Chapter Text
I - Somewhat Qualified
“Truthfully, the job is so simple a toddler could do it. So I’d be pretty surprised if someone your age couldn’t manage, Miss...”
“Messina.” Helena finishes the man’s sentence, trying to hide how much it had pissed her off.
“Miss Messina,” the man repeats frowning, looking over the paperwork Helena had painstakingly doctored to pass even the closest scrutiny. Overkill, it turns out, since the man sitting across from her looks up again almost immediately.
“Did my assistant already explain what the job entails?”
“No he didn’t.” Helena says, easing some of the tension that had built up between her shoulders knowing the fake last name passed the test.
The man still hadn’t introduced himself formally even though Helena knew his name well enough: Roman Sionis.
He lets out a beleaguered sigh at his assistant’s oversight.
“Officially your job title is ‘Psychiatrist’ which you’d appear to be somewhat qualified for…”
‘Somewhat’ qualified? Helena starts to tense up again. The resume she put together shows at least 8 years in the field. Even though it was a total lie she felt her professional pride took a hit. Sionis does not seem to notice.
“But your main task will be a fair bit simpler. You’ll meet with each patient,” he says the word ‘patient’ with some trepidation, Helena notes. “You’ll be provided a list of questions that you need to ask them and an audio recorder to record the conversations with. Other than that, you’re free to observe just don’t interact with them too much. As long as you ask all the questions on the list and don’t forget to hit record, your job is secure. Clear enough?”
Yes, I’m not an imbecile. Helena wants to answer. Instead she settles on just nodding. It’s imperative to her current goal she gets this job, she’ll deal with Sionis later.
He stands up to leave.
“Good. The transport leaves in 2 hours. Don’t miss it. There won’t be another one for three weeks.”
“Looks like your coworkers are too busy to give you the grand tour…,” Carlo Rossi says. He had driven Helena to the snowy middle of nowhere and had bored her with mindless chatter about his personal life for the entire 6 hour ride. Thankfully his job was only to make deliveries every three weeks and she wouldn’t be stuck with this man here. “Guess I’ll have to give you the rundown real quick.” He ads as he opens the door on his side and gets out.
Helena follows suit, dropping out of the truck’s high cabin with ease. Her boots land softly in the fresh snow and she sinks a few inches into it.
“Dead of winter. Better get used to a lot of this white stuff for the next six months.” Carlo says as he comes around to her side of the vehicle wearing a sickening grin.
His name was on Helena’s list, but he’d have to wait.
Instead, she tries to ignore him as best as she can and takes in the structure before her.
‘Calico’s Rest’ was a sizable mess of buildings. The main one had been a prison in the past. The scars of that time were still visible. High wire fences surrounded the building and two watchtowers stood empty next to the giant gate they had arrived through.
Details on Calico’s Rest were hard to come by. All Helena knew was that it had been transformed into some sort of hospital, Sionis had called it a ‘recovery centre’. She frowns at the thought, since the remote location, the harsh icy environment, and the design of the buildings did not seem very suited for any healing. Sionis, the owner, had a dark past of which Helena knew the details far too well. Another reason to doubt any noble plans for the centre. She very much doubts that Carlo would freely share any of its darker secrets, so she only occasionally tunes in on what he was saying as he herds her through the front door of the main building.
“Door’s locked most of the time. Don’t want anyone sleepwalking themselves out of here at night. Would freeze to death before sunrise, that’s for sure.”
Morbid. Helena notes. How often did that happen for you to make that rule?
“Over here’s the mess hall. Three square meals per day, prepared by some of the patients. Everyone here pitches in to keep the centre running, you know. Everyone’s got their own little task.”
Just like a prison.
“The rec room. We’ve got some books. Pool. Foosball. Crappy tv. The works.”
Helena quickly studied all the items in the room almost instinctively. Pool cue could work as a weapon if she needs it. If she can’t get to her own stash in time.
Carlo has moved on quite a bit and Helena has to do a little jog before she manages to locate him by the sound of his insistent prattling again. He’s walking down a long hallway with about ten doors on each side.
Cells .
