Who: Cat and Hood What: An "offer." Where: Jaybird's warehouse When: Nowish Warnings/Rating: Nein
Selina hadn't precisely been avoiding the little bats. Well, she had once, when she'd first found herself back in Gotham-light, but she wasn't avoiding them anymore. Why? Because she didn't need to. None of the little birds or bats came looking for her. She'd been the one to go looking for the kitten, only to find that her alternate-world daughter was as disinclined to talk to her as she'd been seven years earlier. And she'd given up. There was no point in trying to fix something that had already been broken before, when there had actually been a chance of fixing it. The same went with every little bird, every little bat, and Selina had kept her distance.
It felt just like her Gotham.
Not that she minded that at all. And it was only this itty, bitty assignment from Waller that placed her in Hood's warehouse, all those little boys asleep on cots and couches and stolen bunkbeds. But she knew Hood would show, eventually. He always did, and the kitty cat just needed to wait.
And so she did, crouched on the sill of the topmost warehouse window, dressed all in black that didn't quite match the kitten she'd been, and that didn't quite match the cat she was supposed to have become. Seven years older, her long hair was loose, and her eyemask was down, with the night goggles propped atop her head. She was high heels and confidence, and she intended to keep that confidence securely in place for this little meeting. After all, Hood wasn't Damian, and she wasn't going to let her feel old after just a few words and a blinking cursor.
She leaned back against the sill, as unhurried as a kitty cat could be.
Jason didn't come in through the window where the Cat sat, so she got the drop on him. He came in from the other side of the building, the window at the end of the hall. It meant he could walk past the doorway most of the boys slept behind, take a quick look and be sure most of them were there.
He'd been keeping busy since Gotham had righted itself. For the past few minutes since the last catastrophic, diabolical plot, the supervillains of the world had been quiet, so there was that. That certainly didn't slow down petty crime, however. In some ways it fanned the flames, as out-of-work thugs found their way back to the streets, unorganized individuals earning cash and creating mayhem in the non-theme-related ways they knew how.
Jason didn't mind. He liked staying busy. Since his little fight with Damian he'd been using thugs for sparring practice, too, getting his hands involved more than he used to. He didn't have much choice, since he'd been on the semi-straight and semi-narrow for a while now. How long that could last, he really didn't know. He didn't kid himself into thinking he'd be able to stick with it forever. For now, there was something about it that both burned him and singed with the kind of delayed gratification he hadn't felt in a long time. It was different, booking criminals without taking them out of this world, fighting the good fight the supposedly good way. Almost like the way things used to be, but nothing would ever be like the way things used to be again.
When Jason walked into his room, he had a gun trained on the form in the window before he'd finished a short exhale of surprise. But he knew those lines, and he knew that mask, though the uniform was unfamiliar, and something was a kind of...off.
"Selina," he said, and he lowered the gun. She may have fallen off the grid, but Jason didn't seriously feel like he had anything to worry about with her around. Maybe losing his wallet, but he didn't carry one when he was out running rooftops, funnily enough. He took off the helmet with a stiff motion, pain rippling across his ribs. There was sweat along his brow, hair stuck up at odd angles. "You should have told me you were coming. I would have put a bowl of cream out."
"It's not a social visit," she told him, voice huskier and quieter than it had been in her youth. She swung her legs around, and she sat on the sill, legs crossed at the thigh and the foggy moonlight making her little more than a shadow in the window. "And I don't think I'd come to you for cream, Jaybird, not after all this time," she purred, but there was a distance to her voice that was new, something less immediate and brash than months (well, years) earlier.
He looked the same as always, and she had such a hard time making it all fit in her mind. It had been hard with Bruce, seeing him again after seven years. It was no easier with Jaybird, who looked nothing like the Hood that reviled her back home. Oh, her version of Hood was older, almost Bruce's age and no little boy. He was a better man, too, in some ways, and harder one in others. But she'd only ever seen him from afar, because the Bat had never brought her home, and he'd never told her who he was. But still, seven years was a long time, and this version of Jason seemed so young, and she was suddenly very, very sorry Waller had given her this particular assignment.
