Disclaimer: I don't own any DC Comics content.
Before the fighting and the drinking, before her mother had put that bullet into her brain and her father blamed Selina for still breathing, Selina had been happy. Though she still had dreams in which her father arrived home drunk and grabbed her by the arm, shaking her small body and screaming that she needed to stop looking at him with her mother's eyes, she had just as many dreams of being too short to reach the kitchen counter and her smiling mother handing her a fresh baked white chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookie. It was one of those dreams that she awoke from tonight, inhaling deeply with her eyes still closed as if she could still smell their warm, brown sugar sent from this side of consciousness. She thanked the Lord for dreams—those small favors—but then sighed, because she didn't know whether or not there was anyone up there to thank for her pathetic existence. Selina shifted against her especially worn flannel sheets, rubbing her cheek against their softness, inhaling a long forgotten scent.
Cigarette smoke… Eau D'Hadrien…and a whiff of fine spirits…
Eau D'Hadrien?
"Hello, beautiful," said the deep voice. Selina, panic stricken, wrenched herself up to see Mark Grady watching her from across the small, rundown bedroom. He raised an immaculate blonde eyebrow beneath the brim of his fedora and straightened the lapels of his black silk dress shirt. His thick gold chain and zoot pants complimented his alligator skin cap toe five-eye bluchers as well as the mocking smile that shot terror into her heart and adrenaline into her veins. "You miss me, kitty cat?"
"No!" her mind shrieked. "No, no, no!"
Selina screamed loudly and awoke with a start to an empty room in an empty apartment. She chucked a crystal vase sitting innocently on her nightstand at the wall where the figment of Grady once stood before realizing that his presence was indeed that, unreal, and quickly berating herself for a wasted night's work and the payoff she would now miss. She groaned and flopped back onto her pillow, relieved the jersey bedding no longer held that awful scent of ripe citrus, that she'd escaped the dirty walls and broken floors and rickety bed she'd once sought refuge in every night.
She threw off the dark red plush comforter and sat up slowly, checking the clock. 9:21 meant that Mabel would arrive in nine minutes, and Mabel was never late.
Groaning with the pain of last night's physical exertion (pain her adrenaline had heretofore masked), Selina hobbled over to her spotless shower and turned up the steam, reflecting as she worked a rich lather through her long blonde hair. The day ahead would be far easier than those long past, the night more precarious, but also more precious. Nights marked off her time with the Caped Crusader…that Batman that her fellow Gothamites were so enamored with or alarmed by, depending on their social status and side-of-the-law residency.
She groaned as she turned up the water temperature, gradually scalding her long legs. Selina ached powerfully, and later examination before the bathroom mirror showed her why; an enormous, deep purple bruise bloomed across her upper back. Smaller, lighter bruises were forming on her thighs and lumbar area. She was tender to the touch, particularly her collar bone, but otherwise unmarked. And that, she thought critically, is what you get for falling off the fire escape at a building's fourth story and onto a closed metal dumpster. She was lucky she hadn't been paralyzed…She could have broken the neck she now rubbed regretfully. She could have let him catch her, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to end their game of cat and mouse.
Or bat and cat. Whatever.
Mable opened the apartment door just as Selina stepped out of the bedroom wearing black slacks and a fitted gray turtle neck sweater. Selina's assistant was a quiet woman with an unassuming stature and long auburn hair. Her round, black metal glasses, knee-length pencil skirt, and loose cream coloured blouse completed her demure picture, the one for which Selina loved her. In her world comprised of Gotham Heights' aristocrats and Bowery filth, the privilege of friendship with an inconspicuous woman helped Selina retain her sanity. She had so few friends who didn't run around in green leotards or harlequin costumes, if she could those…acquaintances…as friends. Not that she blamed them entirely for their criminality. Pamela had noble (if skewed) intentions, and the Joker had Harley so brainwashed that she hardly stood mentally competent to understand her villainy. Yet, frankly, Selina was the only "anti-hero" (what a word) among them, answering to her own moral code, and she wasn't entirely certain she trusted the two on the rare occasions that she came into contact with them.
Mabel dropped her key with a clatter into a small ceramic tray on the door's side table and walked toward the kitchen counter, her arms full of brown paper grocery bags. Selina's apartment was primarily a flat, the living room graced by huge glass balcony doors open to a pristine, quartz-countered kitchen. A west hallway lead to a guest room, bathroom, and laundry room, while an east hallway lead to her luxurious master suite. Like all upper-class Gothamites, she'd forsaken true modernity for art-deco antiquation; though she was not without her advanced creature comforts, her apartment appeared old-fashioned.
"I've found the brand of tuna you wanted, Selina," began Mable as she unloaded the bags onto the counter. "Is this for you or Isis?"
"Isis," Selina muttered, picking up the tin can and examining the label. "I'm trying something new; the lactose-free cream made a nice base for my concoctions, but I need something a little hardier to feed her…"
Speak of the devil, Selina thought. As she opened the can, the black cat came running from the laundry room where was kept her litter box and perched herself on a counter stool, meowing insistently.
"Yes, baby," Selina practically purred as the emptied the can's contents onto a small, porcelain saucer. "This is for you."
Mable continued to restock the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets as Selina added fresh peas and carrots to Isis' food and placed the small dish by that which held the animal's water above an oval mat on the kitchen floor. The cat ran toward her and began to devour the fish, stopping only briefly to rub herself gratefully against Selina's leg. Selina scratched Isis behind the ears.
"You've got a meeting with Demario and Sumbawa in two hours," Mable said, finishing up with the groceries and tossing the paper bags into the trash. "Have you ever considered recycling?"
But Selina wasn't listening. Far too distracted with her thoughts of the previous night (and her dream), she remained crouched on the floor, petting Isis absentmindedly.
"Selina?" Mable tried again, moving toward her with a hand outstretched. "'Lina?"
Selina snapped around suddenly, her figure inexplicably drooping when she caught sight of her assistant. "Sorry, Mable. I wasn't listening. What were you saying?"
Mable sighed, folding her small hands before her and leaning back against the counter, her head slightly hung. "The meeting, Selina. You have a meeting in two hours with the execs down at Newsome Global, about the conservation project?"
"Ugh," Selina groaned as she rose from her crouched position, leg muscles burning. "That was today?" She ran a long, thin hand over her face blearily.
"And the charity auction…you remember?" Mabel's voice perked subconsciously, and Selina detected the change. "With Bruce Wayne?"
Selina let her head fall back against the refrigerator and sighed. "Mable…Bruce and I are just friends."
"Don't you think he'd like to be more?" she countered with a shy smile.
Selina shook her head and then rubbed her neck. "I…I just don't have time for that right now. Life is complicated enough." Her mind wandered to last night's heist: the rush of a successful burglary and the thrill of the hunt. Really, though she ran and he pursued, she felt the huntress during their brief pre-chase encounters, and she wasn't even sure why she enjoyed baiting the man—no, the legend—so much…
And she didn't know anything about his life or circumstances, but something about him…well, something about him nearly made her hair stand on end, and not entirely in a negative way. Bruce was kind and considerate, charming and intelligent, but he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth that no one could deny. He was so far removed from the squalor that dominated her life such a short time ago, so far removed from the violence that took Holly…
"I just can't, Mabel," she insisted, "Bruce isn't right for me."
The meek Mable lowered her eyes briefly before changing the subject. "Would you like me to get your garnet gown cleaned?"
"No," Selina sighed, grabbing a cup of coffee from the automatic pot, "that's alright." Mischievously, a Cheshire grin lit her face. "I think I'll wear the burgundy."