“These are the patients’ rooms. We don’t have too many in right now, so it’s just one person per room. But they could hold up to four if needed.”
“Where are they?” She interrupts Carlo and he stops dead in his tracks. Helena remembers a bit too late that it has been quite a while since she’s even said anything to the man. And her tone just now was not exactly friendly.
“Where are the what?” He looks at her puzzled.
“The uhm… Where are the patients… right now?” She tries to make her tone a bit more friendly, just like she had spent the past few months practicing.
Psychiatrist voice she’d called it.
“Oh,” Carlo looks around as if it was the first time he’d noticed they were all alone in the building, “No idea. We’ll bump into them, I’m sure.” He shrugs and continues down the hall.
They stop in front of an automatic door. Carlo unclips a badge from his belt and holds it in front of a card reader to the right of the doorframe. The device beeps and the door swings open.
“This card opens all the doors that you have clearance to open, yeah?” He hands her the card.
And how many doors do I not have clearance to? Helena wonders.
“Over here’s the staff’s quarters.” The hallway looks no different from the previous one. Helena assumes its original function was the same, more cells.
“You can pretty much pick any unit, there’s quite a few open.”
They walk past a number of open rooms, each furnished with a basic bed and a desk.
Cozy.
Helena notices that only two of the doors are closed, on opposite sides of the lengthy hallway. One absolutely plastered with colorful stickers and drawings made with markers and the other one left almost absurdly bare in comparison. It causes Helena to pause again. This time she manages her therapist voice first try.
“Excuse me, but how many people are currently employed here?”
“Ah. Well,” Carlo thinks about it for a ridiculously long time considering the answer that follows, “Only two people at the moment. Victor Zsasz, head of security, and Dr. Quinzel, lead psychiatrist. But you’ll meet them soon enough.”
Helena spends the rest of the tour creating a mental map of exit routes and possible weapons as Carlo guides her through various rooms, halls and buildings.
Basketball court, lavatory, greenhouse, cleaning supplies, kitchen.
“Out there,” Carlo points to a small shack-looking construction in the distance, outside the fenced off centre, “That’s where the emergency generator is kept. Not that you’d ever need to deal with it, and over here-” Helena zones him out again as they circle back to where their tour began, walking in the only unexplored direction that’s left. Helena can pick up on some talking in the distance or is it… singing ?
Carlo points his thumb in the direction of the noise.
“Over there is where you’ll be working. There’s a large auditorium for group sessions that the doctor uses, and next to it there’s the practice where you’ll meet with everyone individually.”
Carlo keeps walking in that direction until he appears to pick up on the sound of voices as well.
“Ah, looks like the good doctor has everyone in a session right now. I’m sure you can find your way there by yourself.”
“I can, thank you” Helena says. The tour had been far longer than it had any right to be, but it did give her quite a good idea of the centre’s layout.
She follows the sound to two wide doors leading into what Carlo said would be the auditorium. The sound coming from inside was rather chaotic. Some people were singing, some talking, and at least two people appeared to be just making noise for the sake of it.
With no real idea of what to expect, Helena braces herself and reaches for the door handle. She takes three quick breaths and opens the door with confidence.
As soon as she opens the door, most of the voices stop and everyone turns to look at her curiously.
The amount of attention is more than she is used to and she feels that she is starting to blush, cursing that that reaction is out of her control. She pushes past it, quickly categorizing the scene before her. There’s a chair right next to the door occupied by a man with flashy platinum blonde hair who’s regarding her with raised eyebrows.
Victor Zsasz, head of security .
In the middle of the room there are some chairs that might have stood in a circle before being pushed aside with little regard for organization. Instead, six people are standing in a circle.
Five of them are dressed similarly. Black pants, loose fitting white t-shirts that seem almost fashionable and the same white metallic bracelet around their wrists.
A uniform. Must be the patients . All female. All rather young. None of them look sick.
One woman seemed to have created her own variation on the uniform, though on closer inspection that appeared to have been a coincidence. A black and white sweater with a bizarre print, short black shorts, and black stockings with more than a few tears in them. She’s also the last person who’s still making noise. She seems to be doing her best Cyndi Lauper impression as she finishes explaining what girls want when the working day is done. She does not quite reach the higher notes.
