noir_canary (noir_canary) wrote in newalliance, @ 2013-05-14 00:56:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | [event] mhmra, black canary |
Who: Dinah Lance
NPCs: Craig Windrow
What: Dinah accepts help from her ex-husband. It’s a big mistake.
Where: Gotham City, NJ
When: Tuesday, May 14th
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
There was one person she hadn’t expected to get in touch with her ever- particularly not when she was being hunted like a criminal-- for being a criminal. If there was anyone in the world she wouldn’t have thought she would talk to on a pre-paid cell phone, it was Craig Windrow. He had emailed her after reading about the attempted arrest in the papers, and left his phone number, in case she needed anything and offered to do whatever he could to help- even if it was something as simple as getting in touch with someone for her. And given how she’d had to immediately cut ties with the majority of people in her life, that was a very tempting offer.
So tempting, in fact, that she’d gone through with it- albeit with some reservations. But he seemed genuinely interested in helping her.
And when the manager at the not-so-awesome hotel she’d been staying at saw enough of the news and started to get suspicious of the blonde bombshell who had been living out of one of his rooms, Dinah took Craig up on his offer to crash at his place for the night-- if for no other reason than because said hotel manager was on his way to her room even as they chatted on the phone, with two armed police officers.
All things considered, Dinah didn’t feel too bad about running out on the bill-- the dead cockroaches in the shower had guaranteed that.
She followed on her motorcycle a safe distance behind his car and stopped in at the Duane Reade two blocks up from his brownstone and left with a box of ‘natural soft black’ hair dye. Blonde hair dye always had such interesting names- ‘Bombshell’ or ‘Goldenrod’ or ‘Platinum Hit’. Black dye on the other hand was just that- black. And Dinah was not excited about the prospect of going back to her natural color-- if only because she was half convinced her hair was going to rebel and fall out of ones of these days.
By the time she got to his house (a good distance behind him to make sure she hadn’t been made), Craig had already ordered a supreme pizza with extra garlic sauce and cheese sticks- her favorite- and had set up a pallet for himself on the couch with pillow and blanket so she could have the bed without any awkward misunderstandings or implications of funny business. And his shower didn’t even have any dead cockroaches to fight off. If he had been this thoughtful and considerate while they had been married, Dinah had to admit that there probably never would have been a divorce- and when she said as much, he laughed and shrugged somewhat sheepishly with a friendly, familiar kind of smile Dinah smiled back.
While waiting for the pizza to arrive, Dinah took advantage of the cockroach-free shower and bathroom. For the next twenty-four minutes, she occupied herself by reading and re-reading the hair dye instructions, making faces at herself in the steam fogged mirror, poking around through the various drawers and medicine cabinets in Craig’s bathroom, and dancing barefoot across the cold tile floor while the dye set into her hair.
It didn’t take much to bring back the coal black color of her hair, even after years of dying it blonde. And it still struck Dinah as odd how easily a drastic change like hair color could make you look like someone completely different. That had, after all, been the way that she and her mother had protected their identities for years (though her mother also wore a mask but it was all the same really). She idly wondered what someone like Mia- who had never known her when she’d still been wearing her hair dark- would say to see it.
With hair washed and dried, Dinah was just starting to leave the bathroom when she heard Craig talking to someone on the phone. She didn’t mean to pry, per se, but she never had been very good about minding her own business, so she cracked the bathroom door just a hair so she could listen while she brushed her hair.
“Of course I’m sure it’s her. “ Craig’s voice was a frantic whisper, barely loud enough to hear- and she would have missed it entirely if she’d still had the hair dryer going... “I told you, we used to be married, of course I’d recognize her.”
Well. Now she didn’t feel at all guilty for eavesdropping-- if he was talking about her it was clearly her business.
“I know. I know it’s not just for information. Look, she’s in the shower. Give me twenty minutes, then you can come bust down the door and arrest her and I’ll get my money. … You better not screw me around on this, I need that money. Yeah okay, twenty minutes.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that whole fifty second phone call added up to. This was a set up-- and she’d fallen right into the trap. How damn stupid could she get?! Panic was starting to set in and her chest felt tight. Where was she supposed to go?! She was trapped and Craig- that son of a bitch- was trading her over to the Feds and the Capekillers. She wanted to scream and cry all at the same time.
But she didn’t do either of those things.
Instead, she very calmly went into the backpack she’d brought with her and pulled out her costume. She got into her fishnets, zipped her body suit up to the neck and put on her boots. She had twenty minutes to either get away or prepare for a fight or a little of both-- because there was no way in hell she was going quietly and letting that bastard she used to be married to an entire lifetime ago end up with whatever reward he was angling for. Finally, she pinned up her now dark hair and pulled on a blonde wig, affixing it with a little spirit gum and bobby pins.
When she opened the door to the bathroom, she was ready for war and it was was really unfortunately that Craig had put himself on the opposite side of this battle.
“How much?” She asked with steel backing up her voice as she pulled on her gloves and leaned against the bathroom door.
“Hey..” Craig started to turn and blinked in confusion when he saw her in costume. “Hey, I thought we were doing pizza. What’s with the get-up?”
“How much are they paying you for my arrest?”
“Now wait a second, Dinah, where did you get the idea that--”
She didn’t like the idea of hitting Craig- it still seemed a little too close to spousal abuse for her tastes- but he didn’t know that, and he certainly would have deserved it. Dinah took a threatening step towards him and Craig held up his hands in defeat. “Whoa whoa calm down okay. I was going to tell you-- look I’m in some really bad trouble with some really bad people. They’re Russian Mob, Dinah! You know the Russian Mob? They’re not the kind of people who’ll let you go on a payment plan for gambling debts, you know? And I owe them a lot of money- like... 100k and change okay. So all you’d have to do is take one little tiny fall for the Feds! That’s it! Then you could do that crazy karate stuff you do or get like some of your super-friends to come break you out and everything’s good and everyone wins, right? You don’t go to jail and I don’t get my kneecaps broken and it’s all... “ he moved his hands back and forth between them to try to show a sign of reciprocity, “...copacetic.”
“How much?” She demanded, finally raising her voice. Despite her determination and focus, the pain of the betrayal and sheer barely-tempered rage snuck into her voice when she yelled at him. He swallowed hard.
“Quarter of a million dollars.”
“So that makes an extra one hundred and fifty grand you were going to pocket?” She gave a bitter laugh, pulling on her leather jacket and shaking her head with a joyless, hollow chuckle, “Man, Judas only got thirty pieces of silver. What a schmuck, huh?”
“Dinah it wasn’t like that, I was going to split it with you to--” He started to say, reaching out for her arm, but Dinah jerked her elbow away and whirled on him.
“Don’t you dare touch me.” She snarled, ready to back up that statement with the full force and power of every martial art she knew if he was dumb enough to lay one single finger on her.
He wasn’t, however, and backed up with his hands in the air. “You can’t leave. Where are you going to go?”
“If I let that question stop me, I never would have gone anywhere my entire life.” She shot back as she finished packing what little she had with her.
“Look, Dinah, I don’t want things to be like this between us. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t even look back as she walked out the front door, throwing her backpack over one shoulder.
“Fuck you, Craig.”