A/N: Everyone knows the deal, I own nothing related to the Batman universe, that right belongs with DC comics. I really enjoy Reveiws, as it feeds my power and allows the creative juices to continue to flow. Please, enjoy.
Night of the Cat
Boom!
The sound of the bomb inside the bank made her scream in agony. She was waiting on the sidewalk after school for he mother to get off work when it happened. Initially, she was knocked back due to the blast, but quickly, with almost cat-like grace she leapt up and ran towards the burning building. She tried to avoid the surrounding people who stood there and gawked at the display of violence. Before she could get any further, a girl four years older than she pulled her away from the fire and debris that rained down from the sky. The seven-year-old girl squirmed at this person who kept her away from her mother.
"Hey! What the heck do you think you're doing? You can't go in there, there was a bomb!" she yelled over the sirens that flew down the main street and screeched to a halt in front of the fiery edifice. The girl continued to struggle, but she knew in her heart it was no use. The bank was in flames, burning her future, and her mother, with it.
She collapsed in a fit of sobbing, turning and burying her face in the girl's arm. She pounded her fists in the other girl's chests, but she seemed to ignore it. She didn't know how this girl felt, but she knew she needed to comfort her. As the police cars arrived shortly to help control the crowd. As the firemen went to work, the police began to pick up the pieces. One of the policemen, seeing the girl barely coping with the crying child, slowly walked up, and gingerly took the sobbing girl in his arms and carried her to one of the EMT's vans.
The other girl followed. The policeman, a detective, spoke to the older girl. "You're Robert Dawes' daughter, aren't you? What are you doing here, Rachel, is it?"
"I was just going to get something at the store when the explosion happened. I grabbed her before she could run inside. I think her mom or dad was in there. Is she going to be okay?" Rachel asked.
The detective called James Gordon placed the now-silent girl on one of the vans, and the medics began to work on her. They took care of the scrapes on her elbows, and checked over her trembling body for wounds. Gordon rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I don't know, but I hope she has another family member. I would hate for her to go through the system." Rachel's eyes widened in surprise. Her father, a family court judge, had told her about the foster care system, but she had never heard a cop speak about it with so much fear. She quickly said her goodbyes, and with one last look at the girl, she ran off home to avoid any worry by her father. She just needed a quick stop at an old friend's house to talk.
Gordon shook his head and flipped open a torn steno pad, and jotted down a few notes. The medics were nearly done with a precursory treatment and were headed off to Gotham General. Before they shut the doors on the girl, Gordon asked a quick question, using the voice that he reserved for his own son when he was crying.
"Can I get your name, sweetie? And the name of your parents?"
The girl looked up at him with her tear-filled grey eyes. She shook her black curls out, desperate to speak to this man. Her mother always told her that policemen were friends.
"My…my name is Selina Kyle. My daddy's name is Charlie, and my mommy's name was Helena." She began to sob, and the doors closed, and the van sped off toward the hospital.
Gordon closed his eyes after the van was out of sight. Was. I'll confirm with the coroner, but I know she is in for a rough life.
Dr. Thomas Wayne was working on his daily rounds (he may never need to work at the hospital, but helping out as a volunteer made him feel better about the work he put in at his real office) when he stopped off at room 115—Selina Kyle. It had been a couple of days since the explosion, but the trauma the girl felt put her in a severe case of shock, requiring that she stay at the hospital for a couple of nights of observation and treatment.
He quietly knocked on the door, and stepped inside. The father was watching the girl play a solitary card game, one that only she knew the rules. As they heard him enter, they looked up, Selina with weary eyes and the father with expectant ones. Only the father knew the amount of his pay and how much the insurance company would not pay.
Dr. Wayne smiled sweetly, and glanced at the girl's charts. "She seems to be looking better, and I'm sure you will want to go home, right Selina? I'll bring up the paper work and she can be discharged." He saw the great sigh of relief the father heaved. For some reason, he sympathized with the father, and took his leave to get the paper work.