Who’s this? Helena can’t quite find a place for this figure in the otherwise streamlined centre.
“Ah! Helena! You made it!” The person greets her as if they’d known each other for years. She leaves the circle of curious women and skips, skips! , in Helena’s direction.
“And you are?” Helena asks, failing to make it sound anything but gruff.
“Harleen Quinzel. Lead psychiatrist.” She introduces herself cheerfully, and holds out a hand for Helena to shake.
Helena doesn’t catch her surprise at the woman’s profession in time.
“You?” She questions bluntly.
Shit. Rude.
The whole room seems to fall silent except for the sound of a single, resonant laugh escaping the mouth of one of the patients.
Everyone turns to her.
Helena’s glad for the distraction the stranger brought. Catches herself revelling in the genuine joy in the woman’s eyes. In the long-lasting echo of her voice in the large room.
Helena grabs the opportunity to try and make up for her faux-pas as she grabs Dr. Quinzel’s hand.
For a second she worries, a talent of hers, what the optimal strength of this kind of handshake would be. She appears to have passed the test. Harleen turns back around to face her and flashes her a genuine smile before facing the rest of the room again.
“Alright guys,” she says with a thick Brooklyn accent, “Great job today. Go ahead and take the rest of the day off. Don’t forget to do your breathing exercises though.”
Breathing exercises. Actual therapy. Okay. Helena notes. Maybe Harleen’s more qualified for the job than her appearance would make it seem. And it is not exactly like Helena’s in any position to judge on professional qualifications.
“So, come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.” Harleen says, grabbing Helena’s hand.
Helena’s explanation that she’d already been shown around failing to stop her from being dragged along on a second even longer tour.
II - Inadequate
Harleen’s tour of the facility had not been a total waste of time.
Helena now knows where to find a surprisingly large stockpile of booze and candy.
However, Harleen had not been able to, or willing to, share any more details about her new function, or the centre’s true function at that.
All she had been left with was a thick folder of papers, the questions she had to ask each patient as well as a copy of the patient’s files, and an itinerary.
“Zsasz has the same one. He’ll bring the right person to you at the right time so nothin’ for you to worry about.” Harleen had said as she showed Helena the small room where the interviews would take place. A bare room with harsh lighting, a single wooden table with a recorder built in in the middle, and two chairs.
An interrogation room.
That’s where Harleen had left her after the tour. Right in time for the first interview, Helena notes as she looks over the itinerary and then at her watch.
She spends the next few minutes worrying about the most professional position to be in when her first ever patient arrives.
Sitting in the chair, surely.
Arms crossed.
No.
Arms in my lap.
No. Weird.
Arms on the table.
No, looks like I’m praying.
Maybe if I stand instead?
Lean?
Helena looks at her watch again and furrows her brow.
Her first patient is late.
Harleen had said that the security officer would bring them but what if that was not true at all? What if she was expected to invite the patient for a conversation. That would mean that she herself was late.
Unprofessional.
Helena quickly gathers all the paperwork she had carefully spread out.
She goes to head out the door just as it is opened from the other side.
The surprise causes her to let go of the stack of papers in her arms as they scatter around the floor.
“Oh, whoops.” The woman who entered says dryly as she drops to her knees to start gathering the paper.
Helena, still caught of guard, looks at her for a few moments.
It’s the woman with the radiant laugh from the auditorium, she remembers. From this close it seems like that was not the only radiant thing about her. A great mess of hair that almost looks golden frames bronzed skin. The woman looks up at her for just a moment with clever eyes.
Help her, idiot .
Helena crouches down quickly and manages to pick up most of the papers in just a few seconds.
Okay. Now say something.
“It’s…”
Say more.
The woman hands her the few papers she’d picked up as the pair rises again simultaneously.
Helena’s loss for words continues. She’d practiced how she would greet someone as a psychiatrist. A lot. But none of the words came to her.
The silence was awkward, she was sure of it. But the woman in front of her made no effort to break the tension. Almost as if she was allowing Helena the time to gather her thoughts again.
“Right. Hi.” Helena starts.
