. (spacecowboys) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-05-23 22:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *narrative, selina kyle |
Narrative: Selina
Who: Selina
What: Narrative
Where: The Cave → Out
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope
She sat on stones near the long-dead Pit that she'd helped a long-dead boy create. It was cool and quiet and echoes, and she could still remember him victoriously throwing a bat into the green slime to prove that it worked. She remembered hating it, as the neon glowed off her face. She remembered it feeling like home more than anything in this strange not-Gotham had. She thought they'd laughed after, maybe, joked about things that had nothing to do with mortality or al Ghuls or a Bat that didn't know either of them. Then, it had been them against this odd new world, against a Bat that didn't want to care about either of them. Lost, and the pit of green had just been something familiar, a strange and macabre teddy bear to hold onto in a Cave that was almost right. Memories, and she thought she'd said she would never, ever use it, no matter what. Memories, and she thought he'd disagreed, claiming it was his heritage, but it was a long time now, and she didn't remember it all right. The good times, those always faded first, and they left behind the bad times carved in stark relief, looming and she had to crane her head back to look at them.
She'd pulled off her bandages, because the clean and white strips against her skin felt wrong, and she knew that was all in her head. The ragged lines of red on her wrists and ankles, they told stories, and they counted hours. Hours in darkness. Hours in her head. She traced the raised welts with fingertips that refused to steady, and she felt Ra's in every raised bit of skin.
How was she supposed to outrun her own demon?
Because she knew that was what she'd made him. She'd given him power that she'd never given anyone in Gotham. Not even Joe with his like-minded obsession, and she remembered waking up in a suit that was lined with a paralytic, rigor mortis and vulnerability, and she'd made this man worse. Because he'd succeeded. He'd succeeded where no one in her entire life had succeeded. He'd won, and maybe he didn't think he'd won, and maybe the world didn't think he'd won, but he had.
After Lola, she'd sworn - god, she'd sworn, voice raised to a cold Gotham sky and the Bat looming over her shoulder to keep her from tipping too far into that darkness - that she would never get close enough to get another person killed. That she wouldn't let her reckless stupidity claim the life of someone she cared about. Lola was two, and Tony was three, and she'd done that. No amount of logic would convince her otherwise, because she'd carried that stupid plague for Ra's. No one could take that away from her, it was hers to carry. And in her mind, Ra's had won. She still remembered the way every single bone ached, lying on that medical bed in Stark Tower, and the knowledge that it was too late. That even if the antidote was found, it was too late, as the monitors counted down organs that failed, and she'd thought it wrong that death should come in a lab so far away from home.
Home, and she wasn't sure if the word referred to a person, or a place, or a combination of the two. Gotham and Bat were inexorably intertwined, and she wasn't sure she knew how to do one without the other. Maybe it was different in Eddie's world, which always felt more technicolor when he described it. Purple and green, hats and claws, and she thought they had parties while planning their heists. No one died then, not really, and maybe she was fine there without cape and cowl and the thing that had gotten her through the early years with the whip. Her Gotham? Her Gotham was grey, and it was black. It was three dead birds, and there weren't as many to begin with. There was no green, no purple. Her Joker didn't wear a makeup smile. Her Joe wore a face that had been stitched over his own, a macabre thing straight from a child's nightmares. Her Riddler tore off body parts. Her Bat didn't trust her enough to tell her his name. Her Gotham was a fuck on a roof, bruises in the morning from a man that hated her as much as he wanted her, and mothers that killed their sons just to prove a point. Was it any wonder she'd loved this one from the start? No Hell. Just her and a boy and a Bat to win over, and that had been all. It had been a dream.
And like all dreams, it had ended.
She rubbed at her face, dug her fingers against closed eyelids, and she wondered what would happen if no one came. Just once, if the world said no. She wanted that. She wanted it more than she wanted anything. There, in the dark, 72-hours and she'd counted every last one with gouges into her palm, she'd wanted that. There was power in that, or so she'd perceived in the darkness, power in winning. In that hah! fuck you! that would have come with taking back his victory. If no one had come, then he wouldn't have Damian. The cycle would be broken. In her shattered mind, it was a chain of whispers along Gotham's underbelly. Hey, don't bother taking the Cat. He won't come. And there was freedom in that.
There wasn't freedom in a reluctant tackle, in a needle, in the knowledge that he didn't even come after. She was a yoke around his neck, his albatross, and she just wanted it to stop. Rewind, reset, and she wasn't helpless. She could walk into a fight and walk out every single time. No, it was the quiet moments, the ones where she wasn't looking out of the corner of her eyes. Those moments, and she didn't know if she could give those up too. And it had been a dance back home. Take, chase, and clinging after. No names, but it had been a way to see each other without saying they wanted to, and it just became Hell when that last part was missing.
She stood, unsteady on bare feet gone filthy and bleeding from rocks. She couldn't stay there. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't. This place wasn't hers to be in anymore. These were stolen moments, and there were things that even a thief didn't want to need to steal. She didn't go back through the Cave. She went up, out, stones and fingers and sticky blood that convinced her she was still alive. It had been awhile, and she'd been so much younger then, but she could still do it. She still remembered how.
She couldn't run. She couldn't hide. Not now, not anymore. She had too many people, and they all felt like bricks as she climbed over the edge and spread herself out upon the grass like some offering to the Gotham sky. She wanted to lick her wounds somewhere dark and quiet. She didn't want to explain. She didn't want to make anyone understand. She didn't want the indelibility of words. She didn't want truths she wouldn't be able to keep inside her cracked and leaking shell.
She wanted distance, miles and miles of it, and she wanted the immediacy of breath and fingers on her skin.
She wanted to be feral again; she didn't know how.