Title: Alice the Tiger
Song: "Alice" by Avril Lavigne
Rating: T
Genre: Romance, Angst, Friendship
Fandom: Young Justice: Invasion
Couple: Artemis/Cameron, Article Jr., Frostbite, CamArt
Inspiration: Last chapter, wanting to break away, fan-girling
N/A: California lost, but I'm not going to take this. I've raised too much money and done too much already to back down now.
"Tripping out, spinning around
I'm underground, I fell down.
Yeah, I fell down."
Dreams were twirling hand-and-hand with nightmares. Slipping and sliding across the oil black backdrop of dead bodies and her friends. Unmasked and exposed, beaten to a bloody pump, bones broken and left open and raw for the pickings of vultures. Like Tula and Jason . . . oh god, she had become them.
She was there when they were buried and locked away in boxes like dark secrets never to be mentioned again.
Would they do that same with her?
"Artemis?"
Lock her away and never breathe her name again?
"Hey, Mis? Artemis, wake up. C'mon."
She whimpers but forces her eyes open all the same to find Cam's human face and anime-boy pretty crystal blues staring back at her with concern.
"Hey," a cool hand touches the side of her face that's not pressed against Kaldur's bed. "You were having a nightmare."
She stares back at him silently and glances up at Kaldur's vitals before leaning up to rub the sleep from her eyes. Her head feels heavy. "Oh," is about all she can manage.
"Here," Cameron hands her two Aspirin and a small paper cup full of water and she glances up at him questioningly before he rebuts and falls back into his boy brain. "You look like hell."
There's her once-but-not-anymore-best friend.
"Thanks Cam," she says dryly and chases the pills down with water. She glances at Kaldur's sleeping stupor and wonders if anyone has been in yet to check on him. There are no visible clocks in the room, or really anywhere on the sub, so Artemis had been judging time by looking out the portholes of the sub to weight the choices of light blue water or dark blue water.
Another thing—there were no portholes in here either.
She looks up at Cameron who's watching her expectantly.
"What?" she nearly growls.
"Nothin'." Cameron feigns innocence and diverts his gaze for a moment.
"Screw nothing. What's wrong now?" Her voice is dripping acidically at every syllable.
"I'm freaking out, where am I now?
I'm underground and I can't stop it now."
Kaldur's still not waking up and Artemis is becoming more and more anxious by the day, pacing the floors, hovering the doctors and questioning to Black Manta on the merits of Atlantian healers. That only got her a few quaint 'lover-girl' nicknames but she wasn't giving up—growing agitation aside.
Life was becoming a mosquito bite that had contacted West Nile.
A buggering annoyance like the boy of ice who noticeably began to chill the very rooms he walks into.
"You can't stop me now."
Cameron was always the sort to get troubling things off his chest as soon as possible. Like his words and emotions were ugly leftover vegetables no one wanted, she was the garbage disposal.
"So, do you want to explain? Why'd you go straight?"
"Because my mom—"
"Then switch back over again? Was it for him?" Cameron was pointing at the motionless Kaldur on the bed.
"No! No it wasn't!"
"Then why?!"
"I CAN'T TELL YOU OKAY! ?"
Now, she was backed up and spitting the remains out until he got a new one.
"I, I'll get by. I, I'll survive."
She's staring at her reflection in the mirror and seeing the same face Kaldur and Wally and Dick and now, possibly, M'gann can only see.
Her features have always been odd. Asian and blonde. That was a big oxymoron for you, and a genetic abnormality that had been many times explained to her through the magical possibilities of Punnet Squares that had something to do with recessive and dominate traits in her gene pool.
Blonde hair versus black hair. Darker shades and tones were said to be more dominate, like they could swallow the trait whole like when a baby is first born with blonde hair that progressively turns darker, or blue eyes that progressively go green or sometimes darker.
Then again, she had retained the blonde hair/blue eye combo from her father, so was it really even a surprise?
Paula had once been astounded but Artemis's coloring and had snapped about a half a million photos of her before she was shipped off to prison and Lawrence wasn't really the type to be as sentimental about pictures when what he wanted to see was right in front of him.
The happy little baby, toddler then steadily growing child remained in the past, in the pictures where she belonged.
"When the world's crashing down
When I'm falling, hit the ground
Don't you try and stop me."
She's in the infirmary again and when Cameron finds her—like always when the writer is obviously about to end a damn chapter—he has something to say.
He begins with small talk, asking how she is, how Kaldur is and briefly updates her on the behaviors of the Terror twins and how Tuppence is still evading him and now Tommy decided to step in. " . . . so after he finished threatening me, I decided to come see you—and Artemis I'm sorry so will you just forgive me already! ?"
She, having barely been listening, stares at him in shock when his monotonous voice breaks its pattern to snap and apology at her.
"For what?" ash asks.
He's in his human form and, due to his pale parlor, goes ruddy red at the cheeks. "Well, you're mad at me for two reasons: one) because I refuse to leave you alone—and no this doesn't mean I'm going to—and two) you're friend/boyfriend/whatever is in comatose and I should have known better than to pick a fight with you."
He's right, and direct, and as usual knows her moods, but still: "I'm not mad at you Cameron."
She really has to stop using his name.
Cameron pulls his don't-feed-me-that-bullshit face and Artemis frowns.
"I'm not mad at you Cameron, but I really just can't talk to you."
Cameron glares. "Because we use to know each other? Well, that's bull. We can pretend just to be fast friends—unless you're going for the 'untouchable seductress prude' in that getup I could start hitting on you and you could give me feedback on my lines when we're alone."
"We can't be friends. Period."
"Why?" Cameron asks tartly like something sour was in his mouth. "Why are you dressed like that anyways? Why did you really fake your death and change your face if it wasn't for him?"
Seeing him edge closer to the truth, Artemis lashed out.
"Get. Out." She spits and Cameron glares at her sensing her tension, but this time, he's not backing down.
Kaldur's script description was to lay there and be catotonic like Betty Parris from "The Crucible" THAT PLAY IS MEANT TO BE SEEN AND NOT READ. ARTHUR MILLER DID NOT WRITE NOVELS and he wasn't accused of beign in cahoots with communists just so everyone could hate his work in the end *pout* Though it was amazing he married to Marilyn Monroe. My English teacher is very spirited this year, she says we should read "Fifty Shades of Gray" instead, but since we can't legally we do it anyway. It's anatomy the fun way XD (I have to quote her: "Smut! Let's all read smut! Look at Callie over there, in her chair desk with Christian Gray, she reading that book like its a war!" Callie's a girl in my class)
Anyway, catotonic, funny. And Artemis, well she's falling and slipping and dreaming and oh my goddess she's becoming an Alice and Camron's her White Rabbit.
In other news: I'm writing a new Cam/Art story. You can look on my pole on my homepage for it, it's called "Can't Catch Me"
Loves and reviews,
~QueenVamp