Hi. I don't own any of these characters, they probably belong to WB and DC Comics. I'm just borrowing them, and will return them if I must. This fic takes place between the episodes Sins of the Mother and Primal Scream. It doesn't fit into continuity perfectly, but it's not too noticeable.

Dinah was staring out the window again. Barbara watched as she slowly pushed her favorite, Alfred's famous spaghetti, around the circumference of her plate. It had been a week since Al Hawke had killed Black Canary, a week since Dinah had laughed or cried, a week since the blonde had talked to anyone.

It had gone on long enough.

"Dinah, are you all right?" Barbara asked.

"Fine," she replied distractedly.

"How's school?"

"Fine."

"How's Gabby doing?"

"Fine."

Monosyllabic answers. Never a good sign. Of course, with what Dinah had been through the past few weeks, who could blame the poor kid? It was a bizarre sequence of events to be sure, and added on top of everything else was the normal pain of losing a parent.

"Dinah, it's okay to be sad," she finally said gently. "Grief is a very healthy process. Helena and I don't think any less of you for needing time to mourn."

"I'm not sad," Dinah insisted. She was silent for a few moments and then cocked her head curiously and asked, "Are you? You knew her better than I did..."

"I miss her," Barbara admitted, determined to do something with the attention that the blonde was finally giving her. "I've cried several times since that night."

The teen nodded sympathetically. "It's hard to lose a friend."

"It's hard to lose a mother, as well," the redhead said pointedly.

"So I hear," Dinah said softly, looking away and beginning to play with her food again. "But she wasn't my mother. At least, not in my head, anyways."

"Then why was the first thing you said when you saw her, 'Mom?'" Barbara asked gently.

Dinah's eyes flashed in anger and her hand formed a fist around her fork as she looked back toward her mentor. "Spontaneous recovery."

Barbara rolled her eyes. "I should never have let you take that psychology class."

"It was your idea," the blonde reminded her. "And, while we're on the subject, you're projecting the sadness you feel on to me."

Barbara sighed in frustration. "Dinah, ignoring your feelings won't make them go away."

"I don't have feelings!" Dinah insisted angrily. She paused for a moment and frowned. "That sounded better in my head."

"You're trying to say that your mother wanting to have a relationship with you, and then subsequently having that chance taken away from you again didn't affect you at all."

"Yes!" Dinah cried. "Uh, I mean, no... I mean, it did kinda mess me up at first. But it's different. It wasn't so much that she died-" she stopped herself abruptly and began to make designs in the sauce with her fork. "The whole thing was just weird."

"It certainly was a hard situation for you-"

"No, it wasn't," Dinah interrupted without looking up from her plate. "I've been through that before... no big deal."

"You've been through what before?" Barbara gently prodded.

"Her leaving. It's hard the first time. Not so hard after that."

"Hey," the redhead said, reaching across the table to take Dinah's hand left hand. "You can talk to me about that, too."

'Yeah, like it helped the first time.' The teenager pulled her hand away from Barbara's and put it under the table, out of reach. "Nothing to talk about," she said, taking her first bite of the meal.

Barbara sighed and began eating again. She was trying to think of a different way to broach the topic when a blaring of sirens came from the Delphi.

Dinah jumped up and ran towards the computers before Barbara could even open her mouth. Shaking her head, she pulled herself into her chair and maneuvered it towards the ramps. As she got close, Dinah turned off the alarm and she was able to hear the sound of the elevator opening.

"In here, Helena," Barbara called, wheeling to one of the keyboards.

Dinah dutifully stepped back to make room for her mentor. She had already seen what was on the screen, anyway.

It wasn't good.

"Hey, super friends," Helena greeted cheerfully. "Trouble in the city?"

"Another boy was found," Dinah said, pointing at the screen.

"Ah. Knew it had to be serious to make you guys let Alfred's spaghetti get cold."

Dinah glared at her. "It is serious. Some guy is taking kids away from their families! This last boy was abducted from his school yesterday and they found his body in an alley just a few minutes ago."

