Chapter 2: Fair Game
Fandom: Gotham
Pairing: Bruce/Selina
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Selina
The air had been crisp but not cold, enough chill to make people happy for such nice weather and oblivious to the danger they brought on themselves. It had to be something pretty special for her to venture onto this side of the City, police presence was pretty heavy here, but she'd heard there was supposed to be some kinda gala thing and anytime the celebrity of Gotham got together, there were gonna be crowds, and where there was crowds there was opportunity.
She'd perched herself on the sloping roof of a shop across the street, sizing up the crowd that had begun to accumulate and noting the bright yellow-jackets of the security guards that roamed around. Whatever this shindig was it had to have been pretty important to have brought about all this.
She'd patiently waited for the sun to disappear below the skyline and the overworked staff had put on the unnecessary spotlights and the cars had begun to deposit some of the City's more prominent citizens before she climbed down.
The crowds were uneven, spectators bottlenecking, choosing to crowd only one side of the barricades. She slid passed a group of girls that looked close to her age, but the sound of their gossiping and giggling put her teeth on edge.
Why anyone would be obsessed with people who did absolutely nothing but waste air and money was completely beyond her, but for today they kept eyes cast in a direction that wasn't hers so they served her purposes just fine.
She'd snaked her way through the crowd looking for a good place, a good target. The people in the back would be too vigilant their disadvantaged point-of-view would make them cranky and they'd be more likely to start complaining to one another. The people in the middle were a little less committed and would be more likely to get bored and have a good look around.
No, she needed the people at the front. Those were the ones that had been waiting for hours, those were the one who would be too absorbed in what was happening in front of them to notice what was happening to them.
She'd just been sidling up to her mark, a large man whose wallet was just peeking out of his windbreaker pocket, when the hair on the back of her neck had stood up.
She'd chanced a glance at her prey, but he was still focused on the people arriving. Biting her lip, she looked up and down the barricaded carpet only to feel her eyes widen at the sight. She saw his butler first, his graying head visible over someone else's entourage, but suddenly the small crowd moved and even at this distance she recognized those dark eyes and that stilted gait.
She'd been too entrenched in the crowd too committed to her work to run so she turned her head away pulling the top of her hood further down over her forehead. The noise of the crowd seemed to have dimmed as she focused on her breathing and waited for him to pass.
She watched as his shoes moved past her post and disregarding all her instincts she sneaked a peek at him. She was surprised to see he looked taller, whether that was because he was thinner or he'd grown she couldn't tell but his dark hair looked freshly cut and the black suit he wore contrasted nicely against his pale skin. She felt herself smirk. It was a good look on the kid.
But despite his dapper appearance her eyes immediately went to the shiny treasure on his arm and she bit her lip. It was gorgeous and expensive and dangled dangerously loose around his thin wrist. It would be nothing just to slide it off…
Somebody should've told him to get the links taken out, she thought, feeling her eyes narrow.
Unexpectedly he paused and she felt a breath catch in her throat. His head tilted in the direction of the crowd a moment before he shook his wrist, his opposite hand absently adjusting the watch face. Quickly she looked away pressing her body dangerously tight to the mark beside her.
She felt herself exhale as he continued on and moved out of sight. Relief and a small dose of disappointment mingled settling in her belly. She didn't have the luxury of time and ignoring the latter emotion, she continued pressing her luck, her fingers moving into the marks loose pocket, when she sensed something change.
She didn't want to look up. She really didn't. She'd already wasted too much time watching Bruce Wayne, but there was no more hiding from him.
She quickly rearranged her features, pulling her lips into a smirk as she met his dark eyes. She didn't know what she'd been expecting but she realized why she'd worked so hard not to be seen as his eyes narrowed on her.
Bruce Wayne had never looked at her like that before.
She didn't know if he'd ever looked at anyone like that before.
She didn't have time to acknowledge her thoughts as the guy beside her reacted to her sudden appearance and they both looked down at the hand she still had in his jacket pocket. He was too slow to grab her wrist as she abandoned his wallet, but he somehow got a grip on her upper sleeve tugging her close to him as he shouted. Without thinking she brought her heel down on the top of his foot, his worn sneakers no protection against her boots.
She recognized a woman's shout before she felt a pair of hands pull at her hood exposing her head and the collar momentarily chocking her, but she jerked away from the Good Samaritan, the wooden barricade digging into her stomach. The angry shouts were becoming indistinguishable as hands grabbed at her clothes and she caught sight of a pair of yellow jackets moving toward her.
Out of options, she took a deep breath and quickly vaulted the barricade, not caring about the swag she felt fall as she ran across the carpet and hurdled the other side.
"Oi," cried a very gruff but very familiar voice.
