Jade was just starting to get acne when she left home. It wasn't something she'd really considered beforehand, but in retrospect, it really, seriously sucked. It's not like if she'd stayed home she'd have gotten any arcane maternal advice, like how to keep your bangs out of your face when you're fighting or what the best grandma remedy for blackheads is, not with her mother locked up. And it's not like she could have imparted any sagacious big sister tips upon lil' Artie either; the best she could offer was maybe some hands-on instruction on how to roll with punches.
But she could've been there to make fun of lil' Artie when it was her turn to wrestle with puberty. And she could've gotten some zit cream, and washed her face periodically. Living on the streets was rather unproductive to keeping good dermal hygiene. But then, that really wasn't something she'd considered beforehand.
If she's honest with herself, it probably wasn't all that prominent a factor in her utter and definite failure to get inducted into a decent gang. After all, she was just a skinny thirteen-year-old with training more suited to a shadow assassin than a thug, and didn't have much chance of getting a pumped-up skinhead to take her seriously. But as she seethed through one dismissive onceover after another, she couldn't help thinking that it would've been just that much less humiliating if she didn't have pimples.
The last gang she bothered trying to join was called The Redeyes, so named presumably not because of their drug consumption but for the silly red eyeliner the members believed made them seem simultaneously stylish and forbidding.
They were a group mostly focused on theft and black market dealings, which Jade thought suited her well. She found out about them from a petty dealer that sometimes bartered in peppermints, and approached their leader in one of his favorite alleys to challenge him to an open brawl. He looked at her, chewing on a bright blue bubblegum that dyed his tongue purple, and laughed. Jade was almost certain she could feel her indignation in her ears, it was so righteous.
He stopped laughing sometime between that moment and the one when he was lying on the sidewalk, clutching his crotch and moaning, an attractive new shiner already blooming around his left eye. She still didn't get to join the Redeyes, though.
That was all right. Eventually she managed to snag herself a nice whole-face mask and discovered that a life of solitary villainy wasn't all that bad after all. A few successful break-ins and daring daylight robberies gained her a bit of a reputation, and after a while Cheshire and her mask became a recognized entity of wrongdoing. A couple of apprenticeships later, and lo and behold, a new baby super-villain was born.
If she thought about home after that, it was mostly to wonder what the hell took her so long to get out of there.
.
It was actually pretty much almost exactly ten years ago, maybe, she thinks, that one time when Jade took lil' Artie to the amusement park. Their mother wasn't in jail yet and didn't mind giving Jade a fiver and telling her to watch out for the barbwire when they sneak in because she really doesn't enjoy needlework all that much.
Lil' Artie was predictably and insufferably ecstatic. She hopped in several circles around Jade, rattling off a baby-sisterly ballad of praise and adulation. In the end Jade was forced, out of pure desperation, to carry her piggyback half of the way there to shut her up. It was a good thing Jade was strong for her age and the five-years-old Artemis's heaviest part was probably the enormous blonde hair.
It still didn't work, of course. Lil' Artie's lungs functioned just as well from the height of her sister's shoulders as on the ground. But at least it prevented her from scampering all over the place.
When they got there, lil' Artie actually beat her to the top of the fence. The little bugger was already pretty damn agile. Jade would have to start training harder. Losing any contest at all to her little sister in the presence of their father would be unspeakably mortifying.
They went on all the scariest rides, of course, and Jade watched in amusement as Artie laughed and screamed her lungs out in delight while all the other wimps scrunched their eyes shut and turned green around the face. This was her silly, fearless little sister.
Jade won a large chocolate bear wrapped in thin festive-themed tinfoil from the test-your-strength stand, and on the dart-throwing contest Artemis got a stupid looking frog plush. They traded gifts and lil' Artie managed to consume the bear in the messiest way imaginable while Jade made faces at the frog, who responded by refusing to look any less stupid.
They had three dollars left so they bought one questionable burger and split it between them. Again Artemis succeeded in getting most of the ketchup on her face. Jade refused to give her a napkin. Artemis didn't want one anyway.
