Catwoman (2026) – Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson

Gotham’s chaos isn’t new.

It’s something you inherit, like a birthmark you can’t wash away no matter how hard you scrub. The city doesn’t welcome you—it tests you. From the moment you learn to walk, Gotham teaches you where not to step, who not to trust, and how quickly innocence can be taken if you leave it unguarded.

I learned early that the city listens more than it speaks.

I grew up in places where light barely reached the floor, where windows were broken long before dreams ever had a chance to form. Sirens were lullabies. Arguments behind thin walls were lessons. I watched people disappear—not always into graves, but into silence, addiction, fear. Gotham didn’t kill them outright. It hollowed them out and kept moving.

They underestimated me.

Everyone did.

Because I was quiet. Because I learned how to observe instead of react. While others fought the city head-on and lost, I slipped between its cracks. I memorized routines, patterns, weaknesses. I learned that locks aren’t meant to keep people out—they’re meant to keep honest people in.

I didn’t steal because I wanted luxury.

I stole because taking something meant control, even if only for a moment. It meant I decided what happened next. In Gotham, that kind of power is addictive.

By the time I was old enough to understand fear, I had already mastered how to hide it. Fear makes noise. Survival requires silence. I learned how to move without being seen, how to breathe without being heard, how to vanish when eyes turned my way.

That’s when Gotham started to feel familiar.

The night didn’t scare me. It protected me. Darkness blurred faces, erased judgments, softened the city’s sharpest edges. While others feared what hid in the shadows, I learned how to become one.

Selina Kyle was just a name the city used when it needed someone small, forgettable, easy to ignore.

Catwoman was what happened when I stopped letting Gotham define me.

I didn’t put on the mask to become someone else. I put it on to finally be honest. The suit, the claws, the silence—they weren’t armor. They were clarity. They stripped away weakness, expectation, apology.

I didn’t want to save Gotham.

I didn’t want to destroy it.

I wanted to move through it on my own terms.

The city noticed.

You can feel it when Gotham notices you—the way the air tightens, the way danger pauses, uncertain. I wasn’t just surviving in the dark anymore.

I was learning how to rule myself inside it.

And in Gotham, that’s the first step toward power.

Power in Gotham is never loud at first.

It watches you. Measures you. Waits to see if you’ll flinch.

When I became Catwoman, I thought the city would push back immediately. Police. Crime families. Men who thought the night belonged to them. Instead, Gotham did something worse—it adapted. Doors changed locks. Guards doubled their routes. The underground whispered my name like a rumor that refused to die.

That’s when I knew I had become real.

I didn’t hunt the rich because they were rich. I hunted them because they were careless. Gotham’s elite wrapped themselves in glass towers and false morality, believing money made them untouchable. They stole lives quietly—through contracts, evictions, “accidents.” I simply stole louder.

Every job was a dance. Timing. Balance. Control. I never stayed long enough to be remembered clearly. Fear works best when it’s incomplete.

But Gotham never lets you stay alone for long.

I felt him before I saw him.

The weight of eyes on my back. The silence shifting. The shadows sharpening. Batman didn’t stalk like the others. He didn’t chase. He waited. Like the city itself, he wanted to see which way I would fall.

The first time we crossed paths, neither of us spoke.

He landed without a sound, a black silhouette carved from intention. I didn’t reach for my claws. He didn’t reach for his weapons. We stood there—two creatures shaped by Gotham, staring at the same scars from different sides.

“You don’t belong up here,” he said finally.

I laughed.

“Neither do you.”

That’s what frightened him.

I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t beg. I didn’t run. I understood him too well to fear him. We were both products of loss, stitched together by the city’s cruelty. The difference was that he still believed Gotham could be saved.

I knew better.

Or at least, I thought I did.

Our encounters became a pattern—rooftops, vaults, rain-soaked alleys. Sometimes he stopped me. Sometimes he let me go. Once, he saved my life without a word. Another time, I left him surrounded by guards he didn’t see coming.

Gotham loves irony.

The more visible I became, the more the city reacted. Crime families fought over territory I disrupted. Politicians called me a symbol of moral decay. The media painted me as a myth or a menace depending on the day.

They never asked why.

But something else was rising beneath it all. Not a man in a mask. Not a legend.

Something organized. Something patient.

Someone who didn’t want to control Gotham’s streets—but its fear.

And they were watching me very closely.

You don’t realize Gotham is choosing sides until it’s too late.

The change was subtle at first. Increased security budgets. New private forces operating outside the law. Disappearances that didn’t make the news. Criminals vanishing not into prison—but into silence.

That’s when I learned about the Consortium.

They didn’t wear masks. They didn’t crawl through alleys. They wore tailored suits and spoke in calm, reasonable voices. Former officials. Corporate magnates. Men who believed Gotham wasn’t broken—just inefficient.

They wanted order.

Not justice. Not hope.

Control.

And I was a problem.

They tried to buy me first. A woman like you shouldn’t have to live like this, they said. We can make you untouchable. Safe. Comfortable.

I declined.

That’s when they tried to erase me.

