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Hey everyone. I have finished writing the story. I just need to read over the final parts and then I'll post them. It shouldn't be long. I won't include notes at the beginning of the next one's because of this, but please leave reviews. They help me understand where the interest lies and motivate me to continue. Once again I want to thank GreeKnight for being my Beta reader and plug his upcoming story which may be out by the time some of you read this. If I get positive feedback on this story I will definitely write more. I don't own any of the characters or settings. Enjoy.

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1 Week Ago

The wind whipped her hair around behind her as she tore down the streets of Gotham on her motorcycle. She checked to make sure all her crossbolts were secure, they always were. Huntress was heading toward yet another location of suspicious drug and weapon activity. The Batman had not shown himself in a while and the criminal underworld was capitalizing on that. Strangely, she never arrived on time, as if the culprits knew her response time and always finished their business before she got there. It was getting rather frustrating; with that thought she accelerated even more, weaving in and out of traffic at nearly 150mph. The cops could never catch up to her and had given up trying.

She stopped her bike with only 100 feet; she had almost crashed straight into the brick wall in front of her. She leaped over the wall and froze for a second before running past the bodies, both of the unconscious and dead variety. She followed the carnage into a building, bursting through the door. She aimed her crossbow at the man inside, but did not shoot. The man stood there aiming his gun at her, but he hesitated as well. He sported a red hood that fit the contours of his face. They stood there for a few seconds, staring at each other, until a few armed men could be heard on their way in. They nodded in unison and then went to work; they had never fought together before, but their movements were synchronized and deadly. They made short work of the thugs.

"I heard when you came back from the dead." Huntress turned to face him as they caught their breath.

"Batman made me read a whole dossier on you."

"So no introductions necessary?"

"Agreed."

"Do you know who they work for?"

"Oracle says they're Penguin's men."

"Oh, so you do keep in contact with the 'Bat family'."

He glared at her; the glare was almost identical to Batman's. "I occasionally ask Oracle for favors. I never talk to him."

"Ah. Do you know where he's been?"

"No, and I don't care."

Both of them had indicators go off, more trouble. They both sped out of the place and hopped onto their respective motorcycles.

"Nice ride," Jason nodded toward her bike.

"Ditto. You coming?" She took off down the street toward the address that her police radio gave her.

He soon caught up with her, but only because she let him. They beat the police to the site of the disturbance, apparently someone had noticed men carrying guns and loading stuff in a truck and reported it. The goons were still going about their task and were clearly very surprised to see them. My luck is turning around.

Helena and Jason leaped off their motorcycles and took down the first several men. Then they began pirrouheting around each other laying waste to the rest with fluidity and grace. When they finished with their massacre they caught each other's eyes briefly; their passion, their hatred for the ones who had wronged them, their rebelliousness, and their loneliness reflected deep in the other's pupil's. They ran into the house the crates had come from, the smell of metal shavings and gunpowder was thick inside. They killed several more of the arms dealers inside the house. The first beads of sweat from the fight formed on their brows.

They were breathing heavily, but not from the fighting. Jason turned, looked into her eyes, then her exposed midriff and thighs, then back to her eyes. She returned the favor, looking him up and down. It did not take long, they were upon each other soon. There was a lot more sweating that night, but in the bed upstairs, not in battle.

…

The next few days went very similarly, a surge of passion like dry wood on a fire. They hunted down the seemingly connected criminal activity every night searching for a lead.

"Look man, I'll tell you alright! We work for Penguin! The fucking Penguin okay! Just don't kill me like the rest!"

"Gladly." Red Hood dropped the man to the ground. For a second the man looked relieved, but then Huntress shot a crossbow bolt straight through his knee. He howled in pain.

"Find a desk job."

They walked away from the scene, out of the door and towards the street where their motorcycles were parked. Jason felt an itch in his spine, that something was not right. He looked to his side at Huntress and the world seemed to slow down to almost a halt. He stood there frozen in time his eyes widening as he saw Huntress press a button that remotely activated her bike. The bike disappeared, replaced by shrapnel hurtling in every direction as the C4 strapped to her bike quickly expanded into a blindingly bright fireball. He could not see as the shock and sound hit him and threw him backwards.

