Simple
Ripley
FANDOM: Birds of Prey TV
PAIRING: There is no real relationship here, just suggestions of one.
RATING: PGish, I think
DISCLAIMER: Don't own em, wish I did, stupid people at WB do, I'll forever remain bitter.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This goes with "Maybe" not sure if it should be read before, or after, I don't even know where it fits in, but it does. You can choose, one can't work without the other though, or at least they make better sense together. Again, as with most of my things, this is entirely unbeta'd, not that it isn't noticeable by any means.
FEEDBACK: definitely, I'm narcissistic I like to hear nice things about myself ;-), not really, but more feedback can mean more stories, so just pop me a note at e_ripley_78@yahoo.com
ARCHIVING: Ripley's Head. If you want it, it's yours, just let me know first.
E-MAIL: e_ripley_78@yahoo.com.
I sit here, watching her, watching as she looks over the ledge of our once safe haven of a home. I watch as she is so caught up in thought she doesn't even realize I'm sitting here, trying to figure out how to get through to her. Isn't it ironic that I, the great Oracle, hacking mastermind, she who can do decimal long division in her head within a few seconds, sit here perplexed on how to talk to someone? And not just talk to someone, talk to a woman who has been in my care for years. A woman who I've seen both at her strongest and weakest.
Maybe that's why I just sit here, staring at her, knowing that the only thought going through her mind is about jumping off this building. I don't know what to say to make it up to her; I don't know how to make her pain stop. If I analyzed it enough I'd know that the reason I can't help her pain is because my own feelings keep getting in the way.
I've always asked myself why feelings have to be so complex when everything else in this world is so simple. I never even knew the true complexities of feelings until I met the force of nature by the name of Helena Kyle. Even dating Dick, back when everything seemed like it would last forever, even that was simple. He wanted me, I thought I wanted him. I have always been really good at thinking about what I should want.
Then, one day, in the middle of the class I was student teaching for a semester, this unruly teen just saunters in. She didn't rush in ducking her head, looking as embarrassed as most students did. No, she walked in, cocked her eyebrow at me, and slowly made her way to her desk in the back of the room. I was furious and intrigued, a feeling that had turned into a constant around Helena.
I remember meeting Helena's mom, Selena, and knowing instantly who the woman was. Bruce had hinted enough at his one great love that I had no problems making the connection between Catwoman and Selena Kyle. I had also learned in that meeting just where Helena got her magnetism from. There was no telling Selena Kyle no, just as there was never any denying Helena.
Yet I do deny her. I deny her ever second of every day, even when I can see it's tearing her apart. I don't know how to give in to feelings that I can barely describe, but I know that without Helena in my life I'd be lost.
Helena has always been the one single constant in my life since the day she sauntered in my room. Everyday after that she came to my class, on time, usually early so she could share a little idle chit chat. She had never been late after that, though I discovered from teachers lounge gossip that the girl was teetering on expulsion from skipping so many classes. Yet every day she was in mine. That was the start of her being the one constant, and it lasted through the shooting, the time that weeded out true friends from convenient friends.
Dick Grayson, the person who I had thought would be by my side through thick and thin had ended up not being able to look me in the eye after the shooting. I will admit it had hurt, and it had caused me to close myself off, because the one person who I thought I understood ended up letting me down. But it wasn't long until I realized I had just transferred my trust to another person. I had transferred it to Helena, the one person, outside of Alfred, who had been with me every single day while I was in the hospital. If I think back to it know, I realize I rationalized her steadfastness away as a teenager just being lost, because she did look lost. The fire that had been in her eyes was dulled during those months, and I had been too caught up in my own pain to realize it was drugs that had done it.
I was also too caught up in my denial and stubbornness to realize I was hurting Helena. I was her guardian, a guardian who if she really analyzed everything would realize she had more than friendly feelings for her ward, a guardian who was loosing her hold sanity. It wasn't until Helena got arrested and I had torn some sutures that I realized we had been feeding off one another, but at the same time hiding. I had been hiding my feelings of failure and loneliness from her, thinking that she would never want to hear such things from me. And in doing that, I had missed that Helena, though bad ass on the outside, needed some kind of purpose, she needed to feel like she was needed. How convenient since I, in essence, needed the very same thing.
