Helena Wayne is (the_huntress) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-11 01:41:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics, huntress |
Who: Helena and Selina
What: The kitten wants momma cat
Where: Wayne Manor
When: The night Hels takes care of Dami's cats
Warnings/Rating: Nope, none
It wasn't hard to find the littlest kitten that needed attention. She was busy meowing, demanding dinner though the other cats looked to be doing their best to get her calmed down again. Hels reached down and plucked her up, placing her against the curve of her throat as she went to find the bottles the little kitty needed and get the formula warmed up. It didn't take much to find it and soon the milk was heating up (in a bowl of warm water, not microwaved like some people did it). Though the Selina here might say that she didn't do rescues, Hels did and it wasn't her first time taking care of a small kitten.
Selina. Hels had stayed quiet, not meowing, not pawing at the other woman while she did what she needed to do. It hadn't happened that often when she was growing up, not with her mom, but there had been a few times after her father became commissioner when his men had gone undercover and she had to pretend not to know them. Then it had seemed more like a game, pretending, but this was different. And her mo--Selina, this Selina -- had told her in such a way that it felt off. Wrong. It set off more bells in Hels' head than anything else. She knew her mom's history, knew what this Selina had told her about herself, and backed off to give her space.
She'd had all she could take of space. Hels' soul didn't yearn for wide open spaces or rolling hills or even the solitude of the country. It didn't even cry out for the rooftops of Gotham half as much as it did for the mish mash band of people that were her family now. And maybe if Kara had been here instead of on the other side of the door and a continent plus an ocean away, she could have resisted pawing at Selina, given her the freedom she needed, but with her bestie gone that possibility went with it. She could deal with the absence of one, not two.
After a moment's hesitation, and with the little black kitten still perched between shoulder and neck, Hels went into her bedroom. It wasn't expensive, it didn't glitter or sparkle, but in the bottom of her jewelry box she had a small, silver necklace with a cats paw pendant that shined. Walking through the "Narnia" door between her closet and Tim's old closet, she continued through his old room and onto the small balcony to loop the necklace around the railing. Light caught on it whenever the wind blew. And while she could have done it on hers, she didn't want the draft on the kitten.
Smiling to herself, Hels went back inside, but left the doors slightly cracked. An engraved invitation couldn't have been more personal. Retrieving the milk and a washcloth to wipe up with, Hels returned to her bedroom, all creams and dark woods. She had no idea how long it would take for Selina to realize that little message left on the other balcony, but knew the Cat would recognize it as a message. Curling up into the edge of the chaise lounger, she brought the kitten into her lap and after checking the temperature of the milk, let her begin to feed.
Selina spent more time than she cared to admit crawling around the Manor lately. When she'd first ended up here, in this Gotham that looked like her own, but that didn't have anyone in it that she even knew, she'd claimed the Manor for her own. She'd slept in all the beds, and she'd worn the robes in the closets and draped herself in the jewels from all the safes she cracked. Then, she hadn't met the baby bird, and she had no idea Bruce Wayne was any Bat at all. The Manor had simply been a big, empty place, one with rooms to get lost in and a soft bed for a thief that was all alone in a new place. Then, she'd ended up at Ivy's, and things had started changing, but the kitty cat missed those early days sometimes. And the ones after, when she felt like she actually knew what her place was here, back when she climbed along the edge of the fence without wondering which side she belonged on. Back then, the baby bird had been a game, and Bruce, well, he'd been the Bat.
Now things were different, and the kitty cat was having a hard time figuring out who she was. She knew that in some other story, she was an antihero, but she was a decade younger than that Cat, and she still thought going out on that limb for strangers was a silly, silly thing to do. In her Gotham, she'd known where she belonged. She worked for anyone who could pay, stole anything they needed, and Gwen took care of everything else. Sure, she liked being wrapped in the Bat's cape, but that was her one concession to being good. There were no little birds and no little bats and no kittens back in her Gotham, none that she meowed at, anyway. And maybe that would have changed eventually, like everyone told her it did. But it hadn't yet, and here she was, pawing at a Manor that wasn't hers and purring for a Bat that didn't have the time to chase her.
That particular night, Selina was in the mood for something that sparkled, for old time's sake, before Ra's unleashed whatever terror he had in store. She was out of the cowl, out of the suit, no goggles atop her head and no whip around her waist. She could have been any college student come to visit one of the many boys in the Bat's house; jeans and a sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, one with a Bat on the front. Her black hair was held back with a thick black headband and she wore chunky shoes on her feet and she had black kohl on her striking green eyes. She had gripped fingerless gloves on her hands, the only concession to practicality she wore, that had allowed her to get in and out of Bruce's room. His mother's pearls were around her throat as she jumped down onto the ground below, as she noticed that dangling thing from Feathers' window.
