The stars had disappeared from the sky during Cathy's time inside, save for the last few brightest ones. The green tint of early dawn smeared the small bit of horizon visible through cracks between buildings. The sun would rise soon! But Cathy couldn't go back inside the courthouse, refused to go back. The man in the basement hadn't acted violent, but it didn't matter, the courthouse may as well have been a condemned building as long as he occupied it. On paper, his words would seem polite, even innocent, but the masked intent made Cathy never want to see him ever again.
Cathy sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. The cold was getting to her. Or maybe it was that disturbing encounter, it was hard to tell. Bracing her body like a steel rod, she focused her attention away from the courthouse, out of necessity. Anything useless had to be forgotten for the moment, for she was now back to square one, right where she started - needing a place to hide. She shivered to loosen the "celebration of our own" remark from her mind.
A pair of brownstone rowhouses were tucked away behind a fence nearby, leading to a possible exit. Stooping low, Cathy ducked beneath a two-foot high opening at the bottom and found herself in an urban valley of sorts, surrounded on three sides by brick walls. Windows belonging to each house were covered or blocked off, making it very hard to tell if the homes were currently occupied.
But Cathy needed to chance it.
Entering the tucked away space and leaving the courthouse behind, she found the nearest structure's door to have a mesh-link gate installed, blocking access to the house's entrance door. The second house further away in the corner was missing one. Done deal that that particular one was currently in use. If it was easy for her to get in, it was a walk in the park for a prisoner who already lacked a sense of property ownership simply by the fact that they were incarcerated in Arkham City. The corner house was too obvious of a target.
The sun had broken the horizon by now. It's weak, newborn light grew brighter the more Cathy stalled. Still, it didn't feel safe to just waltz in to the gated house, even if was possible to unlock.
A stake-out was the only safe way, a day's worth to see who went in and who went out. The cold outside was bitter, but it was worth a numbed nose to stay invisible. A dull brownish-orange dumpster only several feet away felt like a good enough spot. Though it would block her view of the stoop and of the door swinging, she quickly set up discarded tin cans she found littered amongst the discarded trash bags and towered them in front of the gate. If the sound didn't alert her, the sight of snow tracks left behind would.
The need to hurry spurred Cathy faster. Thanks to the brand new layer of clean snow, her black clothing was akin to a blinking neon sign pointed in her direction. She stood out worse than Bruce Wayne in a food stamps line. Once her tin towers were complete, she scraped herself behind the dumpster. A puddle of greasy water filled the triangular corner. Luckily the people who used to live here didn't believe in recycling. Flattening several cardboard boxes strewn about, Cathy layed a few sheets to crouch on.
All she could do now was stare at the back of the dumpster and wait. Wait and think. Her mind was all she had; a desolate and lonely place.
Cathy blinked several times. A sleepy itch was in her eyes, but remaining dregs of fear from the previous hours prevented no such escape into dreams. She leaned her head on the craggy stones beside her, exhausted by perpetually tense muscles. At least she had time to relax now, there were many hours to go until nightfall again. But there was only so much relaxing one could do when commencing the next step entirely depended on how the next minute went.
A short time later, with nothing to do, Cathy began to pick absent-mindedly at spots of fluff on her sweatpants, wishing for the small comfort of feeling the material's softness against her legs and not the base layer of denim she had underneath. She lowered her eyelids, just to rid them of the annoying itch. Only for a minute or two. Not that her dreams were at all pleasant these days, but the two thugs who broke into her home hours ago had roused her from one of the deepest sleeps she'd had in a while. It wasn't going to be quite so easy to rid herself of the two dead prisoner's unwavering stares either.
Dutifully, she opened her eyes after what felt like a minute. Sky was still blue, house was still unbothered, garbage still stank—the environment hadn't changed since the last time she saw it. It couldn't hurt to shut her eyes again to rest them for another five minutes. Her ears were still dependable, she would know if anybody passed by.
