Cats Eat Birds - Damian Wayne/OC

18 | DISTURBED FAITH

GOTHAM CITY; OLD GOTHAM DISTRICT; YOUNG HOUSEHOLD; GARAGE | 11:41 AM | CRISTEN

SO DRAMATIC . Maybe Selina was doing this on purpose to please Cristen's more cinematic side, but it's simple fact by now that dramatics are something she's fluent in. They. Something they are fluent in.

But it being time , whatever that could be, also meant that Selina would be here. If this was what Cristen believed it to be, then Selina would be here. Catwoman and Stray, right? A debut? Selina tears back the curtain on Door Number Two to expose her partner to the world for the first time? Everything Selina had promised would happen, and she had promised Cristen they'd do this together.

So, where was she then? It's not like Cristen could pull up on her civilian motorcycle, and that required that she actually knew where Selina wanted her to be. It's time . Time for what? A final test?

Her nails dug into her biceps, waiting in the empty driveway. No shadows flickered across the rooftops. No challenge presented itself. Cristen dared to text Selina back a simple question mark, but got nothing in response. Realistically, she was probably busy, but Cristen couldn't help but spit on that possibility.

If this was a test, bait for something, then Cristen wasn't going to bite. She'd passed the last four "final" tests. Sitting and staring at a dark street for fifteen minutes did nothing to ebb all the frustration she had for Selina anyway.

And that frustration was old and wrung well. Their relationship hadn't always been like this, even if it started and ended with Cristen's cold shoulder and Selina's inability to separate from old habits. Things hadn't always been this way. Once, Cristen had been excited.

           "Will my costume match yours?"

"...If you'd like."

"Will I use a whip too, or will I get something else?"

"What you're comfortable with."

"We'll patrol together, right?"

"Yes."

"Every night?"

"Weekends."

Nightmares made Cristen into a Riddler. Selina hated questions (for said Riddler-related reasons) but the poor girl had been wailing and trembling and thrashing, so desperate to fill her brain with something else that she'd ask even the nuttiest of questions. Last time, she'd asked Selina if she'd ever killed anybody. They watched a late-night history documentary and forgot about it.

By now, the trembling should have receded. It didn't, and that made something in Selina's gut pull, so she pulled the trash can closer to the bed with her foot. It was the right thing to do, because as soon as it was close enough Cristen threw herself off the bed and half into it to hurl.

Selina kneeled and pulled back her hair and rubbed her neck, instinctual. Cristen's back stuttered in bursts, her hair only just past the small pointed ears Selina liked to pinch. It had been the first time that Selina had ever cut hair before. It was the first time Cristen had ever had it cut, too, which was how they figured out that even her hair was invulnerable. First was a word they used often.

"I've never, I-I've never..." Cristen heaved, and the little bastard laughed . No one was so joyful to be reminded of their own humanity quite like Cristen. Then she puked again, and Selina rubbed her back again, and a fine-tipped drill put new valves in Selina's heart when Cristen grinned, "I didn't know I could vomit!"

Selina should have said something about it. Vomiting meant a locked bathroom door and Selina's mother, Maria, but Cristen's issues were specific to a race they didn't even know the name of. Letting it slide felt like bile sliding up her throat, but still. Cristen.