Selina: Chapter 1
She awoke in her bed as she usually did, with cats surrounding her. Meelo was cuddled in the curve of her back. Holly hadn't showed her face in more than two weeks. The little devil must have gone out and found herself a male to follow through the city.
Sitting up, she stretched her arms up into the air, feeling her spine crack and stretch. Her breasts bobbed with each step as she sauntered to the wardrobe. She looked back to the bed as she took two different dresses and held them up to her nude body. "Meelo which do you prefer? The emerald green one? Or the ruby?"
Meelo stared for a moment at the mention of his name, but quickly twirled back around and went to sleep.
"You adorable little shit," she scoffed as she slid the emerald dress with the golden trim down over her smooth skin. She wrapped a stolen, silver necklace around her throat. It had a bright blue sapphire at its heart.
She quickly stepped down the stairs and opened the door, only to find an ugly little dwarf waiting for her. "Good morning, Selina."
"Lord Tyrion, I thought I had told you that I could not help you," Selina said with an irritated tone.
Tyrion took notice and bowed. "Apologies, I know my tongue can quickly prove heavy on unwanting ears. I just had but a few questions more, if you had a few minutes to spare."
Selina sighed, "Very well, give me a minute to grab some coins from my bedside and we can go out and I'll answer all of your ailing questions."
She closed the door and passed through the kitchen to her hidden door leading out to the alley behind her abode. She did not mind the dwarf, but his continued assault of questions about Batman were growing irritating. As she opened the door, this time the dwarf's sellsword waited with a smirk.
"Sorry lass, were it up to me I'd spend the whole day in one of Gotham's famous whorehouses. But the man would rather spend it chasing costumed men instead of naked women," Bronn japed.
Selina groaned and accepted her defeat. Surprisingly, Tyrion was able to restrain himself until they reached the sandy shore of the sea. "So, you've clearly met him. What does he look like?"
"I've told you, he's a man in black armor with the symbol of a bat on his chest and pointed helm. What else do is there to say about his appearance?" Selina grunted. Bronn had fallen behind them by thirty paces, still keeping an attentive eye on his employer.
"Look out to the water. Tell me what you see."
She looked out to the sea confused. "There's a ship coming into port. A group of foreign sellswords shouting at each other in a foreign tongue. Some young girls running about staring at the topless men as if they were cut from marble."
Tyrion chuckled. "You see, but you do not observe. That group of foreign sailors, do you see how the one is barking louder than the others? How he stands upon the plank above the others on the dock? That one is clearly in charge. And those girls that gawk at the strong men working throughout the port? If you notice, the last one in the group is actually lingering her gaze more on one of her friends than the men. She must fancy her. You see the sea? I see the dark blue water laying completely at rest, its surface a mirror both kissing and reflecting the bright sapphire sky above. You need a certain finesse to describe things of beauty and wonder. So tell me again, this time from the heart. Tell me of the Batman."
The dwarf's words and surprising insight gave Selina pause. She thought her words over for a minute before replying, "He's the worst, and the best man I've ever known. He is so distant from his fellow man that at times it seems beyond belief that he loves them. But he does, I can see it. No one would go to the lengths he does to defend, protect, save, his fellow man. He wears the armor, the cape, and the helmet to protect those that know his secret, the handful he truly loves. He hides all of his form but his mouth, and his eyes. This way you can see the mouth of a man as he speaks to you. He speaks with the coarsest, darkest voice of any I've heard, but his words are always so determined, so true. He keeps his eyes visible so that even the most scared little girl will be able to look into them and see the eyes of someone who wants to protect her. Underneath his cold, stern eyes is the lightest ember of warmth. He is both the storm and the calm after it. He is the intensity of the sun with the serene beauty of the moon. Batman has done more for his fellow man than any king or lord has ever even dared dream. The kingdom would want you, and everyone to think Batman wants to bring about the end of the crown, that he hates people and those that would rule them, but no, he loves them."
After Selina had finished, she realized she was short of breath and her chest was racing. She surprised even herself with just how intimately she felt she knew the near stranger that had been her hunter, her savior, her lover.