Helena winced involuntarily. That guilt trip had been almost Oracle-worthy. "How many kids does that make?" she asked gravely, looking over her mentor's shoulder to try to see the screen.

"It's at four now," Barbara said, turning her chair around. She shook her head and sighed in frustration. "And the school board hasn't even told parents, yet! I called that perfidious bureaucrat yesterday, and he told me that it wasn't a 'clear pattern of danger'."

Helena looked at Dinah blankly.

"President of the School Board," she translated.

"Aren't schools supposed to warn parents if any students are abducted or harmed?" Helena asked. "There doesn't have to be a pattern of danger. The law says that they have to tell them if anything's even attempted."

Barbara and Dinah stared at her in shock.

"When you're a vigilante you have to know these things," Helena said in her best English accent.

Barbara stared at her for a few more seconds and then shook it off. "The individual schools have notified the parents. That's just a matter for individual principals. But the murderer hasn't struck the same school twice, so it hasn't done any good. Parents district wide need to be informed. I called some people at the PTA and they made fliers, but it was too late for that boy."

"It's the same guy, isn't it?" Dinah asked.

"Probably," Barbara said. "His body hasn't been examined yet."

Barbara saw the girl's face fall and touched Dinah's arm reassuringly. "We're doing the best that we can. We'll catch this guy." She grinned wickedly. "I didn't just call the PTA, I leaked all the information I have to the New Gotham Gazette and four different local television stations. By this time tomorrow, the whole city will know what's happening and everyone will be watching for him. And that incompetent at the district office will be held accountable for not following procedure."

Dinah and Helena both made mental notes never to mess with Barbara.

"Maybe I should watch a school like Helena," Dinah suggested.

"Nice try," Barbara said, smiling and gently swatting her arm. "You'd do anything to get out of sixth period algebra, wouldn't you?"

Dinah shrugged and tried her best to look like she was trying to look innocent; like she was just a teenager trying to see how much she could get away with. "I just want to help."

It didn't work. The plea still came through in her voice.

The authoritative guardian left and was replaced by a concerned mentor. "Look, there's nothing we can do right now. Let's finish dinner while we wait for the police to finish their report."

"Yeah, okay," the blonde agreed softly, making her way back to the kitchen.

Barbara started to move her electric chair to the ramp, but was stopped by Helena's hand on her arm.

Helena waited until Dinah was out of earshot and said softly, "Hey, how's the Kid?"

The redhead sighed, putting a hand through her hair. "Not good. She won't talk about Carolyn at all. Every time I try to bring up what happened, she gets angry and says that she's already dealt with it. She goes to school, does her homework, trains twice as long as she did before... and does nothing else."

"Hmmm, throwing herself into her work..." Helena tapped her chin with her index finger. "I wonder where she got that?"

Barbara rolled her eyes. "She's actively avoiding dealing with her emotions. That's never a good thing."

Helena nodded, conceding the point. "Are you sure it's not the case, though?"

"It's an especially tragic one, but she's seen worse things since she's been here. I think it's just giving her a safe outlet for her emotions. She can still cry and be angry at someone without facing her mother's death."

"I didn't think of that." The brunette stopped and scratched her head. "I guess I acted the same way when you trained me. Maybe you should let her on sweeps. You always said that it helped me channel my anger."

Barbara looked at her seriously. "And you very nearly beat to death a couple of people. No, it's too soon for her. She's trying so hard to avoid her emotions that she's spinning out of control. She's going to crash any time now, and she can't afford for it to be on sweeps."

Helena leaned to the side to look around the wall and sneak a peak of Dinah morosely picking at her dinner. "You think I should talk to her?"

"It couldn't hurt. You know what she's going through and she looks up to you."

"I'll try at dinner. Speaking of, we better go join her before she gets suspicious and figures out we've been talking about her."

Barbara raised an eyebrow. "You do know that she's a telepath, right?"