A/N-Some of you may be put out to the writing style used in this chapter. I encourage you to read at least to the next chapter, because I used this somewhat hard to follow style for a reason. I change the style to a more traditional type next chapter.
It had been an hour. An hour in a room with her father. An hour of listening to insults and getting beat up. The team had finally come for her. She was curled in a ball when they arrived. When the door opened her father ran out and left her, on the floor broken and bleeding. He had done it many times before. Training had always been brutal, insults and bruises had been common, but it was a whole new level now that she was against him for real. This time he really meant it when he left. He meant every word he said. Every last word.
Wally was the first one to talk to her. He kneeled down on the floor and tried to stroke her cheek, but the second his skin brushed hers she stiffened and jerked up straight. Tear trails streaked down her mask, but were hidden with identical trails of sweat. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she hid those by looking at the ground. Her body was sore from the struggle, but that really was nothing new. It was her spirit that had been hurt the worst, and if there was one thing she was good at hiding, it was how she felt. Pushing herself off of the ground she stood up and took a calming breath. Wally got up next to her, unsure if she would let him hold her. Some of the team had tried to follow Sportsmaster to try and get information from him, so only a few people were present when she walked out of the room. Artemis was so dazed that she didn't register who was there other than Wally.
She blindly followed the group until it joined with the other half and then followed it to the bioship. People had been asking her if she was okay. No, no she wasn't, but they couldn't know that. She nodded and said she was fine, just tired. She spent the ride to the cave trying not to think about what had happened. She yearned for her mind to just go blank and forget what happened, but it wouldn't. The words he had shouted, yelled, and whispered echoed in her mind and the bruises he had enforced pulsed with every heartbeat, a defiant reminder that his blood pulsed through her veins, forever tying the two of them together. She wanted to cry, but not here and not now. The team had to believe that she was tough. They had to believe she had come out unscathed, otherwise they would want to know. The would try to pry out what had happened and why it hurt her so bad, but they didn't need to know.
Her face was passive, she didn't respond to anything around her. The worried glances and concerned looks, nor the soft conversation going on to hide the tension didn't faze her. When the ship landed she strode of it towards her room with a brief declaration of getting some sleep to quell the unease surrounding the group. The hallway that stretched down to her room seemed to lengthen as she walked and the door seemed to take longer to open than it normally did, but her room was just as quiet as normally was.
Closing the door she let her emotions hit her full force. All of the humiliation, disappointment, and anger she felt towards herself came crashing down at once. She was drowning in her own emotions and desperately needed a lifeline. Her thoughts careened in her head as she approached her destination. The scorn she would get if her mother found out fighting against the relief it would provide, driving how far she would go. She shivered as the floor changed from the soft carpet to the unfeeling linoleum as she made her way towards the sink. She shed her gloves and reached into her quiver for an arrow. The metal tip glinted in the bright bathroom light. She felt tears slide down her face as her normally tan skin paled from the force of her makeshift blade. Her wrist stung softly as some part of her mind registered the new pain. She focused on it, let the pain consume her thoughts and destroy them. She let the numb feeling spread and ached for more nothingness. The world fell away and all she was aware of were the thoughts and the memories haunting her. She cried and let the sting of her wrist block out the pain.