Chapter 22 — Portorosso In The Loft | +18
ᯓ♡ fandom: The Batman (Reevesverse) | STRAYS
ᯓ♡ word count: 3,474
ᯓ♡ synopsis: After a long day of studying, Elara seeks comfort in something simple and colorful. She puts on Pixar's Luca, and what starts as a distraction becomes an unexpected moment of softness in the loft. Sofia, initially just sharpening knives nearby, gets drawn into the story of two sea monster boys
ᯓ♡ warnings: Age regression • Found family • References to past parental abuse • Emotional vulnerability• Inherited trauma • Mild language • Disney's Luca spoilers
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A few months ago, Selina Kyle broke Sofia Falcone out of Arkham State Hospital, offering her half-sister a corner in her cramped loft and a chance to heal away from the institution's horrors. Eight months ago, the Elara sent a desperate note to the only person in Gotham she'd seen protect the vulnerable: Selina. That time, Sofia and Selina extracted her from her compromised apartment, and she became the third stray in their makeshift den.
The loft isn't much: exposed brick, leaking pipes, a dozen rescue cats, and barely enough space for three women learning to trust each other, but it's safe, and for Elara, still learning that regression isn't weakness and that these dangerous women won't hurt her for being soft, it's the closest thing to home Gotham has offered.
Sofia is learning, too. Learning to sit with vulnerability instead of running from it, learning that caregiving doesn't have to look like the twisted therapy sessions Julian Rush called treatment, learning that sometimes healing is just watching a movie about fish boys with a tired regressor who needs the world to be colorful for around ninety minutes.
The television was a battered thing, salvaged from a sidewalk in the Diamond District where rich people discarded electronics like used tissues. It worked perfectly fine, Selina had tested it before hauling it up four flights of fire escape, but the screen had a thin crack across one corner that turned part of the picture into a prism.
The regressor didn't mind; she was curled on the floor near the mattress, ostensibly studying fr her college exam, but her brain had hit the wall around twenty minutes ago. The words were swimming, her eyes kept drifting to the dark screen of the TV.
Sofia was at the table, cleaning her knives. Not the guns tonight, those required full focus, knives were meditative, with the rhythmic shhk-shhk of whetstone on steel was almost hypnotic.
Selina was out. "Quick job," she'd said, which meant anywhere from two hours to dawn.
The loft felt large and quiet with just the two of them.
Elara closed her textbook with a gentle move and looked at the TV, then at Sofia.
"Can I…?" She gestured vaguely at the remote on the table.
Sofia didn't look up from her blade. "It's a TV, you don't need permission."
"I know, I just-" Elara stopped; she did that sometimes, asking permission for things that didn't require it, like a holdover from her past, where using the bathroom at the wrong time could trigger a lecture about wasting water.
"Turn it on," Sofia said, her tone gentler. "I don't care what you watch as long as it's not the news, I'm sick of hearing about Oz."
The regressor retrieved the remote, settling cross-legged in front of the TV. The screen flickered to life, casting blue light across the brick walls. She navigated to the streaming apps, Selina had… acquired several premium subscriptions through means that Elara had learned not to ask about.
She scrolled through options, her thumb moving on autopilot. Her brain was with the kind of tiredness where complex narratives felt impossible. She wanted something simple, colorful, and safe.
And then she saw it: Luca (2021)
The thumbnail showed two boys on a Vespa, bright Italian coastal town behind them, everything saturated in that specific Pixar warmth that felt like visual comfort food.
A friend had mentioned this one. "It's about these sea monster boys who transform when they're dry, and they go to this human town, and it's very-" He'd paused, searching for words. "It's very about being different and finding your people, you'd like it."
The opening was immediate immersion: underwater green-blue, a boy herding fish like an underwater shepherd. The colors were so saturated they almost hurt, and the Italian coastal town of Portorosso appeared like a sun-drenched postcard.