Awake again after some time. Squatting had cut circulation in her legs and they were beginning to lose feeling. Peering at the cardboard underneath her feet, no dark stains suggested that water or grease soaked through. They seemed good enough to sit on. Settling down and bunching her knees up to her chin, she crossed her arms tight over her torso and layed her head on the wall again, shifting to find a relatively comfortable position.
In the duration of the first hour, her eyes focused and unfocused on the metal bin, causing her vision to form squiggly bits of light dancing against the orange. Sometimes she tried to sort shapes out of them like an ink blot test, other times she stared without really seeing, thinking about her dad. Desperation squeezed her heart as she imagined the turmoil he was going through, having no idea and no word on what happened to his defenceless daughter in the three weeks of being trapped. She concentrated hard on picturing his face, as if that would somehow send a message to him that she was still alive and unscathed...
...so far.
Cathy jolted awake, the resulting movement scratching her temple against the bricks. Her chest jutted out in a reflexive stretch, and she blinked rapidly to banish her bleary sight, noting immediately that her eyes felt better rested. She had fallen asleep! A light sprinkling of snow tumbled from her arms as she unfolded them, and she found more of it dusted all over. She glanced up to see the wind blowing sheets of it off the roof, some of it falling into her small corner. Sitting up straight, she pinched her clothes and shook the snow off, twitching when some of it blew back and went down her shirt. Her cheeks were numb with cold, but after a tap or two with her hands the feeling came back.
Damnit, why did you fall asleep?! she screamed internally, but it was with some relief that she seemingly awoke of her own accord, and not from the trap springing or noises from the environment. Daylight was still visible, though the sky had since grown overcast. Judging by the amount of shade it was most likely late afternoon going on evening.
Cathy didn't have to wait long, darkness fell within the next hour, and finally when the shadows enveloped her whole, she positioned sideways and scraped out from behind the dumpster to check the stoop. The tin cans hadn't budged an inch. No tell-tale signs in the snow proved that they had been moved and later replaced either.
She couldn't stick out another day behind the dumpster for fear that it would be her last—the air was getting colder and colder by the night. Cathy stepped down for a moment to survey the door. Now how to get inside. Breaking a window was too dangerous, mainly for the reasons of potentially inviting in the cold and an inmate or two, or slicing herself to ribbons from crawling through. A large, foreboding padlock kept the chain-link gate unbreakable. No simple, everyday household item would get through it. She tested the gate by pulling it, seeing how much width the narrow space could accomodate.
At the top, between the house's door frame and the metal barricade, there was a bit of room. The space could be large enough for her to just barely squeeze through. The entrance's turn-style knob was an old-fashioned, everyday domestic one, although a dead-bolt from the inside would complicate everything. Still, the antique-looking handle bode well, for they were usually more succeptible to lock-picks.
At nine years old when Cathy first discovered the cheap method of picking locks with a straightened paper clip, she would excitedly fiddle with all of the locks at her grandparent's house, sometimes for whole afternoons.
Sliding the drawstring bag off her shoulders and digging inside, she pushed aside various items to reach the very bottom, until her fingers rubbed many chilled metallic sticks: hairpins. They weren't packed for vanity purposes, the appearance of her hair was forgotten long ago; they were for jabbing an eye if she ever found herself in a situation that called for it (which she hoped would never come).
She didn't think she could stomach the feeling of a hairpin, wielded by her very own fingers, violently piercing through the toughened jelly of an eyeball. But if it ever came down to it, she wondered if she would be able to override her natural reflex to stop before harmful impact. If it meant fending off an attacker who meant grievous harm, then she hoped so.
Looking over her shoulder once to make sure that she wasn't being watched, she reached into the narrow space with both hands, and inserted the flat end of the hair-pin into the keyhole. Cathy never truly found out how a lock actually worked or what levers and parts were necessary for a door knob to function, so she resorted to blindly poking the pin around for a spot that gave less resistance. It always worked for the paper clip.
