dami can't (leavethenest) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-10-28 13:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, damian wayne, door: dc comics |
Who: Damian and Selina
Where: Bat mansion!
When: Pre plot
What: awkward talkin
Warnings: I have everybody wants to be a cat stuck in my head now and i blame this thread
Damian probably shouldn’t have been allowed to get a falcon.
Between patrolling and going to school, he hadn’t made any effort to actually make friends the way Stephanie had and rarely spent time with anyone in the Batfamily beyond Grayson. He used to turn to Helena for that slice of humanity and friendship or Jason for that brotherly bonding, but (as per usual) he had managed to distance himself away from both people. Damian had also managed to piss off his father and with the sudden appearance of a new Tim Drake, he wasn’t feeling very sociable. So, he got a falcon and put all of his extra time and effort into training it to be a blood-thirsty dork killer. Once that was accomplished? He was going to buy two hounds and train them as well. Who needed human interaction when animals were easy to understand and loyal?
But, Damian had overestimated his new falcon and let it off its leash for a little too long that day. After an hour of not coming home to roost, Damian assumed it was sleeping somewhere in the mansion and decided to go looking. Now, the last time Damian wandered away from his designated areas, he found things that he did not want to see, so he told himself that he’d only look for the bird and not snoop through anything that could just make him more angry at his family than he already was. He also searched through the entire mansion before walking up the stairs to the master bedroom.
The baby bird barged into the master bedroom wearing his typical black shirt and jeans without any shoes or socks and looked up towards the ceiling. “Shardae, come!” He shouted, arm up for the falcon to perch on if it was hiding somewhere in the room. The falcon didn’t appear however and Damian sighed, finally looking around the room to see a woman laying on the master bed. Damian grimaced at her, not recognizing the cat right away. “Hasn’t Pennyworth thrown you out with the-” Damian stopped his pompous act and then tensed up suddenly. His voice turned dark, surprised, hurt. “Selina.”
The Cat in question had been enjoying her little escape from Gotham.
Oh, she knew that she couldn't let it last too long, because it wouldn't do any good to grow accustomed to a life that would never be hers, but she'd always liked pretending. And this pretending was about as good as it got for the cat burglar in question.
As threatened, she'd taken a bath that lasted long enough to make her fingers wrinkle, with suds that only a billionaire could afford, in a tub that could comfortably fit four. Bruce had made himself scarce almost immediately, which wasn't surprising, but she didn't let it get in the way of her bubble bath. After the bath, she'd devoured the food that the thoughtful owner of the Manor had sent up. She'd even forgotten to chew at first, the time in Arkham leaving her with a gnawing hunger in her belly that reminded her of being a very young kitten in an orphanage, where misbehaving was punished with days without food. After that, she'd stolen a pair of Bruce Wayne's silken pajamas, and she'd slept through an entire day.
She knew Bruce had dropped by during that time, or that he'd sent someone, because the bandages at her shoulders were changed, and her ankle had been wrapped. It worried the kitty cat slightly that she hadn't woken up for the ministrations, but she wasn't going to let herself worry about it too much. She could just blame exhaustion and ignore any pesky little comments her psyche was making about trust.
By day three, she was on her feet. Her ankle was bearing weight admirably, and she'd be jumping from rooftop to rooftop in no time. As for the stitches at her shoulder, she could barely feel them, and she knew it would be time to leave the nest soon. But she lingered because, admittedly, she wanted to torment the owner of her little retreat at least once before she went. After all, she'd look light a nightmare when he'd dragged her in, and she didn't want that to be the memory that stuck in his little Bat craw.
And so, wearing nothing but a long and lush robe with a W embroidered into it, she was lying in bed, pondering what life would be like if she was filthy rich and free, when the door opened. Propped up on the pillows, she didn't even need to sit up to see who was at the door, and yet sit up she did. Oh, she'd known she was going to have to encounter the baby bird someday. She just hadn't been counting on today.
