Title: Scream A Little Louder
Rating: T
Word Count: 3,200+
Characters: Wally/Artemis, Jade, Cassandra Cain, Damian al Ghul
Summary: She's always been really good with a bow and arrow or anything, really, that required aim, because her accuracy was pretty much flawless and she's always had an eye for these kinds of things.
Prompt: #32: almost
Other Inspirations: "Rolling in the Deep/Someone Like You/Turning Tables (Adele medley)" – Alex Goot, Michael Henry & Justin Robinette (medley link on my profile) & "you're defeated, Wally West" by viria13 (fanart link on profile)
Notes: This is an AU I created in which Artemis and Jade grew up in Shadows with Cassandra Cain and Damian al Ghul, which I've dubbed as the "Shadows 'verse." You might want to file that term away in your memory for future use, because I'll definitely be visiting this universe again. Multiple times.
Scream A Little Louder
Artemis didn't always agree with the methods of the Shadows, but her father said it was because she was born into it, raised on it. She had been training to do this kind of stuff since she took her first steps so naturally she would find the minor flaws and want to perfect it. He told her to just grin and bear it, take matters into her own hands when she could but otherwise, they had to meet the demands of their employers.
So this was her grinning and bearing it.
She has her ass on the desk and one leg over the other as she examines her nails, listening to the thrumming of fingers swiping over a keyboard somewhere behind her. Her bow is balanced in her lap, her quiver securely strapped to her chest, and she ached to put them to good use.
She had a conscious, of course, more so than some of the others, so unlike Jade, she didn't like killing excessively. But she's always been really good with a bow and arrow or anything, really, that required aim, because her accuracy was pretty much flawless and she's always had an eye for these kinds of things. It's something she's a master at and she loves the thrill of being able to use it.
And like she said, she's not entirely sadistic, so if a few people happen to lose their lives along the way then they probably deserved it.
"Do you think you could speed this up, Doc?" a voice quips, irritated.
Artemis cranes her neck as their captive Dr. Serling Roquette replies impatiently, "You can't rush science, kid." Artemis laughs. Oh, here comes the hissy-fit.
"I am not some kid, you harlot!"
"Damian," Cass scolds, pulling the crabby boy with spikey hair back by his hood. "Enough."
Had she or Jade tried the same thing on the kid, he would've threatened to use the artillery of knives hidden in his belt. But because Damian has a soft spot about two miles wide for Cassandra, he just huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, casting a glare off at no one in particular as he mutters under his breath. Cass shakes her head and looks up, smiling softly as she meets Artemis's amused stare.
Jade walks to stand behind the doctor with her hands on her hips, expression hidden behind her Cheshire mask. She was either amused like Artemis, or irritated like Damian.
"Though, if you are against minor forms of torture, Doc," she purrs, "I suggest you hurry your little science fair project up."
Yeah, definitely irritated.
Not as if Artemis could blame her sister. They had been waiting forever at this high school for the doctor to finish reprogramming her Fog. If they had been at headquarters like they were originally, at least they could kill time at their gym or something. But they had to relocate due to the high possibility that the Justice League could track them and get to her before the weapon was finished.
This was their fifth relocation, and if it wasn't for the fact that the Fog could hack and destroy any computer it touches, making it such a high-priority weapon, Artemis would've complained the need for the Shadows' best team to be sent on a protection detail.
And yes, they are the best Shadows has to offer.
They were all practically born into it: Artemis and Jade's parents were long-time members before they had their daughters, Cassandra was the daughter of two elite assassins, and Damian's mother Talia was the daughter of the man who created Shadows. They've all been training for this, living like this, preparing to take their parents' place, since birth. There was never room to be less than perfect.
Anyway, her eyes are drifting lazily across the computer lab until something catches her attention just outside the window. In the bushes.
How very cliché.
Her bow is in her hand in a fraction of a second, arrow nocked, and she's pretty sure none of the others noticed a thing otherwise they'd be getting ready, too.
