Archive of Our Own ^beta

Selina goes where the cats are.

Or maybe the cats go where Selina is – she does have a knack for attracting cats of all stripes. Indoor, outdoor, feral, housecat. The causality is a little unclear. Does she gravitate towards cats, or do cats gravitate towards her? It’s probably a mix of both. They’re drawn to her, and she’s drawn to them. Attractive forces, pulling on Selina and the cats until they meet.

She’s pretty sure this isn’t what Doctor Mesmer had in mind when he coined the term “animal magnetism.”

Incredibly pretentious parties are apparently a huge part of being rich. Selina doesn’t mind that overmuch. If nothing else, it’s a way to identify future marks. She does have to wonder, though, if anyone actually thinks these parties are fun, or if it’s all just an elaborate charade that will come tumbling down when someone important finally gets up the courage to say that these sorts of parties are boring and obnoxious.

Maybe she’ll be the one to say it, some day. She has a lot of complaints to voice. Such as, what’s the point of even throwing a party if all the music is made with hoity-toity string instruments and all the food is so bland it could host news shows?

The couple throwing this snooty party, the Arqueists, are supposedly trying to raise money for firefighters. Selina has it on good authority that they’re actually going to use the funds for their drug ring. Oh well. Stopping that is more Batman’s job than Catwoman’s. If the Bat doesn’t catch on, Selina will drop him a tip, but he’ll almost certainly figure it out on his own – Bruce is at this party too, after all.

Selina takes a sip of water – regular water, not sparkling water, which is harder to get at these sorts of parties than it should be – and eyes Bruce over the rim of her glass. He’s wearing a deep purple suit that offsets the brown tones of his skin, and his hair is immaculate. And very short, as usual. She wishes he would grow it out more, like he did when they were kids, but as she well knows, hat-hair is nothing compared to cowl-hair. And Bruce is nothing if not eminently pragmatic.

He’s talking to Mrs. Arqueist. From the way Mrs. Arqueist keeps shifting her weight and glancing around the room, it’s not a fun conversation for her.

Selina smiles.

She won’t have to worry about sending a tip after all. Batman definitely knows about the Arqueist’s drug operations.

It’s more than a mutual attraction. Selina gets… impressions, from cats. She wouldn’t call it telepathy, exactly, even though it kind of is. She can’t deliberately go into cats’ minds, for one, not that she’d particularly want to, because that seems extraordinarily rude. But she can talk to them. And they can talk to her.

The cats at Wayne Manor, for instance, tell her that her old acquaintance Bruce often dons a peculiar outfit that includes a long stretch of cloth that flares behind him like wings, and that he comes and goes throughout the night. When he wears the strange outfit, he changes his voice and his mannerisms. Even his shape is different, because of the armor and padding and tall boots. But he doesn’t change his scent, so the cats know it’s him.

And so Selina does, too.

Playing the society darling isn’t much more draining than any other kind of prolonged human interaction. There are a few additional rules, but teaching herself which fork to use and when to titter behind a delicately raised hand is easier than teaching herself to remain upright and not to hiss was. Selina wonders, idly, what the dull, pinched, middle-aged Mr. Valhaus, who is nattering on to her about how little animal conservation matters in the grand scheme of things, would do if she were to hiss at him. He might faint dead away and spill his tenth glass of champagne all over the nice stone floor. She’s almost tempted to try it, just because the mental image is so entertaining. This is an awfully boring talk.

The sonorous, cultured voice that cuts through both her thoughts and her conversation partner’s next word is therefore an even more welcome sound than usual. “Selina, I’ve been terribly remiss. I haven’t danced with you all evening.”

Selina flutters her eyelashes, delighting in Mr. Valhaus’s shocked expression. He must not have realized that the sweet young thing he was lecturing about how wealth should not be wasted on mere animals was on first-names basis with Bruce Wayne. “Well, Bruce, I’m sure you can make up for it,” she purrs back.

He offers his arm, she places her hand on it lightly, and he steers her away the moment her fingers make contact. “Am I right in assuming that you would never willingly talk to Howard Valhaus for as long as you were?” Bruce murmurs when they’re unquestionably out of the man’s earshot.

“I would hardly call it talking,” Selina murmurs back. “I don’t think I got more than a few words in.”

Bruce lifts an eyebrow at her. She’s always been jealous of the fact that he can move his eyebrows independently of each other. It opens up such a range of skeptical, annoyed, and otherwise displeased expressions. “Enjoyed his monologues that much, did you?”

