DISCLAIMER: These characters and situations do not belong to me in any way shape or form. I have borrowed them as part of my sanity maintenance.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written to help spread the femslash lovin' in response to a prompt from ralst in which she asked for Barbara/Helena, falling down on the job.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Falling Down on the Job
By Debbie
"Huntress! Huntress! Get out of there!
Barbara watched as her partner wandered dazedly across the path of incoming missiles. She waited for her to jump lithely out of their path, stunned when she failed to do so. Leaning forward, she braced herself against the desk and held her breath. Helena failed to move. Oracle screamed.
"Helena!"
Barbara let out her breath as Helena slumped to the floor; the missiles missing by mere inches. In the distance, Oracle could see a large contingent of Jawbreaker's henchmen arriving at the scene.
"For fuck's sake, Huntress, get out of there."
Still, Helena remained motionless until groggily she got to her feet. Barbara watched as she touched her ear-piece, and saw as her lips began to move, but the words were mumbled and barely intelligible.
"Barbara, I… feel good… losing it."
Oracle sighed; she couldn't remember how many times they'd had the conversation about only using code names over the comms, but they were damn well going to have it again.
"Huntress, man on. Use your kick, hit him with the left."
Helena tried as hard as she could to follow the words of her friend, but the hammers pounding away in her skull made the concentration difficult, and no matter how hard she tried, her limbs just wouldn't follow her brain's instructions. If she didn't know otherwise, she'd think she'd had one too many back at the Dark Horse before coming out on her sweep.
"I think I'm drunk… my ass."
Oracle's head shot upwards, Helena was drunk, and, out on a sweep, and, on her own as Dinah was away with Gabby for the weekend, and, from the looks of things, was about to be crushed under the force of maybe twenty approaching thugs.
Damn.
Barbara grabbed her car keys off the table, wheeled into her workshop quickly, and dragged the neural coupler out of its new hiding place.
On her way to the scene, all she could think was how irresponsible Helena had been. She'd known the younger woman was meeting a few friends at her workplace before sweeps, but never, ever, in all their shared years together, had Helena gone out on sweeps worse for wear. If the henchmen didn't kill her, then Barbara surely would.
Arriving within minutes, Barbara took a moment to attach herself to the coupler, and another short moment to acclimatize herself to its sensation, and then she was off, as fast as her unnatural feeling legs could carry her. She entered the spot where she had last placed Helena and saw that her friend had managed to crawl behind a dumpster; she also saw an angry mob of men surrounding the dumpster, obviously toying with the stricken woman.
Barbara allowed her rage to heighten, and then marched into the group, fists flying and leg chops thrusting until there was only her left standing. Hearing more thugs approaching, she quickly bent over and carried Helena away.
Helena sighed as the strong arms wrapped around her, safely cocooning her from further blows.
"Hey Babs, who'd have thought you'd be the knight in shining armour, that's my job."
Barbara gazed at the woman in her arms, angry beyond words; this life wasn't a joke. She pushed Helena into the passenger seat, rushed around to the driver's side, and swiftly removing the coupler as she climbed into her seat.
Without conscious thought, Helena leaned over and nuzzled her face against Barbara's neck, kissing gently over the pulse point. "Hmm, Babs, you taste gorgeous, all salty and sweaty. What say we get down and dirty when we get back."
"Helena! Leave it!"
Barbara was angry.
Helena knew it, and Barbara certainly knew it.
Hours later, Barbara was still tending Helena's wounds; she'd lost count of how many stitches she'd sewn into small, deep knife slashes. Helena's conscious levels were slowly coming back to normal, and with it, her understanding of the depth of Barbara's ire.
She waited for the moment the redhead's wrath hit, knowing it would come as soon as Barbara knew that she was safe and ready for her enhanced healing powers to take effect.
Nodding her head, Barbara turned away from Helena and cleared the debris of her ministrations away. Then, deliberately, and calmly, she turned, before exploding.
