I don't own Young Justice and this is not based off of Real Life.
Prologue:
It was a mistake that brought them together, just that, a mistake, and it was love that tore them apart. Like Romeo and Juliet... If Romeo were from a secret rival ninja assassin clan and Juliet was a half-Vietnamese girl with a temper almost as hot as Romeo. Almost.
Instead of a ball, however, it began with an ninth grade dance and a confrontation with the Mafia...
Artemis knew she hated ninth grade. And she hated her classmates. And her teachers. And, if she really thought about it, she hated more than all of that the cafeteria food (That, she couldn't help). She was, in fact, well known for saying so. After all, she wasn't very easy to like herself. She had, admittedly, often found herself contemplating murder in the very halls of Gotham City High, and for her, murder wasn't just a thing for contemplation. She had not killed before, not yet, but she had seen men die. Seen them scream as their arms were ripped out of their sockets and they were hung by their wrists and whipped until they told the truth. To her, death was a necessary part of life, so murder made sense. It was like her Dad taught her: Everyone will have to die someday, and chances are that some will die of murder, some of cancer. Killing creates statistics. That's how Artemis was raised, with the constant knowledge that the only result of death was statistics which would then someday fade into obscurity, facts listed in an unused reference book.
She had no sympathy for people. She'd never had any. Her own mother was crippled, confined in a wheelchair. Her mother was a statistic, no matter how much Artemis cared, Artemis could see in people's faces that that's what they saw when they looked at Artemis' mother. A statistic. The thought made Artemis's pulse race and her fists clench. Someday, she would be like her dad. Someday she'd have power over statistics. She would say who lived, who died, and thus take charge of the future. Artemis had accepted that long ago. In the world she lived in, the world that few people notice lurking around the corners and the dark recesses of alleyways, it was by fighting that you survived. While other cities might have the organized crime like branches of the mafia or drug dealers, Gotham City had lost its Mafia to Batman long ago. Now, ninjas were the city's modern Mafia. Who better to sneak through the night away from the view of the great hero? All of her life, Artemis had known her father was the leader of their "Ninja-Mafia" branch and custom dictated that she be the member of The Family to take his place. So she trained hard. Harder than the others, harder than anyone. She had always overcompensated for being a girl. She was often confrontational, and that was no wonder. At least, not since the Vespoto branch broke off, unwilling to accept her as their future leader. Instead, even her older sister Ches (Jade) had left when Artemis was named successor, and The Family that composed her father's criminal empire was crumbling. She knew she would do anything to gain loyalty for her time as leader. It just wasn't until much later that it was questioned exactly how far she would go for her father's approval, and that was when she met him. The boy who would change her life forever. The boy who would teach her to smile. The boy who she'd love. The boy who she'd kill.