Walk away, Selina.
But of course the kitty cat didn't, couldn't. She cursed herself a thousand times for a fool as she climbed up to Feathers' balcony. Oh, the kitty cat wasn't surprised to find it empty; Feathers wasn't the kind to dangle a pendant at her. But she knew who was, and she knew where everyone slept in that Manor that wasn't hers. She walked through that hidden door (which she'd found ages ago), and she walked into the kitten's room and leaned back against the closet, "Damian pawned her off on you?" she asked of the tiny cat that she'd just dropped off a day before.
"He needed me to take care of her while he's at Stephanie's," Helena replied with a glance upwards. She looked younger, dressed as she was, even though Helena had long accustomed herself to the fact that this Bruce and this Selina were younger than her parents, but those eyes. Hels remembered those.
Before she'd gone to pick up the kitten, she'd changed out of her suit and into her PJs: the same black Batshirt she had five of and the flannel Hello Kitty bottoms that were her favorites. Around her throat weren't the pearls that Bruce had given her, or the diamonds that Kara had, or even the robin's egg necklace but the one with the coordinates to home. It hadn't come with a note, but it didn't need to.
"She's adorable," she said quietly as she wiped at the kitten's mouth as a bit of the formula dribbled out. Half of it had already been taken in the wait for the Selina, and Hels plucked the little cat out of her lap. She could set her down for a minute, just a minute on the lounge, the washcloth tucked under her little furry body to protect the fabric. Hels didn't bother trying to tell it to stay as she stood up and launched herself at the other woman, arms swinging around her neck in a tight, fierce hug. "I don't know if you're still being the bad kitty, but I couldn't take it anymore," she whispered into the side of her neck.
As abruptly as the hug happened, she was letting Selina go, fingers curling about her wrist instead. "Sit down?" She needed to get back to the kitten before she got too curious and went padding off the side of the chaise.
Selina made a sound of noncommittal understanding, an indication that she knew all about the baby bird's recent troubles, even if she was out being a bad kitty cat. Her green gaze lighted on Helena's necklace for a moment, but it didn't linger, and she gave a crook of her head back toward the closet she'd walked through. "That's cute. Does Bruce know yet?" she asked of the relationship between Feathers and Helena. She was out of the loop, and she had no idea who knew what these days.
"Someone left her in my stocking at Christmas," Selina said of the kitten. Not that she wouldn't have scooped her up herself, had she encountered her, but she hadn't. It had been touch and go that first week, but whoever had left her was right; the kitten was a fighter. And, admittedly, she'd thought Damian might need the kitten even more than the kitten needed him. She looked around for Bandit or Martha, but seeing no other little balls of fluff, she looked back at the girl with the familiar grey eyes.
That hug came right as Selina looked back, blindsided her, really. Hugs weren't a regular occurrence in Selina's life, and she didn't hug Helena back so much as rub her arms reassuringly. She knew she was a poor excuse for the girl's mother. She didn't know how old Helena was, but she didn't think it was much younger than her own twenty-two years, and she knew herself well enough to know she shouldn't be anyone's parent. "I think my bad kitty act is up, kitten," she admitted, because when Ra's hit Gotham with whatever he was going to hit Gotham with, well, the gig would be up. Because the Selina she had been would have taken the plane ticket and saved her own fur; she knew that wasn't going to happen.
Sitting down was a bad idea, but Selina ran the pearls at her throat between her fingers, and then she moved away from the closet and sat on the edge of the bed. "What did you want to see me for, kitten?"
Back went the kitten into Hels' lap so she could feed her the rest of the bottle. "Know about what? The Narnia door?" There was a roll of her shoulders as an answer. "I don't know. Probably." Most likely, but then her eyebrows drew together. "It's not a sex door," she said, perhaps a shade or two more defensively than required.
And that wasn't any better was it? Her eyes darted to the side before she glomped onto the next subject Selina brought up like a lifeline. "I didn't want to," she paused, glancing down at the tiny furred body under her hand, "paw you while you were doing what you needed to do." Because that was the only reason Selina would do it, wasn't it? If she had to. She could say all she wanted to about straddling a fence or how she wasn't a good kitty, but Hels knew there was something good inside her, buried beneath all the hissing and the claws.