It was well after sunset when a random guard spotted them and started asking pointless questions about their lack of parental escort. Then he asked to see their tickets and they were forced to flee, panting and giggling as their hair billowed behind them like some sort of split-ended heroic cape. They had to leave the stupid looking frog behind, though. Not only would their father not have approved, but after lobbing it at the guard's head as a distraction, retrieving it would have been detrimental to their brilliant escape plan.
Later that night, after their father got back home, he took them out to the garage for a training session, and Jade likes to think she remembers that same silly-fearless grin on her little sister's face even after Jade kneed her in the gut, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
.
Tuesdays were Rainbow Ice Cream day at Penny's Ice Parlor. Rainbow Ice Cream day was actually a rather misleading name; in truth it was more like Murky Brown Ice Cream day. It was the last day of Penny's work week, so, before they closed for the weekend, they would mix up all the leftover flavors into a big unidentifiable sugary mess and sell the thing for half the usual price. It looked vastly unappetizing and was Jade and Artemis's number one most favorite sort of dessert.
Jade's eleventh birthday happened to be a Tuesday. Artemis took her to Penny's and fed her obscene amounts of birthday rainbow ice cream, complete with live birthday sparkler stuck in the whipped birthday cream and a candied birthday cherry on top.
Lil' Artie didn't have any money, of course, so she made a bet with the owner's son that she could beat him at arm wrestling, double or nothin'. She won but they ended up washing dishes for the rest of the day anyway.
"Great b-day present, Artie," Jade grumbled, arms drenched in dishwater up to the armpits. "Washing industrial sized ice cream containers for free. Just what I always wanted."
"Don't call me Artie," said Artie. "I knew you'd like it. Pass the soap, please."
They got into a soap bubble fight, unsurprisingly. It was inevitable, really. In a few minutes they had lather all over their faces and piled high in elaborate constructions on top of their heads, and they announced a truce as they waited for the bubbles to pop and the soapy water to soak into their hair. Jade was absolutely certain Artemis was the one who looked the most ridiculous. It just took this sort of innate elegance to carry the drenched puppy look with any semblance of dignity.
Later, after it got dark and the manager took pity on them and shooed them out, handing Jade a green helium-less birthday balloon that didn't float, Artemis latched herself onto Jade's torso in a slightly squelchy and sticky hug and wished her a happy birthday.
"I love you, Jade," she said. "You're a really adequate big sister."
Jade petted lil' Artie's soapy hair and bit back a few awkwardly honest responses. "Yeah, well, don't get too used to it," she said instead. "I have much bigger plans than familial adequacy."
But Artemis just held on tighter.
.
A year later their parents went on a mission, and only their father came back home.
Jade took lil' Artie to the trial. They weren't allowed to visit their mother in prison because nobody was supposed to know Sportsmaster and Huntress had any children, but the trial was public and anyone could come watch the crippled Asian woman get sentenced to nine years in federal prison with chance of parole. Her husband wasn't even called on as a character witness.
"I saw you in court today," Sportsmaster told Jade while she was making dinner.
"No, you didn't," she said. "You weren't even there."
"My presence was required elsewhere. But I have eyes in many places."
Jade could feel her blood start to boil. It was rising in her eyes instead of tears. She whirled around, chopping knife clutched tightly in her right hand. "You betrayed her! You let her take your fall! And – you – weren't – even – there!" She lunged at him.
In a flash he'd twisted her wrist and the knife clattered to the floor. He kicked it across the kitchen. She did a sweep kick which he jumped over, and threw a left handed punch which he easily blocked. Then he grabbed hold of her head with both hands and brought her chest down against his knee, hard. Jade gasped and fell onto her elbows on the floor. He stepped on her fingers and she screamed.
There was a high pitched shout and Jade felt small arms wrap around her.
"No!" Lil' Artie dragged the O until it sounded like two separate syllables. "Stop it! You gotta stop it, you're hurting her!" The expression on her face was frantic and scared and very un-Artie-like, in Jade's opinion.
"Artemis," their father said, using his sternest father voice. "Move aside."
