Doors Halloween (doorsween) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-10-28 18:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | plot: halloween |
Who: Harlow
What: Reveal
Warnings/Rating: None
It hadn't been her first rodeo. It hadn't even been her second. But something about this particular night of hotel hijinks made her feel more vulnerable than all of the others put together. Coming back here didn't help. It wasn't her room, and it wasn't her house, and she didn't belong between these silken sheets and in this bed that smelled like someone who wasn't hers. She'd spent a night talking about things she didn't have, about things she wanted, about things she believed, about things she had no intention of letting anyone see, and it made her want to pick up and run more than anything ever had in her life.
And a lot of things had made her want to run during her lifetime. She spent her entire life running, when it came right down to it; she wasn't about to stop now.
But it was one thing to run from things that hadn't ever been said or acknowledged. She could at least lie to herself then. But the hotel apparently didn't feel that was an option. No, it had to flay her open for a stranger to see, and at least she had no idea who she'd spent the evening talking to.
She had no intention of finding out, and she had no intention of letting anyone know that she'd been there at all. Curiosity killed the cat, they said, and she felt very inclined to hold onto all nine of her lives, thank you very much.
And the chat with Damian, right before the hotel's idea of an enlightening Halloween, had only made things worse. It was vulnerability layered atop vulnerability, and she hated feeling vulnerable. And then there were Eddie's opinions, still swirling green and bright in her mind; those didn't help either.
It all made her itchy in a way that was old and familiar. Maybe the baby bird was right. Maybe she'd lost her claws somewhere along the way. Maybe a good scratch was all she needed to feel like herself again. What was the point in being a house cat without a house? Even domesticated kitty cats knew better, and she was no domesticated kitty cat.
The internal pep talk barely made a dent, but she was good at lying to herself. She had years and years of practice, and she'd find a way to believe those lies again. It might take a little time, thanks to the hotel's idea of soul baring, but she could forget.
She'd forgotten for seven years; there was no reason she couldn't do it now.
She raided the safe before she went; she was short on cash, and she did think Bruce's uncrackable safes were adorable. Anyway, a fugitive needed money. Thank you for the donation, Mr. Wayne.
If her ankle wasn't quite ready to bear weight yet, well, she'd gone back into the world in worse shape. It was time to start pretending again, and Selina was very good at pretending.