Interlude #21.
The cargo container smelled like diesel and desperation.
Selina Kyle sat on a wooden crate in the corner, knees drawn to her chest, locket pressed against her sternum like it could fill the hollow space beneath. The engine rumbled somewhere below -- a steady thrum that told her they were moving, cutting through black water toward Blüdhaven's docks.
Away from Gotham. Away from Falcone. Away from the ninja.
Away from him.
Her thumb traced the locket's worn surface. Click. It opened. Maggie's face stared back -- young, smiling, alive. The photograph was faded now, colors bleeding at the edges like a wound that wouldn't close.
"I'm sorry," Selina whispered to the image. "Mags, I'm so sorry."
The container swayed. Her stomach lurched, but it had nothing to do with the motion.
She remembered the way the Roman Ring had vanished. Not stolen: consumed. Golden light spreading across the metal band like infection, dissolving it into thousands of luminous specks that drifted toward him like moths to flame. They'd sunk into his chest, his arms, his core. Absorbed. Gone.
Magic? Mutation? She'd cataloged every explanation her mind could generate and rejected them all as insufficient. Whatever he was, whatever that power meant, it existed beyond her understanding.
And then he'd looked at her locket the same way.
That hunger. That pull. She'd seen it in his body language -- the way his fingers had twitched, the subtle lean forward, the hesitation before he'd handed it over. He'd wanted it. Needed it, maybe, for whatever incomprehensible purpose drove him.
But he'd given it back.
Selina's chest tightened. Her fingers closed around the locket until the metal bit into her palm.
She'd lied to him.
Not about Maggie being dead. That was true. That was real -- the kind of truth that carved itself into your bones and never left.
But the fire?
Her throat constricted. Her breath came faster, shallower. The container walls pressed closer.
No. There had been no fire.
Maggie hadn't died in flames. Hadn't been trapped in a burning building with smoke filling her lungs and heat blistering her skin.
She'd died--
Tears spilled from her eyes in large drops that drenched her sleeve.
"It was my fault," she cried, wiping her face with the back of her hands, but they wouldn't stop falling. "If it wasn't for me, she wouldn't have been in that alley." "
"She would still be alive."
She sobbed.
"I thought I could change things: rewrite your fate," she whispered to no one, only the memory of her past. "He said he could bring you back. He promised."
But the ninja had double-crossed her before she could even make the exchange.
"I tried," Selina breathed, eyes burning. "Mags, I tried. I really tried. But he just wouldn't--"
"Miss Gomez?"
Her head snapped up. Hand went to her whip before her brain caught up.
The smuggler stood in the container's doorway --fifties, weathered face, the kind of man who'd seen enough of Gotham's underworld to know when to ask questions and when to keep his mouth shut.
"We're approaching Blüdhaven," he said. "Twenty minutes to dock. Thought you'd want to know."
Selina nodded, not trusting her voice. The smuggler studied her for a moment -- taking in the smear of hurriedly wiped tears on her face, the death grip on the locket, the way her whole body trembled despite her best efforts to stillness.
"You running from someone specific," he asked quietly, "or just Gotham in general?"
"Does it matter?"
"Suppose not." He turned to leave, paused. "For what it's worth, whatever you left behind in that city: it ain't worth going back for. Gotham doesn't let people leave clean. You got out. Stay out."
The door closed. His footsteps faded.
Selina stared at the locket. Maggie smiled back, frozen in a moment before everything had gone wrong.
She tucked it beneath her suit, against her heart where it belonged.
Blüdhaven was just the first stop. A place to catch her breath, steal enough to fund the next leg. Her real destination waited further south -- a city that had everything Gotham didn't.
Light. Hope. The Man of Steel watching from above instead of a vengeful bat lurking in shadows.
Metropolis.
She'd make it there. Start fresh. Build something that didn't require looking over her shoulder every five seconds. Maybe even go straight for a while -- though that thought felt like wearing someone else's skin.
And maybe one day, when Gotham forgot about her and Falcone's reach couldn't extend that far and the guilt didn't claw quite so deep--
Maybe she'd wonder if he'd survived.
If the Spider was still swinging through Gotham's canyons, still stealing from monsters.
Her lips twitched. Almost a smile.
"Miss me when I'm gone, Spider," she whispered to the container's shadows.
The engine thrummed. The water rushed past outside.
Gotham fell away behind her, taking its ghosts with it.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
Carmine Falcone stood in his study, surveying the damage with the cold assessment of a man calculating acceptable losses.
The Canaletto painting hung crooked. The wall behind his desk bore a spider-shaped crack from where that freak had slammed him. His throat still ached where enhanced fingers had crushed his windpipe, turning his vision purple-black before the cat had intervened.
