Everything hurt. Her heart ached, and her pride was somewhere on the floor, and she'd been around long enough to know that the night before had really happened. It wasn't a dream or a trick of the imagination. She'd been there, and she'd made choices while bedecked in green and chlorophyll, and she'd known exactly what she was doing. And the rejection tasted as bitter on her tongue as the memory of all that greenery. Ivy, of course. Why not? The hotel had a great sense of humor. It could have been worse. It could have been Iris. Ivy was, at least, impressive in her own homicidal eco-terrorist way.
She was in the wrong place. Gotham, and she couldn't stay there, so she found the door, and she stalked the hallways of the hotel on the familiar path to the place she'd been calling home for weeks. But her steps slowed as she neared, and her phone was right there in her belt, and she hated the hotel's sense of humor.
The kitty cat stopped in front of the door, and she turned the phone on - habit. It beeped, and the Wayne Enterprises logo mocked her in steely grey, and she looked at the screen for the first time since she made the choice to leave the city that was her catnip.
She didn't think of contacting the Bat. She didn't even consider it. What would she say? Hi, Mr. Wayne, you wouldn't really have sex with me, so I forced your body to have sex with me instead? Oh, don't worry. Even he didn't want to hang around me after. I guess you have that in common.
Oh, she knew precisely what she'd done, and she knew why, and the kitty cat hated self-awareness for staring her in the face. But that didn't mean she was in a confessing mood, not to the Bat, anyway. And she'd learned something from the night, when it was all said and done. She didn't want a man that didn't want her in the same way. It made her feel pathetic and, Bat or no Bat, it just wasn't enough. Talking to him wouldn't change anything. She'd chased him since she'd ended up here, with a Bat that insisted on reversing their roles.
It was time to stop chasing.
And, for once, she really meant it. And, god, that hurt. It was shards in her soul, and it hurt in the most childishly simplistic of ways. But she'd never been a child, had she? Not really.
She began to turn off the phone, because Gotham wasn't hers and why bother. She wanted to run, to lick her wounds were no one could see, but the blink, blink, blink of a waiting video caught her attention, and she leaned against the wall and watched.
She made it a few minutes before she slid down along the wall, the phone cradled in her hands and so much guilt. She stopped it. She stopped the video entirely, and she leaned her head back against the wall and regarded the crumbling ceiling with damp green eyes.
God, and the kitty cat didn't believe in deities.
A few deep breaths, and she lowered her head and pressed the little arrow that would start video again. He was just a voice still, but she knew he'd turn the camera on himself eventually. She wanted it, and she dreaded it, and Milo made her smile. She missed the little boy that had started out as one of Joe's nightmare, and she was glad to see that freckled face covered in ice cream. She'd worried Milo wouldn't bounce back from her not wanting to adopt him, but he looked fine, and he looked happy, and that lulled her into not expecting the video to cut as quickly as it did.
When the setting changed, she stopped the video again.
She'd never been a nervous teenager. She'd never done crushes or friends that had turned into something more. She was sixteen when she started chasing the Bat. She was seventeen when she caught him. Until now, that was all she'd known. The Bat and johns and pimps, and now this, and she could admit to herself now that she had no idea what to do with this.
She wanted to pace, to prowl. She stood. Back and forth and back and forth against the faded carpet, and the phone in her hand, teasing her. She looked at it, and she looked at it, and she finally sat back down on the carpet, dust kicked up around her, and she pressed play.
She refused to fidget as she watched the rest of the video.
The smile that tipped her lips when he chastised himself at the end was small, miniscule, but it was there. It came with a brush of fingertips against her eyes.
Selina looked over at the door that was beside her shoulder. It was there, safety, and she found that she wanted to go inside very, very badly. It didn't feel entirely like home, the place with the ships and motley crew of misfits, but it felt safe. And she felt raw.
But first. First there was something Selina needed - no wanted - to do.