Notes: All you need to do is picture Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle for this whole thing. EDIT - 7/31/2012: Should have done this earlier but people have reminded me too note that there are minor spoilers in this fic. Very minor. Miniscule, even.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't put myself through torture if I owned this gig.

The Cat and the Bird

It's been a long day.

Dick's spent a good half of the day skipping school (for good reasons, of course) with the rest of the team, tracking and pinning Clayface on the darkest edges of Gotham. Despite the presence of all eight members, Clayface had been persistent and ruthless. Dick recalls Wally and Artemis being thrown into the same wall and afterwards, clumping on top of each other, completely knocked out. He brings to mind Kaldur's tired form as the leader flung blow after blow onto the villain. He can't take out the image of Conner pushing M'gann out of the way to take the multiple hits of broken rubble. He remembers how Rocket had played a major role in the trouncing of Clayface. Her powers had proved to be plenty useful in the battle, what with her ability to absorb kinetic energy with her plasma bubbles. Posing as the perfect distraction, the rest of the team had been able to confuse Clayface enough to finally subdue him before the League appeared to contain him.

Their victory hadn't been easy though: Wally had gone home with a sprained wrist, Zatanna had gone to the infirmary with multiple lacerations on her back after landing on a pile of wood badly, and Artemis hadn't even been allowed to go home until Black Canary could determine whether she'd sprained her arm or broken it.

Dick opens the side door before Alfred can even get out of the driver's seat and walks out of the car. He's in his civvies and he's glad as rolls his shoulders to try and urge some of the ache out of them. If he were wearing Robin's kevlar suit, he'd be feeling twice as bombed. He knows that the first thing Bruce expects him to do when he gets home is to head to the Cave because there's always something to be debriefed on and there's always a little bit of training to do, but he's just not feeling up to it right now.

"Alfred, could you tell Bruce that I'm taking a shower?" he asks as he hands his jacket to the butler's waiting hands.

"Master Bruce would prefer it that you take a shower after the debriefing, as you know, Master Dick." Dick makes a face and heads towards his room anyway. In the safety of the mansion, he plucks the sunglasses off of their perch on his ears and stuffs them into his pockets.

"Master Bruce can wait for ten minutes, can't he?"

"Master Dick, it wouldn't be wise to disappoint your father with your absence," Alfred calls after Dick, "He isn't known for his patience."

"Bruce is plenty patient!" Dick calls back appeasingly with a wave of his hand. He makes a detour towards the kitchen because all of a sudden he feels the need for a grilled cheese sandwich or some ice cream or even some fruit. When was the last time he ate today? All he remembers is Wally handing him some of his energy bar before the bioship landed and that was hours ago. Dick groans along with his grumbling stomach and walks faster. He hasn't been this hungry in a few months.

I'm turning into Wally, Dick thinks, and shudders at the thought.

It's been a long day.

Dick curses the vast size of the Wayne mansion as he walks down the North wing towards the mansion's fancy kitchen. He passes by one of the multiple open doors and after a few steps, stops abruptly. Dick turns quietly and rolls up the sleeves of his forest-green shirt. Something's up, he thinks, walking slowly into the open room. He glances around the room, determining that it's one of Bruce's many lounges but also one of the rooms where Bruce keeps his mother's valuables in a hidden vault.

But apparently not a very advanced vault, Dick thinks,because there it is, open wide and exposing its glittery contents to anyone's thieving delight.

But who can be trained enough to have cracked the vault? Who would have known that this room, out of the hundreds in the mansion, carried Martha Wayne's priceless diamond necklace that her husband had bought for their fifth anniversary? And first of all, who in the world can possibly be good enough to even break into the Wayne mansion?

"Didn't know the bat had a kid," a sultry voice suddenly speaks up. A silver-heeled foot comes flying out of nowhere – seriously, nowhere – and Dick is knocked onto his back. Something is definitely up.

"Ughh," he moans, and his jaw's throbbing now. From his position on the floor, he watches as this temptress dressed in all black leather saunters up to stand next to him. He furrows his brow in confusion as he scans the woman's attire. Besides the black leather, she's wearing a simple black mask to cover the upper half of her face, there are goggles that look impressively high-tech perched on her head, giving her cat-like ears, and the steel tipped high-heeled boots wrapped around her calves with shining, silver heels look like they seriously hurt. Dick remembers his jaw and confirms that yeah, they hurt.

"What's wrong, pipsqueak?" the woman purrs, actually purrs, as she squats down next to him.

"You look a little discomfited," she continues. Even behind the mask, Dick can see the smirk in her eyes, and he frowns. Surprising the femme fatale, he lurches at her with his feet and, when she catches his attack easily, twists his body so that she's thrown to the floor. Dick pushes himself back up onto his feet as the woman gracefully gets into this feline position on the floor, chuckling.

"I'm pretty comfited, lady, thanks," he snarls.

"Hmph," is all he hears from the criminal before she moves.

She looks like a freaking panther or something with the way she leaps from the floor and onto the windows, scaling the walls sideways before grabbing onto God knows what from the ceiling to swing towards Dick. He backflips out of the way just in time to avoid her assault and tosses a small bomb towards the ceiling to blow whatever his opponent's got a grasp on. The bomb doesn't fail him and she falls back towards the floor in front of him.

