Thanks to SamIAm4 for her help. And thanks to Nope, WP, and jt58 for the kind reviews. They mean a lot.
Dinah and Helena were training together, but there didn't seem to be enough light. It didn't bother Helena at all, but Dinah could hardly see what she was doing. She saw Helena's fist coming at her and knew that there was some way to counter the attack, but she couldn't remember what. The fist connected solidly with the side of her face, and for the fourth time that session Dinah fell to the floor.
"Come on, kid! That was an easy one!" Helena said, standing above her with her arms crossed.
"Did you have to hit me so hard?" Dinah asked, wincing as she touched the side of her face.
"Hey, on the streets, the bad guys aren't going to take it easy on you, either. Now get up, and let's try this again."
Dinah stood shakily on her feet, now dizzy on top of not being able to see. She could make out a dim outline of Helena's form, but it seemed to wave in and out. Suddenly, the fist was right in front of her face again, and Dinah threw herself backwards to lessen the impact.
"Come on, kid!" Helena said exasperatedly, pulling the blonde roughly to her feet. "I've been using the same move the whole time and you're still acting like you don't see it coming."
"I don't," Dinah said truthfully. It cost her something to admit it to Helena, but she didn't want to get beat to a pulp, either. "Maybe we should stop for now. I don't feel so well all of a sudden."
Just then, Carolyn appeared, striding smoothly out of thin air. "That's because you're not with me where you belong. Being a superhero isn't the life I wanted for you. You wouldn't be as good at it as I was."
"How do you know when you won't let me try?" Dinah demanded, her voice shaking in spite of herself.
"I'm your mother and I know what's best for you," Carolyn said, roughly taking her by the arm. "And you're coming with me."
"Wait!" Dinah protested, struggling against her mother's grip. "Stop!"
Just then Barbara wheeled into the room, thankfully through the door and not out of thin air.
"Barbara, help me!" Dinah called hopefully. "I don't have to go with her, do I?"
"I told you what would happen if you stopped training," Barbara said. "And she is your mother. You need to go with her."
Carolyn sneered in triumph and began dragging her daughter away, back from where she had come. A large blackness appeared in the middle of the training room, and Dinah realized that was where the darkness had come from all along. It was why she couldn't see.
"Why?" Dinah asked desperately. "So she can ditch me again?"
"I can't believe you," Helena said, her arms crossed and shaking her head in disgust. "I would give anything to get to see my mom one last time, and you don't even want to go with her. You're as cold and heartless as my father."
"Don't make me go!" Dinah pleaded as her mother dragged her dangerously close to the darkness. "Please, help me! I want to stay with you!"
"You're just upset," Barbara told her. "You'll come around. Believe me, this is the best thing for all of us. You would have never fit in here."
Tears streaming down her face, Dinah stopped fighting. "But, how do you know what's best for me? I can do better! I promise. I'll train harder. I'll get better grades. I can help, too!"
"I just want to get to know you again," Carolyn reassured her, pulling harder. "I don't know why you won't give me a fair chance. A good daughter would have wanted this."
"And I don't think I want someone staying here who would be so awful to her own mother," Barbara added. "How do I know you won't do the same thing to me?"
And then they were both in the blackness, hurtling outwards into space. The breath was pulled from Dinah's body and all the light and warmth were gone...
Dinah woke up with a start and stared around herself in confusion. She was seated in a classroom near the back. Several other students were seated in front of her, looking just as bored and drowsy and staring lazily in front of them. It seemed no one had noticed that she had fallen asleep in her detention.
Dinah sighed in frustration and ran a hand through her hair. 'If only I could fall asleep JUST ONCE without having Canary show up. It doesn't even have to be a whole night. Just an hour or so. Just-'
"All right everyone," the principal called. "This afternoon's detention is over. I'll see most of you this time again tomorrow."
Dinah waited for everyone else to get up before she filed out like the rest of them. As she exited the class, she wished that she hadn't told Barbara not to pick her up. She just wanted to go back to the tower and sleep; maybe she could sleep in peace for a while since she'd already had the nightmare.
For a moment she considered using her comms to call her guardian, and actually reached up to turn the mic on, but she didn't want to bother Barbara again. 'I'm already enough of a burden as it is,' Dinah thought to herself, carefully switching off only the microphone. If she were to accidentally turn off the whole set, Barbara might decide that she was fed up with her and-
Well, she'd be sure not to do that.
Finally reaching the doors that opened outside, she was struck by just how beautiful a day it was. The sky was a deep blue dotted by white puffy clouds that made you want to lie down and pick out the shapes as they lazily floated by. Back in Opal, she had done just that on many occasions. All it took was imagination, and you didn't have to have someone to play with you for it to be fun.
It only made her feel worse.
Dinah hadn't been watching where she was walking, and was shocked to find herself at the cemetery. She stared dumbly at the gate for a few minutes, trying to decide whether or not to go in. But the whole trouble was that she didn't want to be with her mother, and this was no exception.
Still, she couldn't just walk away, either.
"Stupid gate!" Dinah finally said in frustration. "Every time there's a gate, it makes you choose something. Go in or stay out. Well, I don't feel like choosing!"
She stared at the offending pieces of metal for several more seconds.
"I'm not scared of you," she finally insisted. "I just don't feel like going in right now."
She made no move to walk away.
"I didn't want you to die," Dinah said softly, staring at the ground. "I just didn't want to go with you. I... didn't trust you. You can't blame me for that."
She began kicking at some of the rocks on the ground half-heartedly.
"You ruined everything when you came," she said. "I was going to help people. I would've been a good superhero. They didn't mind that I saw things. They were nice. But now they think you were right and I can't be me anymore."