His ears rang and his abdomen stang, sliced open by some metal shard. He heard a car door slam and forced himself to open his eyes. He took out the three men in rapid succession and then fainted. It must not have been long before he came to, as no one else had come for them, friend or foe. Pieces of her bike were still on fire scattered across the street and lawn. Huntress was sprawled unnaturally about ten yards away unmoving. He reminded himself to check his own wounds first.

He had a massive headache and a superficial gut wound, but that was it. He crawled over to her. One of her arms was broken, her head was bleeding and she was a pin cushion for multiple pieces of shrapnel. He clenched his teeth as he reached for her wrist, no pulse. When CPR bore no immediate fruit, he called an ambulance and set about getting her broken body into normal clothes and changing himself. He was already formulating a story.

…

"Sir, your friend is being taken care of, we are not at liberty to disclose any further information. Now would you please come with us, you have a head wound and a rather nasty looking cut that is bleeding through your shirt."

Jason looked down at his tee that was now soaked in both his blood and hers. "Right, of course...I'm just worried." He played the part of shocked innocent well.

"Of course, and rightfully so. We'll look after you and then I'll see what I can do to get an update on your friend. This way please."

Shock was the easy part, he was partially in it anyway. The hard part was maintaining a look of horror or pain instead of raw, unbridled anger. The doctors bandaged his head and abdomen and left him to lay there for a while after he refused pain meds. He seized the opportunity to take a nap. He awoke to a doctor walking up to his hospital room door.

"Good to see you awake." The doctor said as he entered. "The police are here and would like to talk to you about what happened, if you need more time I can send them away."

Jason pretended to think about it for a moment. "I think I'll manage, send them in."

"Hello Mr. Todd, I'm Detective Bullock. We just have a few questions about the events surrounding your hospital visit if you don't mind.

Jason propped himself up in the bed. "I'll do my best to answer." He knew exactly what to expect from this line of questioning. Bullock would first ask indirect questions in an attempt to catch him in a lie, then try to link him to Red Hood and Helena to Huntress while simultaneously trying to scare him with 'how much the police already know'. He was about to give Bullock exactly what he wanted, but not in the way he expected.

"Thank you. Now, just for the record, could you state the reason for you and Ms. Bertinelli's presence at 362 Herman Street?"

He intentionally looked away and hesitated. "Umm, we were going for a jog. We recently started dating and it turns out we're both fitness freaks." He pushed out a tear. "She's okay, right? They won't tell me anything."

"I'm sorry son, they wouldn't tell me anything either...Do you often jog that way at night?"

"Uh, sometimes...I guess." He looked away again.

"Okay." Harvey Bullock procured a notebook and flipped a few pages. "Were you and your girlfriend not alerted by the gunshots? Why would you keep running towards them?"

Jason let his lip quiver a bit. "Gunshots?!" He said in mock confusion.

Harvey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright look, cards on the table. We know you weren't jogging there. Neither of you live anywhere nearby, no one in the area has ever seen you there before, it was the middle of the night, and we know for a fact that you two did not get injured until after the shooting started. What we do have is forensics reporting that debris from the explosion is traceable to motorcycles believed to be used by the vigilantes known as Huntress and Red Hood and an eye witness placing those vigilantes at the scene. So, now that I've been honest with you, why don't you return the favor."

Jason let his head hang limply from his neck. "We were there to buy drugs…" He mumbled.

"I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that."

"We were there to buy drugs, okay. A friend of ours said that LSD would take our relationship to the next level and told us where to get some. But before we could buy anything those two superheroes you were talking about swooped in and started killing people. They lined us all up and started questioning and killing guys one at a time. They killed everyone except this one guy that told them what they wanted, him they shot in the knee with a crossbow bolt. We were last in line, we told them that we were just there to get some drugs and they let us go. We ran outside and then the bomb went off. I don't remember much after that. I swear that's the truth."

