"Begin program," snaps Helena.
It had been less than a day since they were shot and nothing could purge the sight from her mind. In some ways it felt worse than being stuck in a closet when Mandragora murdered her parents.
'You were just a child.'
She brawls with endless amounts of Z-8 drones. Machines could be rebuilt, physical injuries could heal, but as always there are the scars and wounds that linger and occasionally fester on the inside. The helplessness had come down on her senses after she saw Barbara on the ground bleeding from her back. The despair shivers through her skin as she watches Oliver get shot. The anger flows through her as Dinah goes down in a failed attempt to disable the assassin. The fear turns to rage as Vic falls sideways during his lunge to protect her from the shots meant for her.
'You certainly didn't understand what your father did for a living.'
As she got older she found out what he did do, but that didn't change her pursuit of being ready for the day that she would kill Mandragora. She took all the marital arts, the weapons, and the physical training she could find except along the way some kind of life did happen for her where there once been only anger and guilt for what happen to her parents. She cross paths with others who had become part of the night, been drawn into the side of humanity that few believe to be natural because in reality it is natural for someone. Natural because it is how they exist and thrive while others twist and suffer for their benefit.
'You just knew that when he talked, people listened.'
She always thought she could have done something differently that night or at the very least there were times when she had wanted to die with them instead of being alive without them. In nightmares, all the decisions made are the 'wrong' ones because that's the way bad memories course through one's mind. She did listen to him one last time and then she saw it all repeatedly even now as she smashes the Z-8 drones in every way imaginable.
'That he always had his guys around him to do whatever he said, but the most frightening one was Mandragora.'
As a child she had grown accustom to the many who did work with her father or rather under him as per his rank as a crime boss. Many were loyal, many were friends of a kind, but some were greedy, some were enemies kept closer. However Mandragora between his size and almost albino like complexion made her stick close to her father or her mother in the hopes that he would just go away, but he wouldn't be going until he chose to go.
'That looking into his eyes was like looking into an empty pit.'
She is a little girl in a closet. She is a grown woman with a crossbow. Her hand is on the closet door. Her finger is on the crossbow trigger. There are tears in her eyes after he kills them. There are sweat drops running along her skin beneath the mask. The darkness in his eyes is the same then and later as she prepares to kill him that night on the docks last year.
'Then one terrible night, Mandragora decided he no longer wished to take orders.'
The Bertinellis rush home. A little boy rushes towards Mandragora. She is behind her father as the headlights almost blind them in the entrance hall. Mandragora has a son, and the boy is almost the same age as she was when her parents were murdered by his father. She heard the last thing her father she said to her overlapping with what Mandragora says to Edgar. The look in his eye could just as easily been identical to one in hers as she was looking through the slit in the closet door when he advanced on her parents.
"Huntress… is really what you want?" asks Question.
Her aim remains on Mandragora. She didn't look away then, she doesn't look away now, but Edgar runs as she shifts her aim upward before firing at the cables. The payload falls knocking Mandragora unconscious. She walks towards him, her childhood demon, her childhood's end, but she wouldn't kill him even though she could, it would just dishonor their memory and take more away from her than their deaths had already done for years. She recalls admitting killing him wasn't she really wanted after all.
Mandragora played along after being sent back to Federal Custody. He was doing hard time for his prosecuted crimes aside from providing the Grand Jury with all manner of evidence to nail his former associates, at least the ones that were still alive by the time he told the Justice Department anything. The ones responsible for Edgar's kidnapping were found in pieces to say the least so he really mean it when he said "taught the errors of their ways." As for Edgar, he remains in protective custody and so she really did believe she had nothing to fear about Mandragora anymore.
However after last night, the conviction of that belief is gone.
Word got around that the captured assassin apparently committed suicide by poison tooth. It meant they had no way of tracing the individual back to his employer. The darkness felt so close to her as the light is almost gone as those that matter most to her now are still in critical condition despite the surgeries. Death had never been this close to her or at least she felt like she had put distance between herself and death except death wears many masks apparently. She is not in the mood to hold back even when these drones aren't cheap, but whoever had complaints about the damages would best keep it to themselves.
