The Universe's Mixer

While Fred showered, Dinah made two calls. The first was for food delivery. She knew that Fred was hungry and thought that they’d all be better off if there was some sort of food available. Though she was pretty sure that Dean might not want to eat when she said what she had to say.

She just hoped that Dean wasn’t with Sam right now. The important thing was that Sam wasn’t tipped off that they might be onto... whatever it was that was going. While Fred was washing up, she picked up the phone and dialed, pacing the apartment and trying not to worry too much about his safety while she waited for him to pick up.

After all, if Sam wasn’t Sam, there was a chance that he would try to hurt Dean next. Then again, she knew full well that Dean was going to be hurt by this in one way or another. Even if that hurt might not be physical.

( The truth is out there. )

Fred needed to see Dinah. She couldn’t go straight to Dean; she didn’t even know how. She thanked Jesse before leaving. He’d helped just by being there.

Once she was out of the Library, she walked a block before making a quick call for a cab. She was soon racing to a certain flower shop. Well, racing may have been an exaggeration. The cab driver wasn’t one to speed through the City; he preferred driving at the mandatory speed, set by the City authorities. Fred didn’t push him to go faster though because she needed to decide what she needed to say.

Jesse had offered to do more without saying as much, but Fred couldn’t let him, partly because she wasn't sure what to ask or how without stepping over some unspoken boundary. She had to figure this out on her own. She needed to. She sighed softly once the cab got where she needed, and she was glad that the City was being nice enough to put the cab fare in her pocket.

She hoped Dinah was by herself, and to make sure, she slipped to a nearby alleyway and sent Dinah quick text.

Are you able to talk? Alone?

She probably should have done sent the text before leaving the library. So much for trying to think ahead.

( ---- )

Valentine's Day wasn't exactly something that Dinah could ignore, since it was the biggest day of the year for her shop. She'd been busy over the last few months, but the week before Valentine's Day had seen her working hard to make sure that everyone who worked for her was ready for the big day to hit. Extra flowers had been ordered, along with vases and ribbons. Orders were filed and organized for easy access on the big day.

This was the type of busy that made her happy. She was glad that the villains of the City seemed to have taken a break for a little while, except for whoever had tried to kill Fred. Dean, Sam, and herself were all coming up empty on that investigation so Dinah was glad to have the refuge of the shop to distract her from the frustration of so many dead ends and of being powerless to help Fred regain the memories that she had lost.

On the day of the holiday that revolved around love, Dinah had gotten to the shop at 3am to start preparing bouquets. By the time the Sherwood Florist opened, all of the orders were ready for delivery and there were plenty of bouquets ready for last minute shoppers as well. Dinah bustled around inside the showroom, in her element as she multi-tasked and gave support to her employees wherever she was needed.


OOC note: this can be open to multiple people so if you'd like to have a character drop in for a quick interaction, feel free.

Fred sat in bed and stared at the ceiling. She'd been in the hospital for a while, and she was more than ready to go home. Her head felt like it was still attached, and she could keep names and events in it. The doctors weren't sure she'd ever get her memory back fully, but the brainy female was sure whatever happened things would be as close to okay as they ever got in the City.

Jack was always around, and it was sweet how he looked after her. He'd only told her that they were friends, but Fred wondered if Jack wasn't the kind of guy who'd look after any head trauma victim this way. She believed him, yet he just seemed a little more champion than friend. She did look forward to his visits. Though, she was beginning to wish he wouldn't agree with the doctors about keeping her in the Hospital. There was no guarantee that whoever had shot her and burned her home down wouldn't come for her here. She was a target no matter where she was. At least outside she didn't have the nightmares.

The brainy female hadn't been overly sharing on the nightmares because she didn't want them to think she was crazy. She had small snippets of dreams that felt so very real, and she didn't like them, not even a little bit. They made her wonder about her sanity, and she'd only just gotten it back. Or gotten a step closer to it.

So, there she sat, wishing for some sort of outside contact yet not knowing anyone who could come "rescue" her. It seemed that none of the people she had known before were around anymore.

Dinah had just pulled her bike into the garage when she received the call from Jack Heart. Her first instinct was to wonder exactly why the mayor would be calling her. As Jack started to explain, she felt a little weak from the shock but she also resisted the urge to laugh out of sheer relief.

Fred was alive. She was in rough shape and Dinah couldn’t visit her until the morning, but she was alive. Jack had warned that there was some memory loss, but Dinah could only hope that that would come back in time.

Whatever the case, her friend was alive. Dinah thanked the mayor, trying not to wonder out loud as to why he was the first to know about this. For now, she was grateful for the fact that Fred had survived the fire at her place.

