Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice or any of it's characters!
So basically this was just a little idea I had. I did this ages ago after discussing Artemis with my friend Dicey. We decided there was a pretty good chance she'd had to kill someone at some point in her life. I'm not sure how plausible this is now, after all the things we've learned about her since I wrote this, but this is still one of the fics I'm most proud of writing so...here it is!
0.0.0
Still as a statue.
Dark gray eye trained down the soaked shaft.
She had no Long bow, couldn't penetrate through the glass.
No, she would wait until he left the diner.
A crackle of thunder overhead and she didn't move a muscle, though her brain did panic for a beat as lightening briefly silhouetted her form on the roof.
The rain came down harder, colder. It trailed down and across her skin, dripping from the end of her nose, her hair, the deadly tip of the arrow. She was freezing, but showed no sign of it, because that's what dad had taught her.
Show no weakness, never give in.
Never be seen.
A young assasin in training. A star pupil.
And tonight was her first real test.
Her slender fingers tightened and curled against the damp black feathers that fletched the base end of the shaft. A deep, calm breath that shook just a little escaped her lips. This was inconceivable, the thing she was about to do.
But she had been told to do this. It was the only way to earn a place in her dad's heart.
Her throat got tight and she let out a small, mocking chuckle, the only betrayal of position she had made this entire miserable night.
A place in her dad's heart. Yeah, right.
Dad loved no one and nothing. Everyone was a potential enemy, people could not be trusted so easily; to defy those who flaunted authority was the way to survive. And that, too, he had passed down to her.
But if dad cared about nothing, not even her...then why was she doing this?
The man inside the diner had finished talking, it seemed. He laughed, leaned across the table to shake his dining partner's hand and threw his napkin on the cleaned plate. He was heading for the front door.
Her whole body tensed. The string of the bow was pulled as taught as it could possibly go, so far back that it caused her arm muscles to ache and burn in protest. She swallowed the lump in her throat, ignored her subconscious's warnings that this was wrong, wrong, WRONG, and steadied her shaking forearm.
Never miss.
Another lesson drilled in by her relentless mentor(he was no parent).
A lesson that she had never needed, because it had become clear very quickly that she had a natural affinity for the bow and arrow. She never missed.
She proved that true in an instant.
The man had scarcely pushed opened the fancy restaurant's glass front door when she let the arrow fly. She was gone across the rooftops before the projectile had buried itself deep 'twixt his eyes.
Her job was well done, a success. No praise was expected. She would be lucky to even get an acknowledging nod when she told her dad her first mission was successful.
But then, Artemis wasn't so sure she wanted praise for murder.