. (spacecowboys) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-05-29 09:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, selina kyle |
Narrative: Selina
Who: Selina
What: Narrative: Settling in
Where: Pirates
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The house on the craggy hill sat empty.
The dust that layered every surface indicated it had been that way for a very long time. Selina had picked the most boringly simple lock to get in, and she'd spent a day going through old papers. The owners, Mary and Philip Huntington, had left the island some years earlier. And hello money in a safe that had actually been harder to crack than most uncrackable safes in Gotham. More questions, this time with her hair tucked up and in a boy's work livery, and she learned the staff had stopped receiving wages ten years earlier, when the East India Company had declared the Huntingtons lost at sea. They had a vested interest in the Company, as well as local family, it seemed. Huh. More questions, and no, no one had come looking.
Well.
She could wait for word from someone, somewhere.
She could.
But the kitty cat was very, very impatient.
In Tortuga, a few ships lost very specific pieces of cargo that day. Dresses, mainly, and all the things that went with them. And Selina really didn't care for the amount of work that went into not being able to move. She was accustomed to a suit that was like a second skin, and she wondered if this was what kevlar felt like, all these layers. Hmmm, well, she could always be eccentric.
A few coins lifted here, a few bills lifted there, and the gold that was stacked bars high in the safe, and she hired staff before returning to Port Royal. She booked passage this time, she kept her head down, she was demure. Very, very respectable wages, and only a few street urchins to wear the new clothes she ordered for them. A motley crew, really, and they looked like the local equivalent of Gotham street kids, but Selina knew better than to trust the clean faced, clean handed locals. No, the cook was a prostitute, and the errand boy was missing some teeth, and the butler had a limp and talked about the ocean like it was a woman he'd lost.
They cleaned up marginally well.
And Maria Wells née Huntington was born. Named after her grandmother, rest her soul, she arrived with trunks and clothing and a tilt of her chin that spoke of privileged and spoons born of silver. Her mamma was Italian, she said, and Selina had no trouble with the accent, and oh, what about her company shares? Her husband? Molto busy in India. Politics, and she missed him terribly. But here is a letter from him. He is looking forward to joining me here as soon as is possible, si?
Less than a week, and she walked down the halls of that craggy house on the hill. The long dress she wore hung close to her body, crinolines and corsets be damned, and she planned. She wanted ships. Of course she wanted ships. Her smile was lush as she stepped onto the porch and looked at the sea beyond. There was still shadow behind her green eyes, a bone-deep sadness that lingered, but she wanted a ship.
She wondered about Gotham, and she wondered if Bruce had found a place where the responsibility wasn't cement upon his shoulders. She wondered about Robert, and she found she had no idea where they'd left things, if anywhere. She thought she should swear off anything that dragged her down, and if she never heard the words I can't love you the way you love me again, well, it would be too soon. She worried about Helena, but that was like worrying about the tide that beat the rocks below; there was no point in it. She worried about Tony, but that worry quickly faded; Robert and Pepper wouldn't let the stubborn man die.
She didn't think of Ra's.
She didn't think of Damian.
She considered turning on her phone; she knew that it would - against all odds - still have power. The hotel worked that way, and she turned the idea over in her mind. Ultimately, she discarded it. Not yet, her soul whispered.
First, she wanted a ship.