AN: Enjoy the first chapter.
Artemisia: An aromatic or bitter-tasting plant of a genus that includes wormwood, mugwort, and sagebrush. Several kind of Artemisia are used in herbal medicine and many are cultivated for their feathery grey foliage. Middle English; via Latin from Greek, named after the goddess Artemis, to whom it was sacred.
"Artemis is a born runner."
They're the first words she can remember her father saying. She can't be older than three, maybe four, pretending to be asleep on the couch with the hope that he'll have one of his unexpected bouts of affection and carry her off to bed; so far she's been disappointed. She can hear the rare note of pride in his voice echoing off the cabinets in the kitchen, the first time in weeks her parents haven't been arguing.
"You say that like it's a good thing." Her mother replies, snorting slightly. There's a familiar bite to her voice, and unbeknownst to her now it is the same sharp tone that Jade will adopt in the years to come.
There's a clink of glass against the counter and the smell of cheap wine fills the room. "Of course it's a good thing. If she can run she'll never be caught."
"Wouldn't you rather have a daughter who can face her problems?"
"I already have one of those."
Artemis feigns a snore and for a moment the kitchen is quiet. Then Lawrence speaks. "Let's not kid around here Paula. She's not like Jade. She isn't going to be able to cope with the kind of life we live."
"So what? You're just going to let her keep running away the second someone whips out a gun? You won't be doing her any favors."
"… I'm just trying to keep the brat alive."
There's more silence in the kitchen.
She can't place it on a timeline, she just remembers laughing.
The three of them are all piled on their uncomfortable couch, a mess of limbs and hair and the same steely grey eyes, all laughing at something they've seen on television. A mother and her daughters.
Her mother pulls back and strokes her bangs off her forehead, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. "Beautiful Artemis." She coos. Jade leans in, pushing herself on her mother until the older woman is pressing her lips against her skin too.
The door bangs open and the smell of stale cigarettes floats through the apartment. For a moment Lawrence simply looks at the three of them, exhausted from the evening's work and the blood caked under his finger nails. His face cracks into a rare smile.
"There's my girls." He grins, stumbling towards the couch to fall a little roughly on the three of them. There's some squealing and they're all laughing and she wishes she could freeze time and live on the lumpy couch forever.
As time goes on she can't quite tell if it's a real memory or something she made up. Sometimes she'll recall it at odd moments and still wonder if that kind of happiness ever reached the four story Gotham walkup.
Her knees are beginning to ache from sitting cross-legged for so long, but she knows she can't move now—the string is nearly in place on her bow and the slightest movement could completely undo any progress she's made. Her father gave her the bow a few weeks ago, a finicky instrument that requires too much pruning to ever give her a hope of using it properly. But he gave it to her and not to Jade, and she's decided that it's a sign that he has faith in her.
She's determined to master it.
"Brat." Is Jade's greeting as she enters their bedroom, flopping down beside her. The jostling movement combined with her half-glance at her sister forces her to accidentally increase the tension, the string crackling as it snaps apart.
She swears under her breath, words too foul for a seven year old. "Jade!" She huffs, a few stray pieces of hair escaping her pigtails. "You made me do that!"
Her sister merely shrugs. At 13, Jade is already more beautiful than she ever will be; her ebony hair is beginning to wave with puberty, the first traces of make-up enhancing her olive skin and making her eyes—so much darker and prettier than Artemis'—look both entrancing and terrifying at the same time. "Not my fault you don't know how to use that thing."
"I do so! Dad is teaching me!"
Jade smirks, crossing her arms across her chest. "If you know how to use it then why aren't you coming with us tonight?"
The indignant look on her face drops slightly, her lower lip beginning to protrude. "They're taking you tonight? Again?"
In answer, her father's voice sounds from somewhere beyond the kitchen. "Jade!"
Her older sister smirks before getting to her feet. "Don't wait up, baby girl."
She's ten now, standing beside her sister in a dark alley way. Her muscles are tensed and her left hand keeps reaching up, almost twitchingly, to check the number of arrows in her quiver. It's her first time out with the family, with part of their team—her first test, as her father had put it.
"Remember," Jade whispers, crouching low beside her. They're wearing identical black spandex suits, Jade look invincible and grown up and Artemis looking like… Artemis. "We're just the look out, okay? That means almost no action. But if something does happen… Just don't expect me to cover your back, okay? Every girl for herself—"
There's a wail of sirens coming from around the corner, and before Artemis has time to be scared or excited Jade's already leapt out in front of her, launching herself out of the alley. "Party's over!" She screeches into the night.
