Helena fought against the hold Dinah had her locked in for several moments before realizing it was futile. If the Kid had the ability to disable the safety systems in the entire wing, there was no way she was going to break out of her mental grip.
She wished she could see what was going on though. That strange spinning sound was still tickling her sensitive ears, and the scent of burnt flesh and the coppery tang of blood was assaulting her sense of smell. She had to guess it was coming from Quinn, who was apparently as immobilized as she and Reese were.
Helena desperately tried to think of a way to stop all of this as she listened to the blonde's cold words to Quinn. God this was so fucked up, she groaned to herself. Think Helena! she chastised herself. For once use your head, because your fists aren't going to get you out of this one.
And then it hit her. She forced herself to tune everything out for a moment and focused her mind inwardly. When Dinah and Barbara had linked with her during that one case with Ketterly, she had remembered the odd feeling that she'd been left with for a couple of hours after the mind merging. It was the lingering effects of having someone other than herself in her mind.
When the Kid had accidentally read her during an intense sparring session shortly after Black Canary had been killed, Helena had immediately sensed her presence in the back of her skull before the Kid had a chance to tell her what had just happened.
Helena sought out that now familiar touch, and immediately found it. Dinah had gotten much better at masking her presence, but Helena sensed her none-the-less. Which meant that she had an open link to the Kid. Saying a quick silent prayer that this would work, she followed that thread back to it's source and mentally shouted at her partner with everything she had.
Dinah had been so focused on Quinn that she had been distracted enough to not sense what Helena was up to until the emotional outburst in her own mind caught her completely off guard and caused her to physically stumble. Her hand flew up to rub at the sharp pain that immediately ran through her temple and she winced as she was bombarded by a flood of powerful emotions.
She instinctively severed her link with Helena, forgetting for a moment that this would also release the brunette from her hold. Through her headache, she vaguely heard Hel gasp and stagger, and then the brunette was fumbling blindly towards her.
"Damn it Hel!" Dinah swore angrily. Wary of trying to link with her again, the blonde backed away from Helena as the older woman finally honed in on her and limped towards her with intent.
"Dinah, you can kick my ass from here to Metropolis and back if it will make you feel better, but please stop this," Helena begged. "She's not worth your soul."
Dinah stopped her retreat and looked aver at Quinn, still frozen in her grasp. "You don't understand Hel…she already took it," Dinah finally said sadly.
Helena had closed the distance between them, and her healing hands searched up Dinah's body until they were gently cupping her face. She couldn't see the younger woman, but Helena could sense the pain and loss in the blonde and felt tears well up in her eyes. "If she had, you would have killed her by now," Helena whispered. God she wished she could see Dinah right now! Her hands convulsively tightened, and she felt Dinah stiffen as her strong emotions bled into the telepath.
"Please come back to us," the brunette begged in the barest of whispers, even though she was projecting that single thought as loudly as she could along with every ounce of love she had for the girl that had become like a sister to her.
Dinah gasped, and then with a shudder her eyes closed, and she and Hel went completely silent for many long moments as everyone else watched on, helpless to say or do anything else to reach either young woman.
Barbara was gripping the edge of her desk tightly, her upper body completely tensed up as she watched the scene unfold before her. How Helena had managed to break Dinah's hold on her to begin with was beyond the redhead at the moment. But it was clear that the two were locked in some kind of mental link right now, and they were all quickly running out of time.
The redhead's hands flew across her keyboards, bringing Arkham into a tight lockdown. She still had no control of the section Quinn was being held in, but Barbara was able to control everything leading into that section. By locking it down, she would be able to stall the approaching SWAT team's breach of the facility by at least five, perhaps even ten minutes.
Then all she could do was sit back and watch. "Please get through to her," she whispered fervently. Alfred's steady hand on her shoulder gave her a measure of hope.
The maelstrom of Dinah's fractured mind nearly shattered Helena's own unstable sanity. What she saw, the unfathomable power she felt, and the terrifying cacophony of "noise" that bombarded her as it did Dinah, mentally brought Helena to her knees, screaming.
Dear god in heaven, no wonder the kid was losing it. And she thought her own life was fucked up.
It was a brutal smack of reality that brought Helena immediately out of her emotional downward spiral. She had failed her family, she'd gotten an innocent man killed, and she was now blind. But at least she didn't have to deal with this every second of every day. It was the old adage that there is always someone out there who has it worse than you do. She just never imagined it would be sweet innocent Dinah.
