A/N: Title comes from Homer, Hymn XXVII "To Artemis"
I came up with the idea of trans!Artemis over a year ago now, but other projects distracted me from it. This fic sticks a lot closer to canon than my other trans fic, since Artemis has transitioned before the series begins. Just imagine that there are a couple of villains being absolutely terrible in between segments, and that's about the only thing that changes. Well, besides Artemis's outfit.
I hope you guys like it!
Artemis decides that she hates Wally West on the second day they spend together.
She's wearing civilian clothes—a green plaid shirt and jeans, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and her face uncovered. She sits on the couch next to Robin, listening to the boy explain the format of a game he's trying to convince her to play.
"Recognized. Kid Flash. B. Zero. Three."
"Whoa," Wally says as he looks at her. "Dude looks like a lady."
Artemis leaps to her feet, vaults over the couch and tries to punch him, red hot fury pouring through her veins. How dare he be like that, how dare he say something like that, how dare—
Robin grabs her arms, holding her back, saving his best friend's face from being dented in by her fist. "Hey, c'mon now, he didn't mean anything by it!"
"Then what did he mean?" She grits out, straining against his grip. Robin is stronger than he looks, and she doesn't want to hurt him, so she stays where she is instead of breaking his grip the way she wants to. Hurt starts to seep in around the edges, tainting the anger, and she doesn't want that. Wally West doesn't get to hurt her.
"That he's an idiot who doesn't think before he speaks, and I'm sure he's very sorry." He glares at his best friend until Wally cottons on and quickly apologizes, clearly confused. Artemis doesn't believe the rapidly uttered words, but when Robin lets go of her arms, she doesn't lunge for him. She walks away and crosses her arms, not looking at either of the boys.
"What did I say?" Wally demands, confused.
"I'm trans, you ass," Artemis snaps, whirling around to glare at him.
Wally winces. "Oooh. Sorry."
Artemis huffs, almost amused that he hadn't realized. "Well, maybe you should try to be less of a jerk next time." She strides out of the room, and doesn't speak to Wally for the rest of the day.
Jade used to send care packages. They only came when Dad was gone for more than two weeks, and it was oddly comforting, knowing that Jade was still keeping an eye out for her, even though Artemis hadn't seen her since her departure. The packages were filled with practical things, sensible things. Flashlights with rechargeable batteries, pocket knives with ten kinds of attachments, warm gloves, twenty dollar bills.
When Artemis told Dad that she was a girl, the packages abruptly switched nature. Tubes of mascara, junk jewelry, and pretty scarves showed up instead, and Artemis wore them constantly, a tiny reminder that her sister had her back, even if the rest of the world didn't.
Even when she joins the team, with Jade on the list of enemies they fought with surprising frequency, the packages still make their way to her doorstep. A long silver chain with an arrowhead pendant, a set of new hair ties, a pair of strappy high heels to go with the dress that Artemis had bought for homecoming.
She tells Batman about them, because she knows she should, but they still keep coming, and Artemis is grateful—glad that she still has this connection with her sister despite everything that's wrong with the world.
She keeps everything that Jade had given her under the floorboards beneath Jade's bed, nestled in shoeboxes, along with other mementos of happier times—family photographs where Mom and Dad's smiles don't look strained, ticket stubs from baseball games and movies, programs from school concerts and plays.
Mom never asks what's in the packages, but she always smiles whenever she sees Artemis wearing her new jewelry or accessories.
Artemis wonders if care packages ever managed to make their way to Maximum Security, and, if so, what they had contained.
It was hard not to be jealous of M'gann, who could change her appearance at will.
Artemis's features are rough and large, clunky and ungraceful, far too much like her dad's for comfort. She envies her sister and mother, who have cheekbones that are sharp as knives and delicate noses. She's jealous of their thick, dark hair, unruly and wild and gorgeous. Artemis's hair is fine and blonde, and even growing it out until it touches her waist doesn't change how different it was from theirs, or how similar it is to Dad's.
Artemis doesn't pass; one look at her tends to tell people more about herself than she is comfortable with people knowing. She feels their stares whenever she walks down the street, their curiosity piercing her and their whispers buzzing in her ears. She hates going into stores, where the clerks always stumble on her pronouns and where she occasionally can hear people calling her an "it".
