Work Text:
Helena has always believed that guilt is only useful if it makes you better.
Anything beyond that is indulgence.
Batman taught her that.
Selina taught her the opposite.
"Feel it," her mother had once said while stitching a cut across Helena's shoulder. "Otherwise it just ferments."
Helena never figured out which parent had been right.
/
She first visits because Damian forgets to answer his phone.
The apartment overlooks Gotham Harbor, tucked above a weather-beaten bookstore whose owner pretends not to know exactly who rents the upstairs flat.
Tim opens the door and smiles. "Hi, Helena."
As if he never disappeared. As if there isn't an empty coffin right now out there buried with his name.
Like she wasn't the one digging through burning concrete until Bruce physically dragged her away because there was nothing left to find.
She hugs him before thinking.
Tim freezes for half a second before he hugs her gently back.
He's taller now.
Too thin.
His shoulders feel unfamiliar beneath her hands.
She tells herself that's because he grew up while surviving alone.
/
Damian makes tea. Tim makes coffee.
Neither comments when Helena drinks both.
The apartment feels...
Normal.
Annoyingly so.
Tim teases Damian because he alphabetized the spice rack.
Damian retaliates by criticizing Tim's photography composition.
Tim rolls his eyes.
Damian almost smiles.
Helena watches them bicker over breakfast.
Something inside her loosens.
Bruce was wrong.
Families can survive impossible things.
Except.
Except.
/
She cannot explain it.
It isn't something Tim says.
Or does.
It is a feeling.
/
She mentions it to her father. Her father says trauma manifests strangely.
She mentions it to Steph. Steph cries because Tim came home. She refuses to look for problems.
Helena understands. She wants to refuse too.
So instead she calls Kara.
"You think I'm paranoid."
Kara snorts into her coffee. "I think you're Batman's daughter and you inherited his paranoia."
"I inherited pattern recognition."
"The line between those is incredibly blurry."
Helena sighs.
Kara reaches across the diner table, squeezing her wrist briefly. Her hands are warm. "What's actually bothering you?"
Helena stares out the window.
Rain slides lazily down the glass.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I know something is..."
Wrong.
She hates the word immediately.
Wrong implies Tim himself is wrong.
He isn't.
Tim is kind and gentle. And trying so impossibly hard.
Damian is painting people again.
The apartment has started accumulating houseplants and critters.
Things are...
Good.
So why—
"I can't explain it," Helena says quietly. "I just..." She swallows. "I failed him once already."
Kara's expression softens. "You didn't."
"I was his big sister."
"You were young."
"I should've saved him."
"You tried."
"I wasn't enough."
Silence.
Finally Kara sighs.
"...You want me to look."
Helena nods once.
/
The beach is empty.
Late afternoon.
Clouds hanging low enough to kiss the sea.
Tim and Damian walk several hundred meters ahead, arguing about something entirely inconsequential.
From this distance, Helena can't hear words, but she can see. Tim talking with his hands. Damian pretending to ignore him.
Normal.
Painfully normal.
Kara stands beside Helena wearing sunglasses despite the overcast sky.
"Ready?"
Helena nods.
Kara's eyes flare crimson for less than a heartbeat.
She follows Tim casually as he bends to photograph shells scattered along wet sand.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing—
Kara freezes.
Helena feels it immediately.
"Kara."
No answer.
"Kara."
The telltale sign of her x-ray vision disappears.
Kara doesn't move.
"...What."
Still nothing.
Helena grabs her friend's wrist.
"Kara."
Slowly, very slowly, Kara turns toward her.
Helena has known Kara for years.
She has seen her after apocalyptic invasions.
After funerals. After planets died.
She has never seen this expression.
"Oh," Kara whispers.
Helena's heartbeat accelerates.
"What."
Kara looks back toward Tim.
He's laughing now because Damian has apparently gotten seawater on his shoes.
Helena watches him shove Damian lightly with one shoulder.
Ridiculous.
Gentle.
Alive.
"...There's... something," Kara says.
The world narrows.
"What kind of something?"
Kara swallows. "...Metal."
Helena's blood runs cold.
"Shrapnel?"
"No."
"Implant?"
"...Maybe."
"Kara."
"I don't know. It's..." She struggles for words. "Tiny. Embedded."
"Where?"
"The spine."
Helena's stomach drops.
"Back of the neck." Kara's voice grows quieter. "It's wrapped around the spinal column."
Helena can't breathe. "...Can you tell what it is?"
A long silence.
Then—
"It isn't natural."
Of course it isn't.
"It looks..."
Kara closes her eyes briefly as she speaks.
Tim calls something from down the beach.
Damian answers immediately.
Neither notices the two women standing far behind them.
The tide rolls in.
Waves erase footprints almost as soon as they're made.
Helena watches her little brothers walking along the shoreline, shoulders occasionally bumping together.
For one impossible, selfish moment, she wishes she had never asked.
Because before today, there had only been grief.
Grief could be survived.
This—
Kara speaks so softly the wind nearly carries it away.
"...Helena."
She doesn't answer.
"...I think you need to tell Bruce."
Far ahead, Tim lifts his camera.
He photographs Damian standing beside the sea.
Click.
The sound doesn't reach them, but Helena imagines she hears it anyway.
Like the first crack in ice that hasn't yet begun to break.