Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Cat’s eyes popped open in the dark room. 2:15 AM, just as she’d planned. Time to get to work. 

She moved away from the other body in the bed with an imperceptible shudder—Cat might reach out to others, but she hated to be touched. That was Kitty’s territory. Or maybe Selina’s— albeit generally in different, usually more feline- or child-related contexts. Not hers. 

Still lying in the wide, soft bed, she closed her eyes for a second and let her mind drift out. There—two sleepily content housecats. They readily opened their minds to her request and let her feel through their senses, tracking all the regular inhabitants of their world. The house was quiet, and, per their time-based territoriality, likely to remain so for some time. Perfect. 

Kitty caught up her purse and clothes from the floor and moved into the bathroom to clean up, while Cat skimmed through her memories of the evening. Not that she hadn’t been conscious of what was happening, exactly. They weren’t that separate. But Cat tended to zone out—or rather, in—when Kitty was working a mark. Bury herself in internal thought and let the other take over. 

The petty billionaire who was the target for the evening had turned out to be one of the slightly better types of the breed—Kitty had been wined, dined, and bedded in fairly considerate fashion. 

All the better to steal from you, my dear. 

The body in the bed stirred as the Cat padded quietly out of the bathroom. 

“Uh—sweetheart?” the tech mogul asked groggily. 

Can’t even remember what our name is supposed to be, Selina put in contemptuously, even as Kitty sashayed over to him with a smile. 

“Hey, babe,” she whispered, leaning over and giving him a brief kiss. “I’ve got an early morning shoot, remember? I’ve got to get home so I can shower and prep.”

Selina had actually mentioned the fictitious early morning call when she’d “happened” to meet Mr. I’m-Super-Rich-and-Important at one of Gotham’s more exclusive nightclubs earlier that night. It’d had trifold purpose: present herself as a working model (men like him loved models; it was a nauseatingly basic cliché, but no less true); provide a reason she wouldn’t want to spend the night with him, allowing him to “overcome” her reluctance (no one got to be a billionaire without enjoying winning more than practically anything else); and establish that she’d be leaving early (reassuring him that there wouldn’t be any awkwardness to getting rid of her after). 

“Right,” he murmured. “Hey, this was awesome, you should leave me your number.” 

“On the nightstand,” Kitty responded in a promisingly husky voice, and pulled away with no further resistance from the sleepy entrepreneur. 

That was true, too. Catwoman’s calling card was a simple black slip of gloss cover, with a gray-violet silhouette of a cat sitting on its haunches with a long, curvaceous tail. The untraceable number on the back led to an answering machine, where the response message—read by an actress in a cunning imitation of their deep, sultry voice—let callers know they should be a little more careful about where they bought their art from next time. 

The messages were such fun to listen to. And occasionally pass on to reporters, if her targets had told on themselves a bit too much in their fury. 

Of course, the Cat usually left the card in place of whatever objet d’art had lured her in, rather than in a bedroom—this tactic was one of their last resorts, when the target actually had decent security, wasn’t inclined to host parties, and ran background checks on the help. But despite an entirely justified pride in her burglary skills, she didn’t let ego get in the way of the easiest and safest way of getting the job done. 

In this case, Mr. I-’Founded’-Eight-Companies-in-Five-Years lived in a big walled compound in the sprawling suburbs outside of Gotham proper. The outside wouldn’t have been too hard to breach, but none of the inner buildings were close enough to the walls to leap onto, even with rope assists, and the extensive lawns and gardens were lit up with spotlights and tracked with security cameras and motion detectors when they weren’t in use. 

But, of course, the inside of the house didn’t have anywhere near that level of security. Cat didn’t even bother putting on her usual costume before padding out into the rest of the house, despite the various cameras—none of them were actively monitored or hooked up to alarms. 

Wouldn’t want the master of the house or his guests bothered by alarms going off or having their privacy compromised, after all, Cat thought acerbically. 

Oh, certainly not, Selina agreed. A robbery is easily fixed, after all—he can always squeeze more money out of the peons. Embarrassment, like diamonds, is forever. 

She quietly slipped down the wide staircase into the “public” portion of the house. This particular tycoon was particularly proud of his “originality” and “creativity” in decorating each main room on the first floor with art from a different region. The dining room was East Asian in theme, a bewildering clash of pieces from a dozen different country and period combinations — all chosen to be stereotypically black and red and gold in color, of course. 

He probably actually thinks of it as Oriental, even if he knows better than to say it in public. Selina sneered. 

And it’s the dining room because of course good food is all they have to offer, right? Kitty added. 

The combined library and gaming room was Eastern European and the ballroom/music hall, classic Sun-King French. 

Of course, that’s the only room that’s even remotely consistent on period, Selina grumbled, even as she drank in the light, airy space and its decorations.  

Despite the Cat’s halfhearted internal lecture on staying focused and sticking to the plan, Selina couldn’t resist snagging a small bronze sculpture from a niche in the ballroom, an 19th century model of Coysevox’s Crouching Venus, although it hadn’t been on their list. It would make a nice guesting gift for the Gotham Museum of Art, after all. She liked to leave them always unsure of whether Catwoman was a friend or foe. 

Even if they decide to roll over on their bellies and hand it back—

Which they almost certainly will—

It will mean Mr. My-Brain-Is-A-Gift-To-Humanity won’t be able to keep it out of the news, Selina concluded their thought firmly. 

The next room was the one they’d been seeking. The living or sitting room, used for comfortable reclining, viewing television, or hosting people in a mood to relax, was outfitted in “Native” style.

And, of course, he hasn’t bothered to even discriminate between North, Central, and South Americas, let alone different nations and tribes, Selina fumed. 

Here, above the fireplace, was the piece that had drawn her here, after it had been lent to a controversial collection at the Metropolis Museum of Art—a Tsimshian headdress frontlet made of wood and abalone. The Cat quickly wrapped it up in a piece of chenille, neatly cut out of a throw blanket with the straight razor she kept in a case in her purse. She wrapped another piece of chenille around the Venus and secreted them both in her “bag of holding”—a three-foot by four foot piece of multi-layered silk with myriad pockets that, when empty, folded down to a square just a few inches wide. 

She grabbed a few other easy-to-carry pieces from the living room, trying to focus on those that were older, but still traceable, then gave the rest a regretful glance and left the room. 

But not the house, not yet. One more stop to make. 

Some discreet inquiries to friends in the Gotham security business had revealed that Mr. What-Inheritance-I-Am-A-Self-Made-Man had decided to store his smaller, easier to fence valuables “unexpectedly” in one of the downstairs bathrooms. Cat quickly located it and took down the copy of one of Monet’s water lilies—so predictable—that hid the safe. It was a decent model, but no S&D, and she got through it in about ten minutes. She purred happily at what she found inside. Diamonds and platinum just never got old—nor did the cache of almost $30,000 in cash. 

Pocket money to Mr. Has-A-Different-Car-For-Every-Occasion, but oh-so-handy for us. 

That last chore done, she slung the bag of holding over her shoulder, so it looked like a garment bag, and headed for the exit. After a nearly ten-minute brisk walk to the front gate, she waved cheerily as the guard in the security office opened it for her—she’d let him know she’d be leaving early when Mr. Revolutionize-Everything-Except-Politics-Of-Course had ushered her in—and waved to the driver of the car idling in the drive just outside, who nodded back casually and put down a well-thumbed paperback. 

 “I hope you weren’t waiting too long,” she said, stepping into the backseat. If she had, of course, it was his own fault—she was precisely on time. 

“Nah, not at all,” he said, checking that she was strapped in. “I just got here a couple minutes ago. City’s quiet as it ever gets this early in the morning, I had a clear shot the whole way here.”

“Shiny,” she said. “I don’t want to miss my flight.” 

“No worries of that,” he said and pulled away from the gate. 

She pulled out her phone and they read an old favorite by Shirley Rousseau Murphy for the thirty-minute drive to Gotham International Airport. As they pulled up to the passenger drop off, she handed the driver triple the agreed-upon fare in cash and waved off his gushing thanks with a fleeting smile before darting into the labyrinth that was GIA. 

The Cat quickly navigated her way through ticketing and arrivals. Her first stop was the mini FedEx outpost in Terminal A, where she mailed most of the jewelry and cash to a few different safehouses, and the Native art to the AAIA. 

They at least, can be trusted to get it back to where it should be without bothering to notify the “authorities.” 

That taken care of, she strided confidently to one of the bathrooms near the main level. This bathroom had a particular feature she found useful—it had two separate entrances, one serving Terminal A and one B. The bathroom was empty at this early hour, and she ducked into a stall and stripped. Her black clubbing dress, reversed to hide the sparkles and pulled down to her waist, passed for a cheap polyester pencil skirt—after pulling on a thin gray sweater and the foldable ballet flats she kept in her purse, wiping off some of her dramatic eye makeup and lipstick and smudging the rest, and ditching her auburn wig ito expose her natural short dark locks, she stepped out of the bathroom barely five minutes later as a completely different woman. 

As she looked now—just another drab woman of indeterminate ethnicity, in cheap clothing and minimal makeup—she was able to walk casually through an employee-only door without raising any questions, and gain access to the danker, narrow hallways behind the shops and restaurants on the main level. 

Ducking into a single-occupancy bathroom, Selina locked the door and pulled out her makeup kit. It was a bit more comprehensive than what the average woman carted around, with tiny bottles of alcohol and spirit gum remover nestled next to her mascara and lipstick. Working carefully but quickly, using a pointed metal nail file to lift up the edges, she removed the latex, nose putty, and scar wax around her nose and jaw. Once that (the hard part) was done, she took out her color contacts and ruthlessly scrubbed away the contouring makeup with her little pack of wipes. 

She packed away the latex and nose putty—waste not, want not—and then, giving the mirror only the barest of glances, began hurriedly layering the makeup back on, this time creating an unremarkable “professional woman” look. This change had taken a little longer—all-in-all, she left the airport about forty minutes after she’d walked in, and even the most sophisticated identification software or genius criminal profiler wouldn’t have been able to recognize her from one iteration to the next. 

Which still gives me a couple hours until dawn. Hmmm, what should we do? Or rather, what shouldn’t I? 

They giggled internally, relishing the high of a job well executed and a night’s fun awaiting.

GIA ran a shuttle to downtown, which was less traceable than a private car service, if also less convenient. She checked into her favorite hotel—the one just a couple streets over from the Gotham Art Museum—and quickly changed into the Cat’s favorite night-walking, name-taking, ass-kicking clothes. Grabbing the Coysevox model, the Cat headed for the roof. 

Less than forty-five minutes later—really, museum security had just gotten sloppy —she’d left the French sculpture in the assessor’s office with another calling card and was heading back along the rooftops to a safehouse for the night when she ran into him. 

As usual—damn him and his ninja training, or whatever it had been—there was next to no warning. One second the Cat was leaping ably from surface to surface, relishing the burn of her muscles and the beauty of the night, and the next, she was pinned against a wall, the side of the mechanical penthouse on the roof she’d been crossing. He didn’t crowd her too close—he was thoughtful that way—but his fists were tight around her wrists, stretching them above her head. Even through the six inches that separated the rest of their bodies, she imagined she could feel his body heat reaching out to hers. 

“Going somewhere, Catwoman?” a growly voice breathed in her ear. 

She leaned just a bit into Kitty and cast their best seductive smile up at the dark, masked figure, giving thanks for the fact that she didn’t have anything on her more incriminating than several hundred dollars and a pair of sapphire earrings that Kitty had particularly liked and hadn’t wanted to leave in a hotel room. Not that she’d stay long in whatever cop’s custody he decided to haul her off to, but she’d been having a particularly good night, and she’d really prefer not to go through the whole “get handcuffed and stuffed in the back of a car” routine. 

“Just enjoying the beautiful night,” she purred up at him. She leaned forward and rubbed sinuously up against the kevlar of his body armor—that was okay, as long as it was her touching him. “Even better, of course, now that I’ve had the good luck to run into you.” 

To her mild surprise, he didn’t pull away. “Hardly luck,” he drawled. “I’ve been staking out the Art Museum since I heard you were back in town.” 

She cursed inwardly. “Now, why would you go through all that trouble for little old me? I mean, I’m flattered, of course. But you could have just called.”

He snorted. “Entertaining and enlightening though the messages on your line are, I somehow don’t think calling it would be likely to end with us in the same place.”

She cocked her head, in surprise, only partly performative. “Surely my occasional, innocent little peccadillos aren’t enough of a reason to track me down.” 

“The crimes aren’t, no. You could be, however.” 

“Oh?” she asked, a little nervous now. This wasn’t going to their usual script… 

“I have a proposition for you. Recently I’ve been thinking that, perhaps, we could come to a smarter arrangement. One that avoids my trying to have you thrown in prison every other month.” 

With an effort of will, the Cat kept from tensing. Not that he wasn’t attractive, of course, not that she hadn’t invited such a proposal from him multiple times, and he’d flirted back even if he hadn’t seemed about to take her up on it, but… 

Something about the way he’d suggested it seemed off, that was all. And plus, the Bat had always belonged to the Cat, who really didn’t mind the occasional rooftop chase, play-fight, and the inevitable escape. It was a challenge, and often quite fun. She didn’t want to give her playmate over to Kitty… 

But then, maybe he actually is interested in the kind of encounter I could give him, Cat mused. Minimal contact, masks on, a little pain imparted, that could be okay…  

He does like to roam around dressed entirely in leather and pick fights that were likely to end in plentiful bruises, after all, Selina concurred. 

