It began when she tried to kill him.
Oliver Queen had been on his nightly patrol through Star City. Although he should say that he was glad it was so quiet, in reality he was itching for action. Speedy was home, furious with Oliver over some remark he'd made about sidekicks. It hadn't even meant anything - just something he'd said in passing - but now Speedy was just Roy Harper, sulking in his bedroom. Oliver would deal with him later. Now he just wanted to fight something.
It was nearing one am when he heard shouts and thuds from an auto shop downtown, the one whose roof he was currently standing on. He hesitated for less than a second before dropping onto the fire escape, and peering through the window. Inside, he caught a glimpse of several dark figures running at someone. A woman, it looked like. He opened the window and jumped down, landing with his bow ready for action -
- and then paused briefly. It occurred to him that he may have analyzed the situation wrong. For one, the woman he had spotted from outside was not a woman at all, but a girl. She was barely a teenager, with a long, Rapunzel-esque blonde ponytail, and a dark t-shirt and pants along with a hockey mask.
And secondly, he didn't know if she even needed his help. She was kicking their asses. As he watched, a bulky man ran straight at her, and she gracefully leaped into the air, slamming her foot onto his nose. Disoriented, he stumbled back, and she followed up with two more kicks right in the face. He landed on the ground, crashing into another one of the men.
"Hey, kid!" yelled the Green Arrow. "Need any help?"
"No!" she shouted. "You can't help me!"
He frowned. "I've been saving this town for years now. I think I can handle a bunch of goons." He whipped out his bow and fitted it with an arrow. He didn't think she needed his help, really, but she was just a kid. It wasn't good manners to allow her to take down a dozen thugs without at least an offer of assistance.
"You're not allowed to help," she snarled. One man grabbed her upper arm and she hissed. She slickly kicked his feet out from underneath and then proceeded to throw three short, sharp jabs into his face.
He was the last of them. All of the men were either lying on the ground, too dazed to move, or scrambling out of the garage. Watching them run away, shrieking, Oliver Queen had to admit he was impressed. Bewildered, but impressed.
"Uh, is there a reas -" He started to say, turning around.
She also had a bow and arrow, and hers was currently pointed at his neck.
"Don't move," she warned.
"Woah," he said. This was a plot twist. Oliver stared at her, this child with shaking limbs and dark clothes, at the destruction she caused. The dark clothes, the weapon aimed at his neck, the seemingly senseless attack on a group of men who were not at all prepared to take her on... the idea of her being the bad guy in this situation seemed less improbable now. It was an easy assumption that any child involved in disputes such as these was the victim. An easy assumption, but not necessarily the right one. "I think this is uncalled for."
"Speak for yourself," she said. Now that there were no distractions, the quiver in her voice became more apparent. "I should kill you."
"You won't," he assured her.
"How do you know?" she said, almost desperately. "I could!" She hesitated for a moment, her breath unsteady. "I've killed before." Her knees buckled for a second, as if she regretted telling him that.
She meant it to be threatening, but the only strong emotion Oliver felt at that moment was immense sadness. He lowered his arrow and his voice, scanning the auto shop for cameras, hidden microphones, anything that would explain her behavior. "Look, I'm guessing it wasn't your idea to start beating people up. Who's making you do this?"
She jutted out her chin. Her hockey mask was slipping, and he caught a brief glimpse of narrow eyes before she shoved it back up, like a nerd pushing his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose. "How do you know I'm not just doing this because I want to?" she challenged.
"You're twelve," deadpanned Oliver.
"Fourteen!" she said, stamping a foot.
"Kid," he said, almost pleading. "We could help you. The Justice League. If you're in trouble, if someone is forcing you -"
"How many times do I have to tell you, I don't need your help!" And then she released her arrow, but not before adjusting the aim ever so slightly. Instead of puncturing his neck, it hit the ground a few feet from him, where it began to billow thick clouds of night. A smoke arrow. When it cleared, she was gone without a trace.
Or she would've been, if she hadn't left the side door open in her rush to get out. Oliver smiled grimly. Amateur.
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It was almost a year before Oliver would encounter the girl again. Things had changed by then. The Justice League had another branch now, a covert ops team made up entirely of teens. He had lost a sid - a partner. He was in a relationship with Black Canary. Which was actually the main reason he happened to run into the girl again.
