Faye Feng → Dick Grayson ✔

Distraction

Dick found Bruce in the Batcave with Barbara at his side. He heard them conversing in hushed tones from behind the elevator doors, and the second Dick stepped out of the metal box, they fell silent. Neither looked at him as he approached the table, making Dick's stomach curl in anticipation of the scolding he was about to receive. It wasn't his fault he couldn't pry anything out of Faye – not anything that helped their mission, anyway – and it also wasn't his fault that Barbara was still in love with him. Plenty of other girls he had dated got over him; why couldn't she? Maybe if she had dark hair and even darker eyes, brown eyes that were glazed silver in the night and turned to honey in the day...

"We've decrypted the transmission."

Dick blinked, frozen in his tracks. He was still a few feet away from the table, where Barbara continued typing away with her back towards him. "What? How?"

"Zatanna walked by while I was running it through the Watchtower's computer," Bruce responded simply, leaving his protégé to connect the dots.

He did, for the motor in Dick's brain suddenly kicked up to eleventh gear. "Magic?"

"It explains why nothing we ran worked."

"Of course," Dick said, struck with awe. "Magic is the equivalent of water to a circuit board – that's why Faye's phone got fired! Wait a second," he frowned. "Faye was talking to a sorcerer?"

"That appears to be the case. Zatanna couldn't reconstruct the conversation without the original bug on Faye's phone, which would have been exposed to traces of magic."

"So we don't know anything else?"

"No, but now that we know they're a magic-user and young enough to be Faye's companion, our list of possible suspects has narrowed down by quite a bit."

Bruce nodded at Barbara, who thankfully didn't turn around. It was hard enough for Dick to look at the back of her head. She didn't even speak; just pulled up about a dozen faces. Dick's eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the faces of some of his friends.

"You included...?"

"Barbara's idea," Bruce said grimly. "She said that until there's a bloodstain, a handprint or some other irrefutable evidence, the Fengs might not be the villains – they might be like us instead. It's a weak theory, but there's no harm in covering a few more bases."

Dick's lips parted in shock. At that, Barbara threw him a brief glance. He returned her stare before her eyes disappeared behind her chair.

"Although Barbara has a point, I disagree," Bruce continued. "Especially since Carl Johnson's body was found this morning."

The photo of a young man appeared on the screen, head torn from his shoulders. Blood-soaked bed covers lay beneath him, empty gaze staring right at the camera from the carpeted ground. Even with his gaping mouth and crimson dripping from his forehead, Dick recognized Carl. The handsome son of a wealthy bank investor and a regular at Bruce's charity balls, Dick had even met Johnson's four-year-old daughter: A beaming little girl with blonde curls, ones that she had inherited from her father.

Dick exhaled heavily. He had seen plenty of corpses in his lifetime, and although Bruce had taught him to view them as no more than puzzles to solve, he couldn't bat away visions of Johnson's daughter with rivers running down her cheeks.

"Did the police find anything?" He asked, attempting to distract himself from Carl's mangled corpse.

"Nothing except that the decapitation was done with a blade. All we have is what we already know – this is a professional's work."