The Starling Saviour

Chapter 58

There was whisperings of a new SCPD member when I entered the precinct the next day, but I was beside myself when found out who it was.

'Helena?' I asked rhetorically, pleasantly surprised, as soon as I spotted the familiar blonde stood with Lance at his desk.

'Since the crime rate's gone up and you've had a few... Encounters with different criminals, we thought that it would help to have someone else to help you out,' Lance explained. 'The rest of your team are useless, and their dropping out like flies.'

'Oh no, why?' I was quick to start worrying. 'It's not because of my leadership, is it?'

'No, it's because Forensic Science simply isn't interesting anymore,' Lance claimed. 'And the workload is getting to them.'

'What workload?' I started to get annoyed at my team's attitude. 'None of them were doing anything, I had to take on twice the amount of work I was originally doing!'

'And that's why they got axed,' Lance merely stated with a ruthless grin.

'Should I not have been told about this, as the Head of the Forensics Department, before you just cut my department in half?' I interrogated Lance, but I couldn't complain; after all, he was the only one out of us both who would have the guts to get rid of the useless.

'I think we both know what I did was what you couldn't,' Lance sensed my thoughts with a smirk.

'I didn't think you'd be back after what... Happened,' I said as I took Helena into my now empty Forensics lab.

'A petty criminal like Vanch could never scare me off,' Helena smiled with resilience. 'I'm a vigilante, remember, like you and now, to my surprise, Oliver Queen?'

'Oh yeah, that happened,' I laughed slightly at Helena's realisation, I presuming she finding out from Vanch's interrogations. 'You've missed a lot.'

'I would've come back sooner, but it took... Longer than I wanted for me to get over Isaac's death,' Helena admitted sadly. 'I moved to Hub City, actually, and I was their Forensic Scientist there.'

'I've heard that Hub City is a great place,' I thought back to the only time I heard of the city, when Lance was in a particularly heated discussion with a controversial investigative reporter from the area named Vic Sage. 'Did you like it there?'

'It was a nice change of scenery, but it wasn't Starling City,' Helena commented. 'I had grown too attached to this place. And I missed you and Ted too much.'

She watched as my face fell at Ted's name, not quite knowing what to tell her. Ted Grant, our old vigilante mentor and Helena's ex-boyfriend, had not contacted me since he closed down our unit and locked away his lair until further notice.

'That's why you know about Oliver,' Helena tried to comprehend what had taken place without her there. 'You're part of his crusade now, because Ted never resumed his.'

'What did you think you were going to come back to?' I asked her softly.

'I guess I had an ideal scenario in my head that I hoped would be true,' Helena bowed her head in shame. 'I was so stupid.'

'We all want what we wish for,' I tried to reassure her. 'You were brave to come back here, to relive everything all over again.'

'I'm not that great,' Helena said sheepishly, I hugging her as a way of comforting her from her hopes being shattered before her very eyes.

---

'-can we get back to crime fighting, please?' Diggle was asking Oliver and Felicity in an offhand tone, the three sat in a booth at the Starling branch of the Big Belly Burger fast-food restaurant chain.