"Does Alfred make a habit of throwing women out of Bruce's bed?" she began nonchalantly. There was still a chance he wouldn't recognize her, and she was clinging to it with all four paws. But then he said her name, and that flew right out the window. She swung her bare legs over the side of the bed. "Who's Shardae? A new cat?"
Damian gave her a long, terrible look of disgust. One that truly would fly past Selina (and the baby bird knew that), but it was mostly for him to feel better than to hurt her. He was tired of feeling jealous of everyone older and more experienced than him and Damian was sure that he had long since gotten over the cat. But, here she was. Draped on his father’s bed wearing a robe. Still talking with those velvet tones that made the back of his neck hot and his need to run off into the batcave reemerge. Selina made him so angry that he could barely remember a time when she didn’t. “I heard something happened to you.” Was all he said and really it could have meant a number of things. The fact that she looked older, the ankle or she landed here. The little bird wasn’t going to specify.
He walked towards the window and tested to see how easily it would open. “I got a falcon.” He told her. “I was going to name it after Stephanie because I made her mad, but that’s probably weird.” Damian stuck his head out the window and called for his falcon. “She’s probably just hunting.” He said, like a little bird sad that his momma bird had left the nest to go find dinner. For a brief second there was a glimpse at how lonely Damian was even if he didn’t recognize it himself. When something went wrong, Damian went off into his corner and waited for people to stop being mad at him. It was a cycle that had worked for him almost two years. How could he possibly see that some of the wheels were falling off?
“Do you have cancer or something?” Damian asked after a moment looking out the window and then he held his hand on it as if to ask if she wanted him to close it or not. He saw that she was injured, but couldn’t imagine anything short of a broken spine would get her down. “Or are you a house cat now?”
That terrible look of disgust might have gone right over the head of the kitten she'd been, but Selina had a little more experience with disgust these days. It didn't help that disgust was pretty much what she was expecting from the baby bird. Nothing had made her feel her age like the conversation she'd had with Damian on the journals, and she'd been dreading this moment. But the kitty cat didn't let that show. Oh, no, she smiled all lush and confident, and she looked him up and down with enough slow deliberation to make him uncomfortable. If she made him blush, well, it would give the kitty cat an upper hand that she very badly needed.
She crossed her legs at the thighs, the lush fabric of her robe parting to show an intentionally off-putting glimpse of skin. "Did you really?" she asked of him hearing that something had happened to her. "I can tell you were very concerned, Damian. You rushed right out to check on me, didn't you?" And there was nothing stranger than sitting there, almost ten years older than a boy she'd kissed once on the side of a building. She followed his progress to the window with her mossy green gaze, and she knew perfectly well that he would jump to conclusions about her nearly-naked presence in his father's bed. Well, it wouldn't do any good to clear things up for him, would it?
But the obvious loneliness on his features made her retract her claws; she'd always had such a soft spot where he was concerned. It had never done her a bit of good, but she had a hard time going for blood when it came to him, and that old fondness was going to be hard to pluck from the kitten in the Cat. "Do I look like I have cancer?" she asked. If the jibe managed to get beneath her fur, she didn't let it show. Her hands rested on the bed, at her hips, and she leaned back and swung one leg lazily. "It's a nice bed," she said of being a house cat.
“I don’t fly to your rescue if I don’t think you need it.” Damian had developed a different relationship with Selina than what his father had. It used to be more about trust than a need to protect her fur and the little bird always wondered if that was what had destroyed their friendship. He paused, looked at Selina with that boyish, foreign confusion that came with the territory of being homeschooled by his psycho mom. “But, I guess that’s what people do. Stephanie threw a fit about her boyfriend being stuck in Arkham even though it’s documented how easy it is for him to escape prisons. And, my father probably broke one of the Justice League over his head because of you.” Damian shrugged. He was getting better at accepting how weird other people were about each other even though he himself could never feign similar emotions.
