Revelations

Selina doesn't bother asking how Bruce knows Maggie's location, or how long he was planning to keep that information from her. The Bat has a talent for lying by omission. If no news is good news, then perhaps he thought he was doing her a favor. And to be fair, the news that Selina's sister is alive but again severely mentally and physically impaired after Sionis' last attack might have just about destroyed her a few months ago. Maybe he wanted to protect her from the truth.

She makes a mental note to have that argument with him later.

For now, they are busy with another.

"I still don't see why you insist on going alone," Bruce chides. Half-dressed, he and Selina stand together in the Batcave's armory arguing in soft, heated tones. Bruce notices, but does not comment on the fact that Selina has chosen to wear the additional armor he once had built for her, years ago when Luthor's incarnation of the Secret Society first came to town. He helps her with the familiar clasps, worrying over the rarity with which she wears them. He would prefer to see her wear this under-armor more often, but seeing her in it now does nothing to bring him comfort. Selina is playing tonight off as though it were low-risk, but the fact that she has opted for this extra protection speaks volumes. Selina is scared. And for Bruce, that is a terrifying thought.

"If she sees you, it could trigger a psychotic episode," he continues, swallowing emotion to keep his voice steady. "You should have backup in case she gets violent."

"Maggie is my sister." Selina shakes her head, her mouth set in a grim line. "She's my responsibility. If she's behind the American Beauty killings, I have to know."

"She's unpredictable, Selina. For all we know, just the sight of you could set her off."

"For all we know, she's a vegetable." The words come out sharp from the fear clawing its way up her throat. "The reality is we don't know. And she's just as likely to flip out on you or Dick or anyone else as she is to try and tear my head off. And if she does, you know I'm the only person on the planet who has a chance of talking her down."

"Which is exactly why you shouldn't go alone. If talking doesn't work you'll have to fight her, and we have no way of knowing what that would mean." He pauses. "I… never fully understood what you told me about your last encounter with her."

"I handled her just fine the last time," Selina quips, dodging the implied question. "I'll be fine. This isn't your fight. It's not Dick's, and it certainly isn't one for the baby birds."

"I will not let you go alone." He stares at her, his jawline hard and angular, letting concern seep into his voice.

"This is not open for debate," she says evenly, echoing his own words to Barbara from last night.

"No," he retorts, doubling down. "It isn't."

The look Selina cuts him would be fatal to a lesser man. It pierces his chest, a strike so precise he loses his breath. But he does not budge.

Her eyes narrow at him, flashing a brilliant, ominous shade. He can sense her changing tactics.

Very deliberately, Selina leans forward, putting her foot up on the edge of the enormous computer console. Slowly, sinfully, she rolls the skintight fabric of a leg guard, slick-looking and blade-resistant, up her calf. Up, up…. Over the knee… up her thigh… Bruce feels his eyes track her every move. When she snaps the garter's edge against her soft flesh, making it bounce, his breathing stops. Selina tips her head back, lips parted in a knowing smile. Her eyes, alluring as absinthe, never once leave his own.

When he was younger, Bruce might have mistaken that look for the invitation it resembles. But this is not his first trip round this block. He is no longer that unsuspecting twenty-two-year-old chasing Catwoman across the Gotham skyline in a spandex onesie and a rapidly-tightening jock strap.

After more than ten years of knowing the woman, Bruce recognizes a warning when he sees one. She is testing him, letting him feel exactly how much power she has over his body. His mind. She doesn't even have to touch him to affect him.

Bruce swallows.

He shifts carefully into a neutral stance, bowing his head in quiet dissent.

"I just want you to be safe," he says gently. Selina's leg slides back to the floor and she sidles up to him, a dare and a demand in her voice.

"Then trust me."

He strokes her face.

"Take a tail with you."

"That had better be a pun," she growls, pulling out of his grasp. Bruce shakes his head in annoyance.

"If you won't take a partner, at least let someone follow at a distance."