She doesn't miss a single hit yet she misses all the horse ring shaped heads clattering to the floor in the holographic simulator chamber. Her body focus is on the targets, but her thoughts are instead showing her other things. It doesn't take a telepath to know she is in deep now. The program ends, but she is on the floor, sobbing as if she were eight years old again except this is no closet. She only wants person in here right now, but he is in the infirmary hanging by a thread even after they took the bullets out of him. She didn't hate him for doing it, she hated the dead man for shooting him, she hated herself for not flicking the first heel tip at the gun before he shot Vic or even before he shot Dinah.
The chamber doors part and Dick Grayson walks in almost as if knowing he would find her here. She almost didn't hear him come in yet she slides up to her kneels then nearly swings at him. She stops halfway and tries to cover that fact that she been crying for almost a half hour. She readjusts the scrunchies in her hair and sniffles some. He says nothing at first to her.
"You are not doing yourself any good bottling it and beating the crud of these drones won't make you feel any better," murmurs Dick.
"I don't care what you think I should or should not be doing with my time right now. The only thing that matters to me right now is more than obvious to you," hisses Helena.
"I think you do care, more than you realize, more than you are used to, why else would you look a mess from crying and besides Barbara is still in critical condition too. They all are even with the bullet out. The next few days are vital to their recovery, I believe they will survive," retorts Dick.
"They were all shot at close range, they had no Kevlar armor on, and the kind of bullets that were used were overkill for a shooting," rebukes Helena.
"You sound half way convinced that they won't make… Vic's your boyfriend, Dinah's the closest thing you have to a best friend, and even Oliver is something of a friend too. Why do you sound so sure they will die?" growls Dick.
"I have seen people die in different ways in my life and gun shots are just one of them!"
"I saw my parents plunge to their deaths from trapeze handlebars!"
"That's my point!"
"Where there is life, there is hope!" snaps Dick.
Helena jumps to her feet and pushes Dick off to the side before storming out of the room.
Dick exits then heads for the Monitor Womb where he expects to find Batman laboring over endless streams of data as he spent almost the whole day since the shooting working over how Knyazev got inside. Queen's security forces and protocols should have kept the assassin out yet somehow he had gotten inside anyway.
Dick enters and finds exactly what he thought he would find in the Womb.
"Anyway headway Batman?" asks Dick.
"You really shouldn't be roaming around in here without your costume," remarks Batman.
"We'll talk about that later, so again any leads?"
"The cameras were briefly on the fritz several times that night starting just after the guests had begun arriving at the residence. The longest continuous fritz would have been enough time for Knyazev to enter the elevator car and ride straight up except how he got access to the car is another mystery."
"Knyazev as per your files didn't suggest he had any techno-savvy, so he had help of some kind."
Batman shows Dick all the security footage from the night of the murder attempts at Queen's penthouse residence.
Dick's eyes widen for a moment.
"You are telling me that they infiltrated Queen's security personnel by sending in her and utilizing his M.O."
"Yes, apparently nobody has ever seen her without the mask, so nobody actually knows her face and his M.O. we are all too familiar with."
It is just another twist in an increasingly disturbing string of events.
"She is the one that messed with the cameras and got them access to the elevator…"
"This is all feels too orchestrated to be random anymore…"
"Here I am thinking that I told Vic that night to not think this was Cadmus level caliber…"
"This is too despicable to even be their handiwork…"
"I know, because its not them… all these attacks have been conducted by known super villains…"
Batman's earpiece comlink chirps, which interrupts their chat.
"Helena Bertinelli has left the Metro Tower," says Terrific.
"What?!? She was told to stay here," grumbles Batman.
Batman deactivates the computers and heads out. Dick is quick to follow once he gets into the Nightwing guise.
Helena finds her way into one of the garages that Vic told her about and there it sits almost as if calling out to her. A new 1967 Pontiac GTO to replace the one that Deadshot or one of his associates' put a thermal transducer in with the intention of blowing it up. If not for Question getting that bit out of Deadshot then she might be dead. Question kept her from death twice. She kept him from death only once, and felt like she had failed the second time. As he hangs by a thread, she just couldn't sit around or bounce around inside the Metro Tower so she went out as if looking to spill guts instead of just smashing up Z-8's. She drives the new car to her place on the outskirts of Bludhaven and slips into the Huntress guise again.
She goes out on her motorcycle leaving behind the clothes that a tracer had been put on without her knowledge.
Batman and Nightwing are only to track her as far as her apartment only to find that she is not home.
"How we are going to find her now?" grunts Nightwing.
