An Interrogation Goes Out with a Bang
Contrary to popular belief, Dick Grayson was not blind to the looks he sometimes got.
There were the glares of haters, the ambitious once-overs of ladder climbing businessmen, and the crazed eye-undressing of his fans.
The last were his least favourite. Hate he could handle, but the actual shrines some people had put together? Terrifying.
That all to say, he was used to being stared at. Used to being in the public's eye as both a celebrity and wanted vigilante.
And yet, despite that, the way Artemis just kept staring at him had Dick completely confused.
Seriously, what was her problem?One minute she seemed ready to fill him so full of arrows he'd resemble a porcupine, then the next she's looking all shocked. Like he'd just sprouted a tail, or something.
He couldn't even properly come up with a metaphor because it was so weird.
It was while he was doing his best to ignore her that he knelt in front of Ida, pulling out his phone so he could type out any especially crucial details.
But the back of his neck kept prickling, and he knew the archer was staring, that same oddly surprised expression on her face. He was half-tempted to turn around and catch her in the act, but they had bigger fish to fry.
Like the rampaging murderer that had literally torn apart several people in the room next door.
Ida had, thankfully. stopped trembling now that Addams (oh how his blood pressure rose at the mere thought of that absolute moron) was out of the picture.
Tuning out Artemis and the rest of the heroes, he fixed their witness with what was hopefully a soft smile—he was a little rusty in the 'being friendly' department—and got down to business. "Can you tell me where you were at the time of the attack?"
Dick found it better to start with easier questions; to build up to the ones requiring more difficult answers. The last thing he wanted was to traumatize her further.
"I was just here, at the bar. Most of my usual clients don't come in till later, round dark, but Bill pays me double to hang 'round during the day."
"Bill?" He kept his tone low, conversational. Like they were simply two old friends having brunch. "Is he your boss?"
Ida paled, one of her hands twisting the buttons of her blouse. "Was. He was my boss—" She choked, knuckles white where they were clutching at her shirt. "He was the first to—to go."
"Hey," He extended his hand, letting it hover above her knee. "Do you mind if I touch you?"
Again, he felt Artemis' gaze swivel to the back of his head. She was staring.
Was she suspicious? Was she trying to incinerate him with sheer glare power? Was she getting ready to jump him?
Ida, unaware of his internal crises, nodded, so he gently placed three fingers on the denim covering her knee.
He'd always found person-to-person contact grounding during times like this, a pressure he could focus on outside of the mess in his head. "I understand that this is hard for you, but I also know that, if you're anything like Hennessey, you are more than strong enough to survive this."
She sucked in a shuddery breath, then nodded again, back straightening against the chair. "I was…mixing drinks behind the bar. I'm technically not supposed to, but Bill…he said the patrons think it's hot. Or something. He was the owner, you know, so what he says goes. Went." Another trembling breath, and she continued. "What he said went. Bill was meeting up with some new guys in town. Said they were suppliers."
"Suppliers for what?" Kaldur asked before Dick could, his usually morose voice a soft timbre.
Ida fidgeted in her chair, nervously eyeing the door where Addams' and his clown crew had exited. "Drugs. Bill was looking to expand our clientele with some harder, newer stuff. Said it would attract younger people."
Dick leaned back, maintaining the light contact between them while also giving himself space to think.
Drug deals went down in places like this all the time, nothing unusual about that. But something was sticking out to him. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"You're not going to tell?" Her frantic voice broke him out of his musings. "I won't be charged with compliance, right?" Tears welled up and pooled on her lashes, but she quickly wiped them away before they could fall. "I'm just trying to pay for school."
Out of the corner of his eye, Dick saw Artemis move to crouch beside him. There was quiet understanding in her eyes in place of their usual hard glint, "I don't think the police are worried about drug charges right now, so that can stay between us."
"Thank you," Ida gasped out. She took a minute to pull herself together, clumpy mascara drying on her cheeks. "This other man came in, and he didn't look so good. Stumbling and stuff. I didn't think much of it. Day drinkers and junkies come in all the time. It's not really my job to ask questions.
"But then he turns and sees Bill's table and just…changes. I don't know how else to describe it. One second he's just a crackhead, and the next he's got—he's got claws and is moving and—" She cuts herself off, quickly glancing up at Dick as if reassuring herself he was still there.
He tapped out a random pattern on her jeans, carefully meeting her gaze. "We're not going anywhere."
"I'm not crazy," Ida says to him, though it sounds more like she's telling herself. "I swear I'm not making this up. I wasn't on drugs or anything. I hadn't even taken a single shot—"
"Hey, miss," Behind them, KF spoke up, voice infused with a lightness none of them were feeling.
Dick had to squash his startled jump at the sound. He'd nearly forgotten about the rest of the teams' presence.
"You're talking to a man with gills, a metahuman, and two aliens," The ginger carried on, voice still pleasantly light. "Trust me, we'll believe you."