She let herself into the shop and made sure that everything was still in order there. She hadn’t been to her flower shop for awhile and she missed it. Truthfully, she was really hoping that she would be able to catch some downtime once she had made sure that the City was safe. It seemed like lately Dinah and everyone else she cared about had been running themselves ragged as they rushed to put out one fire after another.

Dinah caught sight of something in the window of the building as she went to start checking things out. She jumped before she realized that whatever it was out there was person-shaped but wasn’t moving. The Canary wasn’t sure what that meant, but she couldn’t just hide in here. She wasn’t the sort to hide and hope that the bad things just went away.

What she found out front wasn’t what she expected at all. The statue was eerily lifelike and her first thought was that this was just the latest in the long line of Joker’s sick pranks. It was only once she inspected it closer that she started to wonder if it was a statue indeed. Or rather, it was most definitely a statue, but there were certain things about the pose and the expression on the statue’s face that she didn’t think any sculptor would have chosen to sculpt.

She also found the petrified flower-shaped bomb stuck in the sidewalk. She frowned and looked from the flower to the bronzed Joker.

Finally, she sighed and made her way upstairs. It seemed that she had another mystery to unravel, but for now she was exhausted and just wanted to share the news about Fred with Dean and curl up to the man that she hadn’t gotten much alone time with lately.

( Never a dull moment. )

Fred's building was on fire. The office, the apartment... Dinah was trying her best not to think about that. She and Dean had been on their way to the warehouse when they'd heard the call over the police scanner. Dinah knew that she couldn't just call this investigation off. Not with what was at stake for the City. She could, however, handle this part alone while Dean went to make sure that Fred was okay. She was worried that her friend wasn't answering her cell or her comm. She was worried that she might have lost yet another person that was important to her.

But she had a job to do. Whatever was going on personally, she couldn't let the people of this City down. She trusted Dean to check things out and find Fred if he could.

Once they'd gone their separate ways, Dinah headed to Enigma's warehouse. She easily scaled the security fence around the warehouse and dropped down to a crouch outside the building. She was quiet as she listened and watched for any signs of security or a booby trap. With Joker and Crane involved, there was a good chance that there might be something dangerous here.

Dinah had the gas mask hanging around her neck, ready to be put on at the first sign of any fear toxin. She crept forward silently, keeping to the shadows and keeping an eye out for any sensors or security cameras.

(backdated to before Damon heals Enigma)

Once Dinah heard from Hank that the gas masks were ready, she sent out a message to everyone that could possibly be help with this current situation. There were the new recruits and those who had helped out in the past. She didn't know how many would show up or how the meeting would go. She had hoped that she would have had more time to introduce the new recruits to each other and to start building up the trust between the team before the next crisis, but life never did work that way, did it?

Truth be told, she wouldn't have minded just having a few quiet nights with Dean as well.

On the other hand, this was the only life she could picture for herself. She'd taken her time off and it had never felt right. Saving people, helping people-that was what she was meant to do. She didn't live for the potential disasters, but she couldn't picture herself doing anything but trying to avert them.

She had brought along the gas mask that Enigma had loaned her for the reverse engineering. She wanted to return it as soon as possible anyway and it also give her an excuse to get Dean the chance to look the young woman over. Dinah had no problem with getting a second opinion as to how much of the tip about the plan could be believed.

She gave Dean's hand a squeeze as she waited in the lobby of Stark Tower for the redhead in question to grant them permission to visit. Whatever came of this and the meeting, they would handle it together. That in itself was a reassurance.

Enigma’s news about the Joker and Scarecrow’s plan had pretty much wiped everything else out of Dinah’s mind. Her first instinct was to call Dean, but he’d already texted her the night before and told her that he was coming home today, so she would wait. She wasn’t going to rush him home from whatever it was he felt that he still needed to be doing now that his hunt was done.

She’d dropped off the gas mask with Hank to see if he could reverse engineer enough for the team and now she needed the time to think and draw up plans before she talked to anyone else. The hardest part was that she didn’t know how much of the new team she should involve, if any of them.

As soon as that thought popped into her head, she shoved it aside. She couldn’t make that decision for anyone. She had to give them the choice. She had to make it clear what sort of enemy Joker could be and make it clear that she would make do if they decided to stay away from him. She believed in the people that she’d recruited recently and she couldn’t start doubting their abilities and being overprotective now, no matter how much she might want to.

She also wanted Dean involved with this. She would feel better with him watching her back and she believed that he had a point-they needed to be there for each other with things like this. They needed to start working as a team instead of compartmentalizing when it came to danger. They wouldn’t always have to work together on crimefighting or hunting but with something this big, it didn’t feel right to leave him out.

