SEEING DOUBLE
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Birds Of Prey. They belong to their respective creators at DC Comics. No copyright infringement is intended.
It had only been about a week or so since my little incident with Reese's evil twin. The wounds in my shoulders have pretty much healed, although they're still sore. Same goes for my ribs. Of course I don't let Barbara know this or I'd have to hear the endless amount of reasons why I shouldn't be out on the streets doing what I do.
During my unexpected vacation from crime fighting I brushed up on my computer skills, trying to figure out who the hell this mystery man is. I even had the knife tested by some friends of mine but they weren't able to determine anything from it. Barbara checked, double checked and even triple checked her database and couldn't find a shred of info on this guy. I guess we'll just have to wait until he strikes again, which is why I'm planning on going back out on the streets tonight.
It's almost eight o'clock. Dinah is busy studying, or perhaps coming up with another way to ditch school tomorrow. Barbara is getting ready to go out with Wade so it's perfect.
"Does this sweater look okay?" Barbara asks me as she fusses with the turtleneck collar.
"You look great. Where you guys going?"
"To a movie and then a drink or something."
"Or something?" A devilish laugh escapes me, totally intentional.
"I should be back around midnight."
"Yes, mom," I say as I wink at her. "Go! Go have a good time. And do me a favor?"
"What?"
"Give me your beeper." I hold my hand out and wait for her to hand it over.
"I can't do that! What if..."
"Give it to me. You deserve a night out without any interruptions. The scum of the earth will be here waiting for you tomorrow, you don't need to deal with them tonight." I can almost see her mind trying to decide what to do.
"Tell ya what, I'll turn it off."
"Nope, not good enough." I reach over and snatch it out of her hands and shove it in my pocket. "Now go, you're gonna be late." Barbara shakes her head and goes on her way, not without giving me a dirty look from the elevator of course. After the doors shut I grab my jacket and head to Dinah's room. I knock lightly on the slightly open door and stick my head in. "I'm going out for a while and Barbara just left."
"Can I come with you?"
"No, you can't."
"You're going to No Man's Land aren't you? Please can I go!"
"I hate it when you beg and the answer is still no. You have homework or studying or something to do. I'll be back in a few hours." Before she can say anything I shut the door.
Quickly, I grab my jacket and head out before Dinah can chase me down. I slip into the elevator and watch the doors close in front of me. Absently, I rub my right shoulder, wincing a little at the soreness. I shrug it off and head out into the night.
I talk to a few people that I know and ask them if they've seen anything, or anyone, suspicious lately. No one has any info to offer so I roam around a little bit and then decide to go back to where it happened.
I jump over to the roof top and slowly walk across to the stairwell door. There's a wooden board nailed to the door, covering up the holes that were made when I'd crashed through it. Some strips of caution tape are tacked to the door, one of them blowing around in the wind because it's not secured on one end.
I slowly open the door and go to the top of the stairs. When I look down the flight of cement stairs my mind flashes back to that night, freezing me where I stand. I can feel the pain, as if it were happening all over again. I shut my eyes for a moment, hoping it would all just go away, and then I hear his voice. "I knew I'd find you here."
Snapping my eyes open I see Reese. "What are you doing here?"
Reese starts walking up the steps towards me. "I was gonna ask you the same thing but it's kind of a stupid question."
I haven't moved, mostly because I don't really know if it's really Reese in front of me or that lunatic. "Tell me something, what happened after you found me here that night."
Reese's brow creased as he gave me a confused look. "What are you talking about? You know what happened."
I backed up a few steps as he was now standing in front of me. "Just tell me. I want to make sure that you're you."
"I took you back to my apartment and called a doctor friend..."
I put up my hand, signaling him to stop talking. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a paranoid freak but I just want to be sure."
"It's okay, I understand."
