Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-09-12 01:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, door: dc comics, huntress |
Who: Bruce and Helena
What: Hels wakes up.
Where: Wayne Manor.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Epi has decreed that this must carry the warning: This log comes with it's own box of tissues.
Wayne Manor was a vast, sprawling piece of real estate and could have housed five different families beneath its roof. People often remarked on its size and what one man could possibly need with all that space, even with the presence of family he hadn’t had before. But most of his brood lived away from the Manor, and even when they did stay it was temporary, more of a passing in and out than permanent residence. Bruce was the only one whose presence was a consistent fixture, and aside from the various staff (maids, chefs, gardeners, etc) he was often alone. It was also far enough away from the heart of Gotham to offer privacy, not to mention well-secured, which were only some of the many reasons behind Bruce’s decision to bring Helena there instead of putting her up in some hospital.
He chose the largest room in the east wing and closed off the entire section, allowing only a handpicked team of doctors permission to come and go. As money wasn’t an option, Helena was settled in a bed with the same equipment and treatment she would have received at the hospital save for the fact that Bruce oversaw it all. He took a leave of absence from work and, in his stead, left the company to his vice-president with instructions that he be kept up to speed and informed. With others to protect Gotham and things quiet as of late, he cut down his hours spent as Batman, only taking enough time away to establish a presence lest rumor spread that the Bat was MIA again.
Part of him knew that he couldn’t withdraw like this, closing himself off to care for Helena, but if he didn’t then who would? No one else, save for Selina, had asked after her, and he assumed that Nigma had informed Stephanie of recent developments. He kept meaning to reach out, to say something, but he decided to wait until Helena awoke and he had some semblance of direction in where to go from here. He’d been in contact with numerous psychiatrists and facilities but, ultimately, it all hinged on Helena, and she had yet to wake up.
This evening was similar to the ones preceding it; the room was quiet save for the beep of monitors and Bruce sat in a chair close to the window, his half-eaten dinner discarded on the coffee table and a Bluetooth in his ear. He was half-listening to the police frequency and half watching Helena, just in case tonight was the night she regained consciousness.
Not since the touch of the probe to her temple had Helena woken up, but she had been kept sedated throughout the duration of the therapeutic hypothermia, both to protect herself and to keep her body from doing all the things it normally would in order to return her to a normal state of being. Though the last dose of sedative had happened prior to the warming up of her body to a normal temperature, she remained unconscious, though the doctors warned that this could simply be because her body needed the time to heal. No matter how advanced the technology, there was healing that simply could not be done by a machine, unlike the small, pink scar at her throat.
It was the monitors that registered the change first. An elevation in heart rate, not to levels that were deemed dangerous, but a shift from the calm, steady pattern of a body at rest to a body that was waking up. In the next moment, Helena opened her eyes to slowly, calmly regard him.
She'd never thought too much about the afterlife, beyond that she hoped to see her parents and loved ones there and was glad to see that she was right, her lips turning upwards into a slow, unsteady smile. Bertinelli had been Catholic, with all their perceptions of heaven and hell and purgatory, but Helena didn't share those with her assumed identity. "I hoped I'd see you," she said, voice rough from days of not being used. Something was weird though, off. Her dad looked way younger than he should be, much like the Bruce of the last Gotham she'd been in. Strange, but she could deal. This was her dad. She was going to have her dad back, her mom back, her Kal and Diana and Uncle Jim back. If she couldn't have her life or her Kara, at least she had them. She could handle that until Kara got her happy blonde butt here.
The words in his ear had just begun to blur together into a drone of sound when the monitors, which had beeped steadily and consistently since he’d had Helena moved here, registered a change, and in an instant Bruce had sat upright and pulled the Bluetooth free. Despite the doctor’s reassurances and what was done at Sanctuary, true relief had evaded him and he finally felt some of it when she opened her eyes. Consciousness didn’t mean everything was fine, but it was a good sign nonetheless and he was grateful for it. And this time, unlike the brief moment in Sanctuary, she actually saw him.
“Of course,” he said, moving the chair closer and failing to realize that she thought he was someone else, that she was somewhere else. “I wanted to be here when you woke up, Helena. How do you feel?”