And he’d look so… very pretty, tied up on his knees, the Cat purred. 

Whether he means it or not. We could just agree, and then hit him in a vulnerable spot once his guard is down, Kitty suggested. 

Backing out of an agreement with this guy seems like a Not Good idea, Cat pointed out nervously. 

Yeah, but on the other… other hand, refusing him outright is probably unwise as well. Men do not handle rejection well, Selina stewed.

“What kind of an arrangement did you have in mind?” she asked, stalling for time. Cat tried twisting her wrists a bit, hoping that he’d let her loose that now they were entering the negotiation phase, but his grasp was rock-solid, immovable. 

“Well,” he said, his growly voice dipping even lower. And he smiled. Broadly.

It was the most surreal thing they’d ever seen. 

The Batman. 

Smiling. 

What the fuck?

And then it got even weirder, because his lips opened and Actual. Fucking. Fangs. Peeked out below his lips. She jerked back in surprise, but there was nowhere for her to go. 

“I was thinking,” he said, the extended fangs giving him a slight lisp, “that we could make a little trade. I let you give me the slip whenever I see you stealing something—and you give me a sip, as well.”

A small part of them groaned at the ghastly word-play, but most of her focus was elsewhere at the moment. 

“You’re a vampire,” Cat said flatly, forgetting even to drop down into her usual sultry, just-gave-head lower register. “That… makes sense, I guess.” 

“Indeed.” 

“And you want me to let you bite me. And drink my blood. In exchange for not handing me over to a cop that I can escape from in about five minutes.”

He snorted. “Your safety would be guaranteed, obviously. Just a taste now and then, really—and I guarantee you’d enjoy it.”

The Cat tried to hide her instinctive shudder.

Batman seemed to catch it anyway, close as they were. “And we could talk about additional compensation, if you think my proposition is a little too one-sided,” he added. “I can also get you immunity in Metropolis, for starters.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, beginning to slowly reclaim her chill. Not that Superman had ever been much of a problem—he just didn’t concern himself about nonviolent crimes, although he didn’t count white collar crimes as nonviolent if they resulted in death or destruction, regardless of how far the victims might be separated from the perpetrators. 

“Well, it’s certainly an interesting proposition,” she drawled, pussyfooting around the question. “I’d have to think about exactly what I’d like in exchange, though. How about I meet you back here tomorrow night, and we can discuss it further?”

“Sure,” he agreed readily, surprising her again. “Of course, until we have an agreement in place… I’m afraid I don’t have a reason not to hand you over to the cops this time.” 

“Oh, come on, you don’t even have anything on—ow. Ow!”

Chapter Text

Six hours later, the Cat finally made it to a safehouse, thoroughly grumpy and off-kilter. Not only had the Bat been significantly rougher and trussed her up a lot more securely than usual, he’d made sure to find an actual smart cop who wouldn’t underestimate a woman in spandex—a difficult endeavor in any city, but particularly in Gotham. The cop had actually taken off her mask —something most smart people in this superhero-dominated world treated as a massive faux-pas—and had taken pictures of her, forcing her to have to double back for his phone once she’d broken out of his custody. 

And even that had taken her significantly longer than usual! She’d actually come within blocks of getting walked into a police station without a significant disguise on. Unacceptable. 

And she’d lost Kitty’s earrings and their cash, since he’d stowed those in a money belt inside his clothes and oh hell no. Fucking cops. She’d taken a certain amount of glee in taking his gun off his belt along with the phone and leaving it in the taxi she’d snagged. Watch him try to explain that.

The entire encounter had just been... wrong. 

She’d never been afraid of Batman before. She was most at home in the night, the dark, the shadows, and always had been. She liked bats. They were cute and fluffy. And Batman himself had, up until now, always been somewhat… hilariously discomfited and off-kilter in their interactions. 

When she’d been a kid, they’d fostered for almost a year with a family in a tattered old apartment complex that had been overrun with stray cats. It had been their favorite and longest fosterage for that reason, although the Cat had eventually had to deal with the master of the house taking liberties with some of the other fosters and well, that had been the end of that. There’d been one cat in particular that she’d identified with, an antisocial black queen—unlike the others, who mostly swapped around spaces and huddled together for warmth, the elderly feline matriarch had marked out her territory and drove out any other animals with hisses and yowls and her spinal hair standing on end. 

Until the day a young tom, one of the few homed cats in the complex, who therefore thought himself invulnerable and beloved by all, had decided he wanted to be friends with her. The poor old queen, unwilling to openly fight a kitten, had been hilarious in her helpless bewilderment when he simply ignored her hisses and bushy tail and cuddled up to her. No, you should be scared of me. See my fangs as I hiss, how big I am with my tail puffed out? Hear my growls, so loud and angry? Stop touching me. I am the night!

Cat had immediately thought of that almost-forgotten old friend the very first time she’d run into the Bat. He’d had that same air of confused, thwarted menace when she’d responded to his sudden threatening appearance with a cheerful come-on. 

Right from the beginning of this latest encounter, there had been nothing of that endearing awkwardness in this Batman. It was tempting to think that perhaps he’d only recently turned into a vampire, and the change was due to that… but perhaps that was wishful thinking. Selina knew perfectly well that they hated to be wrong, and might be reading too much into things, exaggerating the difference in him, to make herself feel better about never figuring out that Batman was a fucking vampire. 

Cat pointed out that for all they knew, he’d always been a vampire—it certainly explained his choice of fursona, that he only came out at night, his accomplishments and mystique. Perhaps his previous discomfiture had been simply due to him repressing his own attraction and hunger for their blood, and now that he’d decided to give in to it, his natural confidence had taken over. He’d certainly always seemed to have it around other people… 

But they hadn’t survived this long by taking unnecessary chances or ignoring her instincts. And those instincts were screaming that they’d just been in the presence of a predator more dangerous than any she’d encountered before.

After checking the security cameras compulsively for an hour, she relaxed a little. After taking a long, hot shower, Cat loaded up her VPN and firewalls and booked a car and a plane ticket for the next morning—as early as she could while ensuring that the plane would be fully booked and the airport busy enough for them to vanish in the crowd. 

Clearly, it was a good idea to get out of Gotham for a while. Maybe permanently, although her predilection for known and familiar territory had dragged her back here time and again over the years. 

She didn’t get much sleep, despite her carefully curated bedtime mix of spoken poetry and movie scores, noise-canceling sleep hood, electronic and feline alarm systems, and weighted blanket. She was just too unnerved. Besides which, they never slept well with a morning flight—she always got anxiety dreams about missing it and woke up compulsively every hour or so to check the time. But at least the Bat was probably even less of a morning person than she was, if there was any truth in his fursona. 

The next morning was foggy and gray—what a surprise—at the ungodly hour when her driver texted her that he was waiting. 

Yes, of course she’d set the pickup time herself—she wanted to get the hell out of Gotham as fast as possible without tripping any alarms. That didn’t mean she couldn’t rue the consequences of the choices Past-Her had made. 

She checked the perimeter carefully, through multiple sets of slitted eyes, before heading out of the ramshackle apartment building. The car she’d requested—black Ford Escape, license plate and driver matched the photo the service had sent—was purring happily at the curb. 

About to climb into the back, as usual, she changed her mind suddenly—the shadowed bench seemed threatening instead of sheltering for some reason, and anyway, caprice was her Bast-given right—and sat in the front.

“Ma’am?” questioned the young, attractive black man, his voice rising and spine stiffening with surprise—not that he’d been slouching before, she noted with a quick, appreciative glance.

“Luke, right?” she asked. “You don’t mind if I sit up here, do you? I get nauseous in the back seat sometimes.”

“Oh, of course, ma’am,” he acquiesced quickly. Leaning back, he stretched his right arm out toward her. The Cat recoiled inwardly, but controlled the corresponding outward motion—hopefully quickly enough that he hadn’t noticed—when she realized he was reaching into the back seat. Straightening, he tossed a paper bag lightly into her lap with a smile—almost a smirk, really. 

“Do me a favor and use that if you get queasy,” he said. “Barf smells up the car for hours—plus, they take cleaning bills out of our pay.” 

Selina wrinkled her nose as the Cat relaxed her vigilance and let her take over the idle chitchat. “That’s ridiculous. How is it your fault if the passenger makes a mess?”

“From your lips to God’s ears, ma’am,” he said with a chuckle as he pulled into the early morning rush hour traffic. 

Selina blew out her cheeks. “Alright, Luke, I was going to let it go, but that’s three ma’ams in five minutes, which is about seven more than I can deal with this early in the morning.”

That startled him into a laugh, as she’d hoped, although he still seemed a little—sad, fearful maybe? Or possibly just having some digestive issues. Those could be surprisingly hard to tell apart. 

“I’m sorry, Ms. Kyle—”

“Se-li-na, please,”

“I—really?” 

“Luke, you just picked me up from Jefferson Heights, not Bristol.” She looked at him quizzically. She’d been teasing, mostly, but it was a bit odd—this car service was a lower end outfit that mostly served the slightly more affluent areas surrounding the dirt-poor East End. They cost barely more than a taxi, but—unlike Gotham’s taxis, which by union rules could only take street hails—you could schedule them ahead of time or ring them when needed. Most of their clients were the same kind of blue collar, a couple paychecks away from the street, hardscrabble types that the drivers were, and didn’t expect formality or servility. 

Selina’s more usual problem with their drivers was keeping them from calling her honey or kiddo. 

“Are you new?” she asked, watching him keenly. 

“Um—” he stalled.

“You are,” she confirmed, seeing the truth of it in the way his shoulders rose and his head ducked to the side.

 “But you’re a very good driver,” she continued—stating the obvious as the attractive young driver expertly wove his way through Gotham’s narrow, bustling streets, where the lanes were made up and the lights didn’t matter. “Clearly used to driving people around. Just… richer people.” 

“Well—”

“Mmm, did you get fired? Piss off a high profile client, perhaps?”

He didn’t say anything, but his knuckles whitened where his fists were clenched down hard on the pleather-wrapped wheel.

“Aw, crap,” she apologized immediately, feeling ashamed. “I’m sorry. I get carried away by my curiosity sometimes.” 

“That’s okay, ma’am,” he said shortly, forcing a smile.

And then there was a long period where neither of them spoke. She drummed her fingers on the armrest a bit, searching for something to spark up the conversation again. This was the problem with sitting in front, of course. Sometimes you got to have an enjoyable interlude talking about ships and shoes and sealing-wax with your driver, but more often you just ended up stewing in supremely awkward silence. 

“Wait a minute,” she said, jolting upright. “You made the wrong turn back there. You should have taken a left to get on Route 9 South.”

“Detouring over to the GSP—there’s an accident clogging up Route 9,” he said easily. But there hadn’t been anything on the traffic sites when she’d checked, right before heading out of the safe house, and he hadn’t been on the radio, so how would he know if an accident had just happened? And he wouldn’t meet her eyes, though he had readily enough during pauses in traffic earlier. 

Her heart started pounding, breath coming shallow and rapid, the Cat expanding out to fill their body with ready energy. She could spring into his lap—right hand clawed onto his to keep the wheel steady, left elbow into his face, feet jammed onto his to keep him in place and bring the car to a stop—

Something seized her—came from behind her to wrap around her body—powerful arms circling around her chest, trapping her arms, one huge hand pressing a bundle of cloth to her face. She froze in panic. The Cat just barely kept them from gasping or screaming in fright, which would just make her breathe in whatever was in the bundle faster. 

There had been nothing in the backseat, she’d had a bad feeling so she’d checked, it had been empty. He had to have been in the way-back, crouched behind the seats in the Escape’s ample cargo space, waiting for her to sit in the back and then take her. But how had he climbed over the headrests and gotten into the backseat, without her hearing something, seeing something, sensing something? 

After her first convulsive struggles got her nowhere, Cat got smart. She continued fighting, but in progressively weaker, less effective struggles, holding her breath but raising and lowering her chest to mime the deep, heaving gulps of air that terrified, unreasoning prey would take. As soon as it seemed believable, she slumped, letting her body go limp and unresponsive. She soothed her screaming lungs with tiny sips of air, one for each three—now shallow and even—chest raises. 

He had to buy it. Surely the people he usually kidnapped were less wiley, not as good under pressure, and didn't have as much practice in holding their breath. She had a deceptively sturdy build, belying their air of slender fragility. He’d be afraid of overdose—it was so easy to kill someone this way, a thought that made it even harder to stay deathly still as her heart spiked with fear. 

No. She had to play it out. He’d take the cloth from her face to check her tongue and breathing. Then, she’d spring. She rehearsed the actions in her mind—bite down on his hand to get him to let go for that crucial second, one hand to the buckle release and the other to break the window. Escape. 

He had to buy it. Any second now. He’d release her. She’d get her chance. Oh god, her head was swimming now. Had she breathed in the last chest raise? He wasn’t letting go.

