A/N:
Disclaimer: I do not own Birds of Prey. No profit is being made.
Rating: T for dirty talk, swearing, mild sexual content.
Pairing: Barbara/Helena, Helena/OC, Barbara/Wade
Warnings: Time travel, drug use, drinking, angst, femslash, pinky and the brain, excessively delicious muffin tops along with a variety of other baked goods products.
Other: This is the longest thing I have ever written and is still in progress. It's at over 27k words right now (I know that's chump change to most people), but it's a lot for me, especially after ruthlessly hacking it to death before deciding it was okay enough to be put up somewhere. This story is femslash but of course all are encouraged. To love fanfiction is to be in love with love... and isn't the language of love universal?
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Helena
The sum of time in all its parts is infinite, therefore its parts are infinite, therefore each part is infinite.
The Scwarrel Theorem
If I weren't such a damn good bartender I would have been an artist.
Dinah said I draw like a chimpanzee. Well fuck you Dinah. Barbara would say I was brilliant if she ever were to see something I had a hand in creating. Not that I would ever show her.
Most of what I did was painting on canvas at my apartment. A few months after I moved in I converted the extra bedroom into a makeshift studio, with lots of old sheets draped everywhere to protect the walls and the carpet. The first portrait I did was of Barbara at her desk, resting her chin on folded arms, eyes wide open and looking straight at me. I spent weeks just on her hair, perfecting every conceivable detail of her highlights. I had more reds, oranges and yellows laying around my apartment than any other color because of that.
For her eyes I cleverly (if I may say so) hid specks of green glitter under the surface of the final layer of paint. When light glanced off of her the vague illusion of sparkling intelligence was almost befitting of Her Oracleness herself.
Barbara Gordon ended up being the only portrait to grace my dirty hole of an apartment. I developed a fondness for painting interior architecture, like the insides of churches. Dark, empty, Gothic cathedral type of stuff, the kind with rose skylights and stained glass windows. No people - just the walls, the pews, the light and the dark. They all worked well together and people just kind of ruined it.
I had never stepped foot inside a church, but I'd seen them on TV. My mother had hated them. I never found out exactly what her grudge was, but I had felt like it would have been a betrayal on my part to go church hopping after her death, so I made do with creating my own. Mine were probably prettier anyway.
Churches weren't everything I did, they were just my favorite. Currently I was putting the finishing touches on some kind of extraterrestrial part chicken, part dog, part alien… thing. It was a book cover for some hotshot fantasy author, and it would be the first time I was to be paid for my art. I had gotten a hookup at No Man's Land from Gibson, who had a friend who had a friend whose cousin was an editor, or something like that. Gibson hung out at my place all the time, so he knew the kind of stuff I did and recommended me.
I had thought he did it to try and get a date out of me. I did get wasted and play Twister with him, which was basically the same thing.
I was carefully working my initials into a convenient bit of background (a spaceship, go figure), when it came.
The phone call that would be my doom.
Well, that would inadvertently eventually lead to it.
I tucked my brush behind my ear, fishing around in my pockets for my cell. "Uh… hello?"
"Helena." It was Barbara. "Why aren't you answering on comms?"
…Good question. My hands shot to my earlobes.
"I took them off to take a shower and forgot to put them back on. What's going on?"
"Delphi alert. Unusual activity in your bank account. Do you know why someone would deposit four thousand dollars into your checking account?"
Oh right, the advance from the editor for my, erm… masterpiece. I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Barbara, don't worry, it's perfectly legit. I was expecting it. I hope you didn't freeze my accounts or anything crazy like that."
A suspiciously empty static filled the silence.
"Hello?"
"Ah…"
"Jesus with a corncob, Barbara. Fix it please."
I heard the furious clatter of her ergonomic keyboard through the static.
"On it. Sorry Helena, but you know we can never be too safe."
"Right," I said distractedly, my attention returning to alien Fido. "Thanks for the interrupt. Later, Babs."
"Oh, wait, what about the, uh…?"
"What, Barbara?"
Like I didn't know. Curiosity was the kryptonite to Barbara Gordon's Superman.
"I mean, you're not - you're still working at the bar, aren't you? Where'd you get that kind of money? I mean," she added, "you don't have to tell me. Just wondering. As an interested friend."
I dabbed the tip of my brush in a cup of maroon. "Oh, that's my next month's crack money."
"Did I… uh, what?"
"I know, right?" I carefully lined the bottom curve of the "K" in my initials. "Most girls just get two thousand, but now that I'm the number one girl I get twice that, so long as I don't spend any on blow for the other bitches."
"Erm… Right. I'll… get in contact later. Keep your comms on."
Serves her right for being so nosy.
"Whatever. Bye."
A false alarm. A few laughs. Sounded so innocuous, didn't it?
That's what I thought too.