[She wasn't
stupid. She'd figured out by the time she'd scouted town for the new store Eddie had been talking about that Eddie and Steph? Were gone:
somewhere. There would be no baking in the Bat-mansion and hiding the evidence from Alfred and there would be no easy explanation of how Gotham worked in the future. Selina? Was poisoned and licking her wounds,
probably somewhere in the same Bat-mansion but worry, worrying was for losers. She was on her own, temporarily and she'd fed the noisy, furry knot of cats that circled her ankles first thing that morning in the loft across town. She was no further with planning out alternatives to street corners, and she
hadn't picked out a new wardrobe yet, but she had the card that had been crammed into her Christmas stocking in her fingers now and she hovered outside the window of the department store, just
looking.
Eddie had said she was smart and Holly believed it: she could
fake her way through to something else with a little of the polish from the class Eddie had wanted her to go to, and she was
pretty sure Bats had some kind of black card behind the counter on the inside with the woman whose name was written out carefully, like some kind of spirit guide to Gotham's rich.
But
was she going to be someone else? Somewhere, underneath all that polish? Would still be Gotham riff-raff
anyway. She didn't look like an eager shopper ready and waiting for her one-percent experience. She was
clean, which was a step up from before and the crappy apartment she still hadn't given notice on but the skirt was three inches too short to be exactly
daytime wear and the striped socks were hiked over her knees. She wore neon, underneath the heavy green jacket, and the cap crammed down over messy blond wasn't high-roller type wear. Mostly? She looked like she was way too interested in the red silk dress in the window, or maybe the menu crammed to the right that listed the hours of the in-store cafe. Not the best location for a minor existential crisis, but neither was the loft apartment.]