I felt like an idiot. Every time I've seen Reese I've kicked ass and taken names and now he's seen my vulnerable side. I suppose there's nothing I can do about it now. "I thought I'd come back here to try and find at least something to figure out who this guy is." I turn around and walk back out to the roof top. I can hear Reese following behind me. "I've done searches and sweeps and there's not one shred of anything on this guy."
"Maybe you're not looking in the right place."
I turned around to face Reese thinking that he had information and was holding out on me. "Why? What do you know?"
"I'm just saying that you're maybe not looking in the right place. Or maybe you're trying to hard."
"Okay, can we be a little more cryptic?" I cross my arms over my chest and tilt my head slightly as I wait for his answer.
"Maybe you don't have to look too far. Maybe you just have to look in front of you."
After hearing those words I could feel my stomach drop to my knees. Reese's hands instantly turned into knives. He held them up as if showing them off. Then I remembered the knife lying on the ground that night. But each hand was a knife. Apparently he was able to regenerate.
"Who are you?"
"Let's just say I knew your mother. It's a shame that someone ended her life before I was given the chance. I figured I'd at least kill you to get a thrill out of it."
He lunged out at me and I backed up, dodging the thrust of the right knife. Grabbing his wrist, I bent it upwards and then hit him in the face with my elbow. As he was stunned for a moment, I kicked out and hit him in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. "Get up you big pussy. This isn't over until your lifeless body is lying on the pavement ten stories down. Nobody talks about my mother like that and gets away with it."
In a flash, his hands returned to normal and he reach over for a lead pipe that was lying by a pile of bricks. He sprang to his feet and swung the pipe towards my midsection. I got out of the way and tried to grab the end of it but he swung back around and caught me right square in my sore ribs. Down I went, grabbing my side in pain. I looked up just in time to see the pipe coming down again, this time smacking me in the back and knocking me flat on my face. I could hear him laughing but then I heard him gasp. Looking up, I saw Reese scuffling with him. They traded blows and then Reese pulled out his gun. The man laughed and easily kicked the gun away from Reese's grasp. He began to run and Reese went after him. I got to my feet and grabbed the gun that was lying on the ground. Then I ran off to find the real Reese.
I rounded the corner and found both of them fighting on the ground again. Both were bloody and it was impossible to tell who was the real Reese. I brought up the gun and aimed it at them. "Stop it!" Both of them looked at me and I tried to find some clue as to which one was really Reese.
"Helena, don't. It's me, Reese." The man on the right got up and began coming closer to me.
"Don't move!"
"Shoot him, Helena! He's not me!" the man on the left yelled to me as he got to his feet.
My mind was racing. "Don't either of you move."
Suddenly, the man on the right reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun, aiming it at the man on the left. "He's the fake, Helena!"
The man on the left looked at me with pleading eyes, "Helena, don't listen to him. Shoot him! Shoot him before he shoots me!"
"Shoot him, Helena," the man on the right said. "You heard what he said about your mother."
I cocked the gun and aimed it at the man on the right, "Put the gun down before I blow you away."
"Helena, shoot him!" the man on the left yelled, then he looked right at me, "I took you to my apartment that night and called a doctor friend of mine. The next morning I met two of your friends..."
"Nooooo!" the man on the right screamed as he turned and fired the gun at me.
I fired at him at the exact same moment. The world seemed to click into slow motion at that point. I saw the man fall to the ground, green fluid seeped from a bullet wound right between his eyes. Then I saw Reese looking at me with wide eyes. I couldn't hear what he was saying, just saw him running in slow motion towards me. That's when I fell backwards onto the ground. The impact kicked the world out of slow motion and I could feel Reese beside me, grabbing my hand. "Helena, are you okay?" I didn't answer because I really wasn't sure if I was okay. I was frozen, couldn't move and couldn't speak. "Helena, talk to me," Reese said with fear in his eyes. His hands roamed over my body, "Where are you hit?"
I blinked a few times and tried to clear the fuzziness from my mind. "I-I..." Reese practically tore my jacket off of me. He even lifted my shirt up a ways which under other circumstances would have turned me on a little. "I'm okay," I managed to say as I let go of the breath I realized I'd been holding in. I sat up, grimacing as my ribs protested the movement.