After a full minute of constantly checking over her shoulder and jiggling the knob a few times to test it, it finally rotated fully. Elation swelled in Cathy's veins as the door creaked open a few inches, giving way to the house's black insides.
Throwing the bag back onto her shoulders, she stuck her arm through the space and pushed the front door wider. It creaked open eerily, in the way that haunted houses always did in the movies. A shaft of distant, electrical light spilled into the entrance hall like the unfurling of an ominous welcome carpet.
Pulling her arms back, she then slid her fingers through spaces between the gate's metal links and grunted as she hoisted herself up. The barricade rattled and clinked everytime she got a new foothold, making her grit her teeth. The climb was slow-going, she could barely fit her booted toes in through holes that weren't even large enough to fit them. The metal was too smooth to gain much traction, thus Cathy had to resort to her arms doing a majority of the work.
Her waist rose above the frame. Balancing precariously at the top and curling her toes painfully to prevent her shoes from slipping, she threw one wobbly leg over and slid it in the other side. Safely straddling the top of the gate, she brought the other leg in. Gripping the bar, she prepared herself to drop. Already it an incredibly tight squeeze. Her feet didn't even need a good hold, they could simply dangle if she chose to let go. She could feel the wooden beam pressing her backside hard.
The thought that she wouldn't fit was terrifying. If she got stuck, there would be no heroic firefighters to saw her out, no friendly neighbors to fetch the butter, no dad to laugh first and then call for help; she would be a hare in a bear trap, waiting for predators to start circling.
Using the door frame to lean some of her weight against, she waited until her feet got a firm foothold on the gate again and then started wiggling her body down.
Until she got wedged at the point of her ribs.
Dread spilled into Cathy's blood. She sucked in her stomach, which wasn't difficult considering how long she'd gone without a full meal, and attempted to slide in further. The wood frame's edge scraped her back, even through multiple layers of shirts and a jacket. She couldn't get in. Cathy squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and counted to three. Clenching her abs, she forced the rest of her body inside with one gigantic push-kick, tumbling loudly onto the entranceway's floorboards.
She arched her back in pain, fighting the urge to groan from the sharp ache in her ribs, but that risked alerting anyone who could be using the house as shelter. She mustered the will power she didn't even know she had to bite her tongue, and was grateful for the first time in her life that her B's were not double D's.
Clutching her mid-section to ease the painful throbbing, she slowly rose to her feet and closed the door carefully by turning the knob so that it wouldn't click, and listened for noise such as snores, rustling, or voices. When nothing but her restrained, nasal breathing met her ears, she tiptoed in and looked around the corner. Nobody. The house looked abandoned, there was no furniture save for a beaten up couch in what she supposed was the living room. Either the previous owners took all their belongings with them during the evacuation or the place had been ransacked and picked clean by inmates. It felt plain compared to Cathy's shabby but well-cared for apartment.
The dwelling showed signs of neglect. It smelled like a combination of dust and moisture, though she supposed that was more due to abandonment than careless owners. Water stains from the ceiling formed stalactite patterns on the walls. Strips of green floral wallpaper hung partly down, or some areas were ripped away entirely. The floorboards didn't even have a glossy finish, they were simply bare splintery planks nailed into place, similar to lake docks or a cabin.
After her entire walkthrough of the two additional levels upstairs, and a nearly induced heart attack when she stepped on a creaky floorboard, she found nothing but a couple scuttling cockroaches. The place was so quiet that she could hear their multiple legs clicking. Although, that still didn't mean that someone didn't claim the place and planned on returning.
Hopping back downstairs, she propped a few furniture leftovers, like the ratty ottoman, four curtain rods (sure to make enough noise to wake a coma patient once they clattered to the floor) and a book shelf with three missing planks against the front door to keep anyone from breaking in. The book shelf left a clean trail on the dusty floor as she dragged it into place.
After exploring the main level by opening cupboards in the kitchen and inspecting the attached living room, she concluded with the possibility that nobody had used the house in quite a while. Personal belongings weren't left anywhere, there was nothing of value.
