Chapter 19: The Huntress Returns
The Huntress hit three Triad warehouses in one night—precision strikes leaving bodies and questions—and Ben knew exactly who was behind the purple-accented violence.
The news footage showed crime scenes that looked like surgical strikes rather than random attacks. No collateral damage, no witnesses, just dead Triad soldiers and empty drug caches. The kind of professional work that spoke to training, resources, and a very personal motivation for dismantling Chinese organized crime piece by piece.
"Whoever she is, she's good," Oliver said, reviewing the crime scene photos in the Foundry while Ben tried to keep his expression neutral. "League-trained, maybe. Or military black ops."
"She?" Diggle asked.
"Body proportions in the security footage suggest female. Plus the weapon choice—crossbow bolts with purple fletching. Someone who wants to make a statement about identity while staying anonymous."
"Helena. You couldn't just disappear, could you? Had to come back and start a war that's going to put you in Oliver's crosshairs."
"I know her," Ben said, the words out before he could stop them.
Oliver's head snapped up. "Explain."
"Not personally. But I've seen this pattern before. Single target, highly trained, attacking specific criminal organizations with surgical precision." Ben moved to the evidence board, buying time to construct a story that wouldn't reveal too much. "This isn't random vigilantism. This is personal vendetta with professional execution."
"You think you can find her?"
Ben's Prescience activated unbidden, showing him fragments of Helena's future movements—rooftop surveillance, apartment buildings, the particular rhythm of someone hunting with methodical patience. The visions were clearer than usual, probably because he knew Helena well enough for his power to track her patterns.
"Maybe. Give me twenty-four hours."
"Why would you want to handle this personally?"
"Because she's someone I care about who's destroying herself one murder at a time, and maybe I can reach her before she crosses a line that eliminates any possibility of redemption."
"Because someone that skilled either becomes an asset or becomes our problem. Better to make contact on our terms than wait for her to decide we're threats to her mission."
Oliver considered this for a long moment, then nodded. "Twenty-four hours. But if she kills anyone else while you're playing diplomat—"
"She won't."
"You sound very certain."
"I am."
Three hours later, Ben crouched on a rooftop overlooking downtown Starling, his Prescience tracking movement patterns through the urban landscape until he found what he was looking for. Helena Bertinelli stood silhouetted against the city's skyline, crossbow in hand, watching a penthouse apartment where a Triad lieutenant was conducting business that would end badly for everyone involved.
The Huntress gear transformed her into something harder than the grieving woman he'd met in a coffee shop. Purple leather and tactical equipment that spoke to serious money and military-grade resources. But underneath the armor and weaponry, Ben could see the same pain that had driven her to this rooftop with murder on her mind.
"Helena."
She turned without surprise, crossbow tracking his movement with professional competence. "Ben. Though I suppose you go by something else these days."
"Still just Ben. You?"
"Huntress. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?" Helena's smile held no warmth. "I saw the news coverage of your gym incident. The glowing veins, the impossible strength. Suddenly our conversation about surviving death makes a lot more sense."
Ben approached carefully, hands visible, trying to project calm rather than threat. "How long have you been hunting?"
"Three weeks. Twelve confirmed kills, six warehouses destroyed, enough Triad operations disrupted to get their attention." Helena gestured toward the penthouse below. "Tonight I finish the lieutenant who ordered my father's execution."
"And then what?"
"Then I move up the chain until I reach the man who gave the order."
Ben's Prescience showed him the trajectory of Helena's vendetta—weeks of escalating violence, collateral damage, the inevitable moment when Oliver would have to choose between stopping her and allowing her war to consume innocent people.
"It won't heal you," Ben said quietly. "Killing everyone connected to your father's death won't bring him back or make the pain go away."
"Spoken like someone who's never lost everything." Helena's voice carried the particular edge that came from grief transformed into fury. "You told me about dying and coming back broken, but you still have a life. You have work that matters, people who care about you. I have nothing except the need to make them pay."
"You have choices. You could work with us—Team Arrow. Channel those skills toward protecting people instead of—"
"Instead of what? Instead of getting justice for my father's murder?" Helena laughed, but the sound carried more pain than humor. "The same system that ignored his crimes while he was alive isn't going to punish his killers now that he's dead."
"She's not wrong. Frank Bertinelli's murder will disappear into the bureaucratic maze of corruption that protects organized crime in Starling City. The Triad will face no legal consequences, just as Helena's father faced none for his own criminal empire. But that doesn't make vigilante execution the right answer."