"Waking up, that's a good way to put it." Though perhaps it was apt to phrase it that way, waking up, her eyes had been closed when she'd died, being here, wherever here was and opening her eyes -- waking up. She started to push the covers back, ready, eager even to get on with whatever life was in this place. Her dad was here. And if he was here, then her mom couldn't be far behind, and all the other people she had missed while she was in Gothams that weren't her own. "Where's mom at? She's here, right?"
But there was still that sense of something and it wasn't until she pushed her legs out that the beeping sank in. Something was beeping. Her gaze tracked the sound to the monitor at the bedside. Her IV pole. The fact that there were no cats in this house and no Cat in the room. Why did the dead need heart monitors? IVs? Her entire body stilled save for her eyes that followed the tubing down to where it ended in her arm. The dead didn't need IV fluids. They had no heartbeat to register on monitors that beep-beep-beep, a wavy green line that showed the elevating speed of that heart. "No," she whispered. She was supposed to be dead. She should have been dead instead of here, her very last hope a shattered cement wrecking ball on the ground somewhere.
"NonononoNO!" Helena knew exactly how Kitane felt in that moment as a scream rattled up her throat, desperately seeking outwards past the trumpet blast shrieks of her denial as she scrambled backwards, away from him instead of towards him.
Distracted by the prospect of having to explain that no, Selina wasn’t around, he failed to realize that her reaction was too rational, too calm. What a fool he was. “I can ask her to come, Helena,” he began, though he wasn’t at all sure if she would. “She--” Then she moved to stand and Bruce was on his feet immediately, alarmed. She needed to rest and resting involved staying still, not moving, and he moved to ease her back against the bed as she followed the line of the IV to the monitor and froze at that whispered no. Belated understanding sank in then, and he had no idea how to soothe her. If he could just get her to lie down maybe he could sedate her before she could get herself worked up…
Too late.
Her shrieking made him wince, though it was less the volume and more the agony in her tone. She was in pain and he had no idea how to make it better. “Helena, please,” he said, voice uncharacteristically quiet, before he cleared his throat and tried again. “Calm down. Please.” He didn’t want to have to call in the staff who still remained this late to hold her down, but if it came to that what choice did he have? He couldn’t let her hurt herself again. “Please,” he repeated, doing his best to sound calm and reassuring as he held out a hand, slow and careful like he was dealing with some sort of feral, skittish animal.
"No!" She screamed at him, shrill as a child in the middle of a tantrum. It had taken weeks for her to come to Gotham when she first arrived, but she never recoiled from him as she did now, desperate to put more distance between them because she knew, she knew if anyone could stop her from something, it'd be him. "I was supposed to die!" She volleyed, her vision going wavy with the water filling her eyes. "I was supposed to die! I wanted to die! I don't want to live here anymore! Do you hear me!"
She wasn't backing up anymore but getting to her knees on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks, eyes wild as she launched herself weakly at him, balled up fists beating on his chest. "I don't want to live anymore! Don't you get that? I don't want to live anymore! There's nothing for me here! Nothing!" She sucked in a breath of air so hard even the tendons in her throat stood out in sharp relief against her neck, but she choked on it, sputtered, a sob finally bursting free. "Why?" She choked out, voice softer now. "Why? Why can't you understand that? Why can't you just let me die? Why? Why?" The last one broke with her voice, bouncing along the sound like a washboard.
Drawing his hand back sharply as though he’d been burned, Bruce could only stare helplessly as she screamed. A reality he hadn’t wanted to face and now couldn’t hide from was flung in his face with every word; in her mind, they hadn’t saved her. She hadn’t wanted to be saved. He had only prolonged a life she no longer wanted to live and one he couldn’t bear to let her lose. He stopped trying to calm her down and reason with her; in fact, he didn’t say anything at all. Instead he let her vent and when she launched herself at him, he let her. When she beat at his chest with weak, ineffectual fists, he didn’t try to stop her. Maybe, he realized, she needed this. Maybe she needed to let everything out on someone who would still be standing when it was over, someone who would never turn his back on her.