"She has a tracking system built into her bike now, just run it backwards through one of her personal tracers," concludes Batman.
"Show-off, but it works in theory," comments Nightwing.
Huntress enters the parking garage that was previously used by Roulette during her short lived Metabrawl Glamor Slam. The elevator appears to be in use again as she the silhouette of a woman entering the elevator except the elevator car lights are too dim to make out the woman's face. Huntress closes the distance to the doors except they are shut by the time she gets there. The doors reopen again a few minutes later except nobody is in it like the first time she had done this trick to call it back up with a security pass card. The ride down is as fast as she remembers it being the last time except no guards to knock out and no sensual look to wear once down below.
There are no signs that a subterranean casino was ever here. It is nearly pitch black in here and for once she would have to rely more on her other senses besides her eye sight.
"You really shouldn't have followed me down here Huntress," says a female voice.
"You have me at a disadvantage between the darkness and knowing my alias," retorts Huntress.
"Your disadvantage is greater than that Senorita Huntress," says a deeper voice.
"Bane, what are you doing down here and with her?" queries Huntress.
"He isn't the only one you should be wondering about," says a gravelly voice.
"So there is three you… a woman, Bane, Clayface, but I heard two other sets of foot falls now."
There are no sounds aside from the footfalls that she just heard for a moment.
"Who else did you invite to this dark pit?"
There is an audible thud except she is unable to tell at first if it is her or something else except the room looks darker, but maybe it is not just the dark... then nothing.
It is disorientating to her as she grabs her head as if the pounding had kept up after getting that hit to back of her skull.
"She is coming around Batman," calls Nightwing.
She scans around the room trying to work out how she got from the abandoned sublevel to what appears to be the Metro Tower's infirmary. It however looks like she is the only patient in here now.
"Where are Vic and the others?" demands Huntress.
Nightwing hesitates to answer her.
"You have been slipping in and out for days. Oliver was the first to go, the wounds caused too much internal bleeding, and Vic went out next because one of the bullet hit him in such a way that the bleeding likewise got him too."
She howls and cries at the same time.
"Dinah worsened with Oliver's passing and her neck wound proved to be too severe to repair."
"This can't be right. You were the only that kept insisting that I not lose hope."
"Sometimes you can't stop these things no matter how much you want the opposite to be true."
"I had caught up to Clayface, Bane, and three others who were likely to have been working with KGBeast."
"We barely go to you in time. However you were down there alone, nobody else was there, and you were trying to kill you by jumping out of the control booth straight down to the floor. You almost broke your neck," remarks Batman.
"You are lying… I found at least two super villains with probable ties to all the murders and attempted murders from the last two months!"
They were both looking at her so strangely she thought to herself, but what if they were telling the truth about everything that happen in the last few days. It made her more afraid than anything else up to this point, but she felt a sedative casting her off to sleep as she heard Batman's voice.
"You need to rest Helena, we'll talk later," finishes Batman.
"Gordon is asking to see us," remarks Nightwing.
"Did he give a reason besides the obvious?" demands Batman.
"They want to do an independent autopsy on Knyazev's body. They want us to turn ourselves over though Huntress in particular because she is the only survivor from the attack besides me."
"Right, we play along for now, the last thing I need is Gordon after us and prove that they were incorrect to trust us and more to trust me all these years to help safeguard Gotham."
Batman, Nightwing, and a worn down Huntress teleport to the rooftop of GCPD Central awhile later.
Commissioner Gordon is flanked by Detectives Bullock, Montoya, and Allen. There are also apparently SWATs up here too if the laser sights are any indication.
"Now remove all of your equipment and I do mean all of it especially you Batman," orders Gordon.
Bullock seizes all of Batman's gadgetry and his utility belt.
Montoya picks up Huntress' belt and her crossbow.
Allen is given Nightwing's tools from his built-in sleeve dispensers.
"I am placing both Huntress and Nightwing under arrest as accessories to the recent deaths that most of us are well aware of as evidence has been found to conclude that it was within your power to prevent these deaths. This is being done as per the orders of the new ADA Sam Young."
"Those charges are circumstantial. Yes, both she and I were there. Yes, we could have possibly done more, but in a situation like that you only have time to act or react. We weren't aware that somebody ambushed the guards from the inside," interjects Nightwing.
"Your laxness and carefree behavior that night cost the lives of four individuals including Barbara Gordon."
