.

.

Tabitha listens to the silence and wonders how anyone can stand it.

She needs volume. Adrenaline. Ecstasy. A sharpened, silver knife. Blood dripping hotly against her fingers. The echoes and grinds of city traffic. Gotham now wallows in darkness and silence to its foes.

They've already locked the doors to the Sirens nightclub, its front handles quivering and quaking against impatient hands. "It's like they've forgotten how to read," Barbara mutters, coming around the bar-end for a secret stash of their finest and most expensive liquor. She pops off a cork, letting it bounce.

Usually they're open during these hours, when there's nothing else to do in a near-apocalyptic shutdown of human resources and services but to get fucked, get wasted and get a piece of the action — so who the hell is gonna believe a CLOSED sign?

"You sure this is a good idea?" Tabitha asks, folding her arms and surveying the damages from last night.

A man who got a little too handsy with one of the waitress girls ended up with his throat slashed. Courtesy of Tabitha herself. His body got tossed out of a four-story window, broken and battered. Red streaks drizzle over an hourglass. Crimson smudged and hardening over an opaque, transparently blue set of chesspieces.

"A night off, that's all it is. No patrons, no killing, no conflict." Barbara passes her girlfriend some of the amber-brown bourbon, adding a smooth, rounded piece of ice. "We lounge, and… we drink."

Glasses clink together.

Barbara, with her short, bleached-blonde hair spiked up and glittering, chugs it all down. Tabitha sips, enjoying the deep, aching burn, her gilded, finger-ring talons drumming over the bloodied table-top.

"And how about the cleaning?"

"Natalie comes in at eight with a mopping bucket," Barbara replies, staring thoughtfully off into the distance. Lightning glows like a electric flash-flare through the nightclub's window. The pounding rain is a blessing to Tabitha's seemingly neglected eardrums. "Not to mention with… Selina being back…"

Tabitha's eyes turn to the hidden, black-lacquered entrance to the guest rooms and to her and Barbara's own master bedroom. At first, she couldn't figure out who arrived at their place, sneaking in and munching on a platter of cheese and crackers. A small and drenched thing covered with mud and oil and filth. Barbara fussed over Selina, washing and combing out her hair, scolding her gently for disappearing.

"She looks bad."

"Yeah… even so, I heard Selina was hospitalized and couldn't walk ever again." Barbara takes Tabitha's glass of hard liquor, swallowing down a mouthful and raising her eyebrows. "I'd like to know what changed."

So does Tabitha, because nobody could wave away a direct bullet wound to the spine like that.

Not without help.

A long, high-pitched scream reverberates from behind the door. She dodges out of the way, as Barbara hurries in and veers for the guest room Selina's resting in. Her golden-dark hair sweaty and tousled.

Nightmare?

Tabitha watches as the teenage girl kicks her blankets and thrashes, screaming again, waking up violently as Barbara hugs her, whispering Selina's name and petting her shower-damp curls and rocking them on the bed. She must be more vulnerable than Tabitha has ever seen her. Selina doesn't do hugs. Not when she's sobbing out, trembling and overheated, clinging to Barbara's arm and hiding her face like a child.

Barbara sends her a wordless, desperate look. Tabitha shrugs back, straightening up but frowns in concern.

Due to her upbringing, and all of her assassin-training and lack of general patience, Tabitha cannot call herself the maternal one so she lets Barbara do the calming, leaning against the door-frame, sipping again from her cold bourbon glass. Screams in Gotham are familiar to Tabitha. Comforting, really.

She would rather be with the Sirens, flaunting in glitter and strobelights and diamonds, than trapped where the hush forms like an inescapable, slow-reaching sickness in this godforsaken city.

Any day.

.

.

Gotham isn't mine. LET'S JUST ALL PRETEND THAT TABITHA IS FINE CAUSE SHE IS,,,, SHE IS FINE. IT IS ALL GOOD. BARBARA AND TABITHA ADOPT SELINA. THE END. So I've got "Rest Day" for the official Femslash February prompt and "Kidfic" for my additional prompt and it worked! It def worked! Thanks so so much for reading!