Work Text:
With time, the bruises around her neck heal, and the ugly splotchy marks, her father's last gift to her, disappear.
This fact hurts worst because the nightmares don't. They come, crawling to her when she least expects them. Jerking her out of bed with phantom hands wrapped around her throat.
"My own flesh and blood," he had said, disappointed as if he had ever treated her like a daughter. As if he would acknowledged the fact of her being his without her pointing a gun into his face and forcing him too.
"My own flesh and blood," he had said, disappointed as if he had not locked his own daughter up in a madhouse for his crimes. Sofia Falcone. The Hangman killer. It would have been a funny joke, (Hang. Man.) if Selina hadn't throw up when she had pieced it together, rushing from her laptop to the bathroom at break-neck speed, almost tripping over a one of her strays in the process.
The arching shadows of her unlit bathroom comforted her as she clung to the toilet in defeat, her knees digging into her bath-mat that cheekily invited visitors to 'get naked' as she tried not to cry.
That was the way Carmine Falcone treated his daughters. Flesh and blood.
Selina didn't want to be anyone's anything but her own. Living any other way was dangerous.
It got you killed.
'Strangulation.' She had heard the words between the crack in the door, a social worker informing one of her mother's friends of "The Situation". Selina had held Maggie's hand, sitting quietly next to her just as instructed, so tight her nails had dug marks into her sister's skin when the social worker pulled them apart.
Her mother had been Falcone's girl. Everyone knew that. She'd died for it.
She couldn't cleanse herself of the city. She had left it long behind, the oppressive rain, the everlasting grime, and filth that covered every building, every street, and every person. She wanted Gotham City behind her, but it had wormed too deep. Too far into her, and she couldn't reach to fish it out.
It wasn't constant, but it was there. A co-worker at the diner she worked it, cheekily nicknaming them 'the survivor's' when she learned Selina was a Gotham native too. A itch that built up in the back of her head when she served a middle class customer. Like a fight or flight response that urged her to just swipe the wallet, take what you can, like she was still a working girl scrapping away on what was left of her tips after her boss dipped into her funds. Or that migraine would wake up with some days, that wouldn't go away until she slipped into her bike-suit, pulled on her beanie-mask and broke into a house in the upper-class neighborhoods.
The worst times were when she remembered someone she had left behind.
Like Holly, with her dark red curls and her bright eyes, retaining too much of her innocence while being sold away night by night. She had always been good with the cats, patting the kittens with gentle touches in the same way Selina patted through her hair, fingers slipping through and releasing knots in the curls. She'd been even younger then Selina had been when she had started working. Her age ambiguous enough to get a wild array of dangerous and predatory men to hand over bundles of cash.
"I can be as young as you want me to be." Was the line she used.
Selina could remember the child-like gleam of her eyes when she'd come up with it. So proud of the quick line she could offer up to men old closer in age to her father then her.
Or Maggie, living in Gotham's slums by choice, working at a Sister, every penny of the church going to the poor around her instead of her own plate. When they were children, in the foster system, Maggie had always been more agreeable. Eventually, they lost each other in the chaos. When they finally met again, it was clear they had chosen very different paths.
They hadn't spoken long or since, but Selina could remember the old determination in Maggie's eyes the last time she saw her.
"They deserve everything they are given and more," she had said, her voice betraying a spirit that was somehow still soft and generous.
Selina had laughed in her face.
Maybe it was just their difference of experience that had hardened Selina, but she had found it hard to believe anyone in Gotham deserved anything Maggie could give them.
Or Annika, desperate to leave one horrible life only to end up in another hell-hole, and then desperate to leave that one too. Desperate to live out the American dream Selina had never had the guts to tell her was a lie.
Most nights, Selina can still hear her screams over the phone, her nightmares melting between the pressure of her father's hands on her throat and the screams of another stray Selina had failed, with her life getting squeezed out of her.
Sometimes she thinks about the Bat too. The way he had stared at her, quiet and intense. The way he had spoken, after the worst had been all over. He had stood different, and it wasn't the bruises holding him down. It was something else, like his newfound worldview had filled him with purpose. He'd been so confident when he spoke.
"The city can change." It had sounded like reassurance, or a promise.
She'd dismissed it as quickly as he had drummed up the courage to say them.
"I have to try." With the same intensity of her sister telling her Gotham deserved to be taken care of. The same intensity as a softly uttered "you've paid enough," with a hand wrapped around her shoulders and the other on her hands, holding her back from something she would regret.
Those words had changed her too, digging their own claws into her psyche and making space for itself. Changing her without her consent, just like her father's grip on her throat had moments prior to those words.
It was almost a joke, how quickly he'd pieced her together. Seven days, and he sees her with the most clarity a man had ever seen her with. Seven days and she couldn't be rid of him. The way he spoke, the way he stood, awkward and quiet not sure of how to take up space. The way he stared at her, like he was desperate for something with no knowledge of what it even was.