"I'm told you have an interest in keeping a little blonde Kryptonian girl out of the government's clutches." Because even without his posturing to Ollie, that was obvious. Hood was always around when Supergirl got into trouble, wasn't he? "I have an offer for you." Eddie would have said she needed to work on her skills of persuasion, but Selina just wanted to make this as short and sweet as possible.
There was something different in Selina's voice - no, not just in it, about her voice itself, and it made the skin prickle on the back of his neck. He didn't mind the unpredictable, but this didn't feel like the good kind of change. Nothing in the distance in her voice or the leading question about Kara made him feel much better, either.
Rather than come closer, he stayed across the room, holstering his gun and tossing the helmet onto his unmade bed. "If I told you I didn't like where this was going, would it hurt your feelings?" he asked. Nothing that combined the government and Kara could be a good thing. "What's got you coming to me on behalf of what the government might do or not do?" he asked. He was suspicious. He would have to be an idiot not to be, with Selina showing up out of the blue after months of not seeing her, only to deliver a mysterious offer into his lap? No doubt whatever would come in exchange for Kara's freedom wouldn't be cheap. But the answer he'd give was all there in his posture, tight and defensive from the second Selina mentioned her.
"I would be devastated," she purred, though she would be nothing of the sort. She'd already told Eddie this wasn't going to be the kind of easy he had with Harley. Oh, no, Jaybird wouldn't want to go skating in Washington, and he wouldn't want a tour of headquarters. She'd told Waller he would be impossible to control, but Waller had been tight lipped and displeased about things in Gotham, and she'd known she wasn't going to get anywhere at all. And he wouldn't be like Bruce, who seemed to understand that she was walking a fence, but who was willing to let her walk it without any questions asked. No, Hood had never been that kind of patient.
She hopped off the windowsill, stilettos on the floor and that old sway to her hips. She crossed the room to where he was, contradicting her own desire to stay in the window and out of sight. But the kitty cat trusted her gut, and her gut said that him seeing her? It would be an upper hand. No one wanted to grow old overnight, and she seemed to have done just that, didn't she? It might make him listen for a few seconds without pointing that gun at her. She didn't want to have to rip it from his hand with her whip, after all. That was hardly a good negotiation tactic.
She talked as she moved, as she crossed the space. "In my Gotham, we had a little problem. Superman was dating Wonder Woman, and without the little reporter's humanity, well, Supes was a very powerful boy who didn't have any love for us weaker inhabitants of the planet. And then there was a Lantern named Hal, with a ring and control problem. There were others, too, superpowered people that called themselves the Justice League, and they had no checks and balances. They were more powerful than anyone, and they didn't have any laws, any guidelines, and there was no way to control them. And they went too far," she said, walking fully into his line of vision. "Even the Bat thought so," she explained, because her purpose in all of this? That was classified. "The government created a team called the JLA, to prove what real heroes could do. And, if necessary, to control the others who got out of hand."
She sat down on the edge of his unmade bed. "The same team has been founded here, and they'd like to make you an offer."
Jason had already tucked his gun away in the holster by the time Selina slid away from the window toward him, but she was right. Seeing how she'd aged, how different she looked from the last time he'd seen her, that caught his attention and kept it. The long hair looked real, not fake, and while she was still the same sexpot in a catsuit she'd always been on appearances, she was different in a way that just a couple of months couldn't have achieved. "Selina," he said, half-warning, half-wondering, but then she launched into her description of the organization that had sent her to his door.
Jason had never cared much for the superpowered types, if only because their universe-wide concerns so often missed the micro level conflicts of Gotham, of his own neighborhood, of individual misery. It irked him that they could come flying into town once in awhile and everyone treated them like they were the saviors of the day, forgot all about those of them that worked cleaning Gotham's streets night after night, year after year.
