Helena is the (lionessrises) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-05-26 01:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, death, helena wayne |
Death and a Batbaby
Who: Helena and Death
What: Plans foiled again!
Where: Helena's penthouse
When: Current
Warnings/Rating: Suicide attempt. The sads.
Ultimately she didn't go to see anyone else, not like she told Gwen she was going to. Instead she took one of the knives she'd catalogued from the Manor's kitchen and left on foot, the world blurring around her, steel cold against her forearm where she'd tucked the knife. There was no transformation, no peace that came with shedding one body for another, no easing of the pressure building between her temples that became wetness streaming from her eyes. She walked through Gotham, head down, one hand wiping at her cheeks between snuffled wet inhalations, her phone going into one dumpster, her ID and credit cards -- anything with her name on it -- into another.
It was back to her private box of horrors. People always returned to their comfort zones, it was a basic fact of human nature. What did it say about her that she turned here, her hate and self loathing printed in bloated black strokes on otherwise pristine white walls. The knife clattered onto the top of her kitchen counter, noise she barely heard as she kicked off her shoes. Literally kicked, one landing on the couch, the other knocking the lamp off the end table. Crash.
How does it make you feel, Helena?
She picked up the other lamp of the pair -- a pop as it came out of the wall -- and another crash as glass shattered against the wall.
Does it make you feel better?
The tears lodged into something wet and hard in her throat and she nearly choked on them. It didn't help. It wasn't enough. All the world could break and burn and she would mourn that she hadn't finished breaking with it. Cause she was broken, wasn't she? Not in body, her body was fine, kept on running like a performance car or maybe a semi, cause her body just kept on ticking, no stopping, no merciful end, not even when she wanted to give up.
There was no Kara here now though and no one but her to bear witness as she picked up a thick marker, the scent giving her brain a little zing before she put tip to wall and added to the already fetid lines there. I want a sister, but not like you. What the fuck is wrong with you? You're such a baby, grow up. You're sick; you need help. Yes, that's right bats and birds of the Wayne family, she has the crazy plague, better stick her in the looney bin at Arkham -- her shoulders bowed forward as the sob broke out of her. Her hand shook, though she tried to keep the lines even and straight as she wrote, I'm tired of you. Their words, picked and plucked out of her brain to be written upon her walls.
The marker fell from numb hands as she took a step back and read them over again, each phrase burrowing deeper until she couldn't see through her tears. It'd be better if she was gone. They didn't want her here, she was nothing but a problem.
The sun was setting, visible through the full length windows along the corner of her penthouse. Her words remained stark on the walls, but now lit by the orange and yellows of the setting sun. She sat down on the step that dropped the living room from the kitchen and watched. Just watched. Existed outside of the knowledge of anyone for a few minutes in that strange fog of peace that came before everything came crashing down Then she looked back at the wall and the fresh words there and got up to write a message. Two. Time delayed. They didn't take long.
And when she was done, the journal clattered off her knees and onto the floor when she stood. The knife. Shiny sharp steel. Long. Good. She returned to the step with the only answer she had heating against her palm. Gotham really was pretty when the sun was setting, the yellows and reds making everything seem like it was glowing. This had been her answer after the fight with Damian, but she hadn't managed it then. Gray had driven her back to the other side and cushioned her depression with his compassion. But Gray was gone now, in a hotel across the city, and she had only this.
And this, this was quick. One hand felt for her xiphoid process -- she had to aim south of that to make sure this worked. Higher than that and the knife would bounce off her sternum and she'd have to do it until she got it right. A deep breath. No tears. Both hands on the handle. Take the plunge. And she did, hard, beneath her sternum, blade angled up. It didn't even hurt -- and then it was nothing but bright, glistening red edged hurt as she tumbled off her stair and gasped past the bright pulse of it.
The mirror hadn't hurt like this and she closed her eyes, trying to block it out, to move past it, and when they reopened, she was staring up at her ceiling, painted in all the colors of the setting sun. Here. Yes. She breathed out slowly, forced her body to relax and accept the pain as her shirt turned red and wet and tears streaked down to dampen the hair at her temples. Here. She would be free and free her family from the monster they hated within their ranks.
Spewing the leftover pit from her body onto the floor of Selina's bathroom had made a difference to Death. She'd regained so many things she'd thought loss in the wake of her own death and resurrection, but then she'd tried to do too much in too short a period of time. The ninjas stealing Damian's body from the Wayne family cemetery hadn't dropped to her touch, and it had left her weakened and unable to appear fully when she'd spoken to Eddie shortly thereafter.
