Title:I'll Be Gentle pt.8
Rating: Mild 15 for bad language
Pairing: Helena/Dinah
Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just having some fun.
Author's notes: Hehehehehehehehe
Thanks Lena. You know, I thought I was doing quite well – learning from my mistakes even- and then I came out with kiss her ass instead of kick. (I just don't know where my mind was)
"What? … No." Barbara stumbled over her words. She was thoroughly shocked by what had happened. "Dinah, you had no right to do that." But her voice didn't hold the conviction.
Dinah was stunned; Barbara's thoughts were becoming her own as she played them again and again. Her anger and disbelief at Barbara's actions, past and present, melted as one thing kept coming back to her. "Shit Barbara. What did you let Mr. Wayne do to you?"
Barbara started to shake her head. She tried to deny what had happened, but she kept on looking into those innocent blue eyes and she couldn't speak. She wanted to be angry, she wanted to feel anything except ashamed.
"Please, Dinah, you can't tell Helena." Her voice was small, but that's how she felt.
Dinah clambered to her feet as tears surged from the redheads emerald eyes. She rushed over and wrapped the other woman in her arms and held her tight. She didn't speak. She couldn't lie and if she opened her mouth that's exactly what she would do. If Dinah shushed her and told her that she knew how she felt – it would be a lie. If Dinah told her that she wouldn't say anything to Helena it would also be a lie because Helena had a right to know. She just held the sobbing woman in her arms, crawling on to her lap so that she could hold her tighter and allow Barbara to do the same.
She kissed the crown of her head and stroked her flamey hair. It was the only way she could comfort the other woman without words.
Dinah couldn't stop thinking. She didn't know what to do. "Barbara sweetheart." She whispered so as not to startle. "Let me call Helena."
Blind panic flashed across Barbara's face. "No … please, not Helena." Her silky voice was nothing but a ragged sob.
"Then who Barbara?" The blonde was a little more forceful this time. She griped Barbara's chin and held them eye to eye. "She's your best friend."
"But … I've …"
"So." Dinah brushed away every hateful remark with a single word. "She adores you even now. She'd do anything for you Barbara."
Barbara hung her head as fresh tears fell. "What have I done?"
"You need to tell her why, she'll forgive you." The blonde knew this for sure because the redhead was Helena's family and she was fiercely loyal to family. "I need her help too, Barbara." Dinah pleaded.
"My god." Barbara grimaced as she gently pushed the teen from her lap. "After everything I've done and said how can you even stand to be around me?" Barbara held herself in contempt.
"Why did you do it?" Dinah questioned softly as she knelt down and placed her hands on the other woman's knees. "After everything he did to you, why condemn her for falling in love with me?"
"I don't condemn her for falling in love with you." Barbara Gordon couldn't look in inquisitive eyes. "I condemn her for letting you fall in love with her."
"She had no choice in that matter."
"She could've stopped what was happening before it went too far." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. "That's what I was trying to do."
Dinah found herself in a situation which she had no control over. 'Damn it, I'm too young for this shit'. "It was tonight that you decided to move us to Bludhaven, isn't it?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You could see that we were in love and that twisted you up inside. Bruce 'Fucking' Wayne seduced you, made you fall in love, treated you like shit and then … and then he broke your heart. Isn't that about the gist of it?"
Barbara whimpered and she was disgusted with herself.
"And you figured 'like father, like daughter'." Dinah hit the nail on the head. "I mean, she hasn't got a very good track record. More of a get some get gone type of girl before I came along."
"Please Dinah … I don't know what to say." Her voice was low, almost a whisper.
Dinah shook her head in pity. "You need to apologise."
"I can't." Barbara's head shot up sending a corona of fire to settle around her face.
"Helena would never hurt me, not the way he did to you." The teenager chided her mentor. "God Barbara, I've seen the things he did to you. He truly took advantage of your youth and beauty, and knowing who you are now, I can't believe you let him."
"He was a good man." She defended him even now.
"No he was a fucking good bat; he was a poor excuse for a man. He rates up there with my stepfather."
Barbara shuddered uncontrollably. She was exhausted, the sun was coming up and the kitchen was a mess. "If I tell her she's going to hate him."