Something finally stirred deep within Helena, breaking her free of the suffocating depression that had stolen her will to exist these past few months. She would not lose Dinah to Quinn too. Drawing on every ounce of stubbornness that both parents had gifted her with, the brunette fought past the pain and noise and once more reached out to the blonde figure that was huddled on the ground next to her, sobbing.
It was then that Helena realized she could see clearly and was eternally grateful for that one small boon here in the planes of Dinah's mind. With tears of her own pouring down her face, Helena wrapped her adoptive younger sister up in a fierce hug and just held her, feeling everything that Dinah did through the link.
"God Dinah…I never knew," she said in a choked whisper. "I'm so sorry….I'm sorry I caused this to happen to you."
And Helena hated herself just a little bit more, but was doubly determined to make this right. Dinah however was able to clearly read her thoughts and stiffened. "No…this isn't your fault Hel!" she shouted angrily as she pulled away from the brunette.
"Dinah, look at yourself. I can feel everything you are going through right now and this is all because you touched Quinn that night trying to cover for me. You were trying to fix what I fucked up and now you are paying the price."
"Damnit Helelena I'm not a kid anymore and you both need to stop treating me like one!!!" Dinah continued. "I knew what I was risking if I touched Quinn that night. I knew before I even touched her. But that bitch had just shattered the first people I had come to think of as my family. I 'saw' what would happen if I didn't silence her Hel. I had to make sure she didn't expose us or our lives would have been even worse off than they are now. I was willing to sell my soul to the Devil right then and there if it meant keeping us from going down that path."
Helena was rendered speechless for several long moments. "Was it really worse than what we are facing right now?" she asked hoarsely. She honestly couldn't imagine things being worse than they were right now.
Dinah's shaky whispered convinced her that she didn't even want to know how much worse it could be. "If Quinn had the chance to expose us, the repercussions would reach far beyond our lives and that of New Gotham."
Helena watched as Dinah's gaze glazed over, and realized she was seeing into the future. Their dark surroundings suddenly began to shimmer with what could only be faint visions of what was to come. It was all very intangible, but the ghostly images and sounds were more than enough to fill Helena with a sense of dread.
"Humanity's existence will be threatened and it will take all of Earth's champions to save us from annihilation. Had I not kept Quinn silent, the Oracle would be forever silenced, and for the want of six creatures of the night, a war would be lost."
Helena's eyes flickered around them as the faint images played out a horrific battle being waged. The enormity of it shook her to the core as one scene in particular caught her attention. It looked like a final standoff, because as the image flickered by them, she recognized dozens of superheroes before the scene shifted and then eventually faded as the vision passed.
Helena blinked, and filed away what she felt and saw for later discussion. This wasn't the time to delve into this particular revelation, but it was too important to sideline indefinitely. She released a shaky breath and blinked again to try and clear her head.
"Alright D, you made the right choice then, but you can't keep torturing her or yourself like this. All you are doing is becoming more like her and giving her the satisfaction of knowing that she's breaking you. Do you really want to let a douche bag like her get the upper hand over you? Just wipe her mind, if that's what you think needs to be done and then let her rot in here for the rest of her life. It will certainly be a far better punishment than any of us could ever give her," Helena pleaded.
Dinah's gaze finally refocused on Hel, and with a tired sigh she stepped back, hugging her arms around herself. "I don't think I can go back Hel. Not after what I've done."
It was the first time in a long time Hel saw the insecure teen part of Dinah resurface. "We can never take back what we've done Dinah. You've been in my head and you know just how much I wish I could change everything. All we can do is deal with the hand we've been dealt and move forward. What you said to me last night….it made me realize I was being a coward. And that was a bitter pill to swallow and I think that's why it pissed me off so much.
"But, I'm not going to let either of you down ever again. And I sure as hell am not going to give up on you now Dinah. I will walk through hell and back if it means I can set things right with my family. We can make it through this Dinah, but only if we stick together in this. So please…let Quinn and Jesse go and let's go home and heal."
The stone walls that Dinah had been building around herself over the last few weeks and months shattered under that emotional request. She sank against Helena once more, and buried her face in the brunette's shoulder. "I just want the voices to stop," she whispered hoarsely.
