I still don't own any of the characters. Thanks to Pendray, Roonie, and rain1657 for reviewing. I really appreciate it. And thanks to SamIAm for her invaluable help.
As Dinah walked home, she found herself thinking about throwing acorns at Black Canary, but that made her think of an old Lion King video game where a gorilla was throwing bananas at Simba. That led her to think of throwing bananas at her mother because she was much more likely to have access to bananas in the tower than acorns, and that made her think of throwing bat-a-rangs at her mother because those were even more likely to be on the balcony. But then she pictured Barbara's and Helena's reactions to her violent thoughts and shuddered.
Dinah's stomach tightened and clenched and her throat suddenly seemed very dry as she considered how angry they would be at her. Maybe they would be so angry with her that-
No, they would never find out. Dinah was the telepath of the group after all, she didn't need to worry about them seeing through her. Still, she stopped taking delight in the images... for a few moments. Really, she tried, but then she pictured the small squirrel pelting acorns at Canary instead of herself. That wasn't her fault, was it? She had been thinking about her mother at the time of the squirrel incident, so she wasn't to blame if recollection of one brought recollection of the other.
The traffic was beginning to worsen in the beginnings of the evening rush. A light turned green, and a large U-haul truck accelerated slowly, giving Dinah a clear view of the other side of the street. What passed for a park in New Gotham suddenly became visible. There were a few picnic tables on a small field, and a rather dilapidated playground. A small boy was playing alone on the monkey bars. She thought nothing of it for a few seconds, and then did a double take. He had blond hair and looked five or six. He fit the profile of the murders.
She stopped for a moment and thought; she really did want to get back and try to get some sleep.
But he fit the profile.
Dinah shook her head and started walking again as she remembered that all of the kids had been taken from schools.
But the boy was all by himself; something might happen even if that particular murderer wasn't involved.
She stopped again. She had loads of homework that she should get started on, but she could do most of it at the park. She probably wouldn't sleep, anyway.
Having decided, she sat herself down at one of the picnic tables and took out her Algebra. Every now and then (well, maybe a little more than that, it was Algrebra after all) she would look up to check on the little boy.
He seemed to not mind her presence at all, and played quite contentedly on the monkey bars. After a few minutes, he climbed up the slide and stood for a moment at the top. Then he put both arms straight out from his sides and ran down the slide full speed, making ominous crashing sounds. At the bottom he jumped off into the sand and, keeping his arms out, started darting between the various pieces of equipment.
"I am the Batman!" Dinah heard him say to an invisible audience in what was surely the deepest voice he could manage. "Half man, half bat! I fly through the night to stop bad guys and suck their blood!" Here the boy paused and put his arms down for a moment as he considered. "But I have to get back to my cave before the sun comes out so I don't melt. And then, when the full moon comes out, I turn into a giant bat! And then I have to sleep upside down!"
It was only with a supreme effort that Dinah kept herself from laughing out loud. Unable to keep the grin off her face, she hid the bottom half of her face behind her math book and peeked over the top.
The boy, evidently playing the part of Batman during a full moon, climbed to the top of the monkey bars and hung himself upside down from his knees. He pantomimed pulling his wings around himself dramatically and going to sleep. But, as his face began to turn red, this soon lost its novelty, and he climbed back down safely.
Dinah was tiring of Algebra and was just moving to her English homework, when she noticed someone else was approaching. The newcomer hardly looked suspicious, though. It was a freshman she had seen around school.
"Rusty!" the blond, curly haired girl called out.
"Hi," the boy chirped, dropping down from the monkey bars.
"Rusty, I've been looking everywhere for you!" she said, her voice full of relief.
"Why?" Rusty wondered, cocking his head. "I've been right here."
"You need to tell me where you're going before you go," the girl insisted. "I would have come with you."
"But I said, 'Christina!' and you said you were busy," Rusty said indignantly.
"There's a very bad person stealing kids from their parents right now," Christina said. "You shouldn't have come out here by yourself-"
"But I wasn't by myself," Rusty interrupted, pointing behind her at Dinah.
Christina turned around and noticed Dinah for the first time. A look of recognition crossed her face and she smiled. "You've been watching my little brother?"
Dinah shrugged, embarrassed. "I didn't feel like going home."
"Parents?" Christina asked knowingly.
"You saw how Barbara was," Dinah said. When Christina looked confused, she added, "Ms. Gordon, I mean. She's my guardian."
Christina's eyes grew wide. "I'm so sorry," she said.
It was so heartfelt that it made Dinah laugh. "She's lots worse in school. She's actually pretty cool when there aren't students around. It's just, I kind of got into a fight with two guys on the football team today, and she's pretty mad..."
"That was you?" Christina asked incredulously. "You got into a fight with Rick and John and walked away from it?"
Dinah shrugged in discomfort and looked away, her problems suddenly crashing back down on her. She hadn't realized that it was so well known already.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up," Christina said quickly. "I'm sure no one blames you for anything. If you finally had to hit them, they must have been doing something really bad."
