Selina Kyle | The Beginning

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        Selina's home wasn't a home, it was a place to hide. She and Ms. Kitty had finally made it back to the cardboard box where she lived. She carefully opened the flaps that led to the inside and carefully shut them behind her. Inside the box was weighted down by rocks, no one knew that that the box was carefully placed over a sewer drain. Selina lifted the sewer drain and hopped down into the smelly dark pit with her cat in hand. It wasn't a far jump at all, maybe five feet, on her feet again she balanced on her toes to cover the drain. The sewer smelled awful but luckily this part of the sewer was closed off for construction at one point and shortly after the economy dropped down construction never started back up again. So this was home. Down there were three more cats she had found on the streets of Gotham, they had been waiting for her like they always did. They greeted her by licking her boots until she sat down beside them and scooped them up in her arms. Naturally she was one with the cats, they accepted her as their own and she did the same. Her connection with felines had been with her since she was born. Her mother had always surrounded the family with cats and had loved them like they were more children. Selina, even though she was very small, still remembered the way her mother would sing to her and the cats as they sat next to their fire place when her father was working long nights. The thought of her mother made a chill run up her spine.

        The cats moaned for food and Selina felt her stomach do the same. “I know guys, I know” She comforted the starving cats. She felt they knew her pain as well, both her and the animals had grown up on the streets of Arkham and they both felt hunger. “I didn't bring anything home today, but I promise we'll have food tomorrow.” Stealing had become a second nature for Selina. The way she saw it, you were either two things in Gotham : rich or poor. And if you weren't rich you had to steal to survive. And she was right, that's how the majority of Gotham lived. There was few who actually made an honest living and fewer who actually had the chance to. When Selina stole she never felt guilt afterward. She had been doing this ever since she left her father lying dead with the police and even then she felt nothing. You had to do what you had to do to get by in Gotham and this she lived by.

        She tightened the laces on her dirty black combat boots (which were stolen from one of the most expensive shoe stores in Gotham's shopping district) and unzipped her black leather jacket (also stolen, also expensive). She hung her jacket from a pipe so that it stayed off the dirty ground and in her black tank top and black skinny jeans she stared at herself in a puddle of dirty water. Now fifteen, puberty had done her a lot of good. Even though she didn't have a penny to her name she still liked what she saw when her reflection stared back at her. She was very pretty for a teenager and even though she ate nothing for days at a time she didn't look ill and managed to maintain a nice body. What would Mom think if she saw you now. Would she recognize you? What would she look like now? She imagined her mother's beautiful face staring back at her instead of her own. Selina sometimes pretended to herself that her mother was still alive. That her mother was waiting with the cats in the sewer for Selina to return with food. On those days of pretend Selina brought back more food than usual to the sewer, for her mother. If her mother was there with her, going through the same struggle Selina knew that they would be happy with living in the sewer as long as the had each other. Selina turned away from her reflection as she felt a sharp pain in her heart. And some people said there was no such thing as a broken heart. Selina couldn't sleep for a while and decided to look at what she called her forming “collection” of steals. In the far corner of the sewer were things Selina stole that had value to her. There were shiny rings, silverware, candles, necklaces, hats, picture frames with no pictures, a statue of a cat, a lamp with no lamp shade, old cameras, and much more. Her collection of things all together looked beautiful to her even in the ugly sewer. She took a few pictures Polaroid pictures with her cats and decided she should save the remaining Polaroids for better times. After hours of lying awake thinking about her mother, Selina finally fell asleep with her cats cuddled against her.