Monday, December 22nd, 2008, 16:45
New Jersey
Gotham City
Fashion District
Malik knew something was wrong the moment he walked through the apartment door. Selina sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee that had gone cold, her shoulders carrying the kind of tension that suggested bad news was coming. She looked up when he entered, and her expression confirmed what his gut was already telling him.
"Sit down," she said.
"What happened?" Malik dropped his backpack by the door but remained standing.
"Malik...Sit. Down." There was steel in her voice that he'd never heard before.
He pulled out a chair and sat, his stomach already churning with dread. Whatever this was about, it was connected to Saturday night. To Vincent Torrino and the brownstone on Meridian Street and the woman with blood on her face.
"I wasn't going to tell you this," Selina began, her green eyes fixed on her coffee cup rather than his face. "I thought it would be better if you didn't know. But then I realized that would be doing you a disservice. You're old enough to understand consequences, and you need to learn how choices ripple outward."
"Just tell me."
"Margaret Torrino died yesterday." The words hit the air like a physical blow. "Internal bleeding from injuries sustained Saturday night. She made it to the hospital, but it was too late."
The kitchen tilted sideways. Malik gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles going white as the meaning of Selina's words sank in. The woman in the window, the one he'd watched get beaten while he sat across the street following orders, was dead.
"You knew this would happen," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I suspected it might."
"And you still told me to walk away."
"Yes."
The simple affirmation hit him like ton of bricks. No explanation, no justification, just the brutal acknowledgment that Selina had known a woman might die and had chosen the mission over her life anyway.
"How can you be so calm about this?" Malik stood up so fast his chair toppled backward. "A woman is dead because we did nothing!"
"A woman is dead because her husband is a violent animal who beats people weaker than himself." Selina's voice remained level, but something dangerous flickered in her eyes. "We didn't kill her, Malik. We weren't the ones who put our fists to her face."
"We could have stopped it!"
"Could we?" Selina stood up, and suddenly the kitchen felt too small to contain the tension crackling between them. "Really? You think a twelve-year-old boy could have taken on Vincent Torrino and his security detail? You think calling the cops in a city where half the force is on criminal payrolls would have made a difference?"
"We could have tried! Is that so crazy!"
"And then what, Malik? Best case scenario, you get yourself killed trying to play hero. Worst case, you blow months of surveillance work and Torrino disappears before we can connect him to the larger network. Either way, Margaret Torrino still dies, but now you're dead too and we've gained nothing from the tragedy."
Malik stared at her, feeling like he was seeing Selina Kyle clearly for the first time. Not the woman who helped with homework and worried about his grades, but the criminal who moved through Gotham's shadows, seen the worst of the worst, and made choices that normal people couldn't live with.
But then again, Selina Kyle never claimed to be normal.
"Listen to yourself," he said. "You're talking about her like she was acceptable collateral damage."
"Goddammit, Malik, that's because that's what she was!" Selina's composure finally cracked, her voice rising to match his. "That's what everyone is in this business, Malik. Collateral damage in someone else's war. The only question is whether their death serves a purpose or if it's just meaningless waste."
"That's bullshit, Selina!"
"No, that's reality!" Selina moved around the table, her movements sharp and aggressive. "You want to know why I seem uncaring or selfish? Because caring gets you killed in this city. Because the moment you start thinking you can save everyone, you stop being effective at saving anyone."
"So what, we just let innocent people die?"
"We save the ones we can and accept that we can't save them all!" Selina's voice carried years of hard-won experience. "You think Batman saves everyone? You think he doesn't make choices about who lives and who dies based on the greater good? The only difference between him and me is that he gets to sleep better at night because he tells himself his choices are heroic."
The mention of Batman hit something in Malik's chest. He'd been filing away pieces of that puzzle for months, and now Selina was confirming what he'd suspected. She knew the Dark Knight personally. Worked with him, or against him, or in some gray area between the two.