Before he printed out the papers, he took a look over the tests that Selina had taken. He "saw" that some of the tests had never been used on the girl. He remedied the situation at once, and then printed out the discharge papers. Handing them over to the father, he left the rest to a nurse. He had a son to get home to.
Selina just stared at the half-filled page inside her English class. She began to realize just how medial and boring 7th grade was. She kept doodling surprising good pictures of her two cats, Samuel and Cleopatra, running out of the bank with millions in money, ignoring the teacher and her "lesson" of the day. She was tapping her fingers on her free hand when the boy sitting across from her, Roger, chucked a pencil at her head.
"Hey, Kyle, why are you such a freak? Pay attention so I can copy off you for the test." He whispered ferociously. Selina ignored the remark, concentration on the individual dollar amounts that flew out of her cats' bags. Roger was content to throw random bits of items at her head when the teacher wasn't looking. Selina was determined not to let him get to her, but it was becoming too hard.
"Come on, freak, why don't you just go visit your mommy. Oh, wait, I forgot, she died." That was the last straw. Using some of her characteristic Kyle anger, she leapt out of her seat and jumped onto the top of the table. She threw him to the ground and began pummeling him, quick jabs to the face, the chest, anywhere she could get her hands on. The teacher ran from the board to the girl and pulled her off, with some difficulty.
"Selina Kyle! Get to the principal's office right now! I will not tolerate this kind of behavior from you again." The teacher yelled, trying to prevent Selina from launching herself back on the ground over the sniveling Roger.
"Come on, Mrs. Huston, it wasn't her fault, Roger was egging her on! If you would stop trolling on and look at the class every once and a while you would see that!" a boy near the back of the class stood up, taking a stance against what Roger had said.
"Mr. Wayne, there will be no tolerating this kind of behavior, and I will not have you yelling at me. You can accompany Ms. Kyle to the principal's office." She spoke. Bruce Wayne rolled his eyes, and grabbed his books. Selina broke free of the teacher's grip and walked out of the classroom.
She moved quicker than he had expected, so he nearly had to run to keep up with her.
"Wait, will ya?" he yelled.
"I don't need some rich boy trying to stick up for me, okay? I can take care of myself, and I don't need anyone to help me." She quickened her pace, avoiding Bruce any way she can. Instead of heading towards the office, she took a left turn and headed out the back door.
"Wait, you can't just leave—"
"Please, what are you going to do about it? Any why are you even here? Don't think that you need to slum it up here in some public school, just because your parents died. So back off, and leave me alone!" she shoved him against a wall, and turned and ran out the noticed, just before she was out of sight, that her black hair failed to conceal a bruise that ran along her neck, and on the side of her face. He remembered hearing from some teachers that she was constantly coming up with "mysterious bruises" every week or so. Bruce figured it had something to do with her father.
"Dad, I'm home!" Selina yelled as she shut the door. She was out late, working at the animal shelter for the fourth time this week. Working at the shelter was calming for her, as it was run by a sweet lesbian couple who only hired women and girls (they had their fare share of abuse by men). Selina always enjoyed volunteering there, there were no men to harass and belittle her. She heard his answering grunt, and she shook her head. Probably boozed himself into a coma, she thought. She dropped her backpack, and looked in the fridge for something to eat. There were a couple of beer bottles, some mustard, and a week-old box of takeout. "Great, nothing" she mumbled, slamming the door. There was an answering meow from underneath her feet, and she felt the soft fur of her cat, Cleopatra. She bent down, and stroked the cat, "I guess you're my only help, right Cleo?" the tabby stared at her with wide eyes, softly purring. She rubbed the face, and stood up. She searched for the other black cat, Samuel, hoping he wasn't anywhere near her father's chair.
The sound of glass hitting the wall told her where the cat was.
"Goddamn cat!" he yelled, and a black streak flew out of the living room and slid underneath the table.
"Selina, get me another beer!" she pulled her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail, and opened the fridge. She took a deep breath and walked into the room. She handed the beer off to her father, a hulking form that once was so proud. He had sunk into a drunken stupor ever since the funeral, losing his job over the course of a few weeks. She turned to get out of the room as quickly as possible, but he grabbed her wrist.
