As History Repeats

Chapter 11

Dinah flopped onto her bed. She hadn't bothered to shower yet. She was too tired; both her mind and her stomach were full now and she just wanted to go to sleep and forget everything. She couldn't, though. As her head hit the pillow, she saw the blonde figure she fought that night, the one she later found out to be the girl she was slowly becoming friends with, Gabby Andrews. The girl she had been dreaming about for years. Dinah was glad that the only image she really got was of Gabby in the body suit, adjusting it and then putting the mask on. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the hows and why's of how Gabby had gotten there. Dinah saw how the girl was towards her when they met in the lunchroom that day. Dinah could tell that Gabby knew something about her, and may have even been able to guess that she was a metahuman right then and there. Why then hadn't she said anything about it? It could have been for the same reason that Dinah hadn't told Aunt Harleen about the fight. Well, she might have if she wasn't so distracted by her knew pretty toy. Dinah knew a little bit about what it did, and she wanted it to work, but not if it took her guardian's attention like that.

Dinah sighed. She wondered again why Gabby was out there. It was apperent that she didn't have any powers, so why risk herself? It could have just been that the feral woman and Batgirl were too busy and she was the only one left, but that was a big risk to take for the computer components. Really, how does someone like Gabby who seemed so nice, so normal, turn out to be one of them?

Dinah snorted. "How does someone like me end up right here, thinking about... her in this manner?" she asked herself.

The truth was, Dinah hadn't always been this way. Right now, she was evil, a freak. Or at least, that was what Gabby's do gooder friends thought of the likes of her. Once upon a time, Dinah was normal. She had a normal home and she did things that normal little girls did. That changed when she was about 7, when her home suddenly became engulfed in fire and in the next minute she was alone in a corner, everything charred to hell except for her and anyhing that happened to be in the three foot bubble she had somehow created. Dinah saw her mother there on the floor near the door, trying to get to her, but she couldn't...

Dinah bared her teeth angrily and shook her head away from the image of black flesh and its smell. She instead turned her body, hoping a new position would bring her thoughts to somewhere a little more pleasent, but it didn't work.

From there, Dinah's mind skipped ahead a little, and she was glad for it. She didn't want to remember the many foster homes she had been to, the times she was taken to a therapist for supposed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrom everytime she had strange dreams after that. Every night she saw mini-movies in her head, things she instinctively knew at 8 and 9 years of age were going to happen. She saw a car wreck after school in the 4th grade, but she couldn't stop it because no one would listen. People didn't know what to do with a special case like Dinah, and they shipped her everywhere, landing her with a nice enough couple, The Redmonds. They were very straight laced and God fearing people. The punishment then for seeing what she saw was to be locked in the closet until she convinced them (and hell she was able to convince herself a time or two) that what she saw wasn't real. It didn't take her two long to keep her mouth shut and just smile when Mrs. Redmond asked if she had slepted okay.

But that didn't stop what came next. When Dinah was 11, she began to see into someone's mind when she touched them. She tried everything, wearing gloves, staying away from people as much as she possibly could, but still she always found herself bumping into people. She tried to keep this from the Redmonds as she'd skip away from Mrs. Redmond when she tried to hug or kiss her goodnight, or from Mr. Redmond when he'd try to high five her. They thought it was another 'thing' with foster kids that she needed counceling for, so away she went again to a therapist. Mrs. Deacon was very nice, or at least Dinah thought she was. She said she wouldn't tell. She swore...

Less than a week after that, Dinah was sent away to Opal's Psychiatric Facility For Children, where she was numbed by drugs. Which was probably just as well that she was in a haze most of that time, since everyone else around her were screaming, scratching and biting. The one time she could remember being lucid was about two months in. One of the biggest screamers, Evan came up to her and pet her on the head before going back to hollaring. Apperantly, this wasn't a new thing, as he'd been doing it everyday without Dinah really there to know it. The next time he pet her hair, Dinah took his hand, and he froze. So did she, as she was suddenly in a completely chaotic type of place where the only thing not moving was Evan himself, who stood there calm and watching her. He knew she wasn't supposed to be there, and truthfully, she had never been in anyone's head for that long. When she asked him why he screamed so much, he said that it was because since his father died, no one listened to him. He said that since his mother married someone else, he hasn't seen anything of his father's anywhere, and he wants them back.

When Dinah left Evan's mind and had let go of his hand, he was silent for a moment, looked to Dinah before he began to scream again, petting her head before he left again. In some ways, Dinah still wondered if she could have done something to help Evan. She figured that now he was a teenager, his 'ticks' would have gotten worse or, hopefully, he would have gotten the help he had needed and left that god aweful place. Dinah hadn't quite been that lucky. Not long after properly meeting Evan, Dinah had another one of her dreams. They always came and went, of course, but she had never seen anything this bad. This dream was different from anything she could ever remember having. At first she thought it was a residual thing from being in Evan's mind, but she had that instinctual feeling that it was going to happen. All she could see were people running around and screaming various things that didn't make sense to Dinah, and all Dinah could feel was fear, as well as a few other emotions. She didn't know what it meant, but it woke her up. What she saw upon waking were beds shifted everywhere and a light blue charge along her own bed. Things were being flown around and a couple of the nurses were trying to get close to her.