"Oh? And who do you suggest?" She crosses her arms, hip cocked. Bruce frowns.

"I would provide the best cover in the event of a confrontation."

"And who will catch the Joker?" she asks. He jaw locks. There is anger in his eyes, and pain. He does not answer. Selina nods. "That's what I thought," she says and lets her head fall into her hand, tapping one foot in agitation. Then she sighs.

"Bruce," she says, softer now, reaching up to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Trust me. Please."

"I do trust you," he says, covering her fingers with his own large palm. Distress rings plain in his words. "I don't trust her."

"God, you're beginning to sound like Clark before he got up the balls to tell Lois he doesn't really need glasses," she huffs.

"Please don't compare me to Clark," he grunts, and his expression is so long-suffering that she has to laugh.

"I'm not fragile, Bruce," she says, smiling slightly. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you that. I've gone up against every other rogue in your gallery at some point in my career and won. I don't need your help with my sister."

He looks her in the eye. Then he speaks.

"Harley Quinn told Dick that Magdalena nearly killed you the last time you saw her."

"I wasn't aware that Richard and Doctor Quinzel were on gossiping terms," Selina drawls, her tone cooling.

"They might have exchanged information once or twice while attempting to investigate the many sudden attacks on your life at the time."

"Investigating?" she scoffs. "Was anyone really surprised when it turned out to be Talia?"

"Regardless," he sighs. "Between the attacks and Talia's involvement –,"

"Masterminding," she corrects. He grimaces.

"After Talia blew your apartment to high hell, and Zatanna barely managed to keep you alive -,"

"Zatanna attempted to wipe all memory of you from my mind against my will," Selina interrupts harshly. "Do not try to explain this to me like I'm a child, Bruce. I was there. Now do you understand?" She knots her fingers in the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck, not hard. "I survived all that."

Bruce stares at the ceiling.

"Barely," he rumbles. She shrugs.

"Such is our lot." Bruce takes her hand from his skin with an expression of exhausted bewilderment.

"That was quite a year," he murmurs unhappily.

"And not just for me," she says. "How was eighteenth-century Gotham?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he winces. She waits a beat.

"How did you feel when you got back and heard the news?"

"Which news?" He asks. "That stunt Talia and Zatanna tried to pull? Or you teaming up with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy? Or," his eyebrows knit together. "Do you mean the news about your sister being possessed by – an angel? A demon? Dick had no idea and neither did your friends. All they could work out in the chaos was that she had superhuman abilities and nearly killed you. More than once. Selina," he takes her shoulders in his hands. "Please. Let me help you."

"No."

"Selina!"

"No, Bruce. Not you." She shakes her head. "You work the clown case. It's where you're needed. But," She stares evenly up into his liquid blue eyes. "I'll keep Dick on my comm. He can follow me on his own route through the city, if he's available. That's all you'll get from me."

He sighs, relieved or exasperated or both. "Thank you." He looks at her for a moment. Without warning, Bruce picks her up, wrapping his arms about her and hugging her close to his chest. They say nothing to one another.

But he holds her for a long time.

"Thanks for inviting me along on my own mission." Dick Grayson's voice hums sourly in her cowl's earpiece.

"Don't mention it," Catwoman replies, uninterested in the baby bird's temper tantrum. For all his supposed maturity, Dick can still be a real child. And she hasn't got time for his ego tonight. Nor his father's for that matter.

Unfurling her whip from the catch at her waist, Selina leaps onto the roof of the next building. God, when was the last time she was here? Twenty, twenty-five years ago? Maggie was walking, so after their mother died…

The ancient stones pass silently under her feet as she walks along the roofline toward the nearest steeple. She places a gloved hand on the weathered lacework of masonry, turning her eyes up and up, to the gleaming steel cross at the top, the Christ figure staring blankly out across the still city.

Gordon has the city on lock-down. Any rogues that aren't locked up in Arkham have either skipped town or hidden themselves away in the darkest crevice they can find to wait out the coming storm.