"No," she repeated stubbornly, and her face set into a more familiar defiant arrangement. "You can't do this. She's my sparring partner."
He glared at her and she glared right back. She had a rather impressive glare. She'd learned from the best. Jade could see her father was pleased.
"Fair enough," he said eventually. He lifted his boot from Jade's fingers and turned his glare on her. "Next time at least try to land a punch. This display was nothing short of embarrassing."
He left the kitchen and neither of them ate dinner that evening. Maybe Artemis had tried to cook something, but Jade didn't check to see. She didn't want to look at her little sister. She most definitely didn't want to speak to her. She just wanted to be left alone and simmer.
For the next few weeks Jade worked hard to cultivate the special sneer she reserved just for her father. It was a fine sneer, if you asked her, very bold and unsubtle. It told its recipient, in no tentative terms, that he was at the unenviable end of a slow-burning and very intense grudge. It was the very definition of contemptuous. It was, by all facial expression standards, a masterpiece.
It wasn't enough.
.
Cheshire got a hire job at a local high school once. It was perfect for her, obviously, being sixteen at the time and therefore granted instant camouflage. It was a cakewalk, on paper: get in, get mysterious brown package, get out. She didn't take into account exactly just how local the high school was, though.
At first she thought she'd just made a mistake. There had to be more than one blonde half-Vietnamese teenager in Gotham, after all. Then the kid turned, gigantic ponytail swishing and eyes narrowed in indiscriminate suspicion, and there was no longer any doubt: lil' Artie was attending Gotham North High.
Well, the job was still a cakewalk. The mysterious brown package had all the protection of an enhanced locker deadbolt, all of two minutes to dismantle. But the emotional complications were… complicated.
Jade didn't think Artemis had seen her. She would've made a lot of noise if she had. She was always really noisy about the things that she cared about. But she didn't make a lot of noise. So she probably hadn't seen her. Or maybe Jade's airtight disguise as an unassuming high school student was just so perfect it deceived even her own sister. Because obviously Jade was a thing that Artemis cared about. Probably.
The mysterious brown package didn't exactly fit perfectly in her letterman's pocket, but Jade shoved it in there anyway. Anyone stupid enough to try picking Cheshire's awkwardly bulky pocket would find themselves sorry they even got up that morning. The package was safe for the time being, and Jade was free to do a little snooping. This is where her crazy efficient shadowing skills came in handy.
She hadn't seen Artemis since she'd left. That was three years ago, and the kid really had grown. She was gaining the gangly, unbalanced figure of an adolescent, for one thing – and her muscles were beginning to show. For the first time Jade wondered what it was like for her, being raised alone by their father. Whom did she spar with, in her sister's absence? Sportsmaster? Jade really hoped not. At least, looking at her, she couldn't spot any noticeable bruises.
Jade tailed her as she went to the cafeteria for lunch. Artie sat at a large table, surrounded by other kids. She talked and laughed, and she ate a hell of a lot, and none too delicately. It was definitely the Artemis Jade remembered.
She'd been sitting and staring at her sister like some glassy-eyed nutcase for several minutes, forgetting all about her crazy efficient super stealth skills, when Artemis finally seemed to get that odd creeping feeling that means someone might or might not be watching you, and looked up.
Their eyes met, and for a moment, they were both frozen. Then Artie's pupils dilated and recognition flashed across her face. Jade's legs seemed to flex of their own accord, and she bolted.
"Wait!" she could hear Artemis's familiar voice calling after her. There was something in it that could almost be mistaken for desperation. Jade couldn't help herself; she half-turned towards it and winked. "Jade…?"
"Sorry, sis, can't stay and chat," she shot behind her. "I'll see you around, lil' Artie!"
She took some pride in the fact that she managed to shock her little sister so thoroughly she didn't even protest Jade's use of the much reviled nickname.
At the time she wasn't aware that the next time she would see Artemis around, they would both be in costumes, they would both be armed, and they would both be fighting on opposite sides. When that did happen, though, it had such a nostalgic flavor to it that Cheshire wouldn't have traded the circumstances of their reunion for all the soppy hugs and gushy professions in the world.