Crying Wolf

DISCLAIMER: The characters herein are used without permission. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: First large story since The Key. I doubt it will be as good, but it will hopefully keep me just as busy. PS, no animals were harmed in the making of this story.
CHALLENGE: Submitted for the first International Day of Femslash.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.

Crying Wolf
By Erin Griffin

Chapter 1

It was one of those days New Gotham didn't get too often, or it seemed that way to Dinah. Then again, it was mid-fall when she became one of the people who went bump and clank in its busy night hours. After all of the darkness that had engulfed her and her Clocktower family in the six or seven months she'd been with them, there was sun, and if she was lucky (and after what she had lived through she believed in little else), it wasn't just literal. Dinah vowed to herself that she wouldn't let anything get her down that sunny Saturday afternoon, as it was the first time in over a month she got to hang out with Gabby due to the aftermath of Harley Quin's attack and then Gabby's new babysitting job and urgent need of a car. The two friends walked companionably down the sidewalk after a nice lunch at an Indian restaurant as they slowly made their way to the movie theater to see Gabby's newest 'celebrity wife' on the big screen. "I'm glad you were free this weekend. I would've died of boredom if you weren't," Gabby said as they rounded the corner.

"We planned this weekend for three weeks. If we weren't free, I'd have murdered someone," Dinah replied digging into her pockets for the twenty dollar bill Barbara had given her as an allowance.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting money out for our tickets." Dinah didn't even attempt to hide the added 'What do you think?' in her look.

"I'll pay for it."

"Uh, no. You bought lunch. I'm getting the tickets." Gabby shook her head in her 'No no honey, you've got it all wrong, how cute' way that often irked Dinah.

"Tell you what, you can pay for the refreshments or whatever. Or we can go get icecream after the movie, then we can go to Penny's so you can get more of that sexy lipstick you said you wanted more of."

"I can get that next week. Besides, the more you spend on this stuff, the longer it will take you to get that car," Dinah argued.

"It's no big deal. You get refreshments this time, and I will pay for the tickets. Next time it will be your turn." By that time, they had gotten less than a block away from the movie theater.

"And when 'next time' rolls around, you'll be going off to some women's college or something. You'll be so over Eliza Dushku."

"Dunno... She's smokin'. Anyway, if I'll be eighteen, it'll give you enough time to save up for the occasion, now wouldn't it?" Dinah saw Gabby's version of a 'resolve face', as borrowed from her favorite TV show character, Willow Rosenburg. She knew she wasn't winning this argument.

"Fine."

"Great. It's set. Today for you, tomorrow for me."

"RENT," Dinah guessed, and Gabby grinned.

"In the mean time, you can just call me 'daddy'." Dinah's head swerved to the left to gape at her best friend. She couldn't believe she just heard her say that.

"Gabby!" That only earned Dinah an eyebrow wiggle and a huge mischievous grin to replace the earlier one, but neither girl got out a response past that as they saw Kelly up ahead, who had just exited the theater they were about to enter. She hurried past them, bumping roughly into Gabby's shoulder and then disappeared. Dinah caught her friend. "Hey-" Gabby in turn grabbed Dinah's arm to keep her from confronting Kelly. Dinah stopped in her tracks. "First that Zippergirl bullshit, and now she's being a bitch to you? What is with her?"

"I don't know. She's been sort of weird all school year, even before you got here. She had gone off to camp, and I guess she met some new friends, because even in those first couple of weeks, she barely pretended to tolerate me. Then that Zippergirl comment proved to me that she isn't the same girl I knew. You wouldn't believe me, but she never used to be mean. I used to believe there wasn't a mean bone in her body. I knew then that we'd grown apart and that we weren't meant to be friends anymore." Gabby continued to watch the sidewalk after the girl as she spoke, even though Kelly had long since disappeared.

"I'm sorry," Dinah said softly, and Gabby turned to her.

"C'mon. I promised myself that today would be a good day."

"Me too. I just wish I knew what had happened at camp to make her change like that."

"I don't know. She wouldn't talk to anyone about it, we stopped being friends, and it seems as if she's drawn away from everyone. Especially after that night everyone seemed to go crazy. She's always alone. Though we aren't friends anymore, I still worry about her." Dinah nodded and the two blondes finished the last few yards to the movie theater.

"Two adult tickets, please," Gabby said as Dinah stared at a couple of the movie posters. Once inside, Dinah bought Gabby a bottle of water so that she didn't get dehydrated while salivating over Eliza Dushku ("Thanks, you're such a good friend to look after me like that," Gabby had said sarcastically), and a bag of Reeces Pieces, which made Dinah giggle to herself as she thought of Helena's cop 'friend'. Dinah knew, though, that the candy would end up being shared by the time the previews were through.

"Alright 'Daddy', where do you want to sit?" Gabby let out a giggle that caused a couple of people in the seats they passed look at them. "Okay, if you're thinking of the same sexual reference I am, you better knock it off right now."

"Oh god, Dinah." Gabby took the lead and had them sitting almost right in the middle of the seats. Not too far back, not to far in the front. Dinah approved. The two joked around and tried to answer the trivia ("Sixteen Candles", Helena Montana, "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", and Selma Hiyak) before the previews began and they were forced to shut up. Still, Gabby would poke Dinah or hit her knee whenever she wanted her attention long enough to make the appropriate 'I wanna see that' gestures before going back to the movie screen. When the opening credits first started after the studios involved showed their logos, Dinah heard the typing in the background of her complink get really fast, which was what Barbara had told her she would use as a code to tell her she was needed anytime during the movie. The young superhero couldn't help but think that her good day was about to go bad. She got up quickly and shrugged at Gabby's weird look.

"I'll be right back, and if you eat my candy, I'll kill you."

"Sure hun," she said dismissively. Dinah hurried out of the theater and walked towards the bathroom, where she had pretended to study various upcoming movies' displays.

"Oracle?"

<Finally. Look, I wouldn't have bothered you, but there's a disturbance, and it's less than two blocks away from your current location. The disturbance seems to be on one-forty-forth and Cathedral Avenue, but I can't get the security cameras in that area online. All I can get is audio. I can hear screams and... and growling?>

"Holy shit,-

<Dinah!>

"-growling?!" At that, Dinah ran. 'Screaming and growling?' Never good. When she hit one-forty-third and Cathedral, she saw a woman carrying a crying toddler running towards her.

"DON'T GO THAT WAY! WHA-WOLF!" the woman screamed breathlessly. 'Oh my god,' Dinah thought. She had just barely gotten out of the woman's way before she saw a man running towards her. The teen assumed it was the woman's husband. He had what looked like a piece of lumber, but it seemed too small to do an damage without the man getting hurt in the process. He followed the woman without a word to Dinah, and the teen heard the growling before she saw the wolf. It stood at about three feet with white and black fur, icy blue eyes, and nice, large teeth. 'Why grandma...'

"Shit, I gotta play dog catcher now?!" Dinah asked in her panic.

"If you were staring down a wolf right now, you'd be pissing your pants and every cuss word you know would be stumbling out right about now!" Dinah shot back.

<An actual wolf?> Barbara's voice sounded as if the redhead was trying not to panic as well to calm Dinah down.

"YES!" Dinah put her hand out in front of her as the wolf drew closer, and felt a surge of power shoot from her mind, down her arm, and through her fingertips before it left her body in the form of one of her telekinetic blasts. It knocked the wolf back and gave Dinah room to run, hoping in the back of her mind that no one saw that. The two people who had run that way shouting 'wolf' had scared off anyone else near the area. Still, she had hoped that no one in a building looking out the window or someone in a car going past hadn't seen her. If anyone had, she'd be in for a really, really bad day. The wolf looked confused for a split second before Dinah ran deliberately into one of New Gotham's many, many alleyways. That was the only big move she had, really. Distract, then run somewhere secluded and/or dark alley before continuing the beat down.

The wolf followed Dinah as expected, gaining speed as Dinah slowed to round the corner to the alley. Then she felt it, the pain in her lower calf where the wolf bit her right leg. She looked around for something, anything to throw at it with or without her mind. She saw a glass bottle and reached for it before her mind hurled it at the wolf. It shattered against its side, not enough to really hurt it, but enough to startle it, making it release its grip on Dinah's leg. She felt before she saw the blood running down onto her sock, and she knew she would have to cut the day with Gabby short. Either that, or find some way to change pants and socks and make it back to the movie before Gabby got worried. Unlikely. Dinah was also glad that none of her clothes belonged to Helena or her day would have gotten ten times worse. "Oracle, I'm hurt. Bleeding. I can't go back to Gabby like-" Dinah was cut off by the wolf jumping towards her. Startled, she sent another telekinetic blast at it.

"I'm working on it!" The wolf fell back on to its hind legs for a split second before yet another blast knocked it onto its back. It growled at her, looking ready to jump again, but it had begun to shudder violently. The shuddering stopped as soon as it had begun, but as soon as the wolf regained itself, there seemed to be a look of fear in the wolf's eyes before it ran off, leaving Dinah really confused. "Oracle, the wolf ran off."

"I'm okay, I think. My pants are ripped and blood's seeping through. Hurts to walk a little, but should be okay by Monday. I'm just worried about Gabby and where that wolf went." Dinah sighed and muttered, "I can't continue the day like this." Dinah felt herself getting angry. She really wished Helena could've taken care of the wolf that time. Then she wouldn't be limping out of an alleyway bleeding and getting alarmed and curious looks from the people who saw the wolf go past them. "Come pick me up, please."

<Alright. I'll be there. Stay in the shadows near the movie theater, and do your best to keep your leg hidden in case anyone does see you.>

"Hurry." Dinah did as told and waited twenty minutes at the side of the building. "Knowing secret passages throughout the city would come in really handy right now. This has turned out to be a really bad day," Dinah grumbled. When Barbara approached her, the teen said at her guardian's look, "It looks worse than it feels. Can you tell Gabby that the curry messed with my stomach and that you're taking me home? I think I saw her leaving the theater looking for me."

"I'm sorry your day was ruined," she murmured as she inspected Dinah's leg. "Looks like that wolf didn't get your Achilles tendon. That's good. Like you said, you should be okay by the middle of next week at the latest." Dinah refused to respond to that as Barbara used her first aid kit to clean up the blood and put a basic bandage on until they got back to the Clocktower. "I'll let her know. I parked at the end of the block. I'll meet you there." Dinah nodded and watched as Barbara went into the movie theater at the same time Gabby had. She caught Gabby's eye before looking down and walking the other way towards the car. She could faintly hear Barbara's voice, then Gabby's. She could almost hear the skeptical tone when there was a shout of 'Get better, Dinah!' behind her. Dinah didn't want to face Gabby then, so she just raised her hand in acknowledgement. When she got to the jeep, she leaned against it and waited for Barbara to meet up with her. "She didn't believe me."

"I wasn't sure she would. We eat at that curry place all the time. It is our favorite place, and I have gotten the same thing everytime we've gone there." Barbara nodded as she unlocked both doors and got in to her side. As Dinah waited for the redhead to get situated and start the car, she buckled her seatbelt and looked out the window. As they passed Gabby, Dinah felt the heavy guilt within her and tried to tell her friend with her eyes that she was sorry. For everything.

Chapter 2

After taking a shower, a couple of pain killers, and a nap, Dinah no longer wished to murder the wolf, but she still wanted to know where it came from, where it went, and most importantly, why it shook so violently. She was put on bedrest after they'd gotten back, and Alfred brought her dinner in bed as well as a pencil and paper on a clipboard 'so you can still do your English homework, Miss Dinah', he'd said with his superior look. Not that she minded. It wasn't like she had anything better to do now that her day with Gabby was cancelled.

Dinah's third period English teacher, Mr. Watanabe, wanted them to think about a summery for a short story over the weekend and put it in at least six sentences. That she could do, and she did it in less than ten minutes. She'd decided the day before when she got the assignment that she was going to write a short descriptive story about a jogger. Nothing really huge and involved as far as an actual plot goes, but it'd be enough to fill the required two to five pages later in the week. When she'd finished that, she had to lie back and try to take another nap to make the time go by, though she suspected she would be stuck in bed all day the next day as well. Her mind wouldn't stop thinking about the wolf, and instinct told her that something was different about it, but instinct wasn't in the mood to be specific about it, either. The wolf looked like it may have been sick. Why else would it have shuddered so violently, almost as if it was having a seizure? Did animals even get seizures? She'd have to look it up.

Later that afternoon, Barbara came into the Dinah's room to check up on her. "How do you feel?"

"Like I got bit in the leg by a wild animal?" Dinah guessed sarcastically, which made Barbara give her the Look.

"Alright, alright. I know you're mad about today, and I'm so sorry it had to end after you've been looking forward to it." Dinah sighed.