In theory, a system of checks and balances for superheroes might be a good thing. If those superheroes went nuts, it was bound to be. But he had Kara to think of, and knowing her had turned him around on a thing or two when it came to the superpowered and what they needed and deserved. What Kara didn't need, what nobody needed, was to get treated like a weapon ready to fly off the handle any second. Nobody deserved to be imprisoned because other people were scared of them. But nobody wanted the world wiped out because a superhero had a bad day. Nice dilemma.
"I want to hear what the catch is before you tell me what you're going to do for Kara," he said, all edge in his voice. He knew blackmail when he saw it, and that’s what this was going to be. He’d spent too long in Gotham not to know it when he saw it. "Or not do, that's my guess.” He nodded to her. “Then I want to hear what happened to you, and why you’re involved with these people. What have they got on you?”
"They're not bad people," she admitted reluctantly. Sure, they didn't value her life very much, but the work the JLA did was good. They'd rescued plenty of people without homes like Gotham, where no one patrolled streets or did anything useful. Places the superheroes didn't bother with. And they'd stopped plenty of dirty weapons manufacturers. "My last job was to save a little girl from kidnappers who wanted to sell parts of her to get what they wanted, slice by slice," she told him. "It's grey, Hood. You can't judge it all by Arrow," she said, and her derision for Ollie's stupid decisions was heavy in her voice. "Where I'm from, it's a bigger group." She didn't say a better group, but they were a better group. She missed them - Katana and J'Onn most - but this wasn't the time for that. They were doing what they could here, and that was all. "I'm not publicly part of the team, because they need someone who can risk getting caught for the more dangerous jobs that aren't exactly legal," she explained. "No telling the Bat."
Not that Bruce didn't already know something was up, but she hadn't actually broken her silence agreement, and she didn't plan to. Plus, now there was the pesky issue of Blondie's pregnancy, and the fact that her assignments weren't exactly safe. "There's no catch. You join up, they publicly announce that you're part of the team now that you've gone clean. I generally go in first or work solo, but the others tend to work together. You sign on the dotted line, and they leave Kara alone, and you get a full pardon." She spread her hands. "Easy. As for me, I was at the top of the Suicide Squad's most wanted. If I play nice, I get a clean slate. All my bad behavior gets attributed to someone else, and I'm squeaky clean. They caught me, obviously, to make the offer. I took it." Simple, and the kitty cat didn't need to add in her anger at the time at being cast off by her Gotham's Bat. No, that wasn't important even in the tiniest bit.
"Ollie acted without authorization. They don't want to hurt the supes. They just want them to play by the same rules the rest of us do," she concluded. It was more complicated than that, but here and now, that was all that mattered. She'd leave storytime to Eddie.
Jason felt like he could judge it all by Arrow. In his experience, any organization was only as good as their worst member. Maybe it would be different if they punished Ollie, if they kicked him out, or if they kept him and actually watched what the hell he was doing instead of letting him indiscriminately take out superheroic girls who barely knew what dating was, let alone what their powers might be capable of. "Sending someone to save a girl from kidnappers sounds like a PR push if I've ever heard one," he said, leaning against the wall opposite her. "Though I guess not if you can't tell anybody that's what you're up to," he added, reluctantly. Catwoman rescues vulnerable child. That sure as hell would have made the news. "You don't have to worry about me blabbing," he added, "If nothing else, I've got a lot of practice keeping secrets from Bruce Wayne."
Jason did Selina the courtesy of listening while she outlined terms. He owed her that much, at least, for not knowing until now how long she'd really been gone. "The catch is that dotted line," Jason said. "And it's you knowing where this warehouse is, and where those kids in the next room are." He could practically see the door closing behind him even as he reasoned it out, and it showed on his face. He didn't like it. "I do this, or the 'status quo' of people who supposedly don't want to hurt superheroes, but somehow magically manage to, that keeps on going. And the 'status quo' of child services coming down here and finding a bunch of runaways and orphans to ship back to their families and to foster care, that goes too." He folded his arms. "And don't get your fur up because I think you'd tell them that. You don't have to. If you aren't being tracked right now and there isn't a surveillance van out front by tomorrow morning, they're morons."
