I felt a warm hand touch mine. Just the sensation alone hitting my nerves woke me up.

I immediately attempted to sit up, but the pain reintroduced itself to me and I laid back down. Not sure how or why I had forgotten about it. I guess your body tends to work in mysterious ways.

"You okay?" Barbara asked as she rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand.

It took me a moment for everything to register in my brain and to notice that Barbara was sitting beside me. Then I remembered what had happened to Dinah.

I yanked my hand away from her in disgust. "I can't believe you shot her!"

Barbara looked down and sighed heavily. "I..."

"There's no way you can justify your..."

"She didn't shoot me," Dinah said as she appeared in the doorway.

Okay, maybe it was the medication talking, but I could have sworn I just heard Dinah speak and now I think she's standing right in front of me.

"Well, sorta," Dinah explained as she limped into the room.

"I...I thought..." For once in my life I was at a loss for words.

"I shot her with two tranquilizers, heavy duty ones. It was the only way I could get her back to the lab to give her the serum."

"Heavy duty is putting it mildly," Dinah added as she eased herself down on a chair by the end of my bed, rubbing her thigh.

"So...you're yourself again?"

"Yeah," Dinah nodded as she looked at me. Her eyes moved down towards my injured, bandaged ribs and she started to cry.

"Yep, you're back to normal, you're crying."

Barbara gave me a shove.

"Ow! Easy!" I yelped as the pain kicked itself up a notch.

Dinah sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Helena. I didn't..."

I put up my hand to stop her. "You don't have to be sorry. It wasn't you."

"But I said some pretty nasty things on top of knocking you senseless and..."

"I think we're even with the nasty talk part. The other part, however....I think I smell a rematch coming soon."

"Oh no you don't!" Barbara interrupted as she shook her head in protest.

I winked at Dinah to let her know I was trying to get Barbara all riled up and she smiled as she wiped her tears away.

"I don't want to see you out of this bed for a few days, you hear me? If I catch you two in the training room so help me. Is anyone even listening to me?"

"Oh yeah, we're listening," I said with sarcasm.

"I mean it, Helena."

"Alright, alright. I hear you."

"And you, I want you to get back to bed. You should be resting."

Dinah got up and began limping towards the door. "I'll come by later, Helena."

"Okay. Bring your boxing gloves."

"Helena!" Barbara snapped.

"What? I'm kidding."

I let Barbara stew in it for a few minutes and watched the angered expression on her face melt away.

"I'll let you get some rest, but I just want to say that I'm sorry if I doubted you on this one. I had no right to dismiss the issue and not take you seriously. I'm sorry."

I thought for a moment in order to choose my words carefully. Yes, it's something I've been working on. "I accept your apology, but I wish you would cut me more slack sometimes. We don't always have to do things your way."

"I agree, but sometimes your way is a little more violent and aggressive than I'd like it to be so..."

"All I ask is that you trust my way once in a while. In this 'business' you don't always get more with honey than you do with vinegar."

Barbara took my words and nodded. "You're right. Sometimes we can't be so passive about things. I think I was just afraid of not knowing what we were up against and I guess I tried to slow you down. I was afraid that you were gonna run off into the streets and hunt the thing down like a wild cowboy."

"I did anyway so how did your way work, exactly?" I was anxious to see how she was going to talk her way out of this one.

Barbara was silent and nodded a few times. "It didn't work. Okay. You happy now?"

"What? What was that? Did you say your way didn't work?"

"Helena," she said in an aggrivated tone. "I'll try to be more open to your way now and then."

"Good. It's a start."

"I know we're completely different people with completely different styles so I think we need to meet each other half way and see how that goes?"

Deep down inside I never wanted to do anything her way, just seemed to take too long and contained limited to no action. But I knew that I had no choice, so I extended my hand and she took it. "Deal."

"Deal."

I'm totally holding her to this, so let's hope for her sake she meant what she said.

~FIN