AN: Hello, there. This is the first of this set of the ABCs of BatCat. I'll be -attempting- to write 26 oneshots in ABC order, with various ratings, usually T through M ratings. So, without much further ado, Let's see how this goes.

Selina carefully slid through the window that let her into Wayne Manor. The house was freezing and dark. When she exhaled, she could see her breath. She shivered slightly as she started to move through the empty house. The place felt like it should be haunted. It probably was. But at that moment, she didn't care. Bruce Wayne was dead, that was all she knew at that moment.

"Fuck," Selina gasped softly as she felt her heart clench painfully as she thought of him. Him. The fucking bastard. How dare he…. All for a city that would never be grateful enough for his sacrifice. He died a martyr, sure. But in the end, she was left alone.

She wasn't supposed to care. Caring wasn't in her nature. She'd been hardened to the world from the time she was first sent to a correctional facility at the age of sixteen. She was barely old enough to drive, and yet she was old enough to have one hell of a record. No family to bail her out, she'd broken out herself and provided for herself ever since.

"That's a brazen costume for a cat burglar."

"Yeah? Who are you pretending to be?"

"Bruce Wayne, eccentric billionaire. Who's your date?"

"His wife's in Ibiza. She left her diamonds behind, though. Worried they might get stolen."

"Mm. It's pronounced Ibeetha. You wouldn't want any of these folks realizing you're a crook, not a social climber."

"You think I care what anyone in this room thinks of me?"

"I doubt you care what anyone in any room thinks of you."

Selina's body had gone rigid at the sudden memory. These flashes had been coming every so often since that damn bomb had exploded. It was almost scary to her how vivid they were. She shook her head and cursed softly. She had a job to do, before the vultures descended on what remained of Wayne Manor to turn it into the home for disadvantaged boys that had been all over the papers that morning. She walked silently through the West Wing of Wayne Manor, through the very room where she had first met Bruce Wayne in his recluse days. The target where he'd nearly nailed her hand with an arrow stood abandoned, still with the same three arrows in place. Looking back, she knew now that if he had meant to hit her, he wouldn't have missed.

She turned and walked back to the old sidetable that she knew to contain a safe. She knelt down in front of it and popped open the doors only to see that the safe was already open, and empty. The painful trip over there had been for nothing. The necklace was already—

"I had a feeling you'd return."

To say it was easy to sneak up on Selina Kyle would be akin to saying that it was easy to sprout wings out of one's back and fly. She had jumped when she'd heard the soft voice. She didn't know why she hadn't assumed that he would be there, but as she turned to face Alfred Pennyworth, her heart fell slightly. If anyone had a reason to be destroyed after Batman disappeared with the bomb, it was the man standing right in front of her.

"You left him," Selina hissed at last, her words cold as ice. She finally had someone standing right in front of her that she could direct her own pain at. And the longer she looked at Bruce's former butler, the angrier she got. "You were the one person in this world he truly trusted and you left him when he needed you most."

Alfred approached her and every muscle in Selina's body tensed, "You can't even begin to fathom the regret I feel right now, Ms. Kyle. Though, I hear you were around him right before he—"

"I begged him to come with me, to run," Selina snarled, standing her ground as she glared at the older gentleman, cutting him off before he could finish his sentence. "I begged him to leave this godforsaken town with me when it became clear that the bomb was going to cost him his life. What did you do? You left him. You left him when he needed you the most."

"And there isn't a thing I regret more than that, Miss Kyle," Alfred said in a soft voice. Selina could hear the pain in the elder man's voice, but she couldn't bring herself to pity him, not when the man, the one man that Bruce had trusted with everything, had abandoned him. "And, if you're here looking for those pearls, you're too late. They're gone."

"Gone?" Selina repeated, blinking hard. She tilted her head in curiosity. "What do you mean 'gone'?"

"Someone made away with them before you and I both got here," Alfred said. Selina laughed darkly. Of course, that was just her luck. Whatever. She had just been after those pearls because they were the one thing she felt like she could have to hold onto after the hell she'd gone through. But now that those were unattainable, she felt no reason to remain in Gotham any longer. She turned her back on Alfred and without a word, she backflipped out of the nearest window, very much like she had on the day she'd first encountered Bruce.