"Your father was a criminal," Ben said, pushing into dangerous territory. "I know that hurts to hear, but his death was the result of choices he made, wars he started. You can honor his memory by being better than he was, not by repeating his mistakes."
Helena's crossbow swung toward him, bolt loaded and ready. "You don't know anything about my father or what kind of man he was."
"I know he taught you to fight so you could defend yourself in a world he made more dangerous. I know he loved you enough to prepare you for his enemies, even if he couldn't protect you from them." Ben stepped closer, ignoring the weapon trained on his chest. "And I know he wouldn't want you to destroy yourself for revenge."
POV: Helena
Helena stared at Ben through the Huntress mask's eyepieces, finger resting on the crossbow's trigger while her mind raced through possibilities and pain. He was right about her father—Frank Bertinelli had been a criminal, a killer, someone who'd built wealth through violence and intimidation. But he'd also been the man who'd taught her to ride a bicycle, who'd attended her school concerts, who'd held her while she cried after her mother's death.
"Ben sees the complexity that everyone else misses. Most people view my father as either a saint or a monster, but Ben understands that he was both. That the same hands that killed rivals also braided my hair when I was twelve. That understanding makes his judgment more painful because it carries the weight of truth."
"You don't understand what it's like," she said, but the words felt hollow even as she spoke them. "Losing the only family you have left to people who treat murder like business."
"You're right. I don't understand that specific pain." Ben's voice carried genuine empathy rather than false comfort. "But I understand what it's like to survive when people you care about don't. I understand the guilt that comes with breathing when others can't. And I understand the temptation to use that pain as fuel for choices that feel like justice but look like vengeance."
Helena wavered, the crossbow's aim shifting as her certainty cracked. Below them, the Triad lieutenant continued his business, unaware that his death was being debated forty stories above.
"What's the alternative?" she asked. "Let them walk away? Pretend justice will come through official channels that are bought and paid for?"
"Work with people who want the same thing you do—a city where criminals face consequences for their actions. Team Arrow is dismantling the corruption that protected your father's killers. Join us, and you can be part of that solution."
"And give up my father's killer?"
"Make him face justice. Real justice, not just death." Ben stepped closer, close enough that she could see the genuine concern in his eyes. "Helena, you're one of the most capable people I've ever met. You could save lives instead of just ending them. You could be a protector instead of an executioner."
The choice hung between them like a blade balanced on its edge. Helena could feel her father's killer waiting below, unaware that years of planning and preparation had led to this moment. One pull of the trigger, and Frank Bertinelli would be avenged.
But Ben's words echoed with the weight of possibility she'd almost forgotten existed.
"He's offering me a path away from this rooftop, away from the cycle of violence that consumed my father and is consuming me. The question is whether I'm strong enough to take it, or whether the need for blood has become too much a part of who I am to change course now."
Helena made her decision.
The crossbow bolt took the Triad lieutenant through the shoulder, pinning him to his office chair in an explosion of blood and shattered bone. Not fatal—deliberately not fatal—but carrying a message that would echo through Chinese organized crime for months.
"A warning," Helena said, lowering her weapon. "Next time, I won't miss."
But Ben heard something else in her voice—uncertainty, maybe even relief. The crack in her armor of vengeance that suggested redemption might still be possible.
"This doesn't mean I'm joining your crusade," Helena continued, but the words carried less conviction than before. "I need time to think. To figure out who I am when I'm not hunting my father's killers."
"Time is all I'm asking for."
Helena moved to the roof's edge, pausing before she disappeared into Starling City's shadows. "Thank you. For seeing something in me besides just another killer."
Then she was gone, leaving Ben alone on the rooftop with the weight of hope and the knowledge that he'd just convinced someone to step back from an abyss that had already swallowed too much of her soul.
"One shot to the shoulder instead of the heart. It's not redemption, but it's a start. Helena Bertinelli is still in there, underneath the Huntress armor. The question is whether she can find her way back to the surface before the darkness pulls her down completely."
Ben's comm crackled with Oliver's voice. "Status report."
"Situation handled. Huntress is volatile but not an immediate threat. She's... considering her options."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning she's someone who could be an asset instead of an enemy, given time and the right approach."
Oliver's pause carried the weight of someone calculating risks and benefits. "Keep monitoring the situation. But Ben—if she becomes a problem we can't contain—"
"She won't."
"You seem very certain about that."
Ben looked out over Starling City, where somewhere in the shadows Helena Bertinelli was deciding whether to embrace redemption or surrender to the vengeance that had already cost her more than she'd realized.
"I have to be."
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