Whoa, this was an update that nearly didn't happen and it is three chapters shorter than I wanted it to, because I had to recover my files from my suddenly dead Windows installation, but thanks to some really intense IT work I got it all back, but it cost me several days and as I write a chapter a day that means several chapters. I want to put this out now because I don't know if I might go down again and the last chapter might be a little rough on the editing, but still here they are. I am also in the middle of preparing for a big event in my academic life (second only to my final exam in June) so I'll probably only get the next three chapters done by next weekend.
Next to Nope, phantom0864 and nightstalker a big thank you for reviewing and making me want to take this story further than any I've ever written in English. I appreciate your reviews. Of course to my readers I appreciate you no matter if you review or not, but feedback is always nice.
Phantom0864: Yes, Barbara is being a hypocrite, but she has her reasons, which will be explained in the next grouping of chapters. As for Alfred I just couldn't fit it into writing from Dinah's perspective the "time" in the story for him to make a comment, but I will make sure he gives her his opinion soon. Birds Of Prey reruns aren't needed I have the entire show on nonperishable digital media (read: video files) and I have never even seen a pop tart in my life and as I am not a bad cook I'd rather have the food I cook on my own.
Also keep those reviews coming, the one you've given me so far have inspired me to change the scope of the story, which was originally meant to end with Barbara accepting to train Dinah instead it is going to cover the full first season, which means this story should get several times bigger.
Chapter 19: Old facesThe warm water splashed down her body. Helena massaged the shampoo into her hair and enjoyed the luxurious feeling of the water massaging all the sore spots last night's rather intense fight with a metahuman criminal had left behind. With her eyes closed she leaned back and let the water pelt her face, when her telephone began to ring. She opened her eyes and got an eyeful of the soapy water. "Damn it," she cursed, but decided to ignore whoever it was this was their punishment for annoying her.
Yet the phone kept ringing. Helena growled and stormed out of the shower. She tore open the bathroom door and got a solid gust of what to her seemed like ice cold air. Her mood deteriorated. She grabbed the phone and pressed the button to accept the call, "Yes."
"Helena, it is me," Barbara sounded uncommonly worried. She decided to bite back the scalding comment that had been on her lips. "My dad is in the hospital. I need to go see him. Would you mind taking care of Dinah for a couple of days?" She asked.
Helena was a bit shaken. Having lived with the Gordon family she had met Jim Gordon several times. "Of course I'll take care of the kid. Is it serious?" She had to ask.
"I don't know, they didn't say much on the phone. He had some kind of attack and has been unconscious since. I am gonna drive upstate now. I will call and talk to you and Dinah later. Oh, and thank you Helena," Barbara said and hung up.
Helena looked around her apartment and her eyes feel upon her neighbor in the building across from her. She was staring at her. Helena realized she was naked, but forced herself to stay calm as she walked back towards her bathroom as if she was cool with it.
The rarely used chair was good for a couple of spins Helena thought as the Clocktower and Delphi terminals spun past. She had been at the Clocktower a couple of hours already and had even bothered to exercise, but there been no hint of Dinah's presence. She wondered what the home schooled girl was doing, when she noticed one of Delphi's monitors showing Dinah entering the elevator carrying a gym bag over her shoulder.
She had a wicked idea and decided to poke a bit of fun at Dinah. Helena walked over to the elevator doors and hid next to them. They slid open and Dinah walked past her. She jumped forward and grabbed Dinah's shoulders. However she was not prepared for the girl's reaction. In quick succession Dinah twisted out of her grip and gave her with a half way decent kick to the shins. There was a follow up elbow strike that would have hit any slower assailant in the gut, but she had already spun away. Dinah spun around as well.
For a moment the two stared at each other. "Those self-defense classes have done some good," she said and gave Dinah a smirk. At least the girl hadn't really hurt her. Dinah didn't have that kind of strength.
"Wow, damn Helena. Don't scare me like that. I was just about ready to slam you with my TK," Dinah said.
"It's my fault. Now how would you like a major pig out in front of the TV? I've brought over movies and Alfred has promised he would come over to cook," she said.
"Sounds cool, I just want to take another shower. I jogged all the way home," Dinah explained.
Helena's eyebrows shut up involuntarily. She wondered about Dinah's sudden interest in athleticism. "How come you're training so hard?" She asked.
Dinah looked at her like she had asked an obvious question. "I thought that was apparent. Mom suggested I should go out more and the only other activity I have besides self-defense is playing my cello and… and that is just not the same without Joy. I still study new pieces and play them, but it is not as fun as it used to be," Dinah explained.
"That makes sense," she mused.
"Where is mom by the way? Because I am guessing that you're my babysitter for time being," Dinah asked as she headed towards the upstairs sitting area.
