By popular demand, I present the answer to Q's question, and the aftermath thereof.

I own nothing.

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They were married two and a half times in a month. It was necessary, Victor said, to throw the Cabal off of his trail – Helena thought it was a little overcomplicated, but who was she to argue with the Master of Conspiracy when it came to this kind of stuff?

The first time, they took Bruce's boat out into international waters with Helena's godfather, her priest, and Bruce – two witnesses and a captain to marry them. She outlined to her godfather and her priest what they would be doing and an edited version of why. They explained that he was in hiding, but implied that he was part of the witness protection program, not that there was an international power consortium after him. They told her godfather and priest that they had met at work, although he worked in a different field. Her priest knew which kind of work she meant; her godfather assumed they'd met at her school. They agreed, reluctantly, to go along with the plan.

The second time, they were married in costume. It wasn't a traditional wedding by any stretch of the imagination. The groom had no face, for one thing, and the bride wore a purple gown with a rectangular cutout over her belly – clearly a variation on her crimefighting uniform. Green Arrow was the best man, Batgirl the maid of honour, and J'onn J'onzz gave the bride away, temporarily making himself look like her long-dead father. As for the ring bearer, well, it was Rex, obviously. What other boys did they know and trust? Supergirl agreed to be the flower girl, with surprisingly little fuss. Flash, of course, was in charge of the food. Telling Flash about the wedding may have been a bit of a mistake, as his entire Rogues Gallery (aside from Grodd) showed up in costume to crash the reception. As they were just there for the free cake, they let it slide after the obligatory battle.

The third time was aborted half way through. It was a public ceremony, with all of the pomp and circumstance and relatives one would expect in a mob princess' wedding, even an orphaned one. This time, her godfather gave her away with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. The wedding appeared to be going smoothly until the priest asked if anyone knew of any reason why they should not be legally wed. That was when the man stood up and pulled out a gun amd said, "Szasz."

Victor visibly paled. "They found me," he said, his voice raspy with fear. Helena pushed him to the ground and the bullet barely missed them both.

Several of Helena's relatives had pulled out guns in the chaos following the shot. Only a few of them heard the priest tell the bride and groom, "This way."

By the time Helena's family had forced the gunman out of the church (with no fatalities among the guests, fortunately,) someone had called the cops. It could have ended worse if Helena hadn't taught the police sargeant's daughter in grade three; the cops turned a blind eye on the weapons, aside from the antagonist. They wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him as Helena and Victor drove off at a breakneck speed from the chuch parking lot. "You can't run forever, Szasz!" the gunman shouted at the quickly disappearing vehicle. "You think I was the only one they sent?"

Just seconds after the car raced around the corner, the assembled cops and wedding guests heard a sound like a gunshot and metal tearing in half, and an unmarked, driverless eighteen-wheeler raced through the intersection – tin cans and the remains of a white car twisted across the hood. The gunman stopped shouting and gave a satisfied grunt, and refused to say another word. The guests were startled out of their shock when Helena's godfather collapsed.

The corpses of the bride and groom were too mangled for traditional identification, or for an open-casket funeral. The weather decided to get in on the anti-traditionalist mood, and the rain stayed away from Gotham. Roughly fifty percent of the mourners were armed, up from the thirty percent at the wedding. Her godfather sat at the front, still wheelchair-bound after his collapse. After the old man's son's vehement protest at the media's incursion on his father's hospital room, few reporters and only two photographers dared to make an appearance. Most of the armed mourners were keeping one eye out for the gunman from the wedding, who had disapeared from police custody. A few, though, were watching for the people who had sprung him. One of them, a young man just out of high school, thought back to the visit he'd recieved.

He'd liked Helena. His cousin, the schoolteacher, didn't involve herself much with the family, and even less with the family business, but she had always treated him as an adult. She had encouraged his love of writing, encouraged his dreams of following in the footsteps of his favourite authours. He held an unopened bottle of champagne in one hand and his acceptance letter from Oxford in the other, and wondered what to do.

"Are you Paulie Spiro?" said a male voice from the shadows. The Bat? But he hadn't done anything! No... not the Bat. It was a dark-haired man in a fedora and a blue suit. His face was... was not there. Who was this guy?

"Who's asking?" said Paulie, guardedly.

"That would be the Question," said the man with no face.

