Work Text:
Helena was grading her students’ essays when her phone rang. It was her personal cell, not the one for hero-related emergencies. God damn it. This better not be Kara trying to drag her into another girls’ night. She was ready to chew out the person on the other end when she noticed the caller ID. She’d never bothered to put his name on her phone, just the word “Babydoll.”
He spoke before she got the chance to say anything. “Helena.”
She rolled her eyes at his lack of conversational skills. “Hey, Babydoll. Miss me already?”
He didn’t answer. He just repeated, “Helena.”
She sat up straighter in her chair. Something was off. Her boyfriend wasn’t an expressive type of guy, so she’d learned to read him pretty well. His voice was always sort of whispery, but firm. His breathing didn’t shake like this. He didn’t repeat himself. Something was definitely wrong.
She was starting to get worried. “Use your words, babe. Are you hurt?”
He answered quietly. “No.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Not at the moment.”
The tension in her gut eased a little. At least he wasn’t in a life-or-death situation. She was still concerned. “You’re freaking me out here, Vic. What the hell’s wrong?”
“I…don’t know.” He paused. She could almost hear him trembling. “I shouldn’t have called. Sorry to bother you. Just go back to work.”
Oh, hell no. She wasn’t about to let him do his usual disappearing act. “Not happening. Where are you?”
“...My apartment.”
“Okay. I’m coming over.” she announced.
He tried to protest. “That’s really not necessary.”
She put her phone on speaker, tossed it onto her desk, and started fumbling to find some shoes. “You don’t get a vote. I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”
His voice was starting to sound a bit more like normal. “I have never done anything ‘stupid’ in my life.”
“Uh-huh. Just promise me you won’t die until I get there.”
He chuckled weakly. “You know I don’t make promises.”
“You’re impossible. I’m hanging up now.”
She went along with their normal banter until she hung up. Vic didn’t need to hear her panic, which is exactly what she was doing on the inside. Something was seriously off with him. Vic never called anyone for no reason. Especially not when he was upset. He could be a lot like Bruce Wayne sometimes.
She probably broke a few traffic laws on her way to Hub City. She didn’t particularly care if any cops were around. Let ‘em try to arrest her. No one gets between Helena Bertinelli and her man. Thankfully, she didn’t have to drive any cops off the road.
She let herself in with her key to his apartment. You wouldn’t believe how much convincing it took for him to make a copy of it. Vic argued it was a security risk to have more than one key to anything. Helena argued that her status as his girlfriend trumped his paranoia. He only agreed after she stole one of his hard drives and threatened to chuck it in a storm drain. Yep, this was their relationship.
His apartment was a disaster zone, but that was typical. Notebooks and loose papers were strewn across every surface. Piles of books littered the floor like a maze. Half a dozen laptops had been left open. Some of them were dead or broken. His famous theory board was covered in photos, newspaper articles, and handwritten sticky notes. Pieces of red string connected things that would seem totally unrelated to anyone else. Helena figured about sixty percent of it was crackpot nonsense.
Victor looked like a mess. His fedora and overcoat had been lazily tossed onto a chair. His tie hung undone around the collar of his yellow shirt. The faceless mask was removed, but his hair was still colored black. He always kept a clear distinction between when he was The Question and when he was Victor Sage. Being in-between like this wasn’t normal for him. Not like it was for Helena. She found him pacing around the room, mumbling to himself and writing furiously on a notepad.
“Vic?”
He didn’t seem to notice her. “...Illuminati, amino acids, and something else… Crop circles?… No, that’s not right. Petrochemicals?... Ugh, think . Gotta get it right--”
“Victor.”
He stopped pacing. When he saw her, he threw his notepad onto the coffee table face-down. His posture straightened as he cleared his throat. “I said you didn’t have to come over. You have papers to grade. I’m sure your students put a lot of work into them.”
She snorted. “Yeah right. Those little brats don’t put half a brain cell into anything. I’ll just slap them all with C’s in the morning.”
“I’m pretty sure that goes against school policy.” He noted dryly.
“Eh, sue me.” She sat down on the couch, pulling him along with her. “Now, are you gonna tell me what’s got you acting like this or not?”
He sulked for a moment. But he already knew that fighting her stubbornness was a losing battle. “I was just doing some research. Looking into the deep-seeded connection between children’s toys and rudimentary brainwashing technology.”