“Oh, they were thrilling. I especially enjoyed the part where he condescended to me about my obviously inferior knowledge of endangered species preservation programs.” Bruce makes a low noise that is half-chuff, half-cough. “I had no idea Mr. Valhaus was such an expert. I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself.”

Bruce clears his throat. “I’m sure you did admirably, considering the circumstances.”

“I appreciate your confidence.” Selina eyes Mr. Valhaus from across the room. He seems to be on his eleventh glass of champagne, now.

They just make things so easy for her.

Selina knows Bruce suspects her.

She managed to go from street kid to multimillionaire, she’s incredibly vague about the source of her wealth, he knows she used to be a pickpocket, and she even went by ‘Cat’ when they first met. He’d have to be utterly incompetent to overlook the possibility that she and Catwoman are one and the same, especially considering his own experience with dual identities. But she’s good at covering her tracks. Catwoman shows up in Gotham when Selina Kyle has been away for weeks. Selina Kyle spends months in Gotham while Catwoman strikes targets in other cities and never comes near Gotham. The jetlag from all the traveling is worth it to confuse her identity, make herself into two separate people.

But still. He suspects. When they encounter each other in their nighttime identities, he references events that Catwoman would only know of if she was Selina. Selina never takes the bait. She knows it frustrates him, and wonders if she’ll ever drive him to reference, as Bruce, events that Selina would only know if she was Catwoman. Will the mystery of her identity be enough to force him to compromise his?

Probably not. A girl can dream, though.

Mr. Valhaus is too tantalizing a target to ignore, even after Bruce rescues Selina from his attentions. Her interaction with Valhaus as Selina could be another clue to her identity when she strikes him as Catwoman, but hiding her identity from Bruce is more a game than a serious endeavor. It’s certainly not worth giving up her mark. Valhaus has several items that she’s been planning to take for a while, including an incomplete skeleton that needs to be reinterred in its home soil. He’s dodged halfhearted requests for repatriation from the legal system for years, and it’s about time someone implemented more aggressive measures.

(Selina never was too impressed by any legal system, and especially not Gotham’s.)

She’s been casing his home for almost a week, waiting for the right opportunity. Given that Valhaus wound up drinking twenty-three glasses of champagne at the party before doddering home, Selina would say that the right opportunity has arrived.

Five solid black cats with eyes ranging from electrum to viridian accompany her over the fence, in the window, through the security systems, and into the room where the skeleton is displayed. Each cat has a little harness with pouches attached.

All of the cats in Catwoman’s entourage came from shelters. They have no pedigrees and no identifying markings. They are, in appearance, utterly indistinguishable from the hundreds of other black cats that roam Gotham’s streets. Their harnesses and pouches blend in with their fur well enough that a casual observer wouldn’t notice them, and the cats are always gone before anyone can take a closer look. They are wonderful partners in crime, and though getting a skeleton out of a guarded mansion is no small feat, Selina and her cats are very well-practiced. She takes the long bones and the largest bone fragments and packs them carefully with tissue paper in her backpack. The cats get the short bones and the smaller bone fragments, and the jewelry she claims to supplement her wealth, in their pouches.

When Selina has taken all she planned to (plus a little extra), she and her cats leave the mansion through a different window. They stream back over the fence and split up to regroup at Selina’s home. It’s a familiar routine, one that ends with Selina reaching out physically and mentally to each cat as they return, stroking and praising them as she unbuckles their harnesses and carefully empties the pouches. The cats usually reciprocate with headbutts, chirps, or purrs, depending on their natures.

Tonight, in addition to the usual ‘prrp’, she gets an image from Mistoffelees as she undoes his harness. A humanoid figure with a trailing shadow around his neck. Bruce. Mistoffelees saw him lurking around Crime Alley. The Batman, it seems, is out taking care of more pressing crimes than acts of illegal repatriation and petty thievery.

She’s certain at this point that he actively avoids Catwoman when he can, which means either that she’s managed to do what no other criminal has and actually intimidates him, or, far more likely, he knows what kind of things she steals and what kind of people she steals from and has elected to harass lawless vagabonds with fewer morals.

What a nice guy.

The bones she repackages in a crate she’ll take with her on her trip out to Mexico. The jewelry she settles in a case, to be pawned off in a few months when no one is looking for it anymore. She’s sure whoever purchases the pieces will appreciate them much more than Mr. Valhaus did. He wouldn’t know style if it crawled in his window and stole his possessions.