So she pretty much has a clear shot that will only take her about four seconds to make and she finds herself hesitating. She doesn't even know why, either, because a second later Jade is announcing, "We've got company," and the glass is shattering, and she missed her chance. She never misses her chance.
Now she's pissed.
She smashes the computer Dr. Roquette is working on and tugs her out of her seat by her lab coat, letting Cassandra come between them and their new company.
The weird thing is that she knows these people. Well, okay, she knows three out of five because of television: Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad. But the fourth one is green and floating like a younger, female Martian Manhunter and the fifth one looks exactly like Superman if you slapped him in a T-shirt and jeans and dragged him back into high school, so it's not hard to make the connections.
She was expecting the Justice League.
She wasn't expecting the sidekicks, and she hates being caught off-guard.
Damian is snickering like he usually does as he pulls a switchblade from his utility belt and goes after Robin and Kid Flash, and Cheshire is occupying the other three, so Artemis hisses, "Cass," and tugs Dr. Roquette backwards. Cass drops a few smoke pellets before running after Artemis and Dr. Roquette out the door.
There is really nowhere else to go but up, because right now they're not sure if they have back-up waiting outside and they're not taking the chance, either.
"Land the helicopter exactly a quarter mile north of our location, and don't be caught," Cass is ordering into her earpiece, and yeah, Artemis will never get over how they are always on the same page.
"Where are we going?" Dr. Roquette questions, out of breath.
"Somewhere for you to finish your work without any more interference," Artemis replies, dragging her up the stairs. "We'll go up to the roof and jump."
"Jump?"
"Relax, Doc," Artemis tells her. "Our orders are to keep you alive, so that's what we're going to do."
They're running through the gymnasium when she skids to a stop, letting Cass and Dr. Roquette run ahead of her as she pulls a bow from her quiver and nocks, taking aim. Across the room, Kid Flash and the Martian girl are there in the doorway, watching her warily. She shoots her arrow and watches it fly right by their heads, disappearing from view.
"Hah! You missed," Kid Flash exclaims, and Artemis smirks. She never misses.
"Artemis," Cassandra's voice asks, slightly worriedly, behind her.
"Go, Cass," Artemis reminds. She pulls the lighter from her belt and flicks it on, risking a smile back at her. "I promise I'll be out as soon as I can."
Cassandra hesitates for all of two seconds before nodding and ushering Dr. Roquette along, and Artemis tosses the lighter forward. As soon as it hits the ground, flames erupt along the gasoline that spiraled out of her arrow, igniting the gymnasium around them. The Martian girl winces and floats back to the ground, throwing her hands over her head, and Kid Flash is instantly at her side.
He's distracted trying to help his friend, and Artemis couldn't have a bigger opportunity. All it would take is the one shot then she could be out of there and meeting up with Cass and Dr. Roquette.
But she looks down the arrow to where the point is right on Kid Flash's head and her fingers hesitate on the string, and she can't shoot.
She hates feeling guilty.
Kid Flash turns to look at her, too, eyes widening as he takes in her readied stance, and she bites her lower lip and flinches because the air seems to be getting thicker.
She hears something creak above her and feels her heart pound violently in her chest as her head snaps upward and sees a light fixture swinging. Her body is already making the motion to run anywhere when something slams into her from the side and knocks the wind out of her, bow and arrow slipping from her hands as the world rushes too quickly and she is sent tumbling onto the hardwood.
Her quiver digs into her back and shoulder when she lands and she lets out a strangled groan at the pain, only to have it ripped off of her seconds later. Hands grasp her wrists and pin them to the floor, and even as she begins to kick her legs, a body lowers itself over hers and straddles her thighs so she is immobilized.
She looks up finds Kid Flash's face hovering over hers, so close that his hair barely grazes her forehead and she can see all of the shades of green in his eyes.
