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"If you would let me give you pinky promise kisses
Then I wouldn't have to scream your name
Atop of every roof in the city of my heart
If I could see you
Once more to see you”
- Once More to See You, Mistki
“Bruce?” Selina whispered when she felt a slight breeze behind her, almost a nothingness. Most of the time she would turn around just to make sure it wasn’t him. Some others, she would just go because even if it was him, Selina didn’t want to know.
But still, she still hoped most days. Calling his name into the city, in a failed hope to be him, for him to listen. It had been months since their last encounter, months since they decided once again to part ways. It was always like this, their dance where they spun around each other to just slightly touch, but never actually staying together.
Selina understood, knew, the implications, all the consequences; what every part of ways meant. Every time they tried, just to make a fool of themselves once more. She knew their game, the way he would run after her until she let him catch her. The way he looked in a mix of anger and disappointment when they inevitably disagreed on something inevitable. Again.
And again
And again.
They would never work out. Selina and Bruce, Catwoman and Batman. That was one of the only truths she still believed after all these years. The thought that kept her sane when everything seemed upside down, the one and only fact that was still there.
But when the nights were slow, when everything was a little too quiet in Gotham, she pretended. Pretended he was coming, following her until they got tired, kissing on some rooftop under the never ending night sky. She would think that this time they would be actually together, working, living, something, anything.
And then a gunshot or a scream would rip her away from her thoughts and bring her back to reality. They could pretend it would last, they could dance, play their silly game of delusions, work in a few cases together, fool around in hotel rooms, whisper love confessions on rooftops. They would pretend that nothing happened before, so many times before, and try, maybe for a few weeks, even months before everything came crashing between them.
Before something terrible happens in their life, and she acts the way she does, he acts the way he believes. Before their screams would deafen, scare all the stray cats and lost bats around them. Batman would glare at her with that scowl only he could give. Selina would say the same script she had been repeating for years and years now. Everything was still the same.
It felt like a routine now, something steady. They would never work out. Selina and Bruce, Catwoman and Batman. That was one of the only truths she still believed after all these years. The thought that kept her sane when everything seemed upside down, the one and only fact that was still there. Most of the time, she just craved it.
“Selina” he said breathed out like he was too afraid to say her name.
She turned around to see him, half expecting it to see a ghost, a mirage, something equally abnormal because he wouldn’t give up that early, that easy, it wasn’t their usual. But when she turned around he was there, right in front of her, just like he stood a billion other times, like a picture that would be forever glued to her brain.
“Why are you here?” She asked instead of running and kissing him, or punching him right in the guts, hugging him so tight no one could take her away, or dropping him off the building.
“I…” he seemed unsure of what to say, which was a rare thing coming from the big bad bat. He took a deep breath and started talking like nothing happened. “I need your help with a case, I have a suspect that you might know…”
Selina was surprised and she couldn’t come up with a rational reason why she was feeling that way. He was Batman, Bruce Wayne, or whatever happened between these two personalities. He would put Gotham above everyone and anyone. Why she thought this time would be different, that he would look for her, at her, she couldn’t.
She felt dumb, an idiot. Selina wanted to scream at him, at herself, for slipping in her delusions and fantasies. She hoped in that split second of doubt he showed, that he would say he was looking for her because he missed her, something different. Because he wanted her, more than ever, or whatever other thing she could pretend was true when she tried to sleep. She let herself slide in her desires and now she was hurt.
“No” Selina interrupted him. “I can’t do this today, Batman. You’re not getting anything from me”
“I just need a location, Selina, I am not asking you to come or participate in anything”
“You don’t understand do you?” She came closer to him, pointing her finger in his chest “I can’t keep pretending I’m fine with you showing up whenever you want, asking questions and taking whatever you want from me! This is not a life, Bruce!”
She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth, and the way she couldn't stop saying them. She wanted to scratch her face until it bled, wanted to rip his bones out of his body and leave him dry.
“It’s been three months since the last time you appeared, that you gave any signal you were even alive!” She tried to control her voice but she was barely screaming “And now you appear, out of nothing, just because you want something”
“Are you going to help me or not?” He said as if she wasn’t pouring her heart out for him, as if these weren’t years of repressed feeling. Maybe he already knew, maybe he didn’t care. She preferred to think that, this way she wouldn’t feel the urge to come back to him, to be by his side, to fight with him, to fight him.
“Discover it yourself, detective.” She said as she jumped out of the building.
Selina wanted to scream until her vocal cords tore in her throat. Destroy something, preferably herself, in a million pieces and never be full again. She wanted to continue her life, forgetting that Bruce was ever a part of it, ever messed with it, ever made it better. She wanted to pick up her heart from her chest and crush it with her bare hands, feel the tightness around her most important organ, and see the blood dripping out of her hands and onto the floor.
But still, she picked her cellphone up and typed an address out and sent it to the unsaved number she only used to tell her . As soon as the message was sent, she threw the phone against a wall, watching it fall into the ground with part of the broken screen and already out of function. She walked away without looking back.
When she woke up the next day there was a bouquet of flowers on her table, with a simple “Thank you” note. They smelled nice, they were pretty, she didn’t need a name, she knew who it was from, the only person who should thank her.
Because that’s their game, that’s just how they dance. She would cave after screaming, and he would crawl back after being quiet.
Selina hated this more than anything.
She treasured it with her heart.
She wanted to scream, cry, throw a fit like a little kid.
And at the end of the day, she accepted it, because something was just better than nothing.