A moldy, three-seater couch sat lonely in the living room, lumpy from many hard years. Cathy pulled the seat cushions off to see if they were stained underneath, only to discover that it was a sofa-bed. Promising. Pulling the handle bar, she unfolded the foam mattress inside. The sheet wrapped over it bore tiny chewed holes, and some chunks of foam were missing. Various stains dotting the cloth weren't all that inviting either. All for the best anyway, she would feel too vulnerable sleeping in plain sight.
Cathy lifted the back-cushions. Expectedly, it was dark inside. Fetching a match from her bag, she struck it to take a look into the empty shell of the three-seater now that the bed was folded out, taking double care to keep the flame away from the couch fabric. Nothing was inside but a few cobwebs and dustbunnies. Good. She preferred not to be surprised in the middle of the night by rodent visitors. Spiders were bad enough, but she considered the feeling of a rat crawling on her skin even worse.
Longing to be soothed, coccooned in something besides the house itself, she crawled inside the couch. While the house certainly wasn't warm, it protected her from the wind, so she shed her jacket to use as a pillow, doubtful she'd wake up frostbitten. A good night's sleep wouldn't come easily, but Cathy definitely felt drowsy. Staying up the whole night wasn't an option, she needed to be alert enough to continue.
She never thought of it before, didn't have time to think about it, but finally where no one else could hear her, in the safety of her own solitude, she was able to cry properly. She curled her knees up to her chin and let loose the emotion she'd been holding back. All of it.
A soft, peachy glow painted surrounding buildings and lightened the only patch of sky that Cathy could see from the window. Twilight was fast approaching—almost time to move out. Her decision was final, she wasn't staying any longer. Earlier that afternoon when she had been touring the upper floors, now that she had daylight to see everything properly, out of the window she spotted a man in a trenchcoat and his head wrapped entirely in bandages walk by and enter the house next door. The status of Arkham City was worse than she thought. It was apparent that some criminals had to take first aid into their own hands when injured by their territory disputes. It was safer to get out while she still could, before Bandage Face brought any thugs in after him.
Cathy sat down on the floor beside the sofa-bed and dutifully took inventory of her bag's items, sure not to leave a single thing behind. Three bottles full of bath-tub water, book of matches, a whistle, countless hairpins, a bundle of cash for bribery, scattered change for a pay phone (if she could find one that was actually in service), a couple cupboard snacks she shoved in at the last minute, and most saddening of all, two pieces of identification hidden in the lining (just in case her body was the only remnant the police could find...). She belly-crawled and swept her arm under the couch as a double-precaution, and was satisfied when all she felt were her fingers smearing dust.
To wait out the last of the sun's light, she pulled a granola snack bar from her bag and took a contemplative bite while observing the sky outside. While a little stale and hardened, the sweet taste revived her, waking her senses. Unfortunately it also occurred to her just how hungry she was when she swallowed the first bite and felt the grainy glob travel down her throat and settle heavily in her cavernous stomach.
After finishing the bar and partially satisfied for the time being, she poked the crinkly wrapper through a small hole in the wall and out of sight, leaving no evidence that she ever stayed in the house. She had no idea how a wrapper could be traced back to her, but it made her feel better to ensure that nobody entering the place afterwards would notice a previous presence, or even know that the house had been recently used.
Nightfall. Time to move out.
A/N: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second...only three chapters in and I already have 10 reviews, 12 favorites, and 18 alerts? I'm overwhelmed, I've never had that many happen this soon before. Oh my, this-this is all so sudden, our relationship is moving so fast! *presses hands to cheeks* :D I kept seeing reviews and favorites coming in, so I got cracking on this new chapter as fast as I could.
Looks like Maxie never made an appearance in Arkham Origins. Not even as a picture or an easter egg. That means I've got almost free reign on the character here. I'll do my best to make him feel as Arkham Game-ish as I can.