately it was a slow day for the cops. "Shit, it was just a wallet," his partner groaned, looking down at the dead kid with a huff of annoyance.
The other cop looked at him and shrugged. "Tch, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Who cares, he was a nobody."
"A nobody we gotta do paperwork on, now."
"Not if we don't report it."
Hearing those words, even from up where she sat, caused a certain kind of coldness to spread through her body. She just shut down, silently slipping away across the rooftops out of sight. The following days were kind of a blur to her, and she just couldn’t bring herself to care about much of anything.
It wasn’t until about a month later when she went into a drugstore to grab some chips and a frozen meal that she snapped. On her way to the freezers, she passed the candy aisle, her eyes settling on a box of Kit-Kats. Next thing she knew, she was quickly leaving the store with her jacket zipped up all the way to her chin, full to the brim with as many Kit-Kats as she could stuff inside. She made it back to her little den in the corner of some abandoned building and unzipped her jacket, unleashing a wave of chocolate bars that clattered to the ground. Then she just sat down and cried, and cried, and cried.
After that, she just felt… emptiness. Too many bullet holes in her heart, she figured. Too many. So her walls went up, and she stopped caring. There wasn’t anyone left to argue with her inner monologue, and so she stopped turning around; she learned how to keep walking. No one else was her responsibility, she had to worry about herself. Out on the streets, you had to survive on your own.
And then, a couple years later, Selina met Bruce Wayne. She’d been there that night in the alleyway, high up on the fire escape making her way to the rooftop when she heard the commotion. She’d watched with a silent numbness as a masked thug robbed some rich couple before shooting them dead, leaving their kid behind to cry out for help. For her, it was just another night in Gotham, and so she continued on her way. He wasn’t her responsibility.
It was only the next day when every news outlet in the city was talking about this kid’s dead parents that she learned who that boy was. A billionaire’s son. No wonder why Gotham suddenly cared… it made her sick to her stomach. The anger and resentment built up inside her every time she heard people talk about poor Bruce Wayne, as if they were shocked and horrified by something they blindly passed by every single day without so much as a second thought.
When she was introduced to Bruce a week later, as a key witness to his parents’ murder, she wasn’t sure how she would react to him. When she saw his mansion for the first time, it set her teeth on edge and she could barely choke back her rage. So this is all it took for people to give a shit — a big ass house and a bunch of expensive stuff; she despised him already.
But when they finally met face to face, as brief as it was, she saw it in his eyes.
All this ridiculous wealth, the public’s pity, the entire GCPD working the investigation, and yet… he had that same look as all the others. The look of a stray; lost, scared, and suddenly alone in a dark, cruel, cold world. She wanted to scream — it was too much. Fuck this. He wasn’t her responsibility. Just turn and walk away from it all. Who cares?
And yet, for the first time in a long time, she froze. Her chest tightened, her heart stirred. Oh no, she thought. Not again. Not now. Not him. Don’t get attached.
To remind herself of the risk of becoming attached — or perhaps overcome with grief all over again as her heart began to thaw — she took a trip one day down to the edge of the river, to a spot just below the underpass. The riverbank was lined with little piles of stones, each one a memorial — a reminder of what getting attached meant in the streets of Gotham; a one-way ticket to an unmarked grave, with no one but a stray cat to mourn you.
She was a little surprised to see the piles were still mostly in-tact, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they weren’t. Each pile represented someone she had become attached to, someone who had bloomed like a flower within her heart, before being ripped away all too quickly.
And like a hummingbird, she remembered every one.