Unacceptable.
He poured himself whiskey -- single malt, older than most of his enemies -- and drank it in one smooth motion. The burn centered him. Cleared the rage that threatened to compromise his judgment.
Tournaments and bounties were no longer in his To-do list. They didn't work. Gotham's usual methods: throwing money and bodies at a problem until it disappeared, were failing.
Carmine Falcone hadn't built an empire by repeating failed strategies.
He pressed the intercom. "Send them in. And bring the packages."
The door opened. Five figures entered, each one a calculated investment in violence and fear.
Two-Face came first. Harvey Dent's ruin made manifest: half-handsome lawyer, half-walking nightmare. His scarred side caught the lamplight, the burns twisting his expression into something between grin and grimace. He flipped his coin once, caught it, pocketed it.
"Mr. Falcone," Harvey said, voice perfectly level. "I hear you have a problem that needs two solutions."
Behind him, Deadshot adjusted his wrist-mounted firearms with the casual competence of a man who'd never missed a shot he'd intended to take. "Cat burglar and a spider," Floyd Lawton said. "Cute. What's the pay?"
Bane entered next, massive frame filling the doorway. The tubes running to his mask hissed softly as he breathed. "The one who bested you," he rumbled, accent thick. "The one who made the Roman look weak. I will break him."
"That's the idea." Falcone said. "Catwoman is worth more to me alive. She stole something important. I want it back, and I want to know who hired her."
Scarecrow drifted in like poisoned smoke, burlap mask giving nothing away. "Fear," Jonathan Crane whispered. "They both reek of it. The Spider especially. So much potential in that one. So much to break."
"Break him after you find him," Falcone said sharply. "Not before."
The fifth figure made Falcone's jaw tighten despite himself. Clayface, Basil Karlo, moved with unsettling fluidity, his body not quite settled on a single form. "The cat," he said, voice like mud sliding. "I can be anyone she trusts. Anyone she'd run to."
"Effective." Falcone poured another whiskey. "Which is why you're all here instead of the usual street trash. You have resources. Reach. The competence to finish this."
The side door opened. Three men entered carrying duffel bags that hung heavy in their grips. They set the bags on the desk with solid thuds.
Falcone unzipped the first bag slowly. Inside: banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. He unzipped the second. The third. The desk disappeared beneath a landscape of cash.
"Half a million," Falcone said. "Each. Up front."
Even Deadshot's eyes narrowed with focus.
"Consider it a signing bonus." Falcone's hand rested on the money. "But here's where it gets interesting. Whoever kills the Spider gets an additional one and a half million. Whoever brings me Catwoman alive gets an additional one and a half million."
The room's temperature dropped ten degrees.
Two-Face's hand stopped mid-reach for his coin. "So we're competing."
"You're being motivated." Falcone's voice was iron wrapped in silk. "You can work together, work alone, sabotage each other -- I don't care. But only the one who delivers gets the bonus."
Bane's breathing hissed through his mask. "You pit us against each other."
"I'm making sure the job gets done." Falcone met each pair of eyes. "Bring me what I want, and you walk away rich and feared. Fail, and someone else takes the prize."
Two-Face pulled out his coin, flipped it high. It spun, tumbling. He caught it, checked it.
Scarred side up.
"We accept." He grabbed his bag. "Both of us."
The others claimed theirs in sequence: Clayface, Scarecrow, Bane, Deadshot. Each movement was commitment.
At the threshold, Deadshot paused. "What if one of us kills the Spider and another brings in the cat?"
"Then you both get paid." Falcone poured himself whiskey. "I want results. How you divide the work is your business."
Bane was the last to exit. He stopped, turned back. His eyes found the spider-shaped crack again.
"This one who hurt you," Bane said quietly. "He is strong."
"Does that concern you?"
"No." Bane's smile was invisible behind his mask, but audible in his voice. "It excites me. Breaking the strong is infinitely more satisfying than crushing the weak."
The door closed.
Falcone stood alone, surrounded by the smell of old whiskey and older money. Six killers hunting two targets. Three million up front, three million more in bonuses. The largest bounty he'd ever placed outside of a war.
His hand hovered over the phone. One call to Arkham. The Joker could be free by midnight.
His fingers touched the receiver.
Then pulled back.
No. Releasing the Joker was the kind of decision that put even Falcone himself at risk.
For now.
He raised his glass to the crooked Canaletto.
"To pest control," Falcone murmured. "And to making certain everyone remembers why you don't steal from the Roman."
He drank.
Welcome all to my patreon for support and early access chapters. Patreon.com/mimiclord