Usually, she's fine with that—it's been her reality almost her whole life. But watching M'gann imitate whatever girl she wants to look like makes something feel uncomfortably tight in her chest, makes her sick to her stomach with envy. She wishes she could look like that, so secure and happy in the knowledge that what she wants people to see is exactly what they are seeing, even just for a little while.
Gotham Academy is both better and worse than Gotham North.
It's better because the people here don't know her old name, can't deliberately call her it in order to try to get under her skin. It's better because it's smaller, so the teachers notice if she doesn't make it to class because she's been cornered in the bathroom again. She doesn't disappear into the crowd—the teachers notice if there are bruises on her face or if she comes into class with a limp.
It's worse because the kids are richer, brattier, and even more privileged than the kids at North. There is no support system here and no community; no tiny corner of the cafeteria where the misfits of varying sexualities and genders can hide, backs to the wall, eyes pointed carefully at the people who are most likely to start a fight. At North, Artemis had blended in, her biracial features just one of many unusual combinations in the crowd. .
Gotham Academy is as white as a freaking snowbank, with a few pointed exceptions scattered here and there. Instead of just being defined by her gender, people now ask her if she is Chinese or Japanese, if she dyes her hair, and why doesn't she just get back on the boat back to Korea, she's screwing with the grade inflation.
Bullying is nothing new to Artemis.
The costume she designs is sleek and green, spandex and Kevlar and smooth lines. It makes her waist look more tapered and shoulders seem smaller, and she tucks her penis and pads her breasts, and the effect is fantastic. A part of her wants to show off her abs and leave her midriff exposed, but she thinks the effect is too masculine, so she covers her stomach, and elongates the arrow to compensate.
She passes better as a super-hero than she does as a regular girl.
She picks Huntress as her hero name, because she is her mother's daughter, and she will redeem the legacy of her mother. There's no real point of it—all the villains know who she is, and she's a member of a covert team who isn't a 'real' superhero—not like Kaldur and Robin and Wally. She's a dirty little secret, like M'gann or Conner, tucked away in the Cave between missions, except when Ollie takes her out to help with her training.
She wonders if she'll ever be good enough to be his real partner, enough to be known like Kid Flash and Aqualad are.
But she doesn't say anything.
Money is tight after Mom throws Dad out of the apartment, but Mom doesn't say anything, even though her brow tightens whenever she looks at the bills that lay scattered on the kitchen table.
Artemis thinks of offering to give up her hormones—she knows those things are expensive, that their insurance doesn't help very much, but every time she thinks of it she has to fight down a wave of terror and nausea.
Mom manages to get a job at a call center, where she can work from home, but Artemis knows that things are still tight. Artemis clenches her fists and tries to force herself to offer, but the words just won't come.
Months pass and Mom has to buy uniforms and expensive textbooks that, even second-hand, still are pricier than anything that Gotham North could even dream up. Artemis is just grateful that Ollie has stepped in to help with her hero equipment—arrows, especially trick arrows, are something that they could never afford.
When she finally manages to get the words out, her mother refuses, pulling her in close for a hug. "No, this is your life, Artemis! I won't have you sacrifice your happiness and well-being for anything." She grips Artemis's hand so tightly that Artemis thinks her bones will break. "We'll be fine."
Artemis doesn't believe her, but she doesn't say so.
Conner asks her what "trans" means, not too long after the whole mess with Doctor Fate.
Artemis realizes she probably shouldn't be surprised—G-Nomes probably don't give a damn about the intricacies of human sexual and gender politics—so she tells him everything she knows about gender performance, gender identity, and gender expression.
He frowns. "And people… get upset about this?"
Artemis thinks about the time someone tried to push her in front of a bus, and nods. "Yeah. They get sensitive about it."
Conner's brow furrows. "Why?"
Artemis laughs, leaning back against the couch. "Excellent question, Conner. Excellent question."
The adults disappear and in the midst of it all Artemis wonders, should the world be stuck like this forever, what will happen to kids like her. In between catching planes and searching for babies and fighting the good fight, she wonders how many kids now not going to be able to get the resources they need to help themselves.