He looked at the bed when she mentioned how soft it was and then slowly walked over to sit on the edge of it. Damian managed a smirk at her and rolled his eyes with a huff. “I liked you a lot better when you were younger.” The little bird said without trying to be cruel even though most things that came out of his mouth were. “If you were staying in the mansion back then it’d be for a good reason. Like stealing information about Wayne Corp and selling it or emptying out the family vaults. I remember when you used to be cool.”
She scoffed. "You never flew to my rescue, and I never needed it. I still don't," she said, and it was the truth. She had gotten out of Arkham on her own, and she could have holed up in that apartment on the wrong side of town until her ankle could bear weight again. As for her shoulder, she could have stitched that up without any help, but not needing rescuing wasn't the same as not wanting help every so often. She considered explaining that to Damian, but something told her he wouldn't understand. Or, worse, he'd make a mockery of it. "Bruce didn't help me escape," she corrected. "If anyone in the Justice League is broken, it's not my doing." She didn't mention that Bruce had been very, very annoyed by her stubbornness; Bruce was always very, very annoyed by her stubborness. "Stephanie was upset." That, at least, she could agree with. The little blonde bat had been angry, though Selina still didn't understand why. But then she was starting to worry that there would nothing left of the Riddler she knew if that relationship continued, and there was not doubt that relationship was going to continue.
She was surprised when he sat on the edge of the bed, but the kitty cat wasn't surprised at all when he said he'd liked her better when she was younger. "Everyone liked me better when I was younger. You have plenty of company, Damian," she said truthfully, hiding the hurt that came with that admission behind a smirk and a purr. "Well, I guess I'm too old to be cool now, aren't I? Especially since I have cancer or something." She was good at hiding hurt, and it was nowhere to be found in the master bedroom of Wayne Manor just then. She didn't defend why she would have been in the house then, and she didn't explain why she was in the house now. There wasn't any point, and it was safer to have him believe precisely what he believed. She'd trusted him once, but that had changed even before she'd aged seven years in another version of this place. "It's good to know you trust my motives so very much," she purred, all husky lean in his direction, and the suggestion that maybe she wasn't there for any reason that could be considered old or soft.
Damian’s expression turned momentarily fond at her insistence that she didn’t need anyone to escape as if he were seeing something in her that he didn’t believe existed anymore. It was probably much softer than it used to be. The claws and the purring used as a barrier instead of an identity even if the stubbornness was still beating hard under her ribcage. He sat up a little straighter, almost out of respect. “A good warrior never lets anyone know what they’re truly capable of.” The little bird echoed in green al Ghul fashion, picking out the shining jewels from his corrupt family tree. That time of shame he felt about his mother and grandfather had faded as they had from his life. He wasn’t just the son of Bruce Wayne, but the heir of the al Ghul bloodline. And, he was the only one left.
He rested his hand on the bed, moving it across the soft sheets before pushing it down against the mattress. He thought about how often Selina and his father likely had sex on this very bed and felt surprised that there wasn’t anger or jealousy there. Damian didn’t deserve Selina. His father had proved that. What was the point of being jealous about something he didn’t deserve?
Finally, the little bird looked up at the kitty cat and barely shrugged. “You can’t steal from family.” He said, smirk slipping away in favor of honesty. “Go ahead. Take all the valuables you can find. I can give you all the passwords and keys. Do you think any of us would care? No. Because you’re family. And, a fugitive. I’m sure most of us would give you all the money you need to be comfortable and safe.”
Then, he smirked. Again, it felt more al Ghul than Wayne and Damian couldn’t even noticed the difference anymore. He balled up a fistfull of a fabric and squeezed. “I don’t trust you, but I also know there isn’t anything you would do to actually hurt us.”
She looked at him for a few long moments, mossy eyes narrowed as she tried to determine if his comment about warriors was meant to be an insult that she wasn't getting. The kitty expected that from him. She expected insults and taunts and jabs about her age, and the fond expression threw her off in a way that made her consider climbing out the nearest window, bad ankle and all. "The second you have one good fight, anyone worth fighting knows what you're truly capable of," she countered. "You can only fool people who aren't as good as you, and those people don't need to be fooled, because you would have beat them anyway." She wasn't at all surprised to hear him touting al Ghul mantra, though it did make her sigh with unintentional worry. She reminded herself that his other family wasn't actually here; there was nothing to worry about.
