Chapter Two
That Dream Again
The little girl stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and shocked. She watched her grandfather kneeling over her mother's limp body. He pounded on her chest counting under his breath.
"One … two … three … " He counted.
The girl cautiously edged into the room. "Grandpa?" She cooed. Her grandfather didn't respond; he was too involved focused on her mother.
"Damn it, Olivia! Wake up! Wake up, girl!" The girl's grandfather shouted. He slapped the girl's mother across the face, scaring her. She edged forward slightly more.
The little girl tried again, her voice louder this time. "Grandpa Ollie?"
Her grandfather looked up this time. He had tears streaming down his cheeks, wetting his beard. He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again.
"Go back to bed, Baby Bird." He said, his broken voice shaking and quivering.
"Grandpa, what's wrong with mommy?" She asked, stepping forward.
Ollie held up a hand. "No! Go back to bed!" His voice was urgent now.
"No!" Shouted the little girl, stamping her foot.
"Go back to bed, Dinah!" He shouted then turned back to his daughter.
The little girl backed slowly out of the room, then ran to her own room and dove into bed, crying.
----
Seventeen-year-old Dinah "Birdie" Queen woke up crying. In her mind she still saw her grandfather's pained face and her mother's dead body. She sat up in bed and rested her head on her knees. It had been a long time since that dream had haunted her. Months, really.
She rubbed her eyes, sighed and leaned back into her pillows. She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed her phone. She lit up the screen and squinted to read the time. 1:23, with another sigh she flipped open her phone and dialed an all too familiar phone number.
A groggy female voice answered the phone with an angry groan. "This had better be important, Birdie."
Lian was several years older than Dinah, but Dinah's close relationship with her Uncle Roy had brought on a fast friendship between Dinah and the girl who had once been her baby-sitter.
"Li?" Dinah said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I need to talk."
"Did you have the dream again?" Lian said. She was more than fully awake now.
Dinah nodded, then realized Lian couldn't see her. "Yes."
"Oh, sweetie." Lian said with a sympathetic sigh. "It's been a long time since you had that dream."
"I know."
"What can I do?" Lian asked, lovingly.
"Have lunch with me tomorrow?"
"Of course, Birdie." Lian said. "Try to get some sleep, honey."
Dinah closed her phone and settled back into her pillows. A sudden sound at her door startled her. She looked over to see her grandfather's stark silhouette.
"Sorry. Did I wake you up?" She said, pulling herself out of bed. She shoved her feet into a pair of slippers made to look like teddy bears and shuffled over to her grandfather.
"No, that damn cat of yours did." Her grandfather growled. He touched her cheek. "I heard you crying. Are you alright, Baby Bird?"
Dinah smiled and nodded. "Just had a bad dream."
"That same one?" Dinah nodded her reply. Oliver kissed her on the forehead. "I'm sorry, Dinah."
Dinah shook her head, choosing silently not to argue with the name. "You don't need to be sorry, Grandpa Ollie." She hugged her grandfather. "It's fine. It's not your fault."
Her grandfather lowered his gaze guiltily. Dinah shook her head again and hugged him. "Go back to bed, Grandpa."
Oliver smiled and nodded slightly. He pulled away and padded down the hall. Dinah watched him with a smile, and then turned back into her own room, closing the door quietly behind her. She changed into a pair of jeans and a tee and walked over to her window. She glanced back at her door then gazed out the window. She pushed open her window and slipped out silently.
----
Seven-year-old Birdie Queen snuck down the hall of Titans Tower. She closed her eyes and could clearly see a very angry Arsenal and an even angrier Nightwing. She giggled quietly, but stopped herself seeing an even clearer picture of Donna coming round a near corner.
Birdie dove across the hall giggling to herself hysterically. She curled up in a ball in a doorway and put her head on her knees. She figured that if she couldn't see anyone, they couldn't see her. Her body shook with suppressed giggles as she waited for Donna to come round the corner and pass by, oblivious to the seven-year-old blonde monster waiting in the shadows.
