your hamlet of eight hundred people or less: the one where they get sent to some small mountain town
Title: the one where they get sent to some small mountain town [side a]
Series: your hamlet of eight hundred people or less
Fandom/characters: Young Justice, Artemis/Wally
Word count: 1300ish
Summary: Artemis is an FBI agent. Wally's a forensic anthropologist. THEY CATCH MURDERERS! Based on Bones 1x04, The Man in the Bear.
Notes: FOR TORI, DUH. Side A is about Artemis and Wally; Side B, when it exists, will be about Dick, Roy, Conner, Kaldur and Meg back at the lab.
What happened was this: A park ranger in some no-name town found a dead bear. The local vet got called in for an autopsy. (Or, as West keeps correcting her, a necropsy, but that just sounds creepy.) There was a human hand in the bear’s stomach, so the vet called in the sheriff, who called the FBI, who called DC. It’s kind of a hassle to get dragged in on something long distance when it’s not even an important case, but Artemis takes a lot of pride in the fact that nobody in the Bureau has better squints than she does.
It should have been pretty routine - show West some photos of the hand, maybe get it shipped over if he needed to see it up close and personal, get enough information about the sex, age, and history of the person the hand used to be attached to that local law enforcement could ID it.
That was the plan, at least until West noticed some marks that meant the hand had already been cut off before the bear found it.
“So what you’re telling me is that someone is stalking around the backwoods of Washington, chopping people up and feeding them to bears?”
“What? How did you get there from what I was saying? How does your mind even--”
“Pack your bags.”
“Crock, I am not going to Washington state.”
“I’ve told you before, saying it in a definitive tone like that doesn’t make it mean anything to me.”
xx
Aurora is...weird. It’s a small town, and other than hikers and nature enthusiasts, they clearly don’t see a lot of outsiders. Having an FBI agent and a forensic anthropologist in town to investigate a murder causes such a stir that people on the street are greeting them by name less than an hour after they’ve checked into the hotel.
Artemis has spent a lifetime perfecting her glares, and they’re more than enough to persuade people to keep their distance, but West grins broadly at everyone they pass, thoroughly unaware of just how predatory some of the looks he’s getting are.
“Come on,” she tells him, “I’m starving. Let’s grab some lunch.”
“That place looks nice,” he says, pointing across the street.
“Yeah, like a nice place to burn my entire per diem in an hour.”
“You have a per diem?”
“Of course I do, it’s taxpayer money, there’s always a limit. You have one too.”
“Nope. They just said to send them the receipts.”
“That is so unfair, haven’t they seen you eat?”
West grins. “My brain’s a very valuable asset to the United States government, Crock. I guess they’ll do what they have to to keep it properly fueled.”
xx
Local law enforcement is always the same. They’ll make the call to the FBI when they realize they’re out of their depth, but their desire to cooperate always ends there. What Artemis needs is for the sheriff to tell her about recent missing persons the hand could belong to; what this woman’s giving her is some condescending bullshit about how outsiders don’t appreciate how dangerous the wilderness can be.
Artemis is about to point out that it wasn’t the wilderness that sawed someone’s hand off when West walks in. Falls in, more accurately, since it looks like he fights with the door to Sheriff Scutter’s office and loses.
“Sheriff Christine Scutter, Dr. Wally West,” Artemis says while West rights himself.
“My,” says the sheriff, looking him up and down, “the FBI really does get the best of everything, don’t they?”
“I really need to find the rest of that body,” West tells Artemis. “They’re doing their best with just the hand at the Jeffersonian, but anything else I can send them will be a huge help.”
“We searched the area the GPS says the bear covered,” says Scutter, “didn’t turn up anything.”
“Did you check the scat?” asks West eagerly. “It could have incredibly valuable evidence in it.”
Scutter’s momentarily thrown by his enthusiasm for bearshit, but she rallies quickly. “I could take you out along the GPS route tomorrow, see if we find anything?”
“Sure,” says Artemis. “Now you’re all about helping with our investigation.”
Scutter just gestures in West’s direction, the look on her face clearly saying have you seen him?
Artemis needs to get out of this town before she kicks someone in the face.
xx
Of course it’s a cannibal. Why wouldn’t it be a cannibal?
“...and those tribes have a long history of cannibalism. I’ve seen this before, it’s not a big deal in some cultures,” West says.
Scutter’s eyes widen, and Artemis grins. She’ll never finish that sandwich, not after this conversation. “Have you ever...”
“I’ve never been offered human flesh before, but it’s an interesting question.”
