Prompt: 'Bonnie and Clyde-esque AU. Go wild."
Written for the yjficexchange's Operation Valentine on Tumblr. Title inspired by Lana Del Rey's 'Live or Die'.
It's twilight, twenty miles south of Gotham City, when they hear them coming.
By then, there's a half-eaten sandwich making it's way into her mouth when she realises too late that it'll never reach it's destination.
Artemis is always too late.
They meet when she's seventeen, fresh out of highschool and still sore from the wounds left behind by her renegade father and sister. An invisible reminder of everything she's lost, and everything she still has to struggle for. By then, Artemis is aiming for the big leagues.
Stanford, Yale, Harvard Law - fight for justice. She plans to get through university first, and then life can throw everything it wants at her again.
Only it's too early. She hadn't anticipated being enamoured by his crooked grin or his taste for a life of fast-paced self-indulgence. He has freckles dotting pale white skin and hair the colour of flames, drives a red sportswear - stolen, she learns later - and rarely ever drops his speed limit below one hundred. His name is Wally West, the man who runs at light speed.
"Why let others dictate what we can and can't do? We're only on this earth once," he says, when they're speeding down Route 66 with the car hood pulled down and the wind biting at their cheeks.
"We have to find our own rabbit holes," she agrees, taking peace in the lack of paranoia that's been haunting her ever since she left home. Her only regret is leaving her mother behind, so she aims to rectify that as soon as she's back in Gotham City.
And then she realises, with a jolt of pain, that she's become the other half of her family without even realising it.
It's her eighteenth birthday when it happens - shots firing into the night sky like fireworks on New Year's Day. And the distinct sound of metal scraping against metal, deathly silence, then the roar of an explosion. She hears a scream, sees Wally crumpling down before her, writhing in pain and clutching at his leg.
Wally went down for her.
There's another one, disjointed and piercing, that erupts from her lips, and it draws the attention of the two policemen standing before them, guns ablaze.
"How ironic," the taller man sneers, "The nation's two most elusive thieves, caught on the job."
"It ends here, Artemis," the stockier one says, with finality, "Surrender now."
Except she doesn't. Crock women never surrender.
She picks up her pistol from the ground, hearing Wally's groans echo louder in her ears than the sound of stones crunching under her boots.
One, two, bang. The tall cop's head is flung back from the force of her gunshot, arms shooting forwards then backwards as he falls to the ground. His silhouette, darkened against a backdrop of car lights and fire, imprints itself in her mind forever.
Breathe, Artemis.
He comes to hours later, back slumped against the wall of an abandoned house she'd found while driving away from the crime scene in a frenzy. There's bandages on his legs; the ones she'd managed to salvage from their car and throw into the police vehicle.
Artemis rushes over with a water bottle and tips its contents into his mouth, ignoring the sounds of protest he makes, and doesn't stop until it's empty.
"Woah, babe," he says, voice raspy, "Calm down."
"I am calm," she protests indignantly. She doesn't have to look at him to know that he really doesn't believe her, but considering the past few hours, and the thump-thumping of her heart that hasn't had time to die down yet, Artemis really couldn't care less if she was lying about something minor. "How are you feeling?"
"Better than I was… how long ago was it?"
"Five hours."
"What happened?" Artemis glances at the side of his head for a second, staring holes into the peeling wallpaper. "After I went down."
"Nothing," she says, too quickly. "I managed to get you into the car, and then I drove away."
"The Flash? Didn't it…explode?"
Slowly, drawing out all syllables, "Yes," she moves her hands down to the bandages on his legs to remove them. "It did."
"So," he replies in the same tempo, "How did you manage to steal their car, without them arresting you on the spot?"
Artemis purses her lips, unfurling the last of his bandage and allowing the silence to fall over them as she replaces it with a new one. He continues to stare at her with his apple-green eyes, impressed grin turning lopsided.
Wally silently brings his hand up, which she slaps down, and then he repeats the motion. She's still looking down, shoulders drooping, hands frozen where the knot has yet to be tied, when his fingers make contact with her chin.
It's wet, unexpectedly, or maybe she's just been too emotionally catatonic up until this stage to realise that she physically aches from the driving and the knowledge that someone died by her hand.
He slides his hand up to cup her cheek, pulling her into his embrace and willing her to stay put. Her knee consciously moves away from his wounds, because all of a sudden she's aware that this is their first hug - or, the only one that hadn't entailed shielding each other from shattering windows or vaulting up to the top of skyscrapers on a single cable.
Distantly, she registers the feel of his other hand stroking her golden hair, covered at the tip in his dried blood.
"You saved my life," Wally says hoarsely.
"You saved me."
In the sea of realisations she'd made over the space of a few hours, the final one that hits her as he moves in closer and presses their dry, cracked lips together, is that there's a special place in Hell for them. One that's made for people who kill to save a life.
And she'll gladly go to Hell, as long as it's with him.