"It's not your fault. You didn't bite me. This is part of the job, and I chose it. I just don't want to be stuck in bed for the rest of the weekend." Dinah pushed away the odd thought of Barbara shooting from her wheelchair and locking her jaw on her arm, drawing blood.

"You need to keep off of that leg if you want it to heal by Monday."

"I promise I will. I just don't want to be stuck in here all night wondering about that wolf." Barbara thought for a moment before nodding.

"Are you willing to compromise with me?"

"Depends."

"I still want you in bed. You want things to do other than homework. How about I set up a laptop and hook it to the wall? This means you can go online. Now, I want you to do a little bit of a research assignment for me about that wolf you encountered today. I want to know the type of wolf you fought, anything and everything you can find on wolves in general, especially that one, and I want you to write me a page stating hypothesis, any that you might have about the wolf you fought, where it came from, where you'd look for it, if you think it is still a threat-"

"I would think it is still a threat, Barbara. Wolf, remember, not a wild rabbit."

"Either way," she pressed on, "this assignment should keep you busy for a while, but it is your top priority, okay? Finish that, and then- Only then can you goof off and chat or whatever. Sound good?"

"Yeah. That sounds like a fun project." Barbara nodded after she found there was no sarcasm in Dinah's remark, and left the room, coming back a little bit later with the promised laptop and Internet cable, which she hooked into the wall.

"I'll be looking through my databases for anything amiss that may be related to this. I'm also doing a bit of spring cleaning on the Delphi, otherwise I would be doing all of this myself. I'll be checking your page history every so often, so you better be working on that assignment." Dinah nodded and Barbara copied this motion. "Good. If there's anything else you need, Alfred is near by, so you can just yell." Another nod from Dinah, then Barbara wheeled out.

"Oh... kay..." Dinah murmured as she waited for the laptop to start up. She thought of her questions of the wolf. The first one was 'Why was a wolf running around the middle of New Gotham's streets, and where did it come from?' Okay, make that the first two. So, the quest began with Dinah searching the recent news. If the wolf had somehow escaped from a sanctuary or zoo, it'd be known by the news with a look out warning, right? She looked first at the news, then searched for sanctuaries in all the surrounding states. Her search came up short. "If no one is missing a wolf from a safe place, then is it truly wild?" Dinah asked out loud after saving the page that listed wolf sanctuaries and wildlife reserves, which got her looking first for the type of wolf (arctic), then for its habitat. "No, this type of wolf usually lives in like Alaska and Canada. What the hell would it be doing all the way over here? Surely someone would've spotted it and called animal control?" Dinah really had hoped it'd come from a sanctuary. It would have made things really easy. At least then it had a place to go and they'd have medications for whatever sickness the wolf has. 'Could it be,' she wondered, 'that some weird people kept this wolf as an illegal pet and it escaped after suffering some neglect and abuse?' If so, she'd have to take a deeper look on the Delphi if Barbara would let her go near it. She made note of it on her Word document that would soon become her little report for her guardian.

I couple of hours later, she still had no clue as to where her particular wolf had come from, but she had some theories as to where to look for it. Still, she could only put down what she could about wolves and their packs. The only thing she'd come up with for possible sickness in a wild wolf was rabies, but Dinah saw no foaming at the mouth, and the symptoms for it didn't match the behavior of the wolf she fought off. Dinah spent another half an hour typing up her thought process through her searches and what she'd found as a result into organized sentences. She concluded the research by saying she couldn't find anything and was even more curious about the wolf. Other than the small report about the wolf that Reece managed to tuck under the rug, there was no publicity on the attacks, and from what Dinah could tell, no one caught her using her powers and fighting off the wolf in broad daylight. Lucky. Plus, there had been no further sightings, which pulled at Dinah. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. "This is too weird," Dinah muttered. "Where the heck are you? What is wrong with you?" She sighed, looking over her paper one last time with the spell checker, and saved it in a file titled Wolf Research. She saved them again to a disk before she logged into her favorite chat service. Even before any smilies could load up, Gabby was on her.

<lesbi_friend16> Dinah?

<cat_bird_thing> Hey Gabby. Sorry about ditching you 2day. I got really sick. Must've been the curry.

<lesbi_friend16> We eat th@ shit all the time. You <3 it.

<cat_bird_thing> Must have disagreed with the Reece's Pieces.

There was a long pause.

<lesbi_friend16> We planned today for weeks and suddenly ur 'sick'? I don't think so. If u'd made other plans and forgot about it, or if u just didn't want 2 hang with me u should've told me instead of being a bitch and lying about it.

Before Dinah could reply, there was another message from Gabby. 'Damn, she's fast,' Dinah thought as she tried to grasp what Gabby was saying. How could she think Dinah didn't want to hang out with her?

<lesbi_friend16> And it wasn't the goddamn candy bc u never even opened it, so grow a pair and call me when ur ready 2 tell me the truth.

Again, Dinah tried to put in a word, to explain or say she was sorry and that she wanted to be there, but Gabby had logged off or gone invisible. "Damn it!!" Dinah shut the laptop and set it somewhat roughly on the side table. She stared at her wrapped leg. Glared at it, really. "I hate being a superhero," she muttered hotly.

"You'll get over it," said a voice she really didn't want to hear at the moment, and that almost cocky tone to it didn't help the situation or her mood at all. Dinah shifted her glare to Helena, who stood at her doorway. "Whooh!" Helena said, looking as if she was about to fall over at Dinah's look.

"Sure, just as soon as I wrap my mind around the fact that being a superhero means I don't get any friends."

"Aw," Helena said, though Dinah knew she was being a brat. "I will be your friend. Just stay away from my leathers and we'll be the best of buddies."

"Oh yeah, my life just got better," Dinah retorted, turning her head to the walls of the room, then gazing at the laptop. She sighed again, teenage angst filling her mind. "Well, I got nothin'. You?"

"I swept the area, and I found nothin', too," Helena said. "Hey," she added seriously, "I'm sorry I wasn't there." Dinah shrugged off her adopted sister's apology, knowing that if Helena could have been there, she would have been. "I still feel badly that-"

"Stop. I don't need a guilt trip from you right now. What I need is to find that wolf before it hurts anyone else and to find a way to may this weekend up to Gabby so she doesn't hate me forever. Your 'woe is me' isn't helping." Helena nodded, looking surprised, and then she slowly walked to Dinah's bed and stretched out next to her, being careful and minding Dinah's leg as she situated herself. She ignored Dinah's look as she grabbed the laptop and opened it, getting it out of sleep mode. Then she handed it to her sister.

"Alright. Tell me everything. Tell me how it all happened, then tell explain your research that Barbara told me about." Dinah did so, telling Helena everything as she remembered it, adding in details she had forgotten previously onto the research paper and saving the changes to both the harddrive and the disk. Helena listened, adding in her usual snarky comment here and there, and the older metahuman told Dinah what she had found on her sweep, which was nothing other than a guy who had been trying to break into a parking meter. Helena suspected that the guy would have gotten away with it, too, if she hadn't scared him so badly. From what it sounded like, there seemed to have been no indication that the wolf was on the move. If it were, Helena would have known. The fact that they were both confused worried the blonde. "Hey, maybe it went into hiding after you knocked it around a little bit," Helena suggested after seeing the crease of worry on Dinah's face. "We'll get it."

"I hope so," Dinah replied, but she didn't sound too convinced.

Chapter 3

Dinah didn't see Gabby on Monday morning by the flagpole where they usually met, and she wasn't sure if she expected to, either. Though Dinah had given Gabby a call a couple of times on Sunday, her parents had said she was at church with a friend, and when she called back later, she had spent the rest of the afternoon at said friend's house. Though she had left a message and her contact number both times she called, she had gotten no reply. Obviously, Gabby was still angry with her, and never being on the receiving end of her friend's fury, she was unsure just how long her position on the shit list was going to be, nor exactly how high up there she was.

Another concern of hers was the fact that though Helena had searched all day that Sunday for any signs left of the wolf, dead animal bones and remains, small places of panic- anything, she again came up with nothing. This led the Clocktower family to guess that it was wild and had found a way home (though Dinah highly doubted that, considering what she had found in her research), or its sickness prevented it from leaving its hiding spot, and if it was that bad off, then the wolf had little hope for survival, anyway. Though the wolf was responsible for the limp she still had, she didn't like the thought of the wolf dying out there alone and away from anything familiar, especially if a vet or zookeeper could care for it and then return it to its pack. Not knowing where it had gone made it especially difficult to attempt to save it.

Walking up one step to New Gotham High School's entry doors, Dinah felt a sense of dread as she felt a slight pain in her calf where she'd been bitten. "No..." Dinah moaned, knowing she had many more steps to climb. She looked around instead and used the wheelchair ramp, which didn't help a whole lot, but it was still better than using the stairs. The only class she had with Gabby was art in fifth period, so she had to wait until their shared lunch to know for sure what her best friend thought of her at the moment, though her not showing up at the flagpole gave Dinah a pretty good guess. "Hey Dinah, what happened?" Dinah looked up to see that Matt Kendal was holding the door open for her.

"Thanks. Eh- it's nothing. I tripped over myself when I was running this weekend. I think I'd landed on some glass or something," she lied, then added another, "Thanks" when she passed him.

"No big," he replied, and walked with her down the hall until she got to her locker. "See ya."

"Bye Matt," she called after him. She didn't watch him go with that dreamy look in her eye as she may have had if the incident occurred six months prior, and a part of her found that rather amusing. "How pathetic I was."

"And I see that not much has changed from that." Dinah jumped and moved her locker door in order to see her friend standing before her, eyeing her suspiciously. Dinah tried her best not to look guilty, but she suspected her attempts failed as she swallowed and put her backpack in her locker.

"Hey," she said cautiously, testing the waters. She wasn't sure what to expect, even though Gabby was talking to her.

"Hi." Gabby sighed, and it sounded as if all the fight had left her. "I saw you walking in here with Matt. Limping more like. What happened?" The superhero knew that Gabby was giving her a chance to tell the truth, but she just couldn't. Not all of it, anyway, so she did what she could to get as close as possible.

"I told Matt that I was running and fell on some glass, but that wasn't true." Gabby's look softened a little bit. "My phone was set on vibrate at the theater. My family and you are the only ones who know the number, and I only get calls from them if it was an emergency. So when the phone went off, it had to be an emergency, right? Well, it was Helena. She was pissed that I had borrowed one of her shirts and demanded that I return it because she wanted to wear it to some club or something. If I didn't, she'd beat the shit out of me. So I left the theater to meet up with her to exchange shirts, and on the way, there was this stray dog running loose. It attacked me, and got my leg." Gabby's eyes widened when she heard this. "Look, I didn't want to worry you. I had to call Barbara and get home or to the hospital or something, but I didn't want to make your day a bad day like mine was."

"My day turned bad as soon as you left. Look, we're friends, Dinah. I don't care if it would freak me out. I just want to know the truth. The fact is, when you hide things from me, that is what freaks me out more than anything can. You can tell me anything. Don't lie to me again, okay?"

"Okay," Dinah said, though she knew that she would have to again, just hopefully not that day. "Hey, I tried to call you. To tell you, but you weren't home when I called both times." It was Dinah's turn to silently ask what happened.

"Yeah, it was the strangest thing. Kelly called me and wanted to go to church together. That was how we had originally met, at youth group. We would hang out there and at certain events the church held, but we went to different middle schools, so it was hard to see each other outside of that, though we would try to on the weekends and in the summers. I guess she wanted to see a familiar face when she went because I haven't been going for a while and we are the last of the original group that went when we had both started. She seemed persistent. I had wanted to just stay home and steam about our weekend, but she came over and convinced me, and once we were there, it was just silence between us. And when she was there, she prayed the whole time. I mean, usually, we mess around before we get down to business and pray." Dinah nodded.

"I hope this means you're friends again."

"Doubt it. She's changed so much this year."

"But you went to her house afterwards. That has to be a good sign."

"There was something off about her. She seemed... I don't know... Spacey. Totally out of it when we got back. She seemed okay when I saw her today though, unlike you." The warning bell cut off anything else Dinah was to say. "I'll see you at lunch, Gimpy."

"Hey!" Gabby laughed and was gone. Dinah closed her locker with her three ring binder for Math and English tucked under her arm.

That afternoon, Dinah took a walk around the sidewalks near the Clocktower while Helena went for one last search for the wolf. Even sick, they knew it had to eat. If there was still no signs of it, then the trio would have to give up and go back to working on other things. After an hour, Dinah decided to start walking back. <Dinah? Kid, what's your position?>

"I'm on Masterson Street, heading back to the Clocktower, why?"