The Elara felt her shoulders drop.
Behind her, Sofia's whetstone paused. "What is this?"
"Luca," Elara said, not taking her eyes off the screen. "It's about… uh... A cute aquatic boy discovering the world, with his friend, who's also aquatic."
"Boyfriend," Sofia corrected, resuming her sharpening. "That's obviously a boyfriend."
The regressor blinked, looking back. "The movie says they're friends."
"The movie is lying to avoid controversy." Sofia's voice was dry. "I've seen that look, that's not friendship, that's 'I would drown for you' energy."
The girl turned back to the screen, where Luca and Alberto were now building a Vespa from trash, their faces inches apart, laughing. She… couldn't unsee it now. "Oh," she said softly.
"Pixar does that, codes it just enough that kids see friendship and adults see the gay subtext." A pause. "Or sometimes it's just about friendship that's intense, I don't know, I'm not a film critic."
But Sofia didn't move away, and five minutes later, when Elara glanced back, Sofia had set down her knife and was watching the screen, her expression unreadable.
Twenty minutes in, the vet student was gone as not fully regressed; she was still sitting normally, still following the plot, but in that specific state where the adult anxieties powered down and everything became simpler. The colors on screen were beautiful. The Italian town was warm and chaotic and full of people who knew each other, with the two boys having an adventure, discovering pasta and gravity and what it meant to be yourself even when being yourself was dangerous.
She pulled Tikuri from her bag without thinking, hugging the otter plushie to her chest.
Sofia noticed. Her eyes tracked the movement, then flicked to Elara's face as reading. Not with clinical coldness, but with the careful attention of someone who'd learned to recognize when another person was sliding into a softer headspace.
"You want the blanket?" Sofia asked quietly.
She nodded, and Sofia retrieved the softest one from the pile, a deep burgundy fleece that Selina had stolen from a luxury hotel, and draped it over Elara's shoulders without ceremony, as the weight was grounding while the regressor pulled it around herself like a cocoon.
"Keep watching your fish boys," Sofia said, but she'd moved from the table to the mattress, positioning herself where she could see both Elara and the screen.
The movie progressed, and the transformation sequences were beautiful, with water and scales becoming skin and clothes, the boys learning to stay dry, to pass as human. The metaphor wasn't subtle, being different, hiding, feeling the fear of being discovered and rejected.
When Luca's parents appeared, overprotective and terrified of the surface world, Elara felt something twist in her chest. The mother's constant worry and the father's bewilderment at his son's desire to explore beyond what was safe and known.
"I wonder if she's ever been to the surface," the younger woman murmured, more to herself than Sofia.
"Yeah, like… did she want to go? When she was young? And someone told her it was too dangerous, and she just… never went? And now she's passing that fear down?"
Sofia was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful. "Trauma gets inherited, not genetically, through… teaching. You survive something, and you teach your kids to avoid it, and sometimes you teach them to avoid so much they can't breathe."
Elara looked back at her, and Sofia was staring at the screen, but her jaw was tight. "My mom wasn't like that," she said softly. "She wanted me to go. She was scared, but she… she drove me to the airport, to move to Gotham, and helped me pack. Cried, but she didn't stop me."
"She is." Elara turned back to the movie. "Your mom?"
Sofia's laugh was sharp and bitter. "My mother was murdered by my father when I was ten. So, different dynamic."
"I'm sorry," the regressor whispered.
"Don't be, you didn't strangle her."
The silence that followed was heavy. On screen, Luca and Alberto were building their Vespa tower, dreaming of freedom, making Elara pulled the blanket tighter.
By the time the boys reached the human town, the little one was leaning against the side of the mattress, Tikuri in her lap, eyes half-lidded. The town square with its fountain and its flower pots and its people shouting in Italian, besides the pasta-eating contest and the training montage.
She didn't notice when Sofia shifted, moving to sit on the floor beside her instead of on the mattress, just was present and close enough that the girl could feel the warmth radiating from her.