The dwarf was staring at her with a queer expression of astonishment and pleasure with himself. "What?" Selina asked flatly.
Tyrion chuckled, "It's a good thing you left the life of a whore behind. You're far too intelligent for it. You say he loves all of these people. Hm, well it would seem you have an insight into the man that no one else did."
Selina's brow piqued. "What do you mean?"
The lord's face grew still as he looked up to her an asked with a pleasant smile, "Did you love him?"
Did I love him? How do you love someone like that? Who will save you, but then lock you up for weeks on end. Fuck you, and never return to warm your bed. Disappear for months, without a single word. "No. He may love those he protects, but that does not mean he is loveable in return."
Tyrion laughed once more. His prideful, self-pleased chuckle was growing more irritating with each cluck. "Spoken with the true distaste of a former lover."
Selina decided not to give any more breath to the small man's ego.
After a few minutes of silence as they stared out at the sea, Tyrion broke the quiet. "Do you think he died? Or retired perhaps. Maybe what he set out to do is done."
Selina shrugged her shoulders. "Gotham survived before the Batman, it will survive after as well."
The Nameless Man:
"It's been near three months since we found you in that ice hole, and you have yet to say much of anything," Mance spoke as they shared their supper. As he swallowed another piece of cooked flesh from the deer they had been brought, he continued, "You still don't have a name. We can't go around calling you the Frozen Man forever can we? How about Jurz, or perhaps Thorne, Karet, I knew a Karet once, fierce warrior. Unfortunately for him, he was never good with not sleeping with another man's woman. So what will it be?"
The man that had been brought back from a frozen death remained silent. Mance scoffed, "Oh come now lad, we've been conversing for weeks and it's as if I'm still talking with a stranger. You know not your name, or where you're from, all you remember is your woman."
My woman… He thought of the moment when his memories of her flooded back to him. The memories of his dear Nora, with her silvery white hair and beautiful, bright blue eyes. She was a figure forever carved into his memories. Her beauty, her warmth, he could remember feeling and experiencing these sensations, but still did not remember the man he was when he did. It was as if he was watching his life through the reflection in a lake. He saw the events, the way they kissed, the way they felt, how they made love, or shared secrets, but it was as if it was not him living them, merely one who looked like him.
"Well, Frozen Man, finish your meal, then take a walk with me."
He finished his supper, thanked Dalla for her kindness, and followed Mance out of the tent. Mance had been leading his people south for weeks now. He promised them salvation, and a way to get past the Wall, whatever the Wall was. Despite the cold, and the occasional menacing snow storm, this place had a very beautiful and serene feel. On days when the sun was high and the skies clear, the rivers and lakes were the most vivid blue. The trees rocked and creaked in the wind, undisturbed for thousands of years.
Most of the self-proclaimed freefolk remained very clear of him. He was threatening to them, dangerous. A man that had been encased in ice, and whose body felt and appeared lifeless. His light blue skin had not changed back to the fleshy pink of a living, breathing man, and his eyes remained the same lifeless black they had been the day he was rescued. He heard folk muttering the term wight and monster under the breaths.
One thing was certain however, something was not right. No mortal man should have survived however long he had been trapped in that ice, nor been able to continue on living with a body such as his. Most days he did not even feel any sort of hunger, Mance made him eat as to not scare Dalla or Tormund or any of his other council. A dead man was frightening enough, he didn't know how eating would make him any less scary.
As they walked through the mob of encampments, people quickly withdrew to the safety of their tents and stared with open eyes as the pair of them passed. Their great leader, the King Beyond the Wall, conversing with an abomination of nature.
"Oh don't mind them, just never seen anything like you before. Sure our giants and mammoths would scare any Southerner, but to them even you are a new sight to behold," Mance quipped as they passed through.
"I am not like anything in this world," he replied, staring at his blackened fingers.
"This world is full of men thinking they're someone else's better. The king of Westoros sits on his ass and tells his lords what to do. The lords tell their smallfolk what to do, the smallfolk tell their children. It's a never ending chain. I didn't declare myself the King Beyond the Wall, all of these people willed it. They wanted me as their leader, and so I am. You are not like anything in this world, no, but that does not mean you don't have a place in it," Mance continued.