A small smile lifted her lips as she looked up again. It didn't bother her when Selina didn't hug back, that pause before she'd managed to do it last time, because she knew this Selina wasn't her mom. She was still Selina though and that's what mattered. "Needed to hear you meow," she said simply, with a small bob of her head.
Selina didn't like Feathers; everyone knew that. Feathers didn't like her; everyone knew that too. But she knew about Helena's boy on the roof, and she knew better than to think any teenager built a door into a room that belonged to a girl he wasn't having sex with, and under said girl's father's roof, no less. "Of course it is, kitten. In theory, if not in practice," she said, but she left it at that. No chastisement, no lectures about how sure she was that Helena could do better, no threats to tell her daddy. No, Selina knew better. She wasn't going to make Eddie and Steph into Romeo and Juliet, and she wasn't going to make star-crossed lovers out of Helena and Feathers either.
And so, Selina let Helena pounce onto that new subject, though her bright green eyes said she knew that was precisely what Helena was doing. "Don't romanticize me, kitten. I'm a thief, and I do whatever anyone pays me to do. If I can meow in Bruce's ear at the same time, I will, but it still makes me a thief." Because there wasn't any point in pretending otherwise. "If I'm not stealing for Ra's, then I'm stealing for me, but I'm still stealing."
Selina watched the girl on the chaise a moment longer, quiet intelligence in her green eyes as she tipped her head curiously. "You sound like Damian. I didn't disappear," she insisted, and she'd said that more times in one week than she could remember saying it in her entire life. Maybe she needed to leave the greenhouse behind, so these little birds could come chirp safely whenever they decided they needed to. "Does it make it worse? Seeing me?" She asked plainly. Because Bruce was closer, wasn't he? Closer to whatever Helena expected him to be.
When it had come time for Helena to get the talk, she'd gotten it from her mother, rather than her father. (Bruce's sole contribution to the idea of her dating anyone had been when she came home, having been kissed by a boy on the playground and taught which parts of a body were most sensitive to pain and pressure. And then he taught her how to break someone's nose.) It'd been easier that way for everyone involved. She'd gotten the education she needed, without recriminations or blame, or threats of bodily harm for any boys that she might bring home (not that she did. Ever.)
This reminded Hels of then, enough to have her smiling as she wiped at the little cat's face when some formula leaked out of the front of her mouth.
"My mom was a thief," she said quietly, still smiling that warm memory smile. "I don't know if she still continued to steal once she and dad got married, but she was before that." It wouldn't have surprised her to learn that her Selina still did steal -- cats were cats -- nor would it have surprised her to learn that she'd stopped. That was a part of their relationship she was willfully ignorant of, but she was sure it ended with some new sparklies in the house, some stolen goods returned, and a Cat catching a Bat's tongue.
So not going there.
"No, but --" Hels started and purposely stopped, her lips tensing for a brief moment, eyes slamming shut before she opened them again, slowly. "You were working. The last time we talked, you told me I shouldn't be talking to you, so I haven't. I figured you wanted the space so you could do what you needed to." Hels finally looked up at her again, confusion evident. "Does seeing you make what worse?"
Selina was oblivious to Helena's memories. She couldn't even imagine a world in which she and Bruce could raise the girl that was sitting on the chaise with the kitten. They barely had time to breathe in this Gotham, and god knew the kitty cat wasn't having a lot of luck getting Bruce Wayne into anything that resembled a bed. She was scratching at the birds more and more these days instead, and a life in which anything like Helena happened seemed further and further away with each one of Gotham's catastrophes.
"Cat's always steal," Selina said without thinking. Even a clean version of her had to chase thrills somehow. Bruce kept her out of a good deal of trouble by distracting her, and she had to assume the same was true wherever Helena was from. "But I steal for money, not just for fun," she explained. She would end up back in Blackgate one day, because she always did, and Helena might as well be prepared for that eventuality.
But, in the end, Selina sighed when Helena said she was working. "I was helping," she said of what she was doing with Ra's. "No one paid me. It's not work if no one pays me, kitten."
The confusion on Helena's young features made Selina go quiet for a moment, not even a meow for a few seconds. "Does it make being here harder? Does it make not having your real mother harder?" she asked. She'd never asked Damian that question about Bruce, because Damian had always been forthcoming with the answer. Everyone was forthcoming with that particular answer, with how seeing this Bruce made them feel. But the girl on the chaise was so much more settled than any of the birds, so well adjusted, despite seeing the destruction of her world at such a young age.
