Disclaimer: All I own is Father Brian.
A/N: All right...so I did update. I still don't know how long this story is going to go on for, and this may be the last chapter, or it may not. We'll see. I do have some ideas for where this could go, but they're not heavily fleshed out, so I don't wanna promise anything. Please R&R!
The Man in the Church
It was raining heavily, but Selina Kyle did not care. She made her way through the rain, in only a hoodie and jeans, her black hair plastered against her white face. She didn't know where she was going; she only knew that she could not stay in the hospital any longer, pacing back and forth in the bright lights, hearing half-whispered conversations, occasionally getting quick updates from a nurse or doctor who took pity on her—updates that left her more and more anxious.
This is my fault, she thought to herself, and she stopped on the side of the road, clutching her hands to her stomach, wondering if she was going to be sick. She was no stranger to vomiting, although usually the reason was distinctly more physical than psychological.
She felt a prickling sensation along the back of her neck, as if somebody were watching her, and she turned sharply, but saw nothing other than the streetlights glowing faintly, surrounded by rain-enhanced auras of pale yellow. She rubbed a hand across her face and began to walk again, her muscles obeying her commands only loosely.
Gotham flowed around her, like paint-smeared colors on a canvas. She passed bright neon lights, smeared and fogged by rain, men standing beneath awnings, smoke curling up from white cigarettes, women in unbuttoned raincoats and not much else, who leaned over the men seductively and shamelessly. She paused for a moment in the lights and warmth of an open doorway and found that she had begun to shiver. She blinked vaguely up at the sign of the club over the door, which she couldn't even read through the water blurring her lashes. Or maybe they were tears. Usually, she despised tears, but right now, she felt numb and cold inside, and she couldn't even tell if she was actually crying.
She moved on when a man approached her and murmured something vaguely suggestive. She considered punching him, but her limbs were heavy and weak, so she just shook her head tiredly and walked onward.
Her feet were cold. She looked down and was surprised to see she was barefoot. Hadn't she put on her shoes before leaving? Maybe not…thinking back, she had just—had enough. Looked at Ivy, drooping with weariness, bent over like a thirsty plant. She'd vaulted out of the window before she had even been able to think about what she was doing.
A stray cat mewed pitifully from an alleyway, and she paused long enough to offer it a modicum of fish and scratch it behind the ears. Its ribs stuck out, and it had several sores on the backs of its legs. Selina sighed and stretched her arms out to it, but it gave her a frightened look and dashed back into the alley.
"God," she mumbled. "Even the cats hate me now."
She leaned against the crumbling brick wall of the alley, pressing her forehead into the rough stone. "I should have killed him when I had the chance," she whispered. Pain was growing in the back of her throat, and she tried not to think of Harley lying there on the bed, weltering in blood, her pitifully torn face trying to smile.
"Oh, Harls," Selina whispered miserably. "This is all my fault."
Her feet carried her onwards. It was getting darker as she left the downtown area of Gotham behind, and she found herself en route to Wayne Manor. She gritted her teeth and pounded her palm into her face. "God damn it, Bruce," she muttered. "God damn it, why aren't you here?"
And what the hell was wrong with her? She didn't want him here. She didn't want him to coddle her and protect her and be there for her. Damn him.
She was suddenly assaulted with images of what Hush had done to Harley. She'd been naked when they'd found her, after all…had he seduced her? Harley wasn't an easy girl to seduce, but she and Ivy had been after her for weeks to forget the Joker and try to get back into the dating pool. Not that she'd meant "jump into bed with the next guy who asks," but Harley wasn't exactly good at fine distinctions like that.
Oh god, I hope he seduced her. If he hadn't—if her friend had been raped as well as tortured—she felt bile rising in the back of her throat again, and she had to stop walking as dry heaves racked her body. And then she thought of Hush—looking like Bruce, always looking like Bruce—forcing a screaming Harley down onto a bed and—No. No. Alfred wouldn't have let that happen—but he let this happen, didn't he? She must have been screaming…
She was too cold to stay out in this storm any longer. And it was getting worse. Lightning crackled across the sky, closely followed by a low rumble of thunder. She found her legs pumping as she ran up a grassy hill toward a darkened building. She pushed the door open and stumbled inside.
The priest looked up from the altar, startled.
"Oh—I'm sorry," Selina stuttered, reaching for the door.
"No, it's fine," he said hastily. He was young for her idea of a priest—late forties, possibly, reddish hair streaked with gray.
"I didn't realize this was a church," she said nervously. "I'll just be going."
"Wait," he said, his voice soft, almost coaxing. "You look soaked through, my daughter. Can't I get you something hot to drink?"
The tone in his voice was strangely familiar, and as she placed it, she had an inane urge to giggle. Come here, sweetie. I won't hurt you—here's the nice fish. Wouldn't you like the nice fish? Well—what worked on stray cats ought to work on Catwoman. And she was terribly cold and didn't want to be alone anymore. But—
"I'm not religious," she said bluntly. "I didn't come here on purpose."
"Yes?" he said, moving slowly down the aisle toward her. "Fortunately for you, I'm not in the habit of worrying about religion when I see a woman who's clearly in trouble and also freezing cold."
She felt herself blushing, like a chided kid in school. "Sorry," she mumbled.
"Come on in," he offered. "And don't apologize, I understand the sentiment."
"Please don't try to convert me," she said nervously.
He chuckled. "How's this—I won't try to convert you if you don't roll your eyes if I use the word 'God' in a sentence unironically?"