Scutter drops the sandwich, looking a little green. Some people just don’t have what it takes to handle squints.
xx
They’re at the only bar in town, after a Skype conversation between West and Grayson that Artemis hadn’t completely followed - she heard “glug, glug, woohoo!” over the laptop’s speakers, plus something about seizing the aster? Afterwards, West was uncharacteristically set on getting a drink, and Artemis shrugged and went along, because if the attention he’d been getting over the last few days were any indication, someone would have to be there to watch his back.
He’s dancing with Scutter right now; before that it had been Dr. Randall, the vet, and Charlie the overnight delivery girl is clearly just waiting for the right moment to cut in. Artemis is getting her fair share of attention, but that’s what the glares are for. Even if she didn’t have a squint to look out for, she’s not in the mood - losing Sherman in the woods like that left her feeling foul and bitter, no matter how reasonable it was to blame Scutter’s crappy flashlight and Sherman’s home field advantage.
She just wants to enjoy a couple of beers and make sure Wally doesn’t get eaten alive, literally or otherwise. He’s dancing with Charlie, now, and between the panicked looks he keeps shooting Artemis and the fact that she can’t actually see both of Charlie’s hands, she figures that’s her cue.
“Mind if I cut in?” Charlie obviously does mind, but when it looks like she’s about to say so, Artemis clears her throat and puts a hand on her hip. If that happens to draw Charlie’s eye to the fact that Artemis is armed, well, that’s just an accident.
“Thank you,” West says enthusiastically as soon as Charlie’s out of earshot.
“It looked like you needed a break.”
“Everyone kept pumping me.”
“Excuse me?” Artemis is a world-class sniper and a highly professional federal agent. She most certainly does not squawk.
“Geez, calm down, I meant they were pumping me for information. About the case? Not...ew, seriously, what did you think?”
Artemis is not answering that one. “You know they’re only pretending to be interested in the case, right? They’re hitting on you.”
“Um, no. They’re not - what? No.”
“Look around, West, do you think they get a lot of halfway attractive new faces around here?”
It’s barely even a compliment, and not even close to what she could have said, but of course he’s grinning like a fool over that. “What’s that? The one and only Agent Crock thinks I’m halfway attractive?”
She grumbles at that, but West’s clearly off in his own world now, probably thinking about the anthropological impact of new members in closed cultures, and wow, she’s been spending too much time with him.
“Hey,” he says, “if that’s so true, why didn’t you have all these lumberjack dudes after you? I mean, you’re...you know...very...”
“That’s what the gun’s for, West. Lets them know I don’t dance.”
Mercifully, he lets that one go.
Series: your hamlet of eight hundred people or less
Fandom/characters: Young Justice, Artemis/Wally
Word count: 1300ish
Summary: Artemis is an FBI agent. Wally's a forensic anthropologist. THEY CATCH MURDERERS! Based on Bones 1x04, The Man in the Bear.
Notes: FOR TORI, DUH. Side A is about Artemis and Wally; Side B, when it exists, will be about Dick, Roy, Conner, Kaldur and Meg back at the lab.
What happened was this: A park ranger in some no-name town found a dead bear. The local vet got called in for an autopsy. (Or, as West keeps correcting her, a necropsy, but that just sounds creepy.) There was a human hand in the bear’s stomach, so the vet called in the sheriff, who called the FBI, who called DC. It’s kind of a hassle to get dragged in on something long distance when it’s not even an important case, but Artemis takes a lot of pride in the fact that nobody in the Bureau has better squints than she does.
It should have been pretty routine - show West some photos of the hand, maybe get it shipped over if he needed to see it up close and personal, get enough information about the sex, age, and history of the person the hand used to be attached to that local law enforcement could ID it.
That was the plan, at least until West noticed some marks that meant the hand had already been cut off before the bear found it.
“So what you’re telling me is that someone is stalking around the backwoods of Washington, chopping people up and feeding them to bears?”
“What? How did you get there from what I was saying? How does your mind even--”
“Pack your bags.”
“Crock, I am not going to Washington state.”
“I’ve told you before, saying it in a definitive tone like that doesn’t make it mean anything to me.”
xx
Aurora is...weird. It’s a small town, and other than hikers and nature enthusiasts, they clearly don’t see a lot of outsiders. Having an FBI agent and a forensic anthropologist in town to investigate a murder causes such a stir that people on the street are greeting them by name less than an hour after they’ve checked into the hotel.
Artemis has spent a lifetime perfecting her glares, and they’re more than enough to persuade people to keep their distance, but West grins broadly at everyone they pass, thoroughly unaware of just how predatory some of the looks he’s getting are.
“Come on,” she tells him, “I’m starving. Let’s grab some lunch.”
“That place looks nice,” he says, pointing across the street.
“Yeah, like a nice place to burn my entire per diem in an hour.”
“You have a per diem?”
