Aim and Accuracy
Disclaimer: Own 'Young Justice,' I do not. Rick Riodan, own Percy Jackson you do. Any other references to mythology come from really long-ago dead people. I do not own 'Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron,' DreamWorks does… Robert Frost wrote the poem, 'Ice and Fire.' Let's just say I actually don't own a whole lot.
A/N: This begins with 'Failsafe' and moves through the counseling sessions in 'Disordered.' It was nice to see Dick having that conflict building that eventually turns him to Nightwing. This chapter might be a little icky, so be forewarned.
'Gotcha covered!' Artemis mentally called as she released her explosive-tipped arrows at the oncoming E.T. hostiles. They made very satisfying direct hits and two of the ships starting going down, one creating a huge shower of powdery, upturned snow upon impact with the arctic landscape. 'Get inside, I'm almost there!' she ordered, turning and sprinting to her team for all she was worth.
She was only twenty meters away, the snow crunching noisily under her boots but holding, when suddenly M'gann's voice warned, 'Artemis, behind you!'
Artemis quickly pivoted, bringing around her bow and an already loaded arrow as she did so, but before she could so much as release the explosive, the hostile's beam was on her. She had just enough time to think, 'no…' before a searing, blindingly painful fire was consuming her and she was dead.
Or at least… she thought she was. Opening her clenched eyelids, she was surrounded in an inky blackness, but she wasn't alone. A meter ahead of her, on some wobbly wooden surface stood a man, or what she thought was a man as his large form was concealed behind a gnarled, moth-eaten cloak, its imposing gray the swirling shade of soulless clouds that obliterate all colours before them. A lamp, steadily swinging back and forth from a pole in front of the man, further showed that the wobbly wooden surface was in fact a boat, and the guy some sort of gondolier.
She heard the sound of water lapping against the prow, but when she leaned over to investigate, there was only darkness. She curiously tried to reach a hand out to feel if the water was there or merely an illusion, but found her hand couldn't go over the side of the boat. It was like the command between her brain and her arm got lost somewhere. She tried to call out to the oarsman, but her voice died in her throat by the same manner.
Slowly, a red glow in the distance grew nearer until their small gondola emerged from the black cave of nothingness they'd been floating through, out onto a vast wasteland of despair. Artemis unconsciously drew her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth in the middle of the boat. There had been no water. She saw that now.
Instead, their boat seemed to glide along a river made of sulphuric air and… things. Sad, lonely things that floated with them such as a broken dvd, a half-eaten over ripe apple, a dead puppy, a shrivelled rose, a smashed trophy…
Beyond the sulphuric haze, she thought she heard a scream. As the gondola neared a charred, barren beach made of blackened sand, she knew it was a scream for now they were everywhere. Screams of terror, moans of pain, wails of agony… they were the only sounds one could hear.
Her oarsman drew their craft beside the beach and it came to a silky stop, the noxious fumes rising like yellow ribbons all around them. Artemis prayed that she could hide where she was between the two planked seats but the oarsman turned, his skeletal features just visible past the shadow of his hood. Without willing it, her body rose from the boat and carefully stepped onto the beach. She felt the gondola disappear and knew that there was no escape to be had behind her.
Expecting a slobbering three-headed dog to greet her at any moment, Artemis was more than surprised when a tall, thin-to-the-point-of-emaciated figure in a sharply tailored black suit complete with a narrow black tie and shiny dress shoes materialized out of the hazy vapours. A black fedora covered his head, his face swathed in shadows like the gondolier, but she could see locks of shiny, dark brown hair peaking out from under it, curling elegantly at the back to the nape of his white neck. This was not a corpse however. The very living, very long, pale white fingers on one of his flesh-covered hands was wrapped around the hilt of a wickedly lethal scythe about as tall and sharp looking as he was.
…Artemis…
Though he did not move his lips, she heard her name as clear as a bell, and it came from a melodious, threatening voice she knew well.
Still unable to speak, she tried to scramble back, only remembering too late that there was nothing but the screaming void of sulphuric despair behind her. She stopped with her heels melting into it, her hair beginning to singe with a sickening burnt smell mixed with that of rotting eggs.
He lifted his chin a fraction but it was enough for the red glow around them to cast the sharp, aristocratic features of his angular face into relief. There was no flaw on his pearly white skin, his lips were full, his cheekbones chiselled from Adonis. There was no emotion in his glacial eyes, only a light cyan aurora like a hellish spectre trapped behind ice.