Harvey was hurriedly flipping through his notebook, probably checking to make sure that LSD was among the list of drugs recovered and some of the other details lined up. He stopped flipping and started writing, looking visibly frustrated.

"Would you happen to recall what the vigilantes were questioning the dealers about?"

"Uh, yeah. They were trying to figure out who the guys were working for. The last guy said it was the Penguin."

The frustration left Bullock's face, replaced by near excitement. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I think so."

The detective stood and put on his hat to leave. "You've been a great help, Mr. Todd. Rest up, I'll let you know if I have any further questions." He was gone in a flash.

Jason knew that would work. Feed Bullock the lie he was hoping for so that he'd believe the next lie. Then distract him with a big break in the case to take his mind off Jason and Helena's own wrongdoing. Attempted possession of controlled substances is too small a fish for a homicide detective, even if he bothered to report them it was unlikely they would be brought in for something so small. Now he could go back to worrying about Helena.

As if on queue a nurse popped into his room. "Ms. Bertinelli is stable, would you like to see her?"

Jason's heart leaped in his chest. "Yes."

…

Detective Bullock burst into Commissioner Gordon's office. "Sir! The serial drug and weapon shipments have been Penguin!"

"Oh, so that's why the Bat-family has been preventing anything from getting through to the Iceberg Lounge, I suspected as much."

"He's back in town?" Bullock's chipper attitude deflated immediately.

Gordon nodded. "He's back."

Bullock punched the door frame on the way out, beaten by a flying rodent again.

Gordon just smiled and shook his head as he stared out the window. The smile faded as he felt it again, that feeling; that little hint of dread in the back of his mind warning him something was coming.

…

"Jason?"

"I'm here, Helena."

She gave a weak smile that seemed to pain her. "I'm glad you're okay."

Jason grabbed her hand, his voice was shaking. "I thought you were dead."

"They are saying I was, briefly, for about a minute." Her vision was blurry, she could only make out a vague form.

His grip tightened, and the shake of his voice continued but changed from sadness to anger; no, hatred. "I'll kill that fucking bird. I'll bring him to his knees and watch the light fade from his eyes."

Helena pulled her hand out of his. "You're hurting me, Jason." She did not need to see his eyes clearly to peer into them, his hatred was raw and uncontrollable. "I think you need to go." She was speaking very softly.

"What?" He had heard what she said.

"I said you should go." A little more forcefully this time. "We've bathed in more blood the past few nights than either of us have in years."

Anger mixed with confusion. "That's because we're good! We work well together!"

"Yes, Jason, but at what cost? We're more hateful than ever. Before we had direction to our fury, each of us had a goal. Together we just destroy with only a vague idea of why. We're a ticking time bomb, Jason, and I don't think I can survive another explosion."

Jason knelt there for a minute, his eyes desperately searching in hers, then he left. The doctors never found their patient, and Helena never saw him again. She would have cried, but it would hurt too much.

…

The next day when she was feeling slightly better the police came in and asked her the same questions they had asked Jason. Jason had left her a message with all the necessary information to keep their stories straight and she repeated what she had told her with some of her own details thrown in to make it more believable.

Then something completely unexpected happened. Detective Bullock brought in the man she had shot in the knee, he was in a wheelchair and recovering just like her.

"Sir, was this the woman who shot you in the knee?"

Helena and the man locked eyes. She saw in his eyes that he knew it was her, both her and Jason's identities would be exposed.

"No, detective, I don't think so. She was wearing a mask, so I can't be certain, but no, I don't believe so."

Bullock nodded. "Thank you, Sir. Would you like help back to your room?"

"No thank you, I've got it."

The detective left and the two sat in silence for a while.

"My wife and daughter came to see me this morning." He said casually. "My marriage was on the rocks before, but you should have seen the concern in her eyes. We still love each other, I'm going to do better by her." He turned his wheelchair around to leave. "A life for a life, that's all I owe you, and that's all I'll ever pay." He left the room, Helena let the tears flow freely now.