As Donna rounded the corner, she had to bite her lip to keep from bursting out laughing. She snuck over to the door and leaned on the wall looking up and away from Birdie.
"Hmmmm … "She said, a sly smile twitching at her lips. " Arsenal and 'wing said there was a little girl hiding around the Tower somewhere. I wonder where she could be."
A quiet snort, a giggle, and a gasp came from Birdie. She pounded her little feet on the ground in anticipation. Suddenly Donna swooped down on the child and began tickling her mercilessly. Birdie began writhing underneath the unrelenting hands. She screamed and giggled and screamed even more. Finally she broke free and tumbled away. She stood up, still screaming with laughter. Suddenly her laughter stopped as she caught a glimpse of Nightwing and Arsenal running. Running and getting closer.
"Meep!" She squealed. Then she ran in the opposite direction.
She could hear Donna talking to Nightwing and Arsenal as she ran away from the voices. She skidded around a corner and dove into an air vent. She lay there for a moment giggling relentlessly when suddenly she heard a sound behind her. She spun around. (Actually, she more squished herself into the tight space of the air vent and, with a great amount of effort, turned herself around.) The little girl's lips widened into a grin in a flash, then, even quicker, she pursed her lips angrily. Standing at another entrance to the same vent with his head stuck in the vent was Connor Hawke. Connor was Birdie's only biological uncle, (of all of her "uncles") but he was much closer to being her brother. They were closer than most would have realized. He had recently joined the Titans as Green Arrow. He said it was just temporary. Oliver said he'd finally found a place to really belong.
"Are you gonna rat me out?" She demanded. "You rat-fink!"
Connor chuckled. "I'm not going to rat you out, Baby Bird. Get over here."
Birdie giggled quietly at her nickname as she crawled through the vent into Connor's arms. Her grandfather had always called her grandmother Pretty-Bird. Dinah Queen, Birdie's grandmother, had once mentioned that Olivia's daughter (Birdie, that is) would be their baby bird. The name stuck.
Connor carried the little girl down a hallway. At the end of the hall, he stopped, looked both ways and then ran down and into an unoccupied room. He set Birdie down and closed the door silently behind them. He held a finger up to his lips. Se mimicked him, biting the inside of her lip to keep from giggling.
"Where are they?" He asked with a small smile.
Birdie closed her eyes tight. She managed to catch a glimpse of the two men walking down the hallway toward the door that Connor had just brought her through. Pouting up her lips, the little girl pointed at the door. Connor sighed and shrugged. Again, she mimicked him, shrugging her own shoulders.
Outside the room Birdie could hear only one set of nearing footfalls. That, of course, meant that both Arsenal and Nightwing were coming. She never could hear Nightwing coming. Stupid Batman training.
Connor swung open the door just as Arsenal went to knock. (Actually, he'd planned on pounding, if that didn't work he planned on busting down the door.) He smiled innocently at Arsenal.
"Yes?"
Arsenal closed his eyes. "Don't do this, Connor." Connor frowned, but didn't respond. "Not today. Where is she?"
Birdie walked into view, her head cocked to one side, one little eyebrow raised.
"What's going on, Roy?" Connor asked, putting his hands on Birdie's shoulders.
"It's Dinah." Roy said slowly. Connor closed his eyes against what Roy was trying to say.
Roy knelt down in front of Birdie, drawing the confused child into his arms. She laid her head on his shoulder and sat on his knee without even asking. Nightwing led Connor outside to explain it to him in private. Roy released the little girl and took her hands.
"Bird … You know your grandmother has been very sick." Roy began.
Birdie cocked her head to the other side. "Yeah … "
"Ollie had to take her to the hospital today. She … "Roy stopped mid-sentence to gather his emotions. It also gave him the chance to find a tactful way to say this to a seven-year-old. "Dinah has passed on, Birdie."
Birdie was silent for a long while, looking at Arsenal's chest, pursing her lips. She was concentrating hard, trying to understand what was being said to her. Roy squeezed her hands.
"Do you understand, Birdie?" He said, silently praying she did, half praying she didn't.
"Gramma's … dead?" Birdie tried. Roy nodded slowly.