He looked like the angel of death, equal parts terror and beauty.
His ghoulish orbs looked strait through her and he smiled softly before knocking the staff of his scythe against the black beach once, a puff of fine charcoal dust billowing out behind him on a searing breeze. The fine sand grains coalesced into three distinct shapes: A tall, powerfully built man, a slender young woman with wild hair, and a weaker one in a chair.
The black sand blew away slowly as living flesh emerged from beneath, revealing an emotionless Lawrence Crock, his muscular arms folded, a bored Jade Crock twirling a three-pronged ninja dagger carelessly in her left hand, and a weary Paula Crock trapped forever in her wheelchaired prison.
In horror, Artemis could only watch, a strangled scream ripping her throat to pieces as Jade smirked at her, gave the dagger one more twirl, and then swiftly plunged it into their mother's forehead. Paula Crock's sad, tortured face, lifeless eyes opened wide in shock, lurched forward as her entire frame crumpled and then fell into the black swallowing sands, disappearing beneath them as though she'd never been there at all.
A second dagger appeared in Jade's right hand, but before she could throw it at their father, he plucked it from her fingers like she was still a wayward infant and wrapped one of his massive hands around her graceful neck, squeezing until Jade's once beautiful face turned purple and her tongue lolled. The crunching sound of her vertebrae snapping seemed to bounce around Artemis's head as she watched, transfixed, as her father squeezed even more until Jade's entire body popped like a balloon and disintegrated back into the sands.
His hockey mask forming from wisps of curling red flames licking his face, Sportsmaster now advanced on Artemis but as soon as he passed the…Death Angel? The Skeletal Sentinel? ...the scythe flared to life, and with a vicious, single twist, decapitated her father's head. The grotesque object, blood spraying across the charcoal sands, spun through the air, the blonde hair from behind the mask trailing like the tail of a comet as it barrelled towards a petrified Artemis.
Just the moment before Lawrence Crock's head crashed into her startled face, his blue eyes showed the faintest flicker of sorrow for that fraction of an instant as they were mirrored in her own, the very same eyes. But like a detonation, his head exploded at the impact a moment later and she found herself covered in a fine layer of the black sand. Grainy, and oozing like blood from a fresh wound, it dribbled down her chin, her neck, her chest, and further until it invaded her very soul.
The Angel of Death swooped upon her then like a feeding vulture, ravenously devouring her flesh and digging the razor edge of his scythe into her core. As he leisurely raked the blade upward through her abdomen, navel, and sternum, effectively cleaving her in two, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her own. She choked as she felt his scaly forked tongue, like that of a snake, force its way into her mouth and slither down her convulsing throat, burning a fiery path and corroding her from the inside as though it were acid. From his mouth, still locked to her own in the most perverse first kiss she could have ever imagined, he breathed a cold blast of rancid air into the two halves of her split body, filling each side with putrid revulsion and narrowing her fast-diminishing gaze to the churning aurora of hell waiting for her behind his icy stare.
The chill there froze her, an inch from death with all the pain of the world locked inside her, ripping apart at her severed seams but unable to escape. A single tear fell from her eyes and she watched, immobile as it too, froze.
He gave a second chaste, almost tender kiss, his lips barely ghosting over hers before he drew back slightly and licked the crystal tear from her cheek. His long, dark lashes fell, his eyes lowering as he savoured the taste of it and softly whispered, Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. He slowly backed away from her, his forked-tongue flicking. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire. He raised his scythe aloft with one hand, the red flames flickering in its polished sheen. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate, he hissed the word with a devilish smile and casually adjusted his fedora so it once more veiled his face. To say that for destruction ice, is also great. His voice dropped as he whispered, so faint now, it could have been the sulphuric breeze swirling all around her frozen body. He slashed the scythe in a downward stroke, a final, killing blow.
And would suffice.
Artemis's eyes snapped open and the scream that had been tearing her insides apart was finally, mercifully, given release. Her blurred vision saw Red Tornado above her, holding her shoulders steady as she twisted and writhed but she couldn't stop the screaming until her lungs ran out of air and her head fell back with a pang against the metallic surface of the medical table she was lying on top of.
Gradually, so slowly she thought the world had slowed around her during her trip to hell, the pained and concerned faces around her came into focus and her heart rate slowed.
The simulation.
