Catwoman Drabble
Dr. Leslie Thompkins had been the lynch pin. The one who could quell the addicts and gangs and street scum. Her calm presence had reassured the other doctors, drawn the volunteers. After she fled, it took less than a week for the clinic to fall apart.
No gang tags, evidence of a few remaining scraps of respect. Still, the wreckage is sharp-edged and ugly through Selina's goggles. Her extra patrols hadn't helped in the end. Bruce and his bottomless pockets could have the drugs restocked and the equipment replaced in a few days, but is there even a point anymore? The heart of it is gone.
There's a cold rage in her gut as she leaves the ravaged clinic. A small part of her is glad to see the house that Leslie built come tumbling down, no matter how much it hurts her East End. Part of her wishes she had torn it apart herself. Gilded lies, all of it.
It isn't because Leslie all but abandoned her patients, the lost souls who have nowhere else to go. It isn't because Selina lost a friend, a confidant, one of the few people she trusted in this hellhole of a city. Hell, it isn't even because the doctor threw away everything she believed in to essentially murder an innocent girl who'd believed in her.
It's because of the look in Bruce's eyes when he told her what Leslie had done. The voice had been Batman's cold steel growl, but with the cowl stripped away, his eyes...
Selina knows all about Bruce's parents. How their murder has molded him. But she also knows that it was Alfred and Leslie -- the people who had been there since that bloody alley -- who had kept him from shattering along the way. A foundation of strength or substitute parents or whatever stupid cliche you dumped on them. An outpost of sanity.
Leslie had betrayed that. Ripped it away from him. And Selina had seen just a hint of that broken eight-year-old boy in Bruce's eyes.
She wishes he had left the cowl on. Because when she remembers that look, Selina wonders if she'll ever stop hating Leslie Thompkins.