#I actually had to do research on what onomatopeia to use for church bells.

[apple-grass-and-smiles]

A Death By a Thousand Cuts Would Be Easier

Summary: A brief history of some of the moments concerning Bruce Wayne that Selina Kyle will remember until the day she dies.

Author’s Note: So, a bit of an explanation of how this whole thing works. The italicized headers are each things or phrases from the bridge of the stunning “Death By a Thousand Cuts” by Taylor Swift. Under each header is a drabble (none are exactly 100 words, so please forgive me) that is in some way connected with whatever the header is. They are not in chronological order, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too confusing. There are also some shoutouts to some of the wonderful Batcat Fam sprinkled throughout the story as a sort of thank you for being such amazing friends. Also, thank you to Itzel for clarifying what dances Bruce may have actually learned in Mexico.

A Death By a Thousand Cuts Would Be Easier

Looking back on it, Selina gave a lot of things to Bruce Wayne. And when he left, each of those things cut her as they left with him. Her heart, her trust, her love all cut her as he flew away on a plane that didn’t have a seat on it for her. The wound he gave her when he left wasn’t what had nearly killed her. It had been the thousands of cuts those pieces of her had left.

My Heart

Selina’s heart felt like it was about to beat out of her chest. Obviously she knew that wasn’t possible, but it felt like it. She hadn’t even been a tenth as afraid as she was now when they had been fighting that stupid fence to try and get the necklace a hour ago. But making her next request was probably going to be the most terrifying thing Selina had ever done.

“Will you return it?” Selina asks, putting the pearl necklace on the table.

She couldn’t bear to do it herself. The very idea of walking into the house where Ivy had killed that scientist and acting like returning a stolen necklace was the same thing as bringing back the woman’s husband made Selina want to run and hide for the rest of her life. When she weighed the cost of returning the necklace herself against the terror that would accompany asking Bruce for such a personal and vulnerable favor, her fear of facing the woman whose life and necklace she had stolen was just ever so slightly more terrifying. She could trust Bruce to take her heart and not destroy it, but there was no way she would trust herself to return a necklace to a woman whose heart had been eviscerated while Selina took her pearls.

My Hips

Bruce claims he learned how to salsa when he was in Mexico. Selina thinks he’s lying but has no proof to back it up other than that a trip to Mexico does not fit into the timeline she’s working on forming of the past ten years of Bruce’s life since he skipped town. But, his salsa dancing was really good. Like, really, really good. It seemed insane that Bruce had left Gotham a decade ago unable to do much more than a basic waltz and returned a master of just about every style of dance they’ve encountered at galas thus far. Filing away a mental note to interrogate Bruce later about his new found dancing ability, Selina returned to focusing on the mission, searching the room for Penguin.

That is until Bruce moved his hands from her back and down to her hips and any hope she had of looking at anything other than Bruce’s eyes flew out the window.

My Body

Lying paralyzed in a hospital bed as she heard the sounds of Gotham falling to pieces around her was a nightmare so horrible Selina couldn’t even have imagined it. She still wakes up every couple of hours with a jolt and, sometimes, a scream from dreams that seem so real she expects Jeremiah to be the one grabbing her and not Bruce or Alfred or one of the nurses. It had been a week since everything had collapsed in on itself and her world had been torn apart by a bullet and the bombs that blew the bridges and she was only just now beginning to reach a point where she was willing to talk to Bruce. It was stupid to blame her new, useless body on him because he wasn’t the one who pulled the gun’s trigger. He hadn’t made her go to the manor that night. He hadn’t forced them to be friends. He hadn’t made her lie about seeing who killed his parents. But if she didn’t blame him for the bullet that might as well have ended her life, then the only person left in this hospital to blame would be herself. And, at the end of the day, it was better to believe she’d given up her body, her freedom, and her life for the boy who had spent the last 96 hours in a hospital chair next to her than to think about how all the choices that had led her to this moment were her own.

My Love

For a young woman whose entire appeal is that she slinks in and out of people’s lives like a cat with absolutely zero emotional connection to those she interacts with, Selina loves a surprisingly large number of people, places, and things. She loves to play with the cats who frequent her apartment. She loves the little Mexican bakery around the corner from Cornelia Street. She loves her collection of black leather jackets that has only continued to grow. She loves Gotham and punk music and greasy, cheap pizza and the way the sky turns pink as the sun sets and rises each day. But, and this is a fact she buries so deep down inside that it only has a chance to surface when she stays still for more than a handful of seconds, she loves Bruce Wayne at least as much as all of those things combined. She never really told him when he was in Gotham and she swears she’ll never tell him even if he comes back one day, but it’s a small fact she keeps tucked away and it makes her heart just a little bit more full than it was before.

Like a Bad Drug

Selina hadn’t done drugs before. It was a bit ridiculous considering she was 18 and had been living on the streets her whole life. Most kids with stories like hers got their first taste of drugs before they were 10, but Selina’s ability to pick pockets and get in and out of places undetected required her to be sober, so drugs had been firmly off the table. Other kids could be high and still get by, but if she was even the littlest bit not completely in her own head, any attempts she made to steal things would be a catastrophe.