She couldn’t help it, they started struggling again, her body writhing without her conscious direction, sobbing for breath, desperately trying to get him off. 

Blackness.

Chapter Text

When they struggled back to consciousness, too groggy to separate out an individual thought, she was stretched out in a heap across cold concrete, spit sliding out of her mouth to pool grossly under her cheek. Fuck, her head felt like it was stuffed full of steel wool. 

She must have almost come to, a few times, while he’d taken her here—wherever here was. Her mind stumbled hazily across blurry sense-impressions of being pulled this way and that, stretched out across a lap and seats both encased in leather, tight bindings wrapping around her wrists and ankles. Worst, a hand slowly petting through her short locks. 

She remembered his voice, murmuring incoherently in the dark, not as deep or throaty as usual. The thought that he wasn’t guarding his identity as carefully against her was terrifying even in murky retrospect. His shoulder pressing nauseatingly into her stomach before she was swung like a sack of potatoes and dumped onto a hard floor. Every short, hazy vignette of memory ended with the sickly sweet smell and suffocating pressure against her face as he’d sent her back to sleep. 

She groaned as she rolled over onto her back, away from the puddle of drool. Her stomach shifted threateningly, a heavy, painful weight anchoring her to the floor. She forced her eyes open. We can be sick on your own time, dammit.  

That thought didn’t particularly make any sense, but then, their brain wasn’t feeling very sensible at the moment. The ceiling looked like the floor felt, a blank slab of gray concrete. Okay. Sitting up. That’s a thing we can do. 

She leaned into the Cat and turned over again, onto their other side. Used the momentum of the roll and a hand against the cold floor to push herself into a half-sitting/half-lounging position, up on her elbow with her knees bent. 

Oh fuck, I’m naked. 

Panic gave her the energy to sit up all the way, taking in their surroundings with a glance even as she took mental stock, her head painfully echoing their terrified heartbeat. Sore throat, cloudy head, limbs stiff with the lingering cold of the floor. Nothing else, no aches and pains or lingering sensations. She was in a prison cell—three walls of concrete, and metal bars to her left. A bizarre metal contraption in the far corner appeared to be a combination sink and toilet, without a seat or lid, though at least it had a couple of mini hotel bars of soap and a lonely roll of toilet paper sitting on top of it. 

An old-fashioned examining table sat against the wall at her feet, light gray metal bars and black padding and all the restraining straps, and that sent her already fast breath rocketing near to hyperventilation. She pressed her head down between her knees, desperately trying to swallow down the knot rising in her throat as her stomach rebelled again. 

She was unsuccessful, but she at least made it to the toilet before throwing up. 

Oh god, she hated this feeling. Less the muscle spasms and the burn of stomach acid and the taste— not that any of that was fun—but more than all of that, she detested her body doing things on its own, without a conscious will, being unable to stop it. She loathed it. 

An interminable time later, she lifted her head from the stainless steel, finally feeling like she might not need to immediately lower it again. She stabbed at the three shallow buttons until she figured out how to flush and turn on the water—there were two buttons for water, but picking one or the other didn’t appear to affect the icy temperature of the flow. What with the cold water, cold concrete, no clothes or other fabric in the cell besides the single lonely roll of industrial toilet paper, and ambient temperatures that she guessed were around the high fifties, she wasn’t feeling great about her long term health prospects. 

Well. We aren’t going to be here long enough for it to matter, Cat reminded them firmly . 

With that thought in mind, she bolstered her courage and stood shakily, crossing over to the bars. It had been quite a while, but when she’d been a teenager she’d often been able to fit through the standard ones… 

Before she could try, however, a voice called out to her. 

“You back with us, cutie?”

Her eyes, which had been fixed on the bars, now rapidly refocused to what she could see through them. And now that she was paying attention to something outside her internal systems, hearing something other than her heartbeat and breath, she could hear multiple people—a high whistling snore; the low wheezing breath of a lifetime smoker; a soft, monotonous mumbling. 

Her cell looked out into a square space, lined on all four sides by barred cells, like a garden enclosed with cloisters. She couldn’t see the cells that presumably stood to either side of her, and the cells to her left and right seemed empty—although she couldn’t see all the way to the back of every cell, and almost nothing of the ones closest to her wall. But several of the six cells on the wall across from hers were occupied. 

In one of them, directly across from her, another examining table had been placed on its side, with the metal underside and legs facing the bars, and she guessed there was someone sheltering behind it. Three of the others held visible people, all as naked as she. None of them were talking at the moment, so she guessed the continuing unintelligible mumbling was coming from behind the prone table.

One of the other prisoners, in the cell at the far right, was laying facedown on their table, feet pointed at the back of the cell, so she couldn’t see much of anything but mid-length, light brown hair hanging off the side and the very top of a pair of white, pert buttocks. The other occupied middle cell housed a cadaverously tall, ragged ginger who was sitting against the back of his cell, head leaned back against the wall and forearms resting on his bent knees. 

The last visible prisoner, on the far left, was a huge, swarthy man with thick, curly black hair— everywhere. He looked like he’d probably had one of those neatly trimmed beards that was all the rage at the moment, styled in a tight square around his nose and mouth, but clearly hadn’t had a chance to shave in a while. The ragged mane went well with the keloid mass of scarring that covered his sunken right eye socket, completing the piratical impression. He was leaning in a casual power pose with his elbows spread wide, hands laced together, forearms pressed against the bars, and his forehead propped against his fists, apparently unselfconscious of his nudity. 

Oh no, he’s very conscious of his nudity, Kitty injected. And justly proud thereof. Cat nodded internally, accepting the correction. 

As she met his remaining eye, he smirked. “Welcome to the Bat’s dungeon, sweetheart.” 

“Knock it off, Slade,” called a feminine voice from the left. Whoever it was had a beautifully deep voice, as low as theirs, and it sounded like it was natural rather than partially trained. An arm reached into Cat’s range of vision and grabbed onto the leftmost bar of her cell. “Are you okay? Or, well—okay for the circumstances. You didn’t sound great there for a while.” 

“Just coming off of whatever he used to knock me out,” Selina responded. She hovered between the two impulses for a second—wanting to be as far away from the ogling man across from her, but also to respond back to the overture of support from the unknown woman beside her—but eventually she moved forward and put her hand over the fingers wrapped around her cell bar. They twisted, interlacing with her own and squeezing. 

“I’m Ivy,” the woman said. 

“....call me Cat,” Selina responded. 

“Heh. The thief, right?” the man jeered from across the way. “Shouldn’t you be able to escape-artist your way out of here, sweetheart?” They both ignored him. 

“How long have you been here?” Selina asked, almost holding her breath, not sure which answer she wanted. 

“Oh god. About a month, maybe?” Ivy answered. “You lose track of time in here, and you’re the first fresh blood in a while. I’ve been here the longest—of those of us who are left. What’s the date?”

Selina winced. “March 23rd—assuming I didn’t sleep long.” 

“Just about exactly a month, then. And no, he dumped you in here… maybe a half-hour ago. He must have given you a pretty good dose right before—the ether compound he’s using doesn’t last long, not unless you’re willing to risk killing the person you’re applying it to.”

That last was said in the critical voice of an expert, casting judgment on a talented amateur who’d been overreaching themself. 

“He didn’t—do anything, right? Other than taking my clothes?” Selina asked in a hushed voice, turning her head into the cell wall to avoid looking at the man across from them. There was a long pause. “Oh god,” Selina whispered, reaching internally for Kitty’s support. 

“No, no, he didn’t, yet,” Ivy said quickly. “He wouldn’t—when you’re asleep. What would be the point?” That last was added in an angry, sardonic tone, and Selina winced again as the meaning came through. 

“So he’s going to,” she stated.

Another pause. “Maybe. Probably,” Ivy said. “It seems like he’s… experimenting on us. Trying to figure out different ways of breaking us. That’s been one of them, for some. Not, with others.”

“Oh fuck,” Selina whispered again.

“He hasn’t done practically anything to me,” Ivy continued, her voice going flatter, more colorless. “Just left me here, always cold and hungry, making me—” 

Suddenly, a slight mechanical humming noise started from her right, and Ivy snatched her hand away. Across the hall, Slade stiffened and backed slightly away from the bars and lowered his hands to his sides, clenched into fists. 

The person who’d been lying on the cart rolled off it in one smooth motion, standing and facing the rest of them. Cat’s eyes widened as she recognized Two-Face, one of Gotham’s more notorious villains. 

The ginger who’d been sitting against the wall also stood. She’d been able to tell he was tall from his legs—normal tall, not MLB level. But his skinniness made him look even longer, although it also kept him from being imposing—unlike Slade, who was a mountain on barrel-sized legs.

The endless murmuring took on a higher, more hysteric pitch. From their right, a hoarse, weirdly muffled voice started cackling unevenly. 

The humming continued, then was joined by a couple of oddly familiar metallic sounds, like two pipes knocking together in an echoey space. It wasn’t until the whooshing that Cat recognized the sound of an elevator. Seconds later, Batman strode into the room. 

Total silence fell. The Cat held her breath. It was like they were all connected for a second—a school of fish as a shark swam by, pigeons cowering beneath the shadow of a hawk, a grove of trees exuding tannins as the axe cut down. Cowering individually in their lonely cells but also a shared consciousness of terror, every one of them praying not to be noticed, not to be seen, not to be chosen. 

She’d never seen him in person in a bright light—very occasionally on TV, during alien attacks and disasters, or when the Justice League made some joint PR appearance. But every time they’d shared the same air it had been night, on the rooftops, or in a darkened building. She would have expected the outfit to look comedic in the bright, strobing fluorescents, as his imitators did, like a man in tights and a cape and little upward pointing ears should look. 

But there was nothing laughable in the dark, looming figure that swaggered now into his dungeon, master of all he surveyed. He was huge, his cowl blocking out the light, uncompromising in black leather and darkened steel armor, the only brightness the inhuman white lenses over his eyes. His only exposed skin, between the covered nose and chin, was drawn up in a rigid sneer and smeared with black pigment. 

He came over to her, his movement so smooth it seemed like he was gliding instead, his footfalls making no sound. She retreated as far as she could, cringing back against the wall. 

“Selina Kyle,” he rumbled. “You should have accepted my offer.” 

She winced at the use of their legal name, although she’d expected it. Otherwise, she didn’t respond. 

“Come here.” 

She shook her head, Kittying for all she was worth, hugging the wall. She needed to be scared senseless, too terrified to know she’d be better off obeying. Helpless. 

“You won’t like what happens if you make me come in there after you.” 

She wouldn’t like what happened if they never got out of this cell, either. 

“Fine,” he growled, after giving her a minute to obey. Three of the central bars of her cell slammed upward. 

The Cat cursed inwardly as he marched threateningly toward her. The bars moved much too fast to take advantage of a momentary distraction when they were opened. And he hadn’t seemed to press anything to trigger them, which gave her no clues on how they were opened.

He’d gotten close now, and she made her move. Dive below him, hopefully sweep a leg on the way, leap through the bars, maybe swing on one of them and lash out with a kick—

She got as far as diving. He moved impossibly fast for such a big, heavy body—much faster than he had when they’d fought in the past. As she hit the inside of his knee—and barely moved it, like his body was a sandbag instead of a meatsack—he managed to grab her ankle and hauled her up in the air, their body yelping and head swimming as all their weight dangled from that one point. 

A moment later they were screaming, she was screaming, as he swung her twice into the wall and then dropped her. She just barely managed to get her arms up to shield her head, but the shocking impact still knocked the breath out of her. Left her flat on the floor, gasping for air that wouldn’t come, her lungs refusing to inhale, her head whirling into a black fog shot with poisonously colorful sparks.

Vertigo and nausea and bright, bright pain and was the room still spinning or was she being moved? 

Probably both. But definitely the latter, because when her equilibrium began to slowly right itself, she was pressed flat against the wall, not the floor. His gauntleted fingers were pressed bruisingly tight into her armpits and sides, holding her there, her feet scrabbling uselessly against his armored legs until he pressed one knee punishingly hard and fast between her legs.

Kitty cautiously poked up her head from where she’d been cowering in fear, willing despite her terror to do her part, and Cat and Selina shoved her back down. This was going to be far too rough for her. 

“I told you,” he breathed in her ear. “I would have been gentle, taken things slow. But you had to piss me off.” 

She hissed at him, a full display that started in the back of her throat, saliva exploding out of her wide, flat lips to splatter his face. He snarled back and slammed her against the wall again. This time she couldn’t keep the back of her head from hitting the concrete, and her eyes rolled back as pain exploded in her skull, sparks flaring, the room swimming around her. 

More flashing pain as he grabbed her hair, right over the tender spot where a bump would be forming soon, and yanked her head to the right, baring her neck and sending another lightning spasm of white-hot pain through her brain. Her heart rate, already in overdrive, started thundering like it was at the Motor Speedway. 

“No—” was all she managed to gasp out before he drove his fangs into her throat. 

It hurt get him off it hurt she couldn’t move it hurt it hurt it hurt—

And then it didn’t. 

