Saints and Sinners

"Kid," Selina breathes, her body utterly motionless. "Go get your father."

Richard Grayson feels suddenly very small.

"Are you alright?" he murmurs to the woman whom he has never called 'mother.' "You're… crying."

"I'll be just fine, Dick," Selina whispers. But even that sound shakes. She feels the tears running roughshod over her cheeks, but hasn't the energy to wipe them away. They burn in the chill of the cave.

At a loss, Dick backs away from her and heads for the door. Selina minimizes the grisly photograph on the screen as Dick calls Bruce back into the main cave. She sees him take his father's place with Barbara Gordon in the adjoining training room. The door shuts.

And then it is just Bruce and Selina.

"I'm sorry about Barbara," Bruce begins, misinterpreting her stricken expression. "She had no right-."

"Bruce," Selina says, raising a hand to cut him off. "I have to tell you something."

She looks exhausted, and the depth of emotion in that one line has him immediately on high alert.

"What's wrong?"

For a moment, she simply shakes her head. He comes closer, but she stops him.

"Selina?" His posture has shifted to the defensive. He leans forward, his muscles tensed, as though ready to throw himself bodily in front of her. As though the danger is coming from outside, and not in.

"I have to tell you something," Selina whispers, ignoring his question. "But first, I need you to be honest with me." She looks him dead in the eye, arresting his attention utterly. "How much do you know about me?" He blinks, startled.

"What?"

"How much," she repeats.

There is a long pause. They have never in all the years they have been Batman and Catwoman, never asked that question of one another. It has always been a mutual understanding between the two of them, an unspoken rule. Let secrets remain secrets, even if you know the truth. They know too much about one another regardless, so why not pretend? If it's better to let sleeping dogs lie, why wake them?

If Selina is asking this question, then there is something very wrong. The thought makes Bruce's blood run cold.

But she has asked the question, has broken the spell. She wants the truth. And there is no good way to answer her.

Bruce breathes evenly, trying very hard to keep the panic out of his movements. He has no idea why she would suddenly be asking this question, or how she will react to the truth. They have never even discussed the hypotheticals of a situation like this. It could mean anything.

It could be a trap.

But it is Selina asking. And she has a right to know. The silence has stretched too long, he has to make a choice. Has to answer her.

Truth? Lie? Obfuscate? He tamps his emotions down through sheer force of will, clenching his hands, his jaw. Then, wordlessly, Bruce moves to the keypad and types in a code. After presenting his palm and retina to be scanned, he takes a step back to face Selina. Anxious, maybe. Watching for her reaction.

"Override class A6, Kyle. Code 'Helen' - Authorize," he enunciates, and the three massive screens light up with a sudden flood of information. Hundreds of files, one after another, fill every inch of space, arranging and rearranging into some final semblance of order.

There are photographs from every stage of her life, some that even Selina has never seen, splayed across the tops of each screen, maybe ordered by year. Selina stares passively at a couple of mugshots, her face too young, glaring up at the world with wounded eyes.

She inches closer to the keyboard, scanning the assembled files, looking for something.

The oldest documents are handwritten affairs, going all the way back to their first encounter. He even included his notes from when the Catwoman was still just an unknown burglar responsible for a string of high-profile robberies on the wealthy side of town. 'No clues. No leads.' Written in tiny, immaculate letters on the thinnest lined paper she's ever seen.

Bruce never once looks at the screen. His eyes remain fastened to Selina, watching her with a distress so acute it looks painful.

Waiting.

Finally, Selina steps back.

"Is this everything," she asks flatly. Bruce nods.

"Everything." His voice is gruff and strange. It occurs to Selina that he must be fighting every instinct he has in order to let her see this information.

She knows that authorization sequence was the highest level of restriction offered by this system. Palm print, iris scan, DNA match, and voice authorization requiring an exact match of speech pattern and stress. All that, plus a top-secret string of code is what it takes to get to every bit of information the Batman has ever collected on Selina Kyle. If she wasn't about to pass out, she might've been flattered.

But even Batman's hoard of data is incomplete. Pulling a shallow breath in through her nose, Selina faces Bruce directly.

"You know about the House on Fourteenth Street," she states. It is not a question.

