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Catharsis
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"Baby, you're the only light I think I ever saw."
John Mayer, "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room"
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The stars came out and filled the heavy, swollen sky, but they just didn't seem to have the energy to brighten it.
In her cloth shoes and braids, Selina felt like a child. It was an amazingly clear night, of cloudless and sparsely peopled – the bitter chill in the air, harbinger of the harsh coming winter, seemed to drive even the few homeless denizens of Gotham's smallest park to warmer places. The trees, presumably always haggard from the stresses of growing in such a metropolitan place, seemed especially still tonight. They were, Selina guessed, expending so much energy holding on to the last of their crinkled brown leaves that they had none left to sway. It was tense, but peaceful – one thoughtful in the midst of a flashing, sprawling city. It was a shame that, at such a sweet, vespertine moment, everything from here looked dim.
It must have been after midnight. Too late to go home, anyway. Selina rubbed her thumb across the back of Diablo's ear and felt him twitch, dreaming. What a sight she must have been: a mature woman dressed in cut-off jeans, hair tied in loose pigtails, sitting demurely on a tree-shaded park bench – with a four hundred pound panther curled up beside her, his head in her lap. It was a testament to the craftsmanship of the bench that it did not buckle or break.
Selina smoothed her fingers over the beast's lush fur, as black and glossy as the night sky. His deep, measured breathing radiated from his powerful body, and Selina felt it underneath her hands. She felt a strange envy of the savage creature – his instincts were his guide, his only faith. For Diablo there were no tumultuous emotions, no hatred or anguish. Even more than that, his body was sensible; as he needed to he found food, exercised, and when it came time that his body was worn out he slept. Selina didn't feel tired in the slightest. There was too much on her mind.
It was over. She and Bruce had finally come to an end.
It was strange, not being utterly convinced that she loved him, that she deserved him. But all of a sudden it was over, and she didn't know what she wanted – whether that was Bruce Wayne, or something else.
There was a part of her that very much wanted him – the part that remembered the feeling of his strong arms wrapped tightly around her and his hot breath in her mouth, the passion they had shared. But there was another part of her that wasn't sure she loved him anymore, or even if that passion had ever been love. And there was another, wholly separate part of her that was sick of passion entirely.
She thought back on all the silly desires she'd had, all the foolish things she'd done because of him. She remembered one thing in particular: one wish, a daydream really, about what she'd mean to him. She'd wanted him to see her as… his angel. His source of light. The idea seemed so ludicrous, even laughable – that she'd thought herself capable of being anyone's light. Especially Bruce's. That man – he didn't need a northern star, he needed a veritable sun. And the sick thing was, so did she. She was made of darkness every bit as much as he was, and she knew it, now. What a pair they'd made, both trying to make themselves into something different, something brighter, both unable to do so; both convinced that they were on the ascent, and both dragging each other down.
There was no denying that the shock had sent her reeling, but she realized all too soon that losing Bruce was not so shocking. Not directly, anyway. He was a direction, a destination – not so much for her, as for the force of everything she felt, all the raw passion, the force of her fierce and wildly different emotions – love, lust, hate, anger and vengeance. It overwhelmed her, the power of them. What hurt, what really hurt, was not the lack of Bruce, but the remaining presence of everything else that had gone along with him. All of those feelings were still inside her, crashing into walls and each other, burning up with no escape. No Bruce; no target. Nowhere to go and nothing to burn but her.
She waited until the sky turned milky charcoal with Gotham's dirty-city version of twilight. God, it hurt like hell to be like this, so still and helpless, trying to be innocent and failing. It hurt so much less to be in motion, to be vicious and smoky and sexual – it made it so easy to smokescreen, child's play to deflect all that pain and Christian-like contrition with a wicked, fang-toothed grin. Selina thought she'd like to take a stiff-bristled brush to her soul and scratch out all of that smoke and subterfuge. She could make herself raw with purity, if she had the strength. It would hurt, but it would be martyrdom, a good kind of pain.
As the first splotches of sunlight appeared above the stolid concrete building fronts, she knew it wouldn't last, and she'd go back to the way she was. The thrumming ache would fizzle out, this strange illness would pass and she would reawaken as "creature of the night" as she had always been. Some souls were just stained black, and that was okay.
It was a mystery, that sensation of morning. It was sweet, like the evening, but in a different way.
She felt a ripple run through Diablo's skin. A chill wind swept in from the sea, lifting the autumn leaves still left on the small, urban trees and ushering clean air into the heart of the city. Relishing the bite of the cold, Selina inhaled deeply. She knew it was inadequate.
But this was her purge.