<I think I see something heading down Seventeenth. It's fast, Dinah. I can't keep up with it even up top, so be careful if it gets near you.> Dinah walked at a slightly quicker pace to get back, trying her best to ignore the irritation of her leg. She was near where the named streets turned to numbered streets, and wondered how long it would take for her to get to seventeenth avenue. About five minutes later, she saw it, and it saw her. There was what looked like fear in its eyes, not unlike when it had run away on Saturday. It stopped right away when it saw her, and Dinah felt herself tensing up. The wolf's ears went down, as did its tail, tucking between its back legs, and it scrunched down, its belly nearing the sidewalk as it crawled closer.

"Um, Oracle?"

<Are you alright? What's happening?> she asked at the same time Helena asked,

"Good dog," Dinah said nervously, then told her mentors what she was seeing.

<It's submissive behavior is rather odd.> Barbara murmured.

<Well, she DID smack it around on last time, so maybe, not being from around here, Dinah showed it who's boss and it thinks Dinah's its alpha or that this territory's hers or something.> Helena's voice had a smirk in it, and Dinah groaned.

"Well, at least it isn't attacking me at the moment, so you got any ideas on what to do?" Dinah stupidly knelt down to somehow show she wasn't going to hurt the wolf, and it quickly scooted passively to her and licked her hand, quickly showing respect before it backed away.

<Aw. Can we keep him?>

"Shut up," Dinah responded somewhat harshly.

<Dinah?> When Barbara spoke, the wolf's ears twitched. <Dinah listen up. No fast movements. I want you to keep the wolf there with you. I just called animal control.>

"I'll try, but if the TK fails, the best I could do is gimp it to death." That earned her a hearty laugh through the comms from Helena.

<Don't worry Kid, I'll give chase.>

"As long as you don't get caught by animal control," Dinah said teasingly.

The wolf looked at odds of what to do, go back the way it had come from or try to pass the girl before it. Both options were unfavorable; it didn't want to attempt either, but the choice was to either go back and be hunted by the feline human who was above her, or go forward and face its alpha. Both were deadly, and it knew that both weren't anything like it had experienced. It knew as well that it had to leave before it began to shake again. The wolf knew nothing of the hunter above it and had escaped the human before it, alpha or not, so its only chance for escape for certain was to go forward. Slowly, it inched forward and Dinah put her hand up in defense.

Dinah kept her hand up, ready to use her power if the wolf were to attack her, but its passive manner sort of took her aback. She had expected it to want to finish what it had started that weekend, to get some sort of revenge and try to finish her, but instead it acted like her dog about to be punished. Part of her really wanted to let it go, but Helena was watching and would question her, not to mention the fact that if provoked, the wolf would go on the attack, if not on her then someone who couldn't protect themselves as well as she could, and Dinah wouldn't have been able to handle that guilt. Suddenly, it shot towards Dinah's side, as if to get past her. Dinah, startled, sent a telekinetic blast its way, but it caught the wolf in its side, which pushed it into the street. The wolf continued on, going back onto the sidewalk and towards Holt Avenue. "Helena?"

<I'm on it.>

<What happened, you lose the wolf?> Barbara asked in a disappointed voice that pissed Dinah off.

"Yeah, it got away. It just ran off, too quick for me to stop it with my powers," the blonde responded, wondering if deep down, or maybe not so deep, she had missed the wolf on purpose. She watched as the wolf got further away, getting smaller and smaller. It stopped suddenly, then, even from how far Dinah was, she saw it hunch down and shake just as it had that Saturday. Dinah's eyes narrowed as the wolf looked up at Helena, who looked ready to jump down on it. It shot off again and Helena followed. Soon they were both out of sight, and Dinah had no choice but to go back to the Clocktower and wait with Barbara for word from Helena.

"You feeling okay?" Barbara asked when Dinah entered the Delphi area ten minutes later.

"Leg's sore, but I'm fine." The redhead motioned for her to sit down, then went back to the monitors.

<I'm still giving chase, Oracle, but the wolf has a good lead on me.> Helena sounded out of breath when she spoke.

"Do what you can. Maybe it will stop again and give you time to catch up to it," Barbara responded.

<Got it.> What followed was the sound of Helena breathing and occasionally grunting as Dinah assumed the feline meta jumped the larger buildings. All they could do was wait. Alfred, who had remained for some reason or another (no one ever asked anymore, as he always had a shrug in his voice as he said 'you girls still need care'), brought Dinah an ice pack, which she accepted gratefully. She unwrapped her bandages to inspect them. The bite was healing well, even without Helena's quick healing power. It should be a scab for the next few days, then a small scar afterwards. <Oracle, I lost it. Nothing here but a night jogger or two. They seem okay, so no wolf sighting here.>

"Damn it," Dinah said, then covered her mouth. Barbara glared at her in the silent warning to watch it. The teen wondered if Barbara was angry with her for losing the wolf again.

"It's not your fault," she said, though she wasn't sure if it was directed at her or at Helena over the comms. "This wolf is fast. Too fast. I don't like it." Barbara fell silent as she looked through the databases. Dinah wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she knew the redhead wasn't finding it.

Twenty-five minutes later, Helena came back looking disgruntled and tired. "I don't like this," she said, repeating Barbara's earlier words. "It was headed straight for New Gotham Park. I get there and nothin'. I almost knocked this girl down along the way in search for it. If she hadn't seen that wolf, then where did it go? I'm not sure what we're dealing with."

"I don't know, a smart wolf? Fast wolf? This is enough to be our top priority. Dinah, I am gonna need a copy of your little report. Everything we have on anything wolf related might help." Barbara said, sounding somewhat hard. Both metahumans knew that if Barbara couldn't figure it out, they were screwed.

Chapter 4

Dinah woke up the next morning more than an hour before the alarm clock was set to wake her. Though she tried , she couldn't get in that last hour, and she knew that her life was going to be hell that day. Looking around her room, she eyes stopped at her backpack, where the story summary was. The day before when she'd turned it in, she had gotten a nod from Mr. Watanabe, who then told her that it needed a title. That the right title would make the world of difference to the story, but Dinah couldn't think of anything. Slowly, she got out of bed and moved to the desk. Her rough draft was due that day, and she hadn't done it because of the excitement of the wolf hunt the night before. This gave her an idea, and she took out two fresh pieces of paper from her three ring binder and began to write furiously as the jogger became a wolf, running for something, running away from something, running out of time.

Her hand moved swiftly across the pages, filling the lines with descriptions of 'her' wolf, describing the objects the wolf jumped over, ducked under, swerved around with great agility, the scents and sights in the air, the sound of the wolf's breathing... Dinah was almost convinced she was that wolf. After her second reread of the story, she still couldn't figure out what to use as a title for her story. She tucked her homework into her divider and continued to think as she went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Then she poured a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Slowly, around six forty-five, Helena began to stir while Dinah listened to the sound of running water, which meant that Barbara would be out there and grateful for the coffee within ten minutes. Dinah's mind went from her story to the night before, which wasn't a complicated transition considering the subject matter for both.

After breakfast and coffee, Dinah took her own shower and both her and Barbara headed toward New Gotham High School, where the blonde was glad to see Gabby at the flagpole reading one of the Narnia books while she waited. Grabbing her backpack from the back of the Jeep, she felt eyes on her, but when she looked around, Gabby was engrossed in the book, and no one seemed at all interested in Zippergirl at all. Barbara was transferring herself into her chair, and even if she was watching her, she was trained enough that Dinah wouldn't know it, anyway. No one else was paying her any mind, and yet Dinah still felt as if she was being watched. She shrugged it off and hurried towards the flagpole after throwing a 'see you after school' to her guardian.

"Hey Gimpy. Feel any better today?" Gabby greeted.

"Stop calling me that. It makes me feel like I have to start calling you Ren or something."

"That would be Stimpy, Gimpy," Gabby replied. Dinah rolled her eyes. "Your limp isn't as noticeable today," she murmured, looking Dinah over.

"Yeah, leg feels better today. So, you ready to go inside, or you want to stay out here a little longer?"

"Let's go in." Dinah and Gabby walked to Dinah's locker, then to Gabby's before they walked to Gabby's first period math class, which was right next door to Dinah's first period math class. When Dinah entered the classroom, she saw her seat and sat down. Almost right behind her was Kelly, who took her seat two rows away to the right. As she watched her somewhat bully, Dinah saw she kept her head looking straight ahead, but from where she sat, Dinah knew she was still aware of everything else in her surroundings, but chose not to acknowledge it. Dinah then realized that Kelly hadn't even looked at her much less call her Zipper Girl, when before, she never would have passed up the opportunity to do so. Dinah tried to ignore the part of her (the very, very microscopic part of her) that felt sort of robbed, as if by not calling her by that 'nickname', Kelly was taking something away from her identity. 'Is it possible,' Dinah wondered, 'that I actually miss her calling me Zipper Girl?' Dinah continued to watch Kelly until the bell rang, signalling the start of class.

Two and a half hours later, Dinah walked to Mr. Watanabe's classroom and put her paper in the 'In' bin on her teacher's desk before taking her seat at the furthest row corner next to the door. She watched people pass by, and got a wave from Matt and Barbara during the three minutes she waited for class. Dinah then focused her attention to her teacher, a large Samoan man in his late thirties, early forties at the oldest, who was writing what Dinah knew was the day's five vocabulary words. When the bell rang, Mr. Watanabe looked at his seating chart, then at two girls near the back, who were still whispering. "I warned you two," he said in his usual good nattered tone, "so I will have..." He clicked his tongue a couple of times as he scanned the seating chart, "Janel, switch places with Lauren for the rest of the week. If on Monday, you're still little chatter bugs, it will be permanent." Janel, a heavy set African American girl got up, and Dinah heard Dimitri, a guy who made fun of the likes of her, start laughing. Dinah glared at him, which surprisingly caused the boy to shut up. Dinah didn't know the punk girl all that well. No one did, actually, but she knew what it felt like to be teased and to be called a freak when they think you can't hear them. Janel wasn't even a freak. She dressed in black, tattered clothing and often sported a 'don't fuck with me' aura. She could be considered a punk, but she didn't hang out with any of the punk kids in the school, and was often seen alone.

While the class copied down the vocabulary words, Mr. Watanabe looked through his small stack of maybe ten short stories and sighed. He'd hoped for more. "Well, since it is a nice day today, I'm going to reward those who did the assignment by giving them a choice. You can go outside and relax for the period as long as you stay by the window and in my sight, go to the library for computer time, or stay here and have a study period. The rest of you will get this extra time to finish your homework." A hand or two raised. "Yes Jacob?"

"If no one else can hear it, can we listen to music as we worked?" Mr. Watanabe considered this, knowing that a good portion of his students did work well by themselves when working to music.

"Only if you promise to have the assignment done by the end of class. If not, I'm never letting you listen to anything but country again." Jacob nodded as a couple of students groaned at the thought of country music while they tried to work, and even Dinah couldn't suppress her own cringe. "Okay... Melinda, Roland, Danny R. and Dani B., Janel, Becky, Dinah, Dimitri, Scott, Mary, and Leo, you all have a free period. Those of you who wish to leave the classroom, come to me for a pass." Dinah as well as the rest of the students called got up and grabbed their backpacks. Leo, a short freshman, Janel, and who Dinah guessed was Mary, all followed her to Mr. Watanabe's desk for a library pass while the other seven students got a separate pass for the small grassy area near the window. They all stuck together until the seven split for the outdoors, and the other four continued on in a small group, making sure their pass was in view to appease the hallway patrol.

Dinah decided that then would be a great time to look for more information on wolves, which would help both her assignment for school as well as her own personal research for her night life. As she browsed the wildlife section, she saw a couple of books on wolves, one specifically on North American Wolves and one on wolves in general. She sat down at a table near Janel, who looked up at her then at the books she was looking through before she went back to her notebook, which looked to be filled with poetry and doodles of band logos. Dinah hadn't gotten much further than that second page when a folded piece of paper flew over the top of her book, hit her chest, then fell to the table top. Dinah looked up to see Janel watching her, before she set the closed book down and opened the piece of paper.

'If you're doing a research paper on wolves, I can help you. Wolves are my favorite animal.'

Dinah thought the offer through, then shrugged. She dug into her backpack for a mechanical pencil and wrote out her reply: 'My short story is about a wolf. Maybe you can help me. I've searched the Internet already but couldn't find what I need. I know that common sicknesses for a wolf is rabies, but what could be wrong with it if it violently shakes and shudders?' The blonde reached over and set the paper on the edge of the table Janel was at and went back to her book. Five pages later, when Dinah was learning a little bit more about a wolf's position in their pack, the folded piece of paper hit her again, this time on the forehead. Dinah looked at Janel, who giggled, then mouthed 'Sorry.' The blonde opened the piece of paper and again sighed at what she read.