The kitty cat watched the progress of his hand without any knowledge of his thoughts about the bed and the things that had not happened there. Bruce had been sleeping somewhere else during her stay, and Selina would be out of that bed now that she was on her feet again. "I don't take anything I have permission to take," she reminded him, and the scoff at being family came a moment later. "Family? I don't think so, baby bird." The concept was a foreign one. She'd never had family, blood or otherwise, and she certainly didn't consider herself a part of this one. That was a mistake she wasn't ever going to make again. It had taken too long to recover from it the first time. "And I've always been a fugitive." Not to this extent, maybe, but it wasn't an outright lie.
The smirk was old and familiar, and she laughed a knowing laugh that was so much older than the laughter from when she was a kitten. "Not trusting me. That's very, very smart." As for hurting them, she shrugged. "There's no reason to hurt any of you here. No threats. No one making me choose between my fur and yours." Simple kitty cat logic, and whether it was true, well, she didn't even know some days. She glanced toward the window. "Why the falcon?"
Damian didn’t understand kitty cat logic and playing nice simply because the other side was doing the same. He barely understood his own family’s mantras most of the time and lately that code was getting more and more blurry for him. “One of my cats. The older one? She’s meaner than Isis or Bandit and good some of the time. But, she scratches just for the sake of scratching. I thought that was what cats do.” Damian shrugged, flopped down on his far side of the bed and looked up at the Wayne manor ceiling. “Falcons take a long time to train and aren’t loyal to anyone who gives them food. I’m going to take her back to the desert with me someday.”
He fell silent and looked over to Selina, only seeing the mountain of pillows and bottom of her feet. “I hate Gotham. I hate Bludhaven. I want to return to where I was raised, but my family is here.” Damian closed his eyes sighed and then sat back up. “They don’t need me like they used to, though. When was the last time I did anything for them? So, maybe I’ll go back. I bet the League doesn’t have anyone in charge since my grandfather stopped making appearances. It has to be better than pretending I’m a normal person all the time.” He got to his feet and walked back over to the window, pushed it open all the way and then stuck a leg through. The little bird looked over to Selina. “Are you going to take care of my father if I leave?”
"Cats don't scratch just to scratch, Damian. Cats scratch for a reason," she said as he flopped. Whatever the kitty cat remembered of the baby bird that she'd been nearly obsessed with as a kitten, it wasn't this. She wondered if time had changed him, or if time had changed her, or if she could just see things now that she hadn't been able to see then. "Don't ever think a scratch is just a scratch. That's a good thing to remember when it comes to women too," she advised, watching as his gaze turned up to the ceiling. "You want a falcon because they're disloyal, or you want a falcon because they can't be won over by anyone but you?" she asked. They were, Selina knew, two very different things. "Falcons might be more like cats than you realize," she added. Or more like women.
The kitty cat let the silence stretch, and it had nothing to do with the discomfort she'd been dreading. No, she just knew he'd talk eventually, and she waited. "You don't think you'd hate it back there too?" she asked of wherever he'd been raised by the al Ghuls. The desert somewhere, she knew, but she had no true notion of where. The Talia she knew lived in Gotham, and she'd killed her son in Gotham, and that was all Selina needed to know. "Why do you hate it here?" she asked, though she already suspected it had something to do with not being needed. Even seven years hadn't washed away that memory, the fact that Damian's self-worth seemed to be all about who needed him. "You're a Wayne and an al Ghul," she reminded him, an old echo from seven years in the past. "Need isn't want, baby bird. Maybe they don't need you like they did once, but they want you. They always have." And this was familiar territory, though it was rusty and cobwebbed. They'd had so many conversations like this in the past, and she wondered who he talked to about these things now. "You're not Ra's, and you don't need to pretend to be anything. What is it that you want, Damian?" she asked as he walked to the window. "And your father doesn't need me to take care of him. This is only the second time I've seen him in half a year. He does fine on his own."
