Darker Shades of Grey - Part 7 (MA15+, angst)
Part 7
Dinah
This is just my luck. Four blocks from Dr. Fraser’s office and the rain starts to beat down like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The tiny drops slice into my face. I don’t know if the rain is just getting more violent to match the city or if I’m just becoming more sensitive.
I look around for somewhere to wait the rain out but the shops around me have already closed for the night, pulling in their chairs and umbrellas so they wouldn’t sustain any damage from the storm.
I can’t just walk up to any old house and ask if I can sit in their porch because I don’t like to get wet and cold.
So I have two choices, I could run the sixteen blocks back to the Clocktower or I could go back four blocks to the relative safety of the Doctor’s office. She said she had other patients but surely she wouldn’t mind if I waited with her receptionist. Sure a nice girl, if a bit rough around the edges. She reminds me of Helena in some warped, I dreamed of you when you were happy, kind of way.
Fraser wins.
Slowly I turn and start the walk back to my therapist’s office, keeping close to the buildings on my left so they can shield me from just a bit of the hard rain.
A few lone people pass me as I creep along. They have umbrellas to keep them reasonably dry and shelter them from the tough wet drops falling from the heavens.
“Damn you Helena,” I grumble at my feet. If only she would care about me enough to pick me up. It’s not like I’m asking her to marry me. It’s not like I ask her for a hell of a lot.
I didn’t press matters when I remembered her turning me down. I didn’t insist that we sit down and go over the experience, the total heart break that followed the remembering or the fact that even though I share a bed with Gabby I constantly see Helena in my dreams.
Just one lousy car ride. Fifteen minutes of her fucking precious time.
Who am I kidding? She’s probably been held up by Barbara.
Barbara who monopolises all her time and has made it perfectly clear to me - and everyone else - that Helena is hers and shouldn’t be looked at, touched, spoken too.
I can’t even be her friend?
Do I even want to be her friend?
Maybe I should consider setting up another appointment with the Doc this week instead of next. Obviously I need my medication kicking up or a little solid guidance.
My feet stop before I realise what I’m doing. I look up. There’s the Doctor’s building again.
Four blocks is all it took me to completely hate Helena, then love her again and then doubt her. Well done Me … And the crazy contradictions award go to.
I pull open the door to the building and step inside. As soon as the hard rain disappears from my back I start to relax. I pull off my drenched leather coat and hand it to the door man who smiles at me softly, almost sadly, and hangs my jacket up to dry.
I smile back at him. I even continue smiling as I walk to the lift and press the button for my Doctor’s floor. I can’t remember the last time I smiled. Genuinely.
It’s so strange. I don’t know why I haven’t smiled more. I have no reason not to. Good things have happened to me. There have been jokes and amusing stories. Like Helena’s tendency to bring home impossibly wrong but extremely funny blonde jokes. I never laughed at them but they were funny.
Or the stories that Gabby told me to make me laugh. I don’t know if they were true stories or not but they were funny. Old Dinah would have laughed. This Dinah, this strange, non-fun, hardly sane person I’ve become. It’s not me. There’s something wrong with me. Something very, very wrong.
My mental sweat session is cut off by the sharp ping of the lift doors.
Dr. Fraser stands with her back to me, rifling through papers at her receptionist’s desk. She doesn’t even turn when the sounds of the opening doors echo around the empty room.
“Doctor Fraser?”
A sharp gasp escapes my sometimes friend/sometimes doctor and she spins around to look at me. “Dear God Dinah! You scared the pants off of me. What are you doing here?”
“Sorry.” I blush and smile softly at her. This smiling thing is something I think I’ll have to get used to. “It’s just … it’s raining and I was hoping it would be alright if I gave Helena a ring and waited for her up here. She was supposed to pick me up but she seems to have forgotten.”
Babbling. Another thing I haven’t done in a fair while.
Doctor Fraser’s smile drops slightly into a frown. “Dinah, have you been taking your medication?”
“Er.” I blush again. Two blushes in three minutes, unbelievable. Something really must be wrong with me. “I haven’t taken it today, I … er … I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ll take it as soon as Helena drops me home.”
The doctor frowns softly again and turns back to her paper work. “You can use this phone right here if you’d like. Just press one of the purple buttons and dial six to get an outside line.”
“Thank you,” I whisper softly as I carefully pick my way around her and sit in the receptionist chair before picking up the phone.
I dial Helena’s cell phone and wait as it rings.
Three beeps and Helena’s smooth voice filters through the phone. You’ve reached Helena Kyle. I’m bound to a post at the moment while a lavish redhead has her way with me. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back when I regain consciousness.
Another sharp beep and I find myself blushing again as a detailed image pops into my mind, supplying me with a techno colour, sound surround clip of just what Helena’s words may mean.
“Helena, that’s disgusting. Barbara can’t know you’ve got that on your message bank. Look. You said you’d pick me up after my appointment and you aren’t here and it’s raining. I said five thirty Helena. It’s now six, where the hell are you?”
