***
Eyes of Youth
By Ashley
***
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't try to reach me, I'm already dead
The pain when it grips me, for things that I've done
Well, I try to make you proud
But for crying out loud
Just give me a chance to hide away
Exhaustion takes over, will this someday be over?
~Jars of Clay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
***
Prologue – Shattered
***
The wind was cold. Not brisk, not gentle. Cold. The kind of cold that burned your face, that
swept the cloud of your breath away before you could finish exhaling. The kind
of cold that tore away truth from falsehood, that stripped you down until all
you could see was a clear view of yourself. And how blind you
had been in the first place.
Was it possible to sink lower than where she had started?
She’d thought all realizations that needed to be made had been, that her
questions were answered, that she fully understood all she could.
She was wrong.
And stupid Vic had been right. Again.
Helena let out a
ragged breath, still tasting the salt of her tears that had slid underneath her
mask. Her hair felt numb against her face. She drew her knees to her chin, and
for the umpteenth time that night she glanced at a building about a
quarter-mile west of her. The smoke had cleared some, the flames put out long
ago. Squad car lights flashed their colors, an ambulance still transporting the
former occupants to and from Gotham Memorial
Hospital.
Back and forth, back and forth she had watched its movements
down the blocks of city street. And once it had
disappeared from sight into the fog, as always, she would return her gaze to
the smoldering building a quarter-mile away.
***
Part One – Holocaust on 34th
Street
***
Flames shot up from the carpet, threatening to snatch her
and drag her through the floor with them.
“Daddy! Daddy! Help, I’m…I’m
scared!” she screamed as another burning limb crashed onto the coffee table,
sparks flying out, almost catching her. Crawling on all fours she reached the
corner behind the sofa.
“…Daddy?” she whimpered to the increasing smoke and flame
surrounding her.
Why wasn’t he saving her?
***
“Sam! We need that water over here!” “Move!
There’s still people in there!” “Jack! Where’s my
husband! Jack!” “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to stay back, please.” “But all my
possessions are in there! My money! My jewelry!”
“Marie! Thank God you’re all right!” “Get this man to the emergency room!”
“Officer, my little girl is in there!”
The screaming was endless. One could barely distinguish one
voice from the rest of the crowd. Everything muddled together. Huddles of people
waited on the streets – for their loved ones, a sign they could safely retrieve
what remained of their belongings. Some stayed frozen on the sidewalk, gaping
wordlessly as the holocaust grew despite the efforts of the firemen and their
large hoses.
Huntress swooped in close, landing on a roof of a nearby
building. Another fire, she thought. Her other costume had only just stopped
smelling like burnt Kevlar a few weeks ago. Now she’d have to put this one
through the same sad cycle.
She eyed the situation grimly, listening.
“Please, sir – you have to let me in there! My daughter’s
there! Fourth floor, please!”
She didn’t pause to identify the speaker. A quick firing of
a line, a crash and a shattering of glass, and she was inside.
Holding her cape around her as a shield, she listened,
wished her night-vision goggles were in better condition. The smoke was already
clawing at her throat; her eyes were beginning to water.
The kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedrooms were empty. She
repeatedly called out, “Hello? Anyone here?” but never received an answer.
Maneuvering in between burning doorways she came to a startled halt as part of
a door fell in front of her.
Then she heard it – a sniffling in the next room. She leapt
over the fiery wood blocking her way and dodged the falling drywall from
upstairs, finally reaching the couch.
She pushed it away and found a young girl about seven or
eight huddled up in the corner, terrified and coughing up a storm. The girl
loosened her grip on the stuffed pony she was guarding and looked up hopefully
at the footsteps coming to rescue her, but at the sight of the costumed woman
in front of her, she screamed and backed into the corner even more, covering
her smoke-filled eyes with her fists.
“Go away!”
Huntress had dealt with fear before. Kneeling swiftly, she
held out a gloved hand. “I’m not going to hurt you, honey. I’m going to bring
you to your daddy who’s waiting outside.” She hoped her voice sounded gentle,
not raspy from the smoke.
The girl sniffed.
“It’s okay, sweetheart – I’m not going to hurt you.” She
tried to smile at her, but the child didn’t see and shrank away as if the
Huntress was a rattlesnake.
“Come on,” Huntress encouraged, more anxiously this time.
The girl still wouldn’t move.
“I’m not here to hurt you, I promise,” she repeated, and stretched her arm further. “I want to help you.”