It took her a second to recognize what she started feeling as pleasure, because the pain had been so intense, taken up so much of her focus, that all she could register for a second was its absence. Cat’s battle-focus faltered—straight physical pleasure wasn’t something she usually dealt with. Selina fled at the nauseating reminder of times best forgotten. 

It was like the times when their uterus decided to be a truly horrific asshole. Curled up in bed, clutching a heating pad, waiting desperately to see if the pain meds would even take the edge off—sometimes the only thing that could help would be a few orgasms. And those were both the best and worst orgasms ever. The lead up would be stretched out deliciously, but they dreaded the actual pleasure moment because it meant the pain would soon return. Sometimes they couldn’t even feel the arousal, only the cessation of pain… but that no-pain feeling was so good. 

Then he pulled his teeth out, the hand at her nape turned from an angry pull to a tender cradle, and she could feel something other than the lack of agony again. Her toes curled as he began lapping warmly at her neck, a low, throaty purr coming out of his throat as he pressed even closer, pinning her against the wall with just his chest and outthrust thigh, freeing his hands to wander. 

Cat, left in control by default, let out a tiny whimper as his skillful hands stroked the creases of her hips, the undersides of her breasts, the small of her back, sending shivers of pleasure up her spine to meet the pulses of bliss radiating down from where his mouth was still sucking at her neck. She fought to keep her traitorous legs from widening as her cunt thrummed to life. Fortunately—or unfortunately—pressing them tightly together around his hard thigh felt just as good. 

Her eyes had fluttered closed unconsciously, so the whisper in her ear came as a surprise, his hot breath hitting the cool spot on her neck where his mouth had been a moment before.

“The next time I bite you, it will be because you beg me to.” 

And then he dropped her. She yelped as her knees hit the concrete a second before her hands and pain flared again. 

“Get up,” he ordered. He was a couple feet away now, and walking through the gap in the bars. 

Her eyes widened as she clambered obediently to her feet, despite the pain in her knees and hands and absolute lack of inclination to do as she was told. The bars clanged as they slammed shut again, locking her in—although at least he was on the other side. 

“Come here, to the bars,” he commanded. Again, she obeyed him without any input from her brain. 

“Stand at the bars and watch everything that happens out here,” he said. “Don’t look away, don’t close your eyes.” He lifted a hand through the bars and stroked two fingers along her cheekbone. She jerked head away despite the arousal still thrumming through her body, and he chuckled , like it was cute.

“You can blink your eyes,” he amended. “But only just enough to keep them lubricated. We don’t want you to miss out on any of this very educational experience.”

He turned, his cape swirling dramatically behind him, and stalked to the other side of the dungeon, his feet hitting with heavy thumps now as he marched from the right to the left of the line of cells. 

“Eenie, meenie, minie… moe.” 

He stopped in front of Slade’s cell. With their respective positions—the vigilante standing directly in front of the cell, and Slade at least halfway toward the back of his cell—she couldn’t really see anything but the broad back of his cape. 

But she still couldn’t look away.

“Wilson. You’ve had a few days to think further on your situation.”

“Yeah, and I think now my answer’s gonna be... go fuck yourself, shitgibbon.” 

Another low chuckle. “You’re surprisingly committed to retaining your independence, for a mercenary.”

“Shows how much you know, taintboil. How do you think I became what I am? It wasn’t because I was eager to sign up as someone’s permanent buttmonkey.” 

Batman tsked. “Slade, Slade. I’m flattered, but you give yourself far too much credit. Why on earth would you think that, with all the options I have, I would be remotely interested in your scarred, lumpy ass?”

“Nice try, dickwad. Maybe the fact that you’ve been screwing me six ways from Sunday since you managed to rope me in here?” 

“Well, what other use can I have for you... as long as I’m forced to keep you in here? But once you come over to my side… Believe me, your skill with weapons is much more interesting to me than your… lack of skill with your ‘ weapon’.” 

Slade grunted, but refused to otherwise take the bait.

After a second’s pause, the vampire continued. “You could continue your life just as you always have—with the condition that you’d only take jobs I approve of, of course, but you’ve always had to turn away more jobs than you take. You’d just have one extra patron.”

“Client,” Slade snapped.

“Indeed,” the Bat agreed equably. “So?”

There was a long pause, then Slade hocked and spit. The Cat grimaced at the sound. 

“Piss off, fuckbucket. I don’t sign over my loyalty to anyone.” 

Batman let out a dramatic sigh, his caped shoulders lifting and falling. “I’d say I’m not mad, just disappointed… but actually, I’m really not disappointed—since I happened to be in need of an object demonstration.”

The central bars on Slade’s cage slammed up. 

“On the other hand…” Batman said, deathly low and quiet. “I am a little mad.” 

He didn’t bother with the rigmarole of trying to get Slade to come to him, but immediately charged in after him. There was a brief sound of a scuffle, then Slade flew into the central chamber, headfirst. He didn’t quite make it to the far side, instead falling in a heap on the floor a body’s length from her cell. 

Cat met his gaze as he pushed himself to his feet. There was a deep resignation there, buried fear… but also a smothered longing. He looked at her for only a second before turning to face the predator advancing on him. 

What followed couldn’t really be described as a fight. Slade got a few blows in, true, but it was clear that he wasn’t doing any real damage—as if the couple hits the Bat let in weren’t even worth the time to block. In return, Batman took Slade apart . 

The Cat had never felt ashamed of her sadistic tendencies—it was what you did, not what you felt, that mattered. But now, unable to look away as the vampire played with his victim, she pressed her thighs firmly together, determinedly ignoring her wet and throbbing core, writhing internally with guilt. The vampire methodically beat the mercenary down, again and again, blows thumping into his torso and head, lifting him up and slamming him into the floor and walls, bones breaking, blood flying, until he was lying on the floor a broken, groaning pulp. 

When the mercenary clearly couldn’t get up again—even when encouraged with a couple of foot prods—the Bat hauled him upright and pressed him face-first against the bars of her cell. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move away, couldn’t look down, and so she was stuck in place just a few inches from his bruised and bloodied form as the vampire bit down into his shoulder. 

She could see every change of expression as the tough, hard bitten warrior went through the same experience she had. The burning pain and shock of the bite, the powerlessness and vulnerability, the momentary paralysis. Followed by the creeping pleasure that canceled out the pain, the unwilling arousal and helpless desire. His nakedness did him no favors in trying to hide it, as she couldn’t help but notice. 

When the Bat pulled back, Slade gripped the bars desperately, leaning his weight on them to keep himself from falling. Blood streamed from the puncture wounds in his shoulder. Cat touched the matching wounds in her neck with a trembling hand—weirdly, they’d bled hardly at all.

“Turn around,” the Bat rumbled from behind him, “and get on your knees.” 

As she watched in stunned silence, the swarthy mercenary wordlessly obeyed. Batman chuckled as he unlatched his torso armor, tossed a piece to the side, and pulled his pale dick out through layers of black fabric. He advanced on his victim, stroking himself erect. 

“I really have to ask myself, Wilson,” the vampire said. “If I’m not going about this all wrong. Hands behind your back. No biting.”

With that brief preamble, he grabbed the back of the man’s head in one hand. Gripped his victim’s jaw and cheeks with the other, forcing his mouth open, and thrust home. The mercenary gagged uselessly. It was a horrible sound, like a cat throwing up. 

“Maybe my promise that there won’t be any of this once you’re mine, is what’s holding you back,” Batman growled, thrusting hard with every stressed syllable. “Because you just. Can’t. Seem. To get enough.”

He pulled out, his dick dark and dripping. Hopefully just with spit… but she wasn’t feeling very hopeful at the moment. Slade fell forward, hacking and gasping for air.

“Now,” Batman said. “You can do one of two things. Swear to be mine, forever… or beg for my dick again.”

“Fuck you to hell,” Slade groaned weakly. 

“Do one or the other, Slade. Now. ” 

“Please give me your dick,” Slade grated out. The Cat stuffed her fist in her mouth, biting down on her knuckle. “Oh god, I hate you, please let me suck it.”

“Why, certainly,” Batman said warmly. “If you’d really like me to.” 

“Yes, please, you fucking shitlicker, give it to me.” 

Batman laughed again at the obscenity even as he thrust back in. “Get yourself off. Touch yourself, if you want to,” he urged. 

Slade groaned, a deep rumble in his chest that gurgled around his stuffed mouth. The slide of dry skin rubbing joined the grotesque symphony of squelching and gagging, smacking and gargling. 

“If you can get me off before you finish yourself,” Batman promised darkly. “I won’t even fuck you. This time.” 

Slade straightened his spine and started actively sucking and lapping at the cock in his mouth instead of just letting the Bat fuck his throat. Cat couldn’t imagine how he could physically do it, with the amount of punishment he’d taken already.

It went on and on and on. Cat didn’t think of herself as an empathetic person, but her own throat started hurting as she watched Slade’s get slammed again and again, in counterpoint to the ache in her cunt. Finally , the vampire came with a snarl, so deep in Slade’s throat that nothing escaped his lips. As soon as he was done, he pushed Slade off him, onto his back. The mercenary continued to desperately jack himself off until he came over his fist a few heartbeats later with a relieved whine. 

“Crawl back in your kennel, dog,” Batman ordered as he wiped himself off with a handkerchief from his utility belt—black, of course—and tucked himself back in. The mercenary cursed softly, but otherwise did so without a protest, pulling himself back into his cell on his hands and knees. The cell bars slammed down on him with a resounding, despairing clang. 

Batman left then, but not before patting Cat on the cheek where she stood, still frozen, shivering in terror—and even more horrifyingly, still in arousal—at the front of her cell. 

“Have fun thinking things over,” he murmured to her, and was gone.

Chapter Text

She still couldn’t move. 

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She could move in place, swing their arms, even move her head—as long as she could still see the whole room. After some experimentation—as her feet started to ache against the cold cement floor—she found that she could shuffle in place, push up on her toes or back on her heels. 

But she couldn’t sit down. She couldn’t stop watching the—now boringly empty—area between the cells. She couldn’t go back and lie down in her cell or even move to a slightly different spot for variety. 

“Ivy,” Selina grated out. 

No answer. We’re not going to panic, we’re not, I’m not, we’re not. 

“Ivy. Ivy!”

“Yes! I’m here, I’m sorry. I was on the other side of the cell, with Harley.”

Selina bit back a sob of relief. “Ivy, I can’t move,” she continued, unable to keep her voice from going shrill with hysteria. “He—he told me to stand here, and watch, and I can’t stop—”

“It’s okay. Cat, stop. Breathe. Listen to me. It’s okay, it’s temporary.”

Selina took a deep, rattling breath. “Temporary?”

“Yes—it’s the bite. I’m so sorry. But it wears off after a while.” 

“How long?” Selina almost sobbed it out, her mind swirling with rage and fear and horror swirling. 

“You didn’t tell him he could bite you, right? Or ask for anything? Say you surrendered or anything like that?”

“No!” 

“Okay, then it probably won’t be very long. Keep trying to move, as much as you can. And he told you to watch, right? Try blinking as much as you can. Keep your eyelids closed as long as possible. Keep pushing against his hold, it’ll fade, I promise.”

Having something to focus on helped. And Ivy was right, thankfully. After about fifteen minutes more of constant effort—Ivy kept murmuring encouragement and praise—she was finally able to sit down and keep her eyes closed for a couple minutes at a time, although she had to stay at the front of her cell. She was at least able to move over a couple feet, to the left edge, so that Ivy could reach around the dividing wall and hold her hand. They talked quietly for awhile, speaking of this and that and nothing, until Selina realized with a start that she hadn’t opened her eyes in at least five minutes. 

“I—I think it wore off,” she said shakily. 

“Good,” Ivy said warmly. “Are you okay?”

Selina couldn’t help but give a strangled laugh. 

“Okay, yeah. Stupid question.” 

“I think I need to try and get a little sleep,” Selina said. “Ivy— thank you. Thank you so much.” 

“Of course,” Ivy said. “I’m here if you need me—somehow, I don’t seen to have any pressing engagements that demand my presence elsewhere.”

Selina laughed again at the dark humor, a little more normally this time. 

She imitated the unseen inhabitant of the cell across from her and turned her table on its side with a crash—it was heavy— and huddled behind it, her back nestled up to the padded side. 

She fell apart for a long while. They were allowed, dammit. And it didn’t seem like they were on any particular deadline, for better or worse. 

Once she’d cried themselves out, Kitty pushed herself to her feet and used the cell’s rudimentary facilities to clean up—it was annoying to cry when naked, there was no real way to blow her nose except in her hand and then wash it down the sink, which was gross. She set the examining table upright again and curled up on top of it, her back to the bars and her knees to her chest. It was too cold to huddle on the floor long-term, however much Selina disliked the idea of the men across the dungeon ogling her. 

Screw the men, Kitty reminded her. We’re gorgeous, they should stare. 

She smiled wanly at the transparent attempt to cheer herself up. Then she closed her eyes and let her mind wander. 

Up… up… up…

Although she didn’t get any real sense of geography when she did this (unfortunately). No images of the elevator shaft or cement complex around them, just Feline or No Feline. For all she knew they were actually on the top floor of some mountain prison and she was sending her mind down. But they were in a dungeon, so it made sense that anything alive was probably up. 