Helena decided that she didn't want to worry Dinah or ruin the mood. "She was called upstate. Your granddad had some kind of problem and he needed to see her," she explained.
Dinah gave her a strangely resigned look. "Oh, well, I guess it was getting to that time," she replied mysteriously and headed for her room and probably that shower she had mentioned earlier. Helena wondered what Dinah had meant by that.
A little later Dinah reappeared with wet hair, a reddened nose and slightly puffy eyes. Helena recognized the signs of someone crying, but Dinah just smiled and sat down next to her. "Let's see what you gotten for us?" She commented and began looking through the three DVDs that lay on the table.
"Helena, you're way too butch. There is only one good romantic comedy here. You need to watch something other than action movies," Dinah said.
"Hey I happen to like Jackie Chan flicks. They're great comedy," she replied.
"I knew your fighting style came from somewhere, but I never expected that," Dinah teased.
"Punk," Helena said.
A while later as they were watching the first action movie, Dinah rested her head on her shoulder. Helena became aware of tears silently sliding down Dinah's face. "What is wrong?" She asked.
"Granddad, he is going to die," Dinah answered desolately.
"Hey, he is just in the hospital. Nobody said anything about anyone dying," she had hoped to avoid Dinah breaking down. It had only been two months since the attack on the high school and sometimes Dinah still seemed fragile.
"Nobody had to say anything. I had a dream a few days ago. I saw mom and granddad talking. He was in a hospital and he was looking really bad. A bit later on in the dream I was at a funeral," Dinah explained and once again Helena became frightfully aware that no matter what metahuman kinship there was between her and Dinah, Dinah's power differed vastly from hers. She had no idea, what kind of head trip it had to be to be able to see glimpses of life like that or read minds or even move objects with your will.
"Now listen here just because you dreamt of a funeral doesn't mean that it was his. It could just as well be something else," she suggested.
Dinah gave her a hopeless look. "I can read you know… even headstones," Dinah answered back and looked back at the screen. The TV images were reflected in a little lighted square in her blue eyes. Helena leaned back and stared at the TV screen as well. She didn't know what to say.
After a while she had to ask, "If you know these things, why don't you warn your mom? The doctors might be able to do more, if they know about what is coming."
"It doesn't work like that never has. I did warn mom, and she called up granddad but he insisted everything was alright. We both hoped and thought that maybe it was further in the future or just a regular nightmare. I told her about the entire dream. She knows, what might happen, Helena. She already knows what will happen," Dinah said.
"Miss Helena, Miss Gordon," Alfred said in greeting as he appeared out of the corridor next to the sitting area.
"Hi, Alfred, thank you for coming to rescue me from the travesty that Helena calls cooking," Dinah said in greeting and covered up her emotions so fast that Helena once again considered, how good an actress the teen had become by living with the secrecy surrounding her life. Dinah got up to set the table. Helena grimaced a bit and tried to rattle her numb arm back to life as Dinah's weight on it disappeared.
A few weeks later Barbara Gordon was sitting under a gray sky in the large police section of the Gotham Graveyard. Even from the depths of her grief Barbara couldn't help forcing herself to keep a certain amount of emotional distance. Her father wouldn't have wanted her to break down and cry in front of so many of his colleagues from the force. Dinah was standing next to her dressed in black again. The girl handled the loss of her only grandparent well, but then again as with most grandparents the bond was probably thinner than if it had been her own parent. Or maybe she was just too used to handling her grief.
Barbara couldn't remember having felt so miserable in her entire life. Not even when her parents had been killed in that car crash had she been this upset. Of course she had been very young then, the sense of loss was infinitely stronger right now. The current police commissioner of New Gotham had insisted on a burial with full honors and a huge number from the force had come including a lot of pensioned cops and detectives that had served with her dad over time.
Rain began to drip slowly on the congregation as the honorary shots were fired and the final part of the funeral was set in motion. Barbara numbly watched the proceedings until she was handed the flag. She saluted the officers that had given it to her and watched him walk away. Dinah laid a hand on her shoulder and Barbara drew a bit of comfort from her increasingly tall daughter's presence. Helena was somewhere behind her.
Barbara felt a familiar presence and turned her head to see a black haired man standing in the shadows below on the huge nearby trees. She couldn't help smiling as she recognized the face of an old and long missed friend. For a moment she wondered if Bruce was also watching somewhere as well, but she decided not to look for him. He would only give away his presence, if he wanted to talk to them. "Helena would you help me over to that tree," her wheelchair had trouble with the soft ground and so she had to suffer the indignity of being pushed.