A sad look came over Birdie's face then her face was blank. It was an expression Roy hadn't seen on the girl's face since the weeks following her mother's death. Roy pulled the little child into his arms and cringed when there was no reciprocation.
"You're gonna stay here tonight, Cutie." Roy said, ruffling her hair in an attempt to bring her back. He kissed her temple and lifted her off the ground. He carried her off to the room that had once been Lian's. They now had it staked out especially for Birdie.
Birdie was always a bright child. Not that she was able to grasp mathematical concepts or why Doctor Seuss named a whole race of people after one of her favourite bands. Unlike most children, though, she grasped the concept of right and wrong when she was a baby. She was able to understand things that puzzled many a road scholar. Death. Life. Happiness. Sorrow. She was more "worldly" than she was expected to be at any age. Her grandfather said that while she may not have "book smarts" she had "street smarts".
The next morning when Oliver came to pick up his granddaughter, he was a wreck. He looked like someone had thrown him off a cliff, scraped his broken body off the ground, then done it again. He took the little girl, who's face still held the same blank expression it had since Roy had told her the news.
"Thank you, Roy." He said. Roy smiled and squeezed a hand on Oliver's shoulder.
"Birdie's always welcome here, Ollie." He said. "We're always here if she needs us."
For the first time since the night before, Birdie looked up at Roy. He thought he could see something in her eyes when they locked eyes. He grinned reassuringly at her and kissed her forehead.
"We're always here for you, Baby Bird."
----
Roy Harper rolled out of bed and hit the ground. He looked up at the speaker by his bed. It buzzed quietly, but just loudly enough to wake him up. He glared at it for a moment before pulling himself off the ground. He glanced at the monitor by the speaker. He shut off the alarm as he frowned at the monitor.
"All the modern technology in the world, and our security monitor is still –" H stopped himself short as he recognized the figure walking down a hallway toward the kitchen. "Birdie?"
He wandered out into the hall and straight to the kitchen. He crossed his arms and leaned on the door jam as Dinah pulled three bottles of Coca Cola and a bottle of water from the fridge.
She sat the drinks down and said, without turning, "Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to have a coke with me?" Her voice was shockingly flat, Roy noted.
She hoisted herself up onto the table and opened both bottles. Roy pushed himself off the wall and took a bottle. He took a long swig of the cool caffeinated drink then stopped.
"It's 2:45 in the morning. Caffeine probably isn't the best thing for me right now." He said, setting down the bottle.
"So what? You want me to have two rounds of this poison?" She chugged a good bit of the drink. Roy noticed again how unattached her voice was.
"So why three bottles?" Roy asked carefully. He wasn't sure why Dinah was so hollow yet. He needed to be careful.
"Dick will be down soon. Coke." She said, still sounding empty. "Then Connor. Water." Then he recognized the look she had on her face. That blank, heartless look.
"What's up, Birdie?" He asked, sitting next to her on the table. "What's wrong?"
"I had the dream again." She said. Her voice was quiet now, but Roy could hear the slightest bit of emotion creeping back in.
Roy closed his eyes, realizing what the dream meant. "Don't do this again, Birdie. You've been so happy for the past several months."
"Five months, two weeks, four days." Dinah provided. "Since I met Will."
Roy paused for a moment, his hand halfway to the coke bottle. He dropped his hand and gave Dinah a sour look. "Will?"
"Will?" Another voice echoed from the door. Both looked up to see Dick standing there, looking very rumpled. He yawned, stretched, and then grabbed the third coke.
"Yeah, Will." Dinah said, a small smile came to her face, putting Roy more at ease. The smile stayed on her face for a long while before her expression turned cold again. "He's been my boyfriend for almost five months."
"But you just said it was over five months since your dreams stopped." Dick said, cutting in before Roy had the chance to hound her about this "Will".
"Since the night I met him." She said with a smile. "He just made everything feel right. Everything was perfect from the first night. I knew he was right when my dreams stopped."
Roy broke in this time. "Why haven't I met this Will character? How old is he? What's his last name? Does he do drugs? How does he treat you? When can I meet him?"
