Trigger warning: This story references past childhood sexual abuse. It is not graphic.
HELENA'S NOEL
Phil Kurtis
"You're late," she said.
The Question chuckled as he finished stepping up beside her. Huntress still hadn't turned to face him. Lips pursed, arms folding, index finger tapping her forearm, she was staring through the feather-light splatter of snowflakes, looking down from the rooftop, down four stories at the rectory for St. Augustine's, which itself sat some ten blocks away.
"How'd you know I was coming at all?" he asked.
She tilted her chin up and to the side without taking her stare off the street. Q looked in the direction she'd indicated. "Didn't know you and Black Canary were partners now," she said, dryly. "But I do know Dinah can hide much better than to let me spot a couple of flashes off her binoculars."
"Yeah," Q said, savoring it all the way a chess master would discuss a quick beer-and-pretzels game with another. "You got it right. She was meant to be spotted –"
"—and stay in place, so I'd know she was just reporting my whereabouts. That someone was coming."
"But from that," he mused, his blankly masked face turning toward her, "you guessed I would be the one coming up behind you?"
She started to speak, stopped, then tossed back the cape wrapped around herself and unclipped the crossbow from her belt before she answered, "It's who I would send if I was Bats." There,she thought. She'd avoided saying You, which might have then led to "because, at times like this, you always have my back". This is not a night to show weakness. Even to him.
"Wayne didn't send me." He watched her crank and spool, running the string down to latch it in place.
She began hand cranking tension into the set.
"Barnett Ghost 375," he tilted his chin, tapping the brim of his fedora. "Looks new. Good choice for the job you're doing."
The Huntress shivered slightly as the chill nipped at her legs, despite the fact they weren't bare. This was her "winter" uniform, famously flat "700 setups a day" abdomen covered, her legs slipped down into light but tight leather. It was the black-and-purple costume of a warrior with somewhat medieval touches. Her top bore the broad white cross, as always, with her customary golden cross hung from a necklace looking curiously delicate hanging over the more plain white symbol.
"So, you installed a hand cocker, instead of rope cocking it? Oh, and bon Natali, by the way."
"This makes for a surer set into the groove." After two distinct clicks from the spool, she locked the bow in place and pulled off the cocking string, humming lightly to herself. "Not buon Natale?" she asked, lifting the bow up, staring through the sight and fiddling with the settings. "Even Green Arrow took the time to Google up the Italian."
"The Sicilian seemed more specifically appropriate. Blood for blood."
She stiffened but otherwise didn't take the bait. "Fair enough. But you did not just happen to recognize the make and model of this weapon."
"I do my homework."
"Right." She snorted. "By your definition of homework, that's what the Gotham City Sanitation Department does every day."
"Fair enough," he chuckled. "So you knew I'd find the receipt in your trash."
She shrugged, arm cocking back, the bow on her right shoulder now.
"You wanted a voice up here before you go ahead and do this," he said. He's smart enough not to push it with: my voice. But she hears it in his inflection.
"Don't get too cocky," she says, turning to face him finally, left palm slung over her hip. "I just figured you'd enjoy seeing a good Catholic girl earning a ticket to Hell."
"I don't watch those kinds of movies," he said, striding slowly toward her. He circled around, staring the bow up and down. "But speaking of your devotions …. Why are you doing this. I'd assumed you were going after the latest incursion of zips that came in, the young lads from Trapani.
She gripped the weapon tighter, ready to refuse to hand it over, but then he didn't ask. He stared at it respectfully, folding his arms.
She relaxed and held it out a bit for him to peruse professionally. "I have custom jobs that are better, but I want a little deniability, so I went commercial." She boasted, "And this delivers at 385 feet per second with 125 foot-pounds, kinetic."
"More than enough to take down a one hundred-seventy-three pound Archbishop," he muttered. "What's it weigh? Ten pounds?"
"Little over seven."
He looked to his left. "So you're taking it with you, far enough to be sure you've gotten away."
Irritated that he'd clearly scouted the area and spotted her best route of evasion, she muttered, "I'm not suicidal, if that's what this is about."
"Not mortally suicidal, no," he said, that maddeningly blank face turning toward her. Years of practice forced by that opacity meant her ears caught his inflection. Odd, hearing anguish in a voice that would sound flat to anyone else. "But when did you decide your soul was a fit price to pay for – him?"
Breaking his "stare" before she could answer, he wandered to the lip of the roof, looking down at the rectory, where a small crowd was gathered gazing at the windows' golden glow reverently. Rubbing his chin, he mused on, "Famously punctual and on his way to Midnight Mass. He's due out in, what, seven minutes?"Rubbing his chin, he mused on, "Famously punctual and on his way to Midnight Mass. He's due out in, what, seven minutes?"
"Six," she said. "And you don't even believe. So how am I risking my immortal soul?"
The breeze whispered past them, brushing her hair, giving him an excuse to think through his answer carefully, so that when he answered, voice still mundane, her ears – alone – could hear the concern.
"You believe you are," he told her. "This isn't assassinating a mafiaso. It's not even killing a corrupt priest. This strikes at Apostolic Succession, the very foundation of authority for your Church."
