It Catches Up With You – Chapter 1 – Biography
For the second time in under a year, Selina Kyle was in an airport terminal being handcuffed by a police officer. The only difference being that she was in Atlanta rather than Gotham International.
Had she been a villain, she may have wanted to mutter malevolently "curses, foiled again!" But Selina Kyle did not consider herself a villain. She wouldn't call herself a nice person. Nice people don't have FBI files several inches thick. Nice people don't attempt to resist arrest. Nice people don't have a past as haunted as Selina Kyle's.
Her father killed her mother when she was 5. Her father was the victim of a gangland murder who she was 10. She wasn't sorry for his death. She ensured it. He was the one doing unspeakable things to her and her sister Maggie. She was the one to tip off Falcone that Brian Kyle was doing work on the side for Maroni. The manner of his death wasn't pretty – pieces of the body being washed out the sewers in the weeks that followed.
Maggie was young enough to be adopted. Selina quickly fell out of the system. She fled the children's home days after Maggie left and started to fend for herself on the streets. Her first arrest followed weeks later for petty theft – her first attempt at house-breaking. She was given her first prison sentence at 11 in the (blandly named) Youth Services Centre. At 13 she was arrested again, this time for solicitation. The client had the cheek to also accuse her of stealing his watch before he got sent down for sex with a minor. A plethora of shoplifting and breaking and entering offences led at the age of 16 to her spending 3 months in Gotham Women's Correctional Centre before she escaped.
Escape was a beautiful thing for Selina Kyle – she headed for the Canadian border after breaking out. There she disappeared from the official radar, hitching a ride on a container ship out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. How she 'worked' her passage was irrelevant to her – if a girl is desperate…
Having always been afraid of flying she took the ship as far as Liverpool before heading to London and perfecting the art of theft. The British capital was like Gotham in many ways, except being less corrupt. She went from stealing to survive to stealing by commission. You're an oligarch who wants a file in the Russian embassy to disappear? A politician who wants incriminating set of photos destroyed? A City tycoon who needs a password to conduct some insider trading? A collector of fine art that can only be found in museums? Then Selina Kyle was the go-to girl.
Jewel thefts on the French Riviera skyrocketed once she hit Cannes, Marseilles and Nice. She picked up a particularly fine diamond necklace in Cannes – it was in the hotel room safe of an actress attending the film festival. The diamonds looked better on Selina than they did on her. It was such a shame she had to break up such a wonderful piece of art – the necklace itself would have been unsellable. Luckily, Selina knew diamond traders who wouldn't ask too many questions.
By 25 she had a worldwide reputation within the criminal classes. The serious players employed her. The naïve ones attempted to romance her whilst the ones who attempted to edge her out of the niche market she had created for herself were swiftly reminded that the Cat was still top of the tree.
She had planned to get out of the business by the age of thirty. She wouldn't call herself "in too deep" but when you've fraternised with both sides of the law for the best part of 2 decades, to escape its best to start afresh. She'd heard rumours of a device that would allow her to do such a thing: Rykin Data's Clean Slate.
Rykin Data got bought out by Daggett Industries. Then she made a mistake. She got cocky and got caught by Daggett when she tried to steal the USB drive containing the program. They made a deal – she would work for him to do as he pleased whilst he wouldn't turn her over to the cops. They parted but Selina was told to come back to live in Gotham permanently where Daggett and later Bane could make use of her talents.
His minion, Stryver gave her a few odd jobs. Then they offered her an out: she was told to get Bruce Wayne's fingerprints and in return she would get the Clean Slate.
The 'theft' wasn't difficult. Fingerprints are easy enough to life if you use the right dust and the fingerprints were all over the safe. But presented with the safe, she couldn't resist. Breaking it open only took her a few extra moments but she got a fine set of pearls as a bonus.
Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) she also met the Prince of Gotham himself: Bruce Wayne. The stunt with the arrow did genuinely surprise her. He was a good shot, for a recluse. He seemed surprised that she had managed to crack his 'unbreakable' safe. To Selina 'unbreakable' was a ridiculous word. Things are only unbreakable until they are broken. There is no proof of 'un-breakability' otherwise. Safe manufacturers think too much of themselves especially when their clients helpfully leave their prints all over the locking mechanism.
She didn't intend to meet him. Bruce Wayne was a problem albeit an attractive problem: a modern day Adonis, an overflowing bank account, powerful and influential. What more could a girl ask for? She felt attracted to him; more for the thrill of it than anything. The man still knew how to make an entrance. She felt her exit complemented it – even if exceptions to her bad manners had to be made – tripping up a cripple was frowned upon, even in polite society. But needs must.
Daggett then tried to double cross her to eliminate lose ends. If Selina Kyle was anything, she was not a lose end and she was expecting it. She managed to get out unscathed, but only just.
The next night was far more relaxing. All the glitz and glamour of Miranda Tate's charity ball allowed her to rub shoulders with Gotham's finest. What would they say if they knew a serial burglar was in their midst? She could resist wearing those satin ears. Selina considered most of them crooks who had made fortunes on the backs of the less fortunate. They wined and dined whilst children starved in the suburbs and the elderly froze in the winter. They were wining and dining for the last time in a long while; she had heard whispers and muttering for months about a Gotham revolution to be instigated by Bane. The people would rule themselves as Gotham was purged of the corrupt.
Her evening was marred by the Prince of Gotham once again. Bruce Wayne made his first public appearance in years. The gravitated towards one another over the course of the evening. He took back his pearls, she warned him of the coming storm. She made a quip about her ears. She kissed him…before stealing his car. The man should have taken better care of what was in his pocket other than his wallet. Lamborghinis don't come cheap. The Aventador she swiped off him was quite the machine. Shame it got written off in the chaos that followed. She supposed at the time that he could always buy a new one.