I sigh and hit the button on the cradle to end the call then dial the Clocktower, hoping … well not hoping that Helena is there because I have a feeling if she is her message bank would be more than accurate. Stupid teenage hormones.
I hope Barbara knows where Helena is or has enough time to come get me herself.
Doctor Fraser watches as I listen to the click that signalled the line had finally been picked up. You’ve reached Barbara and Dinah, we can’t get to the phone right now so please leave a message and one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.
“Barbara? Are you home? It’s Dinah. Please pick up the phone, I need a lift bad. Barbara, please.”
I sneak a look up and notice Doctor Fraser watching me intently. A small smile on her face. I smile back slightly.
“Barbara … I …”
Miss Dinah?
“Alfred?”
Doctor Fraser moves around the desk and stand next to me, bending over the keyboard to type something into the computer.
Yes Miss Dinah. Please, listen very carefully. Ms. Barbara, Ms. Helena and Ms. Gabby aren’t here right at the moment. I think something may have gone awry.
Helena
So maybe charging the crazy lady wasn’t the best thing I could have done to help get Dinah back. I was angry, I let my emotions get the better of me, I screwed up, Batman would never have let his emotions predict his moves … then again, I’m here aren’t I?
Sick thoughts.
At least they take away the throbbing pain in my head.
“Honestly Harleen you look marvellous. You’re just like cheese, you only get better with age.”
Oh … barf.
“What were they feeding you at that place? You must have lost at lease ten pounds! Then again, you inherited mother’s figure so I guess it’s not that surprising really!”
Jeez … would she stop already.
“Well Harley! I guess you know what to do next. It seems our Huntress is finally waking up. Honestly how silly I thought I was going to have to drug her to wake her up.”
She lets out a big sigh and laughs jovially.
“Drug her to shut her up, drug her to wake her up … I feel a song coming on!”
No really. Please, control yourself.
“Ok … Deli, darling, this would be the time for you to be quiet so we can question the witness,” the familiar drawl of Harley Quinn’s voice comes to me softly.
I don’t think I have ever been so happy to hear her voice.
She, Dinah’s doctor, Dr. Fraser, Harley’s … acquaintance, sister? Finally shuts up.
“Helena, we’re quite aware that you’re awake. You might as well open your eyes,” Harley says to me softly.
Very slowly I lift my left eye lid. It hurts to move my eye around, it hurts to move my neck around and I’m sure that when I try it will be hard to move my limbs around. They seem to be attached to the metal chair I’m sitting in.
“I thought you were in Arkham,” I manage to grind out. My throat hurts as well.
“Well Helena. We all know that you aren’t the brains of your little operation, so it’s really not that surprising that you didn’t know I was out on a … well sabbatical I guess you could call it.”
She stands from her plush leather chair and slowly walks towards me.
Her hand makes my head scream as it settles on my forehead.
She frowns.
“My dear, you have a fever.”
Dinah’s doctor steps forward and places her hand next to Harley’s. My head sears at their combined touch, it throbs and pulls, it feels as though fire ants are trying to nest in my hair.
The sudden burst of pain is enough to shock me into screaming.
The sound that rips from my throat is long and loud, enough to perforate ear drums and shove the smile from Carolyn Lance’s face if she ever heard it.
Or at least that’s what it seems like to me. It doesn’t seem to even bother the two women in the room with me.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Dinah’s doctor says with an evil smile. “Yes, I made that little serum all by myself, no external help and I’m rather proud of it. Ultra sensitises all your nerves, your senses … not much unlike a psychotic episode. I guess you and Dinah could get together and compare side effects but I’ve noticed that the pain doesn’t really go away for a very long time … this should be fun!”
She walks across the room, I’m so glad her hand isn’t on my head anymore, and sits in another beige leather chair. Maybe beige leather is a family fetish.
“Harleen, would you care to sit with me.”
Harley grins at me and presses two of her fingers into my temple. It’s an instant migraine. Times a billion.
My head explodes into white flashes across my eyes; my body aches as though I’ve just run the New York Marathon. Three times.
I have to loose consciousness any second now. No one, even me, could take this much pain and not be knocked senseless.
Blonde hair and blue eyes flash through my mind. If they’re doing this to me, what are they doing to her?
“Dinah?” I ask as I close my eyes tight and try to concentrate on the ache of the metal bindings on my wrists. The more I concentrate on it the less my head feels as though it’s about to explode.
“She’s quite well Helena, a little bit tired I believe. I just gave her the medication she forgot to take today … she’ll be just like new in no time.” Dinah’s doctor says with a smile.
“Mush … you gave her the …”
“Indeed. I can’t have my favourite barely controlled psychopath getting all normal and sane on me! Think of all the bad press I’d be sure to get!”
“Bitch,” I spit from between my clenched teeth.
“Oh? OH! We haven’t been properly introduced yet. You see Helena, I hear so much about you during my sessions with Dinah I feel like I’ve known you all my life. My name is Delenda. My family always called me Dellen though, sort of a nick name I suppose … of course it was such a help when Harley and I got together to think up our plan.”