"I saw your files on him," she muttered, tone petulant, eyes flashing hot.
He blinked. "You hacked into my files on the diocese?"
"Babs did. Owed me a favor, and I was sure you'd have something. What I saw was meticulously documented."
He wrapped his blue overcoat tighter around his frame. "That file was meant for Lois Lane."
She rolled her eyes. Some would say, so was your love.
But she was secure in her hold on him now and wouldn't strike so low as to raise his J-School crush at a time like this. She wiped chilled thawing snowflakes off her face.
"Ms. Lane is publishing that on New Year's Eve," he went on. "For maximum impact." He turned and looked over his shoulder. "Do you really think that now, today, he'll continue to survive?" He turned his body to her. "Sixteen pedophile priests shielded from discovery, let alone prosecution, enabled to continue predations. They had at least forty-seven confirmed child victims over the course of thirty years. Six suicides, twenty-one substance abuse victims. Every priest still on the job somewhere, one of them in Thailand now. You think he'll survive that?"
A car slushed through half-melted snow below, the engine noise stopping in place. They could both hear a door open and shut. He turned, walking back, watching the driver go to the rectory.
"They almost always do," she said, stepping up to the edge, taking aim on the rectory door.
"Not this time," he said. "I've got something else working that will –"
"Why do even you care? It's not your faith. It's not your Church. This isn't about his guilt. It's about ours. Mine."
"As I understand Catholic theology," he said, "you and all believers are the Church. He's supposed to be the servant, so –"
"Fine. He's fixing to get fired." Her fingertip flexed freely, ready to take the trigger.
Just then, a young girl, seven, maybe eight, walked away from the crowd as the adults beamed down at her. Raven haired, olive-skinned, she took tentative steps toward the door as it swung open, holding out a gilt-edged Missal that Helena supposed bore within the lectors' readings for the Christmas Mass.
"Huntress," Q began.
"I see them," Helena snapped. The bodyguards fanning out had come from the shadows on the sides of the building but she hadn't missed them.
"Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatoti," she murmured. "Adesso e nell'ora della nostra norte." Q had tilted his ear toward her, and now sighed fatalistically, hearing her asking Mary to pray for her sins now – and at the hour of her death. Instinctively, he looked back toward her escape route.
A shadow darkened the open door from within the rectory.
"Don't try to stop me."
"I didn't stop your assassinations of mafia capos," he said. "Not even Mandragora, when I was standing right there."
"You didn't force me to stop, no, but you showed me ..." She blew air up from her lower lip, causing her bangs to lift and dance. The crowd began singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen".
"Point being, I've never once taken you from … you," he said. "You decide who you are." He sighed heavily, and finally that maddening calm in his voice cracked. "I'll be here." Let nothing you dismay.
The Archbishop stepped out, eyes bright as those of a right jolly old elf, and he flung his arms wide in feigned surprise, causing the little girl to giggle. He leaned over, his hand at her forehead. She stared up with adoration and trust.
A hard snap of wind carried Huntress' growl away as he made the sign of the cross there with his thumb. Remember Christ the Savior was born on Christmas Day.
The girl retreated, leaving the Archbishop, arms wide as those of a crucifix, beaming out at the parishioner's who'd come down to greet him.
Q tilted his gaze to where Helena reset herself, aiming at the Archbishop's center mass.
To save us all from Satan's power.
She whirled, firing directly into the far brick wall of the walk-up entrance on the other side of the roof, and at that moment as it sprang back and clattered down, the Question stepped beside her, wrapping his palm over her mouth to muffle the scream of rage he knew would come. Her breath was hot, wet, against him, and then she yanked away, pacing into the middle of the rooftop as he trailed quietly behind.
O, tidings of comfort and joy ….
Her shoulders slumped, and she began sobbing.
Q wrapped her cape around her, tugging gently but not forcefully at her elbows. She welcomed him, folding back into his embrace. She convulsed, forcing her sobs to stop, swallowing her anguish. "Couldn't … the little girl, I couldn't have her see …"
"Et beata, quae credidisti," Q murmured into her hair, "quoniam perficientur ea, quae dicta sunt tibi a Domino."
"Blessed is she who believed," she repeated, "that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. Prelude to the Magnificat. Trust you to go with the Latin, Q."
"You understood it."
"Catholic school, Remember?"
"There's no detail of your life, or of you," he smiled against her neck, "that I'd ever care to forget."
They stood, buffeted by the wind as it began blowing hard, the snow falling thicker.
"We can still catch Midnight Mass," he said. "No –" he laughed at her glare. "Not with him at St. Augustine's. St. Maria Goretti's down near the docks. Bruce is having a truckload of turkeys and trimmings delivered for take home. Bags of toys."
"Vic Sage? In a church?" she chuckled, pulling away to go and fetch the fallen arrow. "The place may collapse." She turned and stared.
"What?" He went to her, running his gloved palms over her shoulders and down to hold her back.
"The kids. All those kids, their innocence lost. What would they say, Q?"
"They'd say that your soul is closer to your God," he replied, kissing the top of her forehead, "than his ever was."
End Notes
Unquestionably, one of the most painfully personal things I've ever written under any of my pseudonyms. Dimitte nobis debita nostra.