Warnings: None.

Disclaimer: I don't own or make money off of these characters. And I'm ok with that.

Notes: Written for a comment_fic request. I still miss Impulse at times. Reads more like a PSA than anything else.

Pictures
by Fairady

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"What're you doing?"

"I was reading," Robin pulled his cape off his head and made sure to sit on it this time. The thing had a good ten pounds of kevlar lining but it obviously wasn't enough to make it stay put in the wake of a speedster. "What can I do for you, Impulse?"

Impulse ignored the question, already sprawled out on the couch next to him and making a mess of the folder he'd been attempting to get through. "Like for a class? I got to read tons of boring stuff for school. Bet yours is for some super-detective Bat class! That's way more cool than what I've got to read."

"Not really," Robin snatched the folder away before parts of it could go missing. "It's just a profile for a case I'm working on. And I happen to think some of the things schools want you to read would be better than this."

"Nuh-uh!" Bart was gone just long enough for Robin to notice before he was back on the couch. A school text book being shoved into his face. "Look, it's all words! No holos or vids or even 2D pictures! How do they expect us to read this? It's so boring!"

"Well, some people use their imagination," Robin grinned a little at the look of confusion on Bart's face. "Just think of books as movies that you can play in your mind."

"But why would I want to do that?" Bart zipped away and came back with several movies that he dumped between them. "See? They already got the movies for everything in the book. It'd be easier to just watch them."

"True, except," Tim picked up one of the tapes, "most of the time the stories are changed to fit into the movie format. A lot of things end up getting cut out or never being addressed. So you end up missing a lot of things."

"Oh, guess that's why I failed my last test," Bart scowled down at the tapes that had betrayed him.

Tim didn't know about Bart's English teacher, but he knew his own deliberately worded quizzes to catch out the student who'd read and the ones who'd rented a movie adaption. It was a lesson Bart was bound to have learned on his own eventually. "Reading shouldn't be such a problem for you anyway. With your speed it'd actually be faster to get through a book than a movie wouldn't it?"

"But it's boring!" Bart whined. The book and tapes disappearing in less than a blink of an eye. "I'd rather practice with Max than read."

And considering how much he complained of some of those exercises- "Have you even tried using your imagination when reading?"

"Yeah! Well, maybe," Bart fidgeted which meant the couch vibrated under them. "No?"

"Try it, just once. It might be hard at first, but you'll get the hang of it," Tim opened the file back up to where he was before. "Just remember to treat it like a movie. The words are meant to be turned into images in your head."

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And maybe Robin hadn't meant it quite so literally, but that's the memory that sends him to the library as soon as his knee's healed enough to let him run. There's more books there than he really wants to think about, and for just a fraction of a second Bart hesitates.

A ghostly twinge from his knee breaks the hesitation and Bart pulls down the first book. He's decided to start with the history section. All he has to do is open the book and let the words become images in his head. Easy.

It's not until he's in the psychology section that Bart learns about eidetic memory.

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