. (spacecowboys) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-08 21:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, selina kyle |
Narrative
Who: Selina (and some demons)
What: Narrative
Where: Chinatown → Harlem
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The man had climbed through the window, and while he wore Ra's face, Selina knew he wasn't Ra's.
At least that was what she told herself as she held him against the wall, forearm against his throat and his trachea beginning to shatter under the pressure.
Not Ra's.
Eddie's goggles said as much. The man's voice, as he pleaded for his life, was all wrong. She could hear it, if she just tried hard enough. He called her Sally, and it was wrong, and she'd finally pushed away from him with a frustrated scream that came from her gut. There was a shattered beaker in her hand, and she wanted nothing more than to gut the man as he fell to the floor. She wanted it more than anything.
But he wasn't her demon.
The window was broken now, and the man with the knife was standing beneath it. He was still Ra's, but he wasn't, and she grabbed a bag and filled it with the paltry supplies Robert kept around. It was better that way; she could move faster if she traveled light.
Where she was traveling to? She didn't quite know yet. Somewhere that man with the knife wasn't climbing the escape, for starters.
The streets were nightmares. Strangers wore beloved faces and demons just the same, and they were all coated a gory red she suspected was absolutely real. There was sweat on her brow, and she wondered if she'd reacted so quickly to this thing because of the malaise that hadn't ever quite gone away, or because of the weeks of poor nutrition. It was probably both, she reasoned, and it was a stupid thing to concentrate on, but it wasn't the people around her, and that was something.
Four fights later, and she was covered in blood. But the count of dead Ra's? Was zero, and none of the blood was her own. Alright, so maybe some of them would have trouble walking, but they were alive, and that was more than she could say for some of the people she passed by.
Head down, and she found a building in Harlem that looked safe, easy to scale, even in civilian clothes and needing sleep.
She barely made it off the ground before she heard it.
A growl.
Familiar, and she'd heard it in the lab once, that growl. She hadn't forgotten. She remembered. It was behind her, and she didn't turn. She wouldn't look.
She knew what would be there; it wasn't real and it wasn't him.
She climbed, and the rooftops were better, safer, and she knew it was the right choice as soon as she dragged herself over the side, exhausted and flat on her back, face to the Harlem sky.
Below, the world was ending; she could hear it. For now, she exhaled and closed her eyes.
That growl? Not real.
Ra's, mocking? Not real.
She exhaled.