Her father bursts out of a second story window, showering glass onto the street, followed shortly by her mother, who lands gracefully beside him. Paula looks like some sort of werewolf, her hair streaming behind her and her chest covered in someone else's blood. She's wearing a satisfied sort of smirk that strikes the kind of fear into Artemis that can't be explained, only felt. "It's done!" She shouts.
"Mom, what—" Her mother doesn't even listen to her question; she's already drawing weapons from unexpected places, beginning to circle around the street with knives in her fist as the wail of police sirens gets so loud her ears are aching. Between the sirens, the screaming, and the dull sound of her sister's sai sinking into a policeman's chest, something registers in the back of her mind.
Her mother is a murderer.
She's standing blankly in the middle of the battle, one hand still reaching up to check her quiver. She watches Jade plummet a sai into the cheekbone of an un-expecting victim, an imperfect shot. Her sister twists her wrist until flesh is scooped off bone, blood pouring—
"Artemis!" Her father yells.
She pulls herself out of her trance, trying not to let the violence of the scene get to her. The smell of blood is filling the air, bullets rebounding off street lamps and the sound of someone spitting a distress call into a crackling radio. She's just pulled her bow string taught and taken aim when her mother screams.
It all happens slowly. Her mother is suspended in midair yet somehow rooted to the ground, bullet after bullet entering her body, colliding with shoulder, hip, neck, and spine. She can see blood bursting from her mother's skin, can see her muscles contracting and trying to contain the bullets, can see her knees give out and can see the blood soaking the pavement as she crumples into a heap. She can see people running towards her, and for a moment her mother lifts her head from the pavement, her eyes locking on hers and blood pouring from her mouth.
Then everything speeds up and her mother's eyes are gone and Paula is screaming again. "Take them and go, Lawrence!" Her arms are being ripped backwards and into handcuffs, her face shoved against cement. Her legs aren't moving. "Go!" She hisses again.
Jade runs past her and doesn't look back. Artemis is still frozen, and for a moment Lawrence is too. She watches her father stare at her mother through the holes in his mask for what seems like too long; before she can decipher what the look means he turns his back on his wife, charging towards her. "Run, baby girl." He hisses at her, pushing her in front of him.
She catches her weight on the side of her heel, and before she can set herself right again she hears her mother scream.
She blocks out the next few days, and even looking back it's hard to piece together fragments into a complete picture. She remembers a lot of being still. She remembers the desire to never move again, to never run again, if that means never leaving behind someone she loves.
She remembers her father drinking himself silly; remembers staring at the circles his cold glasses would leave on the coffee table. She remembers the odd moments in which he would weep over things like her mother's old blouses. She remembers making the mistake of asking why they weren't visiting Paula in prison.
She spends a lot of her time trying to avoid beatings, trying to block out the sound of Jade's screams as her father threatens her with knives. She remembers trying to sterilize the wounds and Jade glaring down the offer with the words, "Don't be stupid, I don't need help from a kid like you. Every girl for herself."
She remembers watching her sister harden and turn as lethal as Huntress had been, and remembers the day it was her turn to embark on the same journey.
Most of all she remembers one particular drunken rage; remembers her father accusing her of not doing enough, of it being her fault her mother went to prison. She remembers the blade of a javelin pressing against her spine and remembers a lot of screaming. She remembers coming to in her bed, an uncomfortable amount of bandages padding her back. She remembers watching Jade's hair shimmer one last time in the early morning light before she left for good. She remembers removing those bandages and crying as her fingers probed the knotted and uneven flesh her father left there.
She remembers Lawrence's failed attempt to harden her as well. She remembers his fury fueled by anger at Jade, anger that what was left of their broken family was no longer fulfilling a purpose. She remembers her father telling her he was striking out on his own ("Look for the rent checks, Baby Girl. I'll leave them on the table if I have anything to give") and disappearing into the night, leaving her with nothing but a haze of broken memories and a lot of time to herself.
She spends a lot of time being quiet. The next few years are filled with an internal silence so strong she wants to scream, the walls of the apartment slowly becoming blank as she takes down pictures of better, sometimes happier times. Eventually she starts reading to pass the time between when she's supposed to be at school to when she leaves the house in the dead of the night. She tries and mostly fails at making friends.