They'd all been performing a training exercise… but everything since she'd been hit by the hostile E.T. beam had felt so real. The intensity of it, just thinking about it, brought bile to her already sore throat.
As soon as she'd stopped screaming and struggling, Red Tornado released her. Artemis groaned and quickly sat up, a migraine splitting her head just as the death angel's last slice should have. She leaned over the side of her table and purged the contents of her stomach, the acidic aftertaste familiar.
"…Still, you were aware nothing was real, including the deaths of the entire Justice League," Batman was telling them all in his most controlled tone. He looked up at her state, and something akin to concern flashed behind the visors in his cowl.
Martian Manhunter beside him, doubled over as though he'd suffered his own migraine, quietly interjected, "That is why you hardly grieved, even when Wolf was disintegrated before your eyes. But all that changed when Artemis died…"
She felt her teams' gaze fall on her and avoided their stares, choosing to glare instead at the polished floor.
So the rest of the team had suffered too, and she was the cause. The now familiar pang of shame began to eat away at her recent fear, replacing it with self-loathing. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, letting the numbness take control for a bit as she ignored everything around her and focused on her breathing, pulling herself back together.
"…and her subconscious took control," Manhunter was saying when her ears finally tuned back in. "Making all of you forget too."
M'gann looked devastated, her face wet with tears.
So Miss Martian had done this, unwittingly. Artemis felt sympathy, but it was too lost in the sea of other emotions to allow her to comfort her friend. At least in that moment.
"This isn't her fault!" Conner fumed. "Why didn't you stop the exercise?" The entire team looked up at Batman and Martian Manhunter accusingly, mirroring the question.
Manhunter shook his head and responded sadly, "We tried. But M'gann had a deathgrip on the scenario. Even Artemis, who should have awakened upon her death, was so convinced she had passed, she slipped into a coma." Artemis shut her eyes, fighting the images of her so-called coma. "I realized I would have to wrest control from Miss Martian's subconscious from within. But upon entering, I was overwhelmed by your collective emotion. There was too much…noise to think clearly, to remember why I was there. The deaths of Aqualad and Superboy helped. But only when the mothership exploded and Robin and Kid Flash were silenced did my mind clear enough to remember my true purpose- to shock M'gann out of the exercise…before your comas became permanent…"
Artemis shuddered, once again tuning out the Manhunter and focusing on her breathing. So all of them had died in the simulation…
When she felt herself calm down once more, she saw that everyone was avoiding eye contact. She looked at Wally and he purposefully turned away from her. Stung, she tried to catch Robin's gaze behind his shades but he just continued steadfastly staring at the floor. M'gann began sobbing and Conner looked on helplessly as Captain Marvel comforted her. Aqualad looked lost in his own world.
Each of their League mentors escorted them home that night, so worried was everyone about the team's emotional stability. When she stumbled out of the Gotham zeta-tube into Green Arrow's arms, Artemis caught a flash of his yellow hair and stumbled back with a gasp before reminding herself that he wasn't her father…not by a long shot.
Green Arrow gave her some space, a truly concerned look behind his hooded mask. Artemis closed her eyes and swallowed the sob that longed to free itself from her turmoil. Instead, in a tight voice, she whispered, hating herself even as the words passed her lips, "Could you…stay at my home tonight, Ollie?"
His gaze softening, he gently put his arm around her shoulders in a comforting gesture and began to lead her toward her apartment building. "Of course, Arty. That's what uncles are for."
That night, after Oliver had explained to her mom what had happened, she laid some sheets, an old pillow, and an extra blanket patterned with beach Barbie's smiling face- Jade's old blanket, not Artemis's- over the couch in the living room. The three of them stayed up, watching 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' tackle the untamed American West for an hour or so before Artemis finally felt exhaustion overtake her and, nestled warmly against the couch between the safe presence of Oliver and her mother, she nodded off into a blessedly dreamless sleep.
Oliver must have carried her up to her bed, because she awoke to Jade's familiar 'Wonderland' poster as her alarm went off. Curiously, she tiptoed downstairs to find the blanket and sheets neatly folded on the couch. Inexplicably disappointed, she sought out her mother and found her still sound asleep in her parent's bedroom. Her wheelchair was in an easily accessible position. No doubt Oliver's doing as well. She felt a pang and wished that Oliver really were her family.
It wasn't until after she'd prepared for school- a tedious process since looking at the mirror now seemed to confirm that some part of her was still dead- and started toward her usual subway station that she thought to check her cell phone. There was one text and one voice message.
