A/N: So, this is my first foray into the Young Justice fanfiction community. I had originally planned for it to be a one-shot so I could better break the ice, but the plot sort of blossomed in my head as I wrote so if anyone watches the fic, expect it to be three or four chapters long.
It's intended to be a Dick and Artemis friendship fic, but it can be interpreted romantically if you'd like to, I suppose. Also, the story is set before Auld Acquaintances. The T is for language, nothing else.
This hasn't been beta-ed, either. If anyone is interested in doing so for future chapters, I would be beyond grateful.
She never did like letting her feelings show.
Doing so had been a mistake- a hindrance- all through her old high school life, and it was being a hindrance to her now as the prodigy of the renowned Green Arrow. Granted, she was still in high school, even if that high school was technically a "private academy" that she attended at Paula's insistence. Still a teenager whose well-meaning, if overbearing, mother was constantly opposing her "extracurriculars". Still a girl whose feelings for a certain redheaded boy erred more on the side of migraines than the stomach butterflies he used to give her.
Even the villains she fought so ferociously now mocked her, calling her weak. It was bad enough that her damnable father wouldn't leave them alone, all concern for her privacy waylaid like so much nothing. Bad enough that Chesire had found a way through her armor by threatening him, reading her as easily as she had before she'd left her sister alone with their drunken father. Bad enough that the two of them together had bashed without concern her carefully constructed façade between her team and her home; between her family and her blood.
She would be damned if she showed anymore feelings.
She would be fucking damned.
So why was it then that, adorned was in her dark green, Artemis Crock was racing against the dim night sky to escape her mother's palpable disappointment, the glaring accusations burning at her back even as she retreated from their view? Why was it that, torn from eyes by the harsh, cold wind, she allowed tears to make their salty, residued paths down her cheeks?
Why was it that she slipped across Gotham's rooftops on her way to the lone, ever-untouched fortress of safety offered by the leering city?
Because, secure behind shields of marble and gold, the one person in the entire damn world with whom she'd trust her heart lived there (she wouldn't grant him safekeeping of her identity, of course, but she trusted him with her heart nonetheless). Because when she put on the mask, she didn't want to be a student or a teenager. Didn't want to be the daughter of The Huntress or the disappointment of Sportsmaster. When she put on the mask, she wanted- needed- to be just Artemis. She needed to be able to escape. And the only way to do that was to be sure she could keep Artemis-the-child, Artemis-the-person, under lock and key.
And the only way to be sure she could keep that part of her locked down was to, God help her, talk about it.
It would have been such a laughable predicament if it hadn't been her predicament. The slowly shifting landscape beneath her and the dancing colors of the sky above her did little to ease her anxiety; the implications of what awaited her making her stomach turn mutinously. Pressed low against the grimy skyline, she forced her tired body to stay alert, willed her weary senses to keep vigilant. Gotham's villains had a knack for appearing at the worst of times, and one of the city's rare, calm nights was practically an open invitation for an Arkham escape.
Of course this woman- this girl, by most standards- was no coward. All of Gotham and, by now, she hoped, Star City, knew that was true. Artemis had fought scarier than a man with an arctic bird fetish, but she had no desire to do so tonight. She had seen the difficulty Robin and his mentor had sometimes dealing with the madmen housed behind the Asylum's towering, iron gates and knew of even more of them. Even Artemis had to acknowledge that, despite her bitter resentment and heated opposition, she would never come close to putting so much as a scratch on any of them.
Oh, how she hated them all with a passion. All of them, every single one. And she didn't just direct all this fiery hate towards those lunatics, no, there was too much for that. She hated the whole world, everyone who ever doubted her and everyone who ever judged her wrongly. From the shallow crowd of bullies and future failures that had ridiculed her, to the convict acquaintances of her parents she had, in childhood, ventured to consider friends, she had grown to hate them all. On one hand, the former were the people who had, and would, never be witness to her family's fall from glory and success in The Life or their subsequent descent into poverty. They had little to judge on and their opinions meant nothing to her except as a possible source of amusement.
On the other hand, the latter were the ones who held her in high ass contempt, spat on her for the world she had chosen to leave, laughed at her for the people with whom she'd taken company instead, because they knew exactly what and who it was that she had given up by joining the team. It was them she used to trust with her fears, her aspirations, herself and them whose betrayal, or maybe who betraying, cut the deepest. And when the knife digs that deep, it's usually coming from right behind you.
She found she even resented the team nowadays, and the sanctuary they were able to find in each other. For them, joining Young Justice had allowed them to escape whatever dogged nightmares ghosted behind them, but for her? The team had only brought her closer to that filthy, savage, heartless piece of garbage that still got to- would always get to- smugly claim the name "Dad."
She even got the very distinct feeling that the cheery, bright-eyed martian still held sway over his affections. That she still, unwittingly and unwillingly as it may be, jeopardized their relationship far more than any of their many spats. Admittedly, they didn't have much of a relationship at all, but it still pulled at her heartstrings whenever they spoke, whenever eye contact became inevitable, and whenever the other would start to say something, only to be cut off.
She actually had to run from him once, when he had interrupted their conversation to jokingly call out some lame, half-assed come-on to M'gann. She had fled, the beginnings of the most painful sobs bubbling up in her chest. She heard him call out to her, but she didn't turn back.
That had been four days ago. And now here she was, the mansion just beginning to appear over the city skyline, some terrible feeling knotting inside her stomach. She needed to get rid of the feeling. To exorcize it from her body just as she had expelled the love for her father that she had clung to for so long. To scrub it away with the words of one of the few people who hadn't yet received that fiery hate of hers.