"They really weren't," Dinah admitted. "It was my fault. There's just a lot going on."
Christina turned to her little brother. "Hey, Rusty, you wanna keep playing for a while?"
"Yeah!" Rusty cried, running back over to the monkey bars.
"You wanna talk about it?" Christina asked, taking a seat.
Dinah had heard that so many times in the last few days that she snapped. "No, I DON'T want to talk about it! I never want to talk about it! Why does everyone think they have a right to know what I'm feeling? Does it make you feel superior to know that I'm not dealing with this?!"
Christina seemed unaffected by the outburst. "Ms. Gordon's been asking you that a lot, huh?"
"Everyone has!" Dinah said angrily, putting her English homework away in sharp, jagged motions.
Christina sat down on the bench across from her and looked away, distantly watching her little brother play. "It's so annoying when grown-ups ask you how you feel. It's like they already have it all figured out how you should feel, and no matter what you actually say, they're always seeing it the way they want to see it."
Dinah had been standing to leave, but this got her attention.
"Like, it's not bad enough that they get to decide what's best for you, but they have to decide how you feel about it, too."
Dinah sat back down. "That's exactly it."
"And then, you want to tell them that they're wrong, and exactly how you really are feeling, but that only plays into it more," Christina said, picking up steam. "And they get this smug look on their face, like that's how they expected you to act all along."
"It's like trying to tell someone that you're not in denial," Dinah said excitedly. "Every time you tell them that you're not, they say, 'Well, that's what someone would say if they were in denial.' It's totally annoying."
"Yeah! Like this one time, about a year ago, my parents decided that we should all go through family counseling because of the divorce, and this stupid counselor keeps asking me if I'm afraid for my parents. The first couple of times I said that I wasn't, and then I started to try to change the subject to stuff that was bothering me, and she thought it was a sign that I was really worried about my parents. It was so dumb!"
"Exactly!" Dinah said. "See, I've been living with Barbara for a while now, but then my mom shows up and wants me to go with her."
"Did you want to go?" Christina asked.
For a moment, Dinah just sat there staring. It was the question no one else had cared to ask her, and finally hearing it out loud stunned her for a few moments. All of the emotions she had been feeling for the last couple of weeks suddenly seemed to catch in her throat all at once, and for several seconds the words just refused to come.
"No!" she finally cried. "I mean, I really didn't want to go. For the first time in my life, I feel happy where I am, and I didn't want to leave."
Christina paused for a beat, and then asked quietly "Are they gonna make you go?"
"They were," Dinah admitted. "But there was this accident... And she died."
"Well, that's good," Christina said. Then she her eyes got wide in horror and she said quickly, "I mean, that you don't have to go. Not that she died. I mean, I'm really sorry to hear that, but I'm glad that you get to stay with Ms. Gordon. I'm so sorry, that's not-"
"That's okay," Dinah said quickly. "I know what you meant."
"Thanks," Christina said, sighing in relief. "So... are you glad that you don't have to go, now?"
Dinah looked up at her sharply. "I'm not glad she died."
"Oh, no! I know. That's not what I meant," Christina said quickly. "I mean, you didn't want to go before... but you didn't know something bad would happen to her. You couldn't have known." She paused for a few moments and then added, "It's okay that you didn't want to go with her."
Dinah sighed. "I don't know. I... feel bad that she died. I keep thinking that if I had just gone with her from the start, she would still be alive."
Christina thought for a moment. "It's not your fault. You couldn't have known. And, the way I figure it, it was supposed to be her job to protect you, you know? Not the other way around."
Dinah nodded, looking away. A large part of her wanted desperately to agree, while her conscience screamed at her, 'But it is a hero's job to protect people.' Maybe Barbara was right and she wasn't ready for sweeps. Maybe Black Canary had been right and she never would be.
"Besides," Christina added, "you were just defending your home... your foundation. It's your right. No one can blame you for it. I mean... you gotta figure that's why there are so many wars."
Dinah tried to find what wars had in common with her situation and failed. "What do wars have to do with it?" she finally asked.
"I mean, most wars are over land, right? But land's just a piece of dirt until you put your roots into it. Then it's your home. And people are willing to die to defend their homes."
Christina hesitated and then added, "It's okay to be mad at 'em. You know? Even if your mom isn't alive, you can't help that you're mad. And, Ms. Gordon, too. Even though she's been nice to you, it's okay to be mad at her. I mean, if they make you feel guilty for being mad, they don't stop you from being mad. They just make you feel mad, guilty, and kinda resentful that they made you feel guilty."
"They're not trying to make me feel guilty," Dinah assured her quickly, feeling a little protective of her family.
"Well, that's good," Christina said, "because you shouldn't."
Dinah shrugged noncommittally.
"How did Ms. Gordon react?"
"She was sad. She knew my mom, too."
"No, I mean, are you going to keep staying with her?"