'I can't think of anything that would cause violent shivers in wolves other than seizures, or something else caused by parasites. Please don't kill off the wolf in your story. Please. That's just sad.'

Dinah shook her head, hopefully letting the other girl know that she wasn't planning to, but the African American girl shrugged.

'I don't plan on killing off the wolf, but in the middle of the wolf's run, it shivers. The whole story is just the wolf running, but I am leaving it up to the reader what it is running to or from and why. Same goes for why it stopped and what caused the violent shivers. I just want to know if there is something that would do that to a wolf.'

Dinah set the paper on the edge of Janel's table again and froze when Miss Dominique, the school's librarian, walked by and spotted her. She didn't say anything, but she did raise an eyebrow at them before continuing on towards the computers, where Leo had asked for assistance with his log-in problem. Since they were there on a free period and were being quiet, she couldn't do anything and make it a big deal. She was just a little suspicious as to why they were two tables apart if they were to be passing notes to one another. Since both were good students, she decided to let it go.

Dinah looked back in her book and found that when a wolf had licked her hand, it was a form of respect for its dominant, and felt confused because she was so sure that being in New Gotham and being away form home, it was a lone wolf. She hated the thought that Helena was actually right. Was the wolf trying to form its own pack in New Gotham, since it had roamed too far away from its home? The piece of paper soared through the air again, but was caught by Dimitri, who was walking by. "Love notes?" he whispered, unfolding the note.

"Give it back," Dinah hissed.

"Problem?" asked Miss Dominique, who looked between Dimitri and Dinah.

"No..." Dimitri said, "Dinah dropped this and I was just returning it to her." It was an obvious lie, but no harm was done as he tossed it on the table, hitting Dinah's hand.

"Good lad," the librarian said. "Move along, then. Your good deed is done." Dinah wasn't too mad about the scene, as there was nothing about the note worth hiding. She looked down at what Janel wrote.

'Sounds good. Will you let me read it after you've gotten the final draft back from Mr. W?' Dinah looked up and nodded. Janel smiled, and then they went back to their own projects until Miss Dominique sent them back to class ten minutes before the bell rang.

"Dinah?" Mr. Watanabe motioned for Dinah to come closer. "I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed reading your story."

"Uh, thank you. I'm still thinking about the title, but I'm not sure it any of my ideas so far really fit." Her teacher smiled.

"Well, keep thinking. I like this. It gives me chills." Dinah smiled back at her teacher.

"Thank you," she said again. With that, she took her rough draft with her to rewrite on the computer, and walked to her science lab class, where she saw Kelly writing on a piece of paper before she realized it was the worksheet they had been given the day before. 'Did I even do it?' she asked herself. She had started it the day before during class, but never finished it. 'Shit!' she thought, angry with herself. She'd been so caught up in the hunt for the wolf that she didn't even do it in the free period she'd gotten. However, when she had dug through her backpack for her worksheet, she sighed when she realized just why she hadn't finished it the day before. On the front were questions about a situation and asking for her hypothesis based on general knowledge on the subject as well as the other information provided by the worksheet. She had filled that part out the day before, and on the back was the instructions for the lab and then a few more questions asking if the lab went as planned, if certain variables had changed how would it have affected its outcome, and a conclusion paragraph. Dinah could tell as she read the instructions for the lab that she'd have to partner up with somebody, a thought that made her wish she could get bitten by that wolf again instead. She didn't have any other friends than Gabby, and she wasn't even in a science class that semester for some reason.

Mrs. Cruz, her science teacher took roll after the bell rang, and gave Adam Yancy a disapproving look when he came in. Luckily for him, she hadn't yet called his name. Then she explained the lab, saying they could choose their lab partner. When Dinah didn't move, nor did Kelly when the class made a mad dash to partner up with friends, Mrs. Cruz looked between them. "Kelly. Dinah. You two partner up. If it was safe to work on the lab alone, I'd let you."

Before Dinah knew it, Kelly sat timidly next to her, but neither girl said anything. As Dinah fired up the bunson burner, Kelly put on the gloves and filled the beaker to the desired mark with water. After a while, Dinah met Kelly's eye and noticed for the first time how light they were. 'She doesn't seem to be the type to have eyes so light,' she thought as she looked at the rest of her face, then away. Even as she thought it, she knew it was a silly thought to have. "Look, uh..." Kelly spoke after a good ten minutes of silence between them, "I'm sorry, you know, for being mean to you before." Dinah shrugged it off, though she was a little surprised by this.

"I've been through worse. I don't care," she said, even though she did care, and she felt glad that Kelly was trying to make amends, if only to get them through their lab peacefully.

"You haven't, like... been molested as a child or something have you?" Dinah shot Kelly a searing glare. "I'm just asking," she said defensively.

"Not that it is any of your business," Dinah said coolly, which caused Kelly's gaze to return to the beaker over the fire, "no. Nothing like that. I've just... been through worse. A couple of 'Zippergirl' comments from you is the least of my problems, and frankly, I would have thought a girl like you would have been able to come up with something a little bit better to insult me." Dinah winced as she heard her own words. She didn't mean to be so mean back. Kelly was trying to apologise and she snapped. "I'm sorry-"

"Fine," Kelly said in a small voice. She didn't sound angry, which was different. "Just tell me we're even."

"What?"

"I harassed you with the Zippergirl comment and you just had your say. Just... Tell me we're even, okay?"

"Okay. We're even." Dinah studied Kelly for a moment, hoping she would look up at her and explain something with her eyes, but she never did, and Dinah was forced to go back to writing down the results of their tests on her work sheet.

Chapter 5

That night, Dinah thought about her little 'wolf problem' as she sat down to do her homework after an evening sweeps. Helena had cut it short for Dinah because after jumping a fence to go after a mugger, her pants caught and her wound opened up again, making it mandatory to go back to the Clocktower to get it cleaned and bandaged up again. It wasn't even nine o'clock when she got her leg wrapped up again. She then sat in the Delphi area, listening to the playful banter between Oracle and Huntress as she opened up a Word document for her story. When the banter died down as Helena made her way to the New Gotham/Bludhaven city borders where it was nicer and had less crime, a long low sound could be heard from one of the monitors where various security cameras were mainly on visual with very little sound. Barbara put Helena on standby and opened up the security feed. What Dinah heard next made her gasp. A sorrowful howl sounded. 'Arooooooo-ruh!' It came again and again. Barbara tried to see where it was coming from. "Forth and Henesee, but Helena can't get there in time."

"It sounds so... lonely, like it's hoping someone, anyone will hear it and join its pack," the blonde said softly.

"If we can get it back to where it came from..." Dinah looked at her document and saw that her story was over halfway typed so far. She clicked the floppy disk icon at the top of the screen, scrolled to the top of the document and typed: 'Crying Wolf, by Dinah Lance'. That was what the howls sounded like to her, crying. A deep set loneliness and sorrow that would take a long time to heal, if it could even be healed at all. There was one final howl that was shaky, as if the wolf had its violent shivers in the middle of it, then there was silence. "Eerie. Helena, I'm back."

"Uh, yeah. The wolf was making itself known on the other side of town."

<Really?> There was heavy interest in Helena's voice. She seemed almost disappointed that she wasn't closer to investigate.

"Dinah suggested it was calling out to its pack, but from what we've seen, it is a lone wolf."

"Dinah's here you know, and she's perfecting her look of death at the moment. If you were here right now, you would be a pile of goo."

<'Pile of goo'? Is that the scientific term?>

"No, it is just a term you would understand."

<Burn.>

Dinah tuned out whatever reply Barbara had as she went back to typing up her second draft. 'Crying Wolf' seemed to be the perfect title for her story. At first glance, anyone would look at it and assume Dinah was referring to the fairytale about the boy who cried wolf, when she was actually thinking of the pain the wolf was in. It was the perfect play on words. The title now where it belonged on the page, the blonde seemed to have renewed energy for her story, and her typing got a little bit faster as she finished it up and used her spell check to the saved document. Then the sound of the printer spitting out a hard copy of it was heard. When she looked at Barbara, she noticed that it was quiet over the comms. "Where's Helena?"

"She went home for the night." Dinah nodded.

"I'm going to turn in." Barbara returned the blonde's nod, taking a quick glance at the teen's leg before going to the various monitors and putting the Delphi system on standby. Dinah got her printed short story from the printer and then went to her room, bidding her guardian good night.

Kelly sat next to Dinah in the library, looking over their lab worksheet. Dinah could feel Kelly's eyes on her, but she concentrated on the homework, comparing her handwriting to that of the girl next to her. It was scratchy, not quite neat as she had expected from someone like Kelly. The words were written almost carelessly, which was odd to her. Dinah suddenly looked up into familiar eyes and found she couldn't look away. Kelly's eyes were so beautiful, a thought she'd had a thousand times that week, and would continue to think until she died. That hunger was back, and Dinah found herself wanting to kiss Kelly. She leaned in, then pulled away quickly, regaining herself for a split second. When Kelly leaned into her, Dinah couldn't seem to fight it. Their lips met, and Dinah felt that it was exactly as she'd imagined her heart to feel, her lips, everything. As soon as they mutually broke apart, Kelly nudged Dinah's cheek with her nose in an odd but pleasant cuddle-

Dinah sucked in air as she sat up in bed, her heart racing at the speed of light at the very real images her brain had conjured up. Once there, the remnants of the dream stuck to her, replaying over and over as her heart refused to settle down. Her alarm clock said it hadn't even reached four in the morning, and Dinah groaned before laying her head back onto her pillows. She hated the familiar feeling she got whenever she'd had one of her precognitive dreams. It was going to come true, and she didn't want to kiss Kelly of all people, she didn't want to feel the way her dream was making her feel, and most importantly, she didn't want to secretly wish it really would happen. She lie still in bed, but she did not sleep. Her mind relived the dream once more, and she took note of everything from whom all was there to what they were all wearing. When two hours later, her heart still refused to stop twitching, pounding, and swelling within her, Dinah wondered if it was a good enough excuse to stay home from school. Probably, if she was convincing enough, but for how long? Chances are, as soon as she decided it was safe to go back to school, Kelly would find her and kiss her with such... Ugh, but then again, if Dinah skipped school enough and missed those labs, Kelly might be too pissed at her to kiss her, which was a thought that after a moment, Dinah didn't like.

When her alarm clock did go off, Dinah took a shower and met Alfred in the kitchen, where he sat at the table drinking tea, and he peered over the local business section of the newspaper at her. "Good morning, Miss Dinah. Might I say you're looking confused and full of teenaged anxiety this morning."

"It shows?"

"You mask it slightly better than Miss Helena does, but I do detect a dimness in your smile today." Dinah sat down across from the butler and picked through the rest of the paper for the comics and classified ads to see who was hiring, what kinds of cars were for sale, and what the current running price on black pug puppies were, not that she wanted one... badly. As she mentally highlighted a bookkeeping job that promised sixteen dollars an hour (compared to the seven-twelve an hour minimum wage), Dinah's mind managed to stray from her dream, and Marmaduke proved to be a distraction as well.

"Good morning all," said a cheery voice from the elevator.

"What's this? Do my eyes and ears deceive me, or is it really Helena Kyle up and walking and thinking in coherent sentences, all before the crack of noon? Can it be- OW!"

"I'll take that as a 'Good morning, dear sister'," the half metahuman said with a wicked grin.

"Sure, but you didn't have to pinch me," Dinah whined.

"Of course I did." There was a tone that sounded like 'that's my job', and Dinah rolled her eyes at that, but then she grinned. This was what she got for wanting Helena to treat her like a sister. She wouldn't trade it for anything.

"Ah, Miss Helena. What might I get going for you this morning?"

"Anything edible." Alfred smirked, then gave a small bow. He turned to Dinah, giving her an expectant look, but Dinah just shook her head politely.

"Nothing for me thanks. I'm not really hungry." She went back to the comics before they suddenly disappeared.

"Alright, what's up?"

"Your caffeine levels," Dinah shot back, reaching for the paper. Helena easily kept the pages out of her reach. 'Will Lucy actually hold the football for Charlie Brown this time or what? I want to know!' she thought to herself, knowing the answer.

"No juice, no pancake or waffle or French toast request, no Reese taunting... Something's wrong and I wanna know what it is right now."

"Oh, right, the taunting. Y'know, I knew I was forgetting something," Dinah said as if she was muttering to herself. When Helena's gaze didn't leave her, she shrugged.

"Nothing's wrong. I'm just not hungry this morning," she repeated.

"Perhaps there might be a connection between the lack of appetite and the look of sheer terror I saw on Miss Dinah's face this morning," Alfred said from the kitchen, which caused the blonde to send a glare in that direction. Again with the pile of goo.