But she'd spent the time since in her realm, not needing to appear to anyone, able to simply rest while the rest of the universe spun on. She kept some of her thoughts turned to Gotham, to those there that were familiar to her, but the rest of her consciousness focused on rebuilding herself, her energy. And it was that division of attention that almost allowed a loss that she couldn't agree with.
She'd known, at times, how troubled Helena was, the history there. And perhaps she bore some of the responsibility for not intervening at some point. But for so long she'd been so used to never intervening, and since then she'd been focused on herself and the troubles she'd been shouldering. But something shot straight through her at the shove of knife into Wayne flesh, and she pulled herself from her realm and dropped herself on the floor at Helena's side.
"No, no, no…" The girl had already started to drift with the shock of the injury, and Death pressed one hand to Helena's stomach as the other wrapped around the handle of the blade. Face invading Helena's view of the ceiling, she looked down intently, her eyes dark instead of light, focused on Helena's face while her mind reached out for the life she felt slipping away. There was something pulling at it, and she knew that she was in a battle with whatever had taken her place in the universe, that now ruled over birth and death in her stead. But she still had enough to influence something.
Helena's thoughts were close enough to the surface, tinged already with dying breaths, that Death was able to feel them, hear them, react. "You are no monster, Helena Wayne. Don't you dare believe that." Her voice was little more than a whisper, accompanied by the rushing sound of feathers directly in Helena's mind. "I won't allow it to be your time yet."
She didn't remember hearing the door open, but there was someone there. A woman, dark eyes, pretty. Helena gave her a wobbly smile, the kind where her lips lifted and dipped in unequal motion like a top about to fall. "Hi," she said quietly and closed her eyes, because the woman was interrupting her vision of the sunset across her ceiling, but if she closed her eyes, she could still see it. Pain gave way to numbness, not like when she was changing, but a pleasant, cottony existence.
"But I am. I'm a monster, so I have to die. So you can't tell anyone, okay? Don't tell them. They don't want me around anyway. They don't need to know. They won't care even if they did. Just let me go. I'm ready to go." A whisper, as if she was willing herself to go. Her angel was here already, wasn't she? She could hear wings, the sound of wind and feathers that didn't come when she flew and she smiled again, her hands slowly reaching out for the hand on her belly. "You're my angel and because you're mine, I know I'm going where I belong."
"Shh…" The shush was accompanied by more of those rushing wings, and Death took a risk she never did and delved a little deeper, tying herself to Helena just for a moment, just so she could have that tiny bit greater measure of control. So she knew the second the numbness began to set into Helena's body. "I've seen monsters, Helena. You're not one of them." And then there was no more talking, because she needed all her focus to cling to and pull back on Helena's life, keeping it from being stolen away.
She'd been called an angel before, both in awe and fear, anger and hatred, but never before had it quite pulled at her heart like Helena's whisper. At least not in recent memory. She allowed weak fingers to tangle with hers, pressing gently as she did her best to slowly withdraw the knife, praying that Helena's shock would hold and keep the pain at bay. Slowly, so slowly. She wasn't used to healing, just with taking people at the end of their lives, and it was like trying to read backwards. And it took more energy than she expected. "Relax," she finally whispered, half audible and half in the mind, "It will go easier if you relax…" And if she was hiding a lie under those words, she hoped she would one day be forgiven. "You'll be right where you belong."
It was easy peasy to relax, because finally, finally, there wasn't anyone stopping her. There would be no reversal of this, only gentle, sweet peace where she couldn't hurt anyone and where the words on the walls didn't matter. "It's okay," she murmured, loopy and sing-song. "I know what I am. I know. You're doing everyone a favor, but it has to be our secret, because it'll hurt Bruce and he doesn't deserve that. No one else'll care though. They won't. We're both doing the world a favor," she whispered, and the smile wobbled a little less.
This was shock, wasn't it? It was niiiiiice, the word drawn out even in her mind as she reached up. It took her a few tries, but finally she managed to smear bloody fingers over pale white cheek, while wingsound drowned out the sound of words in her head. Bad Helena for making the pretty angel. Bad, bad, bad. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I made you dirty." Fresh tears came with that, even though they shouldn't. She didn't think they should. She was so close, so close and she didn't want to die with tears in her eyes. Something was happening with the knife. Was this it? Was she going to float away? "I think I'm scared," she confided to her angel. "I think I am."
