Message Failed to Send // Book Five

» Chapter 4

---- From chapter 37, Text Me Back ----

W: Aaand Overprotective!Roy has been activated.
D: Great, this will end well

----

Dealing with assassins is always a pain.

Roy kept his eyes trained on them as he marches alongside the building in the direction of the front door. He could see them through the large window, in between wrinkled advertisements and window-chalk drawings of teacups, weaving in between tables and booths, towards Dick. Which wasn't inherently bad, they were a server at this particular coffee house by the looks of it, and it wasn't uncommon for people to approach Dick in public- he was famous, after all- but Roy had definitely seen them slip a silver stake knife into their apron pocket.

Honestly, Roy mentally chided as he reached the front door. It caught angrily when he tried to pull it open. They'd locked him out. He couldn't even step out for a smoke without Dick getting into some kind of peril.

He'd left his jacket on the back of his chair, so he was didn't have his cell phone- unlike Dick, who was fully absorbed in his- or his lock picking kit, but he did have a bobby pin clipped to his back pocket, so the locked door went from being an obstacle to obsolete very quickly. Still, it cost him precious seconds, and by the time he shouldered the door open, the bell chiming above, they had reached Dick.

Dick looked up, a charming smile fixed on his face, Wally's blue-collared influence making him naturally friendly to waitstaff and the rest of the working class, and there was no way Roy could make it across the cafe in time to save the idiot high school students life.

The knife came down with a flash of silver and Dick dodged infuriatingly slowly. The teeth of the blade nicked the skin just under his eye, which was better than sinking into his forehead like had been intended, but still wasn't, per se, great.

Roy was going to kill him after this.

In the background, where Roy had expected to hear screaming there was silence. The few citizens that had been in the cafe with them had gone still, not drawing attention to themselves.

The attacker- Cass, their name tag said- brought the knife back for a second swing, and it thudded dully against the table as they brought it down heavily, aiming for where Dick's hand had been hovering as he played through the act of trying to catch his balance. Seriously, what good was a cover if he got killed trying to keep it?

Roy could see the exact moment it stopped being a farce, though. It had only been a few days since Dick's last mission: Roy didn't know the details, but he knew Dick had at least two cracked ribs and a long stab-wound along his back that would heal into a wicked scar. Dick was facing him, so he couldn't know for sure, but Roy wouldn't be surprised if the idiot had torn his stitches.

Egg yolk splattered across the table with the next flick of the knife, and Roy glanced down to see that they had stabbed the center of his breakfast. He had idled a few feet behind the attackers lithe frame, watching their limbs tense and relax as they shifted stances to be on guard against him. They were completely silent, and they moved with the smoothness only a dancer or experienced fighter carried.

That and the foresight to lock the front door pointed to this being someone with training- good training- and, if he had to guess, someone who knew their secret identities too. That narrowed down possible culprits significantly, but if he was being honest Roy didn't entirely care about the who and why at the moment.

Part of him wanted to grab the knife from their hands, but his instincts were telling him he'd end up stabbed before he could get that far. Before he could come up with a solid game plan- something he'd had to work on since he'd done solo- Cass took another well-aimed swing and Dick looked very intent on letting himself be stabbed. Roy's higher-thinking shut down and he found himself going purely on instinct as his hand shot towards the table nearest to him.