lore drop for my helena (cw: csa, incestuous abuse)
okay so, if you're familiar with huntress (1989) and huntress: cry for blood as well the movie old boy, then you'll likely understand what i'm trying to go for here better, this is something i've been working over quietly for months, since the beginning of when i first started to write helena, and i have been trying to consider the implications of it in the grand scheme of things of who she is.
because the main point is that the massacre of the bertinelli is the breaking point, not the first blow.
"did they look like daddy, honey?" that line was seriously disturbing to me considering they were just asking if some "big bad men" "hurt" helena. i am sure there's a different way to interpret that question, but then i read cry for blood and:
so in my portrayal, i essentially combined these two major plots into one even more damning thing, and the way i imagine things went down is:
helena was victimised by a rival don at age six; being used as a pawn to teach her father a lesson;
her family is killed off when she's eight;
she comes back to gotham at nineteen years to begin her revenge arc;
two years later, she's near the end of her revenge arc; at twenty one, her entire world turns upside down. her horrible, selfish, conservative father chose to unconditionally love and raise helena as his own daughter even though he knew she wasn't his, biologically? her mother wasn't a good person or a victim, she was a cheater and a liar. and the very predator who haunted her was someone who was supposed to be her goddamn dad, who should've been her protector, not the reason she needs protecting.
her existence is a mistake. and he's not just projecting his sins on her. he makes it real by desecrating her and stealing her girlhood from her, making sure she'll never feel like a person, that she'll always pay the price for taking his real love - her mom, maria - away from him.
when helena says she's given up delusions of sainthood a long time ago, a part of what that means is how i imagine this:
“I’m sorry, child. Our order can only accept those who enter intact in body and spirit.”
helena being denied entry into nunhood in her personal circumstances, because of her not being a virgin due to having been raped. maybe they would've been more understanding if she went into the gritty details, but at that point, fuck it, what is the goddamn point if she has to fight for acceptance? if she has to bare her soul again and again just to be believed? she does not want people's sympathy, fuck them. you hate her, you hate her, and you stick to it. don't sympathise with her only after learning the scary crossbow lady has a sad past!
helena's memory of this incident is warped; even to revisit it feels like she's commiting violation, because she views her child self as a different person.
but there is freedom, however, through all of this; she's free from feeling indebted and loyal to her family. she does love them and miss them, they were her people, but she's free from their ideology, from "blood is thicker than water", from "blood cries for more blood".
because being related by blood means SHIT.
she overcomes her need for avenging her family through bloodshed, and instead, weaponises her lethality and training to devote herself to another causes, something that required no priestly approval or debt to the mafia, just her own choice: vigilantism and teaching.
she can't save herself, she's ruined, she can't undo the blood she spilled, she can't ever truly be unbroken or redeemed; she will do the ugly, dirty work if it means that other souls, much more deserving of redemption than her, can be saved.