She didn't know what she was doing, but she knew she was doing it, as it looked a lot like that first time, in her house... She had blacked out that time, but now she could see everything. She saw how much she scared the nurses and the other children. She did everything to try and calm down, to show she wasn't dangerous, but as soon as the blue orb went away and everything dropped to the ground, Dinah had been taken in for observation, and then isolated. She knew the truth, though. She knew she scared people and that the doctors didn't know what to do with her, just like the foster care system didn't know.

Dinah was transfered to a psychiatric ward that dealt more with adults than children, but they claimed to the Redmonds and the doctors there that they knew how to treat Dinah's 'condition'. With a lot of paperwork from the foster system and The Redmonds, Arkham Asylum had taken over all of Dinah's parental rights as she was shipped off to a place she had never been before called New Gotham. Alone in a glass surrounding, Dinah had never felt more alone. She remembered how much she cried and begged to be let out, but it seemed no one listened. The only upside to this was that she didn't have any dreams and that she hadn't been medicated as heavily, except for a sedative when she was due to see a doctor.

Dinah thought she would rot in her glass cell. She saw hardly anyone, and she knew that if she were really crazy it would have been because of that place. A month went by, and something happened that she had learned not to expect: She got a visitor. Dinah watched the woman carefully as she came in, and the woman did the same. Then, suddenly, she set her jacket down on the floor in front of her, sat down, beckoned for Dinah to join her, and the two of them began to talk. There was nothing of importance in their chats. They were mostly about animals, until this woman, introduced to her as Dr. Quinnzell, began to speak of creatures that were real, like unicorns and pegusus'. It was then she brought the conversation around to why Dinah was there in New Gotham. She began to tell her what was happening to her, and that she wasn't crazy or sick. Dinah had always felt that she was both. When she told her that she was a metahuman and what she could do to start controling the things she could do, Dinah felt she understood. All too soon, Dr. Quinzell stood up. Dinah stood as well and asked her if she would ever come back. "We'll see how my schedual plays out, puddin'," was all she'd said before she left.

Dinah was never happier when she came back, when she kept coming back week after week. Dinah knew she was a therapist, but she was unlike any she had ever met, and Dinah looked forward to the visits, practicing what Dr. Harleen told her during the time the blonde woman wasn't there. Over time, her dreams weren't scary anymore. She began to dream of a normal kind of life, one where she walked down the halls of a high school with another blonde girl, ones where she hung out at McDonald's with her and discussed deep issues together. This gave Dinah hope that she would be able to leave that place, that she wouldn't be locked away forever and she'd get better thanks to Dr. Quinzell. It did take time, but almost a year later, Dr. Quinzell had managed to prove that Dinah was safe enough to be let out of the glass encasement and into a bedroom with a boy named Gibson Khafka, who was closest to her age. He was a little odd, but harmless, as he was burdened with the power to see, hear, smell, taste and touch more powerfully than anything Dinah had heard of, and he remembered all of it, including, according to him, the womb. Dinah and Gibson became good friends and better roommates. He was really good about waking her up if it looked as if she was going to have another nightmare, and she did the best she could to not... well, smell.

When Dinah was 13, she was deemed at full health, but having nowhere to go, she lived at Arkham for a while until Dr. Quinzell surprised her with the knowledge that she was going to apply for guardianship. After many long months, Dinah went home with the one person who seemed to keep her sane in Arkham, other than the images of the girl. She did feel bad for not being able to stay with Gibson, but Dr. Harleen had said she could visit him whenever she wanted to, and at first she did, until he too was released. One thing that Dinah hadn't expected was the fact that Dr. Harleen (Aunt Harleen as she later called her) lived only blocks away from Arkham Asylum, and there were times where she could hear a scream that would make Dinah's insides go cold.

Dinah had a lot to catch up on, since she had spent almost three years locked away, and for over a year all 'round, Dinah had tutors to help her catch up. But Dinah's dreams were still there, and she knew she was supposed to go to New Gotham High, as that was where the girl would be. She knew she had to find a way to talk to her and even thank her for all of the things she didn't know she had done for Dinah while she was locked away. And that was when she had asked Aunt Harleen to be let into high school. Since she was handling her touch telepathy well according to Aunt Harleen, she was allowed to start the new year as a sophmore.

At this, Dinah sat up and looked around her room. She heard a small sound from far away and hoped it was a dog and not another Arkham scream. She covered her ears anyway. She took in a deep breath as she thought about Gabby and what this made them. Were they still friends, or were they enemies now? As far as Dinah was concerned, Gabby didn't know who Dinah really was at night, and she didn't know that Dinah knew about her. Maybe Dinah and Gabby could continue to be friends. After all, this won't be forever, Dinah knew. She had a task to do, and when the task was done, she would be too. If by then Gabby hasn't figured her out, Dinah could go on being around her without knowing, and maybe Dinah could forget any of this ever happened. Dinah snorted again and shifted onto her stomach as her head faced the wall again. "I don't know what I'm gonna do about you, Gabby," she whispered into the dark.