"Kara plays by their rules just fine," he said, and there was danger in that. "She's only been on this planet for a few months, for christ’s sake. She wasn't hurting anybody. All she wants is for people to be friends with her and to go home to a place that doesn't exist anymore." He paused a moment. His mouth had set into a hard line at some point. "This isn't a choice, this is a draft. And you know it."
"I didn't create the dotted line, Jaybird," she said honestly, and she motioned to the warehouse with one black-clad hand. "This isn't my world. I've been away from it for seven years. I know how things went where I'm from, and where I'm from this team was necessary. I'm not a spokesman. I've never been very good at that kind of thing. I'm more of a quiet, under the table kind of kitty cat." As for being tracked, she shrugged her shoulders. "They've never tracked me before. They're not as bad as all that, Hood," she said, because she liked Stevie; he was the kind of good that could never, ever be dirty. But she knew Jason had no reason to believe her. Ollie had, with one little action, made them all untrustworthy. And maybe she was ultimately always meant to be untrustworthy, but that was so hush hush that she wasn't even supposed to know about it. Either way, she was just there to deliver a message. Whether or not he agreed to the terms, that was up to him. She didn't have any power to negotiate, after all.
"Do you even know how many people your little supes killed getting out of ARGUS? Or doesn't that matter, because they took her in? And Ollie might have been excessive, but she was pointing guns at policemen that she'd handcuffed to their patrol cars. Maybe she wasn't going to hurt anyone, but they had no way of knowing that," she said, pushing off the bed and walking up to the boy she hadn't seen in years. "She's from my world, Jaybird. There? She killed hundreds of men and women. Accidentally, probably, but it doesn't change the fact that she did it."
She stepped back, that sway of hip and the lush red of her lips unmistakable, even with the passage of time. "I didn't walk into this because I chose it, so don't lecture the kitty cat about drafts. Just make your choice." And the smile she gave him then was tight, nothing like the lush smile from a moment earlier. One of her claws found his chin, and she tipped it up. "And if you don't think I'd get these boys somewhere safe before anyone could touch them, then you don't remember me very well at all."
No, Selina wasn't responsible for the terms, or for the offer. She was the one making it, though, and she was the only one Jason would have a chance to ask about it. He didn't buy for a second that they'd never tracked her, and if she hadn't thought about it, maybe she had gone soft. Or maybe they were all perfectly decent people over there on Ollie's team. Somehow, Jason doubted it.
"It doesn't," Jason said, hard as metal on metal, and that was that. They'd gone after Kara, and they'd locked her up and tried to experiment on her. Whatever they got, they all had coming. It wasn't as if anyone in that facility hadn't signed up knowing the risks inherent in who they were working for. Hardly innocent bystanders. "And it isn't as if she hurt anyone on purpose. Don't try to tell me you wouldn't have done just the same thing she did, in her shoes." Jason couldn't imagine Selina letting anyone lock her up quietly, flay her open and see what made her tick. Not a chance. "That's not her," he said, firmly. Whatever the Kara in Selina's world had done, this Kara hadn't. "If I worried about what everybody had done in every other world they exist, most of the heroes in this city would have a lot to answer for."
There was no mistaking Selina for anyone else, and he studied her face as she came closer, all tight lines and bee-stung lips gone harsh at the edges. Of course she didn’t like any of it, but she could get as upset with him as she liked. It wasn't going to change the way he felt about having Kara dangled over a cliff to get him to work for the same system he'd spent his entire life circumventing. It didn’t change the fact that he was being dragged by his hair into the same organization he’d been railing against just a few months before. It made him angry, which was something he was good at. He hoped for their sake that they didn’t expect him to come quietly. If he was around, there would be someone there to stop Oliver Queen the next time he saw fit to shoot, bag, and tag a teenage girl for dissection, because he didn't like what she might be capable of. Jason tipped his head up, briefly, at the press of Selina's claws. Then he slid his chin to the side, knowing she wouldn't dig in, so the claw would fall away. "I know you, Selina," he said. "But I know them, too."