The days following that were something of a blur to Selina, when she looked back on them. She'd been packed and ready to leave Gotham at a moment's notice for months, ever since Bane had started causing chaos. She'd made her way to New York City, and with little trouble, managed to secure an apartment for herself in a matter of days. She'd already used the Clean Slate, Bruce's only gift to her, and with all the money she'd accumulated over time, it was more than easy to settle down comfortably. She had lived out of a suitcase for about a week or so before starting to make her new home livable. She forced herself to forget about Gotham, to attempt to move on, to find a release.

It wasn't easy, though. She was plagued by nightmares of Bane's rule of Gotham, and the final battle with him. Selina might have killed Bane herself, but the war wasn't won by her, it was won by Bruce flying that bomb over the river and sacrificing himself. The nightmares haunted her both during the day, and at night; sometimes it was just the sound of Bruce's back breaking when Bane slammed him on his knee, other times it was her last conversation with him.

"You could have gone anywhere, but you came back."

"So did you."

"I guess we're both suckers."

She'd wake up then, as she remembered kissing him for the second time, her heart pounding against her ribcage, and the tears pouring down her cheeks. She rarely cried, hell, she hadn't cried since the day she came home and found her mother dead, at least not that she could remember, but every time those nightmares came around, she was powerless against him.

She might have survived that battle, but she wasn't living. She couldn't stomach most foods, and the only time she ever truly felt human was when she was running, which she did often. She started to notice changes; her clothes hung loosely on her, dark circles formed under her eyes. She'd never had bags under her eyes. Her reflection repulsed her, but still she ran as though she could somehow escape her problems by running, but every night it was the exact same thing; fall asleep, have nightmares, wake up shaking and crying, repeat. Now she knew how Bruce had felt, all those years, and in all honesty, she couldn't blame him.

Autumn fell in New York City, almost six months after Selina had relocated there, and she was still running, despite the drop in temperature. She'd had to buy herself new workout gear as her old set was too loose for her new form. She liked to run in Central Park. The trees were all changing color and Selina found the sight somewhat comforting; though she might not be able to move on in her life, at least time was still passing by, and life was going on for most others. She stopped by one of her favorite spots in the park, right by the river, and she sat down beside it, taking a sip from her water bottle as she caught her breath.

Six months she'd been living like this. She no longer stole to survive, but lived off of what she'd earned while living in Gotham. Now all she ever seemed to do was skulk around her new apartment and run once or twice a day. Food? Who needed food? She was lucky if she managed to stomach one full meal a day. She wasn't living, she was surviving. For the first time in her life, Selina knew sorrow. She didn't even know how to begin to rebuild the person that she had been.

A slight movement from the corner of her eye caught Selina's attention. There was a man, or at least, Selina thought it was a man, sitting on a nearby bench, his face hidden by a newspaper that he was reading. Selina was pretty sure she'd seen that man over the last few days, always in the same spot, always with his newspaper. She hadn't really thought much about him, but she couldn't help but feel like he had been watching her. She rose to her feet and looked out at the water, but as she did, a flashback hit her hard. The vision of watching the Bat rise into the air, watching it disappear into the distance with the bomb, watching it explode in a mushroom-shaped cloud with the bomb still attached to it and –

Selina hadn't even realized that her knees had buckled, until she felt someone holding onto her, and the moment she realized it, her self-defense instinct kicked in. She pushed the person holding her up away with a growl, realizing that it was the man who had been reading his newspaper on the bench. He fell over, his long-ish hair falling over his face, "Sorry," Selina said roughly, clearing her throat slightly, her voice hoarse from non-use. "I didn't mean to—"

She froze as the man looked up, familiar green eyes meeting hers. She swallowed hard, not believing what she was truly seeing, "You…."

Bruce Wayne cleared his throat as well as he sat back on his heels, looking up at Selina. He knew he was in trouble, "Selina, don't get angry…."

It was too late, though. Selina launched at him, her dark brown eyes blazing as she punched Bruce hard over and over again, punching every inch of him that she could reach. She knew, had he wanted to, Bruce could have easily stopped her, with all his years of League of Shadows training, but for some reason, he wasn't stopping her. He took every last punch, letting her get each one out until she too sat back on her heels and glared at him, vaguely aware of a pain rising through her right arm, "You are real, aren't you?"

