Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-30 14:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics, holly robinson |
Who: Annie!Selina and Holly
What: "You're not dead."
Where: Gotham
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
Annie was spun sugar hair, short and pale blond in perky pigtails, with cotton candy tips. There were freckles on a nose made longer and sharper with shadows, and a chin that was made weaker in the same way. The freckles were overpowering, all-over and obscuring anything but themselves. Her eyes were a watery blue, nothing memorable, and certainly nothing like her normally bright green. She wore a grey shirt, snug and cut above her navel, Princess Bitch written in a pretty, swirly pink on the gray fabric. Her shorts were black and skimpy, and the thick tights she wore beneath them were checkered. She popped gum in her mouth, drawing attention to pink, pink lips that were lined to make them look deceptively thinner. She wore good running shoes, and her fingers flew on the cellphone she held between her fingers as she walked. There was a messenger bag slung across her body, and she had spent the past week becoming a well known sight in Gotham's betting establishments. From sports bars, to horse, to cards in back rooms, she was there. She belonged to no one, but it was already accepted that Annie serviced the Egorovs first. She'd spent a few hours sitting on the lap of the head of the Clan, a heavy man fond of heavy rings. And, at twenty-two, she looked closer to eighteen in her current guise. Her expression was a little sweet, a little vacant, and intentionally too trusting.
In short, Annie was in.
She was on her way home, back to the greenhouse via the tunnels, where bubble gum pink could be replaced by jet black, feet on the ground and no Cat on the rooftops. The Cat had been out, of course, because it wouldn't do for anyone to wonder where she was, or what she was up to. But the hits had been quick, thoughtless things; the Bat would know she wasn't serious about any of it. Damian, when he had paid attention to things like that, would have too. But she wasn't expecting anyone notice, not with Ra's on the loose, and not with the baby birds flapping their wings about going after him.
Approaching a sidewalk where teenage girls worked, Selina slowed and reached into her pocket to pull out a wad of bills. She glanced around, wanting to ensure no one saw the wholesome Annie paying street girls. Coast clear, she moved quicker again. Drop and go; that was the goal. But before she even made it that far, something about one of the girls made her stop still, face going pale and looking like she'd seen a ghost.
Old habits died hard, and that was certainly true for Holly. Not even an hour through the door and she was up to her old tricks, literally. The dress was a shade of pink too garish to be anything but loud, legs tanned and bare all the way up to there, but the scant bit of makeup she wore was impeccable, blonde hair shoulder length and wavy, a look that was hard and soft in the same breath. The girl in Vegas might have been spitting mad at what she was spending her time through the door doing, but this was the world that Holly knew best. Johns with fat wallets made thin by her talented fingers and the myriad of services she was willing to provide. And it was one of those that she was chatting up, the line of her back pressed against a black light pole, gaze lifted to him in something that was nearly adoring, but those who were in the know knew that look for what it was. It was all a game, a game to draw someone in, make some little fantasy come true, and in the end, they wiped it all away and tried to get on with who they really were. And there were some girls who forgot that, who became the things they played at. Not Holly, though. She never forgot who she was.
Holly flashed a grin to the man, some nondescript guy in his forties, fingers reaching out to snag the sleeve of his jacket, urging him to stay. Rising up on her tiptoes, she whispered something in his ear that had his brows raising, then furrowing, and then he was slipping away down the street with a shake of his head. Holly made to follow after him, a ploy of it’s own with his wallet gripped in her fingertips, but she didn’t follow. By the time he had turned the corner, she had already pulled the cash from the worn leather thing and dropped it on the sidewalk, kicking it towards the gutter as she tucked the bills into her cleavage.
Selina managed to find her voice before she approached the girl, but it was a near miss. Oh, Holly was older than she'd been when she died, but Selina would know that face anywhere. It still haunted her dreams, and it still made guilt roll over in her belly.