As her blows weakened and her strength waned, he carefully wrapped his arms around her and held her close, against his chest, the comfort offered in the embrace as much for himself as it was for her. “I can’t let you die, Helena,” he began, the words stripped raw in the attempt to keep his voice steady, “because you’re my daughter, and I love you.” He inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath, a hitch in his throat betraying the calm he fought to maintain. “How can I lose you?”
She didn't fight his arms, didn't shove out of his grip, but sagged against him, anger momentarily spent in the face of crushing sadness. "I don't want to live anymore," she whispered against his chest, confession soft, her body shaking with the force of tears she'd been trying to hold in since the day she'd sworn she'd never cry again. It was her darkest secret laid bare to light and she hunched in with it gone, so much strength went into hiding it, and now that was gone, walls gone, hope gone, love gone, every thing gone and scattered to the wind.
All that remained was that shameful, selfish desire to not be anymore and the ever present knowledge that had set up camp in her mind that there was something wrong with her, that she was unwanted, unneeded, and that her entire family would be better off if she'd never been here at all. Damian hadn't talked to her in weeks, as far as she could tell Dick wasn't talking to anyone, Stephanie was too busy with her own life to both with her, and Riddler, hell, Riddler cared so very little he couldn't even ask not to do it. The only people she had left were Kara and Bruce and Kara hated her.
The scream she'd been keeping in finally made it's way out, only it came as a low, hissing moan, vocal cords strained against the anguished, broken sound like a dying animal mourning the last of its spent life. It made her double over against him, hands clutching at his sides as she gasped for air and fresh sobs made her whole body quake. "I want to," she panted, words so quiet as she forced her body back up and clutched at him instead, hands hanging on to the spread of his shoulderblades for dear life. "I want to, it's awful and I want to."
“I know,” he whispered in response, his own pain audible in the acknowledgment. He hurt because she hurt, because he loved her and all he wanted was to make her better, to fix whatever had broken so badly inside her. One hand moved to stroke her hair, gentle reassurance in the repetition. There was no denying the severity of the situation now; Helena wanted to die, and the road to changing that would be long and hard. It wouldn’t happen overnight. There was no simple solution. But if Bruce could find a way to help her recover, to give her reason to want to live and to realize the potential her life still had, then he would do whatever necessary to achieve that.
He was a solid, unyielding presence. He could withstand her tears and the tightness of her grasp as she clutched at him. His hold on her never faltered, and in the silence he managed to find the strength to keep from falling apart. “I know you want to, Helena. I know that’s how you feel. I also know that right now it doesn’t seem like you can ever feel differently,” he said. “But you can, and there are people who care about you, who love you, and who want you to live.” He paused, hand stilling between her shoulders. “You’re my daughter,” he told her, more quietly. “I won’t give up on you. You’re stronger than you think.”
There was nothing but his voice, and unlike all the other things about him that were different between him and her father, his voice was not one of them. Still the same timbre in his chest, still the same comfort that felt like acid on her insides. It was undeserved, his comfort should have been used on those that still wanted to live, on the people of Gotham, on the rest of the family that needed him too.
"No," she said with a little shake of her head, leaning back from his chest so she could look him in the eyes. "No, just you, no one else cares." No one else did and that fact hurt every time she felt it touch the jagged edges of what remained of her self. She didn't even know why he cared, besides that she was a Bat, and daughter to one multitude of him that existed in a far off place that she could, and would, never return to. That door had been blocked to her and now there was only way to ever get back to the family that was truly hers.
Fresh tears poured down her cheeks as her head continued to shake back and forth, vehement denial. "I can't do this anymore. I can't. I don't want to be strong, I don't want to stay here where I'm not wanted." Her voice cracked on the last word and even through the distortion in her eyes, she could see the IV line that was still in her arm. The fingers of her opposite hand began creeping up it, heading toward the connector, where it would be easiest to disconnect. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
It was difficult to defend those who hadn’t made a significant effort to prove her otherwise, but Bruce was determined to try. “That’s not true,” he told her. “We all care about you, Helena. It might not always seem that way, but it’s still the truth. You’re family. They’ve all asked how you are. Selina, too.” He knew what it was like to feel as though no one cared. It was a horrible sort of emptiness, an ache that gnawed at your core and pain so great that ending it would be a relief. But she was loved, and he could care fiercely enough for her to make up for everyone else’s shortcomings if need be.