He was in Gotham City with Dinah, who was visiting her parents. While they were out to dinner, he happened to glance up at the television playing in the bar to see flames burning up the screen. There was a huge fire in one of the residential neighborhoods of Gotham.
"Dinah," he murmured to the blonde woman on his right. The fact that he was here with her, at a mediocre diner sitting through her parents arguing in the unique style only the elderly can, about Star Wars, of all things, was surely a testament to how much she meant to him. He nudged her ever so slightly. "I think Batman can handle it, but your parents don't know that."
Dinah nodded, a smirk on the corner of her lips, and he resisted the urge to press his lips to it. "He might need our help, after all. You never know." Louder, to her parents, she said, "I'm sorry, Mom and Dad, but we have got to go. Official business."
Mr Lance narrowed his eyes. "Wait just a second, young lady -"
"I'm twenty-three, Dad, you can't ground me," she said, good-naturedly, but with an edge. She stood up, Oliver at her heels. "I'll call you later."
Mrs Lance, the original Black Canary, seemed to understand. She winked at Oliver. "You kids have fun."
At a speed so fast the Flash would've been impressed, the Green Arrow and Black Canary arrived at the scene of the fire. Batman was running out of a burning house, carrying a man on his shoulders.
"Where's the fire?" quipped Oliver. Dinah groaned.
Batman ignored Oliver's joke, which wasn't an unreasonable reaction. Putting down the man on the curb, where he was swarmed by paramedics, he said, "There are still people in those houses." The Dark Knight pointed at another three houses, identical both in the architecture and the size of the fire consuming them.
"We're on it," promised Dinah. The two of them raced for the burning buildings, dodging firefighters, paramedics, and the victims, sitting on the curb or wandering around, dazed, crying, shouting -
Dinah took the first house, unleashing a sonic scream onto the fire, flattening the flames with the force of her cry. The archer left her to deal with that house and continued to the next one.
"My son!" wailed a woman in the street, being physically restrained by a firefighter from running back into the flames. "He's in there, you have to go in!"
"The building is seconds from collapsing," the man said desperately. Seeing the Green Arrow, he added, "Anyone who goes in there will be killed. I'm sorry."
Oliver snorted. "Let's see about that." He fitted an arrow into his bow, and shot it at the upper story window, the cord attached to it wildly flailing before it was pulled taut. In seconds he had climbed up and burst into the flames.
Immediately, the smoke overwhelmed him, but he kept going. "Hello!" he yelled. "I'm here to help!" Every foot step burned him, and the ceiling above him crackled with anticipation. He only had a few moments before the building fell to its knees around him. Despite his flippant response to the firefighter's warning, he was only human. Fire would kill him just as violently as it killed anyone else.
"You again?" came a reply, and it wasn't the voice of a victim trapped by fire. Before he could respond, the would-be assassin from Star City whizzed by him, a small boy cradled in her arms. "Quit following me!" She ran to the window he had entered through and jumped out. Even though she'd just told him not to, he followed her, leaping out the window. As he landed not so gently on the pavement, he heard screams from in front of him and a terrific crash from behind him. The building was collapsing.
"Great timing, Arrow," he congratulated himself under his breath. Lifting himself up, he saw the same blonde ponytail from the auto shop passing the young boy into the arms of his mother, who was pressing sobbing thank yous into the girl's hands.
The girl turned around to glance at the remains of the house behind her. In the brief second before she turned her head again, Oliver saw a tanned face, straight, slender nose, and dark grey eyes that suggested an Asian heritage. Her eyebrows were knitted together. Despite the fact that she had just saved someone's life, she looked worried. Scared, almost.
Just as he was about to approach her, she pulled a hood over her head and bounded away from the gratitude of the mother and the wonder of the firefighter. Oliver cursed under his breath.
"Who was that?" asked Dinah as she approached. Her hair was covered in soot, but other than she looked fine, thankfully.
"I have no idea," said Oliver truthfully. His eyes narrowed. "But I think... I think she's in trouble."
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The gap between the second time he saw her and the third was much shorter than the gap between their first and second meetings. This time, it was only a few days before he spotted her again. Still in Gotham, he was driving back to Dinah's parents house after a run-in with some petty robbers when he caught sight of a lone figure in the park, late at night. Even from a distance, he could tell from the stance that the person was an archer.