"Bad dream?" Helena asked, her tone serious and concerned. Dinah lowered her gaze to the table.

"Yeah," she admitted, "but it was just a dream, and only that," she added quickly. She wasn't sure if she was convincing her sister or herself. Helena studied her for a little bit longer before she looked down at the glass of milk set in front of her. A plate of toast followed shortly after.

"Ooh food," Helena said, and the subject of the secret Dinah kept was dropped as she took a bite of her breakfast. Dinah stole back the comics, being too quick for her sister as she had been distracted by the food. Helena let out a protest. That was when their guardian entered the room. "Barbara-" she whined, but was cut off by the redhead's hand silencing her.

"Not before my first cup of coffee. After that, I'll be happy to tune the two of you out."

"So mean," Helena said with a pout. Dinah finished off the page of comics she was reading, then pushed it over to her adopted sister. "Thanks." The rest of their morning was pretty peaceful as Dinah read over the horoscopes (' 'Follow my dreams, yeah right,' she thought to herself), and looked over the crossword and word searches. If she filled any of those two in, Barbara would have had a fit. After she pushed the other half of the comics to Helena, she got up to get her backpack from her room.

"I'll be ready to go in about twenty minutes," Barbara told her, and the blonde nodded, acknowledging that she heard her guardian.

Twenty minutes later, when Dinah was able to get her heart rate down some, there was a knock on the blonde's door, and she granted permission to enter. Barbara opened the door and peered at her. "You ready to go?" Dinah nodded, and got off of her made bed. Both women went down the ramp towards the elevator.

"Kid. Think fast!" When she did look up, a shiny silver rectangle was spinning towards her. She knew she wasn't going to catch it, and was surprised when she saw Barbara's hand in front of her suddenly, holding the thrown object. "Nice catch, Barbara," Helena said, awe apparent in her voice. Then she shifted her attention to Dinah as their guardian handed over the silver rectangle, which the teen identified as a packet of Poptarts. "You'll be thanking me by the time second period starts, trust me."

"Okay... Thanks," Dinah said, which made Helena look at her with her eyebrow raised before the closing of the elevator door blocked the blonde from view.

Dinah didn't see Gabby at the flagpole and wondered if her best friend got mad at her again and forgot to send the memo, or if she was just running a little bit late. She walked up the stairs and to her locker, where she waved at a couple of people as they passed by and said good morning to her, Janel being one of them. She slowly made her way to class after stuffing her backpack into her locker and grabbing her English and math binder. She quickly took a peek inside Gabby's math classroom and saw that her friend's seat was empty, and that she was being a bum and sleeping past her alarm clock again. She sighed and then backtracked a little ways to her own math classroom, taking her usual spot. She gasped when she saw Kelly walk into the classroom a moment later.

Chapter 6

It took a moment for Dinah to avert her eyes and force herself to calm down. She noticed that Kelly wasn't wearing any of the things she wore in her dream, and that thought made the butterflies in her stomach stop moving. In Dinah's dream, Kelly had on a faded black t-shirt with The Rolling Stones mouth and tongue on it, jeans, and her hair was down and wet. At the moment, she was wearing a dark gray NGHS sweater, black jeans and her hair was up with chopsticks keeping it in place. Dinah continued her staredown with her desktop until Kelly was seated, then took out the three sheets of mind numbing math she'd done in her various classes throughout the day before, silently wishing the class could hurry up so she could open up her packet of Poptarts. 'Thank you, Helena,' she thought dryly.

In her English class, Mr. Watanabe took a quick look at Dinah's paper once he saw there was a title at the top, and his eyebrows rose in slight surprise before he grinned. As she got her vocabulary done and worked in the textbook with Janel, she got her paper back with twelve points out of ten. Mr. Watanabe loved giving out one or two extra credit points whenever he could, be it during class when someone raised their hand and answered his tougher questions right, or got the bonus vocabulary word, or when, like Dinah, he liked your answers for homework. Mr. Watanabe really was a cool teacher if you respected him and those around you. Dinah never saw or heard of him getting angry, and hoped to be lightyears away if or when he ever did explode. When the bell rang, however, Dinah did everything she could to drag her feet.

Dinah put her binder in her locker and got out the black and white speckled notebook for science. Finally, when she saw she had only a minute left to get up the stairs and to her class, she picked up her pace and made it through the doorway as soon as the bell rang, earning her a knowing smirk from Mrs. Cruz. She hurried to her seat next to Kelly and busied herself by flipping through the pages of her notebook, knowing she didn't need it except for the worksheet tucked inside.

"Hey," Kelly said in greeting. Dinah looked up slowly, catching the former somewhat bully's eye.

"Uh," Dinah shut her eyes as she felt herself blush, "hi." Her leg where the wolf had bit her had started to itch in her nervousness, even though it was healing fairly well. She did what she could to ignore it.

"You alright?" Kelly asked, studying Dinah, who looked away.

"Yeah," she replied softly, "I'm cool." 'Her eyes are so beautiful,' she couldn't help but think.

"Okay," Kelly responded, her voice going as soft as Dinah's, and it made the moment feel too intimate, too close. 'It's almost like she- no, she can't know about the dream, could she? Does it still show on my face? Am I really that transparent? What good am I as a superhero if I can't keep my emotions in check?' Dinah tried to quiet her head, but found she couldn't. To Dinah's relief, Kelly looked down at her own lab worksheet. Both only half listened to roll call and squeaked out their names when it got to them. Then they turned on the bunson burner. Dinah reached down and absently touched her bitten leg and noticed Kelly's look when she straightened up again. Dinah frowned in concern and confusion.

"What's the matter?"

"I- I think someone tried to cook their lunch on the bunson burner after we've used it or something," the other girl said, her voice shaky. "Ugh, smell that?"

"Hmm, a little bit. Do you need to go outside for a sec?"

"No, the quicker we do the lab, the sooner we can turn it off," she said. Dinah caught her eye again and nodded, holding the gaze that time.

"Okay," the meta replied. The dream came to her easily, and that time, she didn't fight the image. It was as if she was more courageous about it then because Kelly wasn't wearing what she was wearing in the dream, so it wouldn't come true that day. She felt the urge to make the dream a reality, but stopped herself. "Well, uh... we better get to work then."

"Right." With that, it got silent between them as they completed the lab together, only speaking when it was a necessity.

At lunch, Dinah was surprised to see Gabby waiting for her at her locker. "Hey," the superhero greeted.

"Hey," Gabby said. "You look like you'd puke if you were to try to eat something right now." Dinah made a small face.

"Actually, I'm starving. I better keep it down or I'm never feeding my stomache ever again," Dinah tried to joke, but Gabby didn't laugh with her. Dinah put her notebook in her locker and then walked with her friend towards the lunch lines, where a scented mixture of beans and cheese and tomatoes assaulted both blondes' noses.

"So what's up with you today?" Gabby asked.

"Uh, I don't know." At her friend's look, Dinah added, "I'm serious. I don't know. It's- It's odd, all of it. I promise on my mother's... grave..." she trailed off. "I promise you I will tell you when I've figured it all out." Gabby sighed, looking slightly annoyed, but let the whole thing drop.

"Looks like burritos and enchiladas today," she said, turning from Dinah.

"Smells like a mess, though," the meta countered, causing her friend to look back at her before they broke into giggles.

Dinah wandered the halls after school that day when her guardian hadn't come to get her at the flagpole like usual. She wanted to make sure it was some teachers' meeting that had suddenly come up and not that Barbara had gone on some Delphi emergency without her again. That would have made her mad. She hesitated when she reached the library and went in. If anyone knew about any sort of meeting, it would have been Miss Dominique. The librarian was the center of all the information regarding teachers and students, and Dinah could almost go as far as to say she was the oracle of the school when Barbara was gone. At the moment, Miss Dominique was just putting on her jacket, and Dinah saw she'd put a lighter in her jeans pocket. She looked up at the teen guiltily. "Hi... Sorry. I'm looking for Bar- Ms. Gordon?" Dinah said uncertainly.

"I haven't seen her."

"There's no teachers' meeting?"

"Not that I know of," Miss Dominique said slowly.

"Okay, thank you."

"You staying? I was gonna go outside for a sec, then lock up for the day. If you want a book, now is the time to get it."

"Yeah, okay. I'll look for a book to read," Dinah agreed, though she wasn't sure what book she would check out. Dinah had never checked out a book from the school library before. She would usually just read them there, then put them back. If she hadn't finished what she was reading or looking up, she would mark her place with a piece of paper, then write a note telling herself the title of the book and roughly where to find it. Dinah walked to the young adult fiction section and saw a lot of fantasy books. She also saw a lot of manga, though pieces of each set were missing- most likely checked out by thirty percent of the male population of the school, as well as about eight or nine percent of fangirls. When she heard the door open, she looked to see who had come in and found she couldn't breathe. There she was. Her, exactly as she was in Dinah's dream. The Rolling Stones T-shirt and jeans. Her hair was wet, and she looked as if she was still catching her breath after running. Was Kelly on the track team?

"Oh." Kelly sounded surprised to see Dinah. "Hi. I'm glad I found you here. I was hoping you'd... go over the lab worksheet with me to make sure we've got the same answers?" Both girls knew that their worksheets were twins, but Dinah wanted so badly to kiss her and to relive the dream that she could only nod. They walked to the table nearest to them and settled in. "I also know that I'll fall behind in math if I don't figure it out soon. What about you?"

"I'm getting it. I've got a good tutor, see. I-I'll help you, but I don't think we have much time today. Miss Dominique said she was locking up for the afternoon as soon as she gets back from her smoke break."

"Are teachers allowed to have smoke breaks?"

"Probably not. You know, to set an example for us young and impressionable folk, but I'm sure that if some of these teachers didn't get their nicotine fix, the student rate would drop considerably by the end of the first semester every year. The mental image of that is actually quite amusing," Dinah explained as Kelly giggled. She was surprised at how she liked the sound, how she could spend every waking hour earning the right to hear it again and- 'Man, I sound like a four dollar romance novel,' she thought to herself. The young superhero reached for Kelly's lab paper as soon as she had set it on the table between them, and was surprised to see her hand writing wasn't as frilly as she thought. There were no heart-dotted i's and loopy p's and q's. Her handwriting was more of a scrawl, kind of hurried and distracted, like Matt's. Only her answers here right and not guesswork like his had been. "Looks okay," Dinah said in a murmur. She could feel Kelly's eyes on her, but had concentrated on the work. She then got that feeling of deja vu. She knew it was to happen soon. Then, she wondered what was taking Miss Dominique so long.

Dinah knew that if she were to look up at Kelly, she wouldn't have been able to look away, but god, she remembered those eyes. It was that thought that made her look up almost against her own will. Kelly was staring at her, her face somewhat amused as if she knew. When Dinah caught her eye, the other girl seemed a little off guard. Dinah saw that Kelly's eyes were a little bit brighter than they had been in her dream, and the hungry urge to kiss her was stronger than it was in her subconscious. She leaned in, then pulled away quickly, feeling fear start to take over her. When Kelly leaned in after her, she let her, just like in her dream. Their lips met, and it was perfect to her, despite it being a girl she was kissing. Her heart raced, and in a way she couldn't quite describe, her whole body itched for more.

After a moment, they mutually broke apart, and Kelly nudged Dinah's cheek with her nose, then left a small kiss on her neck. Kelly's breathing hitched, then she quickly backed out of her chair as if it had caught fire. When she backed up, her chair knocked over, and Kelly winced at the sound it made as it hit the floor. Dinah looked at the other girl, confused and guilty, then watched without a word as Kelly hurried out of the library with a hand over her face. At the door, Kelly passed Miss Dominique, who looked puzzled. Dinah busied herself with both backpacks and slung them over both of her shoulders.

"What was that all about?"

"Uh- She called me Zippergirl, a-and I said something that I shouldn't ha-have... I'm... gonna go apologise to her now. Thank you for letting me stay," she said quickly, thinking on her feet.

"Did you want to get your book checked out?"

"It wasn't here. I will check New Gotham Library System for it. Thanks again. I-I'll let you lock up now. Thanks." She was babbling, but Dinah was actually surprised that through all that babbling, she was able to make out a full sentence or two. She hurried out of the library and tried to see where Kelly had gone, but she didn't see anything. No one was in the hallway, and the halls were usually barren after three o'clock on the dot. She put Kelly's backpack in her locker and continued to look for her guardian, not finding her. She had no choice but to take the subway to the Clocktower, where she saw Helena digging through the cupboards for something edible and snackworthy.

"Hey Kid."

"Yo," she said in a low tone. She tried not to look guilty, but she knew it was something she couldn't pull off. "Where's Barbara?" she asked before Helena could interrogate her on it.

"She didn't tell you? She went to Bludhaven to talk to Dickly about that wolf."

