A/N: I meant to just have one little fluffy one-shot in this fandom and then leave it to better authors. Bat/Cat is one of those things that is practically too awesome for me to touch, whether it's Nolanverse, Burtonverse, BtAS, the comics, or even the good ol' camptastic WestKitt version. But then the Clean Slate inspires a conspiracy between Gibbs, Vimes, Kenobi, and Ballard to insure that I take at least one more little side-trip into the mind of Selina. Darn it, Paul, you're not even one of the muses I was holding for a friend, but I'll throw you a medicinal carrot this time...
Nothing worked exactly as promised, but she never expected it to. Bruce had given her the Clean Slate, all electronic records of one Selina Kyle had mysteriously vanished from anything connected to the grid, and she had started anew. But for every police database scrubbed of her fingerprints there were ten old warhorses like Gordon who barely trusted the streets beneath their feet, let alone computers, and there were still hard copies to lift from Gotham PD, (Gordon had granted her amnesty in the wake of the bomb, but he'd retire within a few years, leaving softer cops who'd want easier marks and the renowned cat burglar was too easy,) let alone from those early adventures abroad when she'd been young, stupid, and so pleased about getting across those old bridges that she had forgotten to watch behind her until they dragged her back across them.
The first time she'd used the Slate, she had sat outside the Gotham precinct, her antennae under her hat, waiting for an uproar, the howl of dispatchers as their screens winked out and the wails of sirens as the beat cops surrounded their half-witted hacker, the little scolding clicks from Gordon and his hot-blooded detective as the two personally handcuffed her and took her back to Blackgate. (Or to Arkham, where there was nobody left but the Joker's laughter ringing down the halls and into one's brain.) The radio chatter didn't change. No one came up to her park bench. The next time she saw Blake, glancing up at her two nights later as she crouched paralyzed on a roof three buildings down from the precinct, back in the black leather catsuit,- trying to decide if it would be worth wasting her only chance at a new life because Bruce had surely had given her but one shot with this and she would get caught digging through binders of old files or worth throwing away her only chance because her binder would still be there, weighing down her unshackled heels until some bright-eyed do-gooder realized that these papers were missing from the system, - the detective deliberately looked away, chewing his lip as he searched the sky for the darkened shadow of the Bat-Signal. Nobody had lit the thing since the night after the bomb, and nobody was answering it, either.
When Selina finally steeled her nerves and snuck through a rear window with a faulty lock, a thick file was waiting for her on Gordon's desk. She dug through the archives and Blake's desk for backup copies before she left in loose rags that smelled a little like pot with the undercover cops and burnt the binder that night. Jen hooted and poured a bottle onto the fire, declaring this round to Batman, may he and their records rest forever in a similar number of pieces.
Selina still had some cleaning up to do. She had stayed in Gotham a week after the explosion, a week longer than she had meant to, and the first of the bridges was almost rebuilt. When some idiot turned on the Bat-Signal, she took the light blazing over the empty manor (halfway transformed into an orphanage now, but the building inspectors hadn't finished trooping in and out when she'd gone back for the pearls, and she'd breezed in and out amongst their number) as her own sign to ramp off into the night. Jen would be better off left away from this, at least until Selina had buried the last of the Cat beside her Batman and Gotham offered better transport out. The water beneath the bridge was melted, between the blast-wave and the quickly approaching spring, but it was still too cold to swim. From the mainland, Selina fenced a few items less precious than those pearls and bought a ticket to London.
She tired several aliases through her wild jumps across the European borders: Felicia Hardy, Holly Robinson, even Patience Philips for a few days, though the last never suited her. She ran through them quickly in her eagerness to start clean, start afresh, start with no history or ties or record to pull her feet back out from under her. By the time she'd reached Holly, she'd learned to erase these women from existence before the hard copy was even written, getting bolder and more confident in the Slate. In the right hands, this little file was a dream come true. It just left her further and further in debt to a dead man, which left her sitting in a hostel or café most mornings with a laptop in hand, watching children on the streets and wondering if she was really making a fresh start or just getting better at being the Cat.
All it took was two words, three syllables, four letters each, and the Clean Slate was weighed down forever by its attached ghosts.
"Miss Kyle." The voice was so rough that she barely recognized it at first. He'd always had that hoarse baritone growl he adopted when he put on the suit, of course, as if that were enough to change his stance, his build, his scent and render him unrecognizable. She knew who this man was, most certainly, before she'd even turned around, but his identity was simply impossible. There had to be some other brunet bruiser with bad knees and powerful arms that sounded like that, who was as observant as that, who could catch her with two words even before he crossed the plaza between them as quick and silent as the memory of a haunting. It had to be someone else, because Bruce Wayne never smiled so bright or moved so freely without the weight of his city to crush him down.
She took his face in his hands, sensing the thrum of his pulse beneath her fingers, and she could tell that it was from the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste as she sent her nose a little too sharply into his when she couldn't decide whether she'd rather kiss him here and now in public or knock him out with a sharp head butt, drag him back to the hostel, and bar the doors and windows until she could be certain that this was real, this was him, this was past and future and hope all bound up in one man laughing despite the boxed nose and lips pressing firmly against his. He had grown that beard again, like when she had first seen him sight her down that bow before shuffling off with the cares of Gotham dragging him down over his cane, but it no longer overshadowed those dark eyes. "You're late," she replied, catching his hand and pulling him along down the nameless old Italian plaza.
But he had never borne that weight all by himself, even if he'd tried to take it all upon his own shoulders in the past. Now, at least part of that concern was spread out far enough to turn that millstone of Gotham's future around his neck into a clean slate. Not a fresh one - no matter how many other stations Selina managed to raid, her record would be written on every standing building and refurbished bridge in the city, - but clean enough that the writing and scratches beneath didn't obscure the new life that they might choose to write in their clean start.