“You are wanted. Don’t say that.” His voice was firm yet gentle, and his fingers found her jaw in an attempt to stop her from shaking her head so much. He began to tell her that he would be strong for her, if need be, but then she was reaching for the IV line, to where it connected to the machine, and panic closed up his throat as he choked on the no that rose up in his chest. No, no, and he caught her wrist before she could pull it free. “Don’t,” he said, and it was a plea without intending to be one. “You don’t have to do this, Helena, please."
It was so strange to hear a plea from him, so strange, yet her fingers stilled on the line, awaiting judgement from her fractured mind as to which way to go. She looked away from him, back to the IV pole. Saline. No antibiotics, no other meds hooked into the line, it'd be so easy just to pull the tubing free of the connector and blow into it, send air straight up the vein and into her heart. They couldn't stop that, could they? But they'd managed to stop it when she'd cut into her carotid and she hadn't thought anyone would be able to stop that.
"You have to let me go," she whispered, gaze returning to the roadblock of his hand on hers. "You don't have to lie for them, it's -- it's --" she wanted to tell him it was okay, but the word wouldn't come past the tears, she couldn't force it past her lips and off her tongue. Her teeth bared at her own inability to say it. Her jaw worked, tongue pushing at her teeth to work up enough spit to get that single word out and it remained stubbornly stuck there. Things were not okay. Things weren't, she wasn't, and the ability to put them back into any semblance of okay was beyond her comprehension. She let out a ragged breath. Leaving the IV alone meant choosing life and pulling it free meant certain death. Could she do it? Could she do it again? Better to not have the choice, she didn't want it, and a fresh round of tears streaked down her cheeks. "You have -- you have to remove it." Option free will -- take away choice. If it wasn't there, she couldn't use it.
Bruce didn’t know how to let go. It was a lesson he’d never learned, not as a child and not as an adult, despite those who’d attempted to teach him over the years. Even in death he clung to those he cared for. “I can’t,” he admitted, when she said he had to let her go. And he shook his head, no, because he wasn’t lying for them, not really, but that suddenly seemed unimportant as she struggled to speak. He was too afraid to loosen his hold on her wrist, too afraid that if he did she’d reach for the IV and yank it free and do something to finish what she’d tried to start. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said, an attempt to calm her efforts from trying to get out whatever she was trying to get out. He watched as fresh tears streaked her cheeks, and his chest ached from the desire to make her pain stop and not knowing how.
He could have sobbed himself when she told him he had to remove the IV, had he less composure. Removing the line meant removing the temptation to abuse it, and while it wasn’t much, it was something. “Alright,” he said, slowly loosening his hold on her wrist until his fingers were no longer on her skin.
She didn't want to give it up, wanted to hang onto the very last vestiges of this choice, wanted that option to end it all so quickly that they would never be able to stop her. But it was too easy; all she needed was for him to turn his back for a few seconds and it'd be done, she'd be gone and everything would be better. Her fingers worked down to the entry of the IV, past tape and Coflex to keep it in place. Before his hand strayed too far, she reached for it; if it was gone, so was she and there would be no stopping her from finishing what she began, not even with him so very close. He could remove it, he could have this choice that she wasn't strong enough to make. Her shaking fingers curled around his, placed it on the end cap of the IV before hers moved to press down on the entry point, provide pressure for him to pull it free.
Keeping her alive, he knew, wouldn’t be easy. Even with a team of doctors at his back Bruce had a long, hard struggle ahead of him, but he was no stranger to those and, hopefully, the others would realize that their silence was harmful and show her that they too cared about her. She would need support and a lot of it, perhaps more than he could offer on his own. He’d have to speak to them about it, perhaps. He looked down when she caught his hand, the shaking of her fingers a light rhythm against his skin, and watched as she brought them to the IV as though it was of the utmost importance. His medical knowledge was not that of a doctor’s, necessarily, but he’d done this so many times that it was simple. The same way it went in, flush against the skin, it came out, as he managed to keep his hand steady and smooth. He looked up at her afterward, seeking a sort of confirmation somewhere in her gaze. “I’ll be here with you every step of the way,” he promised, and he meant it. His word was not given lightly and it was very rarely ever broken.