Dinah almost chuckled. "What? Even more than she does now? From what I can see he deserves it."
"I have to tell her." The older woman stifled a yawn.
Dinah reached up and traced her fingers up through auburn so that she could smooth it away from Barbara's tear stained face. She was so gentle. "You could do with some rest first."
"When did you stop being that young girl Helena found in the alley?" Barbara sighed.
"I was never a young girl, Barbara. My youth was stolen from me when I was too young to understand what was happening." Dinah spoke from the heart as she explained. "When I came to New Gotham, when you took me in and became my friend and … and my mother, that's when I started to act my age. I'm a teenager Barbara. We bitch, we brood, we fall in love and even though you don't want to hear this, we have sex, you know like you only younger." She smiled as Barbara smirked. "Now, I think it's time for bed."
"Are you going to call Helena?"
Dinah shook her head. "I'll wait until you're feeling up to it."
"Call her, Dinah." Barbara pleaded. "Tell her to come over. Have breakfast with her. But no sex under my roof. If you two are together then there are rules." She slipped her fingers into golden silk and tucked it behind her ears. "Put the kitchen straight and I'll talk to Helena as soon as I get up." She stifled another yawn before dropping a kiss onto Dinah's forehead and wheeling out to her bedroom. "You know I'll kick her ass if she breaks your heart." She called over her shoulder, a statement not a question.
……………………………
"What's going on, D?" Helena emerged from the elevator, her eyes scanning all the familiar faces looking for the red devil on wheels.
Dinah grinned at her lover. "It's safe, Barbara's asleep."
"What?" Helena flailed. "Are you trying to get caught?"
The blonde nodded slowly as she chewed at her bottom lip. "Kinda sexy … the thought of getting caught." She sauntered closer to her lover before grabbing her and kissing her thoroughly. She pulled at Helena's bottom lip with her teeth and then let it go with delightful pop. "She wants to talk to you."
Helena's brow furrowed in confusion. "You mean she wants to chew me out, right?"
Dinah shook her head. "We talked, I threw stuff, we yelled, I read her mind, she cried and then we talked again. It was all very cathartic."
"Fuck, Di, what did you do?" Helena grumbled.
"We made up Hel." She kissed her lover sweetly. "And when she wakes up, you'll do the same."
"I can do the throwing and the yelling, Di, don't know about the mind reading." The brunette was still a little puzzled over what had happened since the feuding duo had left the hotel and more than a little fearful of false hopes. "Are you going to tell me what you saw?"
Dinah shook her head. "It's not up to me to say, but you are gonna have to stay calm. She'll probably say things you're not going to like and Barbara's not in fit state to handle Huntress on the war path."
"Sounds ominous."
"Hmm." Dinah replied.
…………………………………………..
Barbara prised open her eyes and blinked rapidly until they adjusted to the light. She glanced at her clock and noticed that she had only been asleep for a couple of hours. Sighing, she snuggled further into the covers.
"You awake yet?"
A soft voice came from behind her and she couldn't help smiling as an arm came around her waist and pulled her back into the warm body. Her thoughts of earlier momentarily forgotten as she was given a cuddle. "Nope."
Helena pulled herself up on her elbow so that she could look down on the woman next to her. Concern filled her eyes and turned them from cobalt to cerulean. "Are you okay? Dinah told me about the fight, she said you cried." She had not seen her friend cry since the earlier days of the paralysis, she was usually so strong.
Barbara closed her eyes and massaged them with her fingertips as she remembered exactly what was said to make her cry. She wanted to remove herself from Helena's arms; she didn't deserve to be there especially after everything she had done. "Oh god, Hel. I was so wrong, everything I did … I'm so sorry."
"Shushhh." The brunette pulled Barbara into her more tightly as she noticed threatening tears in emerald eyes.
"I have to tell you Helena, I have to tell you why." She sobbed openly. "And it's so hard."
"You don't have to say anything, Barbara." Helena smoothed away red hair. "You've said you're sorry, that'll do me."
A fresh wave of sobs racked Barbara. "I have to tell you."
