no subject

Dinah finds his Dick's room after bartending, and comes up when she hopes he'll be alone. It's the second time today someone has knocked on his door, but unlike Steph, Dinah doesn't call out a name. She waits until Dick - crawling out of the bed he'd just climbed into - calls out:

"Who is it?"

Before she simply answers: "Dinah."

Dick doesn't bother to put his costume on. In nothing but a pair of pajama pants, he opens the door and cracks a smile. Before he can ask 'are you from my timeline?' she's on him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and squeezing for all she's worth.

He hesitates, and hugs her back. It's all he needs;. Canary wouldn't hug him like that if he hadn't died. And that means... well, firstly it means he knows where he stands. They haven't hung out much recently, but they were great friends back when he was Robin. She and Bruce had flirted, maybe even dated depending on your definition, before she met Oliver and Bruce fell hard for Selina. She had been a good friend then, and of course she was a better friend for Roy.

They haven't spoken since losing Roy and others in the explosion that took Metropolis. Dick realises now that they probably never will speak about that directly It was only three weeks ago for him, but for her... who knows? He pulls her into his room and she kicks the door shut behind her. Only then does he loosen his hold on her.

"Hey," he says, pushing her hair out of her face. Before he can ask her how everyone is, he notices the necklace she's wearing, with the innocent looking green gem on a pendant.

He glances at it, and she covers it with a hand, biting her lip.

There is only one reason Dick can think of that the Black Canary would be wearing Kryptonite.

It must have gotten worse.

"So. I should get you a drink."

They exchange pleasantries while he brews jasmine tea in his room's micro-kitchen. Discuss the bar, compare notes. Discover how close to each other they turned up, and the two years between them. Dick tells Dinah about Jay and Steph and Tim, and she tells him about Gordon Freeman and the Dark Dragon and Lucas.

"He obviously loves the other me dearly," she explains, sitting in the corner of his couch, her feet on the edge of the cushions, with her elbows tucked around her knees. "He just... I look at him and I see what Connor might be at his age."

"No," Dick interrupts. "Stop, turn back. Connor?"

"My son."

He'd hug her again, but his hands are busy passing her her tea. "Wow, Dinah, congratulations. how old?"

"Three weeks." She smiles, warm and fond and full of everything dick ever saw when she was together with Roy, but also filled with the kind of soul crushing pain that Dick feels when he remembers he will never see Bruce or Damian again.

He sits next to her, knocking his shoulder to hers. "Start at the beginning."

"I think Metropolis was the beginning."

"Chapter Two, then. No, wait. First - tell me if Damian and Bruce are okay."

Dinah blows gently on her tea, and says quietly: "They're not okay. Ollie told me Damian didn't even go home with Bruce - and you - from the Asylum. He's been with the League for the last two years."

"The League." Dick hardly thinks he even wants to know. But he has to know. He can't not.

"Let me guess, Arkham was just the start?"

"Just the tip. Nothing compared to Palestine, Syria, the Sudan. World. Peace." She snarls the phrase into her tea.

"But it was the invasion that tipped everything over the edge."

"The invasion?"

"Kalibak," Dinah explains. "And an army - several armies - of parademons, hitting every major city at once. I honest-to-God thought I was going to die then."

Which wasn't that uncommon, to be fair.

"Then Superman killed every last one of them."

Dick whistles softly, but he doesn't know what else to say. So many lives all at once. He doesn't need to be told where that would lead.

"After that, he was unstoppable. He had Lex Luthor in the Watchtower, working on a pill that can magnify a human's strength and speed a thousand fold. He wanted to create an army of supermen."

Dick pulls back, staring at Dinah, and hesitates when he sees how pale she is, her breath now shallow. He waits for her to continue.

"He was keeping it at the Fortress. We went to check up - Bruce and Selina, me and Ollie, Captain Atom.

"We found the pills. Managed to get a copy. But...

"Nathaniel was under army orders to try and bring Clark down. He gave his life in the attempt. Ollie..."