That’s not how the greeting goes.
“Hi,” The woman answers. She smiles slightly, as if she is in on some secret about Helena that she herself isn’t even in on, “Zsasz told me to meet you here. Is that right?”
“Right!”
Too loud. Psychiatrist voice .
“Right. Please, have a seat. I just wanted to ask you some questions.”
The pair moves to opposite sides of the table and sit down.
Helena hits record on the device in the middle of the table, noting that the woman takes a few seconds to look at it and then back up at her.
“Okay uhm…,” Helena awkwardly shuffles through the pages full of questions before her, now completely out of order, until she finds the first one. “What’s your name?” She read out loud.
“You’ve got my name right there.” The woman in front of her says, pointing at the file in front of her.
“Right. But uhm…. well… For the recording. You need to.” Her sentence comes out fragmented, and not at all in psychiatrist voice.
The woman lets out an exaggerated sigh and rolls her eyes, but there’s a small amused smile there too.
“My name is Dinah Lance.”
Helena nods, looking down at her pages again. She’s about to read of the next question when Dinah interrupts.
“What’s yours?”
Instinctively, without looking up, Helena answers.
“Helena Berti- uh. Messina.” She tries not to look too startled at the fact that she just almost told this stranger her real name. She’s too worried the woman might have picked up on it that she still refuses to look up.
She’s so distracted that she does not fully grasp the unexpected direction the next question on the piece of paper takes.
“When did you first develop your superpowers?”
Superpowers?
She’s sure she’s failing at hiding her surprise well, but Helena can’t help but look up now and regrets it instantly. Dinah is looking her right in the eye, probably has been all along.
Let’s hope mind-reading isn’t it. Helena thinks.
“When I was around 13, I think. Yeah. When I was 13.” Dinah answers matter of factly, as if she did not just reveal something about herself that Helena had previously believed to be impossible.
There had been rumours, of course, of people with seemingly magical gifts. But Helena had never actually met anyone with any kind of supernatural power.
“What is the… what is the nature of your superpowers?” The next question reads.
Dinah shakes her left wrist as a response, drawing attention to the tight fitting white bracelet.
“Why don’t you take this off and I’ll give you a demonstration.” She says with no trace of humor in her voice.
They use those bracelets to block their powers. Helena deduces, making her peace quickly with all of this new information. She’d prepared for anything, so even this she would be able to deal with. As long as it brought her closer to the intel she was after.
Dinah’s demeanor seems to change suddenly.
“Look, I’ve been through all of this already when you all brought me in the first time. Can you just get to the point?”
Helena’s taken aback at the sudden shift. Clearly Dinah does not enjoy talking about her powers.
“Oh. Right. Uhm,” Helena shuffles through her papers as if the answer might be written on one of them, “Well, I wasn’t here for that so…”
Inadequate.
“Right. You’re new,” Dinah says mostly to herself. “So, what exactly is it that you came here to do, Helena Messina?”
“I’m a psychiatrist. I was hired to help you.”
Dinah nods exaggeratedly, clearly doubtful of any good intentions.
“So this is therapy?” She says, pointing at the recording device.
Right. Damage control time.
Helena can’t exactly stop doing the job Sionis tasked her with. They might take her out of Calico’s Rest before she got the info she needed. Or worse, they might look into her true identity.
But the urge to have the woman in front of her go back to smiling is strong. So strong it surprises her quite a bit. So what if one of the patient’s sulks all the way through the questionnaire? In the grand scheme of things, how much does Dinah Lance factor into Helena’s goals?
She doesn’t . Helena decides. Which is why she surprises herself so much when she leans over and hits ‘stop’ on the recording device.
Dinah raises her eyebrows briefly. Seemingly just as surprised at this turn of events.
“Alright. So fuck the questionnaire for now.” Helena says slowly, thoughtfully.
Very unprofessional . She chides herself.
“We can just talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“Well, about you. That’s what I’m here for.”
No it’s not . Helena reminds herself. But it did sound like something a real psychiatrist would say.
Helena is glad to see the mood shifted from hostility to confusion on Dinah’s part. At least that was a start.
A start to what?