Years earlier, a man named Renald Ivanko had taken over the brothel that Bone owned, the brothel that Selina had called home since the age of eleven, when she'd been kidnapped off the street. She'd been happy about the new owner. Renald was powerful, wealthy, an influential member of the Ivgene clan. For Selina, even then, power had been a heady thing. It was escape, and she hoped Renald would be an escape too. Bone had been cruel, with heavy fists and hard fingers that bruised. All the girls had feared him, but none more than Holly. A few years younger than Selina, the little blonde had spent nights hiding beneath Selina's blankets, and Selina had allowed it. Life at the orphanage had hardened her to many things, but not to small, scared children.
They'd grown older, and by the time Selina was fourteen, Renald spent as much time with her on his lap, as he did selling her to others. He had turned out to be as violent as his predecessor, but he still had enough information about the Ivgene to provide an ultimate out. She'd seen his value and, already a very skilled little thief by then, she'd made the most of having him near. Holly, on the other hand, had always been brash and vocal, even more so in her fear, and she'd never liked authority. Oh, the little blonde girl had always danced to Selina's tune, seeing her as a surrogate mother, but she'd hated Renald.
And Renald, Renald had lost a lot of money one night. And Holly had mouthed off. And he'd dragged Holly from Selina's clutches and shot Holly dead. Selina hadn't yelled or screamed, and she hadn't put herself between the smaller blonde and the older, angry man. She'd hesitated, trying to think through options, and it had cost Holly her life.
Selina didn't think before jumping after that.
And a few years later, the Egorovs, a warring clan, had offered her a job, and Bone had risen in power to head the Ivgene clan, but that was another story</i>.
Seeing Holly here, now, when she'd just caught Renald's scent again, didn't make Selina doubt her motives. The fact that Holly was alive didn't make her forgive Renald anything. After all, she knew the rules of this Gotham as well as anyone. This wasn't Holly returned from the dead. This was another Holly, one that would likely know an older Cat. But that didn't change the surge of protectiveness that rushed through her.
"Don't make yourself too memorable, kitten. You don't want him snarling at your doorstep," Selina told the blonde, not expecting recognition in her current guise. She handed the wad of cash she'd pulled out to a group of girls nearby. "Do you have somewhere to stay?" she asked Holly, over her shoulder.
The other girl talking to her had Holly turning in her direction, brows arched in surprise that anyone was addressing her to say anything other than to get out of her way, this was her block, or something along those lines. Holly wasn’t familiar enough to these women yet that they didn’t acknowledge her as one of their own. She was just another gal turning tricks, and like so many others, they were betting on the fact that she’d just up and disappear someday, either back to whatever world she had escaped from or a more permanent disappearance. But that surprise disappeared from her face as quickly as it had found a home there, one shoulder shrugging up towards a pierced ear. “You need a doorstep for them to come snarling at. Lucky for me, I’m lacking that.” She was ready to leave, to find some other corner to be anonymous at, but then the rest of the words came, her eyes narrowing in response. “I stay where I find room. What’s it to you where I stay?” Dressed as she was, there was nothing really familiar about the other woman, and Holly wasn’t suspicious enough to look any deeper than skin deep.
Selina wasn't surprised at the lack of recognition. Even as the Cat, chances are she wouldn't be what this Holly was expecting. She'd spent the past year and a half playing that game, and she knew it as well as Cat and Bat now. She felt too young, and she felt too old, and she felt both things at the same time. She was too young here, for what everyone expected of her. And she was too old for her age. "Don't go making assumptions about doorsteps, kitten."
The other girls had taken the money without a fight. The Cat was a fixture in this Gotham in all kinds of disguises, and she sent others to do her work, as often as not. Her boys delivered moneys to people all over Crime Alley and the Narrows. Mostly to working girls, like these, and children in foster homes and orphanages; no one thought anything of it anymore. Sure, the kitty cat stole, but almost all of it went back into Gotham one way or another. Well, except for a few shinies she couldn't bear to part with.