Suddenly unable to keep still, she began to pace.
"You suck!" she finally yelled. She wasn't quite sure whom she meant, but it didn't matter. The gate sucked, her mom sucked, Barbara and Helena sucked, and she sucked for thinking that way.
She kept pacing.
At the tower, Helena found Barbara sitting, predictably, at the Delphi.
"Any word from Detective Reese?" Barbara asked her, turning her chair around to face her.
"Everyone's pissed," Helena said. "The leak has put the pressure on the police department to catch the murderer and Reese says there'll finally be some undercover presence at the schools."
Barbara sighed in relief and turned back to her computers. "Finally."
"Hey, where's the kid?" Helena asked. "Doesn't she usually hang around and annoy you when you're working?"
"No, that's you," Barbara answered. "Dinah just stands behind me quietly and watches. But she's still at school."
Helena checked her watch. "Why?"
"She..." Barbara hesitated, wondering if telling Helena would embarrass Dinah more. "... is in detention. She got into a fight at school today."
Helena's jaw dropped and then she laughed out loud. "Seriously? How'd she do? Wait, please tell me it was over some guy!"
"It's not funny," Barbara said, turning back and giving her the patented maternal glare. "And, no, it wasn't over a boy. It was with two boys... and the whole football team."
Helena raised an eyebrow. When it seemed that Barbara had nothing else to add, she crossed her arms and waited pointedly.
Barbara tried to sigh exasperatedly and failed miserably. Finally, unable to keep the smile off her face, she added, "She did very well."
"Ha!" Helena yelled. "I knew it. You're proud of her."
"Yes, it's good to know she could take two teenage boys by surprise after we've been training her for months," Barbara said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
"You're proud of her," Helena goaded.
"She shouldn't have lost her temper," Barbara insisted, looking away.
"Oh, you're SO proud of her!"
At that moment the elevator doors opened, and Alfred came into the room.
"Hey, Alfred!" Helena called. "You're never gonna believe this! Dinah got into a fight at school today!"
"Miss Dinah?" Alfred asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
Helena nodded as the grandfatherly butler walked closer. "And it wasn't even over a guy." She paused as a thought struck her. "What was it over, Barbara?"
"I'm not sure even Dinah knows completely," Barbara said, leaning back against her chair. "But something she said is worrying me. When I asked her what had upset her, she told me that the boy had said the murderer could have his little brother."
Helena's eyes widened and her jaw dropped open for the second time that conversation. "Wait, I was right? The case is what's been getting to her?"
"It looks that way," Barbara said. "I've been looking into Dinah's background, trying to find anything that would suggest this case would resonate with her."
"You think she might have known children who were murdered?" Alfred asked.
Barbara sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "I thought that she might, but I haven't found any murders in or around Opal in that time period. Then I thought that she might have dreamt about some of the murders the same way she dreamt about the night that... the Joker escaped. It's a distinct possibility, but it's impossible to find out for certain without asking her."
"Why?" Helena asked.
Barbara began rubbing her temples. "Because there doubtless were at least some children murdered somewhere in the world in the last sixteen years, but there's no telling if the radius of her powers was great enough to allow her to see them. We know that she was able to see New Gotham from Opal seven years ago and if her powers extend that far in the other direction as well..."
"A lot of possible murders," Helena finished.
"Perhaps it's not just her mother's death or just the case," Alfred suggested. "Perhaps the two are, in her mind, related in some way. While both are very tragic events, putting them together may have compounded her grief."
"Maybe the link is the breaking of family," Barbara said excitedly, her detective's mind already at work. "Children and parents. Listen, Al Hawke killed her mother and now someone is killing children. Maybe she fought with Rick because he didn't mind his family being broken."
"So, maybe letting her on sweeps will help," Helena suggested. "When Mom died, I felt so mad at myself that I hadn't been able to stop it. Maybe we're making it worse by still not letting her help keep families together."
"It's possible," Barbara admitted, "but it's still dangerous for her to be out there. If our theory is true, she's transferring her rage from Al Hawke to the murderer. She won't be thinking clearly."
Helena nodded, and, sighing, dropped a nearby chair deep in thought.
"Well, I'm sure the two of you will help Miss Dinah through this hard time," Alfred said, walking away and entering the kitchen.
Barbara nodded and turned her chair back to the computers. She pressed a button on the Delphi and a loud "Beep! ... Beep! ... Beep!" was emitted.
"What's that?" Helena asked in surprise.
"The new alarm that will sound when Detective Reese tries to contact us again."
"Only if he's in a big truck that's backing up," Helena said, crinkling her nose.
A high-pitched "pew, pew, pew" came from the computers.
"No lasers!" Helena said quickly. "We're not in the eighties, Barbara."
Barbara sighed and pushed another button.
"Is that a foghorn?" Helena asked in disbelief.
"Helena, you can't dislike all of them!" Barbara said in frustration. "Just pick one!"
"So, it's either 'Wide Load', 'Eighties Re-run', or a foghorn?"
"Foghorn it is," Barbara said.
Dinah was still pacing when something hit her on the top of her head.
"Ow!" she said, backing away and rubbing her head.
A small squirrel was on its hind legs, chattering angrily at her.
"Oh, man, I can't believe I just got one upped by a squirrel!"
Shaking her head, Dinah took the hint and moved away from the squirrel's home and made her way to the tower. Still, she didn't fault the small animal. He was only defending his home... and it had certainly worked, hadn't it?
Cocking her head as she walked, she wondered if she should have pelted Canary with an acorn that first time she had seen her. She had been on the balcony, after all, and the angle would have been perfect.
Dinah smiled as she walked.