Selina hadn’t done drugs before, but she also hadn’t been abandoned by Bruce Wayne without a good-bye beyond a small note before. Well, there’s a first time for everything, Selina thought as she snorted the white powder.

In a Haunted Club

Rumor has it that Bruce Wayne is in England. No one has any proof, but there are pictures of an heiress named Kayliegh wandering London with a guy dressed in all black who if you look at the picture from exactly the right angle and have no idea what Bruce looks like, could be the missing Wayne. But Selina actually knows what Bruce looks like, has memorized every line of his face and can still hear his laugh sometimes as she falls asleep. But the tabloids with the pictures were everywhere today and she’s tired of hearing his name whispered by Gothamites everywhere she goes.

So she heads to the Sirens and hopes the sound of the club will drown out the idea that maybe he had moved on and maybe he was in London and maybe she wasn’t part of his story anymore. The alcohol doesn’t help her shake the feeling that a ghostly Bruce Wayn is watching her from just outside of peripheral vision, but that’s not enough to dissuade her from taking another shot.

Our Songs

Once upon a time, Selina had tried to learn to play the ukulele. Someone had thrown the instrument in the trash when she was about seven and Selina had picked it out of the dumpster. It had been painted blue with a picture of a flower on it and she had plucked at the strings and dragged it along with her for a couple of weeks. In the end, it had been abandoned one day when she had to run from the police who were very intent on bringing her back to St. Maria’s. It had just been another one of her dreams that got discarded on a Gotham street, just like she had been.

A decade later she’s stuck in a hospital bed and the doctors are talking about how she needs to adjust to this new normal and that there are plenty of new skills she can learn that don’t require her to actually move much. Selina only half listens to them because the other half of her mind is occupied with trying to think of a reason to keep on going. Bruce brings her a ukulele the next day because he figures it’ll keep her mind off of the impending surgeries and that if she can at least learn one song maybe the doctors will stop hovering as much. They learn how to stumble through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” together and even though Selina doesn’t put any of her heart into the song, Bruce is enthusiastic enough for both of them.

Our Films

“You’re telling me you’ve never seen Star Wars?” Bruce is 15 and completely incredulous. Selina is curled into a ball on the couch, completely and utterly unperturbed by Bruce’s impending, Star Wars-induced breakdown.

“When was I supposed to have the time to sit down and watch a bunch of movies? It’s not like I have tons of downtime to spend watching Spock hit people with laser swords.” Selina gestures impatiently for the bowl of imported European chocolates by Bruce’s left hand while Bruce blinks in shock at his friend.

“Well, you have time now. I hope you’re comfortable because you’re not leaving here until you understand how wrong you are when you say that Star Wars is about Spock hitting people with laser swords.”

“Whatever. But if I’m going to be stuck here for eternity you better hand me that chocolate before I smother you with a pillow.”

Bruce hands her the candy and joins her on the couch as the opening crawl appears on the screen. What he doesn’t know is that Selina has a secret: She’s seen every second of Star Wars multiple times before, but she figured that a Star Wars marathon would be the ideal way for her to try every sweet in the Wayne manor. No one could say that Selina couldn’t play dumb when it suited her.

United We Stand

The Year the Bridges Blew always feels a bit like a dream when Selina looks back on it. She can’t quite pinpoint many details from the year and so much of it seems to fade when she thinks about it too hard. Granted, if it were up to most of the citizens of Gotham, that year would be erased from everyone’s mind so that they could all move forward without the looming fear that one day they will be trapped in their city again.

But there are some memories from that time that Selina wouldn’t erase. She likes to revisit the summer evening she spent one day with Bruce, lounging on a rooftop, watching some teens below trying to set off fireworks. Despite the kids' shouts, the claps of the fireworks, and the general noise that always seemed present in Gotham and hand only gotten louder since the bridges blew, the moment felt quiet. She had slipped her hand into his as a red firework had started and sputtered out and for a single, glorious evening she really felt that she had a teammate. Someone who would still be there the next morning and the morning after that and so on until they had no more mornings to wake up to. In that moment, she felt united with Bruce in a way she never had before. You’d have to offer her a fortune larger than the Waynes’ to get her to give up that memory.

Our Country, a Lawless Land

Gotham was Selina’s city. This fact was the only one she knew so well that it felt like it was ingrained in every muscle and sinew and bone and ligament in her body. She had been born here, had grown up here, had been abandoned here, had been killed by Jeremiah here and then brought back to life here. To try and separate Gotham from Selina would be like trying to separate a single thread from an intricate tapestry. It might be possible, but why would you even bother?

That’s why, no matter how hard she tries, Selina can’t understand why Bruce left, why he always kept leaving Gotham. They built their relationship on the sound of their feet running on Gotham’s street. They had laughed together on Gotham bridges. Had shouted and whispered declarations of love with Gotham’s skyline as their backdrop. Every single part of what made them them was entrenched in the city. And, somewhere in the back of her mind, Selina realized that if Bruce could leave Gotham, the city that had made him, then that meant he could leave her too.