"I'm curious," Selina replied, an answer to the question of why she cared. "You know what they say about curiosity and cats, Holly." She wondered, then, if the old Cat had never played at being other people. The more she learned about that kitty cat, the more she wondered if the similarities were as minimal as they were between the Bats she'd known in her life.
Selina turned away, took a few steps, and she waited to see if the kitten would follow.
It was the combination of ‘cats’ along with her name, a name she hadn’t given to any of the girls (or guys) in the area that had Holly following. Her brow was furrowed down, more than a little on the wary side as she kept pace several feet behind the other woman, a furtive glance cast this way and that as that street-savvy side of her wondered if she was being led into some sort of trap or another.
She waited until they were alone, just the shadows for company, before speaking again. “How do you know my name?” Holly asked, taking a few quick steps, bringing herself up almost alongside the other woman, though she still hung back, ready to dart at a moment’s notice.
Selina didn't like this part. She liked it when people already knew all the rules, and when they'd already experienced the disappointment that came with ending up in this Gotham. But, on the bright side, chances were good this Holly knew everyone else, just not her or the Bat. But everyone else, as far as she could tell, came from the same place, generally. "I'm younger than you expect," she said, keeping up a slow pace, and letting that sink in before she continued. "Kitten, have you figured out that things here are different yet?" she asked a second later, needing to know just how much she needed to explain. Then, she paused. "We're heading to the greenhouse. Do you need to pick anything up before we keep going?" Simple. That should answer any questions the kitten had, shouldn't it? And if Selina wasn't being very articulate? Well, this was a lot like seeing a ghost, one of a person that had died at her own hand.
Her lips pursed, and yeah, some things were falling together bit by bit. Suspicions were starting to come true, and even though Holly wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, she could put two and two together to come up with Selina. “A lot younger than I expected,” Holly clarified, and she was no longer wary enough to keep her distance, coming up alongside Selina, easy to keep up with the slow pace the other woman had adopted. She examined her nails, chipped paint and red cuticles, picking at a piece of skin before she dragged her attention back to what was in front of her. “And yeah, I’ve figured that much out. It’s been disorienting, feeling like it’s home but nothing is the way you remember it. And no. Nothing to grab, at least nothing I care to. Where’s this greenhouse? Like plants? That kinda greenhouse?” It seemed a strange place to be going, but Holly had an inkling of a suspicion that this woman, Selina, knew what she was talking about. There was an air of knowledge about her, and Holly wasn’t stupid enough to ignore that.
Easier than expected. Thank god, Selina thought. She looked over at Holly, and even the makeup couldn't hide the Cat's smile on her lips. "I'm still a few years older than you, kitten," she said easily. Because she was young, but not as young as the girl at her side. As disorienting as it was to see Holly this age, Selina was aware that it could have been much, much worse. "How old am I supposed to be?" she asked, expecting some answer in the 30s. She'd yet to hear about any version of herself that was younger than that. And, well, she didn't think Holly was expecting Helena's much older Cat; she had a feeling that Cat had never know Holly Robinson. "The botanical gardens. You haven't lived there?" Selina wasn't expecting a yes or a no, really. She knew she lived there, in some other Gotham. She knew, too, that Holly was dead in that Gotham, thanks to Eddie's limitless intelligence about things not her Gotham. "I stay with Ivy and Harley." Which was, apparently, pretty standard kitty cat behavior, even if she had trouble with it herself.
“Just... older.” The answer was hedged, some of the wariness sneaking its way back into her gaze, because that Gotham, that world, it seemed so far away from everything that was here. The streets were the same, the air smelled the same, but that was where the similarities ended. Only a few trips through the door and it hadn’t been enough to make this place feel like home yet. “And no. I haven’t lived there. I crashed where I could. Lived with you for a while, but not in a greenhouse or botanical garden or anything like that. Just an apartment. Shitty Gotham City apartment. We had a leaky ceiling.” It was a mundane detail, but the place had been home, at least for a small chunk of her life after Selina had pulled her off the street and gave her a place that wasn’t a bench to sleep on. A long sigh escaped her and she looked up at the night sky, absorbing the rest of that information with a hum in the back of her throat. “And you get along with them?”