On a whim, he parked the car, and headed towards the archer, careful to stay out of the line of the arrows. As he got closer, he saw it was indeed Mysterious Archer Girl from both the auto shop and the fire. She was shooting at an oak tree about twenty feet away. Every shot she made was straight and true. It wasn't just impressive - she was the best archer he'd seen in action since Speedy.
"Nice shot," he told her. She whirled around, her next arrow already notched and pointed at his heart. She only relaxed a little when she saw who it was.
"I thought you lived in Star City," she said warily.
"Visiting family," he told her honestly. He almost asked her what she had been doing in his city beating up middle aged men, but stopped himself. If he interrogated her, she'd just run. She was a kid, after all. He had to be gentle, subtle. "You're an excellent archer."
"Thanks," she replied, still studying him, analyzing him for the possibility of a threat. Again, it made Oliver feel sad. What had someone done to her to make her so on guard, so wary?
"I'm not exaggerating," he insisted. "You've got a gift, kid. With an arm like yours, you could change the world. Help people. Like you did the other day, for that boy. You saved his life."
Her gaze darkened, and she looked away. Instead of proud, she seemed upset. "Usually I don't help people," she said in a low voice. "That was a one time thing. I... you know." Her words from a year ago seemed to hang in between them, unsaid but very tangible. I should kill you. I've killed before.
"But why?" he questioned, even though he'd decided against trying to force her to talk about herself. "Kid, I want to help you."
"Why do you care?" she demanded. "I don't need your charity, Arrow. Just because we're both archers it doesn't mean we're friends, or something."
"I care because I don't like to see kids being forced to do things they don't want to do," he said angrily. He took a deep breath, thoroughly annoyed with himself for being harsh with her when he'd decided he wouldn't. "Just... look, I've seen this before. Kids like you, who hang out with the wrong crowd for a fraction of a second too long, and all of a sudden they're doing someone else's dirty work. It's scary, and it's sad. But you've got to remember, you're young. You can still get out of that game."
"Maybe I don't want to," she said defensively.
He sighed, exasperated. "Okay, fine. Maybeyou don't want get out of it. But think about your family, your friends. What about the people who care about you?" She stayed silent. "Come on, there has to be someone. What about your parents? When was the last time you've seen -"
"My parents are the wrong crowd," she snapped. "You asked me who it was that forced me to do - to kill - well, it was my dad. News flash, parents suck!" She hesitated, then sighed, lowering her bow. "Dads do, anyway. My mom is okay."
Oliver blinked, shocked both by her confession and her sudden willingness to speak about herself. She seemed surprised by it as well, hugging her body with her arms, slender arms that seemed too insignificant to hold up the weapon in one fist, and all the responsibility that went along with it.
"How does your mom feel about your, uh -"
"She doesn't know," she replied shortly. "She's been in prison since I was nine." Brightening, she added, "She gets home tomorrow."
"There you go," said Oliver warmly. "Didn't I tell you? Everyone has someone who cares about them."
She snorted. "You sound like Oprah."
He stared at her. "How did - who told you my secret identity?" he demanded, earning an actual laugh from the blonde-haired youth. He grinned, victoriously.
Suddenly he remembered something Speedy had said to him recently. "Trust is mutual," his former protege had sneered when Green Arrow had tracked him down after the Hall of Justice fiasco, begging him to come back. "You don't trust me, why should I trust you?"
Trust is mutual. "I... if you're ever in trouble, look up Oliver Queen in Star City."
She stared at him, confused. "Um... okay. Oliver Queen, Star City. Okay."
"I know it's far away, but I don't think long-distance travel is an issue to you." She smiled knowingly, his reference to her last visit to his hometown not missed. "He'll look out for you."
After a long pause, she nodded. "Okay."
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As the sun set on a hazy August night, Green Arrow and Batman hovered near an older apartment building in Gotham Heights. From the shadows, they watched as people passed. Children with broken dolls, women with dogs, men with hooded jackets and hands in pockets, teenagers with tattoos on their bare shoulders and someone else's hand in theirs.
Finally, their target arrived; a slender girl with a Rapunzel-esque ponytail climbing the steps to the apartment building, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, carrying a bow and arrow, smiling.
The two superheroes stepped out of the shadows and approached her. She tensed before they could say anything, before she could even turn around (she was good), but relaxed when she saw them, even gave a friendly nod in the direction of Green Arrow. He returned the favor.
