“Ladies Night Out”
It wasn’t much to go on, Dinah Lance hated to admit. A blurry picture on a security camera in the middle of the Paris Las Vegas Casino wouldn’t have gotten Dinah out of bed in the middle of the night if the person calling wasn’t Barbara Gordon and the person in the camera image wasn’t Dick Grayson.
Dick Grayson. Bruce’s kid. Barbara’s former flame. Victim of Hush.
Flashing pictures to dealers and even security guards—they seemed to enjoy her fishnets—she finally was pointed to the men’s restroom at the far end of the resort. Dinah pressed to walk inside—She could get away with it—but the door wouldn’t open.
Typical.
Dinah hit her earring. “Locked. I’m taking a different approach.”
“Please do.”
“Oh, Babs, no need to be so formal. I’m not one of your new Batgirls.”
“Dinah?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and get inside.”
“There’s the Barbara I know and love.”
Taking a deep breath, Dinah let her scream do the rest. The door tore of its hinges and crashed against the wall. She took a step inside the room—and froze. Shoved against the wall was an obvious drunkard, squirming against the iron hold of a man in tight jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket with dark sunglasses.
A very much alive Dick Grayson.
Behind him stood a younger boy, dressed similarly, but with a frightened expression upon his innocent face.
Tim Drake, also with a beating heart.
The Batboys.
“ROB!” Grayson yelled.
Drake’s arms spread out like an eagle. “Seal!”
A wave of power flowed over Dinah, and she knew from the silence in her ear what just happened. She—and her friends—were closed off from the world.
Grayson paid her no more attention. “Come on, Jimmy. Don’t be such a tool. Be a man for once.”
“I—I—”
A punch to the nose freed blood. “I can beat you senseless, Jimmy, but my little brother here—”
Drake snapped his fingers, and his skin—his skin flashed green for a second before the mirror shattered.
“—can give you seven years of bad luck.”
Since when did Drake master the Zantana?
“I—I don’t know anything. Really! I was just robbing this museum for this guy, and the old man had these pictures of Bats on a wall.”
Another punch. The crackle of bones shattered the silence.
“WHERE?” Grayson demanded.
“Fa—Fa—
One last punch knocked the man unconscious, but Grayson never turned, his chest heaving. Drake, however, watched her closely like they’d just been caught by the principal making a stink bomb.
“Don’t—Don’t tell Barbara,” Grayson pleaded.
Dinah scoffed, “ ‘Don’t tell Barbara.’ That’s all you have to say?”
“…Please.”
Anger overtook Dinah, and she stormed forward past Drake. “Do you know what you’ve put your friends through? Seriously? The sobbing, the long nights staring into space, the villains maimed because you!”
Grayson turned half-way around. “Barbara did that?”
“No,
Grayson’s eyes diverted from Dinah’s to Drake’s before he shook his head. “My brother is no longer human.” He lifted up a hand—a gloved hand before pulling the coverage to show a metal appendage. “I lost my hand at my wrist, and I’m pretty sure I’m starting to hear other people’s thoughts, and that’s just the consequences to us physically.”
Dinah whirled to Drake. He wasn’t human? But Drake refused to meet her worried gaze.
“The actions we do wouldn’t be sanctioned by the JLA, and the consequences…Dinah, we might never make it back, and if we do…we might not be who we were.”
“Why?”
Grayson blinked. Well, it’s always good to get one up on the Batboys.
“Don’t ask me to explain it, but I can feel him, Dinah. He’s not dead. I know it.”
“You know it?” Dinah scoffed. “You buried the body next to his—”
“Like Ollie was dead when you killed him on your wedding night?”
For a moment, the sunglasses tipped down on his nose, and she saw the steel eyes that weren’t as firm as the man would have liked them to be. In that split second, Dinah saw the little boy who used to wear short pants and a yellow cape and pixie boots—God, love him—and she wrapped an arm tightly around his shoulders.
Then, planting a long kiss on his forehead, she turned to the teenager and did the same to him.
She never turned around as she walked through the broken doorway and not questioning when the world never looked her way.
“Dinah! Talk to me!” Barbara screamed inside her ear.
Dinah turned back toward the bathroom. The door appeared on it as if she had never destroyed it.
“DINAH!”
“Sorry, Babs. I was going through a tunnel.”
“What about Dick and Tim? What’s their status?”
“Still dead as far as I’ve seen. The boys I found here look like yours, but they are definitely not the same.”
The End