Real seeing-at-a-distance would be an awesome superpower, Cat agreed covetously. 

It was near the edge of her approximately 50-yard unassisted range when she finally made contact. With an elderly Siamese. Great, a guaranteed asshole who would want to do the exact opposite of whatever she suggested, just to be contrary. 

She didn’t make the rules, she just observed them. 

The way in with Siamese cats tended to be offering them something they wanted—usually food, sometimes territory—often, really, just anything they’d been denied. This particular one indicated that he desperately wanted to sit on a particular spot on a couch in another room, which was drenched with sun at this time of day. The sunny spot was claimed by another cat—no, two other cats, excellent—that he dared not challenge, despite his longing for sun basking. 

Let me in, let me see as you walk there, and I’ll get them to let you sit there, she promised recklessly, praying that they weren’t too far—carried in a feline consciousness, she could reach much further than without, but there were still limits. 

Fortunately, she didn’t feel any warning strain or static in the connection as he let her in and loped on toward his target. She followed along, looking out of his eyes. They were in a large house—a very nice, old, and fancy house, and she was used to swanky places. 

I really wouldn’t mind being in this place with my bag of holding, Cat thought. 

Finally, after passing through several rooms—getting more and more nervous the whole time that they’d come up against the end of their range—they ended in a large, sunlit room. A library, Selina realized almost immediately, after encouraging the Siamese to look around at the rows and rows of bookshelves, overstuffed couches, desks and coffee tables. 

A long, oscillating growl met them—one of the other cats, a more common shorthaired black queen, had popped its head up from a sofa to stare at them, clearly wary of her host. Quickly, she left the Siamese and let her consciousness slide over to the shorthair. She was curled up with another, near-identical cat—her littermate—so tightly entwined you could scarcely tell where one cat ended and the other began. 

Quickly, Selina explained the situation to the twin shorthairs. They were not at all inclined to give up their warm, comfy spot even for a moment—especially if it meant the Siamese would get it—but eventually she was able to convince them that her plight warranted it. 

She perhaps used a few more images of overly small cat carriers and vaccine needles than was strictly honest, but hard times warranted… 

Eventually, with a heavy sigh, the twins got up from their spot and left it to the Siamese, albeit with a warning hiss that they’d be back to claim it before long.

They sauntered together throughout the house’s several stories and wings. Selina couldn’t get into much of the western part of the building, it was too far from the dungeon (cats didn’t know the compass, of course, but they possessed a excellent sense of time and knew very well the angle in which the sun would be shining throughout the day, which enabled her to determine directions easily enough), but found that she could follow the cats well enough from the lowest cellar to the highest attic. She was able to verify that the dungeon was underground, as the cats got closer to her the farther down in their home they went. Even at the closest they could get to her, however, they were at enough of a distance that she guessed they weren't directly over her, not unless the Bat had burrowed far further into the earth than seemed practical.

But none of this information did her any good. The cats didn’t recognize her sense-memory of the Bat, although there were a number of people in and out of their territory on a daily basis. They shared scent and sound pictures of two large, fit men who could be the Bat—although one of them just smelled weird, and not like the Bat at all, even filtering through a cat's senses—as well as an older man who smelled of tea and cigars, several women who smelled of cleaning products, and a younger man they remembered fondly, who liked to come by just to pet them and sit on the loud warm purring thing. None of whom were home at the moment, apparently, or at least weren’t in any of the rooms the cats had access to. They acknowledged that several of the inhabitants frequently came and went through doors to which they were not allowed entry, which was frustrating but not surprising or unusual, unfortunately. And—even more irritating—they were indoor-only cats, and not at all inclined to try to make an escape and go exploring. 

Cats couldn’t actually walk through walls, even if sometimes they seemed to be able to. And most were fairly timid about new things and places. But Selina had never yet forced a cat to do something unwillingly, and she wasn’t going to start now. 

So. This could be the house of the Bat’s civilian identity… or it could just be a neighbor, and completely divorced from the cement-encased dungeon nearby. She spread her consciousness out as far as it would go, but either there weren’t any other buildings close enough, or they didn’t have any cats in them at the moment. 

The twins did say that they occasionally saw other cats through glass—hopefully windows, though with her luck they meant televisions. 

She would have gladly stayed with the cats longer, but the tugging of her body meant that her attention was needed elsewhere. She left the twins with abundant thanks and praise and snapped her eyes open, back in her cell. 

The twinge of her bladder and dryness of her throat told her it had been several hours. She rolled off the table with a groan and took scope of her surroundings to gage what had drawn her back and if it was safe to deal with those issues first. 

“Ahh… Ms. Kyle,” a dry voice said. “You’re a very deep sleeper.” 

She spun around. A middle-aged, balding, heavyset man stood at the bars of her cell. He was, bizarrely, wearing a fancy suit, complete with suspenders and a bow tie. 

“Who are you?” she asked. 

“Oswald Cobblepot at your service,” he said grandly. “I brought you some food.” 

He held out his hand. Four energy bars, the high-tech, fancy kind with protein and fiber and 100 vitamins and minerals. 

Kitty minced forward and took them delicately from his hand. 

“Thank you so much,” she breathed out. “I’m so hungry…” She looked down and up at him through her eyelashes, forcing a blush. 

“Oh my dear,” he said, his eyes fixed on her breasts. “Of course you are. I’m so sorry I couldn’t bring more.”

“Couldn’t you?” she asked hopefully. “I’d be so grateful…” 

“Well… perhaps, next time I come down…”

“Don’t bother, Cat,” Ivy said in a disgusted tone. “What he’s not telling you is he’s our object lesson.”

“Hmmrr?” Kitty asked, retreating slightly, her energy bars clutched in one hand. 

“Oswald here was one of the dungeon’s first inhabitants. He caved early—didn’t even get tortured a little bit. Watching it happen to someone else was quite enough for him.”

The older man sneered. “I prefer to think I realistically evaluated the situation and made the most rational choice at hand. Unlike all you stubborn idiots, who prefer to remain down here, hoping—what? That Superman will come save you?”

He laughed nastily. Kitty, remembering what Batman had said on the rooftops, winced. 

“Batman would like us to believe that if we give in, like Oswald, we’ll get the same treatment—allowed to carry on our daily activities, with just a few additional chores like feeding the prisoners—”

“You would, my dear!” Oswald said in an unctuous tone. 

“But really, he can’t do anything that conflicts with the Bat’s orders. Including bringing us more food, helping us escape, or telling us anything about where we are. Although he’ll happily let you think he can. Perks of being the Bat’s minion apparently don’t include all the pussy he’d like,” Ivy finished, contempt dripping from her voice.

“You know, Ms. Isley,” Oswald said, “the Bat did tell me to get on down here and feed the prisoners. And you’re right—he gave me strict limits to what I’m allowed to feed you. But I’m afraid he quite neglected to give me a minimum amount, and, oops! I seem to have run a bit short. Too bad.”

He sneered again in the direction of Ivy’s cell, turned theatrically on his heel, and left. 

“I’m sorry,” Kitty said. “Thanks for the warning.” Flattening herself to the leftmost cell wall, she reached her arm through the bars and stretched her hand out blindly with two of the bars. A moment later, Ivy’s cool hand took it from her. 

“Thank you,” Ivy said. “I should probably be less selfish and refuse to take these, but he’s been giving me barely enough to live on—Oswald always gives me less than the others, and I’m sure it’s on the Bat’s orders, not because I ratted him out. Harley gives me some of hers, but it’s not like she’s amply fed either.”

Plastic rustled, then the sound of chewing. Kitty did likewise, and tore into her bars. They were… adequate. Perfectly good examples of what they were, but god, no one wanted to live on energy bars. 

“You were asleep a long time,” Ivy said. Her lightly questioning tone managed to indicate, without any further words, that she'd happily serve as a sounding board but wasn't pressing for information. 

“... traumatic day,” Kitty answered. Not that she wouldn’t be willing to share an escape plan—if they actually had one—with Ivy, but Cat reminded her sternly that the cells were certainly monitored, and the Bat certainly didn’t need to know everything they could do. 

Speaking of which. Kitty used the convenience and stood there for a long time, drinking water from the sink spray. Once they felt more hydrated, the Cat went back to the cell doors. 

The men across from her were all lying on their tables—or, in the case of the mutterer, still behind it. The laugher was blessedly silent. She pressed her face to the bars experimentally. As she’d expected—but not hoped—the bars lined up right at the inside of her temples. No way she could fit her head through there. Peering through them, she was able to identify dark, flat screens on the walls that likely held cameras. Unfortunately, they were flush with the walls around them, and had no external controls that might be vulnerable to attack. Someone might be able to take one out if they had something to throw at it, but it was unlikely. 

And she had nothing to throw. 

Dammit. 

Sighing, she went back to curl up on her table. Maybe the cats would have better news for her this time.

Chapter Text

Despite the Bat’s threats, he didn’t seem immediately inclined to advance his agenda with Selina—he didn’t so much as acknowledge her presence for the next several days. Perhaps he was counting on the mingled horror and boredom of the dungeon to break her down—which seemed increasingly possible as time wore on. 

Oswald came by with food at irregular intervals. It was always the same energy bars, nothing to distinguish one meal from another. The lights never dimmed or went out. Selina now fully understood what Ivy meant by time not meaning much in the dungeon. Had she not been able to get out and share with the cats, she thought they’d likely have lost all sense of day or night by now. She didn’t know how Ivy wasn’t stark raving mad, after a month of this. 

The extent to which they’d come to rely on Ivy’s support in just a few days scared her a little bit. Selina had spent her whole life needing nothing but their own company. And she hadn’t even seen the other woman—at least, other than her hand. But she didn’t want to think about what the last few days would have been like without her staunch comfort. 

Whispering, pressed against the shared wall between their cells, their hands clasped therapeutically together, the two women talked of everything and nothing—sometimes trying to pretend their surroundings away, and other times joining their defiance to face it down together. They couldn’t have any kind of real-time conversation with Harley as well without it being loud enough for the cameras and the men to hear, but Ivy also served as an intermediary between her two neighbors, and so Selina developed a kinship with the other woman as well. She caught them up on the month they’d missed—they’d been captured together—and Ivy filled her in on the Bat’s agenda, or at least as much of it as she and Harley had figured out. Although some of it was hard to stomach. 

(“He can just—take you over? Because you say you surrender? Magical bullshit,” Selina hissed. 

“Apparently it doesn’t work for keeps until you surrender ‘freely’,” Ivy muttered. “I don’t think he even knows for sure what that means, what the magic treats as consent—that’s what this is all about. Trying out different levels of coercement, figuring out what blocks him and what doesn’t.”)

To that end, the Bat came by at even more irregular intervals to inveigle and torture his captives into breaking, working his way methodically down what Ivy flippantly called the “men’s side” of the dungeon. 

(“How fucked up is it, that this is the most gender-affirming torture I’ve ever gone through?” the other woman commented with a brief bark of dark laughter. 

“I mean, I know you’re grading on a curve, but that’s still a hell of a low bar,” Selina agreed.)

He had tailored a different type of torture for each of his captives. For Two-Face, it was some kind of liquid that burned on contact, only to be soothed away—after an appropriate display of submissiveness, of course—with a different concoction the Bat spread on with a cloth. 

(“He really reached for that one, huh?” the Cat snorted.

“Now, now, don’t knock the classics, dear,” Ivy reproved facetiously.) 

Dent was also one of the ones the vampire raped, although it was a substantially less violent and more weirdly seductive version than the humiliating beatdown that Slade had endured. The Bat stripped down to his cowl and joined the other man on his table, holding him down and teasing him endlessly, making him beg for it. 

The tall ginger, whose name Selina still hadn’t gotten, was being starved, much more ruthlessly than Ivy’s intermittent rations. He also, of all of them, seemed to find the enforced boredom and constant light the most grueling. His session was simply a period of temptation—the Bat brought down a gourmet dinner and ate it literally on top of him while reading out apparently tantalizing blurbs from a science journal. 

(“Chocolate cake,” Kitty murmured, her tongue thick with longing. “With a ganache center and raspberry coulis…”

“Don’t, please,” Ivy begged, a real note of desperation in her voice.)

The mumbler—a thin, starved-looking fellow with cheekbones that could cut glass, long wavy dark hair, and crazy desert prophet eyes—got strapped down on his table with a VR helmet and forced to watch things while high on the bite. He came out of it even more unhinged than before, judging by the intensification of his steady monotonous murmuring. 

(“I truly don’t understand how the vampire hasn’t killed him yet,” Ivy muttered. “I would have killed him by now, and I’m—well, admittedly, that’s not true, I’m also a villain, so I suppose that doesn’t prove anything.”

“Villainy is written by the victor,” Cat said. “Or in other words, live your truth and the devil take the hindmost.”)

The cackler—whose identity Selina steadfastly determined not to think about—seemed to be the exception to the Bat’s exhibitionist tendencies. Selina had no idea what their torture consisted of. They remained hidden, only their unhinged laughter giving proof to their existence, in the same general direction as the elevator noises and Batman’s entrances and exits. Selina might have even thought that it wasn’t a person, just an additional torture that the Bat had thought up… except that sometimes, the elevator would make its noise, the doors would open, all the prisoners would tense with apprehension—and the Bat wouldn’t show up. Instead, the creepy laughter would sound continuously for some time, before dying out into blessed silence. 