"Do you spend any time in Star City?" she quipped, one hand on her hip. Her brow suddenly furrowed, and her joking demeanor disappeared. "Wait... how did you find me? I didn't -" She glanced at Batman, and then suddenly her mouth formed an O. "Did you tell him?" she demanded, her fury only just masking her terror. "I -"
"Relax, kid," said Oliver gently. "I didn't tell him anything. We're not here about that. This is a happy visit. Smile!"
She didn't smile, but she did smooth out the fists her hands had formed against her legs. "I assume you guys know who I am, then?" she asked carefully.
"Green Arrow took the liberty of looking up the list of women released on July 31t from Gotham City Penitentiary," said Batman. "It was a short list."
"Ah," she said, too casually.
"Artemis," said Oliver, trying to dispel the fear that he could see on her face, the fear that wasn't by any means new but was enhanced by the fact and he and Batman were here. "We have a proposition for you." From his quiver, he pulled out an arrow that was unlike the rest. He tossed it to her, who pulled it out of the air expertly. "I recognized your arrow. You helped our covert ops team defeat Amazo."
Artemis hesitated for a moment, studying the arrow in her hands, and then raised her hands in a What can I say manner. "I'm an excellent archer, or so I'm told."
"We are here to offer you a position on the team."
At Batman's words, Artemis's grip on her arrow slipped. For several seconds she stared at them, her eyebrows knitted, her mouth opened. She looked almost... upset. "You want me in the Justice League?" she whispered.
"No," said Oliver quickly before she could get excited. "Not the Justice League. The covert ops team you helped out a few days ago. They could use someone like you."
"Even... even though my -"
"The Justice League does not discriminate based on heritage," said Batman, and those who do not know him might not have picked up on the warmth hidden so well behind the gruff and gravel of his voice. "However, like all superheroes -" And at the word superhero, Artemis laughed breathlessly, like she couldn't believe it, "- you deserve the right to a secret identity. It is your decision to reveal or not reveal your parentage to your teammates."
"Teammates, wow..." muttered the teenager, staring off into space. After several moments, she looked up. "When do I start?"
Oliver grinned. "Atta girl."
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Many years and many meetings later, Oliver and Artemis waited for their signal, in very different costumes than the ones they'd met in. Oliver tugged at his, and even though this wasn't technically his day, he still felt very nervous.
"Artemis," he muttered as they stood behind closed doors.
"Yes, Uncle Ollie?" she asked, looking up at him serenely. She was a far cry from the scrawny street rat he'd been threatened by several years ago. And, believe it or not, it didn't have much to do with the makeup on her face or the curls in her hair or even the flowers in her hand where a weapon once had been (and would be again in the near future, he was sure). It was more to do with the fact that she was beaming at everyone, her eyes shining and her face flushed. She couldn't stop smiling.
It was more to do with the fact that she was so happy.
"Look - kid, I just -" He rubbed his jaw, unsure how to express his sentiments. Rushing, he said, "I don't know if it was ever made clear to you, but even though you being my niece was a cover story, it didn't stop it from being real. Well, obviously, you aren't my niece, but - I'm really glad you nearly killed me. I have thoroughly enjoyed pretending to be your uncle."
Her eyes were sparkling, both from tears and from the thrill of the day. "Same here."
He pretended to breathe a sigh of relief. "Thank God, I was worried you didn't like pretending to be my uncle -"
She playfully shoved him just as the familiar music started to play. "Oh, God," she breathed, shaking out one hand then the other. "Here we go."
"Just remember kid, it's never too late to say no."
"Shut up and take my arm," she laughed, just as the doors opened to reveal a church full of people. Across the room, he heard the groom say "Shit" loudly, no attempt of a whisper in his voice, only to be shushed by the best man's elbow.
Oliver straightened his tie, looping an arm through hers. "My pleasure," he said. And with that, he walked the bride - his protege - down the aisle.
I really don't have a lot to say about this, except that I love Green Arrow and the idea of him sort of adopting Artemis and looking out for her. and I like how they can be father-daughter while at the same time being old pals. and I'm obsessed with subtle spitfire. I promised I'll write something soon where Wally has a more prominent role.
Please review if I have anything out of continuity. I've seen all of Young Justice but I haven't read any of the DC comic books (sorry) so it is completely possible that I am missing something. If I am, please let me know! Also constructive criticism would be appreciated, since I only just started writing again and I don't know if I'm good or not, blech.
Thanks lovelies!