The apartment had already been stripped of Christmas decorations. She’d taken those down on Christmas Eve because truthfully, she’d been overcompensating with the holiday cheer. The first Christmas without Jake was always going to be rough and she’d simply hoped that she could drown that out by celebrating her first Christmas living with Dean. So she’d decorated and shopped and tried to make plans and it hadn’t been fair to expect him to somehow make her forget that her adoptive son wasn’t here for this.

She didn’t know what time he planned to be home and she wasn’t going to wait all day-she’d call him eventually and tell him what was going on if it got too late, but for now she sat at the kitchen table scribbling plans in a notebook as she tried to work out the best use of the team’s resources to stop this plan before it became a problem for the people of the City.

( Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry... )

Backdated to Christmas day and before this thread

Dinah kept herself busy on Christmas day. She had presents to deliver after all. She'd dropped in on a few of her friends and dropped off gifts. The peace offering that she'd brought to Beauty had been particularly well-received as the young woman had invited her in for tea. They might not see eye to eye on Eric, but Dinah felt bad for how she'd left their last conversation and she believed that Beauty truly did mean well.

One by one her gifts were delivered until she finally pulled her bike up the driveway to Wayne Manor. She hadn't forgotten the butler who was so much more. Not in the slightest. Alfred had been there for her through two very tough times since her time in the City. More importantly, he had been there for Jake. Dinah could never forget him on a holiday and she just hoped that he was enjoying a quiet Christmas off. After all, she knew that Zoe didn't live in the Manor and so she assumed that it was empty. She also wondered if perhaps the butler missed having people to tend to.

Neatly wrapped box in hand, Dinah rang the doorbell. She wondered if she should have called ahead. She had been wondering that on each of her stops throughout the day but she hadn't wanted to over-schedule Christmas. She had simply prepared herself to drop presents on doorsteps if she had to. Besides, she thought that surprise visits from friends might be a nice thing for this holiday.

Enigma laid curled in the large bed she and Bruce shared, various monitors and IV's hooked up to her pale, broken body. She was resting, eyes closed but mind spinning rapidly, trying to figure out how to extract herself from the situation without losing everything she held dear to her.

Jack, as much as she hated to admit it, had been right. She couldn't say that the Joker had done this and retain her status (however tainted and tarnished) in The City. Oh there were some, those who knew her true nature she could tell...Bruce and Damon, her father and Crane (though she had a feeling Crane already knew), but those like Erik and Christine...that annoying reporter, Lane...the police...they couldn't know, not without consequence.

So Enigma thought...and plotted...and planned. The brilliant, gifted mind that was a trait all Nigma's shared spinning at a rapid pace, mapping out twists and turns, benefits and risks, and all the while she lay there in her bed at Stark Tower, trying to heal, to move on, trying not to think about a madman's maniacal grin as he tore into her flesh.

Dinah was pretty sure that Dean wouldn't be home for Christmas. He was working that job and he'd said that he would be back when "all this" was over, whatever that meant. She knew he was angry and needed time to cool off. At least, she hoped that he just needed time to cool off. The prospect of spending Christmas without him hurt, but she wasn't the type to sit around and mope. And she really wasn't just going to wait around for him to decide that he was coming home.

To add insult to injury, she'd found a few surprises waiting for her in her shop. There was a card featuring Eric's vampiric 'family' in ugly Christmas sweaters, a set of police-issue handcuffs from Enigma, and most disturbing of all, a beautifully wrapped box from the Scarecrow containing a dead canary.

Needless to say, she had a lot of frustration to work out. She wasn't exactly glad when the news reported that there was a Christmas party that was currently being held hostage, but she wasn't sorry about the chance to get out there and knock a few heads together.

She headed off for the sky rise building containing the hostage situation. Once there, she began to climb the fire escape as she looked for a route into the top level of the building where the party was located. She hoped she could find a way to just slip in unnoticed. Hostage situations like this went better when stealth was involved after all.

Dinah wasn’t at ease in the wake of her discussion with Eric. No, she didn’t like just how casually and easily he had found her. She also wasn’t sure how she felt about the truce, even if she was the one who had proposed it. She did believe that it was the best way to keep people safe. To keep Dean safe, assuming he went along with it. She didn’t plan on dropping the ball on Eric. She wasn’t going to assume that he would keep his word. Though if he did, that would give them the chance to focus on the Joker and Scarecrow. And Enigma, if the girl continued to make trouble.

Dean wasn’t home when she got home, so she decided it was time to wrap presents. She wrapped his first and slipped it under the tree. There were two for him-a ‘naughty’ and a ‘nice’ present. She smiled a little and started humming to herself as she settled into wrapping some of the other presents. She was nervous about the discussion that would be had whenever he got home but for now she would just enjoy the fact that there wasn’t a crisis happening right now. That she could be at home, wrapping presents for the people she cared about.

