Chapter Text
HAPPY WAS NOT A WORD ANYONE WOULD USE WHEN DESCRIBING GOTHAM - at least, not without a few choice expletives to accompany it. The city had never been anyone's beacon of hope, more akin to a star - light-years away, its brilliance dead on arrival. Each building the ghost of smothered ambition - bloodstained and deserted in this hellscape of a city. The scent of rain clung to everything, even on the sunniest days—an oppressive stench, thick with pollution and decay, like the city itself was always preparing to drown.
Like any stretch of rain could purge the city's filth.
Gotham's residents were as smothered as the city air, a heavy smog that smelled of daddy issues and lost futures. People had to carve a life out of the corpse. Find their footing in a city that made them crawl. A Louisville Slugger to the kneecaps and stolen hubcaps; a normal Tuesday in Gotham.
Gotham had never known peace. Every memory in Clio Kyle's mind serenaded with a hail of gunfire, sirens raging in the distance, and traffic blaring through paper-thin walls. Memories of police raids and her mother in handcuffs as hellhounds snarled beneath her bedroom window.
The soles of her sneakers had carried her through the alleyway she stood in now; she could still hear the slap of her shoes against damp pavement as she wove between the crooks and cops. She'd been a child the last time she'd visited Gotham, jumping at shadows in fear of what lurked in them. Three months spent on the streets, surviving by the skin of her teeth. The monsters in the shadows wearing smiling faces.
Hellhounds had been the beasts that chased her into the path of an elder brother she never knew of. Those three months foreshadowing a life of failed quests and battle scars. All earned well away from the Gotham smog, in battles she wished she could burn from her skull.
At least she didn't jump at shadows now; she threw knives at them instead.
Knives that protruded from stone, forged from something older than Gotham's sins. Worn handles catching the strobe-light flicker of the nearby strip club, gleaming for just a moment before allowing the shadows to swallow their brilliance whole. Golden dust swept across old blood stains and grime on a bitter breeze - the only remnants of the victim of her blades. The same predator turned prey - the reversal she'd prayed for, nine years too late.
Back when the anger burned away her oxygen, the pain all that kept her running through the labyrinth that was Gotham's streets. Her shoes slapping against the cement beneath her feet to the chorus of snarling Hellhounds and the police car sirens. She'd run from the very fire scape she strolled towards now. Her eyes easily locating the same landing, the one that was just beneath the living room window. The window still a gaudy green hue she never understood how Poison Ivy convinced her mother to paint it.
It was not the most flattering color against the red brick, mostly obscured beneath layers of soot and pollution.
Her knives found home in the hidden pockets in her jacket, tucked against her stomach as a rat scuttled across the alleyway. Its tiny claws a soft scratching against the cement as the soles of her shoes ghosted across the concrete. A feather-light caress even as she bolted towards the low hanging ladder, launching herself upwards and latching onto the rusted bars in a single motion. The rust staining her hands an orange hue. The metal structure creaking and shrieking beneath her weight as she made her way up each flight. Noting each step that creaked and the ones that groaned too loudly beneath her weight. Retracing the steps that had once been a panicked escape, now a slow return to something she wasn't sure remained. Something she wasn't sure she'd be able to find again.
Gotham hadn't been home in a long time.
Even before she left - she stopped viewing the city as home. Stopped looking at her mother and her associates as family. She'd already clocked all the missed birthdays, forgotten holidays, and months spent in and out of different homes as she fought a losing custody battle with Blackgate Prison. Her mother just couldn't give it up. She'd tried, fully intending on being there until her daughter could stand on her own. But the Gotham underground was rarely kind to its big players.
Selina Kyle may be her mother, but to Gotham she would always be Catwoman first.
It took her leaving Gotham to understand. For her mind to comprehend the way the world was supposed to work. For her to see the cracks in the very foundation of Gotham, the flaws in the very ideals the city was constructed upon. Cracks so jagged and nonsensical like the ones gouged into the green paint. The lock protruding at the base of the bulletproof glass pane. Trembling fingers, twitching and shaking as the key ring on her belt loop found home in her hand. The smallest key sliding into the lock and twisting easily - no trace of the jam she used to navigate to the soundtrack of her downstairs neighbors' domestic squabbles. A jam that needed a bit of divine finesse to unlock properly.
The window opened with a plume of dust; the smell of sage and lavender a heady assault that flayed her senses the moment the pane slid upwards. Growing in strength as she slipped through. A dull thud and click as the window shut and locked on her heels. A sound as final as her decision to return to Gotham on the heels of the fight she was sure would end her.
Standing in the exact spot she had nine years ago as she called her mother a liar, a failure for letting the monster get her.