Bruce's eyes widen slightly, his heartbeat quickening. He forces his expression into a mask of steel, feeling his chest constrict.

"I know about the House on Fourteenth Street," he confirms grimly.

"How much do you know about the House on Fourteenth Street?"

Bruce looks as though he's been shot in the chest. His heart stutters. His lips part for a moment of shock before closing again, tightly, his jaw working.

There is an uncomfortable pause, during which Selina simply stares at him. Patient. Bruce shakes his head, his eyes closing.

"Why?" He says it quietly, almost a plea. Selina swallows down the choke in her throat.

"Because I need to know," is all she says. Bruce blinks slowly, feeling dread pool in the pit of his stomach, warm and sick. He nods. Inhaling a shaking breath, he searches her eyes one last time. Then, finally, he speaks.

"You were twelve," he says, his voice low and harsh, the words quick. Clinical. "Maybe thirteen. You were supposed to be at the All Saints' Orphanage. You arrived there with your sister when you were eleven. She was adopted within a year. You weren't. The orphanage had you listed in their tax documents for four years until your first arrest at fifteen. But I checked. You were on the streets by age twelve, thirteen at the most. Within a year of your arrival, the staff at the orphanage had stopped counting you in roll call. And there were no more purchases of food or clothing made on your behalf." Bruce makes a low, angry sound in the back of his throat. "No official records exist for the next three years of your life," he says. "Until your first arrest."

They find themselves considering her earliest mugshot, a grainy black-and-white. The girl in the photograph has none of the grace that Catwoman wields like a weapon or Selina Kyle wears like a second skin. Long, dark curls hang limply about her too-sharp cheekbones and pointed chin. That elegant, sloping nose looks oddly out of place above those pale, chapped lips, and her eyes are frighteningly dull beneath their heavy lids.

"The police record says you were eighteen," Bruce murmurs, almost to himself. "But it's wrong. That was a lie you were taught to give police if you were ever caught. When Leslie saw you in the hospital, after the processing cop broke your arm, she was appalled. She recognized you from the orphanage. She knew how old you really were. And she was able to get you released into her custody."

"Never quite figured out how she managed that," Selina remarks, too light. There is a sharp pang in her chest at the memory of Leslie Thompkins's horrified face that night.

"Leslie said she had tried to be a friend to you," Bruce continues. "When you were still at the orphanage - while she was the resident physician there. But you rebuffed her. And there were just so many children, and they all needed her help…" He exhales heavily. "She said letting what happened… happen to you… that it was her greatest regret in life."

Selina examines the pattern that centuries of water erosion have made in the blue-black stones beneath her feet. She should have assumed he would know about Leslie. When the ancient patterns begin to blur and disappear, Selina looks up, and Bruce watches as the tears stand in her eyes.

"I know." Selina whispers thickly. "She said that."

Leslie Thompkins, another one of the many strange links between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne.

Dr. Thompkins went to medical school with Bruce's father, Thomas Wayne. Later, she would work alongside him at their own practice, providing vital assistance to the poverty-stricken residents of the East End. Leslie spent many nights at Wayne Manor in Bruce's infancy, cuddling and playing with him in her kind, serious way. As he grew older, he would think of her as a grandmotherly figure, an important link to his past and his humanity.

But even in the days when Bruce's parents lived their illustrious lives, the East End was a messy, violent place. Home to towering mob empires and a thriving red-light district, it was all Leslie and the Wayne fortune could do to keep the place up and running. When Martha and Thomas were murdered, it became too much for Dr. Thompkins. So to compensate, she found the All Saints' Orphanage. She wanted to be a caregiver for the children most hurt by this city, the chewed up and the spit out, despised and displaced – many of whom she knew would never find homes.

Instead, she found Selina.

Leslie hadn't thought much of Selina Kyle on their first meeting – an angry, stubborn little girl, grown up too fast, too hurt and too smart to go quietly back into innocence. Selina visited the infirmary so often, Leslie eventually tried to bring it up with management – but her fears were brushed off. "That one is beyond help," the headmistress said. "A troublemaker." When the pretty little girl disappeared, Leslie seemed to be the only one who noticed – "placed in another home," she was told. "Good riddance."