Selina rounded a corner, ducked into the warehouse full of boys that she'd given Jaybird as a gift, and pulled the wig off her head. The boys, all between ten and sixteen, looked at the new blonde girl with wary interest, and Selina swatted them away, as she changed from mafia runner to sleek black and tousled hair. Uncaring, she wiped the freckles off her face, and the makeup off her nose and chin, and she wandered over to a broken dresser in black underthings. It took a few seconds to get back in the suit, and she leaned back against the dresser as she looked Holly over properly. Her cowl was back, and the yellow-tint goggles were around Selina's neck, but she was all cat just then, as she popped the watery blue contacts from her vibrant green eyes. "Sometimes. Do you know them?" she asked of Harley and Ivy, because she wasn't completely stupid. There existed the possibility that she couldn't trust this Holly. She hoped that wasn't the case, but she could be cautious for a few minutes, even with all the responsibility and guilt she was feeling. "Ivy's still lethal, and Harley's new, but I don't think a version of Harl exists that isn't obsessed with Joe."
Holly didn’t hide the way her eyes strayed to Selina as she wiped off the makeup, divested herself of the wig, and gave a lovely, albeit short, show as she wandered towards the dresser to climb back into the skin-tight cat suit. Some things, she was discovering, really didn’t change, and the body was one of them. “I know of them,” Holly offered, wandering over towards Selina, disregarding the cautious look she saw for that brief moment in Selina’s eyes. The black hair, those green eyes, it brought it all home that this woman was Selina, and no one could really imitate that. No, she wasn’t her’s, wasn’t the one who dragged her in off the street, but the flavour was still there, and there was no effort put into hiding her appreciation of that. Reaching out, she gave a tug to the hem of the fabric, pulling it into place where the grain had been slightly askew, lifting her eyes to Selina’s a moment later. “I worked on my own. You did your thing, I did mine, but you taught me how to handle myself. A guy comes over and gets too pissy with me, and I know how to handle ‘em.” She cracked a smile, crooked and with a bit too much glint in her own eyes, and then Holly was striding away, tugging down the hem of that tight pink thing she called a dress.
Selina didn't mind being watched. Selina had never minded being watched. If she had a problem with it, she would have chosen something with a cape to hide behind, when she was coming up with her alternate persona. But she hadn't, and she didn't mind. She didn't mind Holly coming close, either. Older or not, this girl reminded Selina of what it had meant to trust someone once, to need someone. The relationship Holly described was different, more years between them, but still similar. Her Holly had only been a few years younger, but a few years were a big deal for children. "We both worked for the same pimp," she told Holly, because she might as well share. "We were just kids. You died." Simple, and there was something in the kitty cat's face that said she wanted to leave it at that; simple.
Selina tugged the cowl up, and she pulled the goggles up and, after stashing her runner's attire, and she ducked out of the warehouse, knowing Jaybird would know of their visit, but not caring if the most un-Bat of the Bat's little winged boys knew she'd brought company with her. "Well, now you're moving into the greenhouse. We can reevaluate later." Selina was, very obviously, used to giving orders. She stopped, wondered if she should ask instead of tell, and decided this Gotham was too dangerous for questions and options. "It's more dangerous here, and the Batfamily doesn't exactly know how to work together here. No one will care if you come and go from the greenhouse, but at least I'll know you're in one piece every day or so." And for Selina, that was a serious admission of caring.