She gets the words to nursery rhymes all wrong, and she tries not to blush because she can't remember how they go in English; all the songs of her childhood were French and Vietnamese, but those words don't mean anything to the children of Happy Harbor, so she plows on, butchering Twinkle Twinkle, to the amusement of the toddlers.
She arms herself with her bow and goes to battle, desperately hoping that, at the end of the day, she'll see her mother again.
Zatanna falls to her knees as her father becomes Doctor Fate, and Artemis hugs her closely, trying to comfort her.
When Artemis goes home, she finds a box from Jade on the doorstep.
Artemis takes Zatanna to Gotham with her, willing to let that part of her lies fall apart when it comes to this.
They go to a little coffee shop on the corner, and they talk about Wally and Robin and the rest of the Team, laughing and gossiping and swapping stories.
Afterwards, Artemis takes her to the apartment, and Mom makes up Jade's old bed for Zatanna to sleep on, and she makes cahn chua and cà ri gà, and Zatanna laughs and tells Mom stories, and Mom grins widely, and tells Zatanna that she can come over whenever she wants.
Artemis decides to have M'gann over sometime soon.
Zatanna curls up against Artemis after dinner is over, as they sit on the couch and watch a shitty high-school drama that Zatanna is addicted to. "Thanks. For… for everything."
Artemis drapes her arm around Zatanna, and smiles at her. "Anytime."
The notes in her locker start two weeks in—tiny little scraps of notebook paper with all sorts of things written on them. Some tell her that she should go kill herself. Some just call her names with a rainbow of slurs. Some threaten her.
Artemis takes them to the office, who tell her that they'll look into it, but, as she expects, the notes just keep coming, slipped through the tiny slits of her locker day in and day out without fail. She stops going to her locker as much, and quietly throws them out every time she opens it, trying not to read them anymore.
One day Dick Grayson happens to be nearby when she opens her locker and the notes fall out, cascading towards the ground in a waterfall of notebook paper and ballpoint pen scribbles. There are more of them that day than usual, and she scowls as she picks them off the ground, stuffing them into her bag so she can dispose of them later.
Dick picks one up, and reads it, eyes widening as he goes. "What the hell?"
"It's nothing," Artemis snaps, grabbing it out of his hands, flushing. "Just a stupid note."
"Artemis, it's not nothing!" Dick protests. "That was—"
"Normal, okay? It's normal." Her cheeks feel hot with shame, and she turns away, trying not to let him see the expression on her face.
"It shouldn't be," Dick says quietly. "Hey, can I see that again?'
"Why?" Artemis asks.
"Because I think I can figure out who wrote it." Dick Grayson grins at her widely, his cockiest, most shit eating expression emerging on his face. "You up for a little revenge?"
A week later, Dick produces a list of ten names, and Artemis and he carefully spend the next month making sure that each of those students suffer in small, elegant ways.
"Thanks," Artemis says, sitting next to Dick at lunch the day after the last one has found out that his girlfriend has suddenly been made aware of his OKCupid account.
"That's what friends are for, right?" He says, grinning at her and nudging her in the ribs.
Artemis laughs, tilting her head back far enough that her hair hits the ground, pooling beneath her.
She's never had anyone who wasn't family fight for her before, not about this.
Ollie is great. He knows the bow backwards and forwards, and guides her with steady hands and easy words, compliments and laughs flowing out of him easily. He lets her patrol with him, and she can't help but be thrilled—he's Green Arrow , he's her hero, always has been, and she gets to work with him.
He calls her his girl, and he acts like the lie of their relationship isn't a lie at all—he treats her like she's family, and she tries not to let it show how much it means, but she's a terrible liar, always has been, and he doesn't mock her for it.
Roy doesn't like her, but she's okay with that. Really. Dinah does, and her approval matters so much more, because Dinah teaches Artemis how to throw people much bigger than her and shows her exercises to help maintain her musculature despite the hormones that she now takes.
And then she finds out the truth—her mother begged, they hadn't taken her onto the Team because she was good or because she deserved it, but because her mother begged, because they felt sorry for her, because they wanted to make sure she would stay on the straight-and-narrow, and it hurts.
She beats up punching bags and ruins a whole quiver of arrows trying to see if she can split them, but she keeps missing because she's shaking so bad.
Roy joins the Team and she's not even surprised. Of course Ollie wants his real sidekick onboard, of course they all want someone with real skill, not her.
