seriousfic

jennyo asked for Babs/Dinah reunion fic for her birthday, so enjoy and sorry about the lack of spooning. I guess it just feels wrong now if I write spooning and Bridget Regan isn't involved.

Title: A Tale Of Two Cities
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,554
Characters/Pairings: Babs/Dinah, references to Dinah/Ollie and Helena/Zinda
Summary: What do you do if your heart’s in one city but you live in another? Besides commute?

Star City. Ollie’s gone, off with the JLA (didn’t you used to be a member?) 2 AM and there’s no one to talk to about the gray hair you just found. 3 AM and there’s no kids in bed for you to make breakfast for. 4 AM and you can’t sleep.

Dinah looked at herself in the mirror as she pulled on her costume. It still fit. Of course it still fit, just because she hadn’t worn it for a week, busy running around, pulling around Ollie’s charities and companies and a few parties…

There were perks to being Ollie’s wife. Well, a millionaire’s wife. The Harley-Davidson she kept in the garage, past the missing convertible Ollie was probably in with Hal right now. She didn’t give the parking space a second look, just climbed onto the hog, kick-started it, felt it purr Freudily between her legs. She rode out into the night.

***

Star City. It wasn’t Gotham. There wasn’t a tragedy in every dark alley and Christ, what was wrong with her, how could she be nostalgic for that? Finally, she ditched the bike and took to the rooftop. An hour of nothing, but it still felt nice to be running, jumping, rolling, diving. Even if it was somehow tasteless, a fast food version of the meal she wanted. Finally, an alarm on her belt rang. Someone was trying to rip off her bike. God, her ride had found more crime than she had. That was really only acceptable if you were David Hasselhoff (Dinah wished she had someone to whisper that quip to.)

She ran back, losing some time on Star City’s damn steepled roofs, but finally got there in time to see three guys popping her XM radio out of the Harley-Davidson. She dropped down on a fire escape and, since they hadn’t noticed her, took a second to think up an entrance line.

“Boys, if you want free music, can’t you download MP3s like a normal person?”

Okay, that she was glad no one had heard.

Still, idle chitchat and crime-in-progress was an equation that freaked most criminals out, so they automatically took off. Until one of the gangers looked over his shoulder and saw her.

“Relax, it’s just the Arrow’s bitch! We can take her!”

Dinah used her Canary Cry on him. Just cuz.

“Chairman of the JL-fucking-A!” she told his unconscious body. “Don’t you forget it!”

***

Star City. Tonight’s score. Three misdemeanors already out on bail. One busted bike. Dinah considered calling a tow truck, but hell, she had standards. She used the JLA’s teleporter. Vixen was on monitor duty. She gave Dinah a look.

“Don’t judge me. That’s an order.”

She was beamed back home and immediately made herself a sundae. Three cherries on top.

The TV flickered and sputtered as she flipped through channels, each making as much of an impression as the last. Like trying to leave a footprint on cracked desert floor. The dawn didn’t wake her from her insomnia, but the phone ringing did. Dinah stopped channel-surfing, realizing that she was on one of those networks dedicated to women without clothes on, and picked up the phone. She hit the mute button on the TV before she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi Dinah. Guess who?”

***

Gotham City. Barbara didn’t have a team anymore. Sometimes she called someone in for a favor, but they didn’t stay long. Didn’t stay at all. They didn’t help her move or recommend books to her. They didn’t make connections.

Dinah had never asked about it, but she’d seen Barbara at Bruce’s funeral. She understood.

But for this, Barbara needed people she could trust. She needed the band back together.

***

Star City. The airport. Still under construction, technically, since it had been even before Amsterdam Avenue. Dinah met up with Zinda alongside lots of happy reunions and thought to herself well, how normal. She wasn’t even wearing fishnets.

Zinda was wearing her airline pilot outfit, the cap jauntily crooked. She was flying Boeings while the Air Force processed her re-up application. It was taking a while. She’d last enlisted in 1942.

“Boeings are some fat ass jets,” Zinda said. “And I don’t mean in the good, hip-hop way.”

“Nobody means in the good hip-hop way anymore,” Dinah replied.

Barbara had gotten Zinda the assignment to fly from her home in O’Hare to Star City, where she’d already reserved a rental plane. It was just a teeny Cessna, but Zinda loved it. They flew for Gotham, chatting like they’d never been apart.