"They're going to get caught," the regressor mumbled, watching Alberto's increasing recklessness.
"Probably," Sofia agreed.
"It's Pixar, they have to be okay, children are watching."
Elara smiled, eyes still on the screen. "You're watching."
"I'm supervising," Sofia corrected, but there was no bite in it.
The betrayal came during the rain scene.
Luca, terrified of being revealed, shoved Alberto away and exposed him. The transformation in the rain, scales replacing skin, everyone seeing what Alberto really was. The crowd's horror, Alberto's face, heartbroken.
Elara made a small, wounded sound.
Sofia's hand found her shoulder, a steady and grounding move. "Keep watching," Sofia said quietly.
And she did, because the movie wasn't done. Luca stood in the rain, let himself transform, and stood with Alberto. Silenzio, Bruno. Shut up, fear. Shut up, doubt. This is who I am.
The town's slow acceptance and Giulia's fierce defense. Also, the grandmother's revelation that she'd been a sea monster all along, hiding for decades.
Elara was crying with soft, quiet tears that she didn't bother wiping away, the kind that weren't about sadness, exactly, but about something breaking open in the chest.
Sofia didn't comment, just kept her hand on her little one's shoulder, a warm anchor point in the dim loft.
The ending was bittersweet, with Alberto staying in Portorosso and Luca leaving for school. The two of them separated, but not severed. The final shot of them looking at the same sky, knowing the other was out there.
The credits rolled, and Elara was boneless against the mattress, Tikuri clutched to her chest, blanket cocooned around her, eyes were open but unfocused, that specific post-movie haze where reality felt distant.
"Good movie," Sofia said after a moment.
"Mmhmm." The girl's voice was small, soft. "Pretty town...."
"In the cartoon Italian town with the sea monsters?"
"Mmhmm." Elara's eyes were closing. "No Arkham there, no… no bad people, just pasta and Vespas and… and the ocean."
Sofia was quiet, and when she spoke, her voice was gentler than Elara had ever heard it. "If there was a place like that, I'd take you there, no Arkham, no Oz, just..." She paused. "Just people being kind to each other."
"That'd be nice," mumbled, already half-asleep.
Sofia carefully maneuvered Elara into a lying position, adjusting the blanket, making sure Tikuri didn't fall while the calico kitten, Marbles, padded over and curled against her stomach, purring.
Sofia sat back against the mattress, watching the sleeping regressor, the cat, and the TV screen, now showing the main menu on a loop. The colorful town and the promise of kindness.
She didn't hear Selina return, since the woman was a ghost when she wanted to be, but suddenly she was there, crouched beside Sofia, smelling like rain and rooftops.
"How'd it go?" Selina whispered.
"Fish boys," Sofia replied, just as quiet. "They're secretly sea monsters passing as human in an Italian town."
"…Sure, why not?" Selina looked at Elara's sleeping form. "She okay?"
"She cried at the ending, not bad crying, good crying."
"Apparently," Sofia stood, retrieving her knives from the table. "She said she wants to live in the cartoon town."
Selina smiled, sad and knowing. "Yeah, I bet she does."
They moved to the kitchen area, giving Elara space to sleep. The loft settled into its usual nighttime rhythm; Selina making tea, Sofia checking weapons, the cats rotating through their designated sleeping spots.
On the floor, wrapped in burgundy fleece with an otter plush and a purring kitten, Elara dreamed of Portorosso, bright colors, and warm sun. In this place, being different wasn't dangerous, where you could stand in the rain and transform, and the people around you would just… accept it.
She dreamed of a town where Arkham didn't exist, where fathers didn't abandon daughters, where the only thing you had to fear was running out of gelato, and it was a good dream.
And in the dim loft in Gotham, surrounded by stolen goods and weapons and two of the most dangerous women in the city, she was safe enough to have it.
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