A model inmate at a prison for aliens is one of the few to have kind words of appreciation or respect for how Hank Henshaw ran things.
"He knew there were two responses to caging a beast: its broken or it gets angry. He understood that if you treat people like animals you're gonna get bit. But more than that, he knew that sometimes just the inability to move or to change was enough to break someone...or at least quiet them. I never gave him any trouble...so he never had to calm me down. What I knew, I shared. But unlike literally everyone else here, 'what I knew' was never a priority for him. He was misguided and single-minded but duty-bound. His regard for his code of honor and responsibility...in other words his inability to see past his own uniform was unfortunate for some but helped him recognize and appreciate her own dedication to her people and exception-less belief in honesty and honor. She wasn't a monster, like some people there but she was a criminal, so she absolutely deserved to be there. The only reason I'm at the DEO not a regular prison is my physiology is such they would accidentally kill me. Table salt burns through the soft tissue of my throat and the stuff they use to calm unruly inmates would give stop my heart flat. So I serve my time in the one place equipped for someone as weird as myself...without issue and without complaint.”
She's explaining all this to the new director, J'onn J'onzz. Who after a few minutes asks what crime she committed to get arrested in the first place. Since she was arrested through normal channels and not captured by the D.E.O. Her face grows sad, she sits cross-legged on the floor and says "I beat the hell out of a guy who turned out to be a cop."
"One of the main things presented in the case against me was that I had the disregard and the audacity to attack an officer of the law. And no offense but I'm starting to think your justice system is a little broken. If a person's status is such that it's a worse crime to rob them, or you get a more severe punishment for wronging them, shouldn't they bother telling you what they are? If I'd known, I would have pulled back. To me a cop is either in a dress uniform or...in a blue outfit with a badge on his chest. I never saw a uniform or his badge. Without explaining my ignorance or my other-worldliness I couldn't tell them this, and I doubt people would have listened. I mean, don't get me wrong, I beat the hell outta the guy, enough so that he died from his injuries 3 weeks later, but I didn't decide to be a cop-killer like they presented of me...I DIDN'T KNOW!"
J'onn looks like he wants to say something, but decides against it. Instead he crouches down, eye-level with the complex riddle of a prisoner. "I am listening if you will keep talking." He says simply.
"It's been 11 years since I was sentenced. I keep my head down. I'll serve my time. Although I still am trying to figure out how the hell I killed the guy in the first place." Her voice went completely silent. Almost entreatingly she looked up at J'onn J'onzz. "Am I the only one of my kind that you have on file? Can you check? The only thing I can think of for how someone of my build, size and weight to be able actually kill a cop, physically speaking, is if my people are just that much stronger than human beings."
"And you didn't tell anyone?"
"No, And actually, maybe that's something that earned me a little admiration from Henshaw. that I would rather accept what happens and deal with it than try to change anyone's mind. Introducing the public to some strange human-looking visitor from another planet wasn't something he could hold with. It was actually in his mandate at the time to prevent that from happening. Aliens who look like aliens is one thing. But to prevent witch hunts and people turning on each-other for fear of 'infiltrators'. It was enough to show him I would rather go to prison and just deal with it than create mass panic or a scene. Maybe learning we had so much in common was enough to quiet his suspicions of me."
"I didn't know him very well, only saw his bad side..." Eloise raises an eyebrow. "I don't actually look like this. In my native form I look like a monster, and an imposing one even as far as monsters go. He saw me like that...and reacted accordingly."
"I...I won't say I apologize...but I do regret it."
"Thank you." J'onn said sincerely. "Anyway, if he didn't think he needed to hurt you, he wouldn't have wanted to. And I guess you're right: most prisoners here probably would want to tear *my* head off."
"...He knew." Eloise said suddenly. "That's why he never did anything to make me mad. He knew I was only capable of those things when I was ticked off...so he never did anything that might make me mad."
It occurs to Eloise out of nowhere that she's very nearly free. The charge was manslaughter not murder, and rightly so because it wasn't premeditated and she didn't have a weapon. She has served 11 years of a 15 year sentence and she only has 4 years left. And that's where the story leaves off. I'm left wondering as the author if the actual legal system does the 'taking days off for good behavior' thing for manslaughter? Because if they do, she was a model inmate for the last 7 of these 11 years and her sentence might actually be commutable, without any extenuating circumstances like her alien physiology, the law not being able to take her alien strength and her essentially being a foreign child despite looking old enough to buy alcohol without getting carded.
After treating Henry's wound and not batting an eye at J'onn's green Martian-ness J'onn challenges Eloise in such a way that she locks herself in her bedroom.
J'onn J'onzz: (Uncertainly) why do I get the feeling we just repaid kindness with betrayal?
Henry Allen: (sadly) Because that's exactly what we did.
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