Chapter Text
The first thing Helena does after — well, after — is sleep.
When she finally wakes up, the ethereal orange glow of the streetlight outside her apartment is filtering through the window, painting strange shadows over the walls. There’s a faint headache pounding behind her eyes, and her mouth is cotton-dry and tastes like sour milk. She groans incoherently and swats at the nightstand until her hand lands on her phone.
1:23 AM, and the brightness of the screen nearly blinds her. Helena drops the phone and sags back against the mattress as it dawns on her that she’s slept for almost fourteen hours straight. God, her sleep schedule’s going to be absolutely fucked.
She heads straight for the shower, because she’d collapsed straight into bed when she’d gotten back to her apartment the previous morning and she’s pretty sure that she’ll go insane if she has to spend any more time covered in a layer of grime and sweat and blood, most of it not her own, and probably taco grease on top of all that.
Helena allows herself a much longer shower than she’d normally take, and when she finally steps out onto the tile, the mirror over the sink is fogged over with condensation. She swipes a hand over the glass, clearing a large enough patch that when she catches sight of her reflection, she halts and stares.
Dark, mottled bruises — not many of them, thankfully — stand out against her pale skin, and her eyes seem tired and strangely vulnerable without her usual makeup. There’s a split in her lip, evidently reopened during her shower and now leaking a meager dribble of blood. She darts her tongue out to probe it and winces as her mouth fills with the taste of copper.
Once she’s combed her hair and brushed her teeth (carefully avoiding the cut on her lip), Helena realizes that she’s ravenous and heads for the fridge.
It’s empty.
Fuck.
Alright, it’s not quite empty. There’s a lightly-expired quart of milk on the door, two eggs, and half a wedge of Parmesan — the real kind, imported from Italy, not the bottled chalk dust from the supermarket. An omelette, then, Helena decides.
She eats said omelette on the couch and mops up the remnants with a stale piece of bread she’d found in the pantry. When she’s done, she sets the plate on the couch cushion next to her and checks the time — 2:36.
Helena stares at the wall, listens to the distant wail of sirens, and wonders what the hell she’s going to do.
---
The thing is —
The thing is, she has no idea what comes after. The past fifteen years, she’s had a singular goal: avenge her family or die trying.
And that’s great, that’s fine, but now she’s actually done it, and Helena genuinely doesn’t know where to go from here.
She’s never given any thought to what she’d do once she killed the men who murdered her family in front of her. Maybe, she realizes, she never actually thought she’d make it this far.
It’s a damn depressing thought, but the more Helena considers it, the more she begins to believe it.
I thought I’d be dead by now.
She almost laughs, incredulous and maybe a bit hysterical, and she claps a hand over her mouth before she can and tells herself quite sternly to get ahold of herself and get to work.
She stands and carries her plate to the sink.
---
By the time the sun comes up, she’s cleaned the kitchen, swept the floor, scrubbed the bathroom, hand-washed her gear (and watched with interest as the water ran red with blood in the sink), cleaned and polished her crossbow, inventoried her weapons, and called Luca in Sicily.
When she tells him it’s done, I’ve killed them all, he congratulates her with pride in his voice and asks her if she needs anything.
She tells him she needs more arrows, and by the time they’ve sorted out exactly which kinds she needs and how many, their conversation has returned to a typical level of business-like neutrality.
He doesn’t ask if she wants to come back to Sicily, and Helena doesn’t ask if she can. When she hangs up, she feels — something. Sad, maybe? She doesn’t know. Nine years old is too young to grasp the full spectrum of human emotions, and her family’s death had pretty much marked the end of any emotional refinement beyond ‘channel everything into rage, and channel rage into revenge, and suppress anything that gets in the way.’
It’s not important, anyway.
The bodega on the corner opens at six in the morning every day, so she makes a grocery list. She’d tried going to the big supermarket on 44th and 11th when she’d first moved to Gotham, but she’d gotten as far as the cereal aisle before she’d given up — there were too many choices, and it was pissing her off.
(Or maybe it had been another emotion entirely — either way, ‘pissed off’ was something she could deal with, so she’d decided to hate that grocery store and now shopped exclusively at the bodega, which only had one brand of anything if they had it at all.
It was easier that way.)
---
When she gets back from the bodega, Dinah’s standing outside her door, leaned against the wall with one eyebrow cocked.
“Um,” Helena says, very confused. “Hi?”
“Hey there.” Dinah eyes the shopping bags in her arms and smirks. “Need a hand?”
Helena clears her throat and tries very hard to figure out what the hell is going on. “I — sure. Yes. Thank — thank you.”
Dinah takes two of the bags, freeing Helena to dig out her keys. “No problem.”
Helena can still feel Dinah’s eyes on her as she attempts to unlock the door, missing the keyhole the first time and wondering what she did to deserve this kind of torture.
Probably all the homicide, she thinks ironically, and the door finally swings open. Thank God.
Dinah follows her in, looking around the apartment with curiosity and eventually setting the grocery bags on the counter. They unload the groceries in silence for long enough that Helena feels ready to snap from frustration. Finally, Dinah surveys the food-laden countertop and remarks, "Jesus, you must have the blandest diet in the world."
That does it. "Did you come here just to mock my food, or —"
Dinah laughs, because of course she does, and raises her hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, damn. Remember what Renee said in the diner, about cleaning up Gotham?"
"Yes," Helena replies slowly. It was yesterday, of course she remembers.
"And we worked really well together taking down Sionis, right?"
"Yes."
Dinah leans forward, a gleam in her eyes. "So what if we kept doing it?"
Helena stares at her. "Kept doing…"
"Kicking ass and taking names! You, me, Renee — Harley if she wants, but it doesn't seem like her style. I mean, I'm out of a job, and so is Renee, and hey — if you don't have anything else to do, then why not?"
Helena considers this. She does not, in fact, have anything else to do. She also has an abundance of weapons, money, and time, and a significant lack of purpose, currently. And even though she's always worked alone, Helena has to admit — it might be nice to be part of a team.
So she shrugs as nonchalantly as possible and says, "Sure, alright."
"Great!" Dinah grins at her, and Helena smiles tentatively back despite herself. "Here's my number —" She scribbles it onto a scrap of paper and thrusts it at Helena. "Text me so I have your number, okay? I'm gonna go talk to Renee, see if I can get her on board." She heads to the door, then stops and points at Helena. "And I mean it about the groceries. Mix it up a little, girl, variety's the spice of life!"
"Okay," Helena says faintly, and Dinah sends her a smirk over her shoulder and slips out the door.
Helena diligently applies herself to the task of putting away the remaining groceries, and when she finishes, she grabs her phone and adds Dinah to her contact list, bringing the number of contacts up to a grand total of five. She hesitates over the message, typing and backspacing until she finally gets fed up with herself and just sends, This is Helena.
Within moments, the phone buzzes, the screen lighting up with Dinah's reply: thx!! :)
Helena likes the sideways smile, so she sends one back and finds that she's smiling too.