Nobody moves though words are still spoken at length.
"Don't make this personal Jim," implores Batman.
"Don't Jim me, I thought I could trust her and you to handle this insanity of people zipping around in costumes, but it appears I was wrong. My daughter is dead now and I because of the eventual discovery of her working for you will have to resign or go for my 'retirement'," snaps Gordon.
"Don't go this way Commissioner," insists Nightwing.
"She was your girlfriend… don't you feel guilty? Don't you think we are within our right to punish someone for this?" suggests Allen.
This is not a friendly chat by a long shot as they are given the summons to be sent below in irons.
"Then there is the matter of the deaths of Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen," reminds Bullock.
"This a witch hunt," snaps Huntress.
"Call it what you will, but four people are still dead aside from the man you claim is responsible for their deaths yet the fact remains both you and Nightwing could have stopped him!"
"Come off it Renee!" hisses Huntress.
"Turn yourselves over unless you prefer to resist detainment!"
Nightwing steps back towards the edge of the roof overhang.
"Nobody moves!" shouts Gordon.
"I didn't kill Barbara, I tried to save her, but heck what kind of lives could any of us have without risks, sure being a costume is dangerous yet so is being a cop."
"Don't fiddle with me Grayson!"
"If he is Grayson then Batman is…" realizes Bullock.
"Figures it would take someone else to make the leap for you Bullock," snorts Allen.
"Aw, shove it will ya, besides we got these three vigilantes to clap tonight," retorts Bullock.
Nightwing moves to drop off the side except the SWATs open fire impaling him instantly. No time to flap away so he falls tumbling against the side of the building as he goes down.
"Why did you shoot him? I thought you were seeking detainment, not killing!" hisses Huntress.
"Check again... he is not dead… yet anyway." snorts Bullock.
"I'm taking the law back in full to the police in this city. The time for working with vigilantes is over."
Nightwing grabs onto a protruding flagpole several stories down then pulls himself up even with the blood dripping down the back of his costume. He wipes his mouth then somersaults up to the ledge above and the cops inside take aim at him. A chopper is flying by and remains in a hovering pattern near Nightwing.
"So what is going to be Wayne?" quips Gordon.
Batman drops several hidden gas balls then swoops picking up the handed over equipment after socking Bullock and knocking over Allen. Huntress pushes Montoya down, but leaves her unmarred so together they drop off the side passing Nightwing's position. The three make it to a lower rooftop and keep moving as more choppers join the pursuit as the rest of GCPD mobilize to pursue them. The trio drops to the alleyway after several blocks except the cops are gaining all the same. Nightwing turns to fend them off, but this time they are the riot cops, not just regular beat cops.
"Get her out of here Batman!" yells Nightwing.
"We are not going without you Night…" shouts Huntress.
Nightwing falls as if the previous gunshot wounds plus the beating from the riot cops had killed him.
"We have to go Huntress!" snaps Batman.
Together they descend into the sewers, which would make it trickier for the cops to track them, but this would only slow the pursuit for awhile.
They cover quite a distance through the main sewer lines, but the cops kept up the chase above ground keeping tabs on all entry/exit points should they come back up at any point in the city.
"Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, the League is going to get hell over this," groans Huntress.
"Likely, but it might be best if I just turn myself over, give you time to flee," remarks Batman.
"Even if you go willingly, they will still pursue me too," retorts Huntress.
"There is also Tim and Alfred to consider, they won't weather well especially not Tim."
"Right, poor kid and they better leave Pennyworth alone, he is an older man, he is just a butler."
"He's more than that, but yes, if they only took some less severe hook on him."
"Why not have the League take them back to the Tower?" suggests Huntress.
"I thought of that, but if they are wanted for 'questioning' like we were then, them not being at home would put them in a different kind of danger. I'll try to get them some kind of deal, as for you, don't follow me out of here… it is too compromising for us to be caught together."
Batman pricks her with something and she passes out for several minutes.
"Damn you Bruce, no way to track you and now I really am alone again."
It was time to leave Gotham. She had nothing left to lose except her own life she thought to herself. She kept to the sewers even though after a couple of miles the smell got even worse or maybe it was just the smell of her costume. There is no point in breaking into Dick's loft, the cops would be watching it, the same goes for Wayne Manor, and probably even her own place so she turns to the one place she felt certain they would not be looking at so it meant going really out of her way. However she did not know where else to lead herself so she would be casting herself off into the unknown.