Suddenly, three figures dressed in pelts emerged from the shadows between two tents and charged them. They ignored Mance and instead brought their wrath down upon him. With their clubs and swords they wailed on his body without remorse. One of the swords even sprang a deep cut in his side, but he never felt the pain. Through the beating, he never felt a tremor of pain. As he turned to look upon his attackers, the club found its way to his skull, and he slipped into a deep unconsciousness.
Congratulations…
He turned his head towards the sound, but all he saw was darkness.
Congratulations… The voice echoed again. He realized the voice was coming from all angles, not just one. Spinning around trying to find the source, he remembered where he last heard that voice. Nora….
Her voice spoke once more, Congratulations… You… the…
"I'm what Nora, what am I!?" He roared in anger and pain and confusion. Her voice sounded broken, splintered, like he was only hearing part of the message intended for his ears.
Congratulations…You…are…victor…
Suddenly he was brought back into the world of the living once more. He was in a bed, nude, with figures surrounding him. They were blurred at first, but soon his eyesight returned to its former sharpness.
There was Mance, the fiery haired one with his hair bursting up like a wild fire was Tormund, a spindly one named Orell, and some others he could not remember the names of. "Are you alright, friend?" Mance asked.
Victor raised a hand to his head, "I feel nothing. No pain, no bruising." He looked down at where the cut was, but saw that no blood poured from the wound. It was a thin black line dashing across the pale blue landscape of his skin.
"So Frozen Man, seems you have a knack for surviving," Mance said with a grin.
"Victor…my name is Victor…That's what she called me…Where are they?"
"Got em' tied up in the next tent over," Tormund scoffed.
Victor rose, and left the tent into the open night air in the nude. He had not worn many layers since being freed from the ice. He found a simple pair of trousers would suffice, leaving his chest bare to the cold air.
He turned and continued into the next tent, Mance and his party following close behind. Inside the tent, his three attackers sat chained to wooden stakes in the ground. They had been beaten but were not near death. They feel pain, they bruise…why don't I?
Moving closer, the three flinched as Victor's hands reached out. He wished to feel what bruised flesh felt like, if he could even feel it. He had not yet touched another mortal's flesh. Whenever he and Mance had shaken hands, the man's hands were always gloved.
"We brought em' here as we didn't know what to do with them. They attacked you for…well…y'know," Tormund said, trailing off at the end.
"P-please ser, we didn't mean to kill. Just, you scare us. You're like one of them," one of them whimpered.
Victor turned his head. "One of who?"
None of them spoke, all trembling in fear.
"An Other…" Victor continued.
Mance spoke now, seemingly surprised, "How do you know that word?"
Victor continued speaking without turning towards the King Beyond the Wall. "I have heard it muttered under hateful breath and whispers. They think me one of these spirits your people fear." In truth, he did not know how he knew the word. He just…knew it.
"Th-they're not spirits. They're real!" Another cried.
"Why does your flesh bruise, yet mine remains cold. Dead…." Victor reached out his fingers to touch the nearest prisoner's cheek where a bruise sat oozing blood.
As Victor's fingers touched the man, the man began to scream. Victor withdrew his fingers, but it was too late. The man's face began to lose its hue and cracked and turned frosty blue. His eyes iced over, and his mouth froze in a contortion of pain. It was done in but a matter of moments. The man now sat there, dead, his face and neck transformed into chipped blue flakey skin, as if he were made of ice.
The other two prisoners, along with Mance and his party, stood aghast.
Victor studied the bare hands of the man he had just killed, seeing them slowly grow blue and dead as well. He turned his gaze to his own hands, staring at the murderers that took the man's life. What am I….
After minutes of silence, Mance finally chuckled. "Perhaps we should call you Coldhands instead of Victor."
So for this month I'm going to try and do an upload a week. Unfortunately I'm going to be very busy traveling this summer and won't be able to upload much so I'm trying to crank out a lot now. I'm going to try and make these uploads very appetite wetting for you guys! I've finished or planned most of them, and all I can say is I hope you enjoy!