The sound compelled her to turn her head as she reached the shop front and she barely caught a glance of Bruce Wayne in all his finery and a pair of security guards in a tangle on the ground before she grabbed the first hand hold she could find and hoisted herself onto the roof with every intent to disappear.
Selina strummed her fingers against her drawn up knee at the memory. It was hard to believe it had only been two years, only two years since the two of them had been braided into each other's lives thanks to a twist of fate that had left the boy an orphan and herself on the radar of one of the most relentless men in Gotham.
She sighed at the thought. She wasn't a girl who put a lot of stock in memories. Her own were suspect, the truth and her own reality twisted up until she had trouble telling the stories from the facts. Besides, normally she didn't have the time to sit around and reminisce, but between the constant sound of dripping water and the muffled whimpering from down the hall, all she had was time and memories.
She unbuttoned and buttoned her gloves ignoring the tiny silver scars on the back of her hand. It was strange the things they'd left her, her gloves, her jacket, her boots and the things they'd taken off her, her stiletto, her jewelry, the little bit of swag she'd amassed that night.
Dropping her hands, she looked around her tiny cell again. She'd gathered that wherever she was it was old and at first glance she'd wondered if they had brought her down in the sewer, under the city, but it didn't smell like sewage, just mud and mold. She'd already picked up her mattress tested its weight in her hand, checked under it for anything that might have helped her, but there had been just dirt and stone. Everything was stone, the floor, the walls, the ceiling…
She stared at the door, her only source of light and her only indication that she wasn't already dead.
Another one of the kids, a girl, had cried for what had to have been their first twenty-four-hours. She'd screamed and she'd shouted her cries had been borderline hysterical until Selina had finally just covered her ears to block the sound.
When their first meal (a paper cup of water and a weird looking cookie) had been served, the shouting girl had started trying to make deals. She swore her parents had money, that they had connections. Selina could've told the girl to save her breath. These people never spoke, they never showed their faces, and they never opened the cell doors. Begging, pleading, bribing had no affect on these people. But Selina kept quiet, as long as they were focused on the girl that called herself Rana Van Something or other than they weren't focused on her.
The hours in between their meals had been filled with an unnerving quiet until the other two kids had started in with their questions. If she pressed herself against the bars she could see the edge of their cells the well connected, Rana Van Something or other, was just barely out of her sight.
Ty, at least she assumed that was his name, was so far she could barely hear him, much less see where his cell had been but even from eavesdropping on their conversation she could tell he didn't seem as useless as the girl.
When their questions had turned in her direction she'd momentarily considered staying quite but couldn't see the point. After she'd answered they'd grown quiet. She'd smiled mirthlessly. She wasn't stupid. She understood that these were the kind of kids that crossed the street when faced with her kind of kid and that was if they ever even found themselves on the same side of the city.
But their kid-snatchers were a lot dumber than the last assholes that had tried to run this game. These two kids were quality. Somewhere, somebody was missing them.
It wasn't a thought that usually crossed her mind, but she couldn't help but wonder, just a little, if anybody was missing her. She'd thought for a longtime about the people in her life and could only come up with three possible candidates.
Would Jim Gordon? Probably not. She frowned at the thought. She barely knew the guy. Besides, she was nothing more than a means to an end and a false one at that, her disappearing had to be one of the better aspects of his seemingly miserable existence.
Ivy? Maybe, just a little, if the girl even noticed she was gone at all. But she couldn't blame the redhead too much, Ivy Pepper had her own set of problems; there was just no hiding that kinda crazy.
The Boy? Immediately her mind filled with images of black hair and hooded eyes. She didn't want to think about him. Not here. Not now. But she didn't think he would miss her much, that over stuffed mind of his had way too much to worry about than to spare a thought for her.
Besides it wasn't like she missed him.
For what felt like the hundredth time she absently rubbed her wrist feeling a strange sense of longing at the loss of her bracelet. The boy had presented it to her not long after they'd come back into each other's lives, she suspected he'd given it to her for the same reason that people put bells on cats, but he had been sincere and it was beautiful so she hadn't minded.
She never wore it when she went hunting, the soft jingle would have been a dead-giveaway and the heavy charms snagged on almost everything. She'd always tried to keep it secure in one of the many pockets on her jacket, but when she'd woken up inside her cell, she'd felt the absence of its weight almost instantly.
She jumped her head turning at the squeal of iron hinges. It wasn't time for dinner. She narrowed her eyes, her heart beginning to pound at the echoed footsteps approaching.
This is it, she thought, climbing to her feet and edging toward the door.
She wondered if it was going to be Rana first, or perhaps the boy at the end, but as the footsteps slowed, she felt her jaw begin to clench as she slowly took a step back her feet uneven on the dirty mattress.
Two thin silhouettes appeared in the archway their faces hidden by the back light.
