Aftermath IV
Disclaimer: The characters portrayed herein belong to DC comics, AOL Time Warner and whomever else. Not myself, unfortunately. If it were up to me, Damian would have long since got a good swift kick up the backside, though I must qualify that by saying that the cliffhanger of Detective 838 was the best bit of suspense I've seen come out of DC for some time.
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She hadn't forgiven.
She certainly hadn't forgotten. Murder has a way of staying with you, she'd discovered in the long years since the first time she'd experienced its effects in her life. A harsh, insistent mistress, one who demanded the homage of thought, of reflection, every day.
And of response, if not revenge, every night.
To be fair, while exacting, the memory of murder did allow some leeway. For one thing, she'd noted, there was the element of proximity; while nightly or near-nightly terrors haunted her few, scarce hours of sleep, they universally featured her immediate family. Those individuals who had been gunned down around her as they sat, sharing a meal.
Mother. Father. Brother.
Spare the sister.
A mistake that had saved her life, even as it erased her mother's existence.
A mistake whose repercussions had folded back upon the man who had ordered the hit, pounding him mercilessly with the savagery of absolute, poetic Justice. Had it been as he intended, had her mother, not herself, been spared . . . who knew?
The loss of a child does strange things to the mind, she'd observed during her contact with the other members of the Batclan. Especially to one who feels loss so keenly as the Bat.
A photographic and eidetic memory had to have some disadvantages, she supposed.
She wondered if his twilight terrors matched her own, if his few short, snatched hours of sleep were as riddled with anguish, despair and misery as those she partook of.
She wondered if, unlike her own, they ever marched with the army of those he could not save, but had not seen destroyed.
She hoped not. It was not something she'd wish on anyone.
She had had more than enough experience of that particular brand of skeleton hanging in her own walk-in wardrobe to hold any doubt that the Batman's closet of bones would dwarf her own.
But the auxillary ghosts who could have marshaled themselves against her had been quiescent for some time, seemingly content to leave their labour of torment to the spectre of her family.
Until that night.
The night when one of the Bat's Spring Birds, the latest little Robin, had floated through his opponents to rescue her. And while doing so, had used techniques that she'd only ever heard whispers of, in quiet and awed voices, among the Five Families.
The obscenity of the symbol of hope calmly enacting some of the worlds most effective murder techniques had struck a shard of ice into her heart, even as it forced her bile to rise.
He'd not killed a soul.
But he knew exactly how to.
He knew the techniques that had 'made an example' of her cousin Sal and uncle Coli, in their high security cell of the highest security prison in Sicily.
She had, fortunately, not needed to rely on any skills in the digital arena to obtain the autopsy reports of her cousin and uncle. Sicily was not without technology, but equal parts reverence for tradition and the inertia of a public government had seen the files on the murder of her cousin and uncle remain in the traditional white filing boxes in a central police station. Stealing them had been an afternoon's work, returning them after she made her own copies less than that.
Realistically, she doubted anyone would have cared had she kept them. After all, to most, what was one or two less Mafia hitmen in the world, if not a good thing?
Especially after a conviction for mass murder.
Back when they had been killed – murdered - she had not been required to identify the corpses. That had been her aunt's duty, and in then end, her aunt's destruction.
Oh, the corpses weren't particularly defiled, but the vision of one's own husband and son dead had done little for the poor woman's mind. Reclusive and broken, Antonia had died not long after.
'Not defiled', however, had not meant merely killed. The pattern of wounds marking their prized servants' bodies, distinctive and pronounced, had all but trumpeted a challenge to the Family. 'Come,' the wounds had mockingly said, 'try and stop us, with your guns and your bullets and your Omerta. Come and fight, if you dare. You have lost only foot soldiers now, but we can go anywhere, kill anyone.' The Asano family were respected, but not preeminent. Their murder was a statement of intent, but not an overt declaration of war on the Families. 'You can back out now, with no loss of face. Or you can acknowledge us, stand up to those who can send an assassin undetected into the securest site in your own country, and fight us.'
The Family had opted for the first option. They had ceded to the Yakuza exactly what they wanted, and watched gleefully as shortly thereafter the loose conglomeration of different Yakuza groups had appeared to tear itself apart after an explosion in one of their strongholds.
Of the assassin, the one whose name was whispered in fear, but never spoken aloud, nothing further was known.
The Crimson had vanished in the hail of fire that had marked that destruction, the loss of a fortress and, for one clan, almost total dissolution. The other Yakuza had greedily swallowed up the pieces.
Helena Bertinelli knew exactly how that felt.
It was widely assumed, as weeks and months passed into years, and further assassinations, while efficient enough, displayed neither the subtlety of entrance nor the panache of technique, that the Crimson had died in that blast, his murderous abilities passing with him.
And then, on that rooftop, to save her from the KGBeast, a tiny Robin of spring had flown with the skill of a Crimson, techniques modified into non-lethal, though still elegant, efficiency; the two halves of the Bo staff dancing through the motions of the kata with as much grace as the katana and wakizashi that they had been originally intended for. The same force, the same skill, but this time to subdue rather than destroy.
That night, and for weeks to follow, Helena Bertinelli, Huntress, shared her nightmares with the specters of her cousin and uncle.
Until she'd decided to do something about it.
Tailing the Bat and his squire had not proven easy, but she was becoming desperate. Robin had answers. And they were answers she needed. Batman, after careful evaluation, did not. The style of The Crimson was too different to his own, too dependent on weapons. She'd seen Gotham's knight swing a sword to offer Wonder Woman a sparring partner during her brief time with the JLA. While efficient, he lacked the artistry of the Crimson. A master martial artist, he was neither limited nor, tellingly, defined by the sword.
He was not the murderer of her cousin.
Robin wasn't either. She realised that. But he'd certainly had contact with the legendary assassin. And been in a position to benefit from the other's teaching, which led to some rather unpleasant conclusions. She knew that Shiva had claimed to have taught him briefly, and that Batman did not seem to have an issue with a self-avowed 'goddess' of destruction and murder leaving her mark on his protégé. Why not, then, the assassin known both for cunning, guile, and undisputed, efficient cruelty as well?
Shiva had failed to bewitch the young Robin, but had the Crimson found in him an heir?
To teach the young Robin, the Crimson would have had to have survived his supposed destruction all those years ago. How could she stand by and allow such an evil to continue? Could it be merely that Robin had learned from the assassin and moved on? Perhaps he could even lead her to her cousin's murderer.
But if Robin, had taken more than just lessons of technique to heart, if he was the next Crimson, then Helena would mourn the loss of the cheerful, friendly young boy she considered the most rational of the Batclan.
Helena would mourn, but Huntress would see to his total destruction.
That was Omerta.
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NOTE: Helena's early history and the finer details of her cousin's career as a Mafia hit man comes from the six part miniseries 'Huntress: Cry for Blood' by Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett.
C+C greatly appreciated