Helena didn't point out that where she came from, where her mom and dad were married, Selina didn't steal money. It would have been like sitting in the middle of the Atlantic, asking for a glass of salt water if she'd stolen for money. It was the thrill, the challenge, and Hels knew that.
Her lips curled higher at Selina's admission that she was helping and not getting paid for what she was doing. It wasn't the lack of funds changing hands, but it was the knowledge that with all the meowing Selina was doing about not being a good kitty cat, she was underneath it all. A fingertip scratched under the little cat's chin.
A finger that paused at the question as Helena thought about it. Five years ago when she and Kara first landed in the ocean and she dragged them to a beach -- yes, it would have been harder then. It was hard to see that Bruce, to be committed by him because he didn't believe her. This Bruce was different, this place was different. "No," she answered honestly, because she'd never been able to lie to her mother (ever) and glanced over at her, a small wry smile on her lips. "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad he's here." It would have been easy to say that Gotham needed the Bat, but her dad had been more than that and she wasn't going to fall back on that as a reason. "If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have said yes, but you aren't them. Similar, yes. Sometimes scarily similar, but not the same." Her head tilted sideways, in that curious way that cats sometimes did. "Or maybe not yet."
Selina didn't like that lip curl. It made her feel like the kitten was reading past the fur, and Selina hated when people did that; she didn't have to worry about it very often. And she didn't know that the Bat Hel had so much trouble with before was her Bat. There was no one here from the kitty cat's world, and she never expected anyone to be from there anymore. She didn't even ask. Maybe she should have, but she didn't. She just watched the kitten's finger still, and she pushed away from the bed in anticipation of the answer.
The kitty cat was black and sway, and she didn't bother moving toward the romantic little closet door this time. No, not when there was a perfectly good window right there. She looked back when Helena added that little not yet, and she quirked an inky brow. "How old was your mother, kitten? Forty? Forty-five? Who knows if I'll even be around then." Because, and she hated to admit it, but this Gotham was worse than hers had ever been. There, she could at least hope for some kind of future. Here? Here there was something new and terrible every month, and she'd already had more close calls than she'd had in her entire adult life back home. "But I'm glad we don't make it worse," she added, and she meant that. She didn't care with the rest of them so much, didn't care if they all wanted their Cat back. But she cared with the kitten, as much as she hated to admit it.
Selina opened the balcony doors, knowing Helena would keep the kitten warm for the few seconds the draft blew in the room. "Stay away from any trouble during this thing if you can," she said, though she didn't expect Helena to listen. "Your father will need someone here and healthy, when everyone else gets sick." Because Bruce, she knew, thought he could fend off illness with sheer force of will; the kitty cat knew better. And, anyway, she'd asked Feathers to keep an eye on Helena, and she'd kill that bird if he let her down.
"You'll be around," Helena said confidently. Maybe she wouldn't be, maybe none of them would be, but she did know that none of them were going down without a fight. "Nine lives, remember?" She said as she looked up and smiled. Hels knew they didn't have those, but there was a reason why that saying remained. The smile stayed, but it softened as she tucked the kitten closer to her body, shielding the little one from the draft of air.
"You were the one I sought out when I first came here. That I talked to Bruce first was just coincidence." That too, was the truth. Selina was the first of this new family that she'd met face to face, and the only one she'd initiated contact with. "I'll remember, if you remember the windows always open. Doesn't matter if you're being the bad kitty or the good one." Because deep down, Helena knew Selina was set to good, even if she did things that didn't seem that way. "Don't let them use one of your lives," she added, a thin thread of something that might be worry in there.
Selina did hope she'd be around; that much was true. It was a new thing, not having that death wish firmly settled on her shoulders, and she wasn't used to the fear that came with wanting to keep existing, not yet. Oh, the kitty cat had always had a killer survival instinct, but that was different than wanting - it was the wanting she was having trouble with. "I think I've already used up a half dozen of those lives, kitten," she said, hand on the now-open balcony door.
The kitty cat was all ready to go, but she stopped at Helena's next words. She listened, and she didn't interrupt until the end. It wasn't agreement, that silence. But it wasn't an argument either, and that was (perhaps) an improvement. "I sent Bruce back my comm. If we live through this, you can get it sent back to me," she said, and maybe that was agreement. She didn't say anything else. She just walked out onto the balcony, and then she disappeared into the Gotham night.
Every good kitty cat knew that saying goodbye was bad luck.