Jade leaned down over the railing on the second story of the town mall watching the young couple in the food court below her eat lunch. What kind of twenty-year olds go on a date at McDonalds, she scoffed. But watching the way they joked and laughed with each other made her smile to herself. This was the first time in a long time Jade had seen her little sister so at ease joking and eating french-fries with her boyfriend Wally. Kidflash had better be good to her, thought Jade while watching the two, Lord knows I wasn't.
It had been four years since she had last seen her sister. Four years since she had fought her in the woods. Four years since she had saved her from the avalanche and four years since they had both betrayed their father. Jade had to admit that she had missed Artemis in those past years and that she wanted to speak to her again, but she just couldn't bring herself to approach her baby sister. If she did, then she would be forced to answer all her sister's questions. Artemis wasn't an idiot, she would notice that Jade was pregnant. And if Jade had nothing else, she still had her pride. She didn't want her little sis to know how, like a fool, she had forsaken her life of crime to marry that good for nothing loser, Red. Or that, she had run back to her old ways because he wasn't paying enough attention to her, only to find out a month later that she was going to be a mom.
No, Artemis didn't need to get caught up in all of that mess. She had a promising life, a good boyfriend, an education, the Justice League. Jade just knew that despite all that faked hatred between them, Artemis would throw everything away to help her older sister. Artemis didn't deserve that.
So Jade watched her sister from a distance. She stayed leaning against the railing long after Artemis and Wally had gotten up and walked away holding hands. Jade had never felt so peaceful in her life as she stood, staring at nothing, and daydreaming about the way things used to be. Then she remembered why she had come to this mall in the first place. She smiled ruefully, straightened herself up and walked off in search of the maternity department.