Selina, better known as Cat around the Narrows, grew up mostly alone on the streets of Gotham, and it shows. She's taciturn, distrusting, and never goes anywhere without a switchblade in her pocket. She doesn't remember much about her earliest years, but she knows that when she was five, she was dumped at St. Maria's orphanage in the Narrows, abandoned by her mother; Selina spent the next eleven years looking for her, making up grand stories about her, and ultimately trying to forget about her. It went pretty well, until Maria Kyle wandered back into her life: that left a sore spot, one she won't be able to forget easily. Having her mother come back only to use her to get money - it just proves that all the distrust she harbors for everyone she encounters is founded.

Selina is first and foremost a fiercely independent young woman. Many of her actions and choices - from lashing out in anger or fear or revenge (she does a lot of lashing out), at friends and enemies alike - are rooted in the fact that she has had to be wholly dependent on herself since she was five. It has shaped just about every action and reaction she has to the world around her: she doesn't trust easy, and when she does start to, she spends a long while sabotaging it for herself. This is because the earliest lesson she learned is that anyone can and will walk away from you if it works for them: abandonment is around every corner, and you'll only get hurt if you get attached. So don't get attached.

This has more or less been easy for Selina: she gathered all of two friends growing up, and one of them scared her at least part of the time. Both girls were products of the Narrows, though, and each with their own particular problems - Selina understood them a lot better than she understood comfortable families who stick around for their kids. That lack of understanding never precluded her curiosity, though: when something catches her interest, Selina doesn't let it go easily. (See: she spied on Bruce for an awkwardly long time before they actually wound up meeting. It is still weird to watch someone sleep when you're like fourteen, Selina.)

Survival is the rule of law for Selina: rule number one, look out for number one. When you raise yourself on the streets, that's necessity, not selfishness, and that's what she tells herself whenever her conscience rises. A lot of what Selina learned on her own was that most folks are going to sell you out the second they get a better offer. She tells Bruce early on that it's not enough to be strong out there in Gotham: "Gotta be mean. Gotta be ruthless." And there should be no doubt that Selina is indeed ruthless: when she helps Bruce question a man hired to spy on him, she takes matters into her own hands when Reggie swears to tell his boss that Bruce knows about him. Bruce can't bring himself to kill the man, but Selina, realizing that they're screwed if he lives and talks, pushes him out a window to his death. She hasn't lost a night of sleep over it, either.

The fatal flaw in Selina's survival plan, though, is that when she's attached, she cares a lot. When Bridgit, one of her only friends from the early days, was in trouble, Selina dropped everything to help get her out of Gotham. They robbed a sex trade ring that Selina was aware of, to get Bridgit a lot of cash, fast. She paid no mind to the victims being trafficked: even when she breaks rule number one, it plays into her thought process. She tried to keep Bridgit on task, focused on escaping to safety. That failed, and she trusted Gordon to help her friend. He was the one who told her Bridgit was dead, with an apology that would just be one in a series of people apologizing to Selina for disappointing her.

Still, even after her friend's death, Selina didn't forget her: taking over her pigeon coop isn't self-serving in any way, but Selina still tends to those birds, because they were Bridgit's one escape in the city, the only thing she really cared about. The same thing happens again with Ivy: we don't see Selina cry very often, but she cries when she loses both of her friends, because her coping mechanisms are purely in cutting her feelings off at the source so she doesn't have to feel them. She was never taught otherwise.

Though her name is far from a well-kept secret, Selina goes by Cat around town for, well, plenty of reasons. Someone else gave her the nickname, probably noticing how much she has in common with her namesake: I mentioned her curiosity above, but seriously, for someone who self-protects as hard as Selina does, she opens herself up to a lot of pain. Her life in Gotham is a series of people apologizing to her, sometimes for real fuck ups, sometimes for not living up to expectations that she kicks herself for creating. Some people get second chances (some people get a lot of them), but despite her attachments, she self-protects by writing people off and shutting them out. It's easier to think of that way than as what it is: self-sabotage. Selina is great at ruining her relationships once they get close enough to scare her.