Leslie thought no more of it until she saw Selina again that fateful, awful night in the hospital, handcuffed to the gurney with a cast on her arm. The officer guarding Selina said she was eighteen. That she had been picked up in a raid at a brothel down on Fourteenth Street.

A prostitute. None of Leslie's concern.

"You were fifteen," Bruce continues softly. "Not eighteen."

"But I was a prostitute," Selina chuckles bleakly.

"You weren't…" Bruce strains, grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut. "You were a child." Misery makes the last word catch in his throat.

"True," she agrees, tilting her head to one side with a smile borne of infinite sorrow. "At first. I got used to it."

"Selina…"

"So you know," she says, louder this time. "You know where I was. What I was." She braces herself with a hand on the edge of the computer console. Licks her lips. Swallows. "What do you know about a man named Robert Kline?"

Bruce blinks spastically for a moment, lost for words.

"The politician," he asks, reaching toward her in a plea for clarity. Selina barely breathes. "He made it all the way to Senator, then went down for tax fraud," Bruce rattles off. "Pulled every string he had in Washington to get himself out of jail time. Ended up penniless and divorced. You were, what, nineteen? And I was twenty-two?"

Then something dawns on him.

"Nineteen," he says slowly. "Your first year as Catwoman. My first year in the suit."

Selina nods, steps closer to the console and throws the image of Kline's face over the screen. At the sight of the Cat Scratches, Batman goes white.

"I never knew why…" he whispers. "The scratches. Sometimes you seemed to have no reason. I couldn't find the pattern…" Selina thinks about all those people bearing Cat Scratches convicted of misdemeanors, their more sinister crimes never acknowledged, never paid for.

"There was a pattern," she says evenly.

"What happened," Bruce asks suddenly, appall and desperation plain on his face. "What can I do?"

"Nothing for me," she replies, smiling slightly, sadly at him. "But I'll tell you what happened."

He looks at his hands, at the floor, at her. Finding nothing to help him weather the coming storm, he lets them drop back to his sides, assuming a stiff parade rest.

Selina takes a deep breath.

"Robert Kline was the biggest donor All Saints' orphanage ever had," she says. "While I lived there, he was basically keeping the place afloat. The donations were always anonymous. Although he sure as hell claimed them on his tax returns."

An odd look comes over Bruce's features.

"You were the one who exposed him to the IRS," he realizes. "I always assumed it was his wife."

"If I couldn't bring the bastard down for rape, I was damn well going to get him for something."

Bruce blanches at her too-casual use of that word. He's used it himself enough times, describing crime scenes, cold cases… but never to describe Selina. His eyes find their way, against his will, back to the photograph of Robert Kline still damnably plastered on the screen. Bruce feels a vile hatred begin to bubble up from the core of his being. It tastes of blood and ash. Of violence.

"He was there all the time," Selina continues, looking into the distance to keep from seeing his face. "I always sort of assumed he and the headmistress were screwing. But maybe not." Revulsion twists her lips into a snarl. "She wasn't exactly his 'type.'"

Selina looks up to the ceiling, begging for the strength. She glances at Bruce, swallows, flinches away.

Leslie knew. Despite everything, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Thompkins knew exactly what had happened to Selina the second she saw her in that hospital room. She just didn't know who. And although the woman begged Selina for years, just years, to let her in, to let her help, to let them punish the bastard together… Selina never gave her the name.

He was a politician, after all – a Senator. The police hadn't believed her when she told them. Why would anyone listen to Leslie years later, an unrelated third party with no evidence and a former child prostitute in tow? She'd get laughed right out of her medical license.

"It happened at the orphanage," Selina whispers, her voice oddly detached. "Kline raped me. No one believed me. So I ran." She takes an excruciating breath. "The headmistress called me a liar. When I told the police, they laughed. The officer I spoke to actually called Kline to come pick me up from the precinct. So I ran.

"But I wasn't on the streets two months before someone from the brothel picked me up – I was desperate, I didn't know what to do. They gave me food, a bed. At first I thought it was some kind of boarding house… then Kline walked in the door." A hysterical sound escapes her, not quite laughter, and not quite a scream. Her hand flies to her mouth to silence it.

"Selina…" Bruce murmurs, reaching for her. The pain in her eyes is unbearable to watch.