Bounties went up quietly. New hunters entered the city—trained, disciplined, ruthless. They didn’t chase me for glory. They chased me to prove something. That Gotham no longer belonged to the unpredictable.

The night turned hostile.

I lost safe routes. Lost allies. Lost places I once vanished into without effort. For the first time in years, I felt hunted—not by criminals, but by systems.

Batman warned me.

“This isn’t like the others,” he said. “They won’t stop.”

I believed him.

But I didn’t step aside.

Because Gotham doesn’t need more men deciding its fate from behind glass. It needs resistance. Messy. Unpredictable. Human.

The Consortium made their move during a citywide blackout. Controlled chaos. Their forces swept through districts under the guise of “restoring order.” Anyone who resisted disappeared. Anyone who complied was cataloged.

They wanted the night tamed.

I gave them something else instead.

I leaked their names. Their finances. Their secrets. I stole evidence they thought buried too deep to matter. And when they struck back, I struck louder.

The city burned—not with fire, but with truth.

Batman and I fought side by side for the first time not out of chance, but choice. Different methods. Same enemy. Gotham watched from behind locked doors, unsure which monsters to fear more.

By dawn, the Consortium was wounded but not dead.

And I understood something then.

Gotham wasn’t mine to save.

It was mine to defend from those who claimed ownership.

The night didn’t belong to heroes or villains.

It belonged to survivors.

And I was done running.

Gotham never forgives betrayal.

Not even when the betrayal is against those who deserve it.

After the blackout, the city didn’t breathe easier. It tightened. Streets filled with armed patrols bearing no insignia. Cameras bloomed on every corner like mechanical flowers, watching without blinking. The Consortium didn’t retreat—they adapted. They stopped hiding behind intermediaries and took control openly, dressed as salvation.

They called it stabilization.

I called it a cage.

Every move I made felt anticipated. Every rooftop escape ended with a spotlight cutting across the dark a second too soon. Someone had studied me—not just my habits, but my instincts. They knew how I thought.

That scared me more than guns ever could.

They came for me where I was weakest.

Not in the streets.
Not on the rooftops.
But in the spaces between masks.

Selina Kyle vanished first.

Bank accounts frozen. Safehouses compromised. Old contacts detained “for questioning.” People I once trusted stopped answering calls—not because they wouldn’t, but because they couldn’t.

The city closed its fist.

Batman wanted me to disappear. Lie low. Let him handle it.

I refused.

“This isn’t your war alone,” I told him.

“It’s not yours either,” he answered.

We were both wrong.

The Consortium finally made their move on a rain-soaked night when Gotham felt heavier than usual. They lured me with information—proof of a mass detention facility hidden beneath one of their “renewal zones.” I knew it was a trap.

I went anyway.

They caught me mid-descent, electromagnetic nets slicing the air. I fought—harder than I ever had—but numbers and preparation beat agility. They dragged me into the light like a trophy.

For the first time since I became Catwoman, the night didn’t answer when I called for it.

They wanted to break the symbol.

They restrained me in a glass chamber beneath the city, lights burning away every shadow. The man who spoke for the Consortium didn’t raise his voice.

“You misunderstand Gotham,” he said calmly. “It doesn’t need myths. It needs management.”

I laughed through blood.

“You can’t manage fear,” I told him. “You can only borrow it.”

He smiled.

“We’re not borrowing it. We’re replacing it.”

They broadcast my capture quietly—not as a warning, but as reassurance. Proof that chaos could be controlled. That even the night had limits.

What they didn’t understand was this:

Gotham doesn’t choose order.

It chooses defiance.

And the city was watching.

I didn’t escape alone.

That’s the part history will never get right.

The Consortium underestimated Gotham’s memory. They forgot that the people they pushed into corners had learned to survive there. By trying to erase me, they reminded the city why I existed in the first place.

The rescue didn’t come like thunder.

It came like whispers.

Systems failing. Power rerouted. Locks opening one by one. Not just Batman—though I felt him in the silence—but others. Thieves. Hackers. Street-level ghosts who had watched me steal from monsters and decided it mattered.

Gotham moved as one organism.

When my chamber shattered, it wasn’t vengeance I felt.

It was clarity.

The final confrontation wasn’t a single battle—it was a collapse. Evidence flooded the networks. The detention sites were exposed. The Consortium’s private forces turned on each other as their protections vanished. Men who believed themselves untouchable learned how fragile glass towers really were.

Batman took down their infrastructure.

I took down their confidence.

Face to face with the man who ordered my capture, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t need to. I left him standing in the ruins of the order he’d built, watching it burn without fire.

Gotham doesn’t need martyrs.

It needs witnesses.

By dawn, the city was quieter—not peaceful, but honest. The Consortium was gone, scattered, devoured by the same fear they’d tried to weaponize.

Batman and I stood on a rooftop as the sun bled slowly into the skyline.

“You could stay,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Gotham doesn’t need me to stay,” I answered. “It needs me to move.”

He understood. He always did.

I vanished before the city could decide what to call me next.

Hero. Criminal. Myth.

Let them argue.

I am Catwoman.