Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-23 17:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, nightwing, plot: switch |
Who: Selina and Dick
What: A chat about bats and birds
Where: The roof of Passages
When: Before Selina's visit to Damian
Warnings/Rating: None
Dick was feeling surprisingly well all things considered. Something about not being at home where he knew everyone wanted something from him - even if it was just to make sure he was “okay.” The answer was, no, he was not okay. He was angry and frustrated and grateful and horrified about being grateful all at the same time. He didn’t want to die - but he knew that when you were dead you were supposed to stay dead. Nothing good ever came out of a Lazarus Pit no matter how many ways they tried to paint it. Dick cared about Jason more than he’d admit - he cared about him longer than anyone here - and he’d relied on him through this whole thing. But there was no denying that he was so very not okay. Dick was always okay. Even when things were shit he had to be okay. He’d been hurt, he’d been crazy angry, he’d lost everything and everyone, he understood pain. But this was different. This was all so different.
But being in Vegas? Being all old and still awesome? Being someone else - to a certain degree - it had lightened things up significantly. He didn’t know if it would last - but he liked it. He felt more like him than he had in ages. Which was what prompted him to reach out to Selina. He hadn’t heard from her since he’d been back from beyond the Veil. He didn’t know what he’d say - he was pissed - but he was trying to make sense of it. He didn’t know how to handle any of it. But it was best he chat with her now while he felt more like himself than he had in weeks. Maybe his head would be screwed on properly throughout the conversation.
The only problem was she wanted to meet on the roof. Truth be told Dick didn’t exactly feel bendy. So he did what any normal middle aged man would do. He took the stairs. And at least he could still take the stairs without getting winded so when he came out of the door on the roof he wasn’t wheezing and hacking. Stairs were definitely slower than scaling. He made a mental note to always stay in shape. Just in case. “Selina?” he called out to the seemingly empty rooftop. “Your girlchild told me a weird thing today and someone ought to hear about it.”
Selina hadn't taken the stairs.
She'd realized, oh, half a story up, that gravity was going to be a bitch here. Oh, she could still get up there, but it wasn't going to be easy. By the time she made it halfway, she'd decided that she was going to need to find a different kind of trouble during this visit to Las Vegas. By the time she made it to the top, she'd decided to give Blondie's next appointment (which dinged a reminder roughly between floors four and five) a try. If that failed, she could just go parties and steal things from rich old men. It wasn't her favorite activity, but a Cat had to do what a Cat had to do.
Except she wasn't a Cat anymore. She could feel it in her bones.
Oh, she could still swish and sway and con with the best of them, but it felt different. The desert air didn't take away her anger, and it didn't take away why she did what she did, but it made it more human, and Selina didn't like that at all.
But, of course, she'd realized it in the hallway. It was the reason she was willing to meet Dickie. She knew, perfectly aware kitty cat that she was, that she wouldn't have met him back in Gotham, not without a pretense. She wouldn't have admitted that she missed the nest and the birds. She wouldn't admit that she was worried over the fact that Bruce hadn't reached out after talking to Damian, not even to herself. She wouldn't admit to worrying about anything at all... normally.
But here she was, climbing over the ledge of a roof, just to prove that she could. She was dressed in skinny denim and a snug grey t-shirt with a Batlogo on the front, boots and her spiky black hair held in place by an onyx and diamond clip. She looked like any college-aged hipster girl anywhere, and she stayed on the ledge as she looked around for Dickie.
And, of course, what came through the door wheezing wasn't what she was expecting. "Did the Pit do that, or was it the desert air, Dickie?" she asked, and for all the changes, she still purred like the Cat. As for her girlchild, she knew he was referring to the kitten, but she felt nothing like anyone's mother just then. "What did she say?"
Dick chuckled, “The desert air I think, I didn’t look like this yesterday,” he said trying to smile to his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about the Pit - or remember it. Not here. Not today.
“She said that where she comes from I have a regular job and wear suits every day. Not sure I can handle that information.”
Whatever Selina was expecting, this wasn't it. "That sounds boring, Dickie," she said honestly, leaning forward at the waist, as if any of this would make more sense if she was closer to him. "Is that really all? You aren't going to ask me why, and you're not going to scream, and you're not going to tell me how terrible I am?" she asked. He might not want to talk about the Pit, but the fact that she'd put him in it had been her near constant companion since she'd crawled out of the door to Las Vegas, leaving Blondie insane and mad with sickness.
She stood then, long legs encased in denim and the kind of grace that even losing her Cat-status couldn't take away from her. Her arms crossed over that Batlogo, and she paced in her heavy boots. "Have you talked to Damian? He hates me now. I made him do it, but then he found something- I think things may have gone bad with him and Bruce," she admitted. No third-person, no pretending to hide her concern. There it was, front and center. Her guilt and her worries, all in one.
And then she gave him an enigmatic smile that was all Cat. "You look good older," she admitted.