(She desperately hopes the flames she feels in her cheeks have everything to do with the fire that is spreading around them. God, it better be because of that, or she's…)
"Why don't you go help your girlfriend?" she smirks. "I heard flames aren't exactly good for a Martian."
"She's not my girlfriend!"
She blinks, not expecting the snap, but easily recovers by arching an eyebrow. "Ouch. I'm sensing a little bit of friendly fire going on."
His jaw sets and for whatever reason, she can't bring herself to be completely satisfied. She's really good at getting into the head of her opponent, finding at least one thing that'll screw with them, and this subject seems like a particularly sore spot. She shouldn't want to feel like she needs to figure out why.
"Shut up," he hisses, tightening the grip on her wrists so quickly and unexpectedly that she actually lets out a whimper (a noise she's always, always hated). His eyes actually widen at his own actions and loosen a bit while still being firm enough to keep her in place.
She narrows her eyes at this. Why is he acting like this with the enemy? First he saved her, and now he's handling her somewhat gently. What the hell?
Before she has a chance to question this, however, there is a large crash as something takes out the far wall, and voices are calling out their names. Kid Flash keeps his eyes locked on hers as he calls out his presence, and her stomach does this weird little flip at that look he gives her right before he flips her over and someone's placing cuffs.
Now she's going to be late. Dad's not going to be happy about this.
... ...
She wonders if the Justice League just has too strong a sense of good in them.
When they take her back to wherever they are (they kept her blindfolded the whole way over), they stick her in this small room that's white and actually not horribly furnished. The bed is more than just a lumpy mattress and bounces a bit when she sits down, and Black Canary comes in and removes her handcuffs once the door is locked and proceeds to trying to clean her up a bit.
"You're stupidly trusting," Artemis remarks as the woman is tugging a comb through the knots in her hair.
"If you wanted to hurt me, you would've done it by now," she says simply, and while Artemis sees some logic in that, she sees a lot of flaws in it, too. "Are you going to hurt me?"
Artemis presses her lips together and doesn't respond.
She wonders if the special treatment is because she's a kid, which would actually piss her off a lot. With Shadows, she's always been regarded with some superiority or at least with great respect, unless they're hiring some new idiots who don't know who she is and just how long she's been at this.
Not that she'd rather have Justice take her to some boring old prison, but still.
... ...
It feels like at least an hour or two before someone returns, and this time it's Green Arrow with a new set of handcuffs. She surprises herself (and probably him, too, considering) by actually turning around without being told and barely even flinching in resistance as he slides them into place. Her curiosity is probably getting the best of her right now.
She's led into a room with Batman, Black Canary, Red Tornado, and all five of the sidekicks that ambushed them earlier that night.
Her eyes go straight to Kid Flash and find that he's staring right at her, too.
"I didn't realize I was going to have this big of an audience," she says mostly to herself, but raises her eyebrows and looks at Batman. There's this not-so-tiny spark of fear that washes over her, but it's Batman—you can't exactly blame her.
"Artemis Crock."
She absently clenches her teeth at her name. "I suppose it would be stupid to ask how you found that out."
He has his poker face on, however, so he just goes on, "Your father, Laurence Crock, and mother, Paula Crock, were known criminals. But they went by different names, didn't they?" She has a feeling he didn't mean for it to be a question. "Your mother's very last crime was also the one that put her in the wheel chair and sent her to jail. But you and your father disappeared before he could be caught."
She narrows her eyes into a glare and hates it when she feels them beginning to sting. Her father always said tears could be an ultimate act, but if you meant it, it was an ultimate weakness.
"Why the hell are you telling me something I already know?" she hisses.
"Because up until recently, you've been considered missing and your father has been a prime target. No one even considered that your father would've taken you with him, that he would've trained you himself so that you could fill your mother's shoes, become another pawn at the disposal of the Shadows."
"I am no pawn," she seethes, and Green Arrow tightens his grip on her wrists a little. This does little to calm her.
