InsaneJournal

Prologue - The Journey Home.
Sometimes running away is a good idea. Battles you're loosing. Natural disasters. Situations that may affect your life, the way you live your life. Your family. Your loved ones. Sometimes it's a good idea. Selina had tried to convince herself for a while that the course of action she had taken was the right one, the sensible one. The only way.

Just six months later she was on a ship, making her way back to Gotham.

Ships are safer than planes, easier to board. Easier to lie your way on to. One fake passport is all it takes. A fake name, a fake life. It's easy to reinvent yourself when you have so much to hide and protect. This Luxury liner was the Queen Mary two. Selina had boarded at Southampton, making her way over from France using the channel tunnel. She'd spent the last eighteen months based in Saudi Arabia, trying to carve out some kind of life for herself. It had failed, not miserably, but mainly because she didn't have the heart to put much effort into it. Slowly she had fallen back into her old ways. It started with a few private contractors buying her services, her expertise. Slowly she had started getting back into the trade for more selfish reasons.

A Turkish money laundering operation here, an Saudi human trafficking cartel. It didn't make much difference to her. She targeted people who had deserved it. People she thought needed to be taught a lesson.

New scars, new memories.

Now she was here, staring out into the oily black ocean, watching the waves lap against the hull of the great ship is it cut though the water with ease. In twenty four hours she would be back in the city she had fled from what seemed like an age ago. She felt like a different person, she was a different person really. That old Selina was gone. The one who had almost opened her heart to the man she felt like she could love - and who could love her in return. Now her emotions were locked up again.

Better to be safe than sorry. That's what she'd tried to tell herself. No matter how much her heart throbbed.

Selina pulled the cashmere wrap further over her bare shoulders. It had been the captains meal tonight. Dinner, dancing. Free drinks from wealthy old men who should know better. Her long jet black hair normally reached down below her shoulders, at the moment it was up, suiting the occasion. She was in a better physical condition, she felt stronger, faster than she had previously – maybe it was the fresh air, the challenge of adapting to new places. Whatever it was she felt changed from it. The black silk gown she wore clung to her form well, disguising the scars, leaving just enough to the imagination.

No, she wasn't the same Selina Kyle that had once known Gotham so well. Her heart ached for it now, her home, calling out to her like a siren through the cold night. She could hear it's voice urging her back, urging her into the life she had left behind. The people. The city. She had tried to resist thinking that anywhere would be a good substitute. She'd tried to stay a couple of weeks in a few cities on her way home, but none of them could hold a candle to the Gothic splendour and squalor of Gotham City. From inside the ballroom she heard the strains of an Ella Fitzgerald number. Selina looked out one last time, watching her breath escape out over the side, made visible by the cold Atlantic winds.

Twenty four hours. That was all she had left before landing back on shore. All she had before looking her old life in the face again. For now she would dance, drink. Try to forget. For now at least she was a Russian born American heiress. Or something like that.

Tomorrow she would be Selina Kyle again. Catwoman. Master thief, feline fatale. She'd always liked that one. The Gotham Gazette sure did know how to coin a ringer.