Wren and Selina have claws (laminette) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-24 22:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman |
Who: Wren
What: Narrative (kind of): The next morning
Where: Caesar's
When: Just before Silver's phone call
Warnings/Rating: S for small child
He had to wake up eventually; Wren just wasn’t expecting it to be so sudden or so loud.
She had dozed on the couch, after a long night of worrying, and sunlight came with a scared scream from the bed, which was followed by anxious barking from Finch. It took her a second longer to realize what was actually happening, medicine and exhaustion making her slow to reason. She even tripped over her own feet in her haste, once she finally did start moving.
Gus wasn’t in bed, which was the first thing she noticed, and she was pretty sure her heart stopped in the few seconds before she noticed his tiny body curled up in the corner of the room. Finch was sitting in front of the scared child, teeth bared as he sought the threat in the room, and Wren’s immediate instinct was to call Luke. She didn’t think Finch would bite her, but Gus was crying, and the dog was obviously in protective mode. But calling Luke meant leaving the room, and she coudn’t do that.
“It’s okay, Finch,” she finally said, hands outstretched in surrender, as if the dog would understand that. “I don’t want to hurt him, okay?” she asked, and maybe it was her tone that caused a few of those teeth to hide beneath the dog’s snarl. “Okay. That’s right. Gus? Is it okay if I come over there?” she asked, as if the dog would listen, but she was hoping if the small boy stopped crying, then Finch wouldn’t feel like he needed to protect him. She wished, then, that she had Luke’s firm control with the dog, but she didn’t, and she wasn’t going to yell and make Gus even more panicked. “I know you’re scared,” she told the little boy, ignoring a growl from Finch as she moved closer.
The louder growl that followed, though, she couldn’t ignore that. She sighed, and she sat on the ground where she was, still dressed in the jeans and t-shirt from the night before. She’d made it halfway to the corner, and she wanted to start crying herself, which wouldn’t do anyone any good. She reminded herself, as she often had to do these days, that she’d survived worse hells than this; it was funny how two years of quiet and isolation made that so easy to forget.
“My name is Wren,” she told the little boy, unsure if he remembered it from her conversations with Iris in the park. “Well, it’s Roxie, but my Maman always called me Wren, and it stuck,” she explained. “I know you miss your maman and papa,” she said, because whatever the Johnsons were, Gus thought of them as his parents, and he was so small that there was no way he could understand (or be made to understand) what was happening. “I know waking up in a strange place is scary, but I live here. This is my home, my maison, oui?”
“Whys is he Finch?” Gus asked, voice tiny and small and warbly with tears. It wasn’t what she was expecting, but it was something; she’d take it.
“Luke - You remember Luke? He’s had Finch since Finch was really small, remember? I liked birds a lot back then, and I thought it was really, really smart to name him after a bird. A finch is a tiny little bird, and Finch was really tiny then,” she explained, babbling, because the babbling was making Gus peek out from behind his folded arms, which was making the dog growl less. “My cat-” She looked around the room, and she pointed at the bed, where Petti was watching the scene with catlike boredom. “His name is Petti, which is short for Pettirosso. That’s Italian for robin, which is another little bird. A wren is a bird too, and my Maman, her name was Lark, and that’s another type of bird.”
The cat was, clearly, the most interesting thing in all of that, because Gus had crawled a few steps forward to look at the unimpressed feline. It was enough movement to reassure Finch, who stretched out with a wuff, and Wren carefully moved forward on her knees, until she was close enough to reach Gus if she just stretched her arm out.
“I want home,” Gus said, eyes welling with tears as he turned to look at her.
“Oh, bebe, I know. Come here, oui?” she offered, reaching out a hand as his tears became sobbing, but not really expecting him to take her up on it. She didn’t know if it was her tone, words, or just Gus’ own fear, but he crawled into her lap and she was pretty sure she stopped breathing then. Finch whimpered and nosed at her elbow, the cat yawned, and she closed her arms around the little boy in her lap and kissed his hair. “It’ll be okay, bebe. I promise,” she whispered, rocking him slightly. She kissed his hair, because he let her, and she lost track of time as he quieted against her. If she could freeze time right then, she would, and her arms ached with how badly she’d yearned for this over the years, just to be able to hold him.
She thought he’d fallen asleep when he didn’t stir or speak for a few minutes after she’d finished humming a French lullaby that her Maman had favored, but then a little hand reached out and poked the now-slumbering dog in the nose, waking him and declaring him Finsh.
She smiled, eyes welling up with tears again. “Let’s get you a bath and find you a t-shirt of mine to wear that doesn’t drag on the floor, oui?” she suggested, and she couldn’t hold back a laugh when the little boy in her lap responded with a tiny, sniffly, oui.