"Stop toying with the poor kid, Q," said another voice in the shadows to Paulie's left. When the voice's owner sauntered into view, Paulie wished he'd brought his gun. The Huntress. She could - and would - kill a man for being involved with the mob, according to his father. But instead of pulling her lethal crossbow on him, Huntress just walked over to the guy, Q. "Question here wanted to make sure the people who killed Vic and Helena weren't going after her family too. Well, we've seen it. Let's go, Q."

Question didn't move. "Huntress," he said. "Helena's cousin got into Oxford."

"I should care why?"

"It was her dream and... he was her friend."

Huntress' expression softened. "I know, Baby. Look, you go make sure those people aren't spying on them and I'll talk to Paulie here. I won't even shoot him." Question nodded, and vanished. Being from Gotham, and having heard the stories about the Bat, Paulie wasn't so surprised.

"Look," said Huntress. "You and your people don't like what I do. That's fine. I don't like what you and your people do, either. Good people wind up dead because of Mafia scum. But the people who got Victor and Helena dead? They're worse. I can't keep Q safe from them and go after all the Families, so... I'm calling a truce. With this one Family, at least. Besides, maybe I can convince some of you boys to help us hunt them down. You Mafia types like revenge, right?"

"You should care why?" said Paulie, echoing Huntress' words from earlier.

Huntress didn't seem offended. "It wasn't for Q, I wouldn't. But..." she trailed off, then started again. "But Q doesn't have a lot of friends, so each one is important to him. Victor was his oldest friend, you know? Vic was there the first time Q hacked the Pentagon, apparently, and according to Q that's a big deal. When Q found out Vic and Helena were getting married, he was so happy. He thought Victor could maybe live a happy life with the girl he was in love with, like normal people get, you know? He had so many plans for sending them off safe on their new life together. He didn't count on the gunman and the truck." She took a moment, and Paulie might have been imagining it, but he thought she was crying. "I don't know why I'm telling you this stuff. The point is, Q wants to help you guys keep safe from those freaks that killed Vic and Helena, and I'm going to help him by not killing you myself." She stood, then paused. "Helena wasn't bad. We got to know each other pretty well while she was planning the wedding, you know. She really wanted you to go to Oxford?" Paulie nodded. "Maybe you should go. Last wishes of the dead, right?"

"Maybe," said Paulie, looking again at the paper. "Do you–" But by then, she was gone.

Now Helena and Victor were in the ground. As far as the Question knew (which was pretty darn far) they were all as safe as they had been before Vic and Helena had ever met. Safer, actually, because now there wasn't the risk of the Huntress killing them. A few of the things she'd said still bothered him, though. The biggest issue was the group that had arranged the murder of the two lovers, of course. Who were they? Huntress had only ever referred to them as 'they', and Question hadn't been any more fortcoming. What had the Question done to anger them? By all accounts, Question was not a "hands-on" type of hero, although there was that rumour about Lex Luthor and the US government. Did 'they' have any limits at all? How much could he do to help Question before this mysterious 'they' turned their ire on him? And, aside from the call for blood to pay for blood, why was he looking for a way to help the vigilante at all?

He hadn't seen Huntress again since that night, but Question had been in touch. Some of the things he said were really off the wall, like the thing about the 32nd flavour, but anything that he'd been able to fact check, he had – and everything he'd been able to fact check, Question had been right about. Question had given him a list of Helena's friends and family that he'd also gotten into contact with, and their stories came back mostly the same. However unbalanced this Question guy was, he was on the level. And there was no faking the look in Huntress' face when she talked about him, so she was on the level, too.

Life would be different when he came back from Oxford. Paulie was sure of it.

From the Watchtower, Question and Huntress watched their own funeral via spy satellite. "Paulie looks like he's thinking a lot," said Huntress. "What did you say to him?"

"No more than I said to the others," said Question. "He's just... thoughtful, I suppose."

She glared at him. "I know that tone, buster."

His expression was blank, of course, but he managed to give of an air of complete innocence when he said, "What tone?"

"I told you that you can plan all you want," she said. "But I've still got three weeks to go on our honeymoon, and you promised."

"Sorry, Helena," he said.

She tried to hold on to her glare, but he was just so cute. "Oh, I guess I'll forgive you," she said with a sigh. Then she smirked and leaned close to his ear. "But only if you make it up to me."