Who: Helena, Selina and Bruce What: Parenting fail Where: Wayne Manor When: Recently Warnings/Rating: None
Gotham looked like it always did.
Despite the hole in the roof of the house Selina shared with the boys, and despite the countless messages she had on her cell about jobs that hadn't gone quite right while Blondie was being the Cat, and despite the fact that everything felt just a little different, Gotham looked like it always did.
Selina had crawled through the rubble of her living room upon returning and, with the help of the boys, had collected as many cats as she could. Then resilient little kitty cat that she was, she found another abandoned place for them to call home. This one was off Crime Alley, but in no way better for it. The abandoned warehouse on the docks had been condemned years earlier but, like many eyesores in Gotham, it had remained where it was, wood planks blocking the doors and shattered windows. Now, it housed a dozen boys and just as many cats. Furniture kept arriving throughout the day, and she thought she might recognize a chair or two from the lobby of Wayne Tower, which made her smile just a little.
As for the Bafamily lock on the journals, Selina had avoided it as long as she could. But the conversation with Damian had left her with a just one more time feeling when it came to the kitten, and Helena's indication that she would leave her window open that night didn't go ignored.
Normally, Selina didn't bother with suit and cowl to break into Wayne Manor, but her visit came at the tail end of a hit on the safe of a visiting dignitary, and she scaled the Manor in sleek black, eyes bright green once more. She wasn't thinking about Bruce, because she refused to let herself think about Bruce. After all, that hadn't really been them in Las Vegas, and she still intended to keep the promise she'd made to herself about the Bat and his little family of bats and chicks.
Well, after this visit to see Helena.
The window was, indeed, open, and Selina climbed in without worrying about motion sensors or anything that might let the inhabitants know she was there. After all, climbing into this room was becoming second nature. She pushed the cowl off her head, tipped her goggles back onto her mussed hair, and she walked into the bedroom, where she expected the kitten to be sleeping. It was late, after all.
Helena should have been asleep, but wasn't. She'd gotten back late from Stephanie and Damian's and their movie marathon. The movies, the ice cream, the torturing of Damian had all helped to ease the coil in her stomach, but now she just felt empty, hollowed out, like an apple that had been cored.
The first thing that she'd done when she returned to Wayne Manor (not to Drake Manor, Tim wasn't there anymore) was to open the doors to her balcony as she'd promised Selina. A quick glance to the clock confirmed that as late as it was, if this Selina was anything like her mom, she'd still be up. Grabbing her pyjama's, she headed into the en suite bathroom to clean up and change.
The mirror told her that her nose was red, but no tears had spilled, no matter how much she thought that it might ease something if they would just leak out of her eyes and tumble down her cheeks. She made a comment once, to Kara, that she had cried all she could over things. Helena had meant her parents and their planet, but it seemed like once she told them they couldn't come, they wouldn't come for anything or anyone, just stayed stopped in there like they'd be permanently lodged there.
Closing the door behind her, she quit looking and started going through the motions. Changing out of her clothes, brushing her teeth, washing her face, all without really looking back to the mirror again. There was nothing there that she wanted to see. She finally shut off the water and stepped out, dressed in her typical Batman t-shirt and Hello Kitty flannel pants and inhaled sharply as she nearly ran into Selina.
For a second she just stood there, staring at her in the suit. So like her mom, down to those flashing green cat eyes. Not a word slipped out of her before she was practically throwing herself at Selina, arms wrapping tight around the other woman's neck.
Selina was expecting to find the kitten in bed. She wasn't expecting arms and warmth and cling. The kitty cat didn't do that kind of affection over here. The night with Bruce in Las Vegas was an anomaly, an aberration, and she couldn't quite figure out how to hug the kitten back right away. She wasn't built for this, and maybe it wasn't her fault. After all, she'd never had parents to hug, and stuffed teddy bears filled to the brim with coins and jewels didn't exactly hug back. She had a fleeting thought that somewhere else, in some alternate place, she and Bruce hadn't done so bad. The kitten was free with affection, and too trusting, and Selina thought that pointed to a better childhood than either she or Bruce had. Even if it did make her worry. With Feathers gone, someone else would need to worry about Ra's threats against the kitten, and she wasn't exactly unemotional when it came to Ra's al Ghul, especially after she learned Damian was supposed to die somewhere, in some other place.
