[Chiraptora: For Bryce Wayne]

[serinusniger]

The book launch Dinah so much wanted to go to is taking place in the ballroom of the Gotham Hilton, and the guest list is long and illustrious enough to warrant a large media presence in front of the hotel lobby, parting occasionally to let cars arrive.

It's into this crowd that Dinah, dressed to impress in red, with impressive slits up both sides, pulls her matching red Ferrari. She grins at the snapping photographers, pulls on her heels while still sitting in the convertible, and offers the keys to the valet who opens the door.

Then she offers a hand to her passenger, because coming out of this door will still be easier than fighting the other side.

Comments

[serinusniger]

"Of course I do."

Sin rolls her eyes in Dinah's direction but Dinah ignores her in favor of her coffee.

[gothamsheiress]

"Okay, well."

. . . What's the best way to explain parallel universes to an eight-year-old?

"I'm from the world next door, and there, instead of Bruce Wayne, it's Bryce Wayne."

[serinusniger]

"Oh," Sin says, sipping her milk thoughtfully. "Okay.

"Does Bruce know you're here?"



"No," Dinah says. "But it's not a secret. I'll tell him when I speak to him."

Sin addresses Bryce again. "So you are my sister's sister."

[gothamsheiress]

"I suppose so."

[serinusniger]

"I guess you are," Dinah says with a bright smile.

"Is Jason coming home soon?" Sin asks.

"Tomorrow, he said," Dinah tells her. "And you've finished your milk. Go to bed and you can train with him when he wakes up."

"Okay," Sin says. "Will you tuck me in?"

Dinah smiles at Bryce. "Be right back."

[gothamsheiress]

"Take your time," Bryce says, her smile softening.

[serinusniger]

They do, in fact, take their time. It's fifteen minutes later before the door opens and she leaves Sin to the faint blue glow of a nightlight.

"Sorry," she says. "We're reading The Hobbit."

[gothamsheiress]

Bryce has moved to the living room with her coffee, gazing out the window; she turns when she hears Dinah return.

"It's no problem. Is she asleep?"

[serinusniger]

"If she isn't, she's faking it," Dinah replies with the long suffering sigh of a mother.

"And she'll drop off for real soon."

[gothamsheiress]

"She's a cute kid."

[serinusniger]

"Isn't she?" Dinah says, brimming with fondness. "I ran into her a few years back, and she followed me home."

[gothamsheiress]

Bryce chuckles.

"And she's in training."

[serinusniger]

Dinah glances out of the window, almost wistfully.

"Yes, but in exactly the reverse way than you think."

[gothamsheiress]

"Oh?"

[serinusniger]

Dinah stays by the window, looking down on Gotham rather than looking into the light of the apartment.

"She calls me sister," she explains, "because we were trained by the same so-called 'mother.' I went to experience the same training as the assassin Lady Shiva. Sin was already there."

[gothamsheiress]

Bryce's faint smile disappears.

"Not the League of Shadows?"

[serinusniger]

"If that's your version of the League of Assassins," and Dinah doesn't doubt for a moment that it is, "then you've got it exactly right."

[gothamsheiress]

"Led by Ra's al Guhl," grimly. "When I trained with them. I guess that does make me your sister."

[serinusniger]

Dinah glances down at her coffee cup.

"Well, he wasn't there when I trained. But yeah, I guess it does."

And suddenly she's fighting a smirk.

"You know I almost married him, once?"

[gothamsheiress]

"--Ra's?"

[serinusniger]

Defensively:

"I didn't know that was who he was! And he can be very charming."

[gothamsheiress]

. . . Bryce is just going to shake her head and sip her coffee.

And see if she can avoid the subject of what her 25-year-old self thought of Henri Ducard at times.

[serinusniger]

Dinah shakes her head as well.

"Judge me all you want. I'm sure you've never fallen for someone on the other side."

She knows nothing about Bryce, she just knows who her own rivals have been.

[gothamsheiress]

"Not to the point of almost marrying them."

And the disastrous date with Jim Moriarty wasn't really a date with him. Just disastrous all around.

[serinusniger]

Dinah laughs, and rubs the back of her neck.

"Yes, well, when I do something stupid, I do it completely," is her answer.

Then something occurs to her.

"And you don't even know about Damien, do you?"