"This life was forced upon you, Artemis," Batman continues. "I don't believe you're evil simply because you've been taught to be capable of evil things."
Oh, this is rich.
"That's what this has been all about! You think you can save me?" she exhales humorlessly. "As the world's greatest detective, I figured you would've known it was too late."
His voice takes on an impossibly colder tone as he looks straight at her and says, "It's never too late, Artemis."
"There's nothing good about me anymore, Batman," she says simply. "So you might as well just ship me off to prison."
"If there's nothing good about you, then how do you explain this?" It's Robin who speaks up, producing an arrow—one of her arrows—in his hands. "This is the arrow that saved Kid Flash when we went up against the Amazo, which was a perfect match to at least half of the arrows we salvaged from the gymnasium that were in your quiver."
Her eyes shift to Kid Flash without even realizing it, and in the back of her mind, she wonders if this has everything to do with the way he was acting towards her earlier.
"Professor Ivo and his toys are a nuisance to the Shadows." She shrugs and hopes she sounds as nonchalant as she needs to. "I wanted to see his robot destroyed, not to save you."
"What were you doing in Gotham then?" he questions.
"Oh, don't play dumb! You probably already know it's where I grew up!"
"But why come back and take the risks? Especially since it just so happened that your mother got released from prison the week before."
"That is none of your concern!"
"When you work for Shadows, kidnap scientists, and coerce them into producing deadly weaponry that is a threat to society, it becomes our business, Artemis." This is from Batman, who moves to stand slightly in between her and the Boy Wonder. "Your intentions are clouded with revenge, but you can still be saved if you are willing to sever your ties with Shadows and work with us, not against us."
She almost feels herself taken in by his words for a few heartbeats, until this faint beep in the back of her head snaps her out of her fantasies of actually being able to redeem a life full of wrongs.
"My intentions," she begins slowly, "have everything to do with remaining with Shadows."
An explosion punctuates her sentence.
... ...
Smoke spreads through the air around her quickly, and she feels the cuffs being cut from her wrists, freeing them. Someone straps a new quiver to her back and spins her around, and Cass shoves a new bow into her hands. "Try not to lose this one," is all she says before shoving her out of the way and putting herself between Artemis and Black Canary.
The thing about Cassandra is that she fights with body language. She can predict moves before they've barely registered in her opponents heads, and she knows each pressure point and weak spot like the back of her hand. It doesn't take long for her to exploit them and render someone immobile, and that's basically what she's doing to everyone that crosses their path on the way to the helicopter.
"Hurry the hell up!" Jade's voice echoes above the noise, and Artemis nocks an arrow and fires it backwards to hit the ceiling, causing a second explosion upon impact.
The place beings to rumble, and Artemis is entirely focused on the fact Cassandra is ahead and boarding that she isn't paying much attention to the fact someone is heading right for her until something is colliding with her from behind.
This time, however, she maneuvers herself on top, pinning Kid Flash beneath her.
"Why are you so persistent?" she yells, tightening her grip.
"Because you're better than this, Artemis!" he yells back. "You saved my life! And I intend to do the same thing with you!"
The sad smile she gives him is something that takes herself by surprise, because this is all terribly cliché and she shouldn't find it kind of sweet. So she leans down and whispers against his ear, "I'm not leaving Shadows until my father dies," and actually feels something along the lines of guilt as she uses his split second of shock to throw his head back against the ground and roll off him.
She jumps out of the hole they blasted in the side of the mountain and Jade reaches and pulls her entirely inside just as the pilot is swerving away. When she looks back over her shoulder, they're all crowding around Kid Flash, and even if the helicopter is already pulling away, she can tell that he's alive and moving and it shouldn't relieve her as much as it does.
"I guess you didn't get your ass kicked too badly back there," Damian remarks, which is kind of his twisted way of saying he's glad she made it back, and she just shrugs and isn't entirely sure what she means herself when she says, "I almost did."