Damian knew how this conversation went and ever since he was a kid he still couldn’t quite buy it. To him, being needed as part of a team was more important than being wanted and it had only been recently that he had seen the difference. Damian wasn’t put in the position of Robin because he was needed. Grayson simply wanted to take on the little Wayne as a brother. His mother needed and wanted, which lead to her becoming controlling and unloving. He made a sound of dismissal at what Selina was telling him, unhappy that she suddenly became some wise with her years cat and didn’t resort to finding trouble instead of telling him a truth he really didn’t want to hear.
He shot her a disgruntled look. “I barely see him either.” Damian said with a shrug, but he didn’t seem convinced that his father really could manage without the people who had popped up around him. The little bird swung pushed up with one leg and then stood so he was holding onto the window frame facing her with his heels digging into the edge. “I want to fight and I want to be the best. There’s no one to fight in this city except lame nerds and if I were to prove I was the best, what would it matter? I am an al Ghul. You used to know that. And, al Ghuls pretend to be about solving global problems, but we hate peace. We hate it.” Damian stretched, fingers barely holding onto the ledge as he looked down at the Wayne garden below. “I’m going to go find someone to fight one way or another. It’s in my blood. You can keep being a house cat.”
Selina had always been opinionated, but she'd been too worried about saying the right thing to always say what she meant. Now, she struck out most of the time, but she didn't keep from voicing things because of it. That sound of dismissal reminded her very much of Helena, and of the fact that she still couldn't ever say the right thing where the kitten was concerned. "You remind me of your sister," she said, even though she suspected that wouldn't be well received either. But it was true. "You Waynes are very hard to talk to." Because Bruce was no better.
She uncrossed her legs, and she gave him a smile that was all lush and knowing when he gave her that disgruntled look. "You barely see him. You know how Bruce has no idea how to actually pursue any kind of relationship. Do you make an effort to see him?" she asked. It was hypocritical, but the kitty cat didn't acknowledge the hypocrisy. She knew Bruce loved Damian, just like she knew that Bruce loved Helena; it was a fact, even if Bruce didn't see it himself. And that was the problem, wasn't it? Even if she acknowledged that Bruce cared, she would never come before Gotham or his children or his nest. "You already are the best," she reminded him. "It only matters if you prove it to yourself, Damian. I don't care what the al Ghuls do. I spent the past seven years in a place where al Ghuls kill a child in order to hurt their father. You aren't that, baby bird. Not there, and not here, but there's more to you than putting the batfamily back together. There always has been, even if you don't want anyone to see it, and even if you haven't found it yet." And she knew a little bit about not wanting people to see things.
She smiled serenely. "And I'm not a house cat, but you know that. I'm less of a house cat now than I was then." She just didn't show the entire world her claws now, but they were still there.
Damian leaned back on the ledge. “I don’t have a sister.” He said simply with the conviction of someone who didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Helena was erased from the family tree as far as Damian was concerned and that was somehow lower than Tim Drake could ever get. “But, you’re right. I stopped trying to put the family together a long time ago.” The little bird’s grip tightened around the ledge at the talk of the al Ghul’s, but he didn’t argue. Selina was right, they were monsters who didn’t see their own madness and bloodthirst. He was still one of them, though and the chance to fix the family name was something that tempted him to venture beyond the Wayne Manor walls.
“You’re all meow and no claws.” Damian taunted playfully, all ten year old boy for a moment and then smirked at her. “See you, Selina.” He said after a moment and he felt an echo of dull pain in his chest that must have been what nostalgia felt like. Damian liked to believe he was too young for any of that. Memories of that night on a Vegas building with her bubbled up and he forced the thoughts of green eyes and hips hidden behind cheap latex away. Without a wave or anything more than a nod of his head, Damian pulled himself up and began scaling the Wayne Manor to see if his falcon had landed on the roof.