#batgeance

Fleeting currents of cool breeze lick through the front door whenever it jingles open but mostly it’s wet and warm as the deep South in this brick and mortar. Dirt sprawls across the ground at every step and Bruce mucks his way through a hefty little mound spreading fluffs of mulch further. No complaints come for that. Daniel’s squatted by one of the floor to ceiling windows up front repotting a pothos plant and doesn’t even blink at the mess. He’s got silt up to his elbows.

“You mean you wouldn’t argue with the professional to prove your point?” The shop’s behind a month on rent. Bruce Wayne could snatch up the lease and use it as fucking toilet paper if he wanted but Daniel doesn’t take back his quip. His smile is easy, warm all the way to his eyes, when he looks up from his task and doesn’t at all allude to knowing what a powerful man is doing in his little garden shop. “Need some apology flowers or something? Out of orchids, but I’ve got some lilies in the back if you give me a minute.”

Just hours ago she had every intention to canvas the Tower and nothing else. The best jobs took the longest prep and this job, she swears, will have the best payout and there is absolutely nothing bitter about this angle. He wasn’t even supposed to be home and even if he was... Well she should have known better. So maybe her anger is blinding her a little bit to reason. Only now it isn’t just anger that’s got her fucked up.

Bruce Wayne is half undressed and sprawled on his back in the middle of what she is realizing is some sort of conference room. Figures that a billionaire would have such a space in his fucking home. He’s missing his shirt, lost somewhere in the shuffle from the hall where he’d cornered her snooping, but his pants are still on. Laid back on the long table with his chest rising and falling in time to the thundering pulse in her throat, he almost looks very young. Boyish.

Selina ducks for the floor in pursuit of her own pants. Possibly to force herself to stop staring too. He’d gotten her out of everything and that fact pisses her the fuck off all over again. Almost as much as his accusation. When she half stands to work the pleather over her calveskneesthighs, he’s pushed himself up to his elbows and watches her. Even with the dark of the room, only Gotham’s skyline lit up behind him in applause of its princeling, she can see his eyes and easily picture the cowl accompanying them. Fucking idiot.

“Honey, if you need a play by play of what we just did, maybe we shouldn’t have done it.” It’s easier to give him nothing now. She will enjoy ripping the rug of satisfaction out from underneath him. Selina stands up straight, rolls her shoulders back and watches Bruce’s gaze plummet. He catches himself but not quick enough. Selina smiles slow and lecherous and cruel when he looks her in the eye again. “It won’t happen again. No address needed.”

In an alley unfit for sustaining life with its questionable puddles that reek of ammonia and trash bags that move, Bruce Wayne is bleeding out in the Batman’s heavily plated suit. Or is it the Batman’s suit holding Bruce Wayne within? Contained as he is, Gotham’s Great Detective looks disappointingly human. And disappointingly, disgustingly rich.

Selina hopes the fall hurt. She hopes whatever cut through his armor hurt too. It looks like it hurts now because he is bared teeth and crumbled form, all the shadows cloistering him in like some sort of protective barrier. She’d like to see them protect him from her right now. Maybe he isn’t bleeding out after all if the injury still keeps him wide awake and looking at her through that black shit around his eyes.

“I don’t need to hear anything from you,” Selina sneers. But she speaks in falsehoods. She has so many questions and the only reason she keeps them under her tongue, the only reason she does not salt his wounds is because she knows without any doubt that he would not answer them. Not with any truth of his own. She hopes he hurts. She hopes it hurts him if only because she can lie to herself about anything hurting her too.

She doesn’t know where his mask went. He’s still grimacing but she can see his eyes and– yes, yes, they’re his eyes. She can see the white film of the contacts skipping through connectivity from where she leans against the opposite wall from him. Selina feels her nails cutting into her skin before she knows she curled her hands into fists. “Fuck you.”

Truthfully she hates this city. She hates it as much as she hated the last city, the crawling wet backstreets of these terrible places with their terrible people, all hungry for whatever sin appears more delicious than the last. There is no feeding such a beast, these living breathing entities that wear the face of both commerce and crime. Greed bows to no one and nothing, but welcomes and devours all who bow to it, no matter what Kaz says.

And yet as much as she hates it, she blends so seamlessly within. Gotham’s shadows are as welcoming to the Wraith as any other city thriving best in the dark. Whatever height the tallest building here thinks it claims, Inej Ghafa would strike it down and go far higher. There is none to contest her yet and none there ever shall be, if she has any say about it. And she does.

The figure opposite her opposes all light. The Batman regards her with such animosity, she might have believed herself the object of his nightscape had they not been tailing the same target. Who, much to both of their frustration, has escaped out of range for now. He clearly places the blame on her, but Inej knows better. After all, she isn’t the one with the telling profile. No one spies the Wraith and it’s only because he has ruined her job that she allows him to do so.

“You are mistaken if you think you can deter me from my path.” Inej bends her knees until she is half squatting, pulling twin ring daggers from their sheaths flush against her belly. She has two fingers slid into the open handles, the blades tucked flat against her palms as she lifts her fists. It looks almost defensive except for the threat of those knives. “I’m certain that I saw him first.”