“So, your normal brand of crazy? Got it.”
He ignored the quip, but his eyebrows twitched in annoyance. “I got a bit sidetracked. Started going over some old Justice League files. You know how much I love to revisit previous cases.” (She wished she didn’t.) “I was data mining through some LexCorp shell companies. One thing led to another, and I found some files leftover from when Cadmus was still active.”
She got a bad feeling where this might be going.
Vic stared absently at the floor. “I should’ve stopped. I usually do before it gets bad. It just caught up with me too fast. The memories of… well, you know…”
“When they kidnapped you.” She finished for him.
“Yeah.”
The air between them suddenly felt heavy. Vic started picking apart a loose thread on the couch. His eyes seemed like they were somewhere else. Helena didn’t have to wonder where his mind went. Damn it.
“My heart started pounding. I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” He paused for a moment. “I realize now that my symptoms align with what you’d call a trauma-induced panic attack.”
She so desperately wanted to say ‘no shit, Sherlock.’ She held back because now really wasn’t the time for jokes. Also because he got terribly offended when people compared him to Sherlock Holmes.
“You were right to call me.” She said finally. Vic just shook his head. “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t shut down on me. Let’s talk this out.”
He scoffed like the idea was ridiculous. Then again, neither of them were very good at talking. Their relationship was simple. They watched each other’s backs in a fight. They solved cases. They bickered about stupid nothings. Their idea of intimacy was sharing microwave dinners, watching sappy romance movies, and making love while the credits rolled.
They were comfortable this way. There was no reason to learn each other’s deep dark secrets. He didn’t pry about the nights she woke up shouting for her parents. She didn’t ask why he would disappear into his work for days on end.
And they sure as hell didn’t talk about Cadmus. That one week where they both wondered if they'd ever see each other again. Or those two weeks he spent in the hospital afterward. He acted like it was no big deal. She thought he just needed time to process, so she played along. But it was hard pretending not to notice the electrical burns scarred onto his body.
They never talked about the things that really mattered. They loved each other, and that was good enough for them. But what if it wasn’t enough anymore?
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Vic said.
“Bull. Just because we don’t talk, doesn't mean there isn’t anything to talk about.”
He leveled her with a critical gaze. “Says the queen of compartmentalization.”
She crossed her arms. “Sure, call me a hypocrite, I probably deserve it. My point still stands.”
“You’re overreacting, Helena.”
She did not like being brushed off. “No, you’re under reacting. That phone call I just got from you wasn’t normal.”
“I had a temporary lapse in fortitude. It was a moment of weakness. I’ll recover--”
That made her angry for some reason. “God damn it, Vic. Would you shut up and listen to me?” He stared at her, taken aback by her outburst. “You always say it was just another case, but it wasn’t. I saw how that crap affected you. And you weren’t the only one.”
Vic blinked at her slowly. His expression was full of confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Do you honestly think I wasn’t worried about you? You were missing for over a week! I didn’t know if you were alive, or dead, or bleeding out in a ditch somewhere. I was going crazy trying to find you. I was so desperate I went to that Super Boy-Scout from outer space for help. I thought I was going to lose you. I was scared, Q.
And you wouldn’t believe how angry I was when we finally found you. I was going to kill that scumbag they had torturing you. I wanted to hunt him down and tear him to shreds. The only reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving you alone in the hospital. So I just shoved that anger down like everything else.”
Vic was silent for a long time. “I never thought about how you might’ve felt. I’m sorry.”
She just shook her head. For a master sleuth, her boyfriend was hopelessly oblivious. “I know, Babydoll. It’s okay.”
A moment of quiet passed between the two heroes. Neither of them spoke. Vic continued his restless pursuit of pulling the cushion threads apart. Helena glanced at the notepad he’d thrown on the table earlier. If he thought he was being sneaky by laying it face-down, he was wrong. She reached for it.
“So, what were you writing?”
As soon as she touched the notepad, he placed a heavy hand on top of hers. HIs face turned grim in an instant. “You don’t want to read that, trust me.”