“Plan?” Hey, if she’s feeding me the information, who am I to stop her?
“Well yes,” she slowly stands from her chair, she’s more graceful that Harley as though she’s had a hundred years to learn every muscle in her body and she knows just which ones are working when she walks.
“You see something like eight or nine years ago a very dear friend of mine was thrown into a very disturbing place. Harley and I have always moved in the same groups you know, so we got together to save our trapped one.”
She dreamily floats around the room, her hands on her hips with a wistful expression on her face.
“See, the Joker was the reason Harleen was able to … release her inner harlequin, I guess you could say. He was also the reason I was able to release my inner,” she coldly smiles at me again, “delinquent.”
It’s so lame I have to stop myself from laughing by pinching the skin on my inner arm. It’s a lot worse than I expected, sending hot strikes of pain all the way up to my elbow and back again. But I don’t laugh.
“So when the Joker was thrown into Arkham by that awful Batperson Harley and I thought we’d get together. Have a little cheesecake and plan a little revenge. Normal Sunday really.”
Harley laughs.
“So … it may have taken us a decade but we’ve finally got the perfect revenge. Do you want to know what it is?”
I nod then instantly regret it when the room spins around and I feel like bringing up my breakfast. Again.
“Well it started out simple enough. Find out who Batman was, kill his family, friends, work associates, drag him back to Gotham to defeat us … then he’s so overcome with guilt that he’s distracted and we shoot him where he stands. Straight away, no need to play around. We want revenge not mess. Then we break Joker out and run this city together.”
She waves her hands around her head and laughs.
“Of course it wasn’t lost on the underworld when Batman disappeared straight after Catwoman was murdered. We may sometimes decide on stupid plans but we aren’t all blind.”
She looks at me as thought this piece of information shouldn’t be new but it is ... here I was thinking they all really were stupid, blind, and maybe a little deaf.
“It’s not like everyone didn’t know who Catwoman was. Selina never really was any good at keeping her identity a complete secret. So … we went after Selina Kyle’s family. You. It also wasn’t that difficult to run the DNA tests. Batboys little baby girl. Who would believe? Of course we made sure he knew. A few secretly placed phone calls, a birth certificate or two. It was absolutely classic to watch his face as he saw all the information drop into place. World’s greatest detective my ass!”
“So …” she says softly and rests her hand on my shoulder. I wince. “That’s where you and Harley came in. She played around with you for a while, did as much damage as possible, then let you take her in. I come to town, also do as much damage as possible then break her out.
“But you see this time it was different. We didn’t realise at the time but we were doing the damage in the wrong places. See, Helena, you have a complete and firm grip on what’s wrong and what’s right. It may be just a little blurred in some areas but you’d never cross the black and white line.
“Now, Dinah on the other hand…”
She creases her lips and walks back across the room to smile at Harley.
“Dinah is very unique,” Harley fills in for her sister. “So very powerful and not yet clear on exactly how far she can push the line before she’s staring over the cliff.”
Understanding is starting to dawn on me.
“So much tragedy and pain all locked up behind a sunny smile and a happy disposition, didn’t you know Helena? The sunniest smile hides the deepest pain.” Harley tells me in a faux sincere tone.
“So we moved our plan around a little bit. We’d have a little fun with you, I dunno, some torture, a little brainwashing, maybe even as the finale we could have Dinah kill you. Which she is perfectly capable of by the way. Then we’d kill the rest of your cronies, take down Wayne Corp and finally have the Joker back on his throne where he’s supposed to be.”
“Shall we get the party started,” Harley asks from the back of the room.
“I believe so, times are a wastin’.” Dinah’s doctor walks across the room to the metal door to her left. She pauses as she rests her hand on the door handle.
“Oh, one more thing, Helena?”
I drag my head up and sneer at her.
“Do you love Dinah?”
My mouth drops open just a tiny bit and I know I’ve given myself away, not for the first time at least. I catch myself and sneer at her again. “You can kiss my as…”
“Now, dear no need for vulgarities but remember your life might depend on a correct answer.”
“Go get fu…”
“I have a limited supply of patience, Helena,” she returns across the room and glares at me, her face barely inches from mine.
“Go ahead you psycho bit…”
Her hand slices through the air and connects with my cheek. The pain in my head triples and I allow myself a single grunt.
“For future reference, Helena, don’t make me repeat myself. It makes me irritable.”
The doctor raises her voice and clears her throat loudly.
“You can come in Dinah darling!”
Metal scrapes along concrete as the heavy door is shoved across the room. It hits the opposite wall and my ears ring.
Dinah floats through the opening, her feet barely touching the ground.
Her hair, so dark and short like mine, is wilding biting at her cheeks. Her eyes are filled with nothing but hatred and her face is a mask of pain.
“Helena,” she says darkly, “You forgot to pick me up.”
It’s going to be a long night.