Huntress finds her way into the freight train yards and looks stealthily about for indications on ones heading in the general direction of her chosen direction. It would be a long ride and she did not risk sleeping lest she found unconscious if someone gets the smart idea to search trains. It is a cramp fit hiding in a crate that is already almost eighty percent full, but she had no wish to hide in the open in a freight car. Sleep eventually grabs her as it had been too long and harrowing a night or early morning. She had lost her sense of time in the last few hours.
"This is Snapper Carr reporting live from Gotham City. I was unable to get comments from the Commissioner himself regarding several arrests and two of them that apparently went bad as the suspects did not turn themselves over despite 'disarming' as Detective Allen put it. Several high profiled costume 'vigilantes' recently had arrest warrants issued on them in relation to the shootings that happen in California less than three days ago."
News footage of the scene in California is shown. Pictures of the dead are put across the screen, but the last one hurt the worst for her as she watches in disguise. She had ditched the costume once she got to Hub City. It was strange coincidence that the freight train was shipping for a clothing company. She also tied her hair in such a way to make herself as unrecognizable as possible. The last image was shown again as the news portion went through a loop like it had always done for the past few years. The recent events were also in the local paper including the revelation of Batman's secret identity, but of course Gordon had shown he had known somehow for some time about the Bat Family's identities though he probably made the connections once he worked out that his daughter was Batgirl.
Helena heads for Vic's apartment hoping that the police had no leads on his residence, but if Nightwing and Batman had known then it might be only a matter of time before they think to search here if they get in touch with Hub City P.D. However this city looks more in the dumps in some places then Gotham, but what was it that Question or Vic said to her once she seem to be struggling to remember now.
"Contrasts are foundations to understanding because without them how do we know good from evil, right from wrong, virtue from sin, and further how we know even for a moment which is what we are?"
He wore virtually identical suits all the time, but she found he kept them well as if suggesting he could also double as a tailor if he had thought about such a profession. He kept a cramped book case of all the literary publications he found worth reading and retaining copies of too. He usually aims for tidiness, some semblance of order, some view of purpose, but it is something she found adorable about him because sometimes she would leave a mess in her apartment for him to clean up. In being here, she felt safe yet she also felt loneliness.
She puts on one of his dark yellow shirts and loosely ties one of his black ties on too. Next she pulls out a pair of his pants and slides them on slowly. The sock draw is full of self-same pairs, but she just shuts the draw again. She locks the door, bolts the windows, closes the blinds, and climbs into bed wanting this whole thing to be just a bad dream except it feels like it won't be going away. It is a fitful sleep as she dreams about the night of the shooting as if affirming the whole thing is as real as it had been four nights ago.
She woke in the dark of Vic's bedroom and found herself just as alone as she thought except the dreams had made her feel less alone even though they were violent because of the shooting. She strips out of his clothes and goes into the shower then turns the water on full. She realizes using the shower might draw attention, but Vic probably pays in advance somehow so it seems like nothing to worry her head over. After she dries off and puts another set of Vic's usual look minus the overcoat and hat, she flicks on the television.
"Justice League spokeswoman Wonder Woman issued a statement pleading that they reconsider the charges against Batman and Huntress. The GCPD is not the only department filing complaints against the costumes as they are now calling them vigilantes all. The Justice Department in coordination with other agencies is told to round them up. Public opinion has taken a sharp turn from the recent wave of positive polls last year."
The broadcast switches to Metropolis.
"Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent is fingered as being Superman given his association with fugitive Bruce Wayne aka Batman. Nobody has seen him in the days since Wayne's arrest."
The Metropolis reporter turns the program over to Central City and the process continues through most of the home cities of the costumes she had briefly worked with in the League. She shuts the television off and parts the blinds to glance outside to see if anyone is tracking her to this place as of yet, but so far she had been able to maintain hiding apparently.
"How much worse could this get?" groans Helena.
She pulls off the tie and ponders doing the thing that Dick had made the claim she had been attempting before they found her. Her mind keeps insisting she had found at least three super criminals meeting in the abandoned sublevel that housed Roulette's second Metabrawl that Helena as Huntress had been caught up in last year. She recalls a blackout before waking in the infirmary, but everything since had become progressively worse as if fulfilling her own personal endgame.
