Something outside changed. She could feel it - the hairs standing on edge at the back of her neck. Or maybe it was the silence that fell outside. Something was coming.

The flames hadn't reached that part of Old Town yet. Some part of Selina was disappointed - she hoped to see this place burn. She should never have come back.

No time for sentimentality; no time for memories, for thinking about his lips on hers and the look on his face and the way he just stood there, smiling at her after five whole months, as if nothing had happened. None of that. She should pack up and leave - now.

The news had already reached her ears. They weren't letting anyone leave the city. She'd missed her chance. She should have left when she had that stupid bike at her disposal and the road was clear and he didn't expect her to come back.

She should have left before she had the chance to see him blowing himself up to Kingdom Come.

Packing was useless now. She'd never get out. But she packed anyway. Just in case, she thought. Just in case. Always be ready.

"Selina." She jumped at the voice, the knife already in her hand, advancing at the man behind her. But it was only Blake. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't do that," she scolded him, then went back to packing.

"You need to get out of here."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?"

"No, I mean now." There was an urgency in his voice. Alarm. Fear? She turned around again. Anger in his eyes, but that wasn't surprising. She got used to seeing the anger in his eyes.

"What is it?"

"You're on their list. You're one of the targets."

"Bane's people? Bane's people are a joke, he's gone, they don't have any - "

"The police. The army. The National Guard. They're all here, and you're on the top of their list." He paused. "They know what you did."

"What, save the city, work against Bane, that sort of thing?"

"They know you worked for Bane."

"I didn't work for him," the words came out all angry and sharp, before she had the chance to stop them. "I survived in this place for five months, I'm not some fancy cop, and yeah, he left me alone and I left him alone but I did not work for him."

"I'm not talking about that." He looked almost apologetic. "I'm talking about before."

Before...

"They know you turned... him over to Bane."

She didn't have any clever retort for that.

"They know taking out... the Batman," he settled in the end, "was the last thing Bane needed to do before he could take over the city. They're calling it treason."

Outside, the calls and noise of the rioters changed. Now there was gunfire and screams and something that sounded like a cannon, and it was getting closer.

"You need to get out of here, right now. You can't be caught."

For just a moment, panic settled in. She could always take care of herself, could always come up with the next move, the next target, the next plan. She always knew what to do. But now there were the riots and the army and the fight earlier today and she was exhausted and above all the explosion, far in the bay, and she couldn't let herself think about that, about him, and it was all her fault. "Where am I going to go?" The words escaped her in a whisper. Blake didn't answer.

It was the look on Blake's face that snapped her back into her senses. She didn't need anyone's pity, especially not some stupid cop who didn't know anything about the world.

"They must have already gone through the dockland apartments," she said. "I'll go there, they won't go looking there a second time, not if they're trying to take over Old Town. I think the guys here can keep them busy for a while, don't you?"

She could see from his expression that he wasn't buying her smile, just like he could see through her airy attitude, but she didn't care. Survival first. The rest later.

She sneaked out under the cover of the fighting. It was easier for her than most of the poor souls who were trying to escape what had become a war zone - she took the rooftops, climbed through windows and fire escapes, far away from the fight.

She almost made it out of Old Town before her luck had run out. In the end, she wasn't the only one to figure out that the rooftops were safer than the streets and, three blocks before the point where Old Town met Grand, she saw them.

She recognised them immediately - Bane's men. And they recognised her. And by now, they knew whose side she was on in the end.

The irony, she couldn't help but think and smile, even though there was nothing funny in the situation. Five months she kept her head down and her loyalties only to herself. Five months she kept clean, and Bane kept his word and left her alone. Right at the end she picked a side, and now that the fight was over, that choice was going to cost her her life.

"What's up, boys?" she asked, the knife already in her hand.

The fight ended faster than she thought. To her surprise, she was still standing by the end of it.

She looked around. She remembered cutting the first man's face, the man who was now crawling and bleeding on the roof; she remembered kicking down the second man, the one with the broken lower back who was doubled up, unable to move. But the third... she could have sworn she never even got the chance to touch him. But he was gone.

She stood frozen in place, all of her senses on alert. For just a moment, she thought she caught a whiff of sea salt, of fresh air from the bay, even though Old Town was so far into the city that the sea breeze never made it there. And then the moment was gone.

She had no time to worry about a disappearing thug, no time to daydream of sea breeze. The soldiers down below noticed the movement or heard the noise, she wasn't sure which, but she could see from the commotion that they spotted something was going on. She had three blocks yet until she was at Grand and free, and she had to move right now, or all was lost.

It took her five more hours to evade the blockades and the soldiers and reach the docklands neighbourhoods. A ghost town.

The police - army? National Guard? All of them? - weren't kind to the neighbourhood. Half of the people had been arrested, she could see, whole families dragged out of their homes. And the homes themselves - she could see the apartments through the lit windows. Broken furniture, whatever little there was of it; documents and clothes spread around. Babies crying and people shouting still. And so many windows where no light could be seen.

She picked one of those places. Abandoned, searched, half destroyed, but there was no way of knowing whether the owners were in one of the military trucks, or perhaps they had already moved out by then, left this forsaken place at some point during the last five months to a better neighbourhood. Did it matter? She didn't know anymore. All she knew was that for tonight, she had a bed, somewhere to collapse and rid herself of the day. Of the last five months.

Sleep didn't come. She closed her eyes in the darkness but all she could see was his face. His smile. I admit I was a little let down, he said, and so light-hearted, as if it was only a small favour he had asked of her and she didn't deliver. No sign of the betrayal in his eyes, the surprise when he looked at her that night when she led him to Bane, knowing there was no escape for him.

She sat up abruptly in bed, darkness all around her. There it was again. That feeling, that prick at the back of her neck. The knife that was never too far was already in her hand. And a whiff, a whiff of sea salt...

"Ms Kyle?"

She knew that voice. She didn't know where from, but she knew that voice. She said nothing, got up as quietly as she could from the bed. The old man was smiling when he aimed his flashlight directly at her.

It came to her then. She knew who he was now, even though she couldn't remember his name. "You're the butler," she said.

He nodded. "There are rumours," he said quietly, "they say..."

"He took the bomb. He saved the city."

More than a butler, she realised then as she saw him sitting down, dumbfounded, broken.

"I'm sorry," she offered and he looked at her sharply. She wondered how much did he know.

"I wasn't here," he said after a while - after he could control his voice again, she suspected.

"Some time you chose to take a vacation." The butler said nothing. "I think he was glad. That you weren't here." Nonsense, of course - she hadn't even considered the butler until he showed up and had no clue what Bruce Wayne thought of the man. But tonight she felt charitable, at least towards friends of Wayne. "He wouldn't have wanted you to go through this, like the rest of us."

"Well, Ms Kyle," the butler got up. "I should leave now."

Stay, the word lingered uninvited on the tip of her tongue. Let's talk about him some more. I want to hear your stories. But she just gave him her most charming smile and said, "I'll be seeing you around."

He looked right through her smile and her charm, then nodded and said, "Good night."

Through the glassless window, she watched him leave, a lone figure walking quietly in the abandoned street and into the darkness. Soon he was lost to the dark - much like his master, she thought with a pang and turned her gaze up. Her eyes met the dark shadow of Wayne Tower. Outside of her window, everything went still and calm. It was that hour of the night. And a whiff, a whiff of sea breeze and dampness here, so close to the docks, to the bay.

"Good night, Mr Wayne," she whispered, and a small smile full of melancholy came to her lips despite herself. It was that kind of day, she thought. A day for stupid sentimentality. But the day was over.

She went back to bed. Tomorrow she would start afresh. Clean slate.