Part Three
Dinah
New Gotham looks so lonely and empty from here. The top of the New Gotham Bank building is one of the highest up in the city. It's a good vantage point. I can see everything.
I can see the smoke from several houses in the suburbs but other than that I wouldn't be surprised to find that the world had ended and I was the only living person on the earth.
That would be terrible.
I'd go…well not crazy, I'm already crazy.
I'd go crazier. Maybe start befriending alley cats and eating out of garbage bins. Wearing paper bags for clothes and looting stores only to forget how to operate a television set. Yep that would be me. Wild Dinah.
I'll take what I want when I want it and be Queen of my jungle.
I'm tired.
My legs are killing me from taking the brunt of all the falls from the air as I jumped telekinetically from roof top to roof top. My head is aching from all the thinking I've been doing. Trying to sort myself out when I don't even know where to start. My heart is pounding unsteadily in my chest but I don't know why, I haven't strained myself beyond my limit. I haven't got any heart problems that I know of. But then again…
My mind and body are telling me I killed Barbara even though I couldn't have. I saw her she was sitting right in front of me stroking my hair and talking to me softly. I don't believe in ghosts or angels.
The only way I can think to explain it is that I was hallucinating again.
It's not like that isn't something I've had happen to me before. I've seen thinks before, believed things that weren't real. I saw Helena dead and Barbara as some sort of evil dominatrix, I even saw my dead mother. None of those were real.
Some small part of my brain is yelling at me that it doesn't matter, that nothing will matter in the end. I'm doomed to live a half life.
Barbara's pissed. What's new? I feel sorry for her. I feel guilty that I could hurt the woman that has loved and treated me as though I were her own daughter. I almost killed her. I'm guilty .I don't hate her. It's just easier if I pretend I don't care.
Helena, a beautiful bag of contradictions. She loves me but she can't be in love with me. She doesn't want to see me hurt but she easily kicks my ass in the training rooms. She can't stand being around me but she always touches me in a small way if I'm in the room, as if to make sure I'm real. Maybe she's having hallucinations as well.
Then there's Gabby…
Gabby. Gabby. Gabby.
When I was sixteen and had only been kissed twice I never knew that I could fall so helplessly head over heels in love with someone. Let alone another woman.
When I was seventeen and just starting to find myself at New Gotham High I didn't realise that the flutter in my stomach when I saw Gabby was the beginning of lust.
When I started to look at Gabby as more than just a nice person I didn't realise that it could turn into full blown love.
When Gabby started to look back at me…well I didn't realise that I was more to her. More to someone. I meant something to someone.
Gabby.
I'm in love with Gabby.
But what the hell is love?
Great, I'm getting philosophical while I watch the paper delivery man sneak into a deserted alley for a piss.
Life is complicated.
Oh! How fun! Why don't I just add 'You can't outrun bullets' 'Drink. Drive. You'll be sorry' and 'Marijuana, you don't know what it could do to you' to my little arsenal then prace around the school with a cross and a bible filling unsuspecting teens with information about how God loves everyone.
This is frustrating.
I'm getting no where.
"You could jump again, that might get you somewhere," a smooth voice says from behind me. Of course I expected her to be here. She's always around me when I don't want her to be and never when I need her to be.
"Hell yeah! Or I could just survive again," I sass back.
She smiles indulgently and shakes droplets of water off her jacket. She's dressed in leather from head to toe as usual.
Together we stand quietly looking over the city we swore to protect.
If only I hadn't given up. If only I cared again. If only she would just love me.
"Evil is excreted from every orifice in this city," she murmurs.
She surprises me. New Gotham is her home. Her mother is here, Barbara is here, this is where she grew up and found out about her father.
"But you…"
She cuts me off sharply, "I know what you're going to say but don't you see it. Darkness and evil seeps from every corner, every alley. It's in the darkened corners and the burnt out cars. It plunders and rapes and steals."
"But –"
"No. I don't blame you for losing it a little bit. It's a terrible horrible place. It's filled with drugs and villains bent on destroying as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. Even the villains who don't wear costumes, the petty criminals, the child abusers. Want to do something bad? Move to New Gotham." She throws her arms up into the air and shakes her head.
I continue to look at her as I watch her beautiful face fall. "No Helena. NO! How could you think that! This city made Batgirl, Batman, the Huntress and Oracle. How could you hate it? This city bought you to Barbara. This city bought out your inner vigilante, it helped you to become the woman you are today and I'll tell you what, she's a pretty damn great mentor and friend."
"So you're saying you don't hate it here?" she grins.
"Of course I do."
