When I walk home, tail between my legs like a dejected puppy, I drop the watch into the money tin of an old man sitting on the curb of my street. His eyes are clouded, either partially or completely blind, and he turns his head at the sound.

"A man named Jackson walks this block every week," I tell him, "he'll buy that watch from you. He has a voice like nails on a chalkboard and you can't help but hear him coming from a mile away. He's impossible to miss." He nods faintly, reaching into the tin with trembling fingers to clasp the watch in his hand and he slips it into the pocket of his tattered coat.

I go inside my apartment without the intention of staying long. Just long enough to change into my uniform; giving full rein to Catwoman and her wicked ways. There has always been something freeing about her. Something wild that, truth be told, I don't want to tame. I'd always walked the border of right and wrong, sometimes stumbling further into one side or the other, but I always found my way back. And I never felt the need to explain myself. At least not before I wore that damn cape and cowl.

Was it the uniform that instilled a strange, new sense of morality within me?

Or was it just another desperate, unconscious effort for Bruce's approval?

I'd like to blame the former because it seems like the least degrading of the two. At least then I won't have to feel so guilty for reverting back to my old ways.

I stop in my tracks, standing stock still in startled awe of the man idling in my poor excuse of a kitchen. He has his back to me, his leather jacket looking filthier under the unflattering, yellow light; the material marked with dried mud and something that looks suspiciously like blood. His boots have tracked dirt on my floor, leading in from the front door and leaving a tell-tale trail through every room. I frown, edging towards my bedroom and peering inside. My makeshift bed (a long, thin foam pad) is in disarray the way I left it, blankets thrown together into a tangled pile at the foot of the mattress. My clothes are still strewn all over the floor, their hangers left bare in the open closet. The same closet that was closed when I left the apartment only a few hours earlier.

"You looked through my things?" I call out, infuriated at the invasion of my privacy. "There are rules about looking through a girl's panty drawer, you know. The first rule is: you don't do it. The second rule is: you don't do it."

"There wasn't exactly much to see," Jason points out smoothly, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. "I had to take a look. Curiosity killed the cat and all that."

"Isn't that my line?" I grumble, picking up my dirty clothes and tossing them onto the floor of my closet in a redundant effort to hide my shame. It's too late to take back what he has already seen.

"Probably," he shrugs and walks back out to the kitchen, his eyes slowly travelling across the length of the room with bored curiosity. I follow him. "So this is where you live now?"

"This is called breaking and entering, Jason." I state plainly. He picks up an out of date bottle of sauce. I quickly take it from his hands and put it back on the counter. He rolls his eyes and turns his back on me once more.

How dare he fondle my expired condiments?

"The door was open. Therefore, there was no breaking, only entering," he corrects me, opening my fridge and peering inside. The power must have shorted sometime during the day, because the interior of the fridge is warm. He picks up my half empty carton of milk and gives it a suspicious sniff, wrinkling his nose at the sour odour. Again, I am quick to take it away from him, placing it back in the fridge door and I push it shut. I turn my back to it, barricading it from him.

"That isn't an invitation for you to wander inside whenever you feel like it." I had stopped locking my door after the first two weeks living here, in which my apartment had been broken into twice and then left untouched when they discovered there was nothing to steal.

At least now I'll never have to know when a stranger has come in without permission.

Ignorance really is bliss.

I gesture to the front door, silently indicating that he ought to leave. He either doesn't take the hint, or he ignores it. With an attitude like his? It most certainly is the latter.

"What happened with living at the mansion? Did Bruce kick you out?" he asks, unable to conceal the malicious joy that the very idea gives him. His lips upturn at the corners, creases forming around his eyes as he tries to hide a smile.

"If you must know, I left."

"You left?" he looks incredulous. "To live here? In this dump?"

"Yes. This is my dump that you're talking about. The least you could do is to treat it with some respect. Spare my feelings."

"Why'd you leave?"