"If you're so sure about this," Malik said, "then why did you take me in? Why bother saving one more piece of collateral damage?"
"Are you going to decide that maybe one day, I'm expendable!"
The question stopped Selina cold. For a moment, her mask of pragmatism slipped, and Malik caught a glimpse of something vulnerable underneath.
"B-Because sometimes you find someone worth the risk," she said quietly. "Sometimes you meet a kid who reminds you that there are still things in this world worth protecting, even if you can't protect everything."
"But not Margaret Torrino."
"No. Not Margaret Torrino." Selina's voice hardened again. "She was already dead the moment she married that man. We just weren't there to witness the execution."
"You don't know that."
"I know this city better than most, hell more than I would like. I know men like Vincent Torrino. And I know that domestic violence escalates until someone intervenes or someone dies." Selina sat back down. "The intervention didn't come from the police, didn't come from her family, didn't come from anyone who might have actually made a difference. What makes you think a twelve-year-old with lock picks would have changed anything?"
Malik wanted to argue, wanted to insist that trying was better than not trying, that taking action was better than calculated inaction. But the logic of Selina's position was inescapable, even if it felt morally repugnant.
"We can't save everyone, Malik," Selina continued, her voice softer now but no less firm. "Sometimes the best we can do is survive long enough to fight battles we might actually win."
"Nonsense," Malik said again, but with less conviction this time.
"Is it? Or is it the difference between idealism and pragmatism?" Selina studied his face, reading the conflict written there. "You're angry at me for being realistic about our limitations. But anger won't bring Margaret Torrino back. It won't change the fact that this city chews up good people and spits out their bones."
"So what's the point?" Malik slumped back into his chair, suddenly exhausted by the weight of the conversation. "If we can't save people, if we can't make a difference, then what's the point of any of this?"
"The point is that we save who we can, when we can, and we try to make sure their deaths mean something." Selina reached across the table and touched his hand, her fingers warm against his cold skin. "Vincent Torrino is going to pay for what he did. Maybe not in the way that feels satisfying, but he's going to pay. And when we bring down his operation, a lot of other Margaret Torrinos won't have to die."
"How do you live with that?"
"Carefully. And with the understanding that the alternative is letting everyone die while you try to save someone you can't reach." Selina's grip on his hand tightened. "I'm not asking you to like it, Malik. I'm asking you to understand it. Because if you're going to survive in this world, if you're going to be effective in it, you need to learn how to make hard choices."
Malik looked down at their joined hands, processing everything Selina had said. The brutal logic, the cold assessment of human worth, the way she'd reduced a woman's death to a collateral damage. It should have horrified him. Part of it did horrify him.
But another part, the part that had learned to survive on Gotham's streets, understood exactly what she meant.
"I hate this," he said finally.
"Good. The day you stop hating it is the day you become something I won't recognize." Selina released his hand and stood up. "But understanding it and accepting it are two different things. You can hate the choices and still make them when you have to."
"What if I can't?"
"Then you find a different line of work. There's no shame in recognizing your limitations." Selina moved toward the kitchen counter, her movements back to their usual fluid grace. "But Malik, before you decide this isn't for you, think about what alternatives you have. Think about where you'd be without the skills I'm teaching you."
He thought about the basement where she'd found him, about the cold and hunger and constant fear that had defined his existence before she'd taken him in. About the kinds of choices he'd have to make on the streets, the compromises that survival demanded from everyone who fell through society's cracks.
"Margaret Torrino's death wasn't your fault," Selina said, starting to prepare dinner with the methodical precision she brought to everything. "But it is your responsibility to learn from it. To understand that good intentions aren't enough in a world where the stakes are life and death."
Malik nodded, though he wasn't sure he believed her yet. The weight of the woman's death sat heavy in his chest, a cold knowledge that would change how he saw every choice going forward.
The conversation wasn't over. Might never be over. But for now, they had dinner to make and homework to finish and the careful work of learning to live with choices that felt impossible but were, Selina insisted, simply necessary.