“Of course I do, it’s taxpayer money, there’s always a limit. You have one too.”
“Nope. They just said to send them the receipts.”
“That is so unfair, haven’t they seen you eat?”
West grins. “My brain’s a very valuable asset to the United States government, Crock. I guess they’ll do what they have to to keep it properly fueled.”
xx
Local law enforcement is always the same. They’ll make the call to the FBI when they realize they’re out of their depth, but their desire to cooperate always ends there. What Artemis needs is for the sheriff to tell her about recent missing persons the hand could belong to; what this woman’s giving her is some condescending bullshit about how outsiders don’t appreciate how dangerous the wilderness can be.
Artemis is about to point out that it wasn’t the wilderness that sawed someone’s hand off when West walks in. Falls in, more accurately, since it looks like he fights with the door to Sheriff Scutter’s office and loses.
“Sheriff Christine Scutter, Dr. Wally West,” Artemis says while West rights himself.
“My,” says the sheriff, looking him up and down, “the FBI really does get the best of everything, don’t they?”
“I really need to find the rest of that body,” West tells Artemis. “They’re doing their best with just the hand at the Jeffersonian, but anything else I can send them will be a huge help.”
“We searched the area the GPS says the bear covered,” says Scutter, “didn’t turn up anything.”
“Did you check the scat?” asks West eagerly. “It could have incredibly valuable evidence in it.”
Scutter’s momentarily thrown by his enthusiasm for bearshit, but she rallies quickly. “I could take you out along the GPS route tomorrow, see if we find anything?”
“Sure,” says Artemis. “Now you’re all about helping with our investigation.”
Scutter just gestures in West’s direction, the look on her face clearly saying have you seen him?
Artemis needs to get out of this town before she kicks someone in the face.
xx
Of course it’s a cannibal. Why wouldn’t it be a cannibal?
“...and those tribes have a long history of cannibalism. I’ve seen this before, it’s not a big deal in some cultures,” West says.
Scutter’s eyes widen, and Artemis grins. She’ll never finish that sandwich, not after this conversation. “Have you ever...”
“I’ve never been offered human flesh before, but it’s an interesting question.”
Scutter drops the sandwich, looking a little green. Some people just don’t have what it takes to handle squints.
xx
They’re at the only bar in town, after a Skype conversation between West and Grayson that Artemis hadn’t completely followed - she heard “glug, glug, woohoo!” over the laptop’s speakers, plus something about seizing the aster? Afterwards, West was uncharacteristically set on getting a drink, and Artemis shrugged and went along, because if the attention he’d been getting over the last few days were any indication, someone would have to be there to watch his back.
He’s dancing with Scutter right now; before that it had been Dr. Randall, the vet, and Charlie the overnight delivery girl is clearly just waiting for the right moment to cut in. Artemis is getting her fair share of attention, but that’s what the glares are for. Even if she didn’t have a squint to look out for, she’s not in the mood - losing Sherman in the woods like that left her feeling foul and bitter, no matter how reasonable it was to blame Scutter’s crappy flashlight and Sherman’s home field advantage.
She just wants to enjoy a couple of beers and make sure Wally doesn’t get eaten alive, literally or otherwise. He’s dancing with Charlie, now, and between the panicked looks he keeps shooting Artemis and the fact that she can’t actually see both of Charlie’s hands, she figures that’s her cue.
“Mind if I cut in?” Charlie obviously does mind, but when it looks like she’s about to say so, Artemis clears her throat and puts a hand on her hip. If that happens to draw Charlie’s eye to the fact that Artemis is armed, well, that’s just an accident.
“Thank you,” West says enthusiastically as soon as Charlie’s out of earshot.
“It looked like you needed a break.”
“Everyone kept pumping me.”
“Excuse me?” Artemis is a world-class sniper and a highly professional federal agent. She most certainly does not squawk.
“Geez, calm down, I meant they were pumping me for information. About the case? Not...ew, seriously, what did you think?”
Artemis is not answering that one. “You know they’re only pretending to be interested in the case, right? They’re hitting on you.”
“Um, no. They’re not - what? No.”
“Look around, West, do you think they get a lot of halfway attractive new faces around here?”
It’s barely even a compliment, and not even close to what she could have said, but of course he’s grinning like a fool over that. “What’s that? The one and only Agent Crock thinks I’m halfway attractive?”
She grumbles at that, but West’s clearly off in his own world now, probably thinking about the anthropological impact of new members in closed cultures, and wow, she’s been spending too much time with him.
“Hey,” he says, “if that’s so true, why didn’t you have all these lumberjack dudes after you? I mean, you’re...you know...very...”
“That’s what the gun’s for, West. Lets them know I don’t dance.”
Mercifully, he lets that one go.