She found herself smiling, "Deal."
He led her past the altar and through a door at the back, into a cozy little room with a stove and refrigerator. It was brightly lit, and a pair of yellow curtains with sunflowers on them hid the stormy night outside.
"Sit," he said, and she raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'm not a dog," she said.
"No, but you are close to collapsing. I amend my phrase—please sit."
She was about to argue, but he pulled out the chair for her, and her legs wobbled of their own accord. She sat down with a sigh of relief.
"Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?"
"Hot chocolate, please. With lots of milk."
He glanced at her, and she realized that even in the warm kitchen she was shivering. Her thin, soaked sweatshirt clung to her curves and abruptly she was suspicious of his motives again, even if priests weren't traditionally interested in women. She crossed her arms defensively across her front. Well, it wasn't as if she couldn't handle herself if he tried anything.
A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth, and he turned back to the stove top. She expected him to start talking, but he was silent, concentrating at the task at hand, and they sat in semi-companionable silence, while the smell of heating milk trickled to her nostrils and calmed her.
"Now," he said, as he brought over a steaming cup of hot chocolate. "Do you want to talk about it?"
She was ready to say no, when something else entirely came out of her mouth, "I—don't know."
"Well, let's just talk, then, shall we? I'm Father Brian Young. And you are—"
She paused. "You can call me Sally."
"Sally, then. You seem pretty suspicious of the church."
She shook her head. "I just haven't been in one in—a while." And the last time, I was retrieving a rather expensive holy relic. "And I don't think they'd really approve of me. My living isn't strictly on the—right side of the law."
She saw him glance down at the v-necked scoop of her hoodie and tightened her arms about her. "I'm not a prostitute," she said.
"Sorry," he said. "It's just the first thing I think of when someone says something like that. It seems to be one of the more common—occupations—for women in Gotham."
She snorted. "Yeah. Well—I'm not. My sister—" her voice broke, thinking about Maggie. "My sister used to be a nun."
"Used to?"
"Not a nun, exactly—I think she went to a convent school. Maybe she was a nun. We—we were separated as children. And she—I got her husband killed."
"I see."
"Not on purpose—I don't mean that. Just—somebody from my life got into her life to—to get back at me for something. And she—I can't help her. And now…"
Her voice was shaking. She had never meant to say anything about Maggie. "Now my best f-f-friend…"
Tears gathered at her eyes again.
"It's all right," he said seriously, though he made no move to touch her.
"God." She pinched her fingers with the bridge of her nose. "Sorry. I don't have many people left but my two best friends…and she might die, or—I don't know. There was blood everywhere."
"I see," he said seriously. "What happened?"
"Same basic thing that happened to my sister," she said bitterly. "Some guy in my life doesn't like me—he used me to get back at an old boyfriend and I got back at him for it—and he wants to know where I am, so he takes her and…" Harley's naked body, lying on her stomach on the bed, blood welling from deep incisions on the back of her knees, her left arm twisted and bent in two places it shouldn't bend, her right hand nailed to the bed with a batarang, and when she turned her face, blood and a Glasgow grin where her cheek ought to be…
"You wouldn't care," she said wearily. "We're not…good people. You'd say she deserved it—call her a ha-harlot, I suppose." She leaned her forehead against the table. "God," she whispered. "I hope she was a harlot—I hope he didn't rape her…" She looked up defensively. "I suppose you think that's sinful of me."
He shook his head. "No. I may, objectively, think that it is wronger of her to sleep with somebody than for her to be raped, but I understand why you want it to be true. And even if she has made what I view to be mistakes, that doesn't mean I think she deserved anything terrible to happen to her."
He finally did put out a gentle hand and squeezed her shoulder. "I've seen many sins during my years in Gotham. I would rather see a harmless sin than one that burns and consumes the victim."
She found herself smiling a little, but thinking of Harley wiped the smile back off her face. "It's my fault," she said brokenly.
"No," he said quickly, almost harshly. "It is not your fault any more than it would be your friend's fault if she were raped. It is the fault of the person who hurt her."
Hot rage she had been trying not to feel swept through her heart. "Maybe so," she whispered. "But you wouldn't approve of how I feel about him."
"You probably want to kill him," he said softly. "It's only natural. He hurt your friend badly."
"I've killed people before," she said flippantly. "I could kill him. I should."
"Should? Yes—it would stop him from hurting anyone else. No—you'd only injure yourself more."
She sneered. "I don't believe in souls."
He shrugged. "But you probably believe in a psyche, after all. And I imagine you know how murder warps the psyche, don't you?"
He held her eyes with his own deep brown ones, and she was the one to look away first.
"I'd better get going," she said roughly. "She might be out of surgery by now."
"All right," he said. "I hope she's all right."
She got up, and he rose at the same time. "Let me lend you an umbrella," he said.
She managed a watery smile. "Thanks."
Five minutes later, as she paused at the exit to the church—"I'll try not to kill him, Father. Really."
He nodded, smiling. "That's good." She glanced back as she walked down the hill away from the church, the rain pounding heavily against the old umbrella. "And Selina—" he called after her, and she stopped, the name thudding into her skull like a club.
"Wh-what?"
"Be careful! I believe strange forces rise against you, Selina Kyle, and you are more vulnerable than ever."
The door swung shut, punctuating his last word, and she stood staring back until it occurred to her that she desperately needed to get back to the hospital to find out how Harley was doing.