2014.01.16 - Breath Control

It was clear, yet hazy. Little bubbles gently rose up past her eyes, barely open. It was the quietest ambiance she'd ever imagined. Stillness, layered thick; drifting. A moment of unknown length had passed, and it was then that Dinah suddenly become aware that she was underwater. Cascading, bent sunbeams loomed from the water's surface, a few feet overhead. Panic set in... she needed air, she needed to move! A lethal situation without known origin; contextless and detached. She kicked her powerful legs to launch herself upward, a feat that would've normally been easy for her, but this time, it didn't work... her efforts only pulled her down deeper! Another effort, another push up, only led to another pull down. It was like the world in reverse, as if her trademark willpower had been transformed into a handicap. Breathing became desperate and staggered, and she at once relaxed. 'This is it,' she thought, 'I have to give in,'--a thought that pained her emotionally. It was so counter-intuitive. She relaxed herself, making her body limp. And with the return of this deep quiet, there was nothing else to think about but that last breath of air, now making its way up her throat and out her mouth, in one last bubble.

But it wasn't to be. The world at once jerked in a frantic twitch, and Dinah thrust her torso forward, and the entire world shifted--everything interrupted and transformed, and suddenly overpowered by a extremely loud car horn. Her forehead pressed against the horn as it blast into the Gotham night, and she pulled her head away, allowing the wails of the vehicle to cease its angry cry. She was in a parked car--one of Ollie's undercover 'beaters'--and she'd dozed off.

The last three nights had offered-up nightmares like this. She pulled herself back, and rested on the seat. She fumbled around for her water bottle she reclaimed her wits, and looked at the clock. It was okay, she though, her unexpected nap hadn't ruined things. She still had twenty minutes before Reginald Witney, the man she'd been waiting here for, would step out of the butcher shop and head home.

Reginald had been a bit of a personal sleuthing project for Dinah--the nature of his crimes striking a nerve, as she'd stumbled onto one his of murder scenes a few months ago. He was an efficient, elusive, methodical slayer of women, and his body count had recently hit the double digits, and tonight's capture would mark the end of her search. She gazed up to the second floor window of the shop, and that's when her eyes met his. He was watching her watching him. They locked stares for a long twenty seconds before she decided to make her move, and quickly slid herself out of the car. Most of the time Dinah was clever enough to get the drop on those she was stalking, but it's not like she hadn't been in a chess-like equation like this before. Reginald didn't have many options: he didn't have any help to call for, he worked solo. He could either hole himself up, but without much extensive training, she would make short work of him in that scenario. So, he would probably run for it.

As Dinah sprinted for the door, thinking she'd kick it in, she heard scrambled footsteps inside. Run it was. But they were moving away.

Back door. Fuuuuck. Why didn't she think to check on that?! Embarrassed by the uncharacteristic oversight, she made her way quickly around the building, and sure enough, there was a small back door, now flung open. About fifty feet away a man was vaulting away, clearly as fast as he possibly could. Dinah gritted her teeth and tore off after him.... she was *not* going to lose him.

Block after block, the two kept an even pace. After the ninth block, Dinah's lungs reminded her to make her breathing measured. This need to breathe reminded her of the dream she'd had moments ago, and she imagined how staggered her breathing might get if this chase went on for another ten blocks. Could Reginald truly out-stamina her? She had her doubts, but wondered if testing this theory was too much of a risk, considering the importance of catching this bastard. She reached into her pocket to get her phone, thinking she'd get a little back-up. Babs could help, or Ollie, or Roy. But before she needed to, she watched Reginald make a sudden, decisive turn into an old, abandoned house on the corner ahead.

