✞ · @emmatriarchy : / &. / ❛ you seem pretty detached for someone so familiar with loss... ❜
huntress heaves a sigh.
“yes.”
there’s no point in denying it, after all — and it’s not only because lying to a telepath is nothing short of a foolish endeavour. even if madelyne pryor weren’t one of the most powerful mutants in existence, loss would still be written all over the last bertinelli; not her face, since helena has spent more of her life being masked than not, but her stance, her demeanour, and the way she conducts herself, as if every movement is the result of the price she’s paying to this day.
loss has left her pissed off more than anything else, and she holds onto that anger, because loss hasn’t left her with much; without the anger, there is nothing for her to carry. without the huntress, there is no helena bertinelli.
it’s as simple as that. the vigilante sees no reason for confusion otherwise — doesn’t take superpowers to figure that out, exactly.
she has no reason to feel reservation about leaving her mind unguarded around a telepath, because, even if huntress were an open book, she’s not the kind of story anybody is exactly dying to read, let alone comprehend.
there is nothing new to be unearthed anyway, no titillating secrets to hold against her — she has accept the cold, harsh truth long ago, embodied it, became one with it; her mind cannot be used against her when she cannot stop living in the battlefield of her psyche.
and as for the ill reputation madelyne wields? well, huntress can’t say she herself is one of the good guys either.
“i see no contradiction in that,” despite the flat delivery of her response, it’s accompanied by a sarcastic undertone of ‘is that really so surprising?’
regardless of whether one knows huntress personally or not, she doesn’t expect anybody to give her grace — or worse yet, pity — just because she’s had an unideal life. big deal. there’s nothing to be recovered from, there is no kinder woman waiting to be uncovered as a result of sanding down the brunette’s sharp edges. this is all who she is, for worse and for good.
“there’s nothing much to be attached to,” she remarks. “not here, anyway. it appears i have left my peace of mind at home.”
after all, it is loss that has taught her that attachment is a landmine; inevitably and ultimately precarious and unreliable, no exception. all that’s come from dust must return to dust, and there’s no alternative to accepting that everything, by nature, is destined to come to an end. the equation is achingly simple like that; loss and detachment are two sides of the hill, one leads to the other in either direction.
“so must we really discuss that now?” she says, finally turning to face the queen, eyes narrowing through the sharp slits of her mask. “say what you want before you lose my attention, i’m not a saint.”