Of course, this? This made Selina's determination to remain distant waver. It was hard to keep her uncaring demeanor when she was being clung to, and she awkwardly raised her hands to Helena's back and slowly ran her gloved fingers over the girl's warm shirt, over her spine and back again. She made soft sounds that she would never admit came from her, and those came easier than the hug did. "You should be asleep," she told the girl that was barely younger than she was, but that she felt helplessly maternal about.
Helena noticed when it took Selina longer to wrap her arms around her, but this Selina had always been slow to hug. Those sounds though, and the still hazy memories of Selina in her room after the plague -- she might not be good at hugging, but she knew comfort and that mattered more. For a moment, Helena just stayed there, rubbing her face against the ridge of her covered collarbone and basking in the affection like a cat getting a scratch from its' favorite person.
"Just got home from Stephanie and Damian's," she said, from somewhere in the vicinity of Selina's throat. That had been five, ten minutes ago maybe, but when her eyes peeked over Selina's shoulder to glance at the clock, she saw that it'd been a little over twenty. Had she been in the bathroom that long? It hadn't seemed that way. Her eyebrows drew up together, a little line appearing between them like it always did whenever she tried to figure something out. It was what it was. Eyes closing again, her chin tucked down as she settled her head close to the other woman's shoulder and breathed in the familiar scent of Gotham and the suit. Two universes and a lifetime away and some things never changed. "I'm glad you're here."
Helena's comment about returning from Stephanie and Damian made Selina remember why she was supposed to be separating herself from all these little children that felt so much younger than her, despite barely being younger at all. They had each other for support, and she only distracted from that. But the kitty cat wasn't stupid, and she wasn't blind. Despite all her plans, she was still there, arms around the girl and fingers dragging through long brown hair. She didn't know anything about alternate worlds, and she had no idea that this kitten's previous place had actually been her own version of Gotham, but that didn't matter just then. In person, Selina had trouble denying this little girl anything, and she was starting to become accustomed to the weakness.
The kitty cat hated it.
But there was nothing to be done, and Selina just stepped back and tipped Helena's chin up with her gloved hand. She wanted to tell Helena that she shouldn't ever depend on her for anything, but she had a feeling the girl would just argue. And maybe this wasn't the time for it, regardless of how much Selina wanted to explain that. She didn't want Helena to end up like Damian, who always ended up let down by her in the end.
"Get into bed, and you can talk," was Selina's response to Helena's assertion that she was glad for the kitty cat's presence. Acknowledging wasn't something she did well, and there was nothing for that either. She even looked awkward about it, and she wondered how long it would take for her to regain herself after the Pit and Las Vegas. Some days, she could still smell the sweet scent of death on her skin, and she hated that too.
Bruce wasted no time in dwelling on what had been left behind in Vegas once he returned to Gotham. There was no point, nothing to be accomplished. He belonged here, just as Luke belonged through the door, and the past weeks had simply been a cruel trick played by the hotel in order to toy with them. All those feelings hovering so close to the surface had been shoved back down where they belonged, so deeply buried that it was easy to forget they existed at all. Some still remained, however; he was trying to keep his family together, trying to be worthy of it, but the constant struggle to do so resurfaced back in his city. He’d made amends with Helena and Damian, yes, but his relationship with Jason was as it always had been, and ties with Dick had deteriorated to the point where he worried one wrong word would sever them completely. He should try to reach out to him regardless, he knew, but at the same time he thought perhaps space and time to fully recover from the Pit’s effects was what Dick really needed. He did, after all, have an unfortunate tendency to unintentionally make matters worse.
The first thing he did upon returning to Gotham was to ensure that Luke hadn’t damaged his legacy, or his work, too badly; fortunately, no real damage had been done. All things considered, the boy had done fairly well. Bruce knew that Arkham had been given to Crane’s alter, which was worrisome now that they were all back where they belonged, but otherwise the notable villains’ alters had been quiet. He was grateful for that much, at least. Keeping himself occupied meant there was less time to dwell on things, like where he stood with Selina, or Tim’s sudden and unexpected absence. There was still hope the boy might return as Damian had, but until then he would miss him. It was the familiar ache of loss, one which no longer surprised him.
As he and Tim had intended to track down Ra’s together, Bruce saw the task now falling to him, though Luke reminded him that he’d agreed not to do this kind of thing alone. Maybe he’d take Damian along. He was his Robin, after all, and he thought he was ready for something of this magnitude.