Hearing those words from Dinah, while they were standing inside Arkham's walls just struck something as perversely funny inside Helena. And she giggled, before she could stop it. Dinah's head snapped up, her eyes flaring in anger for a moment, before her own mind caught up with the brunette's line of thought. The teen paused, and then she too giggled.
And something inside both young women broke as they clung to each other laughing and crying, as the irony of their lives caught up with them in that moment. It was the first step in exorcising the ugly demons that haunted them, and it was the final blow to the cold and vengeful hatred that had surrounded Dinah all these weeks.
"I promise you Dinah…somehow I will help to make this right. We'll find a way, but if you keep this up, you'll only undo everything that we try. So what say we call it a night and head home?"
Dinah's answer never came verbally, but she finally relented. With a gasp, Helena found her mind dropped sharply back into her own head, and her world went pitch black once more. She staggered a bit, exhaustion seeping into every pore of her body with the force of a Mack truck hitting her, and it was only because of Dinah's strong grip that she stayed upright.
The spinning noise stopped, and there was the sound of a small metallic object bouncing along the concrete. Helena heard two more bodies begin to shift and then the click of a gun hammer being drawn back.
"Don't think I won't hesitate to put one in your skull Quinn. Dinah may have stopped me the first time, but I won't miss again," Reese threatened harshly.
"Helena, Dinah, you need to get out of there. SWAT has already breached the facility and I have slowed them down but they are only a couple of minutes from cutting through the last of the security doors."
Dinah helped Helena lean against the wall and then took quick steps towards Quinn, who promptly shrank back in fear from the blonde. Dinah, didn't let up though, and when she had the former psychiatrist backed into a corner, she grabbed the older woman by the front of her coveralls and leaned in.
"I should just tell you're heart to stop beating right now and save everyone the trouble of keeping you alive," the teen ground out. "You aren't worth a bullet, let alone three squares and a hot shower a day. But Helena's right. You definitely aren't worth what's left of my soul. So say goodbye to everything you've ever known Harleen, because my face is the last thing you are going to remember of this life. You are about to be given a clean slate. Let's all hope you decide to do something a little better with your life in the future."
"No wait! It doesn't have to be-," Quinn's pleas were cut off as Dinah's hand slid up into Quinn's short hair and tightened.
The teen closed her eyes and bent her head in extreme concentration as Quinn's eyes widened and then rolled up into her own head. The link lasted for only a few seconds and then Dinah stepped away from the unconscious woman, visibly shaken.
"Dinah?" Helena asked quietly.
"It's done. Before...I just blocked her memories. But this time I have wiped them completely. I have left her only with a few basics of herself and her past. She knows nothing of who she is now or of the world she became a part of," Dinah answered. She looked up towards the camera. "How are we getting out of here Oracle?"
"There is a janitor's corridor just outside the door behind you. Inside is a ventilation shaft that leads down into the basement. You can drop into the sewer system from there."
"And the night just keeps getting better," Helena muttered as she shoved away from the wall and swung her head towards Reese. "Jesse?" she asked quietly.
"I got it covered from here Helena. Just get the hell out of here before they break through. But expect me to be by for an explanation when this is all over with."
Helena nodded. "You deserve it," she admitted quietly. "I'm sorry to drag you into the middle of this again Reese, but thank you."
Dinah was slipping an arm under Helena's shoulder, helping both to support and guide her as they made their way out of the room and away from the Asylum.
Barbara released a harsh breath and dropped her head into her hands with a silent sob of relief. Alfred rested both hands on her shoulders now, and despite his earlier gesture of confidence, she could feel the slight tremble in Without looking back, she moved one hand up and rested it atop his, and squeezed gently.
Things had been too close once more. Barbara's mind spun as she desperately tried to figure out a way to help her youngest protégé. It was Alfred's quiet words of wisdom that finally got her mind on the right track.
"Perhaps it is time to seek out some trusted old friends for aid with Miss Dinah. Someone who can empathize with her talents?" he suggested gently.
Barbara's sharp mind immediately honed in on the one and perhaps only person who could help her. But her hands hovered over her keyboard. Two seconds later, her apprehensions over breaking her anonymity as the Oracle were squashed in the face of desperation. Besides, if any of them knew her true identity, it would be him.
As her eyes tracked her partners' swift return, she placed the call.