Dick half wished he could pitch in too, though he didn't think and an illegal, wanted vigilante would go over well.
Ida looked marginally encouraged by their lack of disbelief, her eyes methodically scanning each face. She seemed further put at ease by whatever she found there.
"Okay. He started changing, then he just—" She grabbed Dick's hand, squeezing it so hard he felt his bones creak. The gunshot graze from yesterday, though tightly bandaged, sent a twinge of fizzling white pain through his arm at the contact.
He kept the grimace off his face, knowing it might dissuade Ida from telling the rest of the story.
"—Then the man, or animal, I guess. He—it—had a tail and everything. It didn't look like a man, anymore, then it just clawed one of the stranger's necks." She ran tentative fingers across her own neck, as if making sure it was still intact. "That's when I ducked behind the counter. I couldn't stay there. I thought he was going to—"
A broken sounding sob bubbled out of her throat and she pressed a hand to her mouth, looking both surprised and horrified by the outburst.
Dick figured she needed a break and was more than happy to provide her with one. "I'm guessing that's when you called the police? When you were behind the counter?"
She bobbed her white hair in a nod, the hand currently not clenching Dick's own in a death grip still clapped over her face.
The look in her eyes was all too familiar.
He'd seen it when he was younger, when he'd first arrived at Wayne Manor and looked in the mirror. Survivor's guilt. The weighted, suffocating thought of why am I the only one still here.
A shiver traveled down the length of his spine as memories, memories he did not particularly like remembering, wormed their way to the forefront of his mind.
He must've made some kind of twisted expression, because Artemis' gaze was suddenly fixated on the side of his face. This time, since she was beside him, he could actually see the way her eyes narrowed to slits.
Clenching his free hand in his lap, he smoothed his face back into its usual schooled blankness.
Now was not the appropriate time for a personal crisis, not when there was a hurting witness two feet in front of him.
He turned his attention back to Ida. "I realize you've been through a lot, and you can stop answering questions anytime you'd like, but do you think you could describe what he looked like before he changed?"
Dick had plenty of experience with mutant type metahumans, or just plain mutant types (like Killer Croc). It wasn't certain that knowing what they looked like might help ID them, but there was always an off chance it would.
Ida had just opened her mouth to answer, mouth set with a grim determination, when Dick saw Superboy twitch.
The clone went completely still, angling his head towards the ceiling as if hearing something up there. Dick felt his own body tense warily in reaction to the super's vigilance, his head swivelling up so he could glimpse what Conner saw.
Except he couldn't see anything, only hear it. Now that he was aware of it, there was a loud ticking, getting steadily louder—loud enough now that Dick's own very human ears could pick it up.
He knew that sound. Knew it a little too well from his years spent in Gotham amongst bomb-happy criminals.
Timed explosive. It was definitely a timed explosive.
Could he not even ask questions in peace anymore? What was this world coming to?
The revelation that there was, in fact, a bomb in the ceiling above him, seemed to take minutes. In reality, it was a mere second.
The rest of the team were only now catching on, eyes widening with slow and sudden understanding.
He couldn't rely on them for help, he had to act immediately.
Dick pulled his gaze down from the ceiling and snapped his head back right, then left, mapping out the trajectory the ceiling would take when it inevitably blew downwards.
If he was correct (and, not to brag, but he usually was), the first bit would land right where Ida, he, and Artemis were.
This was obviously too direct and targeted to be an accident; someone was trying to blow them out of the picture. But, again, he had no time to consider possibilities.
Without wasting precious time on warnings, he kicked Ida's chair backward, not bothering to watch as it sent her skidding. She might get hit by some stray shrapnel, but lacerations were better than getting blown to bits or crushed by the ceiling.
With her safely out of the way, he dove at Artemis and tackled her to the ground just as a maelstrom of concrete and heat exploded behind them.
The force of it sent his face smacking into the back of Artemis' head and he tasted blood in his mouth, though he wasn't sure whether it came from a broken nose or a bitten cheek.
Smoke and dust instantly cloyed the air, filling his lungs and making it difficult to breathe.
Their rough landing had knocked the breath from his chest and now his body was working double time to pull it back in.
For an enticing moment, he considered just lying there. Maybe closing his eyes…
But there was no way he was dying here. Not when he hadn't even had breakfast yet.
Craning his neck, which was already sore from the odd way he'd slammed into the archer, he tried to look behind them but his eyes were too blurry with plaster dust.
He could feel Artemis struggling and cursing beneath him, but couldn't hear what she was saying. There was a ringing in his ears. An odd sort of buzzing silence that followed explosions of this magnitude.
His eyes were now watering, so when he tried to squint into the gaping hole in the ceiling, he wasn't entirely sure what he was seeing.
There was a flash of something in the dark, just a blur really. But he thought he caught the barest glint of metal armour.