She didn't spare the building's front door, and kicked it open with great force. It reacted far more dramatically than expected, the old wood literally tearing off its own hinges, splitting in two, pieces of wood chips spraying into the old, decayed living room. This place looked smaller on the outside than it did on the inside--and had clearly been looted--the sparse, empty room-ahead's floorboards were exposed, many missing, each with a set of twisted, rusty, uprooted nails jutting out of them. She'd need to watch where she stepped. Moving into the room, she soon found a staircase--a rather creaky one, and she heard some stirring. Reginald, no doubt. Moving up the stairs, it was possibly the most graceful and careful "hot pursuit" she'd ever done, she thought, careful to avoid the dozens of giant, Tetanus-laden, thorny nails every few feet.

The floor above had numerous rooms, but it was obvious where Reginald was: he stood at the end of the hallway, looking at Black Canary with furious eyes. He held a young girl there, in his arms. She was tied up and looked filthy--perhaps trapped in here for days--and he held a gun to her head.

"Get the fuck out of her, you fucking bitch!" he screamed at her. It was the scream of someone with no options. Reginald, for all his willingness to kill young girls, was an extremely methodical, tactical man. It's the only way someone as twisted as him could go undetected for so long. She figured he wasn't about to take out his last chess piece--his hostage--so easily, but she still needed to be smart.

"Reggie," she started, using a more casual name. "There's no way out of this anymore. C'mon, you knew this day would come eventually," she said. A part of her loathed trying to relate to people like Reginald this way--treating them like real people. It was definitely not her forte, but the situation required some finesse. "You will be taken into the police today," she said, intoning absolute certainty, "you can do this with or without broken bones." She thought this threat surprisingly amiable, but concluded with a more forceful, "LET HER GO. NOW."

Reginald pulled the young, blonde girl back into the room, slightly out of view. She cowered and bawled helplessly under her gag. Dinah took two, careful steps closer, but still couldn't quite see what he was up to.

"Don't make things worse, Reginald. You don't know what you're up against," Dinah warned.

The rustling of something like furniture could be heard from the back of the room. She took one more pronounced step closer, and saw that Reginald had slid open one of the windows in the back, and was about to leap from it. It was only one story down, but it would've still been a painful drop. Seeing that Reginald's positioning had made it more difficult for him to accurately, point-black target the girl, Dinah decided now would be her time to act. She dove at him, making sure that her priority would to get *between* him and the girl, thus ensuring if a bullet were fired at *somebody*, it would at least be Dinah. But she was lucky--he'd committed to trying to run instead of shooting his gun. The young, teenage hostage girl fell backwards onto the floor, flailing to get herself safe. A particularly ugly, large nail from the floor shot into her calf muscle, and she let out a muffled yelp of pain.

Dinah had a few choices--she could head back downstairs to intercept a falling Reginald, who'd likely get injured on the concrete below. He was only human. Or she could try to grab him here. In a moment of fury, she opted to close the window. So she did, with great force, right on top of the fleeting Reginald, who had chosen a particularly vulnerable, awkward escape move. Both of his arms were at once slammed down by the heavy window's frame, pinched and caught, showing bruises almost instantly. "Caught, fucker," she announced scoldingly.

Dinah felt light-headed. She hadn't eaten enough today, and all the adrenaline of the evening had put her into a state of near-ceaseless edginess. It was three hours after she'd called the police to take Reginald Witney off her hands. She took another sip of water, and contemplated calling Babs, but decided it could wait. She was on the highway, about ten minutes from home. She reminded herself that she wasn't supposed to use her phone and drive, anyway, and she hadn't quite figured out how to get the stupid headset to work with her phone. Her thoughts found their way back to the dream she had--drowning helplessly. Despite this, she longed to get a good night's rest.

Getting back home, to her apartment above The Sherwood Florist, was total auto-pilot. She dropped her things on a small table by the door, and decided to make some tea before sleep. Her foot kicked a full-size envelope, bright red, that was lying on the floor. Odd mail. She picked it up lazily, and moved to the kitchen. Everything was how she left it in here--unkempt. She put a kettle onto the gas burner, picked out some chamomile tea, and sat down at her kitchen table. She glanced over the envelope, noticing it didn't have an actual address or postmark. She pulled it open with an old letter-opener--an antique given to her by her mother--and quickly let out a tense gasp at what she saw.