There's a mess of contradictions in Selina, if that wasn't clear already: she wants Bruce to see her as nice, especially once she realizes he's read her well enough to know that's not true. She's good, but not nice, and the fact that he sees her - really sees her, better than a lot of people around the Narrows - makes her want to prove him wrong, even when that means denying her own truth. She's taciturn and fickle, she doesn't like being told what to do, doesn't like being helpful for the sake of being helpful, and she certainly doesn't come when called (seriously, everyone calls her Cat for a reason). She works against her own best interests for the sake of her pride, and sometimes she'll put a lot of effort into helping someone only to turn around and let them drown. (This is after her canon point, but Selina has put herself in a lot of danger for Bruce, and when he's kidnapped by ridiculous powers-that-be, she refuses to help Alfred find him. This is right after Bruce's clone pushed her out of a fourth-story window, so like....she's got reasons, but her actions and motivations don't always match, from one moment to the next.

Ultimately, Selina's life has been about survival, and the thing about surviving is that it gets old. It gets dull. It doesn't let you create long-term, lasting friendships. The full breadth of Selina's memories are devoted to getting by - to doing anything she had to in order to make it to tomorrow. It's been an ugly life, and it's made her very aware of how the world works at its darkest. She's been on her own for eleven years ("She left me here, Bruce. Alone."), raised herself in a community that doesn't have a lot of patience for crying kids, and doesn't teach a lot of forgiveness ("I care that my mother, who left me when I was a kid, only came back to use me!") She's learned how to be selfish, how to be violent, how to cut old ties for new ones, when the new ones have greater potential ("Oh. That's mime for help out out? And blow the coolest gig ever, just cause we kinda, sorta know each other? That right?")

On Surviving:

"You wouldn't understand." "Why? Because I, I'm not desperate to believe in something?" "Because you don't believe in anyone or anything but yourself!" "It's called surviving."

It's called surviving, and it's lonely. Selina's tired of it, and there is a big part of her that is just looking for a place to belong, a family to belong with - though she'd never couch it in those terms. All she knows is that she wants more.

Selina has a lot of talents, from Grade A liar to a champ with a whip, but she's still just a normal human. (With really weird and unexplained cat-like tendencies like rubbing her cheek against people she likes and being mesmerized by batting shiny things, but whatever, Gotham, whatever.)

Having grown up on the streets and, more importantly, the rooftops, Selina is basically made of lean muscle. She has lots of experience dodging chases by climbing fire escapes and leaping across alleys that probably...shouldn't be leapt across, but you know. Comics. Whatever. She's all around in pretty solid shape just from her day to day life of robbing people, running, climbing, etc.

And speaking of robbing people, Selina has a very light touch: she can rob a banker blind while he eats a hot dog, and he'll be none-the-wiser till he has to pay for something. She's also a real scrapper in a fight: people have been underestimating her basically since day one, but she had to learn to protect herself along the way, and she does with single minded ferocity: Selina doesn't pull her punches, doesn't wait to see if an attacker gets back up. She's been going for the eyes of anyone bigger than her since everyone was bigger than her.

She also hasn't discovered this quite yet at her canon point, but she's a freaking savant with a whip. Not many can pick up a whip and smash a bottle on their first try, but Selina has got a definite knack for it.

CANONPOINT: 3x17, after getting shoved out a window.
AGE: 16ish
HEIGHT: 5'2"
BUILD: Lithe
HAIR: Blonde
EYES: Blue
APPEARANCE: Link
STATUS: HAH
OCCUPATION: Thief
RESIDENCE: Anywhere she can squat

BACKTAGGING: ✔
4TH-WALLING: ✘
THREADJACKING: ✔
MIND READING: ✔
FIGHTING: ✔
ROMANCE: ✔
INJURY: ✔
KILLING: ✘