Dick nodded enthusiastically. “Completely boring - I don’t know how I even managed that. I skipped school and went straight to ninja,” he said shaking his head a bit. Then she asked. And he looked down at his feet for a long minute. “At home I might, at home I want to know. And I do want to know - but at the same time, knowing won’t make sense of anything. It won’t make the dreams stop, or the fear end. It’s not going to make it not be true. I’m angry - I’ve got every right to be - but regardless of what the reasons were - I can’t stop it now. I don’t want to understand, and I don’t want to worry about having to feel grateful or lose the right to be mad about it. I just want to feel okay with feeling really bad for right now.” That was the long and short of it. He didn’t want to hear all the valid reasons he shouldn’t have died. He didn’t want to feel okay with having had this done to him. “I’m not making peace with it because there was nothing peaceful about it. I died a horrible death, and was left in a Lazarus Pit alone. I don’t want to be okay with that. Good intentions or not. I want to be okay with the wrongness and move on.”
When she go to the topic of Damian he shook his head, “Not since I came through here. He’s staying with me back in Gotham though. Why does he hate you? And what happened with Bruce?” He was 490 years old but that didn’t stop him worrying about anyone. “I’ve got the suave old guy thing going for me.”
What he said made sense, even if she didn't like hearing it. Nothing would change what had happened to him, and all the explanations in the world wouldn't make it better. She would only be trying to relieve her own guilt, and maybe she needed it to stay with her, a constant reminder to leave Bruce Wayne and his little birds alone, no matter how badly she wanted to bat at them with her paws. She gave him a nod, all eyes gone duller green and spiky black hair clinging to her cheeks. She'd made her bed, dying and Pit green as she had been, and now she had to lie in it. Just the nod, and she left it at that. She didn't even tell him that this was his goodbye, the same kind she'd given everyone else, a selfish little attempt at a last moment that no one knew would be a last moment - no one save her.
Damian was an easier topic, and one she thought Dickie would be best equipped to deal with, regardless of his emotional state. Dickie was the bird that was best with feelings, and everyone knew that. "I got a clip from the recording feed in Bruce's office for Valentine's day. It was something intimate. I think Oracle sent it to me. I sent it back to Bruce, letting him know he had a security leak. Damian got his hands on it instead, and he sent it back to me in pieces. I sent Bruce to patch things up, but I never heard back, and I don't have a good feeling about it." No third person, no kitty cats, nothing to make her sound like the Cat back home. And maybe she would have danced around it more then, but there wasn't a point now. "Damian's important to Bruce. Bruce is important to Damian." I'm tired of breaking this family apart with my bare claws, went unsaid.
Dick folded his arms across his chest and listened to her story with one eyebrow raised and a glint in his eye that just said ‘oh shit oh dear, tell me more,’ he was half way to sitting down and putting his chin in his hands like a child at storytime. “Why do all of you keep doing things in places like the Cave and in Bruce’s office? Or anywhere that has Bruce Wayne’s stamp of approval? If there is anywhere in the world where it is literally impossible to be sneaky and get away with it - it’s in those places,” was the first thing he said shaking his head. “Seriously I learned that at 13.”
But then he got a bit more serious, he didn’t like that Damian was acting out, he didn’t know what had happened between Damian and Bruce but he was bound to find out eventually. “I’ll talk to him, find out what’s up. I don’t like that he’d throw you over and Bruce over in the same week, it’s not good when he starts pushing like that - even if it’s just hurt feelings.”
His comment about why Bruce's office made her smile a lush smile, a knowing smile. "I knew he'd never look at that desk without thinking of me," she said, plain and pleased, the cat that caught the canary and wasn't ashamed of the prize. Oh, she didn't think she got to keep the Bat, but she'd managed to catch him, and she knew he'd ever forget. "My Bat hated giving into me. I don't think this one feels that way," she added thoughtfully, because Dickie understood her Bat, didn't he? Her Bat had always been so angry about his involvement with her. She was the bottle he couldn't resist taking a sip from, her Bat. But she didn't exactly know what the rules were here. She would make her own rules, just like she always did, but that would require being back in Gotham, being herself again. "And I knew he'd have a recording device somewhere. I wanted to see if he'd watch it. I didn't expect Oracle to hack in, and I didn't expect Damian to find it."
Her expression went sober when he mentioned talking to Damian, and she nodded in agreement with him a second later. "He loses his humanity if no one reminds him, " she said of the baby bird. He wouldn't do any good on his own, without guidance, not yet anyway.
She pushed herself away from the ledge, youth and sway and movement that was naturally graceful, even without all the black covering her skin. She approached him, and then she stopped and gave him a smile that was all approval. "You're handsome this way, Dickie. Let's hope we all live long enough to see you actually get this old." But that made her think, pause, think, pause. She knew he didn't want to talk about it, but she was fairly sure this was her last chance to make this peace the way she needed to. "I wasn't clear. I wasn't thinking clearly when I called Eddie and asked him to help me," she admitted, "but I won't blame it all on the fever, or the Pit. I don't think Damian can survive this life without you, not without turning into something neither of us want to see. I thought I was gone, Dickie. I knew Bruce wouldn't Pit me. I knew Tony wouldn't. Jaybird wouldn't. Damian needs you," she paused, considering how honest she should be, how much of her hand to show, "so does Bruce. This Bruce, he's softer. He needs to find a way to fit in, just as much as the others do. He needs you. It was selfish, but I wanted you to know why, even if it doesn't make it right."
She didn't wait for a response. She just turned, already tired of honesty and feelings. She didn't even scale the side of the building. She took the stairs, and she hated how completely ordinary it made her feel.