Category: vignette/romance
Rating: PG
Continuity: TAS, baby
Summary: Remember in Nightwing?  When Dick and Huntress had that...thing?  Yeah, 
neither do I, but I thought it might be fun to put Helena into the TAS universe 
to see how well (or not so well) she and Dick would play.

Disclaimer: Not mine.  Never will be.  Money made from this: zero dollars.

***

Broken
by Sarah Stella (stellas@kenyon.edu)

***

For one thing, Dick knew there was something buried in the ground between them, 
only he'd forgotten what it was or even how long ago it'd been buried.  Maybe he 
had never known.  In the dark, under the folds of dirt, it could be rotten and 
crawling with bugs.  Helena chewed at the side of one sparkly fingernail.  Her 
nail polish was peacock blue and chipped at the ends.  She stopped chewing and 
flipped her hair behind her ears.  There was a fleck of glitter at the corner of
her mouth that Dick wanted to wipe away, except he couldn't stop thinking about 
the thing he should have been remembering.

Helena's eyes were rimmed with dark green eyeshadow.  Her eyelashes looked like 
fuzzy-legged spiders.

"Why don't we sit down and wait?" Helena asked.  She loved her name.  It meant 
'bright one' and she felt happier just thinking about it.  They sat at the side 
of the street, resting their backs against the curb.

"What are we waiting for?" Dick asked.  His head felt like it was floating away.  
He wanted to shove his hands down through the asphalt to find the dirt and keep 
himself from breaking into bits.

Helena sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.  "Godot, Dicky.  
We're waiting for Godot."

"Funny."  Dick pulled a face at the nickname.

She put out her hand, like she wanted to touch his knee, but a curled oak leaf 
skittered between them at the last minute and spooked her.  "Try the tow truck, 
genius," she offered politely.  "You might remember hitting the ice?  That 
crunching sound?"

Dick looked over at his car.  It was a red-fading-to-pink 1969 Karmann Ghia with 
a rust patch exactly the shape of Texas on the passenger side door.  The push 
button on the door handle was right where El Paso should have been.  The car was 
half in the street and half on the sidewalk.  Its lines had become fluid.  They 
collapsed into each other.

Helena flicked her fingers against one another.  A long time before, she'd been 
a smoker, but not anymore.  The day she knew she'd never have another cigarette 
was the day she started to smell it on other people.  It was something she'd 
never noticed before, the way it clung like wet clothing.  So she'd gone to a 
bar that night and celebrated the death of her only youthful vice with a tall 
glass of beer.  It was one of those places too hip for its own good, with 
twelve-dollar martinis in rainbow colors and an oxygen bar upstairs.  

Helena hadn't known anyone there, but hadn't that been the point? To get away 
somewhere where her friends wouldn't think to look?  

Annoyed with her beverage choice, the bartender had set down her beer a little 
too hard and some of the head had slopped over the rim, sliding easily down the 
outside of the glass while the smell of smoke tangled in her hair.

"Yeah?"  Dick tapped one of the car's tires.  His fingers were long and 
graceful.  He stroked the finish with a lover's touch.

"Yeah.  But you never listen to me."

"That's not true.  I remember you were talking about Professor Mason's 
criminology class.  You said he's the best professor you've had at GU."

Helena shook her head.  Her long, dangling earrings bounced and jingled.  
"That's what I'm talking about!  I told you about Mason days ago.  You weren't 
listening when we were in the car.  You were off in La-La land again...without 
me."  She crossed her arms.

Dick knew she was right.  He'd been thinking of the night before.  The rooftop 
encounter with Batgirl that gave him an extra little shiver.  They threw big 
words around, trying them out, each one knowing they could outdo the other.  
He'd said that she was untrained, had no idea of the ramifications of her 
actions.  She'd responded in kind, calling him an overbearing hypocrite. 
Those words on her lips were so like his side of an argument with Batman that, 
stung, he'd made the mistake of telling her that "the rooftop's no place for a 
little girl" and she'd knocked his legs out from under him, delivering a sharp 
blow to his diaphragm as he fell.  He'd crumbled, gasping, to his knees.  Even 
as he looked up, felt he should apologize and squashed the urge, he couldn't 
help seeing the way her cape fell across the smooth curve of her hips.  The air 
got heavy.  He felt something between them.  Her tongue darted out to moisten 
her lips.

He could feel Helena's eyes on him, waiting for his answer.  "Sorry," Dick 
muttered, for all it was worth.  "I've got lots of stuff on my mind these days.  
And this car thing is the last thing I need."

Softening, she reached out to squeeze his shoulder but gave up at the last 
minute.  She could tell that part of him was still miles away.  She wondered 
where, but figured it was better in the long run if she didn't know.

Dick toyed with a bit of gravel on the roadway, rolling it with his finger.  He 
hummed a snatch of "Glass Onion."

"God, I hate it when you do that," Helena said.

"Do what?"

"Couldn't you pick a song you actually know?"

"I know 'Glass Onion.'"

"No, you know the first couple chords and you repeat them.  I wouldn't even mind 
another Beatles song.  Or 'Sympathy for the Devil'?  Do you take requests?"

"Only when I whistle through my teeth," he said charmingly.

"When's the towtruck coming?"

"Didn't you call?"