The apartment hadn't changed since. Her gaze sweeping across the room, picking up the layers of dust slathered across nearly every surface. A fine layer of staleness - not as strong as the lavender her mother always enjoyed too much. To the point Clio despised the smell almost as much as she hated the off-white wallpaper and beige countertops that made the tiny kitchenette. Mentally adding candles to her shopping list, hopefully strong enough to burn the smell out of the apartment.
Her hands - curled into knuckle whitening fists at her side - slowly uncurled just enough to tug the strap of her bag off her shoulder. The bag thudding heavily against the worn pine, throwing up a cloud of dust that had her cringing. Taking note of the darkness of the floorboards, the deep gouges that hadn't been there when she was a girl. Jagged marks carved deep into the wood, likely a wayward blade or the aftermath of a fight neither party left unscathed.
She heaved a breath - too heavy, too loud in the kind of silence that didn't belong in the heart of Gotham. Pervasive. Invasive. Wrong. She swallowed the nerves that trembled in her fingers and burned her lungs as she took a step deeper into the one place she never thought she'd return.
She'd earned her one-way ticket out - she just never expected it to come with a return trip
Her footsteps echoed too loudly as she tugged open the old refrigerator, surprised to find still hummed with life as the bulb overhead flickered. Clearly someone had returned at least once since the arrest that had driven her out. She shook her head, the door thudding shut behind her as she moved on to the couch. Black leather cracking at the lowermost corner, desperately in need of a wipe down. The oak coffee tables were a mess - cracked, warped. She decided on the spot to toss them.
Briefly she wondered how long her mother had been gone. An orange jumpsuit or a fancy new penthouse; the location didn't matter as her face stared at her from beneath a glass pane coated in dust. She hadn't called ahead, hadn't contacted her at all. She told herself that she didn't want to speak to her. Maybe that was just the lie that helped her sleep.
Besides - Clio doubted her mother would even recognize her. It had been nine years since she'd seen her. Nine years since that little girl had descended the fire escape into the chaos that was Gotham.
That little girl was gone; killed by the brutal reality of life.
What stood in her place was a child forced to grow up too quickly. A kid playing adult while the actual adults failed to be anything more than poor imitations of what that child needed. The same adults who wouldn't recognize her face, wouldn't recognize the woman she became. How could they when what they put in was all unintentional?
She'd been young and scared, afraid of shadows and told to ignore them. Convinced of monsters in her closet when the real monsters lurked beneath her bedroom window and strolled through the apartment while her mother had her hide in said closet. A closet that she knew resided beyond the second door on the left. Painted with colorful flowers and cartoon characters that had fascinated her when she'd been a mere four years old. So excited to have a room she could decorate, walls she could paint, and no landlords that watched her too closely.
She didn't go near that hallway.
Some things were better left buried.
Some things best forgotten when the apartment had two bathrooms and a usable couch. She didn't need to go down there. She didn't need to remember when the kitchen and living room had so much space. More exits, she told herself and pretended that the thought of her old bedroom didn't make her sick.
The thought of her room brought back memories of wandering hands and the cries she screamed that went ignored so easily.
The bang of a gun too close to her head. Deadweight on her chest.
Her mother's cries and the horror in her eyes.
They never managed the time to scrub out the blood.
She took note of the bulbs that flickered overhead. She needed to find out if the grocery store on Third Ave was still in business. Food, cleaning supplies, blankets that didn't smell like mildew, and strong candles the list that looped in her head as she went about investigating the apartment. Finding a roll of paper towels and a near empty bottle of Pledge that she could use to clean at least the couch.
New furniture was a must, but with that bit of pledge she could clean it enough to be useable. She'd venture out first thing tomorrow morning for the necessities. Pledge, food, blankets, new pots and pans - gods above she needed so much. She had so much to do, so much adding onto her mental list.
But for rock bottom - it could definitely be worse.
She had a roof over her head and a couch she could replace. That's more than most people. More than she could've hoped for as the pledge coated the couch cushions, kicking up a fine cloud of dust that made her hold her breath. The analogue clock a dull tick, persistent and consistent. The only consistency Gotham knew; a gunshot sounding in the distance as a streetlight flickered outside.
She hated this city. Despised it with everything she had.
She'd once vowed never to return.
Yet here she was, wishing things had been different as she scrubbed the leather until her arm burned.
Wishing she'd been enough for a brother whose story ended too soon.
Gotham had been the last place she wanted to see, yet rock bottom didn't leave options. Not when her account was near empty and her only skills suited a lifestyle only Gotham suited.
Welcome to the bottom; the only way out is through .