Gotham clung to her like a thin oil film that got it's hands on everything.
The first time she realized she had to go back she cried. Sinking onto her knees, the cats crawling over her body and head-butting her in concern. The city was in ruins still, well into the winter. Town hall as mostly talk. Crown Point had been levelled. She could remember ten people off the top of her head that had lived in that area. Girls she had worked for, with. One that she didn't really know who had lent her an eyeshadow palette.
It didn't matter. They were her people. Nobody else cared about them.
She never wanted to go back.
"That city's a demon," one of the customers at the diner had said, as she leaned over to refill their coffee. She had caught sight of the newspaper on the table, something about Bruce Wayne. "I don't believe anyone can come out of it right." Selina hates Gotham. Hated it every second she lived in it. Even still, she tries not to spill coffee on the man.
She resists the pull of the city for a long time. Stayed in Bludhaven for as long as she could stand, and then left. It was a simple plan, take just what you need and run. When the nightmares get worse, When the feeling creeps up behind her, like a little boy trying to terrorize a girl he likes.
Miami. Selina learns how to steal from Stark. It's the only name he gives her. She gives him her own fake name and never asks for anything more.
He starts with the basics. Taking pains to teach her things she learned as a girl with Mama Fortuna. He treats her like a child, and Selina lets him believe he trained her in everything she knows about stealing.
With time, she flourishes under the extra training. Outside of her time in Alleytown, Selina was self taught. Stark gives her the language of the craft she cannot learn alone. Shows her what planning a large score looks like. He's slimy and reminds Selina of home too much to ever be too comfortable around him. Even when she tries. Even in the intimate moments.
When she leaves, she takes the score they planned with her. There is no trace of their time together in his apartment once she's left the city.
Keystone. She comes to the city looking to fight. Ted Grant gives her one look and tells her to shove it. Gives her another and tells her she can't pay her way into his class. She takes the bait. It's the first hit she gets for another three weeks of training. He gives her the confidence with her own ability again. Eventually the nightmares start to fizzle out, and when Ted pins her to the mats by just her throat she can slam him down under her in seconds.
"What are you running from?" It's the last thing he says to her. She slams the door closed on her way out.
Metropolis. The city it all wrong. Too bright and cheery, unbothered by its shameless confirmation of a stereotype. It's a parody of itself. Selina feels out of place. She feels like the pictures of Bruce Wayne in public look. She only stays two weeks. Still, in her time there she manages to find herself in the grime of a shimmering city. It's a story a hotshot reporter is chasing, stark and unnatural in the underbelly of Metropolis.
Somewhere along the line, Selina takes her place and suddenly she's another anonymous informant. Except this time she has new gear, and she's the costumed freak of the two. She leaves Metropolis before the story breaks, can't bring herself to see another city torn apart.
She returns to Bludhaven after months gone. Stands in her apartment wondering why it felt wrong for half and hour before realizing all the strays she had gathered were gone, abandoning the apartment the same way she had after her disappearance.
The feeling comes up from the behind again, the one she had been running from for six months. The feeling in her gut, same as it has first came to her after that good-bye. Like she would never truly be able to leave the city. Even after she had asserted it’s emptiness to her. How there was nothing for her in it now. She’d been so confident, speaking with a defiant jerk of her chin.
It hurt to be wrong.
The first place she goes is her mother’s grave. She stands in front of it for a long time. Wonders what her mother would think of her now. Would she be disappointed?
The wind rushes through the tunnel like the voice of a ghost speaking an language she doesn’t understand. She half expects for the Bat to speak up behind her, never really being good at announcing his own presence.
He doesn’t.
It’s just her, and her mother, and the ghosts wailing in the wind.
Selina brushes her fingers over the carven stone, tracing the outline of her mothers name. Maria Kyle.
Strangled.
“I’m sorry Mama,” she whispers, like it’s a prayer. She hopes the ghosts pass her message along. “I guess the city got it’s claws in us both.”
The next place she went was-
Carmine Falcone's grave was marked by a smooth white marble slab. It was unmarked by his name, if you didn't know what you where looking for you would not know what you had found. Upon it, the words "Veni Vidi Vici" were carved, foiled with gold.
Selina knows she is standing on more money then her mother had ever seen in her life.
I came. I saw. I conquered.
Some feral part of her scratches in her belly at the sight of it. Like some part of her was ready to confirm every monstrous thing she had been called as a child simply for the satisfaction of destroying the last thing her father would ever have.
Instead she said. "I hope you wondered who I was, I hope I haunted you in life, stealing your sleep."
No. That wasn't right. She knew he hadn't. She knew
"I hope you suffered."
That sounds childish. Childish and cruel and Selina can feel that feral thing climbing up her throat. She swallows it down again. She could scream and cry and rip the grave apart. She could spend the rest of her life making his death the most dishonourable and disrespectful thing to have ever happened to him.
"We never spoke while you were alive," she says instead. "I don't see much point to starting now."
He wasn't worth the trouble.