Free as a bird (Narrative/open)
A slightly plump, kind-faced nurse entered Dinah's room shortly after she woke up.
"Good morning, dear," the nurse practically sang. "Today's a big day for you. We just have some paperwork to fill out and then you can be on your way."
Dinah blinked in surprise, not daring to trust what she'd heard.
"What do you mean, 'on my way'?"
"Why, dear, haven't the doctors told you? They've determined that you are, more or less, sane and perfectly capable of caring for yourself outside of these walls."
Dinah stared in surprise, still unsure of how to take this news. Just like that, and she was free again? It seemed too easy.
Maybe Harry had been right after all. Maybe...
Two hours and countless signatures later, Dinah was on her way. Her head was clearer than ever. As the cab pulled away from Arkham and into a jungle of skyscrapers, the memories of her time at Arkham began to fade, as though it were all just one long nightmare. Dinah realized this and fought to hold onto the people she'd met there, fought to make sense of the experience.
Harry and Oz... all the patients who had looked sane but beaten down by captivity, who didn't belong there. She needed to return and get them out too. But first, she needed to come up with a plan.
A familiar building came into view. Dinah blinked in surprise and leaned forward to get the cab driver's attention.
"Stop the car! Here, you can let me out right here."
She fumbled in her bags for money to pay the driver, but he waved her off.
"It's already been paid for. Good luck with your new beginning, miss."
Dinah barely spared a glance for the taxi as it pulled away, her eyes now glued to a very familiar building. The Clocktower. A rush of relief, and a sense of 'home' washed over her. In just a few short minutes, she would be upstairs with Barbara, who had damn well better have a good explanation.
Without taking note of any of the buildings around the tower, Dinah rushed inside and used the access panel inside the elevator to rise to the hidden levels behind the clock itself. Her access code and facial recognition registered without a hitch and soon the elevator doors slid open.
Dinah stepped out of the elevator and stopped short. She frowned, taking in the sight of the control room. It was the Clock tower all right, but there was no sign that anyone had been here in...
Dinah stepped forward and glanced at a small pile of mail. She picked up one of the already opened letters and glanced at the date. Her brow furrowed as she realized it was at least 6 months old, if not more-she had no idea how long she'd spent in Arkham, after all. She flipped through a few more letters and all of them were the same.
She set the mail down and moved into the room, fingers sweeping across the keyboards, the screens. A thick inch of dust settled over everything. And yet, it was definitely the Clock tower. She found Barbara's secret safe in exactly the same place it had always been, the combination the same, Barbara's pictures still on the bookshelf. When she pressed a button on the keyboard, the computer sprang to life, demanding Barbara's password, as though it had just gone into sleep mode while Oracle stepped away for a few minutes.
Dinah stepped out onto the balcony and looked down at... well, it should have been Gotham. She frowned. The skyline was most definitely not Gotham. Well, parts of it WERE Gotham, but there were buildings from other cities as well-Metropolis, Star City, New York, Tokyo, buildings that seemed to be from everywhere, including many that she didn't recognize at all.
It just didn't fit. Any of it.
She stepped back into the Clock tower and noticed an envelope with her name on it, scrawled in Barbara's handwriting. She could have sworn it wasn't there five minutes ago, and yet, here it was. Fingers trembling, Dinah fumbled with the envelope and then opened it. It was heavy in her hands. She fished out a stack of papers, and something else fell out and hit the table with a resounding clang.
A set of two keys, attached to a pewter canary keychain. Dinah left the key for the moment and instead focused on the stack of papers. The top paper was in Barbara's handwriting again.
"Dinah, I've found the perfect building for your floral shop. It's yours, if you'll take it. Please take it. Besides the fact that you could use a fresh start and something outside of this tower, we could use your shop as another method for fundraising for our joint operation. There needs to be more in our world than just crime fighting.
Love, Babs"
They had discussed the floral shop a few times since Dinah's return, but she had been reluctant to allow Barbara to dip into the funds set aside for their operation to give a business start-up loan. She hadn't mentioned that she could really use the chance to get back into running a business again, that she needed something that was hers again after everything she had given up for Ollie and everything she had lost, again.
It seemed her friend had known all the same.
Tears stung at Dinah's eyes.
"Barbara, where are you?" she murmured.
Before Dinah visited the floral shop that was apparently now hers, she had spent hours trying to figure out some way to extract Harry, Oz, and anyone else who needed it from Arkham. She had drawn up a tentative set of plans, but she needed more information. So she left the tower and hailed a cab. When she'd asked the cab driver to take her to Arkham, he'd merely regarded her with a blank expression.
"You must be new to the City. I can only take fares from Arkham. I can't take anyone to there. The roads don't work that way. Besides, who would willingly go to that hellhole?"
After the fifth driver told her the same thing, Dinah tried to walk to Arkham. Every time she seemed to be heading the right direction, she suddenly looked up and realized she had gotten lost and Arkham was somehow behind her.
It was getting dark by that time and Dinah was starting to get desperate. If it was an ordinary night in Gotham, she would have no problem with keeping at it until she'd found a way to Arkham. Then again, if it was an ordinary night in Gotham, she would have Oracle in her ear and perhaps Huntress to watch her back.
Frustrated, she turned down yet another street, now looking for a cab to take her back to the Clock tower. While she didn't relish the idea of sleeping in the empty shell of the place she remembered, she didn't have anywhere else to go.
Dinah stopped short as she came face to face with a row of buildings. One of the buildings was a cheery green, with a sign advertising 'The Sherwood Florist.' Next door, for just a second, she caught a glimpse of a detective agency labelled "Lance Investigations." Her father's agency, next door to a flower shop-just like when she'd been growing up. She blinked and the sign for her father's detective agency faded, but the Sherwood Florist sign remained. Dinah shook her head slightly. Babs wouldn't have picked that name. Not given the significance...
All the same, she stepped forward and tried the key in the floral shop lock. It worked. She barely found the apartment above the shop, opened with the second key and passed out in the bed, too exhausted to wonder any more about the strange situation.
In the morning, the light of day nudged Dinah awake and only reawakened her questions. But even more of a draw was the fact that she had a flower shop-an actual flower shop to set up. She made her way downstairs and took in the refrigerators filled with flowers, and the stacks of every supply she could think of. Barbara-or someone, at least, had thought of everything. For lack of anything better to do, Dinah lit up the open sign and unlocked the door. The new Sherwood Florist was officially open for business.
After a few hours of the phone ringing off the hook, she turned over the 'help wanted' sign as an afterthought before losing herself again in the floral arrangements, the happy rhythm of taking and filling orders. She had no idea that the 'help wanted' sign acted as a beacon and somewhere across town, a City Voice reporter was adding a 'now hiring' ad for a Floral Assistant and Delivery Driver to the classified section of the paper on her behalf.