The Joker is out there. Not even the monsters are safe.

Catwoman frowns, watching the ghostly figure of a patrol car lurking silently in the distance, even its running lights off.

She crouches low, claws gripping the fog-dampened stone, and leans out over the edge of the building. The windows below are black in their heavy, carved panes, the wall disappearing into shadow as it descends into the steaming streets. Gargoyles loom at every turn, their snarling, mournful countenances disturbing and all too familiar.

"Selina," comes Dick's voice in her earpiece again. "Snap out of it. It's time to go."

"I know." But she doesn't move. There is a pause.

"We really don't have time for this," he says, softer than before. "You just have to get in, sedate her, and then get her to the roof. I'll take it from there."

"Assuming the Whirly-Bat 2.0 can handle two passengers." It's almost a joke.

"I'm using the plane," Nightwing retorts. "And you're stalling. Is something wrong?" Selina takes a long, slow breath.

"Maggie was christened at this church," she says at last, raking her eyes along the darkened skyline. "Saint Agnes is her patron saint. Our mother's choice."

"Oh," Nightwing says, startled.

"Yeah," she coughs a laugh. "The irony stings, doesn't it."

Nightwing watches Catwoman make her way to the nearest outcropping and jump down onto a windowsill before opening the window and slinking through. As annoyed as he is at being ordered to run second on this case, he can't deny the logic of it. If there's anyone who can break through to Maggie Kyle, it's going to be her sister.

His eyebrow quirks and he wonders, not for the first time, just what kind of person Selina Kyle's mother was. Unhappy, certainly. It's a matter of public record that Maria Kyle committed suicide when Selina was five. Magdalena must have been two.

But surely the woman must have loved her daughters, at least at some point?

Dick shifts his weight, peering through the red lenses of his binoculars. Then again, he muses. What sane parent would want Lady Agnes for their kid's patron saint?

Catwoman disappears seamlessly into the gloom of the long hallway, following the schematics given to her earlier by Oracle. Up the narrow twisting staircase, through a large chamber with enormous vaulted ceilings, down a short passage and around a final corner until –

"Shit!"

Selina brings a gloved hand to her mouth, muffling the gasp as it leaves her lips. The door is wide open. And there, sitting up in bed with a smile on her frozen features, sits Magdalena Kyle.

Catwoman freezes. Her breath solidifies in her lungs, cold and sharp. Adrenaline courses through her veins, tensing her muscles, pushing her heartbeat to a clamor in her ears. Her claws are unsheathed in half a second and her stance is wide to receive attack.

But Maggie doesn't move. She doesn't blink.

Is she breathing? Selina looks about the room for signs of a trap.

There is little furniture, merely the bed and a heavy wooden dresser beside a small washbasin. A child-sized chair sits at the head of the bed, a worn book of fairytales on the seat. There is no room for anything more. But there are toys all over the bed and the floor.

What is going on?

Slowly, Catwoman shifts to the side, examining her sister's figure more closely.

Maggie remains unmoving, sitting bolt upright in her small bed surrounded by her pastel teddy bears. Her auburn hair is cut short, fraying out in a halo of tight curls, like silvery fire in the moonlight.

Selina inches forward, avoiding the treacherous network of wooden blocks and wind-up dolls strewn across the floor. Flashes of Maggie's face run through her mind like a film reel.

Maggie, so small, her entire body fitting snugly against Selina's own, her weight like an anchor to a calmer reality; Maggie, her mouth contorted in rage, irises white, screaming profanities in a blood-stained nun's habit; Maggie again, eyes wide and helpless in eight-year-old innocence, watching Selina in horror before being loaded into the back of a shiny black car, leaving Selina alone on the orphanage steps.

