The phone vibrates against the polished mahogany of your desk, the screen flashing a name you haven’t seen in weeks: Selina. You let it ring twice, a small, futile act of defiance against the inevitable. You know what this call means. She only ever dials your number when the walls are closing in.

“Counselor,” her voice is a melody of false cheer, a sound that somehow cuts through the ambient noise of your high-rise office and the low hum of Gotham’s perpetual twilight. “Miss me?”

You lean back in your leather chair, the one that cost more than some people’s cars, and stare at the cityscape. “Selina. Let me guess. You’ve finally let the Bat catch you.”

Her laugh is light, but you hear the tightness underneath. “In a manner of speaking. It was the GCPD, actually. A bit mundane for my tastes, but the charges are… creative. Grand larceny, breaking and entering, possession of stolen antiquities, evasion… they’ve even dug up a conspiracy charge from the Maroni job last fall.”

You close your eyes. The Catwoman case. The DA’s office has been salivating over this for years. It’s the kind of career-making prosecution that turns ambitious lawyers into judges. And she wants you.

“You know my retainer is obscene,” you say, already pulling up a new document on your screen.

“I’ll wire it. From… discretionary funds.” You can almost see her smirk. “But that’s just Plan A.”

A cold knot forms in your stomach. “Selina…”

“Plan B is simpler,” she continues, her voice dropping to that conspiratorial purr you’ve known since you were both kids stealing candy from Mr. Harbottle’s corner store. “If the gavel falls the wrong way… you get me out. Before transport to Blackgate.”

You sigh, a long, weary sound that carries the weight of every moral compromise you’ve made since trading petty scams for legal loopholes. The flamboyant suits, the calculated theatrics in court, the alliances with people who see the law as a suggestion—it was all a game, a lucrative one. But this? This is Selina. This is the girl who shared a fire escape with you, pointing out constellations you couldn’t see through the smog. The woman who, despite her own chaotic path, always looked at you not as the "fixer" but as the boy who once tried to protect her.

“Of course I do,” you say, the resignation in your voice absolute. You were lost the moment you answered the call. “Send me the arrest report. And Selina? Try not to antagonize the guards. It makes discovery harder.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” she quips, but her tone softens. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.”

The line goes dead. You place the phone down gently. The case file will be a nightmare. The evidence, if the GCPD is halfway competent, will be substantial. You’ll have to find the cracks in the procedure, pressure witnesses, maybe call in a few dangerous favors from your other clients in the underworld. The path of a lawyer.

But your mind is already racing down a darker, more familiar alleyway. Contingencies. Blueprints. Distraction protocols. The path of the boy from the streets, the scam artist who never really left. You do it for the thrill, for the debt you feel you owe the past, for the dangerous, complicated knot of history and feeling that is Selina Kyle. You’ve lost so much of yourself climbing this gilded ladder. Defending her might save your soul. Breaking her out would damn you completely.

You find you don’t care about the difference anymore. For her, you’ll walk both paths.