She was so very tired.
Outside the classroom door kids laughed and yelled, jostling each other for lockers. The air stank of too many sweating young bodies crammed too long together, of dry bitter dust from practically ancient chalkboards, of burnt cafeteria spaghetti and over boiled green beans, of musky mold in old sagging ceiling tiles, and the heavy oily reek of school bus exhaust.
Her room was a disaster. Something between a crime scene and a terrorist event. How thirty-two kids could so completely dismantle a room with so little in it was beyond her.
The dented and graffiti scratched desks were twisted haphazardly about in what had just been properly neat rows eight hours ago, their crammed beyond capacity cubbies now threatening explosive decompression of worn textbooks ten years out of date, battered folders and absolute masses of crumbled past assignments. Chewed pencils, used up pens and broken crayons were scattered all over the old linoleum floor, in between the sodden muddy leaves and dirt clods that had been carelessly tracked in by battered tennis shoed feet from recesses in Gotham rain. Forgotten jackets, single soaked gloves and squished brown paper lunch sacks spilled out of the cramped narrow coat rack alcoves. And her left over relic of the sixties desk was practically collapsing beneath the horrific weight load of tangled piles of today's still yet to be graded daily work sheets, pop quizzes, and mathematic tests.
She had wearily shoved her door open in the still darkened gloom of six; to finish the last of yesterday's grading and then get into the queue for making copies for today's lessons before the kids began arriving at eight. Normally, she would have been able to bolt her lunch at her desk while correcting papers but it was her turn for lunchroom detail and she had spent a headache inducing forty minutes trying to make sure kids were actually eating their food, cleaning up their messes, and catching escalating discipline problems before they erupted into fighting. Usually, she used the two hours right after school let out to reorganize her room, attack the grading of today's work, and detail plan tomorrow's lessons. Now she had an hour long stint as Detention Monitor coming because one of the idiot newbie teachers had actually drank the black tar in the staff room, to be followed by another hour of a Teacher Meeting to get to where she would have the pleasure of learning all the newest legislative asinine teaching improvements she would be impossibly expected to make actually work in the real world classroom. Which, combined with her bad luck at drawing recess duties today as well, meant not only would her headache be guaranteed to become a migraine but she would then have to spend four hours in her apartment playing catch up with correcting papers tonight instead of her regular two.
And that meant she'd only have time to pull a two hour patrol as Huntress before she had to pack it in if she was to get the minimum amount of shut eye before her alarm went off at five again.
And she repeated the whole exhausting mess in one version or another all over again. And again and again and again.
Because not only were they only in the seventh week of the new school year, it was also only Tuesday.
Helena laid her head down on her nightmare mess of a desk and tried to pretend for just a few moments that she actually remembered why she had been stupid enough to actually want to become a public school teacher in Gotham.
"Uhm . . . Ms. Bertinelli?" came an all too familiar boy's hesitant voice.
She resisted the urge to bang her head against the desk.
Mostly because the paper piles she still had to correct on it were so thick that it would have defeated the whole self punishing aspect of the gesture.
She lifted her head and sighed. "Jake, why aren't you on your bus?"
But the boy didn't meet her eyes; instead he just stared down at his ratty sneakers, his small fingers tightly gripping his school bag as he just stood there so defeated looking.
She frowned immediately at the body language and sat up, eyes narrowing, now completely focused on the lowered black curled head. "Jake? Is something wrong?"
He gave her a miserable slow nod, but still did not look up. And then he sniffed and his chin trembled.
She glanced over at the clock on the wall and winced. She had about three minutes to get to her monitor duty in Detention.
Jake sniffed again, louder this time, his shoulders beneath his too big coat falling further down in utter child's dejection.
And it just wasn't going to happen.
Oh, well, it fit the rest of the day, actually.
Helena reached over and very gently lifted the boy's chin. It was obvious he had spent his bus loading time somewhere crying. One of her usually sassy mischief makers, Jake wasn't prone to tears. In fact, he was usually the one provoking the tears. It was actually alarming.
She deliberately softened her voice and looked him right in his red rimmed eyes. "You can tell me anything you want to, Jake. I'm listening."
The boy sniffed hard again, and then inexplicably burst into tears. "I can't go home, Ms. Bertinelli!" And then he ran around her desk and into her arms, sobbing as if he were going to absolutely die.
Caught completely off guard, Helena held the boy on pure instinct. She knew she wasn't good at giving emotional support-hell, how many times had one of the Bat Clan railed at her for being unfeeling? But the boy shook so very hard with his sobs and she found herself murmuring soothing Italian into his black curls as she rocked him gently.
That jackass of a principal was going to be royally pissed that she wasn't where she was scheduled to be. And he was absolutely going to have her head on a platter for violating District Policy and touching a kid.
But Helena could feel the boy's tears soaking through her purple blouse and his small body clung to her desperately hard as if she was the last secure thing in the whole world.
And she found that she really didn't give a damn what the principal thought.
Because all at once she remembered that this was why she had decided to be a public school teacher.
And suddenly, Helena wasn't tired any more at all.