"End program!" screams Helena.
Nothing happens, not a simulation, no it felt too real to be that unless it is not possible for her voice to end, but no matter how she would try to inflict damage on anything in the room. All it did was make her hands hurt more so maybe this is as real as she fears it to be, but then what else did she have left to lose. She finishes dressing like Question right down to the mask and gets her first taste of seeing the world through her often faceless lover's disguise face. She had to keep moving, but she kept the aerosol handy as at times it is hard to breathe in the mask.
She returns to the vicinity of her place over the course of the next two days, but it is tricky even using a freight car a second time. They were bound to be checking all routes by now except as she nears her place something wraps around her wrist and it turns out to be Catwoman of all people.
"Wait a second last time I checked that nut job Question is male, but you are a woman who looks remarkably like him, identify yourself or I am going to carve up that face until I find a face beneath!"
"Back off Selina, I am not here to fight you!"
"What are you doing dressing like your boyfriend?"
"Haven't you been following the news?"
"Right, Bruce has been arrested and you... Huntress... are a wanted woman… why come here with the cops watching the place?"
"I have to work out why things went so horribly wrong!"
"You already know why… people died on your watch and the cops are hunting you for it."
"That is what… not why!"
"Suit yourself besides it looks like nobody knows Question is history though looking like a woman in that look would tip people off."
"So what do you suggest then?"
Another figure emerges from the shadows.
"I suggest you give up… you lost already," says a voice.
"Who are you?" demands Helena.
"Do I really have to spell it out for you Bertinelli?" sneers the voice.
"You look different then the old profile photos that Wayne kept on you, Hush," continues Catwoman.
"Nice to see you too Selina, looking after strays are you?" chuckles Hush.
"You haven't been seen much lately," remarks Helena.
"I know, but with vigilantes out of the way, crime has been making a killing."
A second silhouette steps out to join the three already up here.
"Something told me you be back here before long Huntress," declares Montoya.
"You killed Nightwing!" snaps Helena.
"He let Barbara be shot first!" rebukes Montoya.
"You think we could have anticipated a murder attempt?" retorts Helena.
"Those who with Batman usually are supposed to have that edge, that almost foresight to see danger before it happens, clearly you either knew it might happen or you were complicit in its allowance!"
"I am sick and tired of these insinuations. We didn't kill her, didn't kill anyone that night."
"I am placing you under arrest with the help from these two up here with us."
"What?!?"
"It was sanctioned to chip some years off their sentence if they help us capture vigilantes like you."
"You would work with a sadist like Hush or a thief like Catwoman to catch me?"
"My mandate is whatever it takes to restore law and order to Gotham as well as Bludhaven."
Helena back flips away and realizes she is without her crossbow, which is probably the latest and maybe even the last mistake she'll make tonight. She crashes into a dumpster in the alleyway and whips out the aerosol then pries the mask off.
"No sense in hiding my face now."
She dives under the patrol cars near her apartment complex.
Vic's new car is not anywhere in sight.
Something is wrong here, really wrong, and beyond the obvious.
She rolls out from under the car and hopes in then hot wires since she doesn't have the keys. It was time to go back to where this nightmare seems to have begun for her. As she drives away Montoya is leading the pursuit to capture her. She pulls straight into the garage and notices her bike like the Pontiac is again no where she left it. Both incidents separately could mean someone had taken the vehicles to impound though the same could apply together except she had left both in such positions they were unlikely to be found immediately let alone in less than two days. She gets out and runs over to the elevator doors except they part to reveal someone is expecting her yet again.
"You are so close yet so far," says a voice.
"I have come a lot further than you think," rebukes Helena.
"The cops won't get here fast enough so die quickly if you don't mind."
"You won't find me an easy opponent!"
"I am exactly what you are so afraid of little girl!"
"You haven't seen my nightmares!"
"So what do you call this then?"
"My life going into the gutter!"
"Not quite poetry, but guess it suits your disposition now!"
Her opponent seems able to counter her every move.
"You read my mind or something?"
"It doesn't take a telepath to read your moves!"
The roundhouse kick fails as usual.
"Why do I default to that move without knowing it?"
"Force of habit, habits give sense of certainty, but some habits are harder to break than others."
Her opponent slams her into the parking garage square shaped pillar.
"You have lost your edge," cracks the voice.
