A City in Need

“One ticket to Gotham city, the earliest flight you have.”

This wasn’t quite like a bad memory, but an ironic memory. She was in an airport once more, wearing her signature sleek black dress with her hair pulled into a neat bun behind her head. She kept her head down, and carried a single small suitcase holding everything she would need. The only difference this time was that she was running to Gotham, and towards the chaos.

A lot had changed since Selina had tried to flee Gotham. For example, she had still been Selina Kyle the master jewel thief, not Selina Kyle the citizen with no record and a clean history.

And, of course, this time she wasn’t being chased by the cops, nor was she worrying about Bane and his people deciding they wanted her dead. Those days were over. Bane was dead by her hand, and he was no longer a problem. Just like any other person, he’d gone down easy after a blow with a gun. Even if Bruce hadn’t agreed with that method, it had worked, and hey, it might just be the reason he and Gotham were still kicking.

No. This time, she was going to a city in need.

Going back to Gotham seemed a fairly simple choice for Selina. Most choices were – she was a girl who knew what she wanted. The only choice she’d ever made that made her think twice about everything she stood for was turning back after opening that tunnel, going back to fight alongside Batman.

It seemed what instigated those sudden reservations about her decisions was when she made the choice to give Batman up to Bane. It was the first time she’d ever really regretted a decision she’d made. She still wasn’t sure what changed that night, and though she didn’t like to admit it out loud, she knew something had.

Running away to Florence with Bruce had been one of the best choices Selina had made in her lifetime, though she wouldn’t admit that, either. It was one of those choices that hardly took a moment for her to make the decision. A new life. The life he’d promised she could have, the life he’d promised was possible, and he could give it to her. She could have taken it and ran off, gone to France like she’d once hoped to do. But there was no fun in that.

“Partner in crime” wasn’t exactly what she would call her and Bruce’s relationship. Perhaps she would, at least for the irony of the statement in itself, but it certainly wasn’t accurate.

That’s what the new slate was for.

So why did their past never really leave them? Why could neither of them forget everything that happened in Gotham City and move on? Why did she still have her catsuit hidden away in a box in her closet? Because, just as her worst fears had promised her, you can’t really leave that life. Her history was erased, but she was still Selina Kyle, and she was still the culprit of numerous burglaries. She was still the woman who helped save Gotham alongside the Batman, but who would take no credit. Because of the new slate.

But even a new slate would leave traces and fragments of what had been written all over it before. Whether those traces are visible to the outside world doesn’t matter: when they were visible to you, nothing could change it.

And she knew Bruce felt the same. No matter how much he didn’t want to be, he was still Batman, and he knew he always would be. Some capes you couldn’t hang up, and a cape with a legacy was the hardest. He was a symbol, a bigger symbol than he’d ever hoped to be, and where he inspired hope he also inspired chaos. Had it not been for Batman, would someone like Bane have ever even made an appearance? Would he have ever threatened to destroy Gotham City?

Maybe that’s why Bruce felt the need to sacrifice everything for the citizens of Gotham. Maybe he felt guilty, like it was all his fault, and that giving the town everything (his definition of everything) was the only way he could redeem himself. To die for them. When he looked in the mirror, did he see what Jim Gordon saw, what Lucius Fox saw, what the Blake boy saw? A hero who rose and saved a city from destruction? Or did he see a man who brought destruction on the city he wanted to save?

When she looked in the mirror, Selina saw a woman who tried to start anew. A woman who took it upon herself to survive, a woman who would do anything to get what she wanted, what she needed, to be happy. Did other people see the same thing when they saw her? Or did they see a little girl who lost everything and tried everything, a little girl who was desperate to start a new life? Or did they see the con she was, the acts, every lie she’s ever told written all over her face, her lips just waiting to tell more?

Selina Kyle was a con artist, and she knew it. But she justified it in her own way. She did what she had to do in order to survive. She put those skills to use when Gotham needed her to, even when every bone in her body and every fiber of her being told her to get out of there while she could.

“I guess we’re both suckers.”

She had hoped this decision would pay off in the long run. It had seemed to. She was living in Florence with her “partner in crime”, sipping tea at a local café, adapting to her new life. But that wasn’t really who she was and she knew it, no matter how much she wished it could be. And this wasn’t who Bruce was and he knew it, no matter how much he and everyone else wanted it to be.

And when word of Gotham’s slow descent into madness had reached them, there had hardly been a question about what they should do. No matter what, Gotham was their city. They’d made it their city, and to this day, Selina would not stand for any form of injustice that might threaten to tear it down. If she could do something about it and walk out of the wreckage with her life, she would do it.

So she had to go back. Selina had to go back to Gotham and reclaim the streets that had once been her own; help Bruce bring the city back to all of its former glory.

The clean slate hadn’t been for nothing. She didn’t have to just be Selina Kyle, the cat burglar anymore. She could be Selina Kyle, the Catwoman. Fearsome. She didn’t exist in any database, not anymore. She could do some good, as long as Gotham could handle a little bit of the bad.

“Flight sixty three, Group A, please approach the boarding lift.”

Because some storms just weren’t worth the aftermath. And now it was her turn to batten down the hatches, because this storm was going to be a hell of a lot bigger than the last one.