Bruce wasn’t home when Selina arrived. Weeks out of the cowl had left him itching to get back out on the streets, making up for lost time, but he was alerted to the fact that the sensors in one of the upstairs rooms had been tripped as soon as he returned to the Cave. It might have been nothing, or it might have been something, and he was far too paranoid to dismiss it without following up. He changed out of his suit first, not wanting to confront a possible intruder as the Bat in Bruce Wayne’s home, and quickened his speed once he released that the alarm had been triggered in Helena’s room. He moved up the stairs soundlessly, not even a creak of wood to announce his presence, and he had his shoulder against the door seconds after turning the doorknob, shoving it open and stepping inside, tensed and prepared for whatever--or whoever--he might find inside.
Selina wasn’t who he’d been expecting, even if he should have considered that possibility, especially with how upset Helena was over Tim’s absence. He stared for a few long seconds, absorbing what he saw, and immediately his posture relaxed, the tension gone, and any sense of awkwardness or discomfort he might have felt was kept well hidden. “Hello,” Bruce said, after clearing his throat. “The alarm was triggered,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
This was the reason why Helena hadn't dated in her Gotham. Here Selina wasn't Catmom yet (yet, as Helena had no doubt that one day she'd be that way no matter how weird it felt on her skin) but Bruce was well on his way to being the same dad she remembered, right down to having eyes and ears into everything. Like the alarms.
Her mom had taught her ways around them, of course. How not to trip them, how to trip them on purpose, how to avoid them altogether if she wanted to, but it had only seemed to spurn their Bruce to trying harder, until it became a game between the three of them. Besides, Helena had never gotten far when she had snuck out, mostly because she was only testing the system. She already knew what would happen if her mom or her dad really thought she was missing (Dadzilla. Mom would have been more relaxed until she thought something was really wrong and then she'd be the scarier of the two).
But, the moment that alarm was tripped, there would be her dad, just like now. She was already halfway into bed, legs tucked under the fluffy, light purple comforter when he came in. "Knocking, heard of it?" She said with a roll of her eyes, but one hand was already out and gesturing him to come in. Hels was too old to curl up between them like she had when she was little, and these weren't her parents, but it was good to see them both here.
Selina could get in and out of Wayne Manor without tripping anything if she wanted to, but an open window invitation meant she wasn't worried about that. After all, she already helped herself to anything she wanted on the premises, and no one stopped her. Not taking a run-in with Bruce into consideration, that was just careless. But she was always careless. The kitty cat leapt before she jumped as a matter of habit, and there was no changing that. Even the old cat, according to Eddie, had that pesky habit. It would cost her when she was older, if she followed the same path that Cat had. And maybe it had cost her now. Even in the kitten's world, she'd gone through all nine of her lives. No, being careful just wasn't in her blood.
And getting caught being kind? That wasn't exactly how Selina wanted things to go when she and Bruce met again. But nothing was predictable in Gotham, and the kitty cat was very good at making the most of what she was given - usually. Now, she was having trouble moving her feet, and that was nothing like her; she blamed it on Las Vegas.
Selina hesitated when Helena motioned Bruce forward. This? This was awkward, and it made Selina want to climb out the window. It felt like it meant something, and that something wasn't anything she was ready to concentrate on. It was a hiccup, really, nothing more. And then Selina perched on the edge of the kitten's nightstand, leaving blankets and tucking to Bruce, who was clearly more paternal than she'd realized. "I don't think your father knocks, kitten," she finally said, the quip taking much longer than it should have. She looked at Bruce when she said it and, meeting his gaze for only a moment, and then she glanced back at the girl in the bed and tried to avoid looking for similarities between them. "It'll be hard, kitten, but you need to live where you are, in the now," she reminded her. It was her own, hard-learned lesson after ending up in this Gotham where no one knew her, and where didn't know anyone.
Bruce probably wouldn’t have realized that he’d forgotten to knock if Helena hadn’t mentioned it. Needless to say, he wasn’t used to having children around, much less young adults who needed their privacy, and so knocking first hadn’t even entered his mind. Really, if there had been an intruder it would be impractical, to knock and announce his presence, but then again he was quick to assume the worst regardless of the circumstances, believing it was far better to be safe than it was to be sorry in the end. “Knocking,” he echoed, the belated realization coming with a sigh. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He would have taken his leave there, allowing Helena and Selina privacy to talk about whatever it was they were talking about, likely concerning Tim, and he thought she would be far more successful at providing comfort. It didn’t strike him as strange that she was here. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t, and maybe that was because he’d come to know Selina well enough to realize that she, like both himself and the others, wore pretense like armor, and beneath all that she was more than she would ever admit to being. She could deny it all she liked, but she cared, and he knew it.