"Oh, yeah," Dinah said so quickly that the two words almost came out at once.
Christina looked at her intently. "Have you guys talked about it?"
"No," Dinah admitted, looking down.
"Oh, man!" Christina said, slapping her forehead. "That's it, isn't it? Ms. Gordon keeps thinking you need to talk about your mom, but you really just need her to tell you that she still wants you to live with her."
Dinah stared at her.
"It's not bad," Christina said quickly. "I mean, when my family was going to that counselor or whatever, that's what I wanted to talk about. But that stupid lady kept thinking that when I talked about how scared I was because of the custody issues, she kept thinking that I was really worried about my parents. I think she thought that I felt like I should take care of them. But I really just needed to know that things hadn't changed, you know? That they still wanted me and Rusty."
Dinah nodded mutely.
"Dinah, they never figure it out," Christina said sadly. "You need to tell Ms. Gordon what's wrong so that she can tell you that she still likes you and stuff."
"But, what if they-" Dinah abruptly stopped herself and shook her head. "No, it's stupid. They'll just think that I can't handle it."
"It's not stupid!" Christina said firmly. "I mean, it's your foundation. Nothing's scarier than having that threatened. It... it feels like you're just sliding away down some hill or something and no one's noticing. You've got to make them notice!"
"It's not the same thing!" Dinah cried, stiffening. "They're your parents. You don't know what it's like to depend on people when you don't know if they're going to want you next month or even next week!"
Christina shook her head. "No, I don't know," she agreed quietly. "But, Dinah, if she's been trying to get you to open up, she must be worried about you. She must love you."
"They should say it, though," Dinah said softly, deflating.
"Dinah, is Ms. Gordon mean?" Christina asked in a concerned, carefully measured voice.
Dinah shook her head without looking at Christina.
"Will she use your feelings against you or say that you're being ungrateful because you need to know that she wants you?"
Dinah considered briefly and shook her head again.
"Will she, like, make fun of you or anything?"
Dinah laughed a little at that, but still didn't look up. "No, Barbara's too nice to do something like that. She'll tease you about stuff but I don't think she could really just make fun of someone."
"Then why can't you tell her?" Christina asked gently.
"Because she might not-" she stopped herself once again.
"You're afraid she'll say that she doesn't want you to live with her anymore," Christina supplied gently. "That maybe having your mom show up changed things."
Dinah looked up at her sharply, and suddenly wanted nothing more than to be away from that conversation.
"Seems to me, though," Christina said softly, "maybe living with the fear that she'll say she doesn't want you might be worse than asking."
That struck Dinah as an incredibly naïve thing to say. Sure, being afraid that Barbara and Helena didn't want her around was scary, but if she said anything they might send her away. Maybe even back to the Redmonds. If she could just keep her head down long enough, maybe she could change their minds and show them that she could earn her keep and be a good crime fighter like them.
Besides, her mother hadn't wanted her and the Redmonds surely hadn't. Why should she think that Barbara and Helena would be any different? Sure, they didn't mind her powers like the Redmonds had, but her mother didn't even know that she had powers when she gave her up.
But what should she say to Christina? 'You don't know me well enough to know that people don't like having me around?' Maybe Christina was just too young to know that some people weren't as good as her parents were... stupid freshmen.
"Listen, I've got to go," she said hastily, standing up. "I told Barbara that I'd come straight home, and I don't want to do something else to-" she caught herself abruptly. "You really should watch your little brother, though. I heard on the news that there's this guy killing kids his age."
"Oh, yeah," Christina said, also standing up. "He got something at school that talked about it. We've already got it all worked out... you know, except for this escaping to the park thing. Hey, Rusty! Come over here!"
The little boy came down the slide one more time and made his way over to the two teenagers.
"Rusty, do you ever go with strangers?"
"Only if they have the password," Rusty said confidently.
"Even if they say that they need help or that mom or dad is hurt?"
Rusty was quiet for a few moments and scrunched up his face in confusion. "You'd come get me."
Christina sighed. "Okay, what if they said that I was hurt?"
"Don't go with anybody without the password no matter what!" Rusty said, confident once again.
Christina beamed with pride.
"And don't come to the park by yourself," Dinah added.
"That's right," Christina agreed. "Come on, we've better get home. Hold hands crossing the street."
Rusty gave an exaggerated sigh that seemed to encompass his whole body. "I'm FIVE! I don't need to hold hands crossing the street!"
"Mom and Dad say you do," Christina insisted, holding out her hand. "And so do I."
Rusty heaved another enormous sigh, but did as he was told.
Dinah watched them go and then made her way back to the clocktower. It was only later, when she was almost back home, that something Christina had said about losing a foundation made her stop in her tracks.
"It feels like you're just sliding away ... and no one's noticing."
In her own nightmares, Dinah found herself hurling off into space without anything keeping her on the ground... like she was just spinning off the face of the Earth.
Uncomfortably, Dinah suddenly realized that she couldn't discount everything Christina had said, after all.