Selina stops him with a look, a warning in the set of her jaw.

She has to get the words out. Now.

"I don't know," she says quickly, shaking her head, her voice sounding too light for the weight of the memory. "I don't know if he owned the place, or if he just made a habit out of donating to establishments with kept children. I don't even know if he knew I was there, or if it was all just a happy accident for him." The words taste like sewage on her teeth, but though the thought has her panicky, it all makes perfect sense.

The House on Fourteenth Street was one of the biggest trafficking hubs in the state, for a while. The whole block had the smell of it, children in high heels standing on street corners when they should have been in school. She wouldn't be surprised if Kline was a regular customer even before she showed up on the menu.

Selina's stomach twists. She can barely hear her next words over the pounding in her ears.

"Kline walked in the day after I was found. And his eyes just… Lit up." The seams of her catsuit seem suddenly alive, wriggling against her skin like a swarm of poisonous insects. She shakes her head in a desperate attempt to clear it. "He didn't try to take me back to the orphanage. I think he liked me better there, where he could get to me. He wouldn't even have to pretend." She barks a laugh, harsh. Making light of the horror in her heart. The sharp sound carries to the back of the cave, like a thunderclap.

Bruce looks ill, but does not interrupt.

"Kline came by all the time after that. For two years, they wouldn't even let me out of that room – I tried to escape twice, but I learned…" A heavy beat. "… Not to." Selina blinks slowly. "Then Kline graduated from bigshot Gotham lawyer to State Senator, and suddenly he wasn't around anymore. They put me on the street, and by that time…" She opens her hands in a small, helpless gesture. "I just… didn't run. Where could I go? The cops would send me right back to the orphanage. And if the pimps caught me…" She shudders. "So I just… stayed. Until that night the GCPD raided the brothel." Her tone shifts, becomes angrier.

The parts that aren't about her are so much easier to put into words.

"There was a new mayor in town who'd campaigned on the promise to 'clean up' the city. Especially the red light district. But it was all for show. The bastard didn't care about the girls, didn't give a damn about the people actually living down there in the slums – he just wanted the real estate. So he could make nice with the mob, give them a place to launder his money. He fucked us." Selina snorts. "What was new?"

"Mayor Hill," Bruce mumbles, putting the pieces together. Selina nods.

"Yes."

"But…" Bruce asks with gentle confusion. "When did you give Kline the Cat Scratch? Did you seek him out? For revenge?"

"He recognized me," Selina whispers, her eyes growing alarmingly wide. Her body goes absolutely still. "He was the only one who ever did. Once in a while, there would be a face in a crowd. I would see it and I'd know – I'd remember. But they wouldn't. No one ever recognized me from… from before. From Fourteenth Street. Their eyes would always pass over me, just another face in the crowd…" Selina remembers them, those times she would curl in on herself in the middle of the street, or run into the nearest dark corner to wait out the waves of nausea and panic. She wraps her arms around herself.

"It was my first year as Catwoman," she continues, now visibly shaking.

"Selina," Bruce tries. "Stop."

"No!" She shouts, making them both jump. He can't bear to tell her, but it scares him deeply. "Let me finish. Please." When he advances no further resistance, she returns to her narrative, speaking quickly. "It was just before you and I got together – not as Catwoman and Batman, but as Selina and Bruce. For the first time," she says, forcing a lightness of tone she does not feel. If she can just get through this next bit… "That Christmas. At the Wayne Enterprises ball. I was just walking through the ballroom, and suddenly he was there. He saw me. And his eyes just… Lit up!" A shudder wracks Selina's frame. "He smiled, and it was like I was twelve years old again, and he was climbing on top of me, holding me down…" She squeezes her eyes shut. "I couldn't move, couldn't think. I just froze. And then he touched me. He put his hand on my arm and told me he missed me. That he missed 'us.' He hoped he would see me again soon…" Selina has to stop, nearly falling to her knees as the urge to vomit overtakes her. Bruce grabs her arms, supporting her weight until she brushes him off, needing the room, needing to breathe. She shakes her head over and over, left to right, disbelieving.

