Stephanie muses on the Birds after their trip to Hong Kong (volume 2 issue 5 and 6).
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Steph doesn't know sometimes how to describe Helena to people who don't know her, or have only seen her from a distance. “Statuesque” seems so...inadequate. And yet, having been with her both when off duty to see her teaching, and on missions where her capo persona is called for, the level of sophistication Helena exudes effortlessly, combined with her height, seems to have no other fit.
She's seen Helena in the most unglamorous situations, from the panicked, horrifying days of the earthquake when she was forced to save her rotten dad from a younger, much more violent and willing-to-use-lethal-force Huntress, to learning how to ride motorcycles with Helena breathing down her neck (literally, too) so that she doesn't scratch her beautiful Ducati (the civvie one, not the white-cross-on-purple one which would be...out of place in parking lots awkwardly fishtailing as she tried to make out Helena's instructions between bouts of muffled Italian swearing...at least, she assumed it was swearing, from the tone and rigidity of Helena's body behind her). Despite all this grime, spiritual and physical, Steph knows that there's something bright about Helena, something that shines whether she's gently but firmly instructing students on European history, arguing with others about the appropriate levels of force and actions, jumping across building roofs, or holding someone off those roofs by the neck three stories up and shaking them for threatening children. It's not white or silver, like the passion which you see in Batman or Babs – the concentrated cultivation of righteousness born of personal pain. It's not warm, firm, and yellow like Dinah's, full of the acceptance of experience and the strength of conviction. It's jagged, excruciating, furious, vulnerable – probably violet (which might explain her own draw towards Huntress – she has good taste in costume colors) – born out of the same pain, but without the kind of examples and love that allow Bruce or Barbara to see the better way.
She saw Dinah, Babs, and Helena out walking after the business in Hong Kong. Dinah had a cast and was smiling as usual, Babs was looking a bit frayed but also mysterious (the combined “new internet” thing and faking her own death must have been eating at her), but Helena... Steph knew it wasn't just the fact that Helena towered over her companions. Taped up like a mummy after Shiva's beating, limping, leaning over Babs to tell a private joke while Dinah wasn't looking, tentatively reaching an arm around Dinah's smaller shoulders, Steph thinks Helena has finally found her way back in.
Sometimes, Steph wonders if it's Helena's height that allows her to continue bucking Batman's strictures. Sure, Helena's ferociously intelligent, has access to similar resources and training, and has carved out her own reputation in Gotham. But there has to be something about being only three inches shorter than the scariest man ever that helped.
Of course, Dinah was shorter than even Steph, and she had kissed Batman. Steph shudders just thinking about that. Slapping Bruce for being a jerk is one thing, even if her hand still tingled in horrified amazement and humor at that. But actually planting a big one on that becowled visage (such an appropriate word for Batman's face, that)...that took guts from someone nearly a foot shorter.
Still, the height had to help.