"Just how stupid can you be?"
Helena's reply, as always, was eloquent in its simplicity. "Huh?"
"Don't you huh me, you know what I mean. Drinking with friends… damn Hel, drinking too much with friends, and still going out on sweeps."
"But, Barbara…" Helena tried to interrupt, tried to say she hadn't had a drink, but Barbara was angry.
"I know Dinah's away, but that was so freaking irresponsible, you could have been killed."
Barbara sighed. "I thought you were past behaviour like this. I thought this…" she indicated the air between them, "… was worth too much to risk not being completely aware when on the streets."
Helena had had enough; Barbara questioning her belief in their relationship was too much. She exploded.
"Don't you question my part in this relationship; I'm in it for the long haul, I always have been. I didn't drink too much with my friends, I wouldn't, I know how important my concentration is when I'm working. This… " it was Helena's turn to indicate between the two of them, "is the only thing that keeps me on the straight and narrow, there's no way I'd pull it asunder by being so stupid."
Suddenly, Helena's voice quieted. "And you know what hurts more than all these fucking stupid scratches is that you don't know that… that you don't trust me."
Barbara watched, unable to move a muscle at Helena's accusations. She watched as Helena grabbed her duster and headed for the door. She watched as Helena turned, a sad desolate smile crossing her face as she quietly said, "You know what, Barbara, if you don't trust me, I'm out of here."
As the door slammed, Barbara dropped her head in her hands; Helena was right.
Much later, Helena was lying sprawled on her old couch; this time distinctly closing in on becoming really hammered. She hated arguing with Barbara and had reached for the JD as soon as she'd lumbered home.
She knew it was childish, but if Barbara thought she was soused, then damn it; she might as well be.
A knocking sound interrupted her thoughts of the redhead, gradually penetrating the fog to be recognized as a visitor at the door.
She slowly got up from the couch and looked through the peephole. Seeing Barbara sitting patiently waiting, she took an extra moment to hide the bottle of whiskey before returning to let the redhead into her apartment.
Barbara wheeled straight past and waited for Helena to sit back down on the couch before reaching out to take the younger woman's hands in her own.
"How are you feeling, Hel? Has the headache settled down? How's the nausea? Have you managed to sleep?"
Helena stared at Barbara, wondering where all her solicitousness had suddenly come from.
"It's a little late worrying about me now, Barbara; I'm well on the way to being better, thank you very much." She wasn't about to admit she really had been drinking now, and she wasn't quite ready yet to accept Barbara's care either.
"I was wrong, Hel, I should have trusted you. I know you don't drink before sweeping."
Helena stared; Barbara rarely admitted she was wrong.
"I'm really sorry, I jumped to conclusions, I know you, I should have known… so, I checked your blood and guess what I found?"
Raised eyebrows were the only answer to her question.
"You had a hefty dose of Rohypinol in there; it was only your enhanced constitution that prevented something so much worse. I'm so, so sorry…"
Barbara pulled Helena to her, hugging the thin body as tight as she could, whispering nonsensical words of love in her ear, offering her apologies over-and-over again. Long moments passed and Barbara was surprised when the young woman remained silent; she'd expected either tears of relief or, more than likely, a tongue-bashing for her stupidity, but there was nothing.
She looked down at Helena, shocked to see that she was snoring softly in slumber. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the bottle of Jack Daniels and allowed a quiet chuckle to escape. "Oh, Hel, sometimes we're as stupid as the other, maybe that's why we love each other so much, huh?"
A mumble came from the inert body in her lap. "Hmm, luv you too, Babs, we getting down and dirty now?""
Barbara laughed. "You should be so lucky, woman, you're three sheets to the wind, sleep's all you'll be getting tonight."
"Ah, Babs, and you're on your white horse again, I could…"
Helena's words drifted off as, for the second time that night, Barbara carried her away into the night.
The End