“Oh come here baby girl…” He picks her up and swings her around, holding her close. “I don’t need a new hat ‘cause I’ve got the best present ever. You. Now let’s have at that cake. It looks tasty. Chocolate?”
He sat at the table in the kitchen, the fork on his Swiss Army Knife out as he scooped a bit into his mouth. “Oh, baby, this is really good. Thank you, Etai Yazi. You just gave me a perfect Father’s Day.”
Two hours before, Roy had pulled up in front of the apartment building where he lived with his daughter Lian. The building was unremarkable; about sixty years old, the building was brick with a small balcony on every suite including the third floor suite which the Harpers called home.
He’d managed to get a good price, and the neighborhood was decent enough to stay for a while.
His gaze slipped to the side as he pulled up in his dilapidated El Camino. Lian was asleep in her car seat next to him. These days you didn’t often see a kid in the front seat of any vehicle.
After the car came to a stop, the lanky man with the long, stringy red hair stood and stretched tired muscles, loosing a yawn before reaching in and picking the diminutive child from her seat. A half grin worn made his expression appear one of pride and contentment.
He carried her up the stairs and put the little girl down to rest on her tiny bed in the second bedroom. For some reason, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave the room and fell asleep in a cheap rocking chair which sat in front of the closet.
There he fell asleep watching the rhythmic rise and fall of his baby’s chest.
The day had exhausted her. From rides, to snacks, to dragging her Dad around, four year old Lian Harper had one heck of a day.
Lian had a spectacular day and learned a valuable story. The Tooth Fairy existed. Armed with her sparkly wand and fighting injustice, this Batman-esque fairy flew around and would hand out money for Baby Teeth.
When Lian woke up and realized she wasn’t in the car, she looked around. She was in her room, filled with stuffed animals, pictures and a few “boy toys” as she had been slowly becoming interested in those. She looked to see if the folder was in her chest but it was gone! Oh no…Daddy was gonna be so sad! Daddy! Where was he?
She looked around and saw him resting. He was okay. She smiled softly before realizing another revelation. She poked her tongue in teh vacent holes in her mouth.
Today was also going to be remembered for one other thing. On the bumper cart ride, Lian and her Dad had invoked the wrath of a teenage. A teenager who had no qualms with messing with Lian. With a well placed crash, Lian had smacked her mouth into the steering wheel and lost three of her teeth.
The pain had been horrible, but Roy had done his best to quell the pain Lian was feeling. The rest of the day had been slow, but ended on a big high note of riding on a roller coaster with her Dad.
She quickly pulled up her pillow and looked around, seeing no sign of any money. Did she not arrive yet? Or had she run into trouble? She slid off the bed and waddled to her Dad. “Daddy? Daddy wake up Daddy” she said, tugging at her arm. “Daddy?”
The frantic tone of his daughter’s voice roused him quickly from sleep. Instinct made him look for his bow, but of course he was in his daughter’s room. There were no obvious weapons to be found excepting her little toy bow.
“I’m up, I’m up,” he said, finding his little girl and pulling her into his arms. “What’s wrong, baby girl?”
On a nearby table, the clock showed that it was nearly six o’clock. It was time to make dinner. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen so deeply asleep after the adventure after the amusement park.
There was no sign of trouble other than her tone so he tossed her onto the bed and blew a raspberry on her belly and tickling under her armpits. “Now I’ve gotcha!”
“Uh, yeah?” he answered, drinking in the long legs and the long black hair. He had a definite weakness for pretty girls with dark hair. And this one bore a resemblance to a certain amazon.
“You wanna go for a ride?”
Well if that wasn’t a sentence full of subtext she didn’t know what was. Still her intelligence had him connected to a very powerful alien with a short temper. She had come to gather more on the rouge team, but something had drawn her to this dirty looking, trucker cap wearing boy.
“Absolutely.” The young woman clicked open the old truck door, swinging the heavy thing open with ease. “Go hard or go home right?”
“You got it,” he said agreeably. Roy may have lived in the city, but there was still a bit of the country boy in him. The boy from the desert was going strong. “So, where you going today? Can I take you somewhere in particular or you just wanna see the city?”
I dunno. If I actually beat the shit out of everyone that got on my nerves for being a pompous ass I’d never get anything else done.
Wally’s a good guy for the most part. You gotta pick your battles, even when sometimes you want to introduce a friend’s face to your fist.
From The Titans #1 (March 1999)
Dick and Donna are presumably talking about his “agreeable indiscretion” with Helena.
Devin Grayson must have caught so much crap for that situation. Nightwing/Huntress #3 had a cover date of July 1998; Titans #1 is March 1999. That’s about an 8-month time lapse. For the late ’90s, when people didn’t have Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook, etc, that’s a pretty quick turn around. DC must have gotten a lot of negative feedback.
I’m not saying that negative feedback wasn’t deserved (I don’t like the relationship for either Dick or Helena), I’m just fascinated and impressed by it.
//Is Garth seriously wearing a purple fish-print vest or am I imagining things???
From The Titans #1 (March 1999)
I’m with Donna; I always found “Wonder Chick” a rather painful attempt at cool.