Her pale, chapped lips once cooed Selina's name before they could say any other word; those eyes, now a flat grey, once shone, huge and blue and bright, taking in the whole world like it was hers to treasure; chubby, dimpled hands used to grab for Selina's hair, back when it was long enough to be pulled, and curled about her face… now those hands lie limply on their coverlet, the nails painstakingly scrubbed and blunted into small, nonthreatening squares.

Watching the comatose woman before her, Selina can't help but flinch at the memories. This poor soul is so catastrophically different from the wide-eyed little girl Selina once tried so hard to protect.

This is Maggie. But she isn't Maggie anymore.

Catwoman swallows hard, trying not to call up the images of her sister chained to a wall in Black Mask's apartment. There was blood everywhere, everywhere but on her sister, and Selina remembers that searing swoop of relief… except…

A sick heat begins to roil in her chest, remembering the corpse of her sister's husband. That poor innocent man, mangled beyond recognition, his eyes gone, and blood on her sister's lips.

Catwoman sinks to her knees among the toys, unable to stop the storm.

"I can't," she whispers.

"Selina!" Dick's voice clangs in the silence, and she nearly jumps out her skin. "Answer me, dammit! Or I'm coming in there and I'm bringing the cavalry. Over."

"Not necessary, Nightwing," she murmurs, fighting down her panic. "I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine," he retorts. Selina lets this pass. "What's going on in there?"

"I found her." Dick makes a short hissing sound over the line.

"Be careful," he rumbles.

"You sound like Batman."

"I was Batman for over a year," he reminds her. Selina smirks.

"Ssh," she shushes him, forcing her focus onto the task at hand. Maggie has not responded to her conversation with Dick, but that could be an act. The thing that possessed her body years ago was very good at hiding itself when it wanted to be. But even if it's gone for good, Maggie could still be extremely dangerous. Assuming she is the American Beauty Killer – something Selina cannot quite bring herself to do – she would have to have been killing for years before the demon ever showed up. And it is possible.

Black Mask drove Maggie Kyle mad seven years ago in an attempt to get revenge on Catwoman. Though it wasn't all business. Selina is certain the devil himself couldn't have enjoyed the process more thoroughly than the sadistic Roman Sionis. The oldest crime scene linked to the Catwoman look-alikes has been dated to just after Maggie was rescued from his clutches.

So yeah. The timeline fits.

Selina swallows. Maggie is breathing, but barely. God, should she call an ambulance? Wake the nuns? Selina's mouth is dry and everywhere she feels cold. She licks her lips.

She should not be doing this. She should just stick Maggie with the sedative and drag her out to the Batplane before anyone has a chance to wake up and call the cops. But…

She can't help it. This is her sister. Bruce will treat her like a criminal, and god knows what black hole Oracle is dreaming up to cram her into as soon as they get back to the cave. Selina might never see her again.

This is a mistake, a bad idea…

"Maggie?" she whispers. No response. "Maggie."

Her sister's breathing is shallow, the scratchy sound loud in the tiny room.

"Fuck," Selina mouths, clenching her fists. She drags in a breath. One hand hovering over the stun gun at her belt, she lowers herself to Maggie's level, sitting on her haunches at the side of the bed.

Here goes a possibly gruesome end…

"Maggie!" The word claps against the stone walls, almost painful, and then Selina flies backward away from her sister.

Magdalena is shuddering violently, gasping for air. Selina grasps the stun gun and aims as Maggie reaches out toward her with thin, white fingers. Her eyes are wild, confusion and terror plain on her face. Then they fix themselves on Selina, and still.

"Who are you," Maggie asks, and Selina blinks spastically. The voice is high and childish, neither the soft hum Selina remembers from before the orphanage, nor the smooth alto of the woman she once was. "What are you doing in my room," it asks.

Selina tries and fails to breathe.

"Don't…" She shakes her head against the assault of emotions threatening to overcome her. "Don't be afraid."

"You're a stranger," Maggie murmurs skeptically. Then her eyes widen and she pulls the blanket up to her chest, huddling against the wall in sudden fear. "Are you a ghost," she whispers.