Never her.
She draws back her bow and releases her arrow, and the strange robot shimmers in order to let it pass through it. But it has done the trick—Kid Flash is free again, free to cause whatever chaos and destruction that they need him to do.
She fights more of the monkeys, and then slips back home, grinning from ear to ear and giddy from adrenaline, thinking excitedly about the possibility of meeting those kids and maybe fighting alongside them. She wants in!
Sitting down on her bed, pulling off her mask, she tamps down on her excitement, reminding herself of who she is, of what her family history is. No one will ever let the kid of Sportsmaster and Huntress join a team of heroes, no matter how many times she saves Kid Flash's life.
The next night, she goes out to find a calm Gotham, and returns to find Batman and Green Arrow in her living room.
She joins the Team, in the end.
Kaldur and she like to go out to lunch sometimes.
There's a little place in Mexico that he favors—it's on the beach, and the wait staff know him well enough not to stare at the webbing on his hands or his gills.
Afterwards, he swims in the ocean while she sits on the shore reading or doing homework.
When she finds out he suspected there was a mole in the team, her first feeling is hurt. She thinks that's why he spent time with her—trying to gather proof of who she was, trying to poke holes in her lies, to sniff her out.
At the end of it, she nearly drowns again, but Kaldur apologizes, and tells her that she can pick the location next time.
She drags him to Russia, where he's so bundled up no one looks at him twice, and they have coffee and cake and don't talk about the Team at all.
There's a horrible, terrible few minutes where she sees the crashed plane and thinks that Jade is dead.
Her sister makes a quip, revealing herself, and Artemis can't help but smile with relief. They fight, and Jade teases her, and Artemis doesn't hold back, refusing to let her emotions get the better of her, even when the studs that Jade gave her are currently in her ears.
The snow collapses in an avalanche, and Artemis almost doesn't notice, almost gets crushed, when—
"Artemis!" And familiar arms wrap around her, pushing her to the ground, to safety.
And when the air clears, her sister is beside her, hand pressed against her arm, warm and safe and familiar. "Alright fine, we're sisters. I don't actually want you dead."
I never thought you did, Artemis doesn't say, because when she stands up, Jade is gone.
Robin is a mystery to her—he's clever and funny and has been doing this longer than any of them, so there's a confidence to him that's sometimes almost overwhelming.
The Cave floods and there is fire and water everywhere, and the others are drowning and being burned alive, and it's just the two of them, without powers, and she's helpless and scared.
"Well get traught, or get dead!" Robin snaps at her, and she wants to stare, because she can see now that he's scared too, that he's just really good at faking it.
Robin gets caught and nearly dies, and Artemis does what she does best.
She makes the shot, and she saves the day, and everyone lives.
And then Red Tornado betrays them.
Dad is in her room, Dad is on Jade's bed, Dad is telling her everything she's ever been afraid of.
"Will they keep you around now that Red Arrow's joined up?" She clenches her fists.
"And what if they learn the truth about out about the family ties you've worked so hard to hide? Would they ever trust you again?" His voice is taunting, dragging all of this straight out of her doubts and fears.
Artemis turns towards the wall, trying not to let him get to her. "Thanks for the pep talk, Dad. We should have these family reunions more often."
He walks towards her, every step making her feel small and helpless again. "You tried, baby girl. You can fight Jade. You can fight me. But you can't fight who you are." The familiar nickname washes over her, reminding her of how he had reacted when she first told him about her gender—a warm hand on her shoulder, a box full of second-hand clothes, a couple of pamphlets dropped on the table carelessly about hormones. He was a terrible father in almost every way, but when it came to that, he had been almost kind.
He holds her chin and makes her look at him, smiling at her like he did when she was a kid and she hit the bullseye. "Time to switch sides, Artemis. You'll never be one of them. You belong with us."
And for a terrible moment, Artemis can't help but believe him.
Zatanna is fun to run around town with, stopping crime and riding their bikes.
It's… nice, to be able to do this with someone her own age. M'gann's wonderful, but so much of spending time with her involves explaining Earth culture to her, and assuring her that what she did was fine. Zatanna is just a normal girl who happens to have magic, and that's… nice. Artemis barely has to hide at all.