A lot of resentment builds up inside her and hardens her like the way Lawrence wanted her to be; by the time she's fifteen she feels much older and much more plagued by demons that no teenager should have. She wonders what it's like to not be alone.
The phone rings a few months after her birthday, breaking the silence. She answers. "Hello?"
"… Baby girl." Is all the voice on the other line says. Then silence.
"Is this some sort of shitty prank call?" She snorts against the receiver. She slides down the kitchen wall until she's pressed against ceramic tile.
There's more silence. "Baby girl, it's me. Mom." Artemis' heart drops, and now it's her turn to be quiet. "It's Paula, darling… Artemis? Hello?"
She hangs up in a panic.
She's waiting for her in an uncomfortable chair, her head in her hands and the smell of unnaturally sanitized surfaces filling her nostrils.
She hasn't seen her mother in years. Five years, to be exact. There were no visits, no Christmas' behind bars. Five years of separation.
She looks up at the sound of squeaking wheels. Where Paula Crock once stood she is sitting, tears running down her cheeks. "My baby." Is all she can get out.
Artemis doesn't hug her hello; she's staring at the chair with bile rising in her throat. So this why her father didn't bother; Huntress was his partner in crime until she couldn't walk. Now she's just a disabled woman with a kid and no way to make rent.
She visibly swallows but gets to her feet to meet Paula as she rolls forward. There's a moment when they both lock eyes, five years of no contact and old memories sitting between them. Her mother is looking at her like she's a pearl in an oyster, pure and touched only by the sea. "My beautiful baby." Her mother sobs, as if she's just been born again into her arms.
"Let's go home." She says, and before her mother can wipe her eyes she's bustled past her, reluctantly leading Paula to freedom.
Paula cries on and off for the next few days.
The first time is when they enter the apartment and the absence of Jade and Lawrence is so overwhelming they can physically see it being pressed into the dingy grey carpet. It takes a while to explain that Jade took off shortly after Paula went to jail and Lawrence… is Lawrence.
Not long after this she cries again while touring the apartment. Paula is a wreck when she discovers that her marital bedroom is empty and coated with dust, and even more so when she discovers Jade's old Alice in Wonderland poster still tacked to the wall as if waiting for her to come back. Strangely she doesn't cry when she discovers old family photos unceremoniously shoved into a box in the living room.
The first night they're there Artemis realizes that they have to learn to live together again. There's a love between them that runs deep, but there's no trust at all; their conversations are laced with awkward pauses and uncomfortable silences. Her mother smiles when she pours the tea and holds her hand against the cool wood of the dining table, and Artemis wishes she knew the woman beside her.
They don't sleep that first night. Artemis crosses the threshold of her mother's room and shakes out the dusty blankets, and together they start the process of sterilizing the whole apartment; they manage to wipe down most of the surfaces in the bedroom before their bodies tire despite their buzzing minds. Artemis lifts the frail body of her mother out of her wheelchair and onto her parent's old bed, and before she can stop herself or enforce the barriers she needs to survive the older woman is tugging on her wrist, inviting her to lie beside her.
Her mother strokes her hair in a way that reminds her of better times, her lips pressed in a thin line to keep them from quivering. "You have turned into a beautiful young woman, Artemis." Paula says her name with as much tenderness and faith as one would a prayer, her charcoal eyes swimming with tears. There's no trace of her old bite in her voice, as if being locked up for so long has broken part of her. "I'm sorry I missed it."
She can't think of anything to say. One of her feet has reached out to press her toes against her mother's leg, knowing full well that she won't feel it.
"You look so much like your father." Her mother continues, her thumb pressing against her temple. "I hope… I know that I did wrong and I know I deserved to go to jail. I just hope that my sentence wasn't yours as well."
Artemis thinks back on lonely days and lonelier nights and suddenly there's a bitterness in her mouth that she can't place. Before she can stop her, Paula is pressing a palm at the back of her neck and stroking the scar that she doesn't know the horrific story behind, fingers pressing against the knotted lump at the top of her spine. "Better days at coming." Her mother whispers.
Artemis wonders if it's a mistake to believe her.
Her mother goes through the box in the living room and begins extracting old photographs. In some sort of unspoken act of respect she passes over the ones that feature Jade and Lawrence, and soon the few pictures they have of just the two of them are sitting upright on bedside tables and hanging on blank walls. The apartment still feels oddly empty even though it hasn't been this full in a while.