But then Helena was gesturing him forward, and after a moment’s hesitation he left the doorway and stepped into the room. Awkward, he thought, was an understatement, but Bruce strove not to let that show. Things had been different in Vegas, different in a way they simply couldn’t be here. He was the Bat, and she was the Cat, and while they might dance their dance and step around what was left unspoken, neither would be willing to allow the sort of vulnerability that had come easier in Vegas. He wasn’t Luke, she wasn’t Wren, and it was better now to dwell on two weeks that might have meant something, but hadn’t really been real at all.
He hadn’t quite reached the point of tucking anyone into bed yet, but at least he’d progressed past standing stiffly in the middle of the room with a frown. Instead, he sat near the foot of her bed, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked up at Selina’s belated quip, and he might have held her gaze for longer than was necessary, staring even after she looked away before catching himself and returning his attention back to Helena. Bruce wasn’t very good at this, at talking, but he could try. “She’s right,” he said, because it was solid advice. It might have been hypocritical, talk of living in the now coming from him, the man who’d forever left a part of him in the past, but he was self-aware to realize that he didn’t want any of his little bats to end up like him. “You’ll miss him. You’ll remember him. But he would want you to keep living, and he might return. Damian has, more than once, as has Stephanie.”
Awkward. Hels hadn't been expecting it to suddenly get so awkward in her room the moment that Bruce came in, but it might as well have been spelled out in hot neon pink letters across the both of them. Oh she knew about them hooking up in Gotham, but she hadn't known anything about Vegas and wasn't much in the mood to ask. A mood that was swiftly heading downhill between Selina's advice and Bruce's agreement. "Are you seriously telling me to get over it?" She said, jaw moving into the stubborn set that every single Wayne shared.
"Are you?" She asked again, no longer really interested in getting under the covers and looking at Bruce like she might claw him if he tried to tuck her in. It wasn't about the fact that Bruce essentially lived in a tomb erected to memories of people he'd lost or they all wore their broken pieces like armor. "I found out today. And if I find this now that youre talking about, I'm stringing him up by the toes and hanging him off the balcony until he squeals, but I'm not hedging on the mights and the maybe's and the could be's. They've never gotten me anywhere. They're not going to take me home and they're not going to bring anyone back."
Selina felt bad for Bruce in that moment. "Kitten, he was only trying to help," she said, fully expecting Bruce to stammer his way out of the room in a minute. Personally, she thought Helena's anger was a good thing. Being angry, crying, it would all help the kitten move on, but she wasn't sure Bruce would see it that way. "He isn't telling you to get over it," she continued calmly, and this? The kitty cat didn't find this part so hard. She always did better with teenagers than with adults, as evidenced by her entire house full of teenage boys. "It's going to hurt, kitten. It's supposed to hurt, because it means he meant something to you. And when it stops? Then you move forward. But don't live in it," she said, sliding back further on the nightstand instead of following the angry girl in the room. "It's too easy to get lost. Live where you are, and mourn him while you do," she said, and the kitty cat had experience when it came to this. After all, she'd lost her Bat, hadn't she? She'd lost everyone, and she'd kept moving forward. And now, when she lost all of this, she'd do the same thing. She'd move forward. Nothing ever came of dwelling in the past, just like nothing ever came of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
But that lesson had taken the kitty cat longer to learn.
Selina crossed her black-encased legs at the thigh, and she gave Bruce a look that was challenging. A quirk of an inky-black brow, and a hint of a smile on her lush lips. Are you going to run away? that quirk of brow asked. If he was going to be a parent to these little birds and bats, he needed to learn to stay in the room until anger became tears, and she was curious to see if he'd let the kitten's ire drive him away.
Rewind to a month or two ago, and Bruce would have done exactly what Selina expected him to do. When faced with anger he either withdrew entirely, became defensive, or a combination of the two as he had with Damian. None of those options, however, bode well for anyone involved; he’d learned that the hard way. And so, while he felt the itch to leave, to turn his back on a situation he was woefully out of his depth in and let Selina handle things, he didn’t. He stayed where he was, at the foot of her bed, and he remained calm. Silent, yes, but calm, as he let Selina have her say. Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested that she hold out hope for his return, but he’d thought that might soothe the ache, somehow, and while his attempts were horribly misguided he simply didn’t want to see her hurt. It was new, the desire to make things better, to fix them, even if he couldn’t. He met Selina’s challenging look with raised eyebrows; no, he wasn’t going anywhere, running or otherwise.