Bruce inhaled slowly through clenched teeth. He wasn't even sure where to begin processing the pain that was now coursing through his body thanks to Selina socking him over and over again. He was pretty sure he'd heard a loud crack somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth punch, but he wasn't sure, at that moment, whether it had come from his body or Selina's, "You tell me," He growled through clenched teeth. "You just punched me about twenty times. Jesus, Selina, are you sure you weren't trained by the League of Shadows?"

"If you're real, why didn't you fight back?" Selina growled right back, her eyes continuing to blaze at him. Bruce swallowed hard as he wasn't sure she wasn't about to launch at him again. He felt his body tense, ready to defend himself, just in case Selina did go for him again.

He finally managed a wry smirk as he and Selina stared at each other, "Look, I wouldn't beat up a woman, any more than you would beat up a cripple." Selina scowled at the echo of her words as she got to her feet at last, feeling the pain continue to rise along her arm. She held onto it gingerly as she began to pace back and forth.

"How are you alive?" She demanded at last, pausing mid-stride to glare at Bruce once again, who had also gotten to his feet. "And how did you find me? At least twelve million people on this island and you manage to find me…."

"I fixed the auto-pilot on the Bat not long after Fox gave it to me," Bruce said at last, he saw a flash of pain pass over Selina's face, and he wasn't sure whether it was the realization that he had lied to her, or her arm that had caused it. "I needed everyone to believe that I died then, Selina."

"Everyone," Selina echoed. "You mean everyone who ever bothered to give a damn about you?" She hissed. She glanced down at her body and shook her head, "When my knees gave out just now, I was having a flashback. I saw the Bat flying out over the river, and you supposedly dying in it. That's all I've been having these last six months; flashbacks and nightmares and panic attacks and crying fits—"

"You've been crying?" Bruce blinked. Somehow, he'd never imagined Selina as the type to cry over his death, she had always seemed much more closed off than that….

"I'm a goddamn human, you selfish son of a bitch!" Selina snarled, finally lashing out once again and slapping Bruce across the face with her right hand. She almost instantly regretted it as she felt the pain shoot through her arm. She clenched her jaw and inhaled slowly through her nose as she stood tensed, unsure of how Bruce would react to her slapping him. He said he wouldn't beat up a woman, but she clearly wasn't the normal woman any more than he was the normal man.

"Selina," Bruce said at last. He looked down to the arm that she was cradling in her left and frowned, "Are you alright?"

Selina looked at Bruce as though she had never seen him before, "Am I alright?" She echoed. "I've been living like a zombie for the last six months, going through hell because I was certain that you had died in that explosion, and then you all of a sudden turn up and ask me if I'm alright? Are you out of your freaking mind, Bruce?"

Bruce couldn't help but smile as he heard Selina's question, "Maybe I am," He admitted with a shrug. "But, you know what? I am alive, Selina. I'm alive, breathing, and aching, now that you mention it, probably due to being punched at least twenty times, but something tells me that you're in more pain than I am right now." He glanced down at her arm, "And that question was directed at your arm. I thought I heard a crack while you were walloping me."

Selina inhaled slowly through her nose and frowned, "Well, that would be just awesome; you fake your death, and I'm the one with the arm that's probably broken. How kind of you."

"Hey, you can't blame me for this," Bruce said, though his tone was kind. "You were the one punching me." He stepped towards Selina and saw her tense as he did so. He held up his hands up in surrender, "Relax, Selina. I just want to see your arm. Trust me, I've had enough injuries of my own to be able to tell if your arm is really broken."

Selina hesitated for a moment before she held out her arm. She felt a small jolt pass through her as Bruce gently took her arm and slid the sleeve of her sweatshirt up. Her arm, to her, seemed thinner and less muscular than it ever had been, and Selina watched as Bruce's reaction as he realized that as well. Sure, he himself looked beaten up, but he still seemed as muscular as always, just like the last day she'd seen him. His touch was enough to remind her that he was real. He was truly standing in front of her, examining her arm, as though no time had passed between them.

Instantly, Selina wrapped an arm around Bruce and pulled him close, kissing him deeply for the third time. She held him close, her heart racing as a low, possessive growl escaped Bruce's lips to her's. She slid her hand up beneath his shirt, feeling him shudder beneath her touch. Her hand rested against his chest, feeling his heart thundering powerfully against his ribcage. He was truly there with her, standing in front of her. He was alive.