"Why do you call him Dickly? His name is Dick, and I think he's, like, your brother or something."

"As much as you're-" Helena said, then shut her mouth. Dinah's mouth twisted as she tried to hold back the tears that were forming behind her eyes. She knew what the half meta was trying to say, and it wasn't as if she didn't treat her like a sister. She was even closer to Helena than Dick was, but after everything that had happened that day, she wasn't all that good at keeping anything straight, pun or no pun.

"I love you too, Hel," Dinah deadpanned.

"Dinah, I am sorry. I-I meant, he is also adopted into the family." Helena wanted to smack herself. Dinah sighed, and gave her sister a fake smile.

"Well, you don't steal someone's comics in the morning if they weren't your sibling... adopted or not, right?"

"Well, I would, but I would only give them back after a while if it was you," Helena said. Dinah did give an honest laugh at that.

"Good enough." Dinah said. Helena studied the teen.

"Is something wrong?"

"Barbara was my ride and she didn't come and get me. I had to take the subway with money left over from the ruined weekend with Gabby. I wish she would have called or left a note with someone, that's all."

"Yeah, that is very un-Barbara. You got here safely, and that is all that matters."

"So... why would Barbara think that Nightwing would know anything about our wolf? It hasn't moved up there, has it?"

"Not that we know of. I mean, Barbara made a search or two, called Dickly and then that was it."

"Oh." For some reason, Dinah didn't like the fact that Barbara hadn't felt the need to tell her this when she had the most contact with the wolf and had a report underway about it on one of the many laptops kept around the Clocktower. She liked that the wolf was 'hers', her project, her assignment. "Well... I guess I am about to go train-" Dinah said as a way to dismiss herself from the conversation, but it only made Helena a little more interested in the sight before her.

"Ooh, did you just say my favorite 'T' word?" the half meta asked.

"Uh, no. I don't think 'torture' was anywhere in that sentence."

"Training, torture... Same diff. Come on, Kid." Dinah groaned, knowing that if she trained with Helena, she would eventually have the truth beaten out of her. Literally. She had hoped to train alone and beat the shit out of the punching bag until she was too tired to think about Kelly, yet as the training session went on, she realized it was the best one she had done... if you didn't count the day her mother came back and she'd discovered her telekinesis, which Helena didn't. "Alright, Dinah. Before you beat me to death, tell me what's going on."

"We both know I can't beat you," Dinah said as if it was a scientific fact. "You're just being nice." She huffed a few breaths of air and took her stance again, waiting for Helena to take advantage of the fact that she had left her right side wide open.

"Sure you can... when I'm dead. Still... you can talk to me." Helena went to the mini fridge that was there and took out two bottles of water, tossing one to Dinah, who almost missed it and used her TK to get it from the air. "Nice. If only you could have done that with the Poptarts this morning."

"Thanks. I know. I have just been a space case today."

"Why?" Helena seemed really concerned, and Dinah knew that she would have to tell someone about it. She couldn't get up the courage to tell Gabby, but she did promise she would.

"I... I kissed a girl," Dinah said, her voice lowering. Still, Helena heard her.

"No shit?" Helena asked, as if she was pleasantly surprised. "No wonder you've had that 'deer caught in the headlights' look on your face all day. Look, it's not that big a deal-"

"No, I mean..." Dinah sat down on the floor with her head on her knees as she lowered her water bottle to the floor at her side. When Helena joined her, she looked up again. "It's not that I've kissed a girl that's got me all wiggy right now. Its not like I've never had those gay thoughts like that before. Its who I kissed. We don't even like each other and yet-" Helena put her hand on Dinah's shoulder blade and the blonde calmed down. Then she started from the beginning. She told Helena about the Zippergirl title and then about them being lab partners, and then finally she told her sister about the dream the night before.

"So, it sounds as if maybe she was mean to you to keep you away. I'm a master at that."

"You sound so proud of that, Hel."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not, but sometimes it is the only way to protect the heart. If they don't know what you feel, nothing can happen, and when nothing happens-"

"You start to complain about how boring your love life is."

"Touché," Helena said.

"Still, you have a point."

"It could be that age old motherly thing, 'They're only doing it because they like you, dear' sort of thing."

"But... If she liked me, then why did she just up and leave? I mean, that kiss was fan-fucking-tastic, and now my chest feels so strange..."

"Maybe she felt the same way, and she didn't want you to see the unmasked desire in her eyes," Helena said in a teasing tone.

"Good God, you sound like a four dollar romance novel," Dinah said, repeating her own thoughts earlier that afternoon. She didn't even try to hide the disgust on her face. Helena laughed in a way that made Dinah think of big burley men about to swig beer.

"Well, you said you've thought about kissing a woman before?"

"Who doesn't?"

"Richard Simmons." Helena said quickly.

"Okay, aside from him?"

"Okay okay," Helena said, giving in to the point. "So... who'd you dream about kissing? Was it me? Everyone dreams of kissing me."

"Big head much?" Dinah asked, then looked over at her sister. "Yeah, it was you- but just once or twice and that was a long, long time ago-" she continued defensively before Helena could tease her or get disgusted with her.

"So, what happened?"

"I MET you."

"Har har." Dinah only grinned. "Seriously, don't fret," Helena said, going back to the original subject, as they both had the tendency to get way off topic to the point they forget what the original subject matter was. "I think this Kelly chick is just as scared as you are." Dinah only nodded again before deciding she couldn't put off her homework much longer. She left the training room before Helena could ask how she truly felt about Kelly. That was just something she didn't want to deal with at the moment, especially since Kelly had been the one to run from her, not the other way around. Dinah finally sat down and took out her homework, which was the math and editing the short story once more. She decided to tackle the math just to get it out of the way, then spend the ten or twenty minutes it took going over her paper before Barbara got back. When she had gotten to the second page of her story, however, she saw the note Mr. Watanabe left her.

'Dinah, I love how your original idea of a jogger transformed into a wolf. The idea of a wolf's plight during its run is excellent. Keep up the good work on this.'

There was a mark that Dinah knew well, which meant he added those two points to her extra credit score. Not that she was complaining. It would make up for the two or three vocabulary quizzes she had bombed at the beginning of the semester. There was also an additional note of 'Great title!' next to the extra points, but Dinah wasn't drawn by that. What leapt at her was his first sentence. 'I love how your original idea of a jogger transformed into a wolf...' Transformed... into a...

Dinah got up quickly and left her room, surprised to see Barbara talking to Helena. "Dinah, I am sorry I-"

"S'fine. Look, I have been thinking... Do werewolves exist?" Dinah said cutting off her guardian's apology.

"Not that I know of."

"Didn't think so, but what about a metahuman who can shift into a wolf?"

"I had thought of that briefly, but ran into a problem," Barbara said slowly, seeming to wince as Dinah's look got cross.

"Problem? What problem? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Dinah, when I checked the Metahuman Database, the meta who could shift into a wolf was that girl in the Animal Pack who went by Wolf. Her real name was Mandy Fairbanks. She died in prison the night Harley Quin hypnotised New Gotham. I did the search shortly after your report said you'd come up with nothing, so I had hoped I would find something when I looked in the Database. When I came up with the road blocks, I gave it up and decided it was no use getting your hopes up about something that is a lost cause. I didn't want you to focus on a dead end."

"She had no family? No... illegitimate children-"

"No, Dinah. I checked. Her father and mother split when her and her twin brother were both nine. Her bother had the power of teleportation. He died in a car accident three years ago. Their mother has the power of earthquakes. Their father was not a metahuman, and from what I could tell, that was the reason they had split. I don't think he knew about his wife before they had married. Anyway, Dinah, this wolf isn't her. It is just some lost wolf trying to find its way home."

Dinah didn't want to accept that as an answer. The wolf as a metahuman was the only thing that made sense. "May I still look into it, though? Please?"

"You can't take my word for it?" Dinah only stared at her guardian as if to say 'she who promised to pick me up after school and didn't tell me about this new angle to my assignment, I think not.' "I'll take that as a no. I don't know what you're hoping to find that I didn't, but I will get you her file and anything else I can find on her."

"Thanks."

"Go get ready for sweeps, Kid." Helena said suddenly after all that time of being silent about her somewhat-not-really-friend from the Animal Pack being dead. Apparently, she didn't know about that. Reese must not have told her. "After all the butt kicking you did in the training room... You need an outlet." Dinah snorted at the thought of her being like Helena and using thugs as an outlet for her anger, but at the rate she was going, maybe that wasn't such an impossible thought. The blonde did as she was told and went to get her night gear, the closest thing she had to a costume. It was nothing special, just black on black, something she could get blood on that didn't belong to her sister. Then she joined Helena by the Delphi system, bade Barbara a quick 'see you in a few', waved off her 'be careful', and was off.

Dinah came back through the elevator doors tired and sweaty, but otherwise fine. She took a quick shower, then retrieved the promised file on 'Fairbanks, Mandy R.' from Barbara. Then she went to her room and focused on Mandy. That could not have been all. There had to have been a connection somewhere between that Wolf and 'her' wolf. As Barbara had said, Mandy was the girl known as Wolf a couple of months ago. She seemed to have been a fairly new member, joining in late August. At least, that is what Dinah figured from the surveillance photos with her in it, which started on the twenty-forth of August. Before that, she'd had many jobs, mostly temporary positions. She was a waitress for almost a year before her temper got her fired, then she'd gotten a job in office, where she'd been let go for the same reason. The last thing Dinah saw before she fell asleep was an address for somewhere in Bludhaven with no title to it, and Dinah wondered before her eyes closed if that was why Barbara had gone to Dick Greyson. She mentally told herself that she would ask her guardian the next day about it.

Chapter 7

Fortunately for Dinah, her dreams weren't remembered the next day, and she slept peacefully until her alarm clock yanked her away from subconsciousness. In fact, for the first full minute upon waking up, she felt pretty chipper. Then she remembered the day before and the wolf, and she hoped things would be resolved soon. As she got ready for the day, she thought about what she'd found in Mandy's file. It seemed there was nothing unusual except for her short temper, which seemed to be explained away by her power. Of course, no one else knew that, really. It seemed to be such a problem that it prevented her from keeping a job, so she had to turn to crime. Dinah joined Helena and Alfred again, and took the packet of Poptarts that had been slid across the table at her. "Is there a reason why you insist on feeding me Poptarts?"

"You needed them yesterday, didn't you?" Helena asked.

"I plead the fifth," Dinah said, not willing to admit to Helena that she had been right. Otherwise she would never have heard the end of it, and from the look her sister was giving her, she knew she was in for an 'I told you so' song and dance in a moment. She sighed, and Helena had gotten her answer, anyway. "Yes..." Dinah grumbled, not liking that Helena had not only been right, but she had been right two days in a row. If it turned out that she was right once more about Kelly, she was officially declaring herself a citizen of the Twilight Zone.

"Well, big sister knows best," Helena replied, which seemed to be the only equivalent for the 'I told you so' dance. For the moment, at least. Dinah only nodded and smiled at Alfred in a silent thanks for the apple juice he set before her. It was as if they had tag teamed her that morning to make sure she had breakfast, not that it would've been a problem that morning. She was so hungry she could have eaten anything set in front of her, including the plate and utensils. She just hoped her guardian would hurry up that morning as she gulped her juice and ate her Poptarts in halves at a time. At the sight of this, Helena's eyebrows rose.

"Hungry?" The only reply the brunette got was Dinah's own eyebrows raising as she finished off her the apple juice. She then went back to her room where she read more on Mandy's family tree as well as the powers they were known to have, and found out that somewhere down the line through marriage, Mandy's family was related to Gibson's. Gotham residents until the end, it seemed. She hastily shoved the contents of the file in with the rest of her schoolwork in her backpack and hurried down the stairs when Barbara shouted up to her that she was leaving for the school in five minutes.

When Dinah and Barbara got to New Gotham High School's parking lot, she didn't see Gabby there again, and sighed. 'She really needs to set her alarm clock a little earlier,' she thought, making her way towards the doors with her guardian, than going separate ways. Dinah turned the combination for her locker and saw a flash of white drop to the floor. The blonde stared at it for a second, then picked it up slowly. It was folded in such a way that a pull tab with the word 'pull' had practically unfolded the whole complex folding job on its own.

'Dinah,

I'm sorry I ran out on you after we kissed. I swear it had nothing to do with you. It was perfect. I wish there was a way to explain it to you without looking bad in the end, but I hope our paths meet again like they had in the library.