(“So, the laughter—” she got out once. 

“We don’t talk about it,” Ivy said firmly. 

“Right.”)

As the other woman indicated in that first conversation, the Bat technically left Ivy herself alone. She’d revealed since then that her real test was to be forced to watch him more actively torture Harley. With his promise, of course—for whatever that might be worth—that if she surrendered, she’d win his mercy for them both. 

(“Like I’d trust him to keep his word, once he had both of us under his thumb. Like Harley would ever forgive me, for selling myself on some halfhearted hope of getting her away from here.”

“No. You have to stay strong!”)

The prisoners mostly didn’t comment on what the torture sessions revealed, trying to pretend a certain amount of privacy into existence—Slade being a notable exception—but the Batman liked to be observed and would take steps to involve anyone he caught being too blatant about looking away. So they watched, and tried to offer as much support in being there for each other as they could. Fortunately for her continued mental health, even Cat didn’t find any other session remotely stimulating, and she decided they could blame the thing with Slade on whatever magic the Bat’s bite had worked. 

And then one afternoon (or morning? Evening? Who even knew anymore?), the Bat decided he was done with the men’s side for a while. 

“Harley, my dear,” he started genially, slinking past Selina’s cage. How he could move like that while wearing what must have been at least thirty pounds of armor and gear was a true mystery. “Been a little while since we played.” 

He paused dramatically in front of Ivy’s cell. “Unless, of course—”

“Fuck off,” Ivy said tiredly.

“As you wish,” the Dark Knight replied in a soft, lilting tone, and walked on, out of Selina’s range of vision. 

“Oh, come on, Guano-Breath,” Harley baited him as her cell doors clanged open. “Like you can do anything worse to me than Mistah J has, and I stayed with him for years! You might as well give up—all this ain’t nothing to me but a bit of rough fun.” 

“I’m sure,” Batman drawled. “But I’ll give it a try all the same.” 

Then there was a short pause in conversation, interspersed by a few growls from the Bat and indignant squawks from Harley. 

“Bondage, kinky!” she squealed at one point, and he snorted. 

Moments later, he wheeled her out into the open space between the cells. She was bound down to her table, her arms flat against her side and her legs pressed tightly together, with black leather cuffs at every limb. In addition, five thin straps were stretched widthwise across her body—just above and below her breasts, across her hips, and above and below her knees—fastened down so tightly that her flesh swelled out around them. 

The vampire left her helpless in the middle of the room to open one of the empty cells. A second later he emerged dragging a dentist’s wheeled tray. 

Oh fuck. Cat let out a mental hiss at the sight—not everything on that tray was visible, but she could see several silver scalpels and a few ominous glass beakers filled with mysterious clear or milky liquids.

“I thought tonight we’d put that pain tolerance you like to brag about to the test,” Batman said, sounding for all the world like a college professor explaining a particularly interesting experiment. 

He carefully slid a neatly folded pad of white fabric from under the beakers and shook it out. Bending over Harley with false solicitude, he swept it out over her—it was an operating sheet, with a window to expose only a small rectangle of skin at a time. He’d set it up with the opening over her breastbone. Selina clenched her teeth. The grotesqueness of it, him pretending to give a shit about hygiene or privacy after all he’d put them through—

“Awww, B-Man, we playin’ doctor?” Harley cooed. 

“Exactly so,” the Bat said, picking up a scalpel. “Now, let me know when you experience mild discomfort…” 

“Oooo, now that tickles, Doctor Acula!” 

The period that followed—it seemed to last hours, but surely it couldn’t have—was one that Selina knew instinctively would be etched on their brain for all time. The Bat kept up that mild-mannered professor demeanor all the while he slowly and methodically cut into Harley’s skin—too shallow to bleed heavily enough to mark the white covering, at least, but other than that, Cat couldn’t see enough to tell what he was doing. 

Harley was so strong… she kept up the “too kinky to torture” bit for longer than Cat would have imagined possible, somehow making her moans and cries sound voluntary and pleased, cracking jokes whenever Batman paused to switch scalpels or move the sheet. Ivy kept up a constant stream of encouragements and insults from the sideline, secure in her knowledge that the Bat, for whatever reason, didn’t want to hurt her directly. 

As he continued into more sensitive areas, however—her arms, legs, the skin just under her breasts—Harley’s spunky front began slipping into stolid endurance. The Bat pulled and stretched Harley’s skin while he moved about her like a painter getting the most out of his canvas, and slowly, her sultry moans turned into pained hisses and grunts. 

But she still didn’t break. And as she continued to hold out, the Bat’s geniality began to fray at the edges, Ivy’s patter took on a smug, taunting air, and Selina’s spirits began to hesitantly rise from the gutter to which they’d plummeted when the Bat opened Harley’s cell. 

Finally, Batman put down the scalpel and swept off the sheet, working the table’s controls at the same time to lift Harley’s torso up into a half-recline, making it easier for the rest of the dungeon to see what he’d done. Despite her fear of attracting the Bat’s attention, Selina couldn’t help but curse as the pattern he’d made leapt out at them, all the stronger for having been entirely hidden until the final reveal. 

He’d drawn dozens—hundreds—of tiny bats in bright red slices across Harley’s pasty-white skin. He’d gauged the depths of his cuts well—only a few were bleeding freely with the movement and altered gravity of the changed position, and even as they began dripping, he dabbed them away with a cotton pad. 

So far, so macabre. But what elevated it into true horror was that the tiny bats formed a larger pattern, a giant bat sign flying across her body—its head sitting on one of her breasts and tail jutting out into her belly, and one wing across her right shoulder and upper arm while the other stretched across her left hand, hip, and leg. 

“You utter rutting bastard,” Ivy breathed.

“They’re light cuts,” the Bat observed casually to the open air, still patting some of the cuts on Harley’s left thigh. “With proper treatment—salve, antibiotic ointment, dressings—they likely won’t scar noticeably.” 

He picked up the clear beaker. Turned, and looked straight at Ivy. 

“Or, I could… aggravate them a bit. I’d clean them, of course, make sure they don’t get infected—I don’t want to lose a playtoy prematurely—but unfortunately, they might end up just a little inflamed. And left down here, without medication—well, I’m afraid she would almost certainly bear the marks for life.”

He advanced toward Ivy’s cell, shaking the beaker so that the liquid sloshed visibly but didn’t spill.

“What do you think, Dr. Isley?” 

Silence. 

“My lady’ll never break,” Harley called out, her voice weak but firm. “No matter what you do. She’s too strong for you.”

“Is that so?” the Bat asked, managing to keep his tone to one of idle curiosity. 

“It—it is,” Ivy answered, her voice wavering and wet. She exhaled loudly. “I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she said, more evenly. 

The Bat sighed. “Well, damn,” he said, in the same tone one might use when looking down at a hairball on the just-washed kitchen floor. “Guess it’s Plan B, then.”

He turned back to Harley, beaker still in hand. Humming idly, he blocked the open neck with a cotton pad and turned it over. After holding it there a couple seconds, he put the beaker back on the tray and began to draw the pad down slowly, dramatically, over one Harley’s open wounds. 

And she screamed. High and shrill, out-of-control. Helpless. 

Ivy began cursing him out, her voice rising in panic and rage. 

“You know what to do to end this, Dr. Isley,” he said, sugar-sweet. 

“Goddamn you,” Ivy choked out. 

Selina clutched the bars of her cell, writhing with anger and horror and misplaced guilt. 

We should reach out to Ivy! Kitty wailed as Harley’s screams grew yet louder. After all the times she’s done it for us—she needs our support!

The last thing she needs is for the Bat to decide there’s yet another person he can torture to get to her, Cat said grimly. 

We’ll do it after this, Selina promised them. 

As they dithered, Harley’s screams and sobs continued, echoing off the cement walls and filling the dungeon with the piercing sounds. Hovering parasitically over her, the Bat drank them in, his smugness and pleasure almost tangible as he continued to draw the soaked cotton pads caressingly across her open wounds. 

“Please,” Harley finally gasped out, her voice hoarse and thin. “Stop.” 

“What was that?” Batman pressed, drawing yet another cotton pad down her inner arm. She screamed again, the sharp tone lasting only seconds before her voice broke into sobs. 

“It’s okay, baby,” Ivy called. “I’m with you. Whatever you have to do.” 

“You know what you need to say,” Batman encouraged. He wiped down another cut, on the ribs this time. The screams weren’t getting any less piercing or horrible, and Selina pressed her aching head to the cool metal iron bars, closing her eyes briefly. 

“Fine, you bastard,” Harley screamed finally. “I’ll do anything, I’ll let you bite me, just fucking make it stop!” 

“Why, of course, my dear,” the Bat said blithely. 

Upending one of the beakers with the milky liquid over his still-gauntleted hands, he began to rub her down briskly. She shrieked again briefly, but then settled into quiet, relieved sobs as whatever-it-was took effect. 

“Now, then,” he said, beginning to unstrap her. “Don’t—” 

As he released her right arm, she punched him—fairly ineffectually given her limited leverage, but with spirit—in the face. He reeled back with a curse, then broke into a short laugh. 

“—fight me,” he finished finally, with a sigh. Catching her hand, he raised it to his mouth and drank. She moaned, writhing as best she could against her tight bonds. 

“Don’t attack me again,” he ordered briefly when he was done. He continued releasing her, cursing as some of the straps, drawn tight for so long, didn’t want to let go. After tugging ineffectually at the last strap for several seconds, he grabbed another scalpel and cut it loose, ignoring Harley’s pained yelp as the blade bit into her skin. 

“Follow me,” he ordered. He held up the scalpel. “You’ll need this. Don’t do anything with it that I don’t tell you to do and don’t hurt yourself.” 

He tossed it to her, then turned and swept away, his cape billowing out dramatically behind him. Harley crossed her arms in front of her and let the blade fall to the floor. 

“Pick up the damn scalpel and follow me!” he ordered without turning or pausing. 

He passed in front of Selina’s cell, Harley following doggedly at his heels, glaring darkly at the back of his cowl and fingering the scalpel measuringly. With his back turned, Selina dared to reach out and let a fingertip graze reassuringly across the outside of Harley’s hand. The other woman turned and winked at her. 

A cell door clanged open. The muffled laughter—which, Selina realized, had become so much a part of the background horror of the dungeon that she’d stopped registering it—grew louder. 

“Jesus Christ,” Harley cursed. 

“Hardly,” Batman replied, his voice dry. 

“How is he still alive?” she demanded. “Why? I’m going to puke.”

“Feel free!” the Bat said cheerily. “Try to hit his face if you do. Unfortunately, he can’t taste it without his tongue, but—I can’t have everything, I suppose.”

“This is stupid,” Harley said. “You think this is going to break me? Apparently you didn’t get the memo, I broke up with the douchebag over a year ago.” 

“Oh, I know,” the Bat answered. “Trust me, if you’d been with him when he killed my son, you’d have been in here with him, not out with the rest being toyed with. I’d simply grown tired of him, and I thought the irony fitting—of his own creation being the one to finish him off.” 

Silence. 

“Alrighty then,” Harley said, her voice bright and perky again somehow. “Let’s do this.” 

The Bat laughed in discordant harmony with the Joker. 

“Absolutely,” he said finally. “I thought we could start with some light evisceration. You went to med school—make sure he survives until we cut out his heart.” 

It took a terrifyingly long time for the muffled laughter to finally turn into gargled screams. By that time, Selina had long since decided that the Bat was unlikely to check back on what the rest of his victims were doing, and she’d fulfilled her earlier promise to herself and gone to hold Ivy’s hand.

They sat, clinging to each other, until the distant cell bars finally clanged open again and they hastily sprang apart. 

Once the Bat had thrown Harley back into her cell and left again, Ivy went to comfort her through the lingering effects of the Bat’s control. Selina jumped up to lie on her table and wrapped her arms around herself. 

How long can we stand this? she thought despondently. She closed her eyes and folded her head down as close to her chest as it would go, curling herself into a tight ball of misery. 

As long as we have to, Kitty answered. 

That’s what I’m afraid of, Cat sighed. 

Chapter Text

“We’re all going to break,” Selina said a few days—probably? Maybe? Perhaps—later, after visiting with the cats. It had been a singularly frustrating morning. She’d found out on her second visit that the Siamese was an indoor/outdoor, and actually belonged to a neighboring house, with a teenage boy. Today she’d finally got him to agree to take her over there—only to find it was far out of her range. 

And then after that, she’d actually gotten a look at one of the mansion’s inhabitants for the first time—the old man—and it had done her absolutely no good. He was just... an old man, British but otherwise completely unremarkable. Gone pepper and balding, and he’d been dressed conservatively in slacks and a sweater over a button-up, attire that wouldn’t stand out in most settings. Literally the only even remotely notable thing about him had been an old-fashioned pencil mustache, which was hardly something she could use to identify him. Worse, all he’d done was sit in the library and pet the twins while reading and drinking tea. He couldn’t even have the decency to be one of the surprisingly large majority of people who talked to their pets. Her only sighting of another human being outside these cell walls in a week, and she’d learned nothing. 