“Why don’t we start with how you’re feeling today?” Helena asks in peak psychiatrist voice.
Dinah shifts. Sits further back in her chair with her legs stretched in front. Relaxed. Effortlessly cool.
“Well Dr. Messina, I am doing surprisingly okay for someone trapped in the middle of nowhere.”
Trapped? Helena catches onto the word.
“Trapped?” She didn’t mean to ask it out loud but there it was, hanging between them. The first verbal acknowledgement she had gotten of the facility’s true purpose.
Not a hospital. A prison.
Helena thinks carefully about what her next question should be. What might get her more information without blowing her cover. But the recording device was turned off. No one needed to know what she asked Dinah in this room.
So what if…
“Do you know if Sioni-”
Helena gets interupted, loudly, by Zsasz swinging the door open. The door hits the wall hard and bounces back. Zsasz catches it with his foot.
For a brief second Helena recognises a very familiar look in his eyes.
Rage.
It goes away quickly. He fakes a smile and turns to face Dinah.
“Sorry to interrupt ladies. Dinner is ready. Better get a move on, Lance.”
“Right,” Dinah’s eyes go from Helena to Zsasz before landing on Helena again for a few moments. “Okay then.”
She gets up and leaves the room, having to awkwardly contort herself around Zsasz in order to get out the door without having to touch him. He stands unmoving, looking at Helena now.
She stares back unblinking. Sensing there’s a challenge there.
“You get what you needed on there?” He asks, nodding in the direction of the recording device.
“Some of it.” She answers.
“They were clear about the job, right?”
“Yes. Very.”
“So you were recording the whole time. Right?” His last word sounded harder. A warning. No.
A threat .
“Right.” Helena says. Getting up resolutely. She doesn’t bother trying to avoid touching Zsasz as she leaves, roughly pushing him aside with her shoulder as she heads to the mess hall.
He must have been listening in at the door, Helena knows. Tasked to interfere as soon as she did something out of line. He’ll probably tell someone about the question she was about to ask. Maybe even Sionis.
Fuck.
Nothing left to do but keep her head down for a bit. Play along.
Her suspicions are proven true once again when she sees Dinah sitting alone in the middle of the empty mess hall. Looks like it’s nowhere near dinnertime yet.
Their eyes meet briefly. Dinah’s face showing a look Helena has a hard time recognising. Guilt, maybe? But what does Dinah have to feel guilty about?
“Looks like we’re gonna get some serious snow soon.” Harleen has her nose pressed up against a window in the staff’s quarters.
Helena joins her, keeping her distance, and looks outside. Seems like her colleague was right. A great mass of clouds is coming in their direction and already the snow around Calico’s rest starts falling more heavily.
Helena takes it all in. The pure chaos of snowflakes and wind,
I know how you feel . She catches herself thinking, even though she’s not sure what she means by that.
“Hey slowpoke, you comin’?” Harleen calls. She’s already at the end of the hallway and opens the door with the keycard.
She’d invited Helena to spend the rest of the evening in the rec room. Apparently that’s where everyone gathers in the evening. Patients, prisoners? , and staff alike.
Harleen’s listing off all of the board games they have. Helena’s surprised she’s listening and nodding along to Harleen’s long winded speech. For someone so objectively annoying, she sure does grow on you quickly.
The atmosphere in the rec room is comfortable. Everyone seeming comfortable doing their own thing. Reading, talking, playing board games, or watching some 80s movie on the television. Zsasz is nowhere to be found. But he’s not the only one…
“We’re missing two.” Helena says out loud.
Harleen, who is already bugging one of her patients with bad chess advice, especially considering they were playing backgammon, looks up.
“Two? Oh! Two people.” She looks around, taking stock of who is missing. Helena already knows half of the answer. “Hmm, Cynthia and Dinah. They’re probably out smoking. I tell ya, you know you’ve really got it bad when you can’t even kick the habit for this kinda weather.”
She shrugs and goes back to whispering “knight to E4” in the ear of an increasingly more frustrated woman.
Helena looks out of the door heading outside. The snowfall had gotten quite intense. If she was forced to go out there now, chances of getting lost were probably pretty high. How far would you be able to look ahead of you? Four feet? Less?