"Are you sure you're not hit? You fell and I thought..."
"I'm fine. I just felt lightheaded and fell." Now I felt embarrassed. Embarrassed that I basically fainted in front of Reese. Looking over at the man on the ground, he had now turned to nothing more than a steamy, green glob. I contorted my face at the sight.
Reese helped me to my feet and let me lean on him as we walked along. "So this guy says he knew your mother. Any idea who he was?"
"No clue. My mother didn't exactly have a lot of friends."
"Why's that?" I shot him a look and he just rolled his eyes, "Nevermind. You'll tell me when you're ready, I guess."
"Sorry. One step at a time."
We got down to street level and we just kinda stood there for a moment. Awkwardness hung in the air, like the end of a first date. I can't stand awkward silence so I broke it. "Listen, I just wanted to say thank you for saving my life last week. If you hadn't shown up I'd probably be dead."
Reese smiled, feeling his male ego inflating a few notches. He looked at me and then reached out towards my face. Taking his thumb, he wiped away some blood by my eyebrow. "You've got a nasty cut there."
"Eh, it's nothing. I've had worse," I said with a laugh, but in doing so it hurt my sore ribs. "Ouch."
"You better have those ribs looked at. I can..."
"I'll be fine. I'm just gonna go home and take a nice hot bath and forget this night even happened."
"You want a ride or something?"
I smiled at him and shook my head slightly, "No thanks."
Reese returned the smile. "Well, take care. I'm sure I'll see you around soon. But not too soon. You better take it easy until those ribs heal up."
"Yeah," I said as I started backing up to walk away, "I don't want to take away all the action on the streets. You gutta have at least something to do." I winked at him and walked off into the night.
When I got back to the tower, Dinah was asleep and Barbara was still out on her date. I tossed my jacket on the back of a chair and eased myself down on the couch. My ribs were killing me. I turned the TV on and then laid down. There was something about watching TV in the dark that was soothing. So soothing that I fell asleep.
I woke up suddenly and bolted upright as I felt something on my leg. "Ow!" I yelped as my ribs throbbed.
"Whoa, it's just me," Barbara said as she sat there looking at me.
"Shit! Don't scare me like that." I hugged my ribs a little as I settled back on the couch.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, you just startled the hell out of me."
"No, I mean your ribs." Before I could say a word she already had her hands on the hem of my shirt, lifting it up to take a peek at my ribs. I tried to protest but she moved my arm away and instantly gasped at the sight. "Helena! Your ribs are black and blue, more black than blue. They weren't like this the other day. What happened?"
"Nothing happened." I pulled my shirt back down and moved away from her.
"Don't give me that. Did you go out tonight? Did you go see Reese?"
There were so many times that I wished she would just mind her own damn business and this was one of those times. I just wanted the whole incident to be done and forgotten but as usual I had some explaining to do. "He's dead."
"What! Reese?"
"No, not Reese. The guy that attacked me."
"Oh God, you didn't go out there and try and find this guy by yourself."
"He was after me anyway. He said that it was a shame someone killed my mother before he got a chance to do it himself. He wanted to kill me to get revenge on my mother. He attacked me and then attacked Reese. I could have killed the real Reese, they both looked exactly alike."
"So you killed him?"
"Yeah. I guess Reese and I have this thing about saving each other's lives."
Barbara hung her head for a moment and then lifted it. "I wish I could tell you that you'd never be in danger ever again but you know that's not true. Our lives aren't like everyone else's."
"That's for damn sure."
"But we do have to be a team if we want to survive. So no more solo hero acts, got it?"
"Got it." After the words came out of my mouth I felt a voice in my head calling me a liar. Deep down inside I knew that it was indeed a lie. I'm sure there are going to be plenty of more times when I go out on my own and try to take on the world. It's just the way I am.
THE END