And there were two people- no three, with the redhead boy being the first and, in all honesty, her mother being the second- she found she did not hate, found she could not hate. And while she ran from the second and, by extension, the first, here she was running to the third. The only person she had ever felt safe exposing her heart to. The only civilian she'd ever trusted with more than her name. The only human- or alien, for that matter- on the planet who knew nothing of every important thing she'd ever done, of any truly significant moment in her existence since that day Jade had left her alone and yet still seemed to care for her anyway.
Artemis was running to Richard Grayson.
She came to the unpleasant realization that she wasn't quite certain as to how to go about what she wanted to do now that she was there, standing awkwardly under the bright. luminescent glare of the mansion portico, feeling especially small and vulnerable without the mask she had hurriedly stuffed into her pocket and with her quiver, bow and hero suit concealed under the baggy sweatsuit she had, thank God, thought to bring with her as she stole from her apartment. All sorts of foolish seemed to emanate from how she carried herself with a surprisingly small amount of her usual self confidence; it was a new sensation for her, not having her usual self-assuredness, but then again, this whole deal was new to her entirely.
How exactly was she suppose to put into words why she had just knew to be here, how she had bolted from Paula's lecture with the distinct purpose of seeking out the black haired teen? How was she supposed to express what it was she wanted from him, what words she needed to hear, knowing only he could be the one to say them?
"Hey, Dick. I just realized how badly I needed to see you. Ignoring the fact that that I have never met your father or been to your house and can't actually tell you what's wrong, do you think I could stay the night?"
Oh, that would never do. You didn't just waltz in and demand stay at Wayne Manor. Anyway, she couldn't have him thinking she wanted something romantic- that was the last thing she needed- and it sure as hell sounded like she did as she played with the words in her head.
She should have anticipated better, rather than spending her travel wallowing in her recently realized hate. Because God knows she didn't have to wallow, what with it already draping heavily around her conscience.
So when, without her even knocking, the large double doors swung open from the inside and she came face to face with a strangely unperturbed butler, Artemis was suddenly painfully aware that she had absolutely no business whatsoever for being there unannounced and uninvited. And on a school night, no less.
"Why good evening Miss…Crock, is it?" There wasn't even a hint of surprise in that tone as he opened the door in what seemed like an invitation for her to step past the glaring fluorescent light and into the softer, lamp-lit foyer; while the older man spoke with such fluent grace and ease, the teenager found herself at a garbled loss for words. She watched him, slight perplexed as to why he seemed to be expecting her, or why he was otherwise accustomed to strange visitors in the middle of the night, but nonetheless allowed herself to be ushered in.
"Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, sir." She had to pinch herself to bring about the response, distracted by the gleam off cherry wood floors and the tapestries displayed so lavishly on the wall. "I'm sorry that it's so late, but is Dick still awake?"
"Awake but not present, I believe. He and Master Bruce were just leaving to fulfill some late obligations that they had otherwise neglected." Even as he spoke, the butler offered her a seat in a waiting room off the main hall, its cushions illuminated by the faint, welcoming pulse of a lit hearth. "I would, of course, be more than pleased to go see whether they have yet departed."
Another delay on her part. Artemis hadn't yet taken the offered chair in anticipation of the conversation's course- he would say, "If the matter is of pressing importance, I could go fetch him" or something along those lines and she, the ever-polite guest, would be expected to decline and take her leave. And she would know that was expected because he would say "if" which is adult code and usually comes with a "this seems ridiculous and irrational and I'd like you to leave but" implied to be amended before the "if."
But he hadn't, so she didn't, and so she was once again at a loss for what to say.
Maybe this man was cleverer than her policy on first impressions would allow her to believe. After all, anything that drove a sixteen year old girl across an entire city in the middle of the night was likely "pressing," and he had been accommodating to that thus far.
"Uh, yeah," she repeated again, wincing at her own lack of eloquence. "That would be great, sir."
"Alfred." he corrected gently, beginning to withdraw from the room before her tinnier, timid inquiry stopped him.
"Alfred, then." A pause. God, so many pauses. Her voice was almost too small to catch him as he left the waiting room. "How did you know my name?"
His own pause, and the way his mouth held in a slight "o," as though he had begun to answer and then stopped himself, lingered in the silence between them just a second too long. Artemis almost thought he wouldn't be forthcoming with an answer.
Finally came: "As Master Bruce's butler, I make a point of knowing those that the Wayne Foundation grants scholarships to, Miss Crock. You'd be surprised how many appear at our door at one point or another." He amended a slight, knowing smile to the reply and Artemis noted he seemed to particularly stress "appear."
Before Artemis could decide on which of her many other questions to broach, Alfred had already taken his leave with another pair of murmured words. He left Artemis brooding in his surprisingly tangible wake, her hand shoved deep into her pocket so that the green mask hidden there could anchor her while she collected her thoughts. What exactly was she going to say to Dick?
The fire hissed behind her and Artemis, slipping from her train of thought, noticed for the first time that it and a single, pale strip of lights were the sole illumination in the room. It was enough, of course, and though she half expected it, the light didn't flicker eerily, but the dimness still lent an ominous air to the portraits on the walls. The whole room felt sinister, really, but Artemis reassured herself that it was just fatigue and unease worming their way under her skin.
Sure, the stuff was creepy, but that was okay. She loved that kind of stuff. She did a kickass creepy.
Still, she knew it was going to be a long night.
A/N (again): I do apologize if anyone thought Artemis was a little OOC, but I do think she has an anger like this somewhere inside of her. A resentment. Frustration. Maybe we don't see it because she has people like Dick in her life. Because she, God help her, talks about it.
Thanks for reading, of course! Dropping me a review would be fantastic! I will try to mentally send you hugs and kitten gifs from my corner of the internet if you do.