"No," Catwoman replies, cautiously coming closer. "No, I'm not a ghost. I won't hurt you. I promise."

"You look like a cat," Maggie says, her nose wrinkling. She reaches out to touch the ear of Selina's cowl, but stops when her sister flinches. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Ma-," Selina begins, then stops herself, swallowing. "Nothing, kid. Nothing's wrong. You just startled me. That's all."

"I'm no kid," Magdalena pouts indignantly, causing Selina's heart to sputter. "I'm a big girl! I'm almost six now!"

The fine wrinkles on the woman's forehead, combined with the deep lines, carved by sorrow around her mouth, make the innocent enough statement into a bullet. Selina remembers when Maggie turned six – it was the day their father broke his little daughter's arm while trying to get to Selina. Selina, who looked nothing like him but was the spitting image of her mother, so that his wife's face taunted him even in death, judging him through the eyes of her bastard child.

That was the one and only time Selina let Maggie try to be the protector. Maggie, her little sister.

She looks older than Selina now.

"Six years old, huh?" Selina murmurs.

"In two weeks!"

"Congratulations," Selina says, trying to muster up some sense of false excitement.

But that's right, actually. Her sister's birthday is on February 16th. So she remembers that much. Selina wonders where the knowing ends.

"The nun-ladies are throwing me a party," Maggie continues. "There's gonna be a cake and everything!"

Selina has to turn away as the air leaves her chest, not caring that she is opening herself up to attack.

'Nun-ladies' was her word when they were children. She used to whisper silly nonsense about them to amuse Maggie on those odd days when their mother decided for whatever reason to drag them to church.

And then at the orphanage she would use those same stories to make Maggie laugh after the nuns had struck them with rulers or bibles or belts. With hands swollen, her knuckles bruised and blackening, Selina would weave stories to stave off the nightmares. But Maggie was adopted within a year of their arrival at that place, and then Selina would whisper those words to herself at night, knowing they wouldn't help.

"Are you ok?" Maggie asks suddenly, staring in appalled fascination.

"Yes," Selina replies quickly. "I'm fine. I need to talk to you."

"Ok." Maggie shrugs.

"Do you have a name?"

"I'm Magdalena," she says. "Like the Bible."

"Magdalena, huh?" So there's another point of reference for her missing memories. "I hear she was an interesting lady."

"Sure, she did some cool stuff I guess." Uninterested, Maggie begins playing with the corners of her pillow. Selina steels herself for the next question.

"Maggie," she says, carefully holstering the stun gun and palming instead a smoke bomb and a tiny syringe. "Do you have any family?" The redhead stares at her blankly.

"Everybody has family," she says matter-of-factly. Selina nods, masking her tension with the gesture.

"That's true," she agrees. "Do you know any of yours?"

"Yes." Maggie nods but then looks at her blanket, at the cheerful monkeys and dancing bears quilted onto its surface. "I have a mama," she harrumphs at last.

"Anyone else?" Selina turns the syringe over in her fingers, hiding the powerful sedative behind her back.

"No," Maggie states simply. Selina's heart drops.

"I see," she whispers, almost to herself. "So there's no one else."

Maggie looks distressed.

"No," she sulks.

"Ok then," Selina says quietly, rising to her feet. Best not to push her luck. "I'll let you go back to sleep." She lifts the tiny syringe.

"No!" Magdalena orders stubbornly. "I remember. I have got someone else."

Selina halts in her tracks, staring at the small, petulant woman before her.

"I've got an angel," Maggie goes on. "A sister."

Catwoman wants to take on a defensive stance, but she can't. She can barely breathe.

"Do you know if your sister had a name?"

Maggie scrunches up her face as though thinking very hard. When she opens her eyes, she looks as though she is about to cry. She shakes her head slowly, making her curls shiver.

"I don't remember," she whimpers. "I don't know. It was very important. I promised I wouldn't forget."