Death closed her eyes for a moment when the touch pressed and dragged against her cheek, sighing softly and turning her head just enough to press a kiss to Helena's wrist, following what seemed right in the moment, going on pure instinct with something she'd never done before. Something that was against who (and what) she was. "You didn't," she replied, shaking her head as her gaze went back to the knife that she continued to draw back, focusing on not taking the girl (and not letting anyone else take her) as she went. Thinking the opposite of what she usually did, and she could feel some of the flesh knit back together. Not fully, not completely, not truly healed, but enough to keep Helena's life from slipping away.
When the knife came fully out, blood didn't rush out behind it, and Death gave a little sigh of relief. Her hands shook with the exertion, and she had a feeling that if she wasn't transparent yet, she would be very soon. She kept the knife in her own hand, not trusting Helena enough to leave it there, even with as weak as the girl likely was from the injury and blood loss. What counted was that Helena still breathed and her heart still beat. "Don't be scared. No reason to be scared. I'm right here…"
It was strange, that little press of lips to the thin skin of her wrist. It felt so real, like she wasn't dying at all. And then there was the knife, in her body one minute and now in her angel's hands. Her breaths came faster -- and they shouldn't be, should they? And the tears continued to come because she wasn't dying anymore, but she was shaking, all energy that had nowhere to go.
"No, no, no, you're my angel, you're supposed to take me. I'm not supposed to live here, I'm not, I'm supposed to die. Everyone would be happier if I was gone, everyone, they all hate me, you're supposed to take me away from all of this," she wheezed, tears falling randomly as she tried to sit up, get away, anything that would give her what she was finally looking for. She only managed to get a shoulder off the floor before her vision went white, agony lancing out from the stab wound. "I'm supposed to die," she whispered, voice cracking over the words. "I'm supposed to be dead so they can be happy again," she choked out past the tears. "Please, please I have to die. Let me die. I want to. I need to before they hate me any more."
"Shhh," the shushing came again, though softer and with a waver. "I know what they think, Helena, and it's not hatred. And it's not your time to go yet. I'm sorry." And she was. It tore at her, in a way that it wasn't meant to, to see this girl like this. Full of so much despair and so many twisted thoughts that she found it hard to believe that her sisters weren't here. And Death, she was still present enough that when sudden, surprising tears fell from her eyes, they landed on Helena's shirt. "And it doesn't work that way, your death in exchange for happiness. I've seen it so many times before and it just doesn't work that way." She didn't say that it would hurt, that it would leave another hole in people's lives, because she didn't think that guilt was the right thing to give Helena.
Her hand, the one not still holding the knife, laid gently on Helena's head, even as it shook and trembled. Behind her, the walls slowly cleared, no words scrawled over the paint. The effort of it drained even more of her energy, but she couldn't leave those words there. She couldn't.
Neither could she leave Helena in quite so much pain. Her hand moved from head back to stomach as she tried to undo even more of the damage left in the knife's wake. It translated as warmth and comfort, what she could (or used to) offer those she took. The same sort of peace that she'd given Damian in his last moments, even though there wouldn't be death at the end of this comfort.
But that warmth was the last of what she could do. Energy too stretched yet again, she was gone as suddenly as she'd arrived. The only real evidence of her presence was the bare walls and the half-healed wound in Helena's stomach. And the fact that the knife was gone.
And even as the pain on the outside dulled in the wake of warmth, the comfort was short lived. She sat up slowly, gasping at the echo of pain in her middle and stared at the now blank, empty walls. Her angel was gone and she'd failed once again. She could find a new knife, another knife, she could go in the bathroom and take the entire bottle of Tylenol she had there, or she could crack her head against the porcelain of her sink again. They were all possibilities and she couldn't muster the energy to do anything more than to cry and press her face into her carpet to muffle her screams.
She could take away the words on the walls, but not the ones that remained emblazoned on Helena's brain. There was no taking those out, no escape, except for one as she lunged at her phone. Dial tone. She stared at the numbers like they were written in hieroglyphics. This wasn't an answer, no one would believe her, and before she could talk herself out of it, she hit the numbers with the tip of her index finger.
"9-1-1 operator, what is your emergency?"
Fresh tears spilled over her bottom lid. "Hello? 9-1-1 operator, what is your emergency?" A female. She didn't sound at all like her angel.
"Can you hear me? What is the nature of your emergency?"
The words loosed themselves from her clogged throat. "Please help me. Please. I tried to kill myself."