"The manor made me claustrophobic," I answer tonelessly, gesturing again to the door; this time with more severity. Again, he ignores it.

"The eleven bedroom, eight bathroom mansion with its own grand hall, study and library, was too confining for you? I thought you'd like it. All the glitz and glamour. Plenty of silverware to slip into your pockets."

It really was a hopeless lie, I'll admit. But surely he, as someone who grew up orphaned and impoverished, can understand the way Wayne Manor could make you feel. How it somehow, inexplicably, made its occupants seem so small. Insignificant. Like I was a ghost involuntarily vanishing through walls all the time; passing by unseen.

"It was like living in a museum. Everything is the same shade of beige and it's always freezing cold no matter how many times I fiddle with the thermostat, and your voice echoes even at a whisper. It was like there were invisible signs all over the place warning me not to touch anything," I explain feverishly, wringing my hands together. "This… this is much more comfortable."

Jason sniffs the room and wipes his nose with his sleeve, "It smells like something died in here."

"Probably a dead rat in the walls," I say, unconcerned. I got used to the pungent stench a long time ago. I probably leave the house with the smell clinging to my hair and clothes all the time without ever being able to notice it anymore. "As 'lovely' as your company is, you have failed to tell me why you are here."

"Just wanted to check in and see how well you healed up. Shame they couldn't fix that, you know?"

"Fix what?"

He waves his hand at my face, his expression twisting into that of controlled disgust. I blink in surprise, reflexively leaning away from him.

"That's just my face. As it has always looked," I sigh, unamused.

He winces dramatically and places his hand on my shoulder. The same shoulder that had taken weeks to heal from dislocation but still, to this day, never felt right. I think he's well aware of it too as he gives it a tight squeeze. "I'm so sorry to hear that. But look on the bright side... The sight of you must make people feel very charitable."

"No. They just avoid looking at me. Lest I sicken them."

"That's why you're stealing again," He says it matter-of-factly. Completely void of any doubt. I shrug his hand from my shoulder purposefully.

How could he possibly know what I was about to do? Had he followed me and conceptualised my plans just from the stolen watch? Or am I that transparent?

"I'm not stealing."

"Hmm, maybe not. But you're thinking about it, aren't you? I found your uniform."

"It's a sentimental thing. You wouldn't understand," I sniff. Always on the defensive. Always lying. "You should tell me what you want before I call the cops."

"Go ahead, call them. Neighbourhood like this? They'll just laugh and hang up."

He isn't wrong. There is no way they would respond to a call around here. Were they to enter The Bowery suburb, they'd never leave. Not alive at least. This dreadful place is near uninhabitable even for those who grew up here; the streets rife with violence and crime. Any ordinary day out there could very well be your last.

"Look, my intentions are quite simple. Harmless. I came to check on you," he explains, eager for me to believe him. I consider him for a moment, apprehensive, before shaking my head. Back in Matthew's bedroom, I'd concluded that Jason was as monstrous as the monstrosities he hunted. There barely seemed to be even a shred of empathy behind that red helmet of his.

"You used me to get to Matthew Carter. You manoeuvred me like a puppet on strings; knowing I could very well die."

"I don't want you to take my indifference as an act of disinclination," he murmurs gently.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't nudge you towards Matthew with the intention of getting you killed… I just didn't really care whether you lived or died."

"Oh, well now that that's cleared up, we can be friends again," I remark sarcastically, trying to push him towards the door but he stands tall over me, his feet unmoving.

"We were never friends, Selina. That much you knew already."

"So you came all this way just to tell me: 'hey, I didn't give a fuck if I got you killed. But that's okay because it isn't like I wanted to kill you'. That's real kind of you, Jason. But it was an assurance I didn't need or ask for. You can leave now."

"Look. You were the only one that could infiltrate his security. I needed you to get inside. If you'd killed him, that would have been a win-win for the both of us. Instead you flaked out and I killed him. I crossed him off my list and you don't have to fret about him anymore. A win-win for the both of us. Can't you be happy about that?"