Her best guesses were that either no one actually lived in the mansion above, and the old man and his unseen younger companions were some kind of caretakers, or else the cats weren’t allowed into the part of the house where the people mostly spent their time—Cat had seen that before, occasionally, in rich mansions that received a lot of guests, and so were divided into “public” and “private” areas with only a few access points between them. Although when she’d encountered that before, the cats were isolated in the private areas, not the public. Possibly one of the inhabitants was allergic? 

But in any case, it turned out that her best hope, the only damn edge she had, was of little help. 

“No we’re not,” Ivy said firmly. Selina had to take a second, lost in their thoughts as she’d been, to remember what her friend was responding to. Oh right, her forecasting of their inevitable and inescapable doom. 

“Are you kidding me?” Harley called from the next cell over. “The Crow over there would have probably broken already, except I don’t think he’s got enough braining spoons left to understand what he needs to do to make it stop at this point. Riddles is going to give in the next time Batsy offers him a McMuffin and a Nobel. And Slade—”

“Can speak for himself; thank you, ladies,” the mercenary growled from his cell. “I’ll die before I break.” 

“Yeah, sure, you betcha,” Harley shot back. “So you’ll die. Hell, Ivy will probably join you, she’s stubborn enough. Fucking childhood testosterone poisoning, that's what causes it.”

“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted,” Ivy replied, her voice dry. 

“Porque no los dos?” Harley asked, in a dead-on impression of the little meme girl. Selina laughed in spite of herself. 

“We’re all going to hang on,” Ivy said firmly. “He can’t outwit the entire Justice League forever. Sooner or later someone will figure out what’s going on, and they’ll save us.” 

“Yeah,” Selina muttered. “I’m sure you’re right.” 

Despite Ivy’s optimism and Harley’s humor, Selina was steadily losing hope. And she’d barely been touched so far and she had an escape that the others were denied. If it was this bad for her, how could the rest of them endure? Her imagination had been going haywire while the Bat had left her to “think,” and she was quite certain she wouldn’t be able to last through more than a couple torture sessions, not when he seemed to have found a perfect way to torment each of the others. 

And if she was going to break anyway… why endure any more of this? The monotonous diet, the endless light, the cold, the fear… Why not surrender, and see what happened? If worst came to worst—she could let her mind drift off with the cats, and just never come back...

And maybe—Ivy’d said you had to mean it, for it to work, and that the Bat would be able to tell if you didn’t. But maybe if part of her meant it… 

She ate a bar, washed up a little–inasmuch as it was possible—and was about to head back to “sleep” for lack of anything better to do, when the elevator started humming again. She blanched. By now, every one of the prisoners had had at least one “turn” since she’d arrived—Dent had had two—except her… and Ivy, technically, although what he’d done to Harley had more than made up for that. 

The Bat strutted in as theatrically as ever. He seemed to pause for a second as he walked in front of Selina’s cell, and she tensed (well, got tenser) but he walked on. To Ivy. 

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck… but he didn’t do anything directly to Ivy, that was the point, he just tortured Harley and made her watch—

“So, Dr. Isley,” he said quietly. “You’ve been here five weeks, now.”

“Is that right?” she said. “Getting bored?” 

“Your girlfriend seems to think I’ve taken the wrong tack with you—that you’re stubborn enough to just sit here and starve to death while I break her over and over again… I suppose she’s right. I really had thought you cared more for her, but I guess you’re just not capable of that kind of love...”

“Fuck you, Batman,” she spat out. “Harley knows exactly why I won’t give up.” 

“Nah,” he continued in that same even, quiet tone. “I think I’ll fuck you. ” 

And as the bars clanged open, he reached out a hand and pulled Ivy roughly into the main room. 

It was so strange, seeing someone physically for the first time after you’d formed such a strong relationship. Ivy was middling tall for an American, a couple inches under six feet at a guess, very curvy, with long, wavy red hair. A knockout, honestly, although Hollywood wouldn’t have agreed—Selina guessed she was around 35 or 40, with scattered silver hairs standing out vividly against the red, wrinkles drawing slight laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, cellulite across her belly and thighs and upper arms. 

She was beautiful.

Their eyes met, and Selina knew instantly that, despite everything else claiming her attention at the moment, Ivy had been engaging in the same kind of long-awaited, appreciative look at her. She felt warmed to the toes by the affection and trust she saw in her friend’s eyes. 

And then the Bat’s black glove closed around Ivy’s throat and lifted her back against him. His other hand went wandering around her body, groping impersonally at her thighs, belly, breasts… 

He lifted her breast, squeezing crudely at the nipple, scratching cruelly across the small, neat crescent scar on the underside, and Selina just… snapped. 

She couldn’t say she’d led a lonely life. Cat and Kitty and Selina had always kept themselves company, after all, and they’d had the cats. But Ivy was the first friend they’d had that the world would have acknowledged as such. Even though surely Ivy had only befriended her because they’d been thrown together in this impossible situation. She’d still chosen to spend time with Selina instead of being alone (or with Harley, whom she clearly loved) and Selina couldn’t help but feel honored by that. 

And such a friend. Resilient, courageous, brilliant—still so deeply caring despite the clearly difficult life she’d led, even though her stories hadn’t dwelled on those parts of it. Ivy had endured so much to be herself, to survive. Selina couldn’t bear to watch her go through this, too. 

“Stop!” she cried.

They both looked at her. The Bat’s hands froze. 

“Cat, no,” Ivy warned. 

“Don’t you dare!” Harley yelled from her cell. “If anyone’s gonna do it, should be me!” 

“Neither of you should do anything,” Ivy bit out. The Bat punched her in the head, hard enough to stun her for a moment. Cat hissed. 

“Shut up,” he said casually. “That goes for you, too, Harley, unless you want to see her get another.”

He heaved his victim forward, closer to Selina’s cell. Ivy's head lolled down at her chest, her eyes still hazy with the blow, but Selina could feel the other woman begging her not to give in. But if it was going to happen anyway—better that it maybe mean something. 

“You were saying?” Batman prompted.

“Sorry, Ivy,” she whispered. Then looked up at the Bat. “Let her go. Out of here, free and unharmed. And then I’ll be yours.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed. “Not sure I like conditionals… go ahead and say it. And then I’ll let her go.”

Selina bit her lip. But either way… either way, at least one of them would get out of this damn prison. Maybe both. And then—even if the Bat held on to them, even if his control really was everything it had been cracked up to be, surely there would be a way to get loose. Oswald clearly retained some free will, he just didn’t care enough to do anything good with it. 

At least, it would be a change, something different from this endless, timeless dungeon. 

“As long as Ivy is free and unharmed,” she promised, looking into his white lenses. “I’m all yours. I surrender. Whatever you want.”

He nodded slowly. Without moving his fingers from around Ivy’s throat, he moved even closer and reached out his other arm. “Give me your hand,” he said. 

She took a deep breath, and laid her right hand in his gauntlet, palm down. He bounced it, caught the underside, and lifted her wrist up to his mouth. Cat screwed her eyes shut, clenched her left fist, and braced herself. 

And continued to brace herself… 

Nothing was happening.

Finally, she looked up and stomped her foot.

“What are you waiting for, you asshole?” she demanded. 

“I told you that you’d have to beg,” he said with a smile. 

“Oh you fucking—“ she bit herself off. Much though she wanted to tell him to go shit up a creek… she took a deep breath, looking at his fingers still tight around Ivy’s neck. 

“Please bite me,” she said flatly, not bothering to make it sound believable. 

“Oh, come now. You can do better than that,” Batman said condescendingly. 

She clenched her teeth. Okay. She could do this. They’d done worse. 

Kitty looked up. 

“Please,” she said breathily. “Please make me yours. I’m begging you, please bite me.”

He did. Eyes locked on hers, he raised her wrist that last crucial centimeters, and bit down.

She stifled a scream and bit down herself on her other hand, at the knuckle. Fuck it hurt!

After a moment, though—and shorter this time, it seemed, but then, she wasn’t dizzy with a near-concussion, either—a wave of warmth and not-pain washed backward up from her wrist. A second after that, her knees went weak as arousal swept through her. The Bat started sucking, every pull seeming to draw another wave of sensation through her, then he lapped his warm tongue over the bites several times before pulling back. Tingles of pleasure traveled up her arm and straight down to her crotch as he withdrew.

“Oh fuck,” she bit out, steading herself with a hand on the bar. 

The Bat chuckled and dropped her wrist. “In a second, my dear,” he said. 

Turning, he walked Ivy away. They passed out of Harley’s sight quickly, but she heard the clangs and whooshing as the elevator landed. Then it closed again, and Batman walked back into sight. 

“Oswald will get her clothes and money when she gets to the surface,” he murmured. The bars clanged up. One of them had been the bar she’d been clutching, and she almost fell forward into his arms. He caught her and drew her into him. “She’s free and clear.” 

“Thank you,” Kitty gasped. 

Cat groaned inwardly. Thank you? Because the guy had stopped torturing one of the people he’d abducted and held prisoner? Who are we kidding?

The Bat chuckled. His hands were roaming down her bare back, cupping her butt. Kitty and Cat had a brief wrestling match, debating which of them was better suited to enduring this particular torture. Selina dove down, receding back into herself as fast as possible, and after a second, Cat followed. 

Suddenly, Batman tipped her head back, looking her in the eyes. “No, Selina,” he murmured. “I want you, alert and present. Don’t hide yourself away in some corner of your brain. Stay here with me.” 

Selina gasped as she felt herself mentally dragged back, forced back into her head, Kitty making way with dismay. “No—” they whimpered. Selina never— hadn’t, didn’t, couldn’t—not since—

He kissed her. Unable to stop herself in this state, she bit his tongue, drawing blood. He laughed. 

“So feisty!” he crowed. “Just like I always thought you’d be.”

He lifted her up into his arms, slinging her legs around his waist for balance, and carried her farther back into her cell. 

Sat her down on the examining table and pulled her head back by her hair so he could kiss her throat and chest... as he wheeled her back around, toward the main chamber. She bit back a moan and struggled desperately to get away from his heavy touch. 

“Mmmm,” he said. “Not quite as uninhibited as in my imagination, I have to say… pity.”

He flattened his hands on both sides of her head, drawing her close, until their foreheads almost touched. “Open your eyes,” he said in a quiet tone, just loud enough for her to hear. 

She hadn’t realized she’d closed them—she opened them and stared him down defiantly. 

The white lenses in his cowl were open, she saw with a shock. His eyes were cold, a deep slate blue. 

“You want me to fuck you,” he whispered. “More than you’ve ever desired anyone before. You’re desperately aroused—you feel like you have to have me take you, own you. Like you’ll never get enough, never be satisfied.” 

She gasped as the feeling he’d described washed over her. She’d already been physically aroused—his bite had seen to that—but now her mind and emotions followed, until her very skin thrummed with it. Her cunt leaked, so empty it hurt. Selina had never felt like this, even when safe at home, touching herself, and lost in fantasies. Even Kitty had never been this heated, this desperate, never even close to this, so needy for the touch of the person before her and no other.

She glued herself to him with a long, drawn out, pleading moan, bringing his mouth to hers and wrapping her legs around his waist. Their tongues battled for a moment, every wet touch feeling like heaven but also stoking her inner need higher. She clutched and grasped at his armor, desperately seeking skin and unable to find it. She wrenched at his belt, but his hands closed fast around hers, not letting her get any farther. Trapping her hands flat below his, he grabbed the edge of the examining table and continued pushing her through the open cell door, into the open space between the cells.

She bit back a scream of frustration, wrenching her mouth from his, despite how much it hurt to not have every part of her body touching him… he barely noticed, mouthing along her neck and shoulders instead. 

Of course, he would insist on making her beg in front of the others, would make her entirely his in front of his captive audience, bring her utterly to her knees—that last, probably literally. That last thought made her burn with rage, with terror… and with desire. She shook, torn between the fear and the need. 

Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer. 

“Please,” she gasped, seeking his mouth again. “Please, let me touch you.” 

He groaned and disentangled from her—forcibly, because she didn’t want to let go of him—and stepped back. She mewled in protest, tears coming to her eyes. 

“It’s okay, baby,” he said hoarsely. “Stay there, hold still. Just give me a second, I’ll take care of you, I promise.” 

She wrapped her arms around herself as he stripped, stifling a whine as she wrestled with the pain of not being touched. Breastplate and shoulder plates and thigh plates—so many buckles!—then the underlying kevlar. Once he got to the final layer, he just ripped it off. Finally, he was standing in front of her naked, but for his boots and cowl, acres of bare, taut skin and muscles framed by blackness above and below, damp with sweat. 

A small, buried part of her reminded her how ridiculous he looked, how she’d been tempted to laugh when she’d seen him strip down before, to take Dent. A grown man in nothing but a black bat mask and knee-high, armored boots. The rest of her, the part that was in charge, thought he was gorgeous, everything she’d ever wanted and more, six-plus feet of deliciousness and danger that she wanted to lick all over. She desperately needed to touch him, but she couldn’t move. High-pitched pleading noises tumbled out of her throat.