"Sure," Helena said and from the tone of her voice Barbara knew she was wary of the man that she had never been introduced to. Dick had stayed in Bludhaven to fight its crime lords after a falling out with Batman way before the Joker's fall and she had only had contact with him through a couple of phone calls. Helena had never formally met him.
"I am so sorry for your loss," Dick Grayson said as she came closer. Using the rare moment Barbara took time to consider the former boy wonder Robin now Nightwing. Even in adulthood or maybe especially now he was a smoldering hottie as Dinah or Helena would've put it. He had someone inherited the air of mystery and power that had surrounded Bruce although Dick seemed so much more human.
"Thank you for coming, he would have appreciated it… for many reasons," Barbara said. After Batman had revealed the truth to him, she had done the same too on the night she had adopted Dinah. He actually surprised her by admitting that he had known for quite a while that she led a double life as Batgirl. He had recognized her voice quite easily. It had been easy for the detective in her father to then add two and two together and identify all the Robins and of course Nightwing knowing that Bruce had been Batman.
"He was really a great guy. Say, where is Dinah? I saw her just a moment ago," he asked and looked around. Barbara realized she had lost track of her daughter and looked up at Helena.
"She went that way. It looked like she knew where she was going," Helena commented and pointed in the direction of the regular graveyard. Barbara knew very well what graves lay in that direction.
"Let's go pick up my daughter," she said. "Would you like to come home with us? We could talk, catch up on our lives and the like," she offered hoping to catch more than just a fleeting glimpse of her friend this time.
It took them a short while to find her. She was standing at her mother's grave just staring at it in some kind of quiet communion in the middle of the rain. Helena, of course, had to throw in a comment as they found the girl standing in the rain, while they were covered by their umbrellas, "Kid, I thought you were supposed to be smart. Yet who is standing in the middle of rain getting cold with an umbrella in her hands."
Dinah looked up at them and nodded in solemn greeting to Dick. Barbara knew that her daughter's somber mood stemmed from the graveyard. She had attended several funerals for classmates like Joy's after the hostage taking and every time Dinah had visited her mother's graveyard afterwards. "Dinah, let's go home," she said.
"Let's," she agreed and walked towards them, while unfolding her umbrella.
The thick bullet proof elevator doors slid open, while Barbara and Dinah continued telling the stories about their life.
As he stepped inside, he was astounded by the size of Barbara and Dinah's home, but he was even more astounded to find a facility such as the Clocktower hidden in the middle of the sprawl of Downtown New Gotham. It had everything from super advanced computers with massive networking capabilities, broadcast systems, medical facilities and all the lab equipment you'd ever need to fight crime. It seemed that the rumors about Barbara running her own organization weren't entirely wrong. He had asked over the years of course, but mostly she had just claimed that she just provided a bit of help to local heroes.
He had known of course that Dinah would be living with her mom, but he was surprised to find that Helena Kyle the daughter of Catwoman was the Huntress and Barbara's former charge. The Huntress' reputation as a relentless and very effective heroine had even reached his town over the last couple of years. He had barely digested all of this information, when Alfred appeared as if out of nowhere and offered to take his coat. "Hello, Alfred," he said in greeting. Alfred nodded and headed off with their wet coats and umbrellas.
"May I suggest that you change clothes Miss Gordon, you're quite drenched my dear," Alfred said. He gazed over at the almost dry looking red head next to him in confusion, and then remembered Barbara telling him that she had formally adopted Dinah and she was therefore also a Miss Gordon.
"Good idea, Alfred, scoot young lady," Barbara said and gave her daughter a nudge.
"Yeah, yeah," Dinah said and headed off into the still unknown parts of the huge apartment.
"So do you all live here," Dick asked and looked around.
"Aren't we curious?" Helena replied.
But Barbara came to his rescue, "No, Alfred helps out from time to time and Helena has her own apartment."
"I guess I should have kept better contact with you, but there was some stuff I needed to focus on and… well I didn't know if I was welcome," he felt bad having missed out on so much of the life of a person he cared about, just because he had gone through another disagreement with her mentor. Now that mentor had disappeared and his friend and her life had completely changed without him around.
"You've always been welcome even at the manor, Master Grayson, but I fear the pigheadedness that is so common amongst all of you would not let you see it," Alfred explained as he passed by heading for the kitchen.
Dick looked at Barbara and Helena, who looked about as willing to admit Alfred was right as he was. "So how about you join us for dinner?" Barbara suggested. That was a suggestion, which he quickly agreed to.
The mood at dinner was a bit better than he had expected, but then again he was trying his best to lift the mood with a whole lot of help from Helena. She seemed to grow friendlier as the dinner progressed. Barbara seemed the most affected by her father's death, which was to be expected. However both she and Dinah seemed rather resigned with the fate of the old police commissioner, which left the dinner a much less depressing affair than he had expected. "So I just jumped over that guy and gave him a solid kick in the ass. I mean, how could you take him seriously the guy had named himself after the Penguin but he had neither Chester's mind nor style. He did have one of those umbrellas with gadgets in them, but honestly I was way past being scared of a guy waving an umbrella with a small knife in the end around," he explained making all three women smirk.