Selina didn’t get it, that much was obvious. She looked at Kara, maybe all the supes, and saw what the JLA saw. Threats in the making, harm in humanoid shapes. "She's one of the good ones," he said, slowly. It was frank, and sincere in a way he often wasn’t. "The kind they don't make hardly anywhere anymore. She's...I don't know. Naive. Nice. She gets upset when everybody doesn't get along. She gets sad, but she's not a mess. She lost a whole planet full of people and her dad killed her mom in front of her, but she’s still a whole person." He shrugged, belatedly. "I'm not that. You're not that. Not even Bruce is that. I'm not going to let anyone ruin her."
He wasn't sure, because maybe the intervening time had changed things too much, but the Selina he'd known ought to understand that. Wanting to keep the last whole figurine on the shelf from being smashed to pieces. That ought to make some kind of sense.
Selina didn't bother answering his little question about what she would have done in Kara's place, because she would have handled things differently, but she understood where he was going. Oh, the kitty cat would have gotten herself out, but she would have done it smarter. But she was older, so much older than that tiny Kryptonian, and she'd learned a little about control over the years. Oh, she wasn't any more fond of it than she had been as a kitten, but she knew when she needed it to save her fur. Kara drew too much attention to herself, and that was the wrong thing to do in order to survive these days. The kitty cat knew better. "As far as the JLA is concerned, the problem still exists. Checks and balances, Hood, that's all they want. And they want to do the same thing you're doing down there on the ground. Saving people, good deeds, altruism." She said the last word with disgust, because the kitty cat would never, ever admit that maybe she liked it, just a little.
"I don't like Ollie any more than you do," she told him truthfully. "And he doesn't call the shots. Amanda Waller does, and Stevie Trevor does. Ollie's just like you and Eddie on this team," she explained, hoping that would calm him down a little.
She had no idea if Kara was good or not. She knew Bruce trusted the girl, and that counted for something, but she wasn't part of the batfamily and its little offshoots anymore, and she tried to keep herself as removed as she could. After all, she wasn't going to be as stupid as Oliver Queen was. She was more concerned about the fact that Bruce had just publicly given Lantern, Superman and Arrow his city, than she was about the little Kryptonian girl and her charms. "It sounds like someone has a crush," she purred, stepping back after he turned his chin away, that lush red smile coming back again, all tease and refusal to that the conversation seriously. She could have told him that it really wasn't up to him whether or not the little blonde got ruined, but she kept it to herself. She couldn't remember him caring about anything this much in this messed up Gotham, and maybe that had changed him.
"Is she why you went clean?" she asked, reaching into her belt and tugging out a comm, which she tossed over to him. Oh, she knew he was clean. Everyone at the JLA knew he was clean; it was the only reason the offer had been made. And they both knew he was going to accept, so why bother pussyfooting around it? "Welcome to the team, Hood. Turn that on, and that dotted line will find you. No saying anything until they make it public."
"No," Jason said. He didn't think of it as 'going clean', either, but Selina would just look at it as semantics, so he kept that particular thought to himself. "I've got my reasons," he said, and that was it. The JLA, he was sure, didn't care why he'd gone clean. If they were smart, they would, but they didn't seem to care much about motivations over there. Just actions. He looked down at the comm in his hand and wondered if going clean was worth it, if it meant working for assholes who drafted you off the street. He was supposed to have left that in the past, not be circling back around to it.
He slid the comm into his pocket. "Won't that be fun," he said, with all the enthusiasm of the march to get his teeth pulled. It wasn't about Selina. They could have sent anyone - they just sent her because she knew him, and he knew that. "I'll remember not to go shouting it from the steps of city hall between now and then," he pledged.
"And Selina?" he asked, before she left. "I still want the whole story, someday soon."