Harm calls her an it, and Artemis sees red. She does her best to fight him, fights him tooth and nail, but he trounces her and Zatanna, hunts them like prey, and it irritates her to no end.
She wakes up tied to a chair, her crossbow aimed at Zatanna, Secret having led them straight to Harm's home. Zatanna frees her, and they run, blowing up the kitchen and stumbling outside, into the cool Halloween night, to a grave in a backyard.
And then she learns that Harm killed his own sister, and she thinks of Jade, thinks of packages on the doorstep and a teddy bear beneath the floorboards, and she knows that he truly is a monster.
Wally is softer once she gets to know him—kinder too. He doesn't apologize, not really, but she learns to trust him, even learns to like him. He has her back and she has his, and they find themselves being paired up for sparring and missions more and more. They work well together, despite their bickering and their arguments.
Quietly, after she tells them the truth about her family, in a tense moment of preparation, he pulls her into a corner.
"Look, I realize… I never really said I was sorry. About everything. But especially what I said that day. About… about you being a dude. That was bad. Really bad. And I'm really sorry. Because it doesn't matter at all. Well, like, it does, because it's a part of who you are, but not like, in that, it's any of my business. So, um, I totally get it if you're still—"
Artemis covers his mouth with her hand, trying to fight down the smile. "Wally. It's okay. Really."
"And you know it's okay that you didn't tell us about your dad, right? Totally get you not wanting to be related to that jerk wad."
Artemis laughs, and they rejoin the others, getting ready to go to Santa Prisca.
Batman once suggests sending her undercover to find out what Cameron knows.
She refuses.
"He doesn't know Artemis," she tells them. "He only knows… before."
Ollie instantly places a hand on her arm, comforting her.
"I understand. We'll find another way." Batman nods at her, and her knees nearly give out in relief.
M'gann is thrilled to have another girl on the Team, and so immediately breaks out the sleepover supplies. Artemis has never had a real sleepover either—not unless one counts making forts out of the mattresses with Jade while ignoring that their parents were out being the bad guys
So she lets M'gann paint her nails and braid her hair and they watch shitty movies where the white chicks save the day, and she leans against M'gann, enjoying herself despite everything.
"You really don't like this stuff nearly as much as I do, do you?" M'gann says the next day, stirring the batter of a batch of cookies she made.
"No, not really. I'm more of a tomboy." Artemis, for a moment, thinks that M'gann will comment on how weird that is, that a trans girl could be like that, but M'gann says nothing.
"Mind tasting this batter for me?" M'gann says instead, offering Artemis the spoon. Artemis takes it, but she can't really tell anything besides the fact that cookie dough is delicious. Which might have been the whole point, now that she thinks of it.
They fight the Justice League, and they win. There's something twisted to that, in Artemis's mind; this is exactly what her dad would want, but she's doing it on the side of good.
She fights Ollie and the Flash and Aquaman, and then Kaldur bursts in, all ready with the plan that he had carefully crafted.
Kaldur is a genius, and Artemis owes him so many trips to Russia after this.
She shoots the arrow and Wally wraps his arms around her, as the cargo-bay doors open and the air becomes thin and hard to breathe.
Klarion and Vandal are gone by the time they make it to the entrance, but Red Tornado is there, without his limbs, and he congratulates them.
"Happy New Year, Justice League." Auld Acquaintance begins to play, a jingly little electronic version of it, and Wally looks at her. He picks her up, holding her in his arms, and Artemis looks at him in shock.
"I should have done this a long time ago," he says, and Artemis realizes what he's about to do.
She puts her arms around his neck and says, "No kidding," and then they're kissing.
A/N: Cahn chua and cà ri gà are both traditional Vietnamese dishes, at least according to Wikipedia. Cahn chua is a sour soup, usually made with fish, while cà ri gà is a chicken-based curry dish.
Artemis's Vietnamese heritage is super-important to me, and I love exploring it. It's canon that's she's trilingual, which probably means that Vietnamese/French was prominently spoken at her home when she was younger, even if they speak in English during the show.
The whole Cameron thing is a reference to Young Justice #13 ...And the Penalty, in which Artemis goes undercover in Star City's Police Department to find out about what Icicle Junior knows about the Belle Reve plans.
So much thanks to sroloc-elbisivni for proofing this for me! You rock!