They probably assumed their identities were safe, that she couldn't see in the dark and she was in no rush to correct them. The moment her eyes adjusted on her new targets she felt a foreign and momentary sense of confusion. Both figures were dressed well, but the shorter of the two couldn't have been any older than Bruce, he was still in what she could only assume was some kind of school uniform, a large crest on the his lapel, his white-blonde hair neatly combed away from his thin face.
A sudden burst of light made her squint shielding her eyes from the glare of the flashlight beam.
"This is the one, Barty," drawled the older man, running the beam of light up and down her. "Tell me son, have you ever seen eyes that green before and rumor has it that she can see in the dark. Is that true, pretty girl?"
She stared back at him, but he stood patiently waiting for her to answer.
"Can't trust everything you hear," she shrugged, her voice cracking from such little use.
"She's clever too," he continued. "Took days for those idiots to catch her, and best of all, look there," he explained, his voice rising with excitement as the light landed on her chest. "That right there is a lion's heart."
Selina fought to stand still as the boy's cold eyes ran the length of her.
"How can you tell?" he asked his voice unimpressed.
The older man laughed, a deceptively warm sound, as he reached into the pocket of his jacket. Selina tried to swallow as he leveled the handheld firearm at her. She kept her gaze steady, her eyes narrowing on the barrel before she exhaled looking at him. If they hadn't killed her yet for all the trouble she'd given them, she doubted they'd start now.
Her action must've delighted him more than if she would've started screaming, because he laughed again as he put his firearm back into his jacket.
"Like I said," he repeated his voice full of mirth. "A lion's heart."
The boy exhaled crossing thin arms over his thin chest. "Just looks like street-trash to me," he scoffed.
The older man's face fell at his son's words, "That's because you're naïve my sweet boy. You only see with your eyes, not with your heart," he explained, touching his son gently on the chest. "This street-trash right here has shown more bravery in the last five minutes than I've ever seen from you. That's why-"
He paused, his eyes landing back on Selina for just the briefest moment. "This girl," he said, pointing back in her cage. "She's the one. She's perfect."
Bruce
The fire inside his fireplace crackled and popped, but Bruce Wayne barely heard it as he stared at the phone in his hand, his thumb running over the buttons that he needed to push to reach Detective Gordon. Clenching his jaw, he set the receiver down next to his untouched dinner and the newspaper he'd been reading.
It had not even been two weeks.
Two weeks. Fourteen days.
Four less than her record, he reminded himself dropping his hands into his lap as he sat back against the leather upholstery of his couch.
Ten days did not mean she was missing, it just meant that she was absent and for as long as he'd known her she had been absent quite a bit. She was a lot like her namesake in that respect, she came and went as she pleased and nothing and no one was going to tether her.
Running a hand across the back of his neck, feeling the overly tight muscles that had begun to bunch there, he stared back at the phone. He couldn't call Gordon. She would most likely despise him if he sent a cop out to find her not that the detective could anyway. Gordon was a 'good sort' as Alfred put it, but he was much too busy to try and chase down a streetwise sixteen-year-old girl who most likely didn't want to be found.
His eyes slid over to the newspaper two smiling faces stared back at him. His time at The Academy had been short and most of his memories from that period didn't involve his female classmates, but he still felt a strange sort of guilt that he only had a vague recognition of Rana Vandergood.
According to the article, she had just returned from placing second in a robotics competition at the national level. She currently sat on the school's student council and had been preparing to run for student body president when she'd gone missing.
She shared the page with a Tyrese James, a good student, but a better athlete. Tyrese currently held two state records in the 100 and 500 freestyle and was being recruited from some of the top schools in the country. He'd been reported missing after he failed to show up for practice. The coach was quoted as saying he didn't know what the team was going to do without him.
The reporter had seemed to agree; the article had focused more on the two teens achievements than the pain their parents must have been feeling at the loss of their children. It had finished by mentioning three other high-profile missing persons cases, two college kids and a woman, a well known marathon runner, who had all three disappeared last month, all three cases foul play was suspected, but in all three cases there had been no trace of them.
Three.
He swallowed the lump in his throat at the number and his eyes traveled back to the phone.
Standing he walked to the closed doors pushing back the thin curtains and putting some much needed distance between him and both the phone and the newspaper. He was being irrational. Most likely, Selina was just too busy to come and visit. She had her own life one that he only ever got to see the edges of a blurry outline that she kept vague.
He watched flurries swirl in the little light left from the setting sun. Maybe his anxiety was caused by the incoming weather. The line that had already moved through this week had left inches of snow on the ground, but according to the meteorologist those three inches would be considered a dusting compared to what was to come.
Author's Notes: Sorry for the short chapters, harder trying to get back on the bicycle than I thought it would be. Constructive Criticism always welcome.