Dinah stared at him incredulously for a moment. A new voice chimed in for her. "You haven't met him because she was scared of this. He's nineteen. His last name is Knight. He doesn't do drugs, unless you consider caffeine. He treats her like a 'queen goddess'. Her words, not mine. And you can meet him never." Connor walked over to the table and grabbed the bottle of water. "How'd I do?"
"All but the last one." Dinah said. "I wanted to have a dinner so you guys could meet him. I haven't told Grandpa Ollie yet. I'm kind of scared, too. I'm worried he might go Jason or Freddie on me." Even with her jovial words, all three men knew that she was feeling anything but light hearted.
Connor hopped up onto the table on Dinah's other side. He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder.
"I'm sure he wouldn't be too homicidal. Not towards you. Although, they may find your beau with a few arrows in him." Dick said, his tone obviously forced light.
There were several moments of companionable silence; nothing strained or uncomfortable. Suddenly Dinah spoke, her voice shaking, finally breaking her callous exterior.
"What if it means things aren't as good as I thought?" She whispered in a devastated tone. "What if it means … what if he breaks up with me?"
"I'll kill him." Roy said, taking her hand. "If he breaks up with you, he's an idiot."
"He's the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. A very long time." She was braking down now. She felt tears on her cheeks and felt her shoulders shaking as sobs began wracking her body. "Good things … don't happen to … me. They … they just … don't! I'm not meant to … have good things."
All three men went to pull her into their arms, stopped then tried again. Finally Connor succeeded in pulling girl into his arms. She buried her face in his chest and continued sobbing. He pulled her closer and rocked her back and forth.
----
It took almost an hour and a half hour for Dinah to calm. By that time she was asleep. Connor carried her into the room that was still set aside for her, although it had gone through many phases and changes since she had first come to stay here when she was four; after her mother's death.
He set her in the bed now covered with sheets covered in pictures of Mikhail Baryshnikov, his protégé Nicolai Radetsky, ballet shoes, British flags, and beautiful ballerinas Connor had forgotten the names of moments after he'd been told them.
He glanced around the room, remembering the days it was papered with pictures of Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, and Carebears; all of which had gone off the air completely at least a decade before Dinah was born. It was after this that Dinah found a love for ballet. She swore to everyone that she was going to marry Baryshnikov, ignoring the fact that he had died thirteen years before her birth.
Then there was her phase when she was obsessed with "The Who", Elvis, The Rat Pack, and Johnny Cash. People who had not only died but who had been completely forgotten almost thirty years before her birth. Then there was a time when she liked things the other kids her age liked. It lasted a proverbial five minutes. She then delved even further into history, falling in love with Broadway, Vaudeville, and the Zigfield Follies.
Now her walls were blanketed more eclectically than any living person. Rainbow Brite, Sailor Moon, and My Little Pony covered one wall; Elvis, Rat Packers, James Dean and Cary Grant covered another; her ceiling was purely ballet; her third wall was covered with Broadway memorabilia; and the last was covered with anything and everything British. This stemmed from the phase when she would not speak in a normal voice, she had to speak with a horrible British accent. She swore to everyone she met that she was the bastard child of Queen Elizabeth IV.
Her room at her own home was blanketed quite similarly. She thought it was tops to be able to have twice as many posters as anyone else, and have room to put them up.
Connor shook his head, finally coming out of his nostalgic moment. He switched off the light and pulled out his cell phone as he left the room. He opened it and dialed Oliver's number.
He didn't even say hello when he answered. "You have Dinah?"
Connor smiled. "Yes. She's sleeping. She's a bit broken up, but she's fine." Connor paused. "Why do you call her Dinah?"
"It's the name her mother gave her." Oliver said.
"You're sure it has nothing to do with you missing Dinah?" Connor said, instantly regretting it.
Oliver sighed. "Send Dinah home first thing in the morning. She has rehearsal."
"Goodnight, Dad." Connor said before he hung up. He glanced back in at Dinah's sleeping form and smiled. "Goodnight, Baby Bird."
----