"You toyed with me to get what you wanted," I accuse.

"And what is it you think you do, huh? Ask nicely? No, you flirt your way out of speeding tickets or flash a little cleavage to get some leeway from the police. I manipulate and you entice."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it? So you don't sway your hips and bat your eyelashes at Bruce to seduce him into forgiving you?"

"I thought you came here to offer a bizarre non-apology, not to attack me for what Bruce and I do behind closed doors. What is it you really came here to say?"

He stops. His mouth hangs partially open but no words are coming out. I see his hands tightening into fists at his sides and he shifts his weight slowly from one foot to the other. Is that confusion I see? Uncertainty in his eyes?

That look of feeling lost. He so often seems unsure as to what he truly wants. Like his course gets so easily interrupted by a small bump in the road. He isn't really sure why he came here.

Emotions are a fickle thing. He hasn't yet learned how understand his.

"You earned his forgiveness without ever saying sorry," he says finally, his nostrils flaring.

"So this is about Bruce?"

"Isn't it always?"

"Not for me. Not that it's any of your business, but what Bruce and I have. Had. It wasn't a game. If it was then, well, I didn't know the rules. He hasn't forgiven you because you aren't worthy of forgiveness. So don't you dare think I have done something shallow to earn it."

He pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers and turns his back to me. "I shouldn't have come here."

"You think?" I scoff. "You know where the door is. Don't let it hit you on the way out."

He walks swiftly to the door but his hand stops on the handle. "Did he say anything about me? You know… after?"

"Honestly? He hasn't said a damn word to me about anything," I confess. "But you know what, Jason? I realised something. Something that I think you actually learned a long time ago. Bruce tends to listen but he doesn't really hear us. So why should it matter what he thinks?"

"You're angry?"

My lips turn up on one side in a cynical smile. "I don't want you to take my indifference as an act of disinclination."

"I hate it when people feed me my own words," he mutters and opens the door.

"Yes, and I hate it when people break into my home and sniff my sour milk. Now we're both unhappy."

Jason laughs lightly. "Welcome back, Catwoman," he says knowingly and steps outside, closing the door behind him.

"We'll meet again, Red Hood," I say to myself. He and I are bound to cross paths again in the future, whether it be coincidence or to hunt one another down. Perhaps one day I'll cross some kind of line and he'll add my name to his kill list. Or maybe I'll kill him first. It's possible he may just annoy me enough. If he makes rifling through my underwear drawer a regular activity.

But I'd be lying if I said he hadn't helped me. He saw things with a perspective quite like my own and it estranges us from the others. Like me as a small child trying to see through my mother's eyes, the boys try and see through mine, but it's like putting on someone else's prescription glasses and then wondering why everything is blurry. You can never truly walk the same road as someone else. You can try, but the scenery will always be different.

He and I are as close as we are apart, and that's why I have little doubt that we will indeed meet again. But I know we'll both, when that day comes, wish that we hadn't. We're worse when we're together. We get under each other's skin.

Together, we become the worst versions of ourselves.

But maybe our meeting tonight is the push that I needed. The push back onto the tightrope between good and bad. Now I can tiptoe along that line and feel little to no regard as to which way I fall. Jason has opened the door for Catwoman, and now I feel free from the cage Bruce and his family put me in. I feel less inclined to do what's best for them rather than what's best for me. And I smile, knowing that by the end of tonight, I can finally feast on the freedom I have been hungry for. After tonight, I can have it all.

I change into my uniform, turning left and right to see it in my cracked bathroom mirror. The sight of me, clad in the clothes that feel more like a second skin, fills me with courage. A rush of adrenaline. A flashback to simpler times where I didn't only survive, but I also thrived. A recovered memory of being in control.

When I walk back out that door, I feel reborn.

The night is mine.