How alike we are in some things almost frightens me. Yet some days she perplexes me, like her obsession with food, especially Pop Tarts, after a sweep. Or the days I had only early classes and I would come in to the clock tower to catch her watching old episodes of the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. She always enjoyed the black and white episodes best, she said it added to the mystery and suspense, and of course an extra layer of cheese to the mixture.
Then there were some days when I could look at her and just know what she was thinking. I knew how betrayed she felt when it turned out her best friend Sandy had been Lady Shiva. At the same time I was perplexed that she was angrier with me for using the neurotransmitter than for the mistakes I had made in the past. I guess it was then that I really let myself realize that our relationship had traveled past close friendship a long time ago.
I started paying much more attention to her then. I watched the things she did just a little more closely. She came by the clock tower far more than she really needed too, usually with some excuse of there being the best TV in the clock tower, her old one of course, or that she had no food in her apartment. As often as she dropped by for that last excuse I should have been clued in years ago of just how Helena felt, because god knew I never found the time to do the mindless chore of grocery shopping. I could do hand to hand battle with Catwoman, or Joker with ease and relatively little stress, but it takes ten minutes in a grocery and I am practically frozen in panic.
It was Helena's increasing jealousy for Wade that really clued me in to how she really thought towards me. And it was that knowledge that both relieved me and terrified me. It relieved me because, if I really let myself admit it, I want Helena in every way that I can have her. But it also terrified me because I want Helena in every way that I can have her.
I know that anything I have with Helena will be more complex than what I had with Dick, and definitely more complex than what I had with Wade. Wade had been a convenience, he wanted me, and I was so alone. I had wanted to break it off with him so many times, but then Helena would go out and flirt with Detective Reese and I would immediately turn to Wade. It eats away at me knowing that if I had been completely honest with him and myself, that he would be alive right now. If Alfred hadn't meddled and allowed Wade into the clock tower just when I was getting up my nerve to confront Helena and see if she wanted me the way I wanted her, maybe things would have worked out very differently.
Or maybe I would have chickened out. As much as I want Helena, another part of me screams that it isn't proper to want someone who you were, at one point, a guardian to. Then there is another part of me that screams to keep things simple, because there would be nothing easy about being with Helena. And still another part puts its two cents in that Helena deserves so much more than someone who is broken.
Then there is that one single part that takes the lead. That reminds me that when Helena's hurt, it's my home she comes to get cared for. When she's upset, it's my window she stands outside of until she thinks I'm asleep, and then she sneaks in to sleep in the loveseat beside my bed. It tells me that I am the only voice of reason Helena ever listens to, not because I'm so logical, but because Helena can't bear the thought of letting me down.
It's that part that drove me to follow Helena silently out here now. I knew from the looks I kept catching from Helena that she was torn on the inside. Without a doubt, she was torn over everything that had happened, and the part that she had played in it. And more than likely, beating herself up over the very thing that I constantly beat myself up over. The look I see in her eyes is the look I see everyday when I look in the mirror, the look of someone who would do anything just to make someone smile, but at the same time hold back because of all the flaws.
Helena's flaws, no doubt how she sees it, is the darkness she received from her father. That's why I know she wants to leave. I know she wants to run away so quickly to protect her family that she can't see how her leaving would affect them. She's dying on the inside and all I can do is sit here and wish I could help her.
No...that isn't completely true. If I think about it, I want to do far more than help her, I want to throw my arms around her and tell her how much I love her. And that thought terrifies me. But the thought of her leaving terrifies me more. I can't let her leave; I can't let her become the one thing she despises. If getting her to stay means I'll have to bite the bullet and let her see how much I need...no, how much I want her, then so be it.
It's time to put Oracle away, because Barbara Gordon has to open up the eyes of the woman she loves to get her to stay. I just hope it's not too late to give Helena what I know she wants. I hope she's not too afraid to accept it.
Guess that's my cue to stop watching and start acting. I know I once heard that love is a very proactive thing, and over thinking till Helena jumps isn't exactly at the top of my to do list.
The End