Flames were growing wildly into the room; the smoke getting
thicker by the minute. The girl’s muffled voice came with a cough. “I don’t
believe you.”
Huntress prayed the rafters overhead wouldn’t collapse
before they got out. “Why?” she asked the trembling child. She didn’t want to
sound annoyed, but this was getting ridiculous.
With surprising calm, the girl brought her arms down from
her face and stared into the Huntress’s eyes with her own penetrating gaze. Her
eyes were a deep green, Huntress noticed.
“You kill.”
***
Huntress wanted to demand the girl explain herself. She
wanted to get out of the room and get the child out of harms way. She wanted to
understand how did this little girl knew.
But she couldn’t, couldn’t do anything but crouch there and
face off a pair of accusing green eyes.
How could this little girl....know?
Know?
Did that question then mean her own admittance that
indeed….she had?
But what significance was that? Yes, she had killed – in
self defense, to protect a life, to avenge the blood of her family, to stop a
crazed thug from ever hurting anyone again. This was nothing knew, and she had
never felt any other way on the subject. And why shouldn’t this little girl
know of her methods?
“You kill....You
kill...You kill....”
The words echoed in her mind. There was something unnerving
about this child possessing such information. Perhaps her father had witnessed
something, or maybe even been involved in one of the operations Huntress had
brought down. And of course, rumors existed, but…this girl treated her
knowledge as fact.
But it is fact, Huntress thought in her own
defense.
Somehow that didn’t make her feel any less uneasy. Was that
confession just another condemning piece of evidence now stocked against her?
Somehow the accusation felt true and therefore wrong. Somehow she felt
different, and it wasn’t a good kind of different.
Huntress barely registered the increase of smoke and flame
that had continued to invade the room. She heard wheezing and felt her eyes
stinging but the sounds were foreign and distant. She could only hear and
understand one thing.
“You. Kill.”
And understanding, she realized, was the worst feeling in
the world.
***
Part Two – The Watcher
***
As the last of the sirens died and blended among the other
sounds of the city nightlife, he crept out from his hiding place.
No fatalities, that was good. A few had some minor injuries
or burns, but on the whole everything was fine, if you discounted the fact that
the entire apartment complex would have to be rebuilt.
He glanced up and frowned. He whipped out his binoculars, but
by that time the only thing he saw was a purple cape disappearing behind a far
rooftop.
He shot out a jumpline and began
his ascent upwards with swift, noiseless movements.
***
She found the window and opened it almost blindly, fingers
trembling awkwardly. Once inside, she slammed it down and locked it, suddenly
afraid.
She unclasped her cape and it fell to the floor. She peeled
off her gloves, followed by her belt, all thrown halfheartedly onto the sofa’s
plush cushions. Lastly, she removed the mask, which now felt stiff against her
skin.
Her entire costume smelled of smoke.
***
“Yeah, I’m en route…say, an hour or two?....The
Redbird? It’s parked near the Fashion District. I’m on my way to get it... I
know it doesn’t take that long, Alfred, just…I just need to do this one last
thing before I turn in for the night, ‘kay?...No, Bruce doesn’t know…Yes, I’m still on probation…..’preciate it, Alf….yeah, see ya.”
Robin landed on the rooftop and swung himself upside down so
he could hang by his knees from one of the fire escape railings. Tentatively he
tapped the window.
***
Her costume lay on top of the washing machine, staring at
her as she emptied the dryer and put the new wet load inside it. Now in sweat
pants and a Gotham Knights t-shirt, Helena
reached for the deep purple of the cape. As she lifted it, the mask slid off
and floated to the floor.
She locked her eyes with its empty holes.
The smell of smoke returned to her newly shampooed hair, the
heat and the grime to her body. She dropped the cape and shut the door behind
her, her retinas still burning with the image of two green eyes boring into her
soul.
***
Helena hadn’t
been able to say anything when she first saw him, he noted. She was obviously
shaken by something, but he doubted it was his arrival at her window. She knew
he was still on “probation” as Batman called it, ever since the Ferwald case. But his visits were not unusual.
She refused to look him directly in the eye, but he took her
shrug as invitation enough to come inside.
Entering cautiously, he managed a small “Hey.”
***
Not now.
The last thing she needed was for the kid to see her crying.
The last thing she needed was a teenager feeling sorry for her.
But in the
confinements of her own apartment, she was forced to
give a response.
“Hi, kid.”