Artemis had been expecting to have to help Paula at every turn, but the older woman is highly adjusted to life without the use of her legs; years of crime and villainy has left her old bones and muscles sculpted and strong, and a few days after her return Artemis watches her swing steadily around her chair and propel herself into bed. With a twang in her stomach she is reminded that she isn't really needed.
Paula gets a job as a cashier at the local grocery store, but this acquirement only leads to a series of terribly awkward questions; the money her father collects is for rent and food, but what about school fees? Books? Clothing? After nearly an hour of flaring tempers and distrusting looks something snaps inside Artemis and she screams at her mother—there was nobody to help her, she did what she had to do to make her own ends meet, why can't you understand that? Her mother's eyes harden but she doesn't say anything, not bothering with asking for an explanation. They both slam their fair share of doors that night.
The next morning her mother lays down the law in the most ridiculous way Artemis can think of: a stern talk around the dining room table. There's talk of grades—she's passing, she thinks—and the future—"Don't bother, we can't afford college, Mom"—and a curfew—as if. The two Crock women have a verbal sparring session that almost results in actual sparring before they come to an agreement: Artemis is to work on her grades and apply for scholarships and save for a future. The curfew is weeded out of the conversation and Artemis counts her lucky stars that her mother stopped bothering by the end of it; after all, Paula couldn't stop her if she tried.
Bitterly, Artemis longs for an empty apartment again.
She's nearly asleep when she hears the hallway window crack open.
Her eyes are wide open and she's thrown the covers off herself before the footsteps in the hall sound on the dry carpet. She's been waiting for this for a while. She grabs the bow he had made for her in the corner, snapping it as quietly as she can into place. She doesn't have her quiver but she has a newly finished arrow on her desk; putting it into place between the string and her blistered finger, she marches on.
She finds him in the living room, his mask discarded and his hand clenched around one of the pictures Paula's put out. She's stared at it long enough she can recall the photo by heart: she's a newborn and Paula is perched beneath a tree in the park, neither of them looking at the camera. She's never liked that picture; there's an odd energy about it, almost as if they're game about to be shot. She flexes her fingers around her arrow, locking her joints into place.
"Don't bother with that, Baby Girl." Her father grunts, sensing her presence and placing the photo back in its place. He looks a little worse for wear, his skin bruising around his eye, some hair singed. He isn't fazed as she tenses her muscles tighter, trying to find a spot not covered with armor to strike, and ignores her in favor of digging for a cigarette in his pocket. Her nose wrinkles as he licks the tightly rolled paper and flame flickers twice before he lights it.
She watches him let out a drag of smoke before unlocking her muscles, allowing her arrow to loosen and her aim to drop to the floor. "Where were you this time?"
Another drag. "Santa Prisca. Does it matter?" He rustles around in a pocket of his suit, pulling from it a rumpled check and placing it beside the photograph on the table. "Got paid."
There's a silence between them, a silence much different than those between her and Paula; Lawrence takes another drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the floor, putting it out against the carpet with his boot. She glares. "Mom's home, you know."
"You don't say."
"Is that why you're here?"
Lawrence lets out a gruff and vaguely menacing chuckle. "I'm here to take care of you, brat." He looks her full in the face, scowling. "Look, kid. I've had a long day, some shipments I bet my life on fell through. Give your old man a break or else."
Before she can stop herself she's hissing at him, so many years of anger building up inside her and threatening to burst. "Or else? Mom's here and she needs taking care of too. She can't walk—or do you already know that? Did you plan that—"
Before she can even get into a proper stride he's on her, cutting her speech short with a quick jut to her throat, his fingers knowing her body better than her own; she can hardly put up a struggle against him, his digits striking her wrists and forcing the release of her bow. Before she can recover her breath he's pushed her to the floor, her own arrow pressed against her throat, his arm crushing her into place. "Don't talk about things you don't know anything about, kid." He raises his free fist, striking her cheek with a punch hard enough to send a message, but not hard enough to bruise. "You know, I think you're getting a little old for a baby sitter. Consider this a parting gift."
He strikes her again, this time about her throat so that he can make his escape while her body is struggling to find air. It takes a while for her to rattle through some shallows breaths, and even longer before she hears the window close. She lies still against the floor for a while, glancing up at the table the photo is on.
The check is still there.
AN: This is my first YJ story, a piece I've been working on since January 2015. Please read and review and let me know if you enjoyed the first chapter!