-Kelly'

Dinah was surprised by this note. She hadn't expected to hear from Kelly so quickly. She truthfully wasn't sure what she had expected, but definitely not a note like that. There was no mention of her backpack, which, if Dinah were in her shoes, would have been included in the note. The part that had caught her attention the most was the fact that it seemed Kelly wanted a repeat of the kiss. Dinah was startled out of her thoughts when the note suddenly disappeared from her fingertips and then she saw her friend's face. She tried to grab the paper back, but Gabby was quicker. "This has got to be what you're hiding from me-" Dinah looked at Gabby in horror, especially after Gabby's eyes widened. "You and Kelly kissed-?"

"Say it louder, Gabby. I doubt the rest of the school heard you," Dinah said testily, which caused Gabby's laughing eyes to turn serious.

"Dinah, is this what bothered you yesterday?" Dinah nodded, then grabbed Kelly's backpack after taking what she needed from her own. She motioned for Gabby to follow her before her friend could ask questions about the backpack on her shoulders. The two blondes walked towards the girls' bathroom and Dinah checked the stalls before she began to speak.

"Gabby..." Dinah wasn't sure how she was going to say it, but she had to. Gabby was getting too suspicious of her, and she had to tell her something. At least this would be something she wasn't lying about. "Do you believe in premonitions?"

"Like what Pheobe gets on 'Charmed'?"

"Uh- ...Sure."

"Yeah, I guess so, why?"

"Well... The night before last, I had a dream of kissing Kelly, and I knew it was going to come true. It wasn't- It wasn't even the fact that it was a girl. I was freaking out because it was Kelly," Dinah said, just as she'd told her sister. "That... and because of how I felt when I woke-" Dinah was cut off by the door to the bathroom opening up. Gabby switched gears quickly.

"So, you wanna come over after school?"

"I'll ask Barbara at lunch and let you know in art class, mmkay?" Dinah lead the way out of the bathroom.

"Really?" Gabby stopped walking and turned to look at her friend.

"Yeah," Dinah responded, confused.

"Sorry, I thought you were just playing along back there. I'd really like to learn more about you pr- your dreams. It sounds fascinating. Well, I've gotta scoot. If I'm late again, its detention. See ya." Gabby waved and hurried into her classroom and Dinah walked casually into her own class, even though her chest got tight at the sight of Kelly. Dinah took the long route to her desk, passing Kelly's desk long enough to set the backpack on it and walk away, otherwise not acknowledging Kelly's existence. It might've been easy to do in math, but it'd be damn near impossible to do in their lab class. Dinah figured she'd cross that bridge when she got to it.

It surprised her when her day was otherwise fine. She'd gotten the highest possible score on her story, Barbara said she could hang out with Gabby to make up for not picking her up the day before, and other than her grumbled, "I don't want to talk about it" to Kelly in lab class, the time in the other girls' presence was bearable. They'd worked silently other than the usual shop talk between them until the bell finally rang. Gabby and Dinah had fun speaking in code about Gabby's crush on Gina (which both knew wouldn't be requited, as it seemed Gina was the only one who didn't know that she and Matt were practically an item) before the two friends parted ways again after agreeing to meet up at their usual spot at the flagpole after school.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Gabby and Dinah started their four block trek to Gabby's. They were almost a block away from the school when Gabby slowed her pace. "Kelly asked me about you," she said casually, and Dinah's face shifted into one of concentration.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, after I got out of Spanish class, I ran into her." Gabby said no more than that. Obviously, she wanted Dinah to ask, which would show interest in Kelly. It was a trap, in other words, so Dinah stayed silent, although curiosity was killing her. "Dinah, what happened?" Gabby asked after she realized her friend wasn't going to respond. They hurried along the sidewalk after Dinah motioned that she couldn't talk there. Once in the safety of the Andrews' home, Dinah turned and faced her friend, then dropped her gaze.

"Like I said, I had a dream about Kelly the night before last, and yesterday it came true."

"How often do you have these dreams?" Gabby asked, leading the way to her room, where she unceremoniously dumped her backpack on her floor by the door.

"I started getting them when I was eight or nine years old, and they didn't happen often. The last year or so, I'd average two or three a month, often times in the same week- and no, it isn't in the week I'm menstruating," she added before Gabby could make some sort of comment like that, as the meta knew her friend would. She was right if the look on Gabby's face said anything.

"I think that is so cool. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't have any friends in Opal, and you saw how hard it was making friends when I first got here. I didn't want you to think I'm a freak just like everybody else did."

"Hey, I would never think you're a freak. Mysterious? Sure. Eccentric? Hell yeah, but a freak? Never."

"Thanks Gabby. That means more than you'll ever know," Dinah said, her voice serious and almost melancholy.

"Again with the mysteriousness," Gabby said genially. "So... What do you think makes you dream these premonitions? Do you like... touch things and you dream about them that night? Or... Well, once- like a couple months ago- I read this book where this girl got struck by lightning, and ever since, she had this ability to find missing kids if she saw their faces before going to sleep." Gabby was sort of babbling at that moment, and Dinah knew she was a little excited by the idea of having some sort of super power. If only Dinah could tell her about her 'dangerous hobby'. It would have made Gabby talk ten miles a minute, but she couldn't.

"I think I know what book you're talking about. I wish I could do that. It would be more useful, I'll tell you that," Dinah admitted. "So far, I've only had dreams that somehow connected back to me, even if I don't know why when I first wake up. When I was living with my foster family, I had a dream about Helena and Barbara. They seemed to be two completely different people, plus, they were strangers to me, but I knew... I knew even at nine years old that I'd meet them. It was just something in my gut that would tell me whenever I thought of that dream. I knew they were home. Just don't tell Helena I said that."

"What else did you dream?"

"Little stupid stuff. When I was twelve, I knew what my Christmas gift was because I saw a porcelain doll... stuff like that. I think they are triggered by some deep emotion." Dinah looked at her friend and watched as she seemed to let it all sink in a little. She looked thoughtful, and for some reason Dinah couldn't explain, she had a feeling that it couldn't be a good thing in that situation. There was something that burned in Gabby's mind, a question that she so badly wanted to ask, but couldn't find the words until finally, she did.

"Dinah, I have a question for you, and I want you to answer me truthfully. Last night, there was something on the news about a wolf howling not too far from here the night before last. It had me thinking, you know, your leg had you limping pretty badly on Monday, and you just said you get a small cluster of dreams at a time..." Gabby stopped and collected herself. "I think you had a dream about that wolf attack because it was near us at the theater, and... maybe you tried to stop it from hurting someone. I admit to not knowing you as well as I'd like, but from what I do know about you, I could see you doing that. Did you?" Dinah wanted to deny it, to tell Gabby that it really was a dog bite, but the other blonde was already onto her. If she were to deny it, it would have only gotten herself even more tangled in her web of lies, so she only nodded, surprised by her friend's intuitive mind.

"Yes. I hadn't meant to actually encounter it. I mean, even I'm not that dumb. I was going to the side of the building to call animal control or something when I saw it and ran. It was faster."

"I'm sorry I was so harsh with you."

"Hey, it's okay. I'm sorry I've been lying to you. If I had known you were going to be so cool about it, I would have told you sooner."

"They way I see it, your gift and how people would see you after knowing about it is not much different from me being in the closet."

"That sounds about right," Dinah agreed.

"So... speaking of-"

"Hey, I am not in any sort of closet. I never claimed to be straight," Dinah said in her defence.

"You never claimed to be a flaming homo, either. You never gave any hint that you might swing my way when I came out to you."

"Because I don't have to claim to be anything. Why can't I just... be?"

"Nicely said. So, Miss 'Dance-Around-The-Subject-Better-Than-Michael-Flatley'-"

"Who?"

"Riverdance," Gabby supplied.

"Oh, I-"

"Dinah." Gabby's tone took this 'I'm serious' edge, and Dinah couldn't help but laugh.

"Okay, what?"

"Are you okay with everything? The kiss and all?"

"It's not... It's not about sexuality. It's about Kelly. I mean, what the hell?! And then she just... ran off. I just wasn't prepared for the dream and how the kiss made me feel... From Kelly."

"That good, huh?" Gabby's tone made it hard for Dinah to fight off the blush that suddenly covered her cheeks.

"It was- It was- ...Yeah." Gabby grinned. "Gabby..." Dinah couldn't believe she was about to say it out loud, but she had to or she would burst. "She's got the most beautiful blue eyes. I mean, me an' you, yeah, but hers are just- wow!" At Gabby's thoughtful look, which turned into somewhat of a frown, Dinah asked, "What? What's the matter?"

"Kelly has green eyes."

"Everytime I've seen her, her eyes were blue. Especially yesterday."

"Maybe they're contacts, but I know her eyes are green."

"Why would Kelly wear contacts? They didn't look like contacts to me," Dinah protested.

"She could be wearing them for fashion. I think they were a bluish color at church... I can't remember. But still, a fashion thing, like the black eyes on that Toad guy in that X-Men movie, or yellow vampire eyes on Buffy. Maybe there are other colors and designs. I wouldn't know."

"But-" Gabby put a hand on Dinah's upper arm, then looked around her room in a quick visual sweep. She then ducked under her bed, looking almost like she was swimming under water, and with the clothes that surrounded her, she might as well have been using a power kick just to move herself in all of it. When she crawled back out, her rump was wiggling as she tried to keep her grip on whatever it was that was in her hands.

"That was so much easier to do before I got boobs," Gabby claimed a little loudly, and Dinah was glad that no one else was in the house at the time, or that Gabby hadn't said that at school.

"I'm sure it would have been easier if you'd clean your room more than once a decade," Dinah said sarcastically.

"Haha, shut up." Like the mature teenager she was, Dinah stuck her tongue out at her friend. "So," Gabby said, getting them back on track, "you still don't believe me? I've got this postcard thing Kelly sent me this summer. Her eyes are clearly seen in it. That's how I'm so sure they're green. They sparkle in this picture." Dinah sat next to Gabby on her bed as she looked through her little shoe box of pictures and letters. On the very top was a picture of her friend with Kelly when they were about ten or eleven. Gabby pulled out a pink hand made postcard from under that photo. It was made with squiggles, stickers, a picture pasted on to it, and a message next to the address and stamp on the back. Indeed, Kelly's green eyes were sparkling, but that wasn't what had made Dinah gasp. What shocked the teen superhero was the young woman Kelly posed with in the picture. The woman's eyes were the iciest shade she'd ever seen.

"Holy sh-!"

Chapter 8

Gabby ran after Dinah screaming her name, not that Dinah heard her. "What the hell?!" Gabby screamed after her. The teen was starting to feel as if she was in some movie-oke of My Best Friend's Wedding. Dinah turned to her friend and let her catch up.

"We've got to find Kelly, Gabby. It's really important."

"Why? What's wrong?" Gabby felt bewildered. Their quiet afternoon was disrupted once again, and Dinah wasn't talking at the moment.

"I'll explain later," Dinah said a little bit distracted as she looked around for some unseen person.

"Later. Always later," Gabby grumbled. "You explain it to me now!" Gabby snapped. Dinah couldn't keep her own annoyance out of her voice or off of her face.

"I don't have time to explain it right now. We have to find Kelly, and if my suspicions are right, she's going to need you now more than she ever did in youth group. So let's go!" Dinah had put emphasis on the last two words before storming off again. Gabby huffed, but the determination on her friend's face made her steps quicken, plus, she didn't like the sound of what Dinah had just said. "God, she must feel so alone..." Dinah said to herself, then Gabby was sure Dinah was talking to someone else, not her. Gabby wondered for a fraction of a second if Dinah had completely flipped and gone mental. If it involved Kelly somehow, Gabby had to go along and see where it all lead, and if it didn't... "Please, just look Huntress... I'd ask her if she weren't in the shower- BECAUSE I THINK I FOUND OUR WOLF!" Dinah's shout startled Gabby. She didn't remember seeing Dinah so short fused, but this seemed really important to her. She didn't dare try to speak to her then, and continued to trail after her.

"Damn," Gabby whispered to herself.

"I'm not gonna beg. Hel- this is so not the time. Damn it! I'm going offline if you're not gonna help me!" Dinah finally said, looking as if she wanted to scream. "Thank you," she said curtly. "Look, One-Forty-Forth and Cathedral... Seventeenth and Masterson... Forth and Henessee. Give me something in common- Yes, especially Forth and Henessee, where the howling was. What's near there? Specific? Like... is there... a... prison?" Dinah laughed, and Gabby was sure that startled her more than the frustrated yell she'd heard a moment before. "Great, I mean... It was what I was hoping for. I'll see you later.... If Gabby gets 'later', then so do you. Promise. Stand by." Dinah finally looked at Gabby.

"Who-"

"Later," Dinah said, trying not to laugh at Gabby's frown. Dinah then stopped walking again and turned to her friend.

"Does the name Mandy Fairbanks ring a bell?"

"No, not really. Should it?"

"I was hoping it would. She was in the picture with Kelly on your post card. Did you see what color her eyes were?"

