Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-15 23:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics |
Who: Selina
What: Narrative
Where: Wayne Manor, mostly
When: As soon as Bruce leaves town
Warnings/Rating: Violence
Selina had never been in the basement of Wayne Manor. It hadn't even been her first choice for this, but the Greenhouse wouldn't work.
When Bruce told her he'd be out of town, she'd planned to blindfold Renald and take him to the cave. It was easy enough to dispose of a body down there, the twists and turns and darkness making it prime land for it. But then Bruce had told her Jaybird was in charge. Jaybird, who might kill Renald for her, or who might not let her kill Renald at all, depending on how seriously he was taking Bruce's cautionary words about not using lethal force while he was out of town. It left the kitty cat with little choice. The Manor, and the Manor's basement became the best she could come up with on short notice.
Getting her hands on Renald was easier than expected. He didn't have the slightest idea that she knew where he was. He didn't realize that, this time, there wasn't a Bat to save him. She neutralized him, draped him over the back of the Batpod she'd borrowed, and she took him to the Manor.
Oh, the kitty cat knew the place wasn't empty. She knew there was a tiny, black-haired bat skulking around somewhere, but that one was quiet; she wasn't worried about the girl. Damian had run away from home, Dickie was being angry in Bludhaven, Helena was somewhere being bratty, and Jaybird was down in the bowels of the cave. No one would come near the basement. No one at all.
And so, the kitty cat tied Renald up. Hooks held him against the stone wall, his body a naked X, his head covered in a sack.
The sack was important.
The sack said that she wasn't sure she was going to be able to kill him. Certainty wouldn't have required a sack to hide their location. What did it matter if a dead man knew that she was killing people in Bruce Wayne's basement? Dead men told no tales, no matter what anyone said.
But his face was covered, and it made Selina angry with herself. The Cat she had been before ending up in this excuse for Gotham would have killed him without thinking. He had done so much harm. He had ruined her life. She could still remember the fear in Holly's eyes. She could still remember his hands on her own body. She could still remember what it was like to be a child, one grabbed from an already terrible life and plunged into a worse one.
But, still, she didn't take the sack off his head.
For days, she came back. Night after night, when it was quiet and still, and she paced, and she crouched across the dark basement. She watched him, and she listened to him beg. He was filthy by then, the stink almost intolerable. But she still shoved a glass of water in his hand every few days, and she still ruthlessly pressed a piece of bread to his lips beneath the sack.
Those nights, she felt so young. This Gotham wanted her to be something like what they had known, and it ate at her. That older Cat, would she have been able to kill him? Because this Cat was having trouble. She was having trouble, just like she was having trouble with all the rest. She was barely older than the children that had grown angry at her. And, for the first time, she wished all this had happened when she was older. She still lived in that place that thought age made things easier to handle, to absorb, to survive. If she was older, then maybe she would have understood what Helena needed, or what made Damian so angry, or how to deal with Jason's issues with Ivy and Harley. Maybe an older, smarter Cat would have found it in her to tell Dickie off herself, instead of sheathing her claws and letting hurt feelings fester. Maybe an older her would have convinced Bruce not to go after Ra's.
Because she really didn't have any faith he would be back.
She trusted him; she did. But that didn't mean she didn't worry. Maybe that older Cat didn't worry. Maybe she'd outgrown it.
Selina felt young.
The man on the hooks moaned, and she looked up from her crouch. She undid the whip from her waist. It would be so easy to strangle him. He had the marks from it already. She'd tried twice, leaving his throat red-raw.
She tried again. Through the sack, she listened to the gurgles of strangulation. So close. So close. So close.
She broke away with a scream. A scream at the top of her lungs, frustration with herself in every hint of the agonized sound. Behind the sack, Renald laughed, and it was the laugh from a million of her childhood nightmares. She undid the gun from her thigh holster and smashed the butt against the center of that black sack. She heard his nose crunch into nothing beneath the pressure, and then he stopped laughing.
She stood there, still, while he dragged blood-gurgled breath past his lips.
Finish it, she told herself. He was as good as dead anyway. Finish it.
She lifted the gun; her hand shook.
When she lowered the gun, thirty minutes later, she still hadn't fired. She slammed her boot against his groin over and over, as angry with herself as she was with him.
Minutes later, and she intentionally triggered the alarm on the way out, her favorite string of pearls from Bruce's safe around her throat; Jason would put Renald in Blackgate, if he didn't finish him off. She knew he'd get out again. Blackgate didn't hold anyone in this Gotham.
But he wouldn't look pretty, and he wouldn't be using his cock again. As angry as she was with herself, that counted for something.