There was no measure of peace that came with it's removal, no exhaled breath that proclaimed 'oh boy, we lucked out on that one!' It was a loss: the easy way out gone, the control over her own fate gone, the very last hope of a quick, unstoppable way out gone. Her shoulders shook as she looked down at it, a fresh birth of tears. She wanted it back, wanted what it symbolized back, but it was already out and replacing it would require a fresh needle and more steadiness than she had.
"I don't," she started, whispered, hollow. I don't want this.Her gaze moved from the steadily dripping IV to him. I don't want to walk it. The way meant more doctors, more people poking around in her brain metaphorically instead of literally, and she curved inward, uncaring as she slid away from him and hit the floor on her knees, arms wrapping around her stomach in a mockery of comfort. There was no comfort here, that had fled with everything else, there was only the weave of the carpet against her forehead as fresh words caught in her throat and came out only as a high pitched wheeze.
There was nothing he could say to make this easier, nothing he could do to change how she felt and make her want to live. In a way the removal of the IV was like an alternate form of life support; he was keeping her alive by eliminating the only other option. Even so Bruce still feared that, somehow, she would find another way, sheer desperation giving her alternatives. It was that fear which acknowledged what Selina had said, that a facility was the only route left. He couldn’t keep her here forever, locked away in a room, and expect her mindset to change. She needed help he simply wasn’t capable of giving, not directly. He could connect her and those who could, he could guide her along, but he couldn’t piece her back together on his own as much as he wished otherwise.
His fingers lost contact with her skin when she turned away, and they closed on nothing but empty air as she slid to the floor and wrapped her arms around herself. He looked down at her for a few seconds, fighting to swallow past the lump in his throat before moving to kneel beside her. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say aside from repetition so he remained quiet, and instead of words there was touch, an arm around her shoulder and a hand on her back, to offer what comfort he could. At the very least, he was there.
"I don't," she repeated before the words raised into a wail, then a full fledged anguished howl that any wolf would have been proud of. Her voice cracked on a gulped in breath of air, the sound cut short by her body's need to breathe. "I don't, I don't, I don't want to do this, I don't want to feel this way anymore, I don't want to live, I don't want to feel anymore, I don't want to exist," she said, all in a rush, words tripping off her tongue just as fast as tears came from her eyes. "I don't," words broken on jagged mirror edges as she rolled towards him. If she was a painter she would have doused her fingers in turpentine and pressed them to the canvas of her life until she was gone, nothing but a blur to be painted over.
"I wish I had died with my parents," she confessed, words whispered so softly, it would have been easier to read her lips. That was all she could tell him, all the words left in her soul summed up into that one sentence as she curled up tighter, hands moving up to clutch at her shoulders, thighs to her forearms, a fractured girl-bat that was left in pieces and beyond his skill to fix.
The noise brought one of her doctors in, a small syringe at his side filled with clear liquid. Helena didn't see him until he was already bending down, a quick swipe of an alcohol pad before he eased the needle into her skin and injected her with something to help her calm down. It was only then that she recoiled, injection site burning, betrayal in her eyes as she looked up first at the doctor, then at Bruce. "What?"
“I know,” he whispered, a stark acknowledgement of her pain in his voice. “I know, Helena. But you can get better. You can. This doesn’t have to be the end.” The thought of her life ending like this, in such sadness and despair, was unbearable. She was far too young and he’d already buried his parents; he refused to bury his child alongside them. “You still have your whole life ahead of you. You have so much to offer, so much potential. The world needs you. I need you,” and his voice broke there, after he’d managed to keep it steady for so long. He’d learned to need no one after his parents died. He’d thought it had made him strong. Caring was weakness, and weakness made him vulnerable. Maybe he was weak, now, for having let people in when he’d spent a lifetime shutting them out but it was too late to change that; he couldn’t go back to what he’d been before.