A dash of colour, an inhumanly fast motion, and then it was gone.
Dick blinked once, wondering if he'd actually seen anything or merely had some new form of head trauma from the explosion. He honestly wasn't sure which outcome he preferred.
Refocusing back on the archer beneath him, he realized she'd stopped cursing but was still pushing at him weakly.
Slowly, as not to exacerbate any injuries he had and just couldn't feel yet, he pulled himself off her and sat up.
The world seemed to flicker in front of him, or maybe he was just blinking again. It was getting harder to tell the difference.
Then Artemis filled his field of vision, her eyes looking oddly concerned and her mouth moving.
There was a cut on her chin from where it must have scraped along the floor, and he reached out carefully to see how deep it was.
Not quite enough for stitches, so that was good.
For some reason his actions seemed to annoy the archer, and she pulled his hand down, lips moving even faster now,
"—you absolute and utter moron."
Oh. He'd heard that bit. Why was she calling him a moron, though, besides the usual reasons?
"What?" He said slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable even as his tongue tried to slur them.
"I said, are you alright, you absolute and utter moron," Her voice sounded frantic, borderline hysterical as she looked at him.
Did he have blood on his face or something?
"I think I'm fine." To be honest, he couldn't really feel the rest of his body yet. In his experience with this kind of thing, it took a minute for any injuries to really make themselves known.
Shock. He vaguely recognized that as a symptom of shock.
The archer looked somewhat reassured, now that he was talking and able to hear her. "You sure? You don't look…" She trailed off, eyeing him up and down again carefully, "great."
Her tone lit the fire under his usual annoyance towards her, lulling it back to life and causing some of the bleariness that'd been clouding his thoughts to dissipate. "Well sorry I don't look fresh off the runway, Arty. Remind me to glam myself up next time we're nearly blown to high heaven."
For some reason, that made her smile. "Yeah, you're fine."
He rolled his eyes at her, only for the action to send a bolt of pain lancing through his forehead. Of course he was fine.
"Are you alright, though? Nothing broken?" Dick eyed her up and down, much like she'd just done to him.
She looked okay. Evidently his impromptu tackling had successfully protected her from most of the fallout.
"Yeah, I'm good." She pressed two fingers to her ribs, and Dick recognized the movement as checking for signs of breakage. He'd done it to both himself and Bruce, on multiple occasions. "Ribs are probably a bit bruised, but nothing I won't survive."
"Sorry." He said quickly, eyeing the only dust-free swathe of floor where they'd landed. Dimly, he realized he didn't want to apologize, but his brain-to-mouth filter wasn't really working at the moment.
"You know," She looked at him again, something unrecognizable in the soft curve of her mouth. "I think I like post-explosion Grayson a lot more than detective sour-puss Grayson. He's talkative. And honest."
He flipped her off, ignoring the twinge of pain brought on by the movement. "S-screw you, ponytail." His body had the audacity to sway underneath him as he spoke. "Damn traitorous limbs."
Artemis laughed, like he wasn't being perfectly serious.
Was he being serious? His mind was too addled to tell.
She opened her mouth, probably to say something stupid, when there was a bout of heavy coughing somewhere to their right.
Dick abruptly remembered that they weren't alone. That there was half a team and a witness somewhere in the settling dust and rubble.
He tried to leap to attention, fully intent on finding them, only to crumple back down when a flash of pain ran up his right leg.
Evidently his shock was finally eddying, as the rest of his various aches and ouches were now making themselves known.
Biting back a curse, he stared down at his leg, noting with a grimace that there seemed to be something sticking out it.
Wire. Wire meshing from the pathetically weak plaster brick ceiling.
The archer hopped up onto her two perfectly fine, functioning legs—no Dick wasn't jealous, just annoyed—and slipped one of her shoulders under his arm. She propped him up, taking the weight off his apparently impaled leg.
The woman had to bend oddly to accommodate him and his shorter stature, because everyone on the Young Justice team was freakishly tall.
Artemis didn't say anything, to which he was grateful for, and merely waited patiently while he readjusted himself to this new way of walking.
"You good?" She asked when he seemed situated, her grip on his shoulder just tight enough to keep him from collapsing again
"Good." He managed to squeeze out between gritted teeth. "Peachy.
Again, Artemis didn't snark about his obvious lie. She simply gave him another quick once over, then said, "Let's go find them."
Together, with him propped on her shoulder, they headed off under a blanket of settling dust.
(A/N): Guys. Gals. My dudes. I AM SO SORRY :d I've been routinely updating on AO3, and I have totally forgotten to keep it up over here!
Again, so sorry! I'll do my best not to let it happen again T-T
Apologies aside, thank you so much for reading this chapter/leaving reviews on the last one! You're all so kind and encouraging despite me being a horrible author 33333
Have a great rest of your week :D
~ASL