The Universe's Mixer

The holidays were going to be hard for Dinah. She’d expected that. Facing the prospect of Thanksgiving and Christmas without Jake made her heart ache. She still thought about her lost son often, but she was in the process of making peace with it. Having Dean around helped a lot. It helped to keep her mind off the grief and gave her a shoulder to cry on when she really needed it. It had also helped to get back into fighting crime. Having a purpose, having something to drive her made it easier to avoid falling back into the despair that she’d felt in the months after Jake’s disappearance.

Since Thanksgiving was the first holiday without Jake, she’d dreaded it. But she’d also started to make plans. It was her first holiday with Dean, and she wanted to do something to celebrate that. She knew he liked pie and all kinds of food, really. And from what she knew about his life before the City, she doubted he had had many big Thanksgiving meals.

Since Dinah’s form of cooking generally ended in things being burnt to a crisp or over-seasoned or some combination of the two, she’d enlisted Alfred’s help. She’d invited the butler (though really, he was so much more to Bruce and to everyone else who had stayed at the Manor or been a part of the inner circle) to dinner, but he’d politely declined. Dinah felt bad about letting Alfred go back to the empty manor on the holiday, but he’d pointed out to her that Thanksgiving was a traditionally American celebration. So she’d given him a hug and thanked him profusely once everything was done for the turkey dinner.

Then it was a matter of waiting. She’d asked Dean to try to be home at a certain time today, without telling him exactly what was going on. She had hoped it could be a surprise. Whenever he did come home, it would be to a table filled with turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, rolls, and to an assortment of pies waiting in the kitchen. She knew he liked his pie after all.

The City very rarely rested or gave Dinah a rest. She didn't mind the pace most of the time. In fact, keeping busy was usually a good thing for her. She just would have preferred to have stopped at least one of the supervillains currently running around the City before things got even more hectic.

Currently, she wasn't having much luck with that, and she still wasn't sure what to do about Enigma.

She was keeping her ear to the ground on all fronts, but the Joker had been nervewrackingly quiet and Crane hadn't done much outside of the asylum. Unfortunately, proving his wrongdoings inside the asylum would be much more difficult. And while Dinah would love to just kick his ass and leave him on the doorstep of the police, she needed some sort of proof to go along with the gift-wrapped suspect.

What she needed was to strategize with a member of said police force. And maybe even get a little bit of a girls' night out in the mix. They could always talk business and then skip to the 'girl talk' as it were.

Dinah picked up the phone to dial her favorite CBI agent, hoping that Jen would be up for grabbing a drink and talking things over.

Damon hadn't achieved the exploring he had planned to since he had gotten distracted by Enigma. She had provided him with just the kind of distraction that he needed to make him forget about Elena for a few minutes. Of course, it wasn't like he hadn't started thinking about Elena again shortly after his encounter with the redhead. A few hours of meaningless fun wasn't going to change the way that he loved Elena. But being stuck here meant he had no chance of making an impression on the gorgeous brunette that might make her consider him as anything more than Stefan's brother.

He needed to get out and clear his thoughts. Living in his head wouldn't get him anywhere, and he couldn't help the fact that he was stuck here. He set out again to explore the city, again with no particular destination in mind. He stayed away from the street where he'd met Enigma, since he'd already seen enough of that street and it wouldn't be anything new for him to explore. He really did need to get a better idea of his surrounding if he was going to be stuck here.