Our Paper-Thin Plans

“I think I’d want a house with a window seat.”

“A window seat? Out of all the things a house could have, your request is for a window seat?”

“Yeah. I like them.”

“Do you spend a lot of time in the window seats back home?”

“Yeah, if you and Alfred aren’t bothering me that’s usually where I am.”

“How have I never noticed this? Alfred, did you know that Selina loves window seats? … Okay, how did everyone know this but me?”

“Maybe your powers of observation just aren’t as good as you think they are.”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll make a note that when we rebuild the manor to add in more window seats.”

“You better or else I might have to find some other billionaire to hang out with because window seats are a deal breaker in this whole thing.”

My Time

Selina’s time is a valuable commodity. Every second she’s spending doing something is a second she could be casing a jewelry store or picking pockets downtown. But, sometimes even a young thief needs a night off. Selina’s plan is simple, she’ll feed her current cats- Isis and Coco- and then take a shower before eating some Chinese from the place across the street that always has just a bit too much food left over come closing time.

At least that was the plan before Bruce Wayne knocked on the door (He knocked. Like she paid rent for the place.) and asked if she was up to anything. Of course, when she planned on a quiet night, Bruce wanted her to keep him from dying on some fool’s quest. She only rolled her eyes once before grabbing her leather jacket and heading out the door. She’d always have time for him.

My Wine

Selina doesn’t usually drink wine. She’s had a variety of them, ranging in cost from a couple of bucks to more than a year’s worth of rent, and she honestly hasn’t liked any of them. But a couple of times a year since she’s turned 21, she gets a small invitation in the mail inviting her to a quiet dinner at the new Wayne manor. Alfred always pulls out a bottle of what he promises her is good wine and they usually finish it by the time dinner is pushed to the end of the table and desert is being savored. Sometimes the invitation is for a special date, like Christmas or Alfred’s birthday, but other times there is no rhyme or reason that Selina can discern for the dinner. This time the invitation comes and is signed by both Alfred and Bruce and a not small part of Selina is bitter that Bruce is trying to infringe on the bond that she and Alfred forged in, and because of, his absence. She doesn’t show up on the appointed date and instead hacks the Wayne bank account and makes a very generous donation to a local animal shelter in Bruce’s name. Alfred sends her a bottle of wine a few days after they were supposed to meet that he claims is spectacular. She can’t taste the difference between it and the box wine she bought one time.

My Spirit

Selina’s birthday is either December 1st or December 3rd. Maria says it’s the 1st, but all her official documents cite it as the 3rd. Selina knows it’s weird to not really know her birthday, but it’s not like she grew up with birthday parties so it never really was an issue. But then she accidentally reveals that she has two birthdays to Bruce when they’re 13 and suddenly these previously mostly meaningless days in December are arriving with more pomp and circumstance than she had ever anticipated.

They throw a party on the 1st with games and food and gifts at the manor. Alfred prepares all the fanciest foods and Selina is asked to wear a dress to the party. (She does, but she complains about it the whole time.) It’s a fun, if strange event, and Selina enjoys herself. But then the 3rd rolls around and she returns to her apartment exhausted from running all over town in the snow to find Bruce with an enormous pile of take out from at least half a dozen of her favorite restaurants. He’s brought a projector and some movies and pillows and blankets. They make a pillow fort before settling down with the food. Snuggled beneath a pile of blankets, with some old movie about a guy in a wheelchair spying on his neighbors from his window, Selina has a shining moment where she truly understands peace. For once her mind, her spirit, her body, her heart, every part of her, feels completely at peace. It’s the best birthday gift anyone could have given her.

My Trust

She doesn’t wear the ring on her finger for a multitude of reasons. It could get lost or she could scratch herself or it could get caught on something or it could be noticed by someone and then the whole world might know about the secret Selina had been carrying around for about two weeks. It isn’t that she is ashamed or embarrassed about the engagement, but she likes the idea that this particular moment is being shared only with the people she trusts to treat it with love and kindness. She knows that the world, that Gotham, will pry and pick at the happiness her engagement is giving her, but if she keeps the ring on a chain around her neck, close to her heart, then maybe she can keep this beautiful moment going just a bit longer.

A Thousand Cuts

The bells ring louder than she had expected but the crowd of people are even louder. Selina’s still not used to the public side of being connected with this new Bruce Wayne, but she loves the private part of him too much to be dissuaded by camera flashes and people shouting his name. As they race from the the entrance of the church (Martha and Thomas got married there, so Bruce felt getting married there was the closest he’d get to having his parents at his wedding) to the open car, she focuses on the rhythmic ringing of the bells, blocking out the shouts and questions and rice that is being thrown at her. And each ring seems to to call out to her:

Bong! Don’t give up on him.

Bong! He’s got you.

Bong! He may have cut you a thousand times…

Bong! But he’ll heal you a thousand and one.