Title: Error #9
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Helena and a mystery someone.
Characters are property DC Comics. I am just borrowing.
Helena sat up in bed and looked at the empty space next to her. She took a deep breath and pulled her knees into her chest for a moment, hugging them tight, shutting her eyes, and trying to extinguish the empty feeling she felt inside.
She had made a choice for herself. She wanted to prove something, the way she always tried to prove something. It wasn't quite working for her though, and the promise she made to herself seemed as empty and cold as her bed. This wasn't her, but she just couldn't keep going on like she had before.
Validation found in the arms of a stranger, or even an acquaintance, it just wasn't healthy and it only ever lasted for brief fleeting seconds.
There were days when she wasn't sure she would ever understand the love she saw others receive. Even all those heroes whose relationships were so unstable, they knew love and they clung to the memories, even during the darkest times when all the love in the world seemed like an illusion.
Nothing felt right.
Well, that was a bit of a lie. Crime fighting felt right, even if no one ever wanted to give her a chance. Even if she would never receive the approval she though she deserved, did deserve.
She deserved respect.
She did one hell of a job.
So, why did she want the Batman to tell she was doing good? Why did she want the other heroes to give her a nod instead of looking at her like they expected her to fail?
She hated that feeling.
She hated knowing that Catwoman had given her the best advice she'd ever receive. That it's all worth it as long as she was doing it for herself. It had to be her she was pleasing. It had to be her she was confident in. The approval of others had to come second to the approval she gave herself.
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe that was why she had made that stupid promise to herself and had been sleeping alone for the last six months.
No one could claim that Huntress was not confident. No one could claim that Helena Bertinelli wasn't fearless.
She was all of that. She exuded that.
There's always more under the real and figurative masks than others can imagine though. Every other hero had the same type of demons. So, why was it that it seemed as if every other hero and caped crusader could deal with it better, easier?
Well, maybe not every hero. Batman was certainly a hypocritical piece of work.
Helena slid out of the bed and padded over to the shower. She had a class to teach. She had a real life to attend to that was all book reports and faculty meetings. She could hide away in that world for a little while. She could pretend she was as great as she thought she should be teaching a classroom of wide eyed fifth graders.
After school everything shifted back to costumes and masks. The fight for justice, for vengeance, for ridding the world of evil, and of skirting that thin line she balanced across, between being a hero and being a villain. And she always played things close to the chest in that regard. She was waiting, in some ways, for that eventual day when she'd be that bad guy who thought she was doing the right thing, only to be told by the others that that wasn't the case. That she was just as bad as the villains she pursued.
Things were actually better than her, sometimes, darker thoughts would have her believe. She had matured a great deal working with Oracle and Black Canary. She was still a very angry young woman, and it showed in the way she fought. It showed in her quips and banter.
She wondered, when others mentioned her anger to her, if they thought she didn't have a right to be angry. She wondered if they thought she should have gotten over it by now. But, she knew, just by watching some of the others, that that anger never really goes away. It just ends up being managed better. It just ends up being hidden under the mask, under the facades of hero and secret identity.
Up at the clock tower, under the guise of the Huntress, Helena patiently waited for her assignment. Oracle was currently lost under the pull of her computer screens, taking in information, sucking it up, and retaining all of it. Oracle had a perfect memory. That memory troubled Helena.
The problem between Helena and Barbara, despite all outward appearances and easy excuses, was never the fact that Helena had slept with Dick Grayson. It was a minute fraction of the tension between them. It was not just Helena's methods or the way other heroes spoke of her. It was all balled up in the fact that once Helena had worn Batgirl's costume.
That one thing, that one act was worse than sleeping with an ex-boyfriend. It was worse than her inappropriate methods out in the field. It was worse than a lot of things, because wearing that costume was stealing something from Barbara that was closer than any lover ever could be. It was like taking part of her soul. And, unfortunately, Helena wasn't really sorry she had done it.
She couldn't be sorry she had done it, because the real Batman was not in No Man's Land yet, and Gotham needed a Bat to protect it. The city needed that costume and that insignia to be seen and feared, remembered. So, Helena could never be sorry for that, and that lack of apology made things really tough sometimes. Other times, though, that commonality bonded them closer together. Maybe even closer than either really wanted.
Oracle finished her work on the computer and turned to give out the mission for the evening. Huntress took her orders and left, almost too quickly. She found herself regretting her hasty exit, but she was frustrated and empty on the inside. She needed to be out in the night, fighting, since she had sworn off her only other real type of release.
The evening ended with Helena needing stitches and a set of bruised ribs. She tried not to laugh as Barbara stitched her up and Dinah made a joke. She held her side in pain, but smiled all the while.
Dinah knew how to keep the tension between the three down. She would make a joke and Helena would quip back and suddenly all three would be trading barbs and one-liners. And, between the laughter, and the jokes, and the, "Ouch! Don't make me laugh that hard, my ribs", between all of that was warmth. It was that feeling Helena always tried to find, that something that filled her up. Sometimes she missed it for what it was, and sometimes she wouldn't.
It was the nights when she found it that made her uneasy. It was the nights when she belonged that she feared and questioned, because when everything was good, that was when it all went away. It was when it always went away.
It was depressing as hell to find herself thinking that way. It reminded her just how broken she was. It reminded her of what she missed, and of bad habits that felt right.
Helena left the tower with a smile she didn't feel. She went back to her apartment and graded a few papers before she took a long hot shower that did very little but get her clean. She lingered on the stitches in her arm as she slipped on a night gown, and then she stood in the middle of her apartment, not quite sure what to do with herself.
This was when she'd normally be at a bar, or a club. This was when she'd normally be getting that other thing she used for release, to fill that void. It wasn't always about taking someone home, or going to their place and having sex. She wasn't a tramp. She didn't sleep with just anyone, and she certainly didn't sleep with everyone. It was about the hunt that led to that moment when the chosen prey gave in. In that moment the hunter decides to either take her prey down, or let it go, knowing it had been caught, even if just for a moment.
Helena shook her head and started walking towards her door. She stopped when she heard a knock. An eyebrow arched she moved cautiously, and then took a look outside the peep hole.
She sighed and opened the door.
She looked at the woman on the other side, and she didn't know what to do with herself. She had a ready arsenal of sarcastic and jaded things to say. She had them and she couldn't say them. So she stood there in the doorway, just looking, and probably looking like hell.
"Won't you let me in, Helena?"
It was the question that was the answer to everything. She felt so stupid for not seeing it, and not knowing it. It was all she had to do to keep that empty place in herself filled. It was all she ever needed to do from the very start. It meant trusting, it meant not fearing, letting the anger take a rest, and it meant taking a risk.
She shut her eyes for a moment and then she nodded, opening the door wider.
"Yeah, come in."
End.