Her smile falls dramatically fast, so fast that it's almost comical.
"I hate every corner, every 'orifice', every villain and every child abuser. I hate the pavement, the cars, the shops... the goddamn leaves. I hate it all with a vengeance that I could never put to words."
She stops staring at me and obviously decides it's easier to just look at Wayne Tower. "Then why do you stay here if you hate it so much?"
I expect that question and yet it still catches me by surprise.
"Because I have no where else."
I take a deep breath and think of all the things my heart and head have been stewing in for the last year and a half.
"Because I have no family and my only friends are here. Where do you expect me to go…run back to a home I ran away from in the first place? No. I don't think so. I stay because of Batgirl and the Huntress." I'm starting to feel drained, my emotional vacuum is on high and I'm losing control of the emotional barrier I set up around me.
"So, did you come up here to jump?" she asks as she sits down but firmly keeps her eyes on Wayne Tower which still sits proudly on the horizon.
"No."
"Why should I believe you?"
I roll my eyes and snap at her.
"Gee I dunno Helena. Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you should just send me away again, see how well that goes."
Before she has a chance to toss my own words back at me I throw my arms out to the side and easily lower myself to the building below us. She's beside me before I can even start running.
She grabs my shoulder and by instinct I throw her over it. She hits the pavement ungracefully and let's out a grumpy snort. I know I can run away and probably have just enough time to make it far enough so that she can't follow me. For some reason I stand perfectly still.
"Gee Kid, I thought you'd be at least a little off since you haven't been training with me."
"Don't ever underestimate me," I tell her darkly and start to walk off.
"Well, obviously from now on I won't." She dusts off her behind and follows me. "We never wanted you togo there.."
"Go where?" I ask as I skirt around a full garbage can.
"To that place, that rest home."
I spin around with my mouth open to protest but I know she's right. I sent myself there. I'm just angry that I went at all. I'm failed, admitted defeat. I'm not strong like they are. I never was.
I shake my head and continue walking. She stops in the middle of the alley.
"I said I wasn't in love with you. I never said I didn't love you," she yells.
I throw my hand at her and send her crashing to the ground again.
"Fuck off," I hurl over my shoulder as I retreat.
"This is my city Dinah. I'll protect it and anyone in it. That includes you."
I keep walking away.
Helena
That'll teach me for looking up while I walk. If 'd kept my eyes at street level I never would have seen Dinah's lanky form standing proudly on the side of the New Gotham Bank building.
If I had kept walking I probably wouldn't have such a sore ass right now. Then again if I'd kept walking then Oracle might have sent me straight back to talk to Reese about a suicide off the top of the New Gotham Bank building.
That's not a pretty thought. Seeing Dinah mushed up like the forgotten cupcakes I sometimes find in the back of my car. I wouldn't be able to stand that.
Just seeing her in the hospital with all those tubes and respirators and machines hooked up to her was enough to send me straight to the bathroom. It was sickening.
Then watching Gabby cry by her lover's side that was heart breaking. Needless to say by the time D had regained consciousness and was ready to come home I was worn out again.
She's worse than Barbara in some ways. Dinah blatantly ignores her physio appointments, just like Barbara did. Even thought the doctors told her if she did there would be more nerve damage and possibly loss of feeling in her legs.
Strangely enough the only appointments D will keep are the ones with her shrink. I thought after the debacle with Harley Quinn hypnotising her she would try anything to get out of seeing another shrink. Guess I can't always be right about everyone.
Some how I've managed to walk six blocks while I was think. I almost laugh at my own surprise when my body automatically stops in front of the Clocktower. If I squint upwards I can just see Barbara's chair on the balcony.
I make quick work of the building, landing silently beside my troubled lover. Her face is scrunched up, she looks as though she's been crying. I want to slap Dinah senseless.
"Dinah's missing again," she whispers to me through the darkness around us.
I sigh to myself and sit beside her, "she's fine just letting off some steam somewhere in the city. I caught up with her on the way home from work."
"Is she ok?"
Is she ok? I've been asking myself that question ever since she first tried to kill us all. I decide to stay with a semi-positive answer. "No different than normal." There's no need to share my thoughts on the young girl trying to jump off the building that would just upset everyone.
"Can you do me a favour Hel?"
I look at her. Any other time I would jump at the chance to help her in any way but there's a look in her eye that makes me suspicious. "What?"
"I need you to discretely check Dinah's things."
I raise an eyebrow warily, "you want me to ransack her room?"
"NO!" Barbara insists quickly, "Just check things…make sure she isn't keeping anything important from us."
"Like what Barb?"