He inhaled sharply at her confession, so quietly whispered that he barely managed to make the words out. While Bruce had never been this low, had never lost all hope entirely, he’d come close in the wake of his parents’ death and he knew how it felt to miss them so badly that, as much as he’d wished them alive again, he’d also wished that he had died with them if only so they could be together. How many times had he gone back to the very spot where they’d died and imagined that night going differently? He had no words, however, to say that he understood, and so he only held her tighter.
When the doctor entered with the telltale syringe in his hand, Bruce wanted to tell him no, to protect her from the world itself, but she wasn’t calming down and he knew this was for her own good. He shifted slowly, as though he’d aged a decade in less than an hour, and though he wanted to avert his gaze when the needle was skillfully injected into her skin he forced himself to look. The doctor was calm, having done what he was hired to do, but in contrast Bruce very nearly flinched at the betrayal in her eyes when Helena turned her attention on him. “It’s to help you calm down, sweetheart, that’s all,” he told her, trying to swallow down the guilt that rose in his throat. “So you won’t hurt yourself. You need-- you need help.” It was a hard, hard thing to admit, but saying it aloud was a sort of catharsis. He’d already made calls to various private facilities, places that knew how to help her; he simply had to choose one, though it was one of the hardest decisions he’d ever had to make. “I’m sorry,” he said, a few moments afterward, so quiet it was barely audible.
How could he tell her that she had so much to offer and then let them fill her up with meds? Her face turned away from him, tears staining the carpet darker until, minutes later, they stopped. It wasn't because she felt any better -- she didn't -- but it seemed a lot harder to just let them out now than it had in the minutes past. Her body relaxed, tension fading from her muscles that had been drawn tight since the moment she realized she wasn't dead and seeing the spectre of her father at her bedside.
"I want to hurt myself," she told him in drug-induced calm, her entire body rolling slowly to the side when all she wanted was to turn her head. It was just as well, even staying on her hands and knees required far too much balance and willpower to remain upwards. Better here, on the carpet, staring at his knees. Her fingers spider crawled across the floor towards him, quietly humming 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider' until her fingertips ran up his hand and she could trace the valleys between his knuckles. "I'm sorry too," she whispered. "I want to stop and I can't. It'll be okay when I'm gone though. You won't have to be sorry anymore. Everyone will be happy." She patted his hand consolingly. "You'll see. It'll be okay. Everything will be okay. Me too, because I won't hurt. I'll be happy," she said, a little crooked smile curling her lips as she looked up at him. "Promise daddy, it'll all be okay once I'm gone," she repeated as the smile faded and her eyes closed.
Bruce watched as the drug took effect, but while it calmed her the shift in her behavior was no comfort to him. This was merely a bandage over a wound, a temporary reprieve that might, for now, fix the surface but do absolutely nothing for the real damage that lurked where no one could see. “I know you do,” he told her quietly, and that terrified him. He looked down at her fingers, watched their progression, and he closed his eyes as she spoke. Her voice was merely a whisper and yet it cut deep, deep into him, through skin and muscle and bone, a pain that wasn’t physical yet was no less real for it. Happy. All he wanted was for her to be happy, but he couldn’t let her die. He had to hold tight to the hope that someday she could find happiness and life again, no matter how long it took or what he had to do in order to get her there. He opened his eyes after a few seconds, her crooked smile blurred by tears that threatened to spill over in a way they hadn’t since he was young. He couldn’t speak. He could only look on as her eyes closed, which was when he ran a hand down his face and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Leave.” Quiet as it was, the command was forceful enough that the doctor left without question, the door clicking shut quietly behind him. Very, very carefully, Bruce lifted her in his arms and laid her back on the bed, tucking the blankets around her as though she were a small child being put to bed. He watched her for a long, long time, before he turned, ignoring the Bluetooth on the chair for the phone he’d left on the table.
There was a center outside Gotham, very quiet, very expensive, and highly recommended. The longer he waited, the more difficult it would be. Bruce settled back into his chair by the window, his gaze never leaving the bed and the sleeping girl within it as he dialed. She might hate him for it now, but one day, he hoped, she would understand that everything he did, all of this, was done out of love.