She laughs as she gets up, seemingly unfazed by her approaching (and inevitable, Dick's sure) defeat.

"Not bad, honey," she says in that sickly sweet voice.

Dick narrows his eyes at her. He prepares himself to take on both the offensive and the defensive, raising his fists, but she makes no move to attack him. Instead, the woman places a hand on her hip and stands there, looking Dick up and down. If he wasn't as ready to rip his nails into this woman as he is, he'd blush.

"So, what are you, pipsqueak? Baby Bat? Batboy?" she taunts. Dick forces himself to remain calm and fight for the upper-hand. He will not let this temptress get to him.

"If you must know," he mutters, moving his hand subtly towards a hidden birdarang in his equally hidden utility belt, "they call me Robin." Dick likes the way he delivered that sentence, so he doesn't hesitate another millisecond and flings a birdarang straight at the woman, aiming for her middle.

It all happens within a single second but Dick sees it all happen. The birdarang travels through the air, headed toward this feline female's middle area but perhaps half a foot from making contact with the woman's leather-covered skin, another flash of black metal comes out of nowhere - things just keep coming out of nowhere! - and knocks his birdarang off course, the two pieces of metal clattering on the floor next to the far wall.

Of course, there's only one person who could've stopped one of Dick's birdarangs.

"Enough," Bruce's voice rumbles through the room and even if this woman is most certainly the bad guy here, Dick feels like a little boy who's been caught doing something he ought not to have been doing.

"Bruce," Dick starts, and since Bruce has used a batarang in front of this woman without his mask, Dick figures that it's okay to kiss their secret identities goodbye for the time being. Bruce fixes a stern look at Dick that almost silences him, but Dick remembers the open vault.

"She got into your vault, Bruce! She's probably after your mother's necklace and who else knows what. I can stop her!"

"You don't need to stop her, Dick," Bruce responds, and maybe Dick's imagining it, but the man sounds bored. Dick narrows his eyes as Bruce turns toward the now-amused woman and says in an almost friendly, perhaps even in a welcoming tone, "Selina."

"Bruce. Been a while." Dick notices the glint in her eye behind her mask and quickly glances at Bruce. Now he's actually smiling ever so slightly and Dick glares at him.

"What - what is going on?" he stammers. Bruce turns to Dick as if he's just remembering that his freaking son is standing in the same room and throws him a bit of an apologetic look.

"Dick, this is Selina. Selina Kyle. Others know her as Catwoman."

Catwoman? Dick wonders. Who the hell even –

It's been a long day. It's going to be an even longer night.

"Miss Kyle! As I live and breathe!" When Alfred greets Selina with a hug, Dick wonders if the world's gone mad. They're all standing in the mansion's large kitchen now and Dick hasn't taken his eyes off of Selina, who's removed both her mask and her goggles. Without the mask, Dick can see that her eyes are a kind of hazel brown and if he looks hard enough, they aren't the eyes of a masked criminal. In fact, they're kind of… warm.

But that doesn't excuse what she was doing filching around in Bruce's top-notch vaults. And it certainly doesn't excuse Bruce's and Alfred's homeliness around her. Who the hell is this chick?

"Dick," Bruce says, "Selina and I… we have a history." Bruce rubs his neck awkwardly and Selina's leaning against the sink next to him, silently laughing at his situation. Alfred bustles around making tea for himself and the other two adults and hot chocolate for Dick but when he passes by, Dick sees hints of a cheeky grin on the butler's lips.

"And that explains what she was doing in Martha's vault? Trying to take this?" Dick holds up the diamond necklace he snatched before following them to the kitchen. He hadn't wanted to take any chances with this woman. Sure, she's pretty - okay, she's gorgeous - and maybe if she were like his aunt or a mentor like Black Canary something, he would so get along with her and she's making Bruce twitch and twiddle his thumbs - the Bruce Wayne - so she's definitely cool but she's still a criminal. She's still a criminal, Dick reminds himself constantly, and nothing about her will excuse what she had been ready to do.

Selina shrugs and smiles lopsidedly. It's charming but Dick isn't having any of that.

"What can I say, pipsqueak?" she glances at Bruce, "I like to announce myself with a bang."

Dick rolls her eyes at her and addresses Bruce directly.

"You're okay with this? With her?" Bruce sighs. His shoulders slump.

"I've known about her return for a while now, Dick. I just didn't know she'd come back… like this," he eyes Selina and she makes a face at him. Dick makes a different kind of face and waves Bruce's attention back to him.

"So - so what? She's a - she was going to be a thief until I stopped her and I did and now what? Are we letting her walk?" Honestly, Dick usually has the right thing to say and the appropriate questions to ask when it comes to being around Bruce. But now this chick walks into their lives, rustles things up a little and throws Bruce - not to mention Dick - completely out of normalcy so Dick has a right to freak out a little.

"Who are you?" he says now to Selina before Bruce can answer. "What are you really doing here?"