"Yeah, they were like this light... blue." Gabby trailed off as she seemed to see something try to click in her mind. "Dinah?"

"It is a long and complicated story, and you have to believe me when I say that I think she is the reason Kelly's been so changed this year." There was what sounded like a gunshot followed by a howl of pain and vicious barking, which made Dinah start to run in that direction. Gabby hesitated, then followed her. Three blocks away, the barking was the loudest, and both blondes saw the white and black wolf that had become so familiar to Dinah. It hobbled along on its back paws and right front paw. Blood was spilling out of its left shoulder. There was no one around, and Dinah swallowed as she saw the sight. "Kelly," Dinah said, which made Gabby search around for her friend.

The wolf's ears perked when it heard Dinah's voice, and it made its way to them, Dinah meeting it halfway. Gabby watched in horror and some awe as her friend dropped to her knees and the wolf collapsed into her like a deleted scene from Old Yeller or something. Then something happened that Gabby would have never guessed. The fur of the wolf seemed to melt into naked pink skin. The body was suddenly not that of the wolf, but that of her best friend, who was still whimpering and shivering. Most importantly, she was still bleeding. Gabby's feet began to move before she really knew what was going on as Dinah tried to keep Kelly warm, and Gabby took off her jacket, wrapping it around Kelly's middle to cover her back and buttocks. "Kelly," Gabby said, trying to keep the horror out of her voice, "what happened to you?"

"I... I'm being hunted," she whispered.

"What? By who?"

"I don't... know. I can't see them, but I knew they were there."

"But-" Gabby couldn't figure out just what to say past that. An unseen attacker? Her best friend, a werewolf? And Dinah knew? Dinah's psychic? Can she be in some weird dream? Did she fall asleep in sixth period again?

"We've got to get her somewhere safe," Dinah said.

"Like the hospital," Gabby replied.

"The person who's hunting her might still be out there."

"I don't know, if they were out to kill Kelly, don't you think they would have taken another shot in the time it took us to get to her?"

"She fought them off, but still, you've got a point. That does seem strange, but Gabby, we've got to get her out of here. I don't like the thought of an unseen attacker." 'Yep, Dinah's definitely psychic,' Gabby thought, 'and my best friend is definitely a bleeding werewolf. Did Mandy bite her and change her?'

"So what do we do?"

"We'll take her to my place for now. Barbara- Ms. Gordon knows how to patch this up really well." Dinah hadn't just meant the wound.

"Why not the hospital?"

"Her power to shift into a wolf must still be pretty new. If she gets scared or frustrated or angry, she'll shift again and the same thing might happen to her that happened to Mandy Fairbanks." It was somewhat a lie. Exactly what happened to Mandy and how she died was really anyone's guess, and Dinah's was that Mandy had shifted in the middle of her time in Lala Harley Land and scared someone in the prison, who killed her, supposedly out of self defence, but only Mandy would really know. At the name, Kelly shifted painfully to look at Dinah.

"How- How do you know about that?"

"Shh shh," Dinah soothed. "We'll all talk about that when you are better. We'll fill in all the blanks." Dinah then turned slightly with Kelly still in her arms and touched her earpiece. "Huntress, you still there?"

"I'm going to need a car over here. Tell Barbara she's got a patient on the way and not to get too mad at me for what I'm about to do."

<Oh man...> Helena moaned, knowing Dinah's words couldn't mean anything good. <Okay then. Where about on 7th and Henessee are you?>

"We're just out on the sidewalk. You can't miss us. And tell whomever's coming to hurry."

<Alfred's on his way. Hang tight.>

"Thank you. Canary out," she added, though it was pointless to say her codename at the moment. It just made her feel better to sound authoritative and Barbara-like in a situation that had put her insides to a panic. She couldn't show it or Gabby would freak out, and nothing would get done.

"That was the plan," Dinah said before she turned the mic off. She focused her attention on Kelly, who looked to be fighting off another shift. Her shivering got a little violent, and her breathing became shallower. She was wide eyed, and Dinah was about ten seconds from a freak out. She had to say or do something.

"Dinah," Gabby said, her own voice quivering with panic, "I think she's going into shock if she isn't already there. What do we do?" Okay, that really wasn't helping. Dinah took in a deep breath. 'WWBD? What Would Barbara Demand?' Dinah wondered.

"We've got to stop the bleeding the best we can." Before Dinah could finish that sentence, Gabby was putting both hands over the wound, doing her best to ignore how much blood covered them in the process. "Good. Keep that until help gets there. Maybe put a little bit more of your upper body directly over her-"

"Uhng!" Kelly shouted in pain as Gabby did as she was told.

"Shh, Kelly, I am so sorry!" Gabby said. "Is this helping?"

"I think so. I know this hurts Kelly, but we have to stop the bleeding." Dinah looked down at the girl in her arms, then back to Gabby. "Keep that up," she said again, then looked back down at Kelly. "Kelly. Kelly listen to me. We're gonna get you somewhere safe." Kelly didn't respond. 'Oh no. Don't die. Please...'

A few minutes later, a car Dinah didn't even know belonged to them stopped before the girls, and Dinah was surprised (though she shouldn't have been) to see that not only was Alfred there, but Barbara was as well. "Let's get her in here," Barbara said, but it was unnecessary, as Dinah was already helping Alfred gently get her off of the ground.

"Is it safe to move her?" Gabby asked.

"I think so," the blonde meta said, though Dinah herself wasn't quite sure, "I mean, it's only the shoulder, nothing uberly serious-"

"She just got shot and is going into shock!"

"And you yelling at me isn't going to help us any!" Dinah said back.

"She's right," Alfred said gently, then got a firm arm around Kelly's waist. This made Dinah bump the injured shoulder causing the brown haired girl cry out in pain once more.

"Oh god, Kelly!" Gabby said involuntarily, then shut her mouth quickly. She tried so hard not to panic or throw up and did a good job of it so far. She had never seen someone get badly hurt before.

"I'm so sorry," Dinah said. The wolf meta was a little wobbly on her feet, but Dinah could tell that Kelly was trying hard to help them out. They managed to get her into the car, and as soon as the girls were all situated, Barbara crawled over to the wounded metahuman and began to swab around the bullet wound. She looked up suddenly, checking the surroundings.

"What? What's the matter?" Dinah asked, watching her guardian look everywhere around them, especially out the window.

"Nothing. I thought I felt someone nearby," the redhead responded automatically. Alfred opened the glove box and handed both Dinah and Gabby a pair of blind folds.

"If you would," he said.

"But-" Gabby protested, looking completely bewildered.

"It's alright, Gabby-" Barbara cut in at the same time Dinah said,

"We need to get Kelly to a safe place, but in order to keep that place safe, you can't know where exactly it is, alright? I promise you, you won't have to wear them longer than necessary, but you've got to trust me." Gabby nodded. What else could she do? She then slowly put the blindfold on. Dinah tried to ignore the blood on her friend's hands and the blood she'd left on the blindfold once it was on. The blonde meta then put the other blindfold on Kelly, saying exactly what she had said to Gabby in murmurs to soothe her. It seemed to be working, and Barbara found herself impressed by her teen ward, knowing how scared Dinah was.

"Wh-Why can't we take her to the hospital?" Gabby asked, though she had already asked it several times. Apparently, Gabby didn't exactly buy the 'she'll shift or something' excuse. Dinah looked at Barbara, who nodded.

"Gabby, the- well... The doctors can detect in her blood what turns her into a wolf," she said lamely as she shrugged. She was glad that Gabby couldn't see it. How does one go about explaining all that without explaining ALL THAT?

"It's in the blood?" Gabby asked, looking as if she was trying to see through the blindfold at Dinah. Up until then, Gabby was certain that Kelly had been bitten by a werewolf, namely that Mandy chick, and had been turned or something. Dinah put a hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

"I don't know much about it, Gabby. Known metahumans have been born or created without much information on the hows or the whys. It could be a matter of using more than just ten percent of your brain, or it could be a lucky combination of genes you were born with, or, like in your favorite show, it could be an outside force that somehow changed someone." Dinah was surprised to find that explaining these things calmed her down quite a bit as Barbara worked on Kelly.

"What?"

"Early on, there were... tons of odd occurrences that had caused a change in genetic coding. Naturally, some of them had children, my mother was born with hers and passed it on to me-"

"You're talking about the odd robberies, the people who claim to be saved by some flying bat person..." Barbara smirked. "They had odd genes or something in their blood that caused them to be these meta something humans?" Gabby asked.

"Close enough," Dinah said.

"I really wish that this was all some elaborate practical joke you were playing on me," Gabby said in a small frightened voice. This was too much at once. Dinah slowly took Gabby's hand and when Barbara was busy moving the blindfold long enough to check Kelly's pupils, she spelled out 'U will know, promise,' before placing the hand back on Gabby's knee. Gabby wasn't sure just what she had gotten herself into when she had said she wanted to know what Dinah was hiding. Dinah, however, knew that Barbara was going to brutally murder her for doing what she had decided needed to be done. Gabby need to understand, and the only way she could do that was if she knew everything. She just didn't know how to break the news that, 'Hey, I'm a superhero' to the only person she could ever call a friend. Gabby got the message and nodded, and felt around for Kelly. Dinah guided Gabby's hand to Kelly's cheek, and Kelly's head moved a little as if to look at Gabby. The friends seemed to communicate something to each other without a sound.

It was then that Dinah understood how Gabby must have been feeling when she and Kelly knew what was going on and being left out of the loop. As Dinah watched the friends give a sense of comfort to each other silently, she felt left out. Theirs was a friendship deeper than anything she had ever experienced. It was as deep as Helena and Barbara's friendship. As deep as Alfred and Bruce Wayne's even. People had shunned Dinah and she them before she could develop such a friendship. She knew that her decision to take them both to the Clocktower was a good one. Kelly needed someone to understand, and Gabby needed to understand. She just hoped this decision wasn't something that was going to turn around and bite her in the ass as hard as Kelly had bitten her in the calf.

Chapter 9

It took another half an hour to get Kelly into the room used for such emergencies. Dinah was lucky enough to never need to use the room. Once Kelly was where Barbara wanted her, Dinah took off both blindfolds and put some of Kelly's hair back. "Gabby and I will be right outside the door, okay?" Kelly swallowed and gave the faintest of nods. Dinah was so relieved that Kelly had stayed conscious though the whole thing. If she hadn't been, Dinah would have gone into complete freak out mode. Dinah motioned for Gabby to follow her. Just outside the door was Helena holding some sweats. She held them out to Gabby, who took them questioningly. "We're gonna need to wash up in a bit. There was..." Dinah tried not to obviously stare at Gabby's shirt, which the other blonde noticed, "... quite a bit of blood." Gabby seemed to just notice this and looked down at herself, inspecting her hands. Dinah could hear her breathing increase. "Oh dear," she murmured, then touched Gabby's shoulders. "Shh. It's okay Gabby. We're all okay."

Another ten minutes had Gabby in the shower and her clothes in the washing machine, though how much can be done for them was something unknown, even from Alfred, though he said he'd try. Dinah was torn. She wanted to be there for Gabby when she got out of the shower, but she had just promised Kelly that she would be right outside her door. If only she had the ability to clone herself... Helena offered to guard the door to the room Kelly was in and yell to her if she was needed before Gabby got out of the shower, but that was something she doubted. Like a British guard, Dinah stood in front of Gabby's door with no emotion on her face. Her mind raced as she waited for her scared friend. She took almost a half an hour, but still Dinah didn't move. At the same time the water stopped, Helena had come to see how things were going. "You okay Kid?"

"Yeah. I know Kelly will be okay. Gabby's gonna be alright, but Barbara's gonna have my hide when this is said and done."

"She'll understand and get over it. It wasn't like you took them here after school for an MTV fest. Kelly was going into shock and you didn't know what else to do," Helena said, which eased some of Dinah's fears. "So... which one is our wolf?"

"Kelly," Dinah answered, surprised Helena couldn't tell with her extra senses.

"Kelly? The way Gabby's acting, I thought it might've been her."

"No, but she helped me figure it out." In murmurs, Dinah told Helena about the coincidence of the camp, and the picture of Kelly with different colored eyes.

"That would mean that they are related somehow or they did drugs together."

"What? Kelly's not a drug user, Hel." Dinah said defensively.

"How else can they have the same metahuman power?"

"I don't know, some blood ritual? A 'my blood is your blood' sort of wiccan bond?"

"Do wiccans do that?" Helena asked.

"How should I know?!" Dinah snapped.

"Hey, I'm just-" Helena was about to say, but Dinah calmed down and cut her off.

"Sorry, sorry."

"I'm sorry I implied that your girlfriend did drugs." The sisters were quiet for a littl