"It's ok, Maggie," Selina says quietly, trying to hush the woman before she becomes hysterical. Any more noise than they are making and someone could come looking. "Shh, it's ok."

"No!" Maggie cries. Selina's ears prick up at the distant sound of a door scraping open against a stone floor. "No! I know it! I know her name! I won't forget! I promised!" She throws the bedclothes onto the floor and Selina grabs her arms to stop her movements from growing more violent.

"Let go," Maggie shouts. "I know it! It's… It's…" Then she stops. The world slides sideways and then everything is thrown into very sharp focus. Silence. The two women stare at one another as the sound of pounding feet in the hallway grow dangerously close. Selina doesn't blink.

"Selina?"

Oh god. Oh god. Maggie's voice, her real voice, falls like a prayer from those pale, chapped lips. Her brown eyes are sharp, the spark of intelligence burning within them drawing Selina in like a lighthouse. Neither one of them moves. Neither one breathes.

"Selina, is that really you?" Maggie asks, the sound a hoarse whisper. Hoarse, but hers. Selina can only nod. "Selina. Oh my god." Maggie takes her sister's hand, gripping it tight. "How did-?" She looks around the room in which she has lived for the last three years as though seeing it for the first time. "How-." And that is it. Just like that, something snaps. "No!" She shrieks and Selina nearly jumps out of her skin. Maggie's eyes roll back until only the whites are there, and then she is screaming. "I saw— I saw it!"

"No Maggie, wait," Selina cries, trying to calm her sister to no avail.

"I saw it, I wasn't there, I didn't want to!" Maggie rakes her fingernails across the flesh of her forearms, drawing blood. Selina grabs her sister in a restraining hold, wrapping her fingers about the smaller woman's wrists and wrenching them above her head.

"Maggie! Maggie, stop!"

"No!" Maggie screeches, the sound echoing off the off the walls so anguished, Selina's knees nearly buckle with the weight. "Let me go, letmego! Simon! Simon! No, no, no, no! I can't, I don't want to! Go!"

Selina prepares to bury the needle into her sister's neck, but then Maggie appears to go into shock. Her frame is wracked by violent tremors. Even simple coherence has fled, she is mumbling gibberish, babyish gurgles interrupted by wails and snippets of words that freeze Selina's blood in her veins. "Mask, no no no—Mama? Help, it's, it's blood can't no—Selina! I-I-I- !"

Thunderous footfalls sound just outside the door. Too late.

Panicked, Catwoman throws open the window, letting it slam shut just as a hoard of nurses and holy folk in nightclothes burst into the room. She watches from the roof as one of them kneels beside the bed, speaking soft words and stroking Maggie's face over and over again. Medical equipment is brought into the room. Someone turns on the light. Selina watches just long enough to see the hysterical woman begin to calm, and then she bolts.

Flying across the rooftops, not bothering to avoid detection or police presence, she heads blindly into the depths of the city.

"Selina!" Dick shouts over the comm. "What are you doing? What's happened?"

"It's not her," she says maniacally into the void. She knows Dick can hear her. "You were wrong. It's not her."

"What?" he exclaims, alarmed. "What the hell are you talking about?" She cannot bring herself to answer him. Cannot explain it to someone who didn't see, who never knew Maggie Kyle before.

"Selina!" Dick calls again, and it sounds high-pitched, like feedback. "Selina, what happened? Is everyone alright?" She cannot respond, cannot see, merely shakes her head and keeps running. "Catwoman!" he shouts. She turns off her cowl's comm link.

She knows now. No matter what anyone might say, Selina Kyle knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that hers sister did not commit those murders. There's simply not enough left of her. Even the psychotic demon-angel that had possessed her has gone. Perhaps the people at the church found some way to exorcise the cursed thing, or perhaps Maggie outlived her usefulness. Regardless, there is no trace of that evil to be found now. Nothing remains of the woman who was once her sister, not even that maniacal version built of anger and twisted half-remembrances that so desperately wished for her death.