She sighs heavily and I can see the world rise with her shoulder. She continues to stare out at the city, "haven't you noticed Helena. She's withdrawn, emotionally and physically, she's always tired even though Gabby says she sleeps for hours at a time, deeply. She's just plain mean and grumpy and I think she's seeing things again."
I wave my hands around in front of me to get her to continue but she doesn't. "So what you're saying is…"
"She may be taking something."
"Drugs!"
Barbara turns to me her eyes are filled with hope. I can see where this is going now. She wants it to be something else. She doesn't want Dinah to be mentally unstable. At least if Dinah is taking something there are ways Barbara can stop it.
Dinah's health is out of both their control and now Barbara's starting to panic.
"Ok," I whisper against my better judgement, "I'll take a real quick look."
I spin on my heel and head into the Clocktower. At least I have less chance getting caught if Dinah's out of the Clocktower.
The door to her room is slightly ajar. I won't have to break anything, good.
It's a mess inside. Leather thrown hazardously over chairs, dirty clothes piled in corners, school books, novels and papers lying on the floor, the bed unmade. There's even the stale smell of sex and body odour deep underneath it all. I cursed my sensitive sense of smell then glazed around in wonder, how could Gabby sleep in here?
I'm sure that if I looked under the bed there would be some sort of biological hazard or mini world forming.
I promise myself that I'll look everywhere…except under the bed.
I step towards the desk and pull open the first draw. Spare pens, pencils, paper and several small boxes of candid photos. Nothing incriminating, deadly or illegal here.
The next three draws are the same. In completely disarray but not harbouring anything Barbara might like to look out. Well except for the half used box of condoms -- I'll have to find some way of asking about that one later.
I turn to the bed and check under the mattress, the covers and then the draws beside it. When I've searched everywhere reachable, not including the underneath of the bed, I check the wardrobe. Yet still nothing.
I stand in the middle of the room facing the window. I let my hands rest on my hips and I consider any other places Dinah may have hidden things. The loose floor board where I used to keep the odd bottle of JD or pack of cigarettes hasn't been touched since I last used it. The small hidden draw in the back of the bedside table is in the exact same condition. Maybe I need to teach the kid these things.
"Are you looking for Dinah?"
I spin around and come face to face with a sad looking Gabby. "Ah…um…er…"
LIE! YOU HAVE TO LIE HELENA!
"Actually I was just…"
"It's ok," she says softly and walks into the room. She wrinkles her nose in disgust at the dirty dishes on the floor near the door. "It's needs a clean huh?"
I nod then grin, "It's not much different from when I was hunkered down in here actually." Aside from the mess and possible anthrax growing under the bed.
"So, what were you looking for? Maybe I can help?"
LIE! LIE! LIE!
"My jacket," I spit out quickly, "D borrowed it last week. You know the black leather one with the big pockets? You know the one?"
Gabby considers me for a second before getting on her knees beside the bed. "Yeah, I remember," she says as she ducks her head underneath the covers spilling off the bed on to the floor. I wonder if I should rush for the oxygen tank and first aid kit in the training room. Gabby's got guts.
"Look something like this?" she asks as she holds up a small white container. She pops the top open and spills three brown capsules out onto her hand. She offers them to me and I take them. Carefully she puts the container back under the bed. I slip the tablets into my coat pocket. This will keep Barbara the Science Nerd happy for a little while.
"Her psychiatrist gave them to her but I don't think they're helping…maybe you could get Barbara to do her thing," Gabby suggests as she grabs several shirts off the floor and lobs them into a washing basket. I nod and turn towards the door.
"Actually Helena," she calls. I turn back around and wait.
"She's been having strange dreams. They're always of her mother or Barbara and they're always…wrong. I dunno how to explain really. They're always just so rude to her blaming her for things that she didn't have anything to do with."
"Like what?" I ask and step back into the room.
"Like Barbara blaming Dinah for her paralysis and others where she's actually walking but still…taunting her about the incident after the dinner. Or her mother screaming at her that she's the reason she's dead."
"And you saw these dreams?" I ask.
She nods. "It's hard not to when your sleeping right next to her and she's sort of accidentally pulling you into them as an added bonus."
I turn away again, "That's one cool talent you got there Gabs." I grin.
"OH! And Helena?"
I turn back to her again.
"Next time you want to lie about why you're in a room."
I nod.
"Maybe you should check which jacket you're wearing."
I look down; sure enough the jacket I described to Gabby was the one I wore to work. I grin, slap my head and, in an excellent Homer Simpson impersonation, mutter, "doh!"
