A/N: Hi. I was recently catching up on all of the Young Justice episodes I missed, and this popped into my head after finishing Season 1.
Short drabble.
Artemis-centric.
Tell me what you think and if I should make it into a longer story. 'Cause I has ideas.
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People are never all that they appear to be. There is always something else, something more; maybe they are hiding it on purpose, or maybe they do not even realize that it exists within them, but it is still there, lurking, hiding underneath the surface of the masks that seemingly-every-day people don twenty-four hours a day.
Artemis knows this better than anyone. She wore a mask of her own, both literally and figuratively, for the longest of times. She tried to deny who and what her family was; and it almost got the people she cared about most, the people she considered to be almost like a second family to her, killed. She still wears a mask, literally now, but not all of the time. She learned to trust, to let her walls down and open up to the people who truly cared about her: Robin, M'gann, Connor, Kaldur, and even Wally.
Sometimes it still hurt, thinking about her mother in her wheelchair and knowing that she is the reason for it. Sometimes, the scars re-opened and it felt as if they were bleeding, raw and red and new, all over again. And sometimes she wondered if she had truly made the right choice, had chosen to fight on the wrong side. Then M'gann would bake and Robin would tease and Connor would listen and Kaldur would try and advise her and, possibly the most important and significant, Wally, (sweet, oblivious, red-headed Wally), would shut-up for longer than a minute and just sit with her; as if he knew that what she needed most right at that moment was silence
Those are the times she remembers clearest in her mind when her father, her cold-blooded killer of a father, manages to catch her alone and whisper a reminder that 'we're still family baby-girl, no matter what you do or whose side you pick, it's my blood running through your veins.' Those small, seemingly-insignificant moments are what run through her head on repeat when her sister, her criminally-insane older sister who she once looked up to and respected, holds a sword to her neck, lifts up her mask, and kisses her cheek before disappearing into the smoke and dust of whatever battle they are currently fighting; constantly on opposing teams.
And when she finally, finally, tells them the truth – that her sister is the assassin they have been fighting against since their very first mission together, that her father is the murderous mercenary that has been one of the League's biggest problems for the longest time, and that her mother used to hold that title right alongside him – and they don't judge her for it all, that is when she knows that she chose the right family.
Because even the darkest secrets, the things that people shove so far into the back of their mind in denial that they hope it means it never happened, come out sometimes. And as Artemis learns, it is sometimes always for the better.
Because she knows that her father was wrong, and she'll never be daddy's baby-girl again.