"Crap."  Helena snapped out her cell phone and was soon engaged in an urgent-
sounding conversation with the towtruck driver.

He and Batgirl had suddenly been playing a dangerous game of chicken.  It had 
been pretty obvious that one of them was going to crack.  He worked his jaw like 
he was chewing on the words he wanted to say.

"I...uh...sorry," he'd finally managed, lamely.

"Sorry?"

"Yeah.  I know you can take care of yourself, and a helluva lot better than I 
could too.  It's just that sometimes..."

"Automatic Batman mode?" she suggested, sympathetically.

"Automatic Batman mode."

"I've gotten the speech from him too and it didn't go over any better with him 
saying it, if it makes you feel better."

The right corner of Dick's mouth lifted into a half smile.  "I guess it kinda 
does."

"I just want you to know that I'm serious about this thing.  You don't have to 
like it, or me, although it might help.  I'm going to keep on doing it, 
regardless."

"Okay..."

He'd meant to say more, but he was cut off when she grabbed the front of his 
costume, pulled him into her and kissed him.  He could feel her teeth and 
wondered if she meant to hurt him.  She held onto him tightly.  By the end, her 
lips had wandered across his throat and his eyes fluttered shut.  And just like 
that, she was gone and he'd felt a soaring mixture of desire, confusion and 
guilt.  Maybe the same way Bruce felt about Catwoman, although they never 
discussed it.   

The guilt was on account of Helena, his girlfriend, the woman sitting next to 
him shouting orders into her cell phone.  Sometimes, the Italian in her got the 
better of her judgement.  Gently, he took the phone from her hand and spoke to 
the man on the other end for a few moments.

"Fifteen minutes," he told her once he'd hung up.

"Screw you," she said nastily.  "Who do you think you are?  Like you just have 
to waltz in and take over everything?  God."  Helena wiped her mouth with the 
back of her hand and the fleck of glitter that Dick had seen before came away on 
her skin.  She nudged it with the side of her thumb, remembering the night she'd 
put it on.  Dick had watched her with poorly-concealed fascination.

"I don't understand how you get it on so neat," he'd said.

"What are you talking about?" she'd replied, waving her hand in his direction.  
"See how it all slops over the sides here?  I'll never be a manicurist."

"And that breaks you up inside?"

She'd sighed for extra melodramatic effect.  "It's just another door slammed in 
my face.  Who knows, I could have been a world-famous manicurist.  I could have 
touched the cuticles of the stars."

"Right," Dick'd said, drawing the word out.  "Well, I still think it's nice."  
His hands skirted across her knees.

"Hey, I've got wet paint here," she protested.  She put her foot on his shoulder 
to push him away.

"Don't worry.  I won't get near the paint," Dick'd said, smiling.

Beside her, in the present time, Dick was humming again.  It was a high-pitched 
noise, almost a whistle, and it poured into her ears.  She felt a flood of 
sadness, because it seemed to her like things were ending between them, and 
there was nothing either one of them could do about it.

"Could you stop?" she demanded.  "Why can't we sit here in peace?"

"Okay," Dick said.  He seemed chastised and Helena immediately felt guilty.  He 
picked at a loose thread in his jeans.  Despite his easy sense of humor, 
sometimes he wasn't a comfortable person to be around.  There was something 
about him that was always held back.  He touched her elbow and she eyed him 
suspiciously, sliding the look sideways from under her heavily colored lids.  
The green makeup made her eyes look dark and glittering, like she'd be willing 
to kill him just to improve a boring day.  

Helena twirled her hair up to the top of her head and then let it fall.  Dick 
had stopped looking at her at all.  He was staring off into space, eerily still.  
She leaned into the back of his neck and breathed deeply, searching for his 
cologne.  It had been the first thing she'd noticed about him.  He smelled piney 
and spicy.  She'd even been able to smell in the bar where she'd drunk her
overflowing beer with smoke tangled in her hair.

Dick had begun their relationship with a hand on her shoulder.

"Company?" he'd asked, sliding onto the stool next to hers.

"Not particularly."

He'd tilted his head.  "Why not?  You got something against people?"

"Some people."  Helena knew she should have seen it then.  Her first impulse was 
to walk away, because who ever heard of any lasting, fulfilling relationship 
being based on lousy pickup lines.  Not just lousy funny, lousy bad.  But he'd 
chuckled at that and she'd found it charming, even if she tried not to.

"So can I ask you what you're doing here without slipping into the nice 
girl/place like this cliché or is it too late?"

"It might be."  She swallowed her smile that time.  "I'm quitting smoking.  I 
did quit.  I'm celebrating."

"By sitting in a smoke-filled bar?"

"It's a pride thing."

"Ah."  There was a twinkle in his eye she liked, or maybe it was just reflected 
light from the disco ball revolving flaccidly over the bar.  They exchanged 
numbers and met for coffee.

Helena was never exactly comfortable around him, but she tried her best to 
pretend because the way he looked at her, or anyone, made them feel like the 
only person in the room.

Dick wasn't paying attention.  She was getting angry.  She shoved her back up 
against the side of the car and leaned her head against the metal.  It smelled 
dark and smoky from the rust on the door.  She closed her eyes and tried to 
picture the tow truck coming down the road so that it really would.

She knew she needed saving so the boredom wouldn't kill her, but she could see 
now that Dick just wasn't the superhero type.

***

end