"Why?" Helena didn't care just as long as she had the redhead and Dinah, that's all she wanted.
"She needs to tell you Helena." Dinah spoke from by the door. "More for herself than for you. She just needs you to listen – no more secrets."
Barbara gripped Helena and managed to turn onto her back and then on to her opposite side so that she could see the two women. "She's becoming quite the wise young woman, you know?" She referred to Dinah.
"Yeah". Helena grinned as she drank in the sight of her girlfriend. "Almost like Yoda."
The older woman chuckled as the youngest stuck out her tongue. She waved Dinah onto the bed with them.
"Ooh, threesome." Dinah bounced to a chorus of groans. She snuggled in between the other two women and waited for Barbara to speak.
Barbara took a few deep breaths. "I was 17 like Dinah when I met … Bruce."
"Bruce, my father?" Helena questioned thinking that this was going to be a Batman story.
"Shushhh, baby, let her talk." Dinah pulled Helena's arm around her and laced their fingers. She nodded for the redhead to continue.
"I met him at a business dinner my dad took me too. I was his substitute because my mom was ill." Barbara continued, all the time she watched Helena's face. "He was handsome and rich, what more could a girl want?
"He took a liking to me and pursued me like anything else he wanted, relentlessly. It was all so flattering. He sent me flowers and jewellery he'd take me to fancy restaurants. It didn't take me long to fall in love with him and let him take me to bed."
Helena growled as her eyes narrowed, but she didn't speak.
"But he was a millionaire playboy and he lived by his reputation." Barbara closed her eyes so that she couldn't see the anger aimed at her. "I'd find out that he'd go with other girls, often my school friends, but I kept on forgiving him."
"Then one night he took me out someplace fancy – I can't remember the name. He persuaded me to have sex with him in one of the bathrooms. Afterwards as we finished our meal he told me that I was too immature for him and that he didn't think we looked right together."
"But … but you were Batgirl to his Batman." Helena couldn't believe that someone who treated Barbara like that would live to see the next day, but they were friends.
The redhead grimaced, she was a different woman now and Bruce would not have got the chance he had back then. "Batgirl was my rebellion, aimed at Bruce and my father for treating me like a weak little girl. When I found out that he was Batman and he realised that I was Batgirl, something changed between us. He saw that I was good and he treated me with respect. As our relationship changed to student and mentor, I put what he'd done to me in the past."
"Until it came back to bite you on the ass." Dinah piped up from her place between the two women.
Barbara nodded and lifted her eyes up to Helena's. "Are you okay Hel?"
Helena Kyle had her eyes tightly shut. She was angry and she didn't want the others to see her eyes in their cat like state. She was so angry that she wanted to hit something.
"Helena, I'm so sorry for everything I did." Barbara reached for the other woman's hand and squeezed gently. "I can see that you and Dinah are made for each other now. It was wrong of me to think that you were just playing with her emotions, because of what Bruce did to me. Please forgive me."
The brunette melted, her eyes reverted. "You don't have to be sorry anymore, Barbara." She leant over her girlfriend and pecked the redhead's cheek. "Damn him for what he did to you. If he was here right now I would put him in a world of hurt for breaking your heart, you know that right?"
"But he's a different man now." Barbara defended.
"Yeah, well I still don't like him." Helena scowled.
"So you think that D and I are made for each other?" She tried to lighten the mood and changed the subject. The further away from Bruce Wayne the better, even talking about him pissed her off, more so now.
"Yes I do." Barbara returned Helena's beam with one of her own, grateful for the segue into happier territory. "Is everything going to be all right between us?"
"Yeah, but you could buy me some poptarts to sweeten me up." Huntress grinned.
Dinah chuckled. "I think you're sweet enough, baby."
Helena scowled.
It was a few moments later when Barbara noticed her friends' eyelids droop, but she had something to say before they fell asleep in a tangled heap. "Don't hurt her, Helena. I won't be very pleased if you do." She gave the brunette her best 'hurt my daughter and I'll hurt you' glare.
"Don't worry Barbara." She kissed her lovers forehead as she looked up at them. "I'll be gentle."
Coming soon - Not So Tough - a continuation of I'll Be Gentle