Helena stands around for a bit feeling awkward. She hasn’t really had too much experience socialising. Or at least not socialising in any traditional way and she very much doubted one of these people would want to do a sparring match with her.
She settles on reading. There’s a few books that peak her interest, there’s even a few in Italian. She picks a novel by her favorite author even though she’d already read it three times as a teen, taking it over to an empty table to read it.
She’s quickly absorbed in the text, not noticing the brief chill running through the room as the door outside opens and closes. Nor does she fully register the fact that someone was now suddenly sitting in front of her.
Dinah waits until Helena slowly looks up from her book.
Apparently that was the only confirmation she’d been waiting for, as she starts talking.
“So, Dr. Helena Berti-Messina. I was wondering about that. You having a last name to be mistaken about.”
Fuck.
“First I thought that maybe you’d been married. Took his last name. Broke up. Not used to it yet. But I noticed you don’t have any sign of having worn a wedding ring so, probably not.”
“You a detective or something?”
The woman laughs. Loud. Heartfelt.
“No. No. But I worked with one for a while. Who knows, maybe some of that rubbed off on me.”
Helena doesn’t answer. She’s trying to come up with a way to redirect the conversation away from her hidden identity.
“Anyway, I came up with some other possible reasons for it. Just stop me when I’ve got the right one, okay?”
Helena does not answer.
Dinah’s smile seems to waver a bit.
Probably because I’m not smiling . Helena deduces, but she can’t quite bring herself to play along.
“Alright alright, don’t tell me,” Dinah says, smiling again as she sits up straight. She leans forward making direct eye-contact now. “It’s more fun if I can find out by myself anyway.”
Helena’s not sure if she could hide the truth if Dinah figures it out.
“Hmmmm.” Dinah seems to search for something in Helena’s eyes. When she apparently found it she starts.
“Soviet spy.”
Ha. No.
“Da? Maybe? You look like you know how to speak Russian.”
“I know how to speak a lot of languages.” Helena says, surprising herself more than Dinah. Dinah chuckles, seemingly taking the new clue into account.
“So soviet spy is a no. But many languages, alright, maybe that’s something. Let’s see…”
She leans in even closer. Helena can make out all the various colors in Dinah’s eyes now.
“British spy?” Dinah asks in a bad fake accent.
No .
“Witness protection program?”
Close.
“Psychiatrist.” Helena corrects. But her unwillingness to play along only seems to increase the fun Dinah’s having.
“Former dominatrix to the stars.” Dinah declares.
Helena can’t stop a sudden laugh from escaping her, to Dinah’s delight. Even Harleen looks up for a moment at the unexpected sound.
“Alright, alright. Last try: International assassin.”
Whoa.
Helena says nothing. Focussing all her energy on not reacting.
Dinah’s smile wavers and then disappears as the air between the pair grows heavy.
“So, who’re you here for?” Dinah asks trying unsuccessfully to sound as if she’s merely joking.
“No one. Psychiatrist.”
“Right. Well.” Dinah looks Helena up and down slowly. “As long as you’re not here to kill me, guess I don’t really care.” She stands up abruptly and goes to leave the room. Helena considers going after her for a moment. To explain, maybe, or deescalate.
Instead she’s interrupted by Harleen who’s loudly shaking the box of a board game in her face.
“Scrabble?”
Just as Harleen drops the box on the table in front of Helena all the light’s in Calico’s Rest go out.
One of the women yells in surprise. Helena tries to remember her name. Laura? Lori?
Helena is already standing at the pool table, hand curled around a cue, ready for a fight.
A sudden stream of light illuminates the rec room. Zsasz, holding a flashlight.
“Looks like the power went out. Damn snowstorm. Lance, go turn on the generator.” Zsasz commands.
“By herself?” Helena asks forcefully.
“She’ll be fine. But hey, you’re more than welcome to go with her, doc.” He says.
She’d argue the point that this sounds much more like a job for a security agent but she knows she’s antagonized him enough for one day.
“Alright,” She agrees. “Come on.” She says as she passes Dinah before grabbing the flashlight out of Zsasz’s hands.