boy wonder & pretty bird; oneshots/gap-year chapters

Tie-In Comics Pt. 3: Cold Case

Summary: When Captain Atom gives the Team a cold case to investigate from the Vietnam War, the entire operation gets very messy very quickly.

NOTE: I'm actually not going to do all of the comic issues, I just really wanted to get the history one out of the way, and also I really want to get to the Invasion arc as well, but I'll probably do that as an in-betweener before I start writing the Invasion arc of The Robin & The Canary, since this small series of one-shots ties into that. This one is issues #9 and #10 and takes place just after Infiltrator, so Artemis has just joined the Team, obviously.

I made our little baby canary bean an ARTIST and I am LIVING for it, okay? Dick's also a ventriloquist, and enjoys stepping on Wally's toes. Literally.

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M O U N T J U S T I C E
August 13, 15:28 EDT

As much as she prided herself on having a higher intelligence than the average human being, Reese had to admit that listening to Captain Atom drone on and on and on about historical covert ops missions and how to enact them was getting undeniably boring.

So, she did what she always did when she got bored. She drew.

Taking the pad of paper that each of them had on the little makeshift desk, Reese took out a pencil, turned to the side so she'd be able to see the side of Dick's face, and began to roughly sketch out the Boy Wonder's profile.

"...when your mission relies on subterfuge, resist the urge to go on the offensive..." Captain Atom was saying as he stood in front of the holo-screen that read Espionage 101. "The last thing you want is to risk yourself and the Team...because a covert operation means keeping to the shadows..."

He kept talking, but Reese zoned out again because it wasn't like Batman hadn't already pounded this information into her head when she had first been starting out as Silverbird.

Don't reveal yourself, don't get caught, which is essentially the same thing, but whatever, Batman was Batman, and people listened to him. Sometimes. Most of the time.

Either way, she kept sketching, and Reese actually thought it was turning out pretty well. Dick had noticed what she was doing, of course, and he glanced at the brunette from the corner of his eye but snapped his gaze back to the front when Reese gave him a glare.

Everything had to be perfect if this drawing was going to turn out the way she wanted it to, and that meant that Dick couldn't be looking at her. Although...one of the many, dare she say it, endearing qualities about Robin was his mysteriousness.

Practically no one knew Dick's identity, and the Dynamic Duo in Gotham, for the longest time, people thought were little more than urban legends the police department had made up to scare criminals.

So, wouldn't it be more mysterious if, in the final product of Reese's drawing, you'd be able to see only one of the Boy Wonder's eyes, rather than both of them?

"Hey," she hissed out, careful to keep her volume under that of Captain Atom's, but since she and Dick were sitting so close, he heard her just fine.

"What?" See, there was this thing Dick did sometimes when he wanted to talk without bringing attention to himself. He threw his voice and became some sort of thirteen-year-old ventriloquist, speaking with his tongue without moving his mouth.