"No, I lost much more than that," snarls Helena.
She lashes out tackling her opponent then slams the attacker into the asphalt. The silence is eerie before the opponent flips back to her feet and pushes Helena back into another pillar across from this one. As Helena's back lands against she cries out in pain.
"This is not an arena and I am getting bored with you," admits the voice.
"You are just delaying me, you don't want me getting downstairs like I did last time," declares Helena.
"Believe whatever you like Bertinelli, but you will die like your babydoll and your new friends!"
"How do you know my nickname for him?" demands Helena.
"As he would put it, that is the question," cackles the voice.
"That's it… you are going down you sycophant!"
Helena slugs the opponent who stumbles backwards and runs into the opening elevator. She runs towards it next except something hits her from behind just like it did when she was down there the first time.
She awakens in the former Metabrawl arena, but it is pitch black just as she remembers it being the night she had first come down here in search for someone to tie to the dead assassin that badly wounded everyone that matters to her heart now. However during the lapse between her coming here and waking up at the Metro Tower those that did matter died from their injuries that were presumed to be treatable. She is not alone in the arena as across the way is Catwoman then off to another corner is Montoya and in the opposite from Montoya is another woman that she never thought she again, that woman being Tsukuri.
Now what are the odds of me being down here with four women that I would know, that Batman would know, that Nightwing would, and that … Question would know? Too many odds, too much coincidence all the way.
There are at least two sets of eyes up in the rafters, but that would mean someone other than her probable captors is watching her.
"It looks like she has come around, give her another dose, and send her back into it. This was the point of this experiment wasn't it? To drive her kind insane?" suggests a familiar male voice.
"What about the others? They could rouse at any moment just like is she doing now!" says a feminine voice.
"Then gas them all!" insists the familiar male voice.
"You heard the man, gas them, for what is more potent than fear itself?" cracks a second male voice.
Her eyes widen in horror when working out why the posture of the first voice's body did look so disturbingly familiar. There is no error to be made about that perpetual smile especially.
Terrific first everyone that matters dies because I failed to save them and now I am stuck with Scarecrow.
One of her captors prepares to gas her again except something hits the canister spraying the substance towards whoever is holding the fire extinguisher modified to fire the gas. The one with the extinguisher falls backwards, starts convulsing, and then appears almost catatonic.
"So hard to find good help these day yet the aim from our intruders is famous for impeccable!"
"All of you lure them away, this is experiment must continue immediately!"
The silhouettes from the rafters descend as together both smash their clenched fists into the two speakers in front of her. She can tell her wrists are still bound, but someone or something is cutting them.
"Who are you?" mumbles Helena dryly.
"Best not to shock her, we have no idea what they did to her in the last two days."
"Let's just get her out of here and back to the surface."
"I'll take care of that, you two I suggest round up those responsible for this insidious thing."
She felt her heart pounding in her chest when hearing another voice from behind her.
"Easy there, you are safe now, I am getting you out of here, and the others will take care of the rest."
Together they exit to surface daylight to see a whole deployment of SWAT securing the perimeter. She closes her eyes because it is so bright and she feels too dizzy to remain standing plus suddenly there is a hunger she swore she barely felt for the last two days. As she appears to be slumped over in his arms he could imagine that she got a taste of what Cadmus did to him last year because her heart rate had felt erratic to his touch. A squad of medics takes her from him in order to get her back to the Metro Tower.
The elevator doors part to reveal the expected culprits in cuffs with familiar masks behind them. He walks towards them as they drop to their knees though of course neither looks as menacing to him as they might think themselves. The other male is Bane, now severed from his venom supply.
Scarecrow's female accomplice is Star Sapphire.
"Clever way to hide your apparent fears for the damsel and your own," snips Scarecrow.
He pulls up Scarecrow's hands and grips the villain's fingertips.
"That is supposed to scare me? I am Fear itself!" declares Scarecrow.
"Then you won't be afraid of broken fingers will you?" suggests Question.
Scarecrow yelps at the sound of his fingers cracking all at the same time.
Question teleports back to the Metro Tower leaving Batman and Nightwing to haul the bloodied and bruised criminals back to Arkham.
As for Star Sapphire she must be separated from the sapphire in order to disable her powers.
The infirmary is a livelier place now though the newly engaged couple is still bed bound until they get the clear to leave, but that won't be for some time now.