Selina raises an eyebrow, "Way to be forward, kid." She stands up from her position leaning on the counter and leans forward towards the thirteen-going-fourteen-year-old.

"Who am I? I'm Bruce's reckoning," she says humorously. Alfred laughs quietly but before anyone can say anything, the phone rings outside. Alfred excuses himself to answer the call and it's Dick's turn to rub his neck. Jeez, talk about awkward. Heavy on the awk.

"But, uh. Seriously. Who are you? Like. How did all this start?" he asks. Selina doesn't have to ask him but she knows he isn't really asking about her and Bruce. He's asking about her specifically. How Catwoman started.

"Gotham isn't the greatest place for any lonely girl, Dick. I learned to do what I had to, made a living out of it. Then Bats showed up and kind of kicked me out of town for a while 'til I made a few changes."

"Some changes," Dick mutters. Selina glances down to the floor, a flash of shame gracing her features before looking back up at the kid.

"A girl's gotta eat, bird boy," she whispers.

"What if…" Dick starts, his mind suddenly conjuring a potentially ridiculous notion, "what if you worked for Bruce or something? What if he gave you a job at Wayne Enterprises? Then you could start over and stop doing all this," he shakes the diamond necklace in the air.

Bruce grimaces and steps in after remaining silent for a while, "It's more complicated than that, Dick."

"What's complicated, Bruce? She could start off as a secretary or a mail girl and the pay would be even better than the headmaster's pay at Gotham Academy."

"We've talked about that and –"

"And what?" Selina turns to Bruce. "Kid's got a point, Mr. Wayne, and I'm a smart girl. You've seen it yourself."

"Look, I –"

"Excuse me, Master Bruce, Master Fox is on the line for you," Alfred interrupts politely, reentering the kitchen quarters. Bruce straightens out quickly, obviously eager to escape the room.

"Hold that thought," he mutters, dashing out of the room. Dick smirks and turns back to Selina, who's grinning and shaking her head at Bruce's retreating back. He clears his throat and Selina looks to him in time to catch the diamond necklace he's tossed at her.

"You weren't really going to steal that, right?" Dick asks her. Alfred's started busying himself again with making a late dinner for the crowd of three. Selina tilts an eyebrow and walks up to lean on the counter next to the Boy Wonder.

"You weren't really going to hit me with that little bird knife, were you?" she challenges back, crossing her arms. Dick gives her this half grin.

"Birdarang, actually. And nah. It was going to come back to me at the last possible moment. I only aim to injure, not kill."

"Bruce taught you well, then." Selina notes. "I remember this one time we were up against this riot of men that had ambushed my friends and …" she pauses, looking away from Dick's eyes, "and I was able to get my hands on a gun, and I was about to shoot the guy. And I was going to do it. I was really going to do it."

"But Bruce?"

"Kicked me in the face," Selina snorts and Dick chuckles with her. "But then he apologised when it was over."

"Sounds like him." They're both quiet for a while and it's no longer awkward. They watch as Alfred whips up a bunch of sandwiches filled to the brim with everything: lettuce, cheese, onions, tomatoes, and even seasoned chicken breast. The man just has no qualms with exceeding expectations.

"By the way, those were some nice moves back there. You should show 'em to me some time," Selina says. Dick looks at her and she's momentarily startled by his brilliant blue eyes and just how much they seem to know.

"Does that mean you'll stay?"

"If you don't mind, pipsqueak."

"Well…" Dick scratches the back of his head, "maybe we didn't get off to the best start but…" he sighs helplessly. "Bruce likes you. A lot. And I know I probably will, too." Selina reaches over and ruffles his hair.

"Glad to hear it." Dick leans away from her hand and points at Selina's face.

"Just no more vault cracking." Selina laughs and smiles at Alfred as she accepts a cup of tea.

"Wouldn't dream of it, bird boy."

Dick sneaks another glance at Selina while he takes his cup of hot chocolate from the twinkle-eyed butler. He rolls his neck again, relieving himself of the pain from the day's events. It's been a long day. A weird one. The cat's met the bird and likewise, but they seemed to like each other enough to keep from killing one another at first glance.

And as long as the bat's happy, then things'll work out.

Dick leans far enough to catch a glimpse of Bruce talking on the phone outside in the hallway. Bruce is running his hand over his face while holding onto the receiver with his other hand. But when he releases his chin, Dick can tell that Mr. Fox was probably teasing Bruce because his dad – sometimes he still can't believe that Bruce is kind of his father – is smiling in a way that he hasn't seen in weeks.

Yeah, things'll work out, Dick thinks. Especially since the cat seems to make the bat happy.

So, the bat's happy, oh whoopee. I'm losing it, thanks to this Writer's Block. Anyway, this, my fellow superheroes, was the result of watching The Dark Knight Rises two Sundays in a row. And I loved it twice as much the second time. Maybe even thrice as much. You can probably tell by now, I adore Anne Hathaway's interpretation of Selina Kyle. If you have any questions or need clarifications (this is a pretty AU and timeline-altered fic), don't hesitate to ask!

Also, if you can point out which quotes from TDKR that I stuffed into this fic, I'd love to know!