"You've got to be kidding me. A guy like that calling himself a mastermind is just sad," Helena agreed.
Barbara laughed a little. "That is nothing. Do you remember that nut that thought he was an insect man and tried to outdo Catwoman at cat burglary? Every time he got out of prison we caught him on top of some building in his latest insect suit," she said.
"Oh, yeah, he was special," he agreed remembering the guy in his yellow spandex suits quite well.
"Wasn't he just another thief?" Dinah asked.
"No, because you see the idiot had one big problem with being a cat burglar," Dick said sagely, "he was afraid of heights." All around the table everybody laughed.
Dick stood out side the clock and looked out over New Gotham. It itched in his fingers to go back to his hotel room, slip on his costume and prowl the night. Maybe he would feel better about Jim Gordon's death if he sent a few criminals to prison. He heard the noise of electrical motors behind him. "It's a beautiful sight," he said.
"Yeah," Barbara agreed and stopped at the ledge.
"A lot has changed since I last stood next to you," he said. He felt a bit stupid for being gone this long and he swore he wouldn't let as much time pass before his next visit to New Gotham.
"Last time you stood next too me, we were two friends, heroes wearing our costumes. Now my costume is permanently retired and you've become a stranger," she explained.
"I don't have to remain a stranger," he suggested hoping to steer the conversation away from Barbara's bitter destiny of becoming locked in a wheelchair. He hated seeing her eyes looking out of the city with such longing, but there was nothing he could do, but try to make her think of something else.
Barbara turned her head slightly and looked up at him. "I have an answer for you by the way. While she has given me more trouble than I would have ever thought possible, there is no cost only gain from having Dinah with me," she said reminding him of their age old conversation at Black Canary's grave.
"I knew you would understand. You've always been a smart girl, stubborn but smart," he said with glee. "Speaking of Dinah, how are her abilities coming along?" He remembered Barbara telling him about the girl's metahuman abilities of precognition and touch telepathy.
Barbara gave him a wry smile. "I think both Dinah and I agree that the jury is still out on their usefulness… They've only gotten stronger. The telepathy isn't something she uses a lot and the visions still come unpredictably from time to time. She has however added telekinesis to her abilities. And you can probably imagine what kind of shenanigans she can get up to with that," she explained.
"I guess she must have a hard time relating to normal people with living here and having all those abilities," he commented.
"She is coping. There haven't been that many problems, but I think Helena being a Meta too has helped a lot. Helena has tried most of the bad things too and she can usually give Dinah good advice," she said.
He didn't comment on the revelation of Helena's nature even if it was news to him. "So how is crime fighting in New Gotham these days?" he asked and cast a glance over the city glittering with its electric lights.
"Different from our days I can tell you. There are a whole lot of small time metahuman crooks these days and they sure make things exciting at times. There is a whole lot less masterminds and a whole lot more regular organized crime. We're coping fine, but there are still cases slipping by now and then," she admitted.
He knew his track record in Bludhaven wasn't perfect either, so he couldn't fault them for losing a couple of cases being only the two of them against the crime of a city like New Gotham. He wondered, "So when are you going to start training Dinah."
Barbara looked at him with outrage and anger in her eyes. "Just because Bruce tried to solve your problems by remaking you in his image, don't mean I'll do the same to my daughter. Dinah is not going to become some kind of crime fighter swinging across the rooftops, while she lives here with me," she gave him a warning look as he had planned to run inside and take Dinah away to train her by himself.
"I just thought with her being your and Black Canary's daughter as well as hanging around here, it was just a matter of time. I was wrong and I'm sorry," he said, but wondered if Dinah shared Barbara's conviction. She had seemed very interested in his stories at dinner.
"Barbara, I should go. I have an appointment with some criminals tomorrow, so I'll have to drive out early," he explained hating that he had to leave, but there was a major drug shipment due tomorrow and he really wanted to make sure it never reached the streets.
He rose, but Barbara put a hand on his. He turned slightly and looked at the red headed woman. "I was really glad you came. It has been great to see you again," she said.
Dick didn't know, why but he felt the moment was appropriate. He bent down and gave Barbara a kiss which she returned. Neither noticed Dinah smiling at the scene from a window next to the clock. The girl quickly ducked back down as Dick rose back up to say his goodbyes.
As he opened the door to the inside of the tower Barbara called out behind him, "Don't become a stranger again." He licked his lips and smiled. He would try not to.