Dick draws an arm around Dinah, but carefully doesn't interrupt her.

"He beat Ollie to death," she says coldly, "Beat him bloody and broken. He's Superman, Dick, he could have put Ollie down with a finger, but by the time we saw the body... he took his time. He enjoyed it."

Dick was expecting Dinah to start crying, but she spits the words, grief long-ago replaced by fury.

"Oliver. Nathaniel," she starts listing names. "J'Onn - burned to death. Kyle Rayner - presumed murdered. Bruce, his back broken like a twig..." she adds hastily, "...he's safe, he's been working with Barbara. But Clark destroyed his secret identity, declared martial law in Gotham. He can't go home."

Dinah pauses there, sipping her drink carefully.

"But he got the attention of the Lantern Corps. You know the Guardians?"

"Kyle might have mentioned them." Dick's mouth is the dryest it's been since he died.

"They tried to step in, but Clark and Hal brought in Sinestro. Guy - Guy Gardner of all people, he arranged our salvation. A full on rescue mission for the people of Earth."

"War," Dick says carefully. "An invasion, you mean."

"Yeah, I guess I do." She's speaking calmly now, referring to events of only last week.

"It was our last hope. Our last chance to bring him down. The rest of the resistance went after the League - I think Damian's now safe, captured in Gotham. Me..."

"...you went after Superman."

She smirks quietly. "Superpills and a kryptonite bullet. And contact lenses with cameras inside, broadcasting his brutal murder of me, so all the world could see the monster their Superman became."

Dick looks at her over his tea, now too cold to drink. She'd seemed the same warm, affectionate Dinah he'd known, but now he recognises a rage that never dreamed he'd see in her face.

He almost reaches for her again, but she doesn't need it. She just stands quietly and returns both cups to the kitchenette.

"He's here, Dick," she says, touching the pendant around her neck. "I sat, and I watched the tabs board, and he's here. Clark Kent, Diana of Themiscyra, Hal Jordan, Vic Stone. I've seen all of their names come up. All the League's big guns except Raven. I don't know how often they come, but they're here."

Dick listens to the cold anger in her voice, compares it the warmth he feels from hearing names he still considers friends. "Are they ours?"

"I honestly don't know. I don't even know what I'd prefer." He's not sure either, to be honest. It was easy with Jay and Steph - he had no one to compare them to. Dinah continues: "if it's the Clark who killed me, the Hal who stood by him after he killed Ollie, the Diana who stood by and encouraged both of them, then I know they're my enemies."

But - Dick can only imagine how much Dinah would want to see her friends again.

"At the end, after everything Clark put Bruce through," she says, "Bruce's last words to me were to remind me not to kill Clark. To remember the man who he was. I don't think any of that man was left when he killed me, but..." She pushes her hair out of her face.

"Jay," Dick says. "Jason Todd, the other Robin who is here. He was killed by the Joker. And he's pretty much consumed by rage at Bruce for not killing him in retribution."

Dinah nods, standing still in the middle of the floor, as if she doesn't really know where to go.


"I don't think I'm going to stay here," says Dick. It's not a subtle subject change but he's following a thought. He's not sure he wants to see the people who tore his brother away from his father, who murdered his friends. "Maybe long enough to see if the other Bruce, who is here, comes round. But..."

He hesitates, thinking of his new brother and his new sister, but then of the brother he left at home.

Dinah returns to the couch. "But you're thinking of all the people on the other side of that door."

"Donna."

"Roy."

"Wally."

She ducks her head. He doesn't need to add Oliver.




She ends up finding the minibar, and Dick ends up lying on his own couch while one of his father's best friends cries herself to sleep in his bed, thinking of a dead lover and a living son and a world gone to hell.

For his part, he stares at the ceiling and starts counting bodies, and wishing that there were any gods he could pray to, that his brother comes back from the edge his hero has toppled far over.

The phantom pain in his neck begins to throb.