“Please, please, please,” she begged, mindless with desire, her hands still clenched on the edge of the table.

He chuckled and came to her. His touch was electric, sending shivers of sensation sown her spine, and she started purring, which made him laugh. She wrapped her legs eagerly around his waist and climbed him like a tree, lifting herself off the examining table completely. He grunted and buried his face in her shoulder as she closed a hand around his cock and guided him toward home. Before she could fully ensheathe him, however, he pulled her forcefully away from him and slammed her back down on the table, facedown. She mewled into the table padding, a helpless, confused noise. His weight pushed her down, oppressive and suffocating, even as his nearness relieved her desperate need and heightened her arousal. 

“Sorry, dear,” he said, a little breathlessly. “I’d like things to last a little longer than that.”

She whined and pushed herself back around, reaching for his cock again. 

He laughed, the rat-bastard, and fought her off. 

“Really, darling, you can’t control yourself?” he asked. 

“You saw to that,” she pointed out, unable to keep herself from continuing to try, even though she knew it was useless. 

He sighed dramatically as they wrestled, both of them on top of the narrow table now, almost toppling off a couple times as they rolled about. That was okay, though, because at least his bare skin was touching hers, and maybe she could writhe into just the right position… 

While she was focusing on that, however, he had another agenda. His hands closed around her wrists. Before she had it quite figured out—her mind was elsewhere, okay?— he’d managed to get a leather cuff from one of the table’s hospital restraints secured around her right wrist. 

“No,” she yowled, images of what Harley had endured flashing through her mind. She struggled uselessly as he shortened the strap, forcing her arm to the side of the table. “No, please, I’ll be good—”

He chuckled. With her mobility now limited, he was able to get her left wrist in position fairly easily. Once the second restraint was on, he pulled back from her a bit, kneeling on the padded tabletop, between her spread legs. She yanked up at the restraints, unable to herself from reaching uselessly for the vision of beauty before her, even as a part of her cringed in shame at the picture she must make, bound and helpless and desperate with desire. 

“There we go,” he said in a smug tone, smiling down at her. She hissed, but couldn’t maintain the hostility long, the need he’d instilled still humming through her veins. 

"Please,” she begged again. “Please fuck me.” 

“Oh, I will,” he reassured her and began to caress her slowly, running his hands down her thighs, then up toward her breasts, ignoring her weeping cunt. His touch hadn’t gotten any more soothing, and she bit back tears of frustration even as she moaned in bliss. “In time.” 

His bare hands were so much cleverer than his gauntleted fists had been, stroking her fitfully, rough fingertips catching on her nipples, the little hairs on her stomach. Every touch was like fire against her skin. Then he moved his hands lower, cupping her butt, and put his mouth where his hands had been, and his lips and tongue were a thousand times hotter than his fingers had been, driving her wild. It felt amazing. She came with a faint shriek as he mouthed at her breasts, arching her back in bliss. But it was over too soon, a little peak of pleasure that only served to drive her need higher. 

He seemed to want to drive her insane, fondling and biting and licking at every part of her but the place where she needed him. She came again. And again . She was incredibly overstimulated by now, every touch a mix of pleasure and pain on her sensitized skin, but she couldn’t stop wanting it. Needed him to bury himself in her, to possess her utterly.

“Please fuck me, please fuck me, come on, just do it, I need you, please,” she begged raggedly. 

“Well,” he muttered. “If you insist.”

She sobbed with frantic desire, rocking herself back and forth on the table, wrists pulling uselessly at her restraints, feet kicking uselessly into empty space on either side of the kneeling vampire. 

He pulled her legs up to straddle his massive thighs and stroked them slowly, fondling the silk smooth skin of her inner thighs, rubbing the hair on the other side the wrong way so it stood on end. Finally, still inching his way forward with unhurried cruelty, he slid his cock inside her. Just the thick head, no further, punching its way in a sharp burst of pleasure-pain. And out, and in again, rubbing and stretching her rim with deliberation, spreading her juices. She was moaning continuously now, head thrown back, lost in ecstasy. Nothing had ever felt this good. 

He continued to tease her for what seemed like an eternity, fucking her only shallowly, denying her satiation even as he sent continuous waves of fiery rapture through her body, so intense they were almost painful. Finally, finally, as she got to the point of begging coherently again instead of just making pleading pleasured noises, he slid all the way inside her in one smooth thrust, his way made easy by her copious slick. She shouted in triumph, coming for the ‘who even knew any more’th time, a deep, wrenching climax.

But when she slowly worked her way out from the sea of bliss her orgasm had drowned her in, the fulfillment she yearned for was still lacking, despite the deep, primal joy of being filled. 

She squealed and moaned as he worked in her hungrily, his forehead pressed to her sweat-streaming chest. It was so good, every thrust forward sending a stab of bliss straight up her spine, every grinding retreat sending waves of pleasure through her entire body. She met his thrusts gladly, urging him deeper, harder, faster, long beyond even token resistance by this point, working her abs to lift her butt off the sticky-wet padded surface with every stroke. All too soon, he came with a choked-off howl. The feeling sent her off again, a wrenching, intense, spine-shaking series of tremors. 

 When she came back down, she nearly wept again—every part of her body felt strained and exhausted, her damn clit felt hot and hurt with how many times she’d come, her wrists burned from pulling against the restraints… and she still wanted him. Still needed him, the desire shooting through her just as undeniably as when they’d started. 

As she writhed, still helplessly bound on the lab table, she caught Harley’s white face peering out between cell bars on her right, the blonde’s face drawn with fury. On the left, Slade posed implacably in that same power pose she’d first seen him in, but his eyes were black and hot, fixed on her. 

“Don’t stop,” she begged, rubbing her legs up Batman’s naked flanks. “Please, I still… please don’t go.” 

He hummed tiredly, lifting his weight off her. She whimpered. 

“Oh, alright,” he said. “If you’re going to cry about it. But you’ll have to do all the work this time.”

There wasn’t room on the table for them to lay next to each other, so he sat between her thighs and shoved his legs under her, until her butt was resting awkwardly on his thighs, with her shoulders flat on the padded surface. She groaned as she strove to lift her upper body without being able to push herself up, with her wrists still bound tight to the sides of the table. He chuckled at her struggles, and she hissed at him.

It took every ounce of the acrobatic flexibility and strength she’d cultivated as a sneak-thief to twist around into the position she wanted—first, sitting up, her abdominal muscles screaming. Then she braced her bound hands on the edge of the table and lifted her upper body into the air until she could pull her butt back and fit her legs through the circle of her arms and body, then down to entwine with his. 

“Mmm, that’s a good girl,” he murmured approvingly. He lay back, crossed his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes in seeming utter contentment. 

Grumbling, she brought herself off a couple times by just grinding down into his temporary softness, bending herself in half to mouth and bite at his nipples in contended revenge, wishing only that he’d freed her hands so she could touch his stupidly glorious skin as much as she’d like. Soon enough, however, her need could no longer be soothed, and she pulled herself back into child’s pose so that she could lick and suck him to hardness again. 

He hissed softly as she lapped at the over-sensitive skin—good, it serves him right!, yelled a buried voice inside her—and cleaned their mingled juices away. It took far too long, but eventually he stiffened, a welcome weight on her tongue, stretching her cheeks and lips. 

Crying a little in sheer relief, she lifted herself back up and down, pulling him inside her again. Exhausted, she laid herself out on top of him, resting her head on his chest, rocking back and forth just enough to keep the clawing hunger away, trying to stretch out the time before her next useless orgasm as much as possible. 

After a while, however, he got tired of this—we probably weren’t putting on a good enough show for his theatrical leanings, she thought bitterly—and he sat up, bringing her with him, their chests pressed together, her arms helpless at her sides. He kissed her again deeply and began thrusting up into her with more intent, his arms wrapped around her back. His mouth stifled her protests and moans as he worked them both to a grunting, sweaty, teeth-rattling finish. 

She began to cry hopelessly, the need still eating away at her, as he slowly disengaged from her, lifted himself down from the table, and wheeled her back into the cell. Once there, he finally released her wrists. She rubbed them silently, moaning—there was a full three-inch wide ring of red, irritated skin where she’d desperately pulled against her bonds.

Despite her despair, her continuing need drove her to climb weakly off the table, and follow at his heels, reaching out for him again. He shoved her back and the cell bars clanged down as he walked away. 

She wept harder, clutching at the bars, her vision blurring. Was this really it? Had he done all this, captured her, gotten her to surrender so fucking easily, just so he could use her and discard her? Drive her crazy with a need that could never be satisfied? Did he have no better use for her than as a fuckrag, satiating his sadistic needs and then left pleading uselessly forever in the endless light? 

“Selina,” he said. He was back? “Look at me.” 

She looked up. He was standing, fully armored again, in front of her. And Ivy was standing there with him, her face a study in wretched compassion and grief, her hands bound behind her and duct tape across her mouth. 

It was like a switch turned off. The want, the desire, the need, vanished. 

Rage rushed out to fill the space they had vacated. 

“ You fucking bastard,” she snarled, reaching futilely through the bars to try and snap his lying, deceitful, sadistic spine. “Let her go!” 

“Say pretty please,” he taunted, laughing. 

“I’ll make pretty pictures with your intestines” she growled. 

He sighed. “Well, now we know what happens with conditional surrenders. Damn. Still, worth learning.” 

“Are our lives just a fucking experiment to you?!” 

He pursed his lips. “Huh. Yeah, they pretty much are, aren’t they?” He grinned evilly at her and then sank his fangs into Ivy’s neck. The older woman screamed, the sound stifled by the duct tape sealing her mouth. 

“No!” Selina screeched. “I’m going to kill you!” Angry tears streamed down her cheeks, and she wiped at them furiously. She’d always cried when she got mad enough, and it had always just enraged her further. “Ivy—” she choked out. But she didn’t know what she could possibly say. 

Her friend’s eyes opened, despite the teeth still digging toward her throat. Their eyes met and clung in a silent, supportive communion. 

“I’m so sorry,” Selina whispered. Ivy closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again, her pupils moving back and forth in the shake of negation that she dared not make with her head. 

Batman pulled his teeth out and lapped at the puncture wounds until they stopped bleeding. Pulling back, he examined his work and gave an approved, satisfied nod. 

“Well,” he said. “That was very touching.” 

“Eat shit,” Selina said flatly, unable to think of anything more cutting or creative to say. 

“Now, now,” he said. “You should really be nicer to me. But you’ll figure that out… eventually.” 

He dragged Ivy out of Selina’s vision. Cell bars clanged open, and a few minutes later, shut again. 

Batman walked back and paused just a second in front of Selina’s cell again. “Or maybe you won’t,” he said thoughtfully. “But it sure would be a shame to kill you when you’re so much fun.”

And then he left. 

Selina sat down where she was, heedless of the cold cement floor, and sobbed. 

Lost in despair and self-hatred, she was insensate to anything for an unknowable period. Finally, however, Kitty roused herself and took over, cutting off their tears. She pushed herself slowly to her feet. 

“Cat?” Ivy called from her cell. Her voice was tired and strained, and Kitty realized, after a second of filtering back through her tear-drowned recent memories, that the other woman had been calling out for her for a while. 

“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m… fine, as Steven Tyler would say. Give us a minute, yeah?”

“Of course,” Ivy answered, a weight removed from her voice. “Take all the time you need, I just—I’m here for you, if you need me.” 

“That means a lot,” Kitty reassured her. 

She went to the back of her cell, to the small commode, and began slowly washing herself off. She started with her face and worked her way down, cleaning inch-by-inch with the measly bar of soap and water splashed from the sink in her cupped hands. The cold water, for once, felt refreshing—a blessed sacrament rather than an additional torment in the chill, damp dungeon. 

Finally, when she could get no cleaner, she stopped procrastinating and made the shameful walk back to the front-left corner of her cell. 

“Ivy?” she whispered, half-hoping that the other woman had given up and gone to sleep. 

“I’m here,” the smooth, deep voice whispered back immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Kitty choked out, tears springing to her eyes again. “I was so stupid, I should have have listened to you, I—” 

“Don’t you dare, ” Ivy hissed back. 

Kitty stopped short, her tears drying up in surprise. “But—”

“No one has ever done something like that for me,” Ivy said, her voice breaking. “And yes, it was stupid—of course he wasn’t going to keep his damn word—and you shouldn’t do it again, but you can’t fucking apologize for it, you hear me?”

It was so unexpected, Kitty had to swallow down a laugh. “Yes ma’am,” she said finally, grinning weakly. 

“Good,” Ivy said firmly, her returning smile audible. 

She reached a hand through the bars. Kitty took it, curling their fingers today. 

“We’re going to get out of here, Cat,” Ivy said. “You gotta hang in there. Me, you, and Harley, we stick together and I’ll get us all out of here, I promise. Trust me, okay?” 

Kitty sighed. She pressed her head to the bars, and raised the other woman’s hand up to her mouth. She pressed her lips to the back, then turned it over in her hand so she could kiss the palm.

“Okay,” she whispered. “We trust you.”