"You bounce back quickly Vic, but I don't know about her, she looks like hell," rasps Dinah.
"She's tougher than she looks, but I worry too, the Cadmus nightmares…" remarks Vic.
"Yeah, I can't grasp or imagine that, and nobody knows what those sadists did to her."
"Let's just say I left them with something to remember me by in the hopes that they stay away from her."
Dinah weakly smiles and returns to Helena's bedside. The doctors put her on intravenous temporarily, but now she's the one in the woods instead of him. He went in front of the gun because on some level he didn't believe he'd be as strong as her if their positions were reversed right now. If not for the tracer they wouldn't even had a general idea of where to start looking for her.
Barbara will be on crutches for awhile, but she'll come back somehow especially with Dick around for the rehab. If he had not been so quick she would be in a wheelchair instead of on crutches, but hindsight often triggers flashes of what could have happen if things had gone differently.
Dinah's thigh is still mending as is her throat, but at least she is able to speak though the subsonic cry can't be tested until her throat is fully healed so for now she is off-duty as is Oliver. The chest wounds were bad, but they got the bullets out plus they had to drain to stem the internal bleeding.
Catwoman and Tsukuri were brought in later though kept sedated through it all in order for the gas to run its course. The same is done for Montoya, but it appears Helena is the only who had overcome the effects without medical help.
As day turns to night, he takes the next watch as Dinah is looking to rest her leg and probably cozy up with Oliver. His still healing wounds still felt tender as well, but he went after her knowing that he might make it worse except on some level he actually felt guilt of his own for his acts the night the four of them were shot. However the way Dick spoke to him during their search had given him the impression that she felt infinitely worse than him. It was also breaking promises of a kind by stepping in the way of a gun, but it was halfway selfish and halfway selfless act. Still it had him shook up though they had to pull through this somehow, it is after all what they have always done.
However this time they would both have something fresh to carry and he could tell it well as he watches her sleep albeit fitfully at times. He reclines in his seat next to her bed and tries to get some sleep of his own, but somehow it is broken and random. He rouses to sound of her screaming and does his best to calm her, reassure her.
"Not real, nightmare, you are dead, they are all dead… failure… failed…" sobs Helena.
"This is real, I am real, you are here with me, you saw a surreal nightmare," insists Vic.
She continues to cry so he climbs into bed next to her and he feels his undershirt dampen from her tears, but right now it is better to just let her cry, for the cycles take as long as they need to run because otherwise it means limbo of a bad kind.
"Shh… just cry… shirt's not important anyway," whispers Vic.
There is nothing left to do now except sit in silence as tears stream down her face She eventually falls back to sleep though she clings to him tightly, but he won't move, he needs to be here, be her anchor to reality, to remind her that there is something to wake up for now.
I follow tangents, but this is one that keeps going without a fixed answer because it doesn't exist in a constant state for it is in flux, such is love, such is Helena.
He strokes her hair wondering if her being in this state is his fault. She starts mumbling in her sleep.
"Babydoll… where are you?" murmurs Helena.
"Right here… Helena," sighs Vic.
She weakly smiles with her eyes closed and her grip on him tightens slightly. He drifts off to sleep though doesn't note that his grip is equally tighter on her as well. He had to admit inwardly she had taken hold of him in more ways than just her ability to pin him down wherever they went together.
A/N 1: Helena gets a taste of her own personal hell from a rather familiar source, inspired by TNBA episode Over The Edge. Her active participation in it is a reversal of Barbara dying concept. In this version Barbara, Dinah, Oliver, and Vic perish from the gun shot wounds in the last chapter.
A/N 2: The consequences are likewise more fatal as it affects apparently the entire Bat Family and perhaps the League as a whole.
A/N 3: As for Helena wearing the Question look, I think that speaks for itself. As for an explanation, she does it as a way to be close to him as she believes he is dead until later. Sad, sappy, romantic, but that's them in some sense of the word.
A/N 4: It felt like a plot gamble to put them through this, but somehow I always found the episodes that made me think were often ones that had such plot intensity that they become favorites of mine.
A/N 5: I wasn't aware immediately that Jeffrey Combs was the new V.O. for Scarecrow during TNBA. However Combs has already proven a versatile actor on-screen too, best example ST:DS9. His V.O and the revamp Scarecrow look actually scared me in contrast to the BtAS variants.