His reaction only made her want to read it more. She gave him a look of reassurance. The tension between them was almost palpable. With her free hand, she gently loosened his grip. He didn’t try very hard to stop her. She turned the notepad around. Deciphering his chicken-scratch handwriting was a challenge. She had to go over it a few times before she really made sense of it. What she read made her very angry.
“Tell me this isn’t what it looks like.” she demanded.
He ducked his head away from her glare. “I needed to remember everything. To make sure I didn’t reveal any information. Anything that could be used against us. That’s why I had to write down what was said, every single word.”
For a second, she was too shocked to say anything. “Why would you ever put yourself through that? How could you think that was okay?”
He tugged harder at the thread between his fingers. “Because I have to. Any information in their hands is power they have over us. Even while disbanded or imprisoned, villains are always a threat. What if some of their lackeys are still out there? What if Cadmus was bigger than we realized?”
“It wouldn’t matter.” She argued fiercely. “You told me and Superman that you didn’t give any useful intel. You just made up some conspiracy nonsense to annoy them, right?”
His voice was getting frantic again. “What if I was wrong? They drugged me a few times. I wasn’t thinking clearly. What if something slipped and I don't remember it?”
Did he just say they drugged him? Fuck. How could he ever want to relive that nightmare? Why torment himself after everything he went through? She just didn't understand him sometimes.
“So you thought this was the answer? Scripting out your fucking interrogations?!” She shoved the notepad in his face and started pacing around the room. “God, you are the most careless, self-sacrificing idiot I have ever met!”
He stood up and followed her. “Think what you want, but I have to do this. Even the smallest bit of information could be used against the Justice League. Against our friends. I can’t be responsible for that, Helena!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted. Fear and desperation showed deeper than his stubbornness. Helena could feel him shaking. She placed her hands over his and squeezed. He didn’t pull away. He usually did when she tried to touch him during an argument. As she looked into his eyes, all she could think was that he didn't deserve this.
Her anger evaporated in an instant. “Cadmus is gone. They’ll never hurt anyone again. That’s what you’re responsible for.”
He just shook his head. He didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t. The man was too negligent of his own needs. He blamed himself for every little thing that went wrong. Even something like being kidnapped and tortured for information. There wasn’t a thing in the world she wouldn’t do to take that pain away from him.
“If you really believe that, then you don’t understand me.” He said grimly.
She placed a gentle palm on his cheek. A soft chuckle escaped her. “Vic, I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who could ever understand you. But I’m the closest anyone’s gonna get. So maybe you should give me a little credit.”
Instead of smiling back, he just deflated even more. “I don’t know why you go through the trouble. It hardly seems worth it for someone like me.”
That felt like a stab to her heart. “Don’t say that.”
“Some days I hardly feel like a person, let alone one worthy of your affections. I don’t deserve you, Helena.”
He tried to pull away from her, but she didn’t let him. She rested her forehead against his shoulder. Her voice came out like a whisper. “You wanna know a secret? I think the same thing about you all the time.”
“What?”
“Mhm. You do so much with that big brain of yours. All I’m good at is throwing punches. We just don’t make sense.”
He was quiet for a moment. What he said next wasn’t what she expected. “We’re regular people fighting alongside aliens, magicians, and metahumans. Nothing about either of us makes sense. But life would be boring if it made sense all the time, wouldn’t it?”
She snickered softly. “You’re just saying that because you wouldn't have any conspiracies to solve.”
“And you wouldn’t have any mobsters to beat senseless.”
The two of them laughed. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Her body melted into his embrace. Both of them stayed like that for a while. The tension between them faded. The rest of the world shouldn’t matter when they’re together. Nothing could touch them here.
Helena pulled away after a few minutes. Vic’s gaze followed her curiously. She grabbed the notepad from earlier, tore out the pages he’d written on, crumpled them up, and dropped the paper ball into his hands.
“Screw Cadmus.” she announced.
He looked like he was about to argue. “Helena…”
“Don’t make me beat you senseless.”
“Oh, alright. Screw Cadmus.”
Reluctantly, he dropped the papers into the trash bin. He looked better now. Less anxious. He wasn’t holding himself so tensely anymore. His smile actually reached his eyes this time. That was a good sign.
Helena nodded in satisfaction. “I’m gonna burn that later. But right now, I’m hungry. Do you want pizza or Chinese?”
“Tacos.”
She planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Sounds perfect.”