At the mention of what had happened, their relationship where Selina was from, Holly shot a sharp look in the other’s direction, eyes widening for just a moment at the mention of her dying over there. That was a destiny she wasn’t looking to fulfill over here, and if Selina didn’t want to talk about it, Holly wasn’t going to push it. Best to put it where she didn’t even need to think about it, because fuck knew what would happen if she started her thoughts venturing down that path.
Following after Selina, Holly silently cursed her heels, shoes that might have made her legs look fantastic, but they were hell to walk in. And whatever orders that Selina wanted to give, she was free to. Holly would follow, so long as she felt it was in her best interests. Street rat background didn’t lead her to trusting easily, and she was more prone to doing her own thing when it came down to it than being a mindless soldier with a captain to follow. The situation that Selina painted reminded her of home, of her Gotham. A place to stay, no rules to strap her down, and a mutual feeling of safety that was ensured when their paths crossed, sometimes frequently, sometimes less so. “Gotcha. And Harley and Ivy. They gonna give me a hard time moving in?”
"Harley loves company, and Ivy, well, Thorns is still Thorns, kitten. Be careful, and don't trust her." But Selina's words of wisdom applied to most everyone in Gotham, friend or foe. Harley would be friendly, but Harley had this unfortunate little habit of going back to Joe and doing whatever Joe wanted. The greenhouse definitely wasn't the safety of the Batnest, that was for sure. But she reminded herself that she wasn't cut out for that life and, if this Holly was anything like the tiny spitfire she'd known, then Holly wouldn't be able to live by those rules either. Still, it wouldn't hurt to let one of the birds know to keep an eye out for her on patrol. After all, being a bookie was keeping Selina busy these days, and who knew what was going to come of her encounter with Renald in the end. "Stay away from the clans," she said abruptly. If Renald was around, the last thing they needed was for him to use Holly as a bargaining chip. Selina still had no idea what the clans wanted with her, but she would find out; she just didn't want Holly getting caught in the crossfire. "Do you know anyone else in Gotham, kitten?" Because this version of Holly might; it wouldn't be out of the question.
Not trusting someone, that wasn’t hard for Holly. Trust didn’t come easily with her, but she could play nice enough when she needed to. Whatever happened from this point forward was going to be an adjustment, but if there was anything that Holly was good at, it was adjusting to whatever life threw at her. Nothing had ever been a constant for her, and she took change in stride without even batting an eye. And normally, she might have taken something like Selina’s warning with a grain of salt, but there was something in the woman’s tone when she mentioned the clans that had Holly bobbing her head in agreement. “Yeah, I’ll stay away,” she promised, and those spoken words were as much of a pinky swear as Holly had in her book. She stayed true to her word, most of the time. “I might know some other names, but if you’re asking if we got together for sleepovers and painted each other’s nails, no. Don’t know anyone that well. People don’t associate much with thieves, Selina,” Holly commented, giving the woman look. “You and me did our own thing. When you left, I did my own thing. I didn’t do the friend thing.”
Selina was already moving toward the greenhouse, eager to get Holly settled and safe, but the comment about people not associating with thieves made her stop in her tracks. And it was a curious, curious kitty cat that looked at the blonde girl then. Even behind the yellow-tinted goggles, her bright green eyes asked questions, and she hummed thoughtfully before asking, "and the Bat?" Because maybe she hadn't tangled in the Bat's cape wherever Holly had come from. It would be the first version she'd heard of that hadn't, but maybe somewhere she'd chosen another path, one that didn't come with a cowl and a growl.
Holly was quick in her steps beside her, moving swiftly despite the heels on her feet. When Selina stopped, Holly simply gave her a look, turning around to walk backwards, her head canted to the side. “How can you trust someone when you never know if they’re going to take something precious from you?” she asked, and the tone made it seem as though it was a no-brainer, that little thought. “And yeah. I know who the Bat is. I do my best to stay off his radar. I’ve enough troubles without the caped crusader pointing his attention my way.” Her shoulder slouched down and she turned, walking forward again. “So. Where’s this greenhouse again?”