Then they bankrupted Bruce Wayne. She was trying to get the Clean Slate from Daggett, again. History repeated itself, and she got caught again. But this time she took Daggett hostage, flung him out of a window only to get 'saved' by the Batman. She had it under control but upon reflection, his assistance was useful, even if she had her gun snatched away from her. The 'thing' they flew away in was impressive, even if she didn't like flying. The blow that evening came from learning that the Clean Slate didn't exist.
Her time was up. She made move out of Gotham. She'd fly first class back to Europe. She was packing when a bankrupt Bruce Wayne came knocking. He offered her the Clean Slate in return for her cooperation in getting his 'big powerful friend' to Bane.
Delivering the Batman to Bane would even her score and settle her debts. It was business deal. But she felt awful after that night. Until Bane called him out, she didn't consider Bruce Wayne and the Batman to be one and the same. She felt sick. As if she had betrayed a friend. The last time she had felt like that was when she last saw Maggie as she left the home. It was as if her heart was breaking.
She didn't even know the man very well. He was civil, charming even. Not a completely chauvinistic asshole that the tabloid press had portrayed him as. She liked him. And he seemed to gravitate towards her. She felt genuinely sorry for Bruce's humiliation thanks to Daggett. She wasn't sorry that he had lost everything, only the manner in which his fortune was lost. She could still hear his back break in her nightmares. A sickening crack as the Dark Knight was unceremoniously deposed.
Once the shock had passed and ever the pragmatist, Selina aimed to get out of Gotham before Bane caught up with her. No doubt she was still a lose end. She nearly made it. If it wasn't for Blake, she would have. He had the audacity to believe that she was running from the law and didn't take the Bane threat seriously. How wrong he would be she thought as she was issued with an orange prison-issue jumpsuit before being sent to Blackgate. She was one of the last to be incarcerated under the Dent Act as a suspect in the disappearance of Bruce Wayne.
The 'liberation' of Blackgate by Bane less than a week later allowed her to escape from the constant jeering, abuse and cat-calling that the inmates provided her. Blackgate made Womens Correctional look like a cake walk. Her cell was flanked by a serial killer on her left and a gang boss – one of the minor Maronis – on her right. Freedom couldn't come quick enough.
The storm allowed her to disappear for moments at a time. Occasionally she would be asked to do a little work for Bane or one of his cronies in the new order but in general, everybody left her alone. She could get out of Blackgate but she couldn't get out of the city. She was trapped as the city fell to pieces around her. A city held hostage by a man his finger on the trigger for a nuclear bomb. A city abandoned by the Federal Government.
Chaos.
Chaos was the only word she could use to describe it. It was great for the first few days as the poor enjoyed the spoils of revolution. Then the dust settled and the beauty of the dream vanished as reality set in.
Selina was used to life on the streets once her apartment was trashed by looters. They didn't manage to access her reserve stash of gems or the secret compartment under the floor containing her cat-suit. She moved everything she thought was important into a lockup on near the Midtown Tunnel in the hope that she could escape through it once the time came.
The chaos worked in her favour as she managed to accumulate a significant cache of fine clothing, jewellery and art. Part of her felt she wasn't stealing but doing a public service with the latter, preserving it for the future. The city was dying and she didn't want to let it go just yet.
At the same time as building the cache, she also kept protecting the less well off. She was saviour of the downtrodden. As he would later say on his return, she was "pretty generous, for a thief."
Months passed before he managed to resurrect himself. Bruce Wayne as Batman came back with a bang. He gave her the Clean Slate and even opened his toyshop for him. That bike…
As quick as he returned, he was gone. Gone for good. Vaporised in a nuclear blast.
The city mourned the demise of the Batman. She mourned the loss of Bruce. All but a select few thought he had died during the occupation. His body could not be found. Less than half a dozen knew that he gave his life to save a city.
Selina Kyle lost the cat-suit as soon as she could and dropped off the radar as soon as the first relief trucks entered the city.
Not many attended the funeral of Bruce Wayne. Selina watched from the tree line as Alfred Pennyworth, Lucius Fox, John Blake and Jim Gordon unveiled a headstone for an empty grave in the Wayne family plot in the grounds of Wayne manor. She left a single white lily on the headstone once everybody had gone.
The winds were favourable on the day of the blast. The radiation cloud was blown out to sea but the City of Gotham was going to take month if not years to fully recover. There was nothing left in the city for Selina so she packed up and left.
During the occupation, she had broken into an abandoned garage in the Old Town. Under a dust sheet at the back of the garage was a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible in pale blue. During the sixth month occupation she restored the vehicle to its former glory and changed the colour from blue to gloss black. She also managed to rebuild the engine and tune it up to create a V8 monster. She also added a second gas tank in the trunk. The result was a very smart, very quick, very solid machine.
Before leaving, she split the cache dumping the large pieces in a van on the driveway of Wayne Manor. The small pieces she put in the trunk of her Mustang. She ran the Clean Slate as soon as internet access returned to the city.
Two weeks after the blast, Selina had left Gotham and driven to Atlanta. She intended to take a flight out of the country. She decided on Paris and bought her ticket in the terminal – First Class with United. She was going through security when the she was stopped by the TSA agents manning the desk.
The Clean Slate had proven to be too good to be true. Selina Kyle's name was on the No Fly List and she was in handcuffs for the second time in under a year. Thankfully they hadn't given her an orange jumpsuit or shackled her legs…yet.
A/N: Please tell me what you thought. More to follow soon, hopefully.