***
Part Three – Afraid to Fall
***
Even in the dimness of the room he could see she had been crying, and he
was automatically uncomfortable. It would have been one thing if she was Cass
or even Stephanie, but Helena was
his elder. The seven or eight years that separated them were small enough that
he could consider her a friend and not just a coworker or former teacher. But
those same years provided a big enough gap to prevent him from being more than
a friend at arms length.
He wished he could tell her everything – more than what she
knew, which wasn’t anything in comparison to what he
and Bruce and Dick and Babs knew. It simply wasn’t fair that she had all this
information on her exposed to half the Bat-squad, had had her whole life laid
out and examined before them, and in
turn all they gave her was a fragile alliance that she only accepted when she
was desperate. Because she knew it only existed according to their will, free
for them to break and form as they pleased. It would never hold – she would
always manage to screw up in someone’s eyes and that, it seemed, was the end of
it. It was an acceptance she had given up trying for long ago.
He felt that was the very reason she deserved it.
But she acted differently towards him, like an older sister
of sorts. She teased him of course, but it was never of the accusing tone she
resorted to with Nightwing or Batman. She trusted him more than she did Oracle.
And they worked well together, despite the animosity between her and the rest
of the gang. Helena was someone he
wanted to help and look up to in the same moment.
But in the aftermath of the discoveries Helena
had made in the past year, Robin knew that now he may not be close enough to
offer comfort through his alter ego, or even simply “Tim.” As much as he valued
his friendship with her, he also needed to honor his loyalty to Bruce and
everyone else. It wasn’t that he thought she’d burn all Wayne Enterprises
buildings the minute she learned their identities. It was because the
possession of the knowledge meant you were trusted, and, he recognized,
vice-versa. Until both parties could do that, Helena
wouldn’t be able to know that Barbara Gordon had once been Batgirl, or that
Batman lost his parents at the same age Helena
lost hers.
And until he could talk freely about everyone in the
Batcave, he never would be close enough.
But it didn’t help that he had never seen her cry before,
either.
***
“You kill....You
kill...You kill....”
The echoing wouldn’t cease.
Her head rested heavily in her hands like a dead weight.
“You wanna talk about it?” he had asked.
“Not really,” she’d wanted to say.
She told him anyway.
***
A scream from what seemed like far away brought her back.
Wordlessly she scooped up the child – despite the girl’s
protests – and swirled her cape around her. Narrowly missing a deluge of
drywall she dove out the remains of the window, shooting a quick line that
wrapped around a lamppost and eased their fall so she could land on both feet,
the girl and her pony tucked safely in her arms.
“Caroline!”
“Daddy!”
Caroline was instantly snatched from her grasp and enveloped
in the embrace of whom Huntress presumed to be her father. The man turned,
about to escape the chaos of the scene and hurry to a more secure shelter, but
abruptly whirled to face the Huntress and whispered a quick “Thank you.”
All she could do was nod in reply.
***
“She knew.”
That’s all Helena
had been able to say.
“….I’m sorry,” Tim said softly.
Her lips twitched in a small attempt at a smile. “For what?”
she asked wryly.
“I dunno…everything.” He took a
seat at the stool at the end of the counter, watched her sink into the pillows
of the couch and stare blankly at the television.
Silence for a few minutes, then:
“I can’t believe she said that.”
“She’s young, right? Probably heard stories…you know, all
that urban legend stuff. Kids have wild imaginations anyway…”
“Tim, she called me a killer,” Helena
interrupted him sharply.
“But you’re not -- I mean you haven’t -- not since--”
“Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,
right? Same situation, different word choice.”
“You’re not a mass murderer, Helena.”
She smiled at him again, but this one made him feel like a
fumbling child. She looked at him like she would an ignorant little boy who
didn’t understand that his mother was asking if he’d eaten the last cookie
because were splotches of chocolate all over his chin.
“No,” she said. Then she sobered. “But she’s right.”
She rested her chin on her folded hands. “I’ve put bodies in
the morgue. I’ve left people to die. I’ve used more violence than what was
necessary. And I didn’t care.” She said the last part so desperately.
“Obviously you do,” Robin said pointedly.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Now that a little girl hit me over
the head with it like a club. Even Batman couldn’t make me see it. Not you or
Nightwing or Oracle could make me get it. I was so stupid.”
She yanked a hand through her hair. “And now what’s done is
done and I…I can’t take it back….”
As the Boy Wonder mused over this for a moment, he cast a
glance back over at her and caught her brushing back tears. But she recovered
almost instantly, stood and made her way to a cabinet,
produced two glasses and filled them both with ice water. She handed him one,
and he sipped at it gratefully.