Nothing.

Just a shattered little girl in a dying body with no hope of ever learning again who she really is.

Was.

Selina stops where she is, gasping for air. Falling to her knees, she rests her head on the cold ground and cries.

She becomes aware of Dick some time later, his lanky figure standing on a nearby rooftop unhurried. She cannot tell if he is talking to her and she does not turn the comm link back on. Not yet.

Raising her tired eyes, she looks around at the place where she has landed. A metal rail is braced against her back, supporting her as the last of the sobs wrack her exhausted bones. The roof is steeply sloped, turning up into a dull point not five feet from her face. From the looks of their surroundings, she has lead Dick on a chase through Gotham's lower East Side to the very edge of the city. She knows where they are.

The water tower.

Many years ago Selina learned that from this spot, and this spot only, one might catch a glimpse of something truly magical. A sea of tenement buildings borders the tower on three sides, but from the fourth the entire East Side is visible, its neon signs and snaking streets made beautiful by distance. Selina has always managed to find her way to this spot on her lowest nights to witness its spell. Its sacred view she has shared with only three people in her entire life.

First was Holly, the night Selina begged her to finally stop hiding the needle marks and go get help. Holly had been afraid. But she did eventually manage to get clean.

Then it was Dick, the day Jason Todd died. She remembers that as the last time she saw him while he still just came up to her shoulder. When she placed her arms around him and said nothing, he could lean into her body and let the tears fall where they would. He left the Teen Titans to become Nightwing that next year.

And finally, there was Bruce.

Selina remembers sitting with him in the quiet moments before sunrise, watching the sky lighten to purple and then gold, the two of them saying nothing and needing nothing said. She remembers racing him to the top, twice for fun and once because it is the highest point in the area, and he was angry and finally getting winded. Once, they raced one another to Gotham PD just as the sun climbed over the horizon. And instead of sulking when she won, he took her face in his hands and kissed her gently, watching the color in her eyes spark and deepen in the golden, brightening day.

This is their special place, somewhere they go when they need one another, when they need to be alone, when they don't know what they need. Even Wayne Manor does not hold for them the peace that invites them to this rooftop in their best moments and their worst.

Perhaps that is why Dick stays where he is, at a respectful distance, and does not try to approach her.

He knows about sacred things.

Selina stands and begins to walk slowly around to the far side, imagining the view. Her tears have dried. There are no sirens rending the air, so she can only assume that Maggie is stable. She has no idea how long she was running, or how long she has been sitting on this roof. Hours? Minutes? She will ask Dick in a moment, once she has gotten her bearings and her voice under control. She takes a deep, calming breath. Then she notices something.

A small object is fluttering in the wind at the edge of the far railing. Curious, she makes her way over the corrugated surface of the roof, her head tilted to one side. There, taped to the cold metal is a piece of paper. She turns it over.

Then she nearly faints.

The colorful illustration stares up at her, tauntingly, daring her to scream. Selina's mouth goes dry. Her muscles shake from the strain of keeping her body upright.

No, no. No, no, no.

A joker card. A grinning clown, complete with fat, red drops of what can only be blood spattered across its surface. And a note.

XOXO. Look up.

With the glacial pace of the truly horrified, Catwoman raises her eyes to the cityscape before her. It is not drastically different. No buildings are missing, no explosions pierce the silence. But there it is. Spread out across miles of city, spray painted on billboards and the sides of towering apartments, lies a symbol of brilliant cruelty.

A perfect rictus grin.

And it has been constructed in just such a way as to be visible from this exact spot.

Selina turns her bloodless face to look at Dick, her vision swimming. He cocks his head to the side, looking curiously up at her from his perch. He cannot see it. He would have to stand here, in Catwoman and Batman's sacred place, to understand.

As she reopens her comm link, it occurs to Selina that she has had about enough of feeling like she is about to throw up for one night.

"Houston," she proclaims with a dryness born of utter exhaustion. "We have a problem."