“No,” he said, “I’m not telling you to get over it. I would never tell you to do that, even if it was possible.” Nearly two decades had passed, and he still hadn’t gotten over it. He’d always despised the people who told him he should. “I’m not telling you to put all your hopes on the what ifs either,” he continued. “Of course you’ll miss him. Of course it will hurt. But, as Selina said, don’t let it stop you from living. That’s all I meant.”
As quick as Hels could be to anger, it was just as quickly spent, usually. Another time, when she was thinking clearly, Helena would have realized they were just trying to help (or at least Bruce was, no matter how misguided the attempt might be), but she was staring after Selina like the other woman had sprouted another head from her shoulder. "What do you think I'm doing?" She forced out through tight vocal cords. It'd been less than a day since Hels found out and already they were telling her not to live in it?
"Getting lost? I'm not lost, I'm not going to get lost." Is that what they thought? What was it with them and doubting her? It was bad enough when Tim did it and decided to hide the information about Ra's threats from her, but to get it from them? Knowing they thought so little -- "I know how to find my way home, but unlike what everyone keeps trying to tell me, this isn't it." Screw the fact that they were in her room, that she'd essentially invited them all in as she threw the covers back and slid out of bed, and even though she knew it wasn't the most adult thing to do, it didn't stop her from opening her bedroom door to Passages. "I'm not staying here for this," was all she said before walking through and letting it fall loudly shut behind her.
Selina watched the girl tantrum her way out of the room, and she slid off the nightstand a moment later. Maybe she'd been wrong about her skill with teenagers. "I think you should go after her," she told Bruce. Just that, and then she pulled up her cowl and settled her glasses back on her face. Another burnt bridge, and maybe she was too young to push at the kitten the way she needed to, or maybe she just shouldn't be playing mother to anyone. Selina never chased, and she wasn't going to chase the girl out the door and into the Manor. Helena had a father to do that for her. And as liberating as the burnt bridge felt, it made the kitty cat sad too. Maybe that was just leftover Las Vegas.
The Cat swayed over to where Bruce was at the foot of the bed, and this part was easy. This part she had years and years of experience with, all the way back to when she was just a teenager herself, when she'd fallen for a hero in black. She slid a finger beneath Bruce's chin, and she tipped it up, just to see if he'd let her do it. "I'll see you around the rooftops, Mr. Wayne," she said, and maybe it came out a little flat, but it was better than it had been in that desert that wasn't home. When her hand slipped into her utility belt was anyone's guess, but the communicator Blondie had been using in Gotham was in his pocket a second later; she shouldn't have it.
"In the meantime, take me off your little family locks." A step back, and Selina was well out of his reach before he could do anything to stop her. As for the backflip out the window? That was kitten's play. And there was no sign of her below or above, no trace to be found, and no indication that she had ever been there to begin with.
Bruce attempted to pinpoint where, exactly, things had gone so wrong, but failed miserably. He had no more success in trying to get her to calm down and keep from leaving, unsure of how to fix something when he wasn’t quite sure what he had to fix in the first place. “Helena, don’t,” he began, the start of what might have been a painfully awkward plea for her to stay and talk this out, but it was too late. She was already through the door, which swung shut loudly behind her. He sighed, disappointed with the way things had gone but not as discouraged as he might have been in the past. One failed conversation didn’t mean he had completely destroyed his relationship with Helena, nor did he believe it meant the same for her and Selina. “I know,” he said, when she suggested he go after her. “I intend to.” If this family unit of his was going to work, effort was required; he knew that now.
Her approach didn’t draw his attention until the last second, intentionally so, and when she slid a finger beneath his chin, he was no willing participant. There was nothing cruel or hard in his eyes, just the usual sort of challenge, confidence even, with no trace of nostalgia for what they’d left behind in the desert that wasn’t theirs. “I suppose you will, Ms. Kyle.” Bruce could have attempted to stop her, but he didn’t. He sat, still and motionless, giving no response when she told him to take her off the family locks. Instead he waited until she’d disappeared out of the window, and then he pulled out the communication device she’d slipped into his pocket, regarding it with a sigh before tucking it away once again.
He rose from the bed and left Helena’s bedroom, but there was no sign of her in the Manor, and he realized fairly quickly that she’d likely crossed through to the hotel. There was no use in sending Luke after her, so he decided he would simply wait instead. She would be back eventually, and if not, he could always contact her over the forums.