***

Gotham City. The Waynecorp airfield. Zinda started to playfully grouse that Bruce had never let her fly his Batwings, then she stopped herself.

Helena was waiting on the runway, in an Italian convertible that made Dinah dig her driving gloves out of her baggage. Zinda laughed. “Boss lady trying to impress you?”

“Nah,” Dinah said, wondering if she was lying.

Zinda buzzed Helena as she landed, and when they disembarked, Helena’s hair was still mussed. They cheek-kissed and Dinah hugged and Helena let Dinah drive. She didn’t need any reminders of the roads. Gotham filled up her head like a second language.

“You miss it?” Dinah asked Helena, who was dressed casually, in mittens even.

“No. I’m good at teaching.”

“You don’t ever miss your crossbow?” Zinda insisted, punching Helena’s arm.

“Only at PTA meetings. Who wants to ban Fahrenheit 451, I mean, c’mon!”

***

Gotham City. Wayne manor. They killed the radio miles before they could see the gates, didn’t talk either, even though Zinda and Helena had been in the middle of a nigh-incomprehensible conversation about Glee. “Could you believe it when Puck…” “I screamed when Emma and Sue…”

The gates opened and they rolled inside. The moors wore brown leaves like flakes of dead skin. Dinah suddenly wished she’d dressed warmer. It was colder here than in Star City. She stayed close to the others, so their heat didn’t diffuse into the atmosphere.

The mansion seemed more foreboding without Bruce. As if he had imbued it with any kind of warmth. Then again…

Alfred greeted them at the door. He had prepared those neat little sandwiches that only professionals made. Dinah thanked him, smiling. It was good to know that some things stayed the same, or healed. The butler led them, hushed and gothic, to the clock. He set it to the hour and minute his master had been killed. Dinah wondered if it was just a coincidence or if someone had changed it. If someone had, she hoped it hadn’t been Barbara.

They went down the stairs, into the cave. Helena was especially quiet. Zinda asked why in a low whisper.

“He never took me down here. Not this way.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Barbara waited for them. She was dressed severely, accessorized with the same grim vibe as Alfred. That ‘I like you but I don’t like you too much’ thing. Dinah patiently waited to make eye contact with her, but it didn’t happen. Barbara gave them all a businesslike nod, then launched into the briefing. The usual. Terrorists. Supervillains. People who didn’t notice their girlfriends’ haircuts. She wrapped up explaining Plan Save The Day and gave them a minute to change. Zinda and Helena went off to zip each other up.

Barbara was like a part of the cave system, limestone that slowly bled and bled until it hung to the ground. Dinah Indian-sat in front of her, waiting for Barbara to make the first move. She wasn’t that good at waiting.

“Barbara, you don’t call, you don’t write…”

“Your arms look fine, so why can’t you pick up a phone?”

“I sent you that e-mail with the kittens.”

Barbara smiled despite herself. “My spam filter flagged it. I think you have a virus.”

“Don’t talk about Ollie that way.”

Barbara smiled and Dinah smiled. Like a chemical reaction, they laughed. Barbara wheeled to the computer, which was monolithic and chiropteran instead of overclocked and kitbashed and Star Trek like Barbara’s old system. Dinah irreverently leaned against the mainframe, munching on the Reuben she’d taken from Alfred. She loved to watch Barbara work, those fingers flying over her console, that steely confidence in her eyes.

Barbara didn’t like to be watched. “So how’s married life treating you?”

“The sex is nice.”

“And it’s just with you?”

“The sex is nice.”

Barbara laughed, the kind that grated on your throat as it came out. “He won’t change.”

“You did,” Dinah pointed out, thinking of how many hours they’d spent negotiating a first meeting, how many more hours they’d spent together.

“I’m smarter than he is.”

“Prettier too.”

“It’s the haircut.”

“I like it.”

The conversation came to a stall. The Batcomputer whirred and beeped.

“I’d better get dressed.” Dinah unzipped her bodice a little. “This look doesn’t just happen.”

“Dinah…” It was the first time she’d said the name. Barbara turned off the monitor. Without it, her face was mostly shadows. “You can come closer, if you like.”

Dinah did. She took off Barbara’s glasses and set them aside. Put her hands on Barbara’s face. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw a smile.

“I missed you,” Barbara admitted, far away from the clipped monotone.

“I missed us.”

As they kissed, Dinah knew where she belonged.