Bat, Cat, and Coin

Selina I

Her mom had taught her a lot. She had taught Selina how to read and also how to steal, how to be smart and how to be stealthy. But she had never had to teach Selina not to trust strangers; Selina had learned that easily enough on her own.

She wondered how her mom would feel if she saw Selina now, living in a gigantic mansion with a boy her age and his mom and dad and even his butler. Would she tell Selina not to trust them? Would she tell her to stay and eat their big meals and sleep in their comfortable bed and wait to see when they would kick her out?

Selina knew that would happen eventually. Mrs. Wayne liked having her there, and had even bought her a whole bunch of new clothes so that she didn't have to keep wearing Bruce's clothes. But sooner or later, it would change.

When she was six, her mom brought a stray cat home to the basement where they were squatting. She was a black cat with bright, yellow eyes, and Selina had liked her immediately. They had taken care of the cat for a few months, and Selina had named her Nightcat, because she was black and her mom found her at night. But then her mom decided that it was too expensive to keep taking care of Nightcat, and so had taken her away. Selina was furious with her mom for days after that, but her mom convinced her that Nightcat was never really part of their family, she was just a stray, and she was too much of a burden for them to keep her.

Now, Selina was Nightcat. She was a stray that the Waynes had taken in, and they would keep her until they decided that she was too much of a burden, or they got bored of her, or they decided they simply didn't like her anymore. It would happen eventually, as surely as the sun would rise the next day and it would be like she was never there. And maybe Bruce would be upset about it, because he seemed to like having her there, but he would get over it just like she had gotten over losing Nightcat.

So she decided to make the most of whatever chance the Waynes gave her. She read through a lot of Bruce's books, and when his school year started, she followed along with his homework. Leslie came over fairly often to guide her through some lessons, but those were more boring than when she could go at her own pace. She didn't want to go to an actual school, where she couldn't decide for herself what she learned when, like she was used to.

But she also went through the manor when no one was around to see her, making note of where some of the more expensive items that she could carry were located. When the Waynes eventually kicked her out, she would make sure to take enough that she could sell to keep herself comfortable for as long as possible. It was what her mom would do.

* * *

Bruce liked playing checkers, and she didn't mind playing that with him, but when he tried to teach her chess, she had a much more difficult time. There were a lot of different pieces that moved a lot of different ways, and some of them didn't make sense at all, like the horses that were supposed to be called 'knights.' Still, she sat there and moved the pieces around until he eventually said "Checkmate." He liked winning and she liked when she made him happy, because it meant that he would want to keep her around for longer.

"What's something that you're afraid of?" he asked very suddenly one day, as they sat on opposite sides of the board.

She stared at him. "What?"

"What's something that you're afraid of? Someone at school said that a good friend will tell you what they're afraid of, because they trust you."

She frowned and crossed her arms. "How do you know they weren't just trying to trick you into admitting what you're afraid of?"

He matched her expression. "He wasn't asking me." Then his gaze dropped. "I don't know if any of my friends at school are good friends. But you are."

Selina's arms fell. "I am?"