"I panicked," she states simply. "I couldn't let him get to me. Couldn't let him touch me again. Not ever. I put on the catsuit that night, looked him up, broke into his house. I found the safe behind a shitty painting in their bedroom. There was nothing in it, nothing about the brothel, the orphanage, nothing!" She snarls, enjoying the hideousness of her rage. Let the outside finally mirror the in. Bruce flinches.

"But I had everything else. Financial records, tax returns, you name it. I didn't pick, I took all of it. And then I turned around, and I saw his face. He was sleeping. Peaceful. And why the fuck should he sleep when I hadn't slept through the night in eight years?" Selina bares her teeth. "I just wanted to take back what he stole from me – all those years, the pain. My childhood. I wanted to kill him," she breathes. Bruce's own breathing comes faster now, alarmed at her sudden change in demeanor. "Just one little scratch. To mark him for what he'd done.

"I scratched him," she says, her voice going dead and flat. "I don't know what I was expecting. He woke up. Screaming. His wife woke up too. I didn't even look at her. I just… I got so scared." Whispering now. "Kline looked up… he saw me. He saw me and he knew. But I thought he recognized Catwoman. I'd been in the papers by then, there were pictures… But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. Of course he knew it was me, he always knew. He always found me. I don't know how, or why… And now…

"I know it's him, Bruce," she hiccoughs. "Robert Kline is the American Beauty Killer. I know he is.

"And I should have known all along!" She bends double suddenly, self-hatred in the curve of her spine, in the press of her nails against her skin. "I can't understand why I didn't see it…"

"It's not your fault," he whispers to her. "It's ok, Selina. It's not your fault. You couldn't have known."

"But I should have," she cries, throwing her head back.

"You couldn't have known," he repeats gently. "Please, Selina. You couldn't have known."

"Four women are dead," Selina replies dully. "At least. Kline raped and murdered four women because of me. Because he couldn't get to me." She shakes her head, just slightly. "That's not what I wanted."

"Of course not," Bruce exclaims passionately, reaching out to take her in his arms. "Selina, you cannot blame yourself. This was never about you."

"This was always about me!" She pushes him away, fixing him with a murderous glare. Agonized, she lets everything out on one breath:

"If it wasn't for me, all those innocent women might still be alive. My sister never would have been tortured by Black Mask – her husband is dead because of me! My mother and father are dead because of me! If not for me, they could be happy and alive and Maggie would have grown up with parents like a normal girl. She'd be sane and happy and living her life far away from this godforsaken city, but instead those women are dead, my mother killed herself because I was born, and my father became a drunk who beat the shit out of us every night.

"So let's not sugarcoat this, Bruce, I'm well aware that the world would be a damn sight better if I wasn't in it!"

In the silence that follows, only their breathing is audible. Selina's comes in heavy gasps, but Bruce appears to barely be breathing at all.

"Why would you think that about your mother?" He asks, heartbroken. Selina's shoulders slump. She sounds so tired when she responds,

"Carmine Falcone raped my mother when she was seventeen. I am the products of that rape. My mother killed herself when I was five. You do the math."

"Selina…" Bruce breathes, wanting, needing for her to understand. "None of that was your fault."

"I know," Selina replies hopelessly, shrugging slightly. Her shoulders ache. "Doesn't make much of a difference, does it?"

He stares at her. With tired eyes that prick and burn, Selina meets his gaze and holds it. Her face hurts. All her joints feel swollen and her muscles scream for sleep. The pounding in her head feels like a hammer upside her skull, a throbbing pressure in her ears. She feels it in the tips of her fingers. Her jaw is locked so tightly she can hear the bones grind. As her muscles begin to unwind, it becomes a battle to stay on her feet while her body is overtaken by shivers.

Selina looks away from him. She brings her arms up to wrap themselves around herself, holding still. She wants a shower, something to wash away all the memories she can't forget. She wants to tear the catsuit from her body and burn it. It is too tight, cutting off her blood circulation, restricting her air.

Her skin crawls.

She wants a bath. She wants to be submerged in water deep enough that she doesn't have to look at her body.

With a desire borne from the very marrow of her bones, Selina longs for sleep.

"I'm going to bed," she murmurs finally, to no one in particular. Then she turns away.

Bruce watches her go. In the emptiness, he stares after her for a long time.