( Snow's coming down, I'm watching it fall... )

Dinah was in a festive mood at the moment. She had just finished her Christmas shopping so her arms were loaded down with bags of presents, and now she was taking a stroll by the City's gigantic Christmas tree. There was still that sadness at the idea of having Christmas without Jake, but there were things to be happy about too. She didn't know what they'd do and she didn't much care about the details, but she was looking forward to her first Christmas with Dean. She had a new team member to work with, and she currently had bags of presents for everyone else that was important to her too.

The tree itself was a sight to see. Dinah had always liked Christmas lights and this year was no different. She lingered just a bit and bought some hot chocolate from a street vendor before finding a bench to set her things down on. She planned to patrol later but it couldn't hurt to take a few minutes to simply be, could it?

The sounds of Christmas carols greeted her ears and there was just the faintest bit of chill in the air as she sat and enjoyed the hot chocolate and the lights.

The second that Fixit was closed, Megan 'ported herself back to the cottage, directly into her room. There was half an hour until Dinah had said that they would meet up again in front of the store, and while that had seemed like plenty of time earlier, Megan had forgotten the state of her room.

She started digging through her closet for workout clothes, throwing things aside, and stopped. Typical. The City knew. Her old X-men uniform hung in the back of the closet: reinforced fabric, armored boots and gauntlets, everything.

Megan hesitated for just a moment before grabbing for the familiar black and yellow. If all else, it was something she was familiar with.

Pulling her hair back, she 'ported herself back to Fixit to wait.

Dinah had decided to go looking for Megan to check up on the girl. It had a been awhile and she couldn't help but feel a little bit responsible. She had also considered offering to work with her, if she wanted. The mutant had expressed a curiosity about the Justice League and while there wasn't much of a team left, Dinah still thought that she and Hank had room to take in new people if they needed a place to go.

When she didn't find Megan at the coffee shop and heard that the young woman was no longer employed there, she asked around. There weren't too many pink-haired girls with fairy wings in the City after all, so it wasn't hard to find her.

The information Dinah received had pointed her in the direction of Megan's new place of employment, Fixit. Dinah found the shop and pushed open the door, looking for a sign of pink hair or wings.

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.

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.

As Dinah had expected, her phone reappeared in her pocket on the way home from Enigma's warehouse. As soon as it did, she'd called Dean. If she knew him as well as she thought she did, he would have been worried by now, possibly frantic and almost certainly out looking for her.

She was still twitchy and exhausted and she was really glad to be going home. She just wanted to see Dean and make sure he was still okay-to make sure that none of the nightmares she'd had about him over the last half day had come to pass.

By the time she made it home, she definitely looked the worse for the wear. She did the best she could to smooth her hair down, trying to look as presentable and 'okay' as she could before she let herself in the door.

Dinah stood in front of the asylum, staring up at it in silence while she tried to psych herself up to enter. She had heard rumors about the asylum's reopening. Rumors that the Joker was now a patient here. Rumors that there was a new doctor in town.

She didn't like this place. In fact, she hated this place. Memories of being held against her will and drugged up were nothing compared to memories of how she'd found Jake here. Memories of wanting to kill the Joker and hesitating because Jake-Jake was in the room and she couldn't cross that line. Not with her son watching.

Memories of all that had happened in the months when Jake had been missing, and of everything that had come out in the months when he'd been recovering after the fact.

She hated this place, but she wouldn't let that keep her from doing her job.

Perhaps she could have brought Dean or Zoe or Oliver. Maybe she should have. But this return to Arkham was something she had to do on her own. She wasn't sure why exactly, but she knew that she had to face this on her own.

She wasn't wearing her fishnets today. She wasn't even wearing her other, slightly less revealing costume. Maybe she would have felt better if she had one of the costumes, but she was visiting in broad daylight and it would be better to be less conspicuous. Which meant normal clothes and a cover story. If Crane was indeed here, he would most likely recognize her. But if he wasn't, well, then she would at least have a chance of getting her information and leaving without trouble.

She finally found her courage and entered the building. Once inside, she made a beeline for the receptionist desk and asked to see Dr. Crane. She was most definitely hoping that all she received in response was a blank, confused look.

Dinah was really fed up with getting dirty picture messages from a certain vampire, and more fed up with the fact that she couldn't find a phone store to change her number, nor could she simply lose her phone.

That was why she was glad that Fred seemed to think she knew someone who could help. She trusted Fred's judgment and hoped that her brainy friend was right. She really hoped she was right.

Dinah followed Fred as they walked through the City looking for Annie's shop. She glanced over at Fred as they walked.

"So how did you meet Annie?" she asked.