"I told you to get rid of the cats, we can't afford to feed ourselves, let alone a stinking animal. " he slurred his words together, barely staying together long enough to shove her away, demanding she clean up the "goddamn mess".
She turned to the wall, where the beer was still sliding down the wall, and glass was everywhere. She went over, and carefully picked up the larger pieces, trying to avoid the sharp edges. She had hoped that by enrolling in a few classes at Gotham Community College, working three jobs, and volunteering at the shelter, she could gain some independence from her father. "Guess how lucky I am." She spoke to herself walking in the kitchen with the broken shards. She felt a massive shape loom into the kitchen. But she focused on throwing away the shards. It wasn't until she felt the hand on the back of her neck that she began to get scared.
Her father threw her against the wall, and began to slap her once, twice, three times. She started crying, but he was immune to the sounds she was making. She tried to protect herself, but he was too strong, to fast for her. She wondered how a man who spent his days drinking, eating, and sleeping could hit so hard. With a great effort, she shoved him off her, and threw open the door, the two cats streaking out behind her. She grabbed her backpack, and took off.
The next thing she knew, she was in Gotham City Park, crying her eyes out and trying to ignore the pain coming from her face, her arms. She brought her hand up to her nose, and it came back red.
"Selina? Selina Kyle?" she heard a voice say. She turned to see Bruce Wayne's head sticking out of a car. She jumped up, suddenly nervous for her appearance. She backed away as he stepped out of the car, a soft, British voice warning him that they were going to be late for the event.
"Great, just when I thought I was rid of you, you come right back, like a dog." She said.
Bruce just smiled. "I don't know whether to take that as a compliment. I am a dog person, you know."
"Yeah, well, I hate dogs. So off you go, Master Wayne." She spoke, doing a poor imitation of the mysterious man in the car.
"Are you okay? You look like you just got hit by the business end of a fist."
She shook her head. "Always like you, Bruce. You care too much about other people; it's going to get you in trouble one day. I can take care of myself. And now, I need to find my cats. Won't be seeing you, Wayne." She turned and walked into the woods, leaving a stunned Bruce behind.
Walking along in the darkness of the night, Selina Kyle began to think. Now that she was on her own, truly, she needed to find a good income for herself, and not work three dead-end jobs, being run by a man that only wanted to feel her up. She began to think of the life Bruce Wayne had been living, filled with money, expensive suits, and diamond-studded cufflinks. She wondered how to best use her skills, skills she was learning from an older woman who lived in the middle of the park, the woman who had dozens of cats around her. She was learning how to enter places without being seen, to pickpocket even the most observant people, to attack and protect without mercy. She thought of her own two cats, wandering the streets, avoiding dogs, animal control, and other devices of human civilization. Her wanderings brought her to the wealthier shopping district of Gotham, and directly in front of a jewelry store. There was a beautiful diamond necklace on display, each circle of the jewel perfect in cut, with the largest almost the size of her eye. She began to stare at it, and noticed the pressure sensors dotted around the necklace, and she remembered how to disarm them. She smiled, and walked on.
"Miss, I don't think you should be wandering around this late, Gotham is a dangerous place you know." She heard the sound of a man with authority, and she cringed.
With a smile, she turned and attacked the man. "I know, idiot dog. And you would be well to remember that too." She said as he was groaning on the ground, blood gushing from his nose and face. He was clutching a dangling wrist, broken in two different places. Selina got off the man, and strutted down the sidewalk.
The darkness of a new night filled Selina Kyle with hope. Jewelry stores and banks lay dormant for the taking. Slinking around in her black wear, she jumped with cat-like grace from one building to the next. She settled on the roof of a new bank that had just installed the only security system that it could afford. Childish, for the Cat Burglar she had become. She slipped on the black mask that made her look like the Cat she had lost over two years ago, and jumped down to the lower levels. She slipped in a hole she had created with the newly bought glasscutter with her recent inheritance, as she called it. The work began for the Catwoman.