“He know you’re here?” Helena
asked him.
“No,” he replied.
“You’re a good kid, Tim.”
“Thanks.” He finished his drink. “Can I ask you something?”
Her glass to her lips, she raised an eyebrow to prompt him.
“If I…accidentally ran over a dog while doing rounds one
night, would you forgive me?”
“People are hardly dogs, Tim,” she reprimanded. “And the
things I did were hardly accidents.”
“I know,” he cringed. “But would you?”
“Yes.”
“And if I did it again one night, and again the next night,
would you still forgive me?”
She attempted to interrupt. “That’s not even--”
“Would you?” he
asked again, and she could feel his eyes pouring into hers even behind the
mask.
“That’s not fair!”
“Would you?”
She sighed. “…yes.”
Tim put his empty cup in the sink.
“And if, afterwards, I felt so guilty,” he continued, “that
I decided to start all over – clean slate, and all that jazz – would you let
me?”
“You suck at analogies, kid.”
He didn’t laugh. She exhaled frustratedly.
“Listen…Tim…. I don’t think Batman or Oracle or anyone else can be as forgiving
or understanding as you – I don’t even know if I can!”
“But isn’t it worth a try?”
She sighed again, leaning against the sink, her stare
searching the masked eyes of the boy in front of her; she realized, as she had
so many times before, that he was much older beyond his years, and that scared
her.
“There’s a line,” she said, “that when crossed it is
impossible to retrace your steps and begin again.”
“I’m not saying you should go back,” the teen insisted.
“Just start over.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Helena
said, her gaze now focused on a spot on the silver faucet.
“Maybe…but you have to start somewhere, don’t you?”
She sighed. “Not what I meant,” she said softly.
“Then what did you
mean?”
Her eyes snapped back up to him and she blinked. “Forget it,
Boy Wonder. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her tone was dismissive, but there was
a sorrowful undertone that Tim could not ignore.
Helena turned her back towards him
and began to scrub the dishes robotically, her mind noticeably not on her task.
Robin reached out a hand as if to lay it on her shoulder,
but quickly remembered his place and let fall back to rest at his side. He
stole a look at the oven clock, and realized he had better head back to the
Cave before Batman noticed his prolonged absence. Knowing Bruce though, he
probably already had.
He stopped at the last minute though, one foot out the fire
exit. “What are you going to do?” he asked her.
“I wish I knew,” she said, her tone distant. She dried her
hands on a dish towel. “But some kid who’s too smart for his own good made an
interesting suggestion.”
“And?”
“And…I don’t really know, Tim. I honestly don’t.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He frowned slightly, watching Helena
brushed an imaginary dust bunny off her arm.
“Helena?”
She looked at him.
“I won’t tell Batman if you don’t want me to.”
The side of her mouth quirked up. “Won’t
make any difference either way. You do what you want.”
“Look...for what it’s worth, I
think you’re pretty cool…”
Her eyes dropped to the floor momentarily, and he wasn’t
sure if it was out of shame or modesty.
“And I think…. You’re going to be okay.”
At that her eyes darted upwards, but the Boy Wonder was
nowhere in sight.
Helena whispered
silently to herself, the tears beginning to fall again.
“I wish I could believe that.”
***
Epilogue – Picking Up Pieces
***
A young, dark haired woman climbed the rain-splattered
marble steps that lead to the great double doors of the Gotham Cathedral. She
entered the quiet, somber vestibule, keeping her eyes lowered. She dipped her
fingers in the holy water and crossed herself, making her way to the tucked-away
confessionals near the sanctuary. Her movements were automatic, her thoughts
were elsewhere.
She found an empty booth and kneeled, crossing herself again
and saying a short, silent prayer. Several times she opened her mouth, several
times her throat closed up and she almost choked. She almost ducked back out,
considered sprinting through the dark all the way back to her apartment, but
finally, Helena spoke.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has
been...." She paused awkwardly. "...years…since my
last confession."
The End
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's a long way from the moon up to the sun
It's a longer road ahead of me, the road that I’ve begun
Stop to think of all the time I’ve lost
Start to think of all the bridges that I’ve burned that must be crossed
~Switchfoot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: Opening lyrics
belong to Jars of Clay’s “He”; ending one belongs to Switchfoot’s
“Home”.
A/N: bnjammin
– this was a wreck before and you turned it around. Thank you for making this
so much of what it is. I’ll keep you for a while. ;)