The voice message was from Green Arrow. 'Hey Arty. Hope you got some rest. Star City called but I made sure your mom and you were alright before I left and Batman assured me he'd keep a lookout. Dinah is going to be giving the entire team some grief counselling sessions over the next few days and all of us agreed you guys should take the day off from school. I know it will take more time than that to heal, but rest up, and if you need me for anything, I'm only a call away.' BEEP!
The text message only read, 'bm: 9. no green.' Frowning at the message as she began to head back home, Artemis almost missed the familiar face that appeared as a tinted window rolled down, waving her over from the black sedan parked beside her apartment.
"Alfred?" she asked in confusion.
"Yes, my dear. Lovely to see you again," he said, stepping lithely from the vehicle and opening the back door for her. "I trust Master Wayne informed you of my coming?"
Artemis dumbly gazed back down at the text for a moment before finally coming to some grasp of the situation. "Uh… yea." She gingerly hopped in, feeling moderately safe with Alfred, as he'd driven her several times in the past week. He got back into the driver's seat and they headed off. "So what's going on?" she asked, trying to figure out if she was supposed to know about this or not.
"I believe Master Wayne wishes to tell you in person." From the rear-view mirror, Alfred must have seen her worried expression. "Never fear, young miss. In fact, I do believe you'll be quite pleased."
When the sedan pulled in front of Wayne Manor, Artemis was very surprised when Bruce Wayne himself opened her door and helped her out. "What's…
"Let's talk inside," he quickly intervened, a reassuring smile on his handsome face. Confused, Artemis could only follow as she took in his casual clothing- a black sweater, blue jeans (which may or may not have been pressed), and ordinary black sneakers.
This seemed bizarre.
Dick was likewise wearing civvies, sans the shades, when they came upon him in the grand foyer, standing to greet them beside some comfy looking furniture that must have been moved around the night of the banquet. She found her sight fixated on the four-leaf clover of his emerald green shirt, unable to meet his uncovered eyes.
Wayne moved past them and pulled a lever, a giant grandfather clock opening to the stairs that she knew led down into the Batcave.
Artemis heaved a sigh and shook her head, turning to face the less emotionally draining superhero in the room at that moment. "Alright, I give up," she said to Wayne. "What am I doing here?"
"Recent events have brought to my attention that you could use some extra training," Wayne explained, his face betraying nothing as he stood motionless beside the cave opening, waiting for her.
"But...what about your secret? Why are you suddenly trusting me so much?"
He grinned, a Bruce Wayne grin. "Because you live in my city."
"This is because I let the team down last night, isn't it? And because you feel responsible for my attack at the docks…"
"No."
"But I'm already getting training from Canary," she reasoned, shooting a sideways glance at Dick. "Plus, you know I learned from one of the best," she added quietly, referring to her top-secret background.
"You live in my city, you play by my rules. Your former teachers won't be teaching you anything new and while Canary's knowledge of martial arts is exceptional, you have the distinct disadvantage of being one of the few non-metas in the entire League, something Black Canary doesn't have to contend with."
Still rooted to her spot, Artemis put a hand on her hip. "So I'll ask again, why the sudden interest?"
The features of Wayne's face hardened into the Dark Knight's and she unconsciously took a step back like she had that night in his study, but it was Dick's near-forgotten presence beside her that quietly spoke up, "Because I asked him to."
"Why?"
His blue eyes were burning, but not with Jonathan's ice. Dick's eyes held wildfire. "Because you died last night and because of your attack Friday! Because you live in Gotham and go to my school. Because your presence in my life is unavoidable and I'm not equipped to watch you die or get raped or even fake die IN A SIMULATION I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN WASN'T REAL!" His breath hitched and he pinched the bridge of his nose, refusing to let the tears come. So quietly she had to step closer, he went on in a broken whisper, "Because I can't be responsible. I don't want to be."
Alfred laid a comforting hand on Dick's quaking shoulder and he turned away for a moment to gather himself. When he turned back, his emotions were under control, but just barely. "I talked it over with Bruce. We agreed that you need more training. Your aim is excellent, but as we've already seen on some of our missions, it's not enough. Also, since the attack, we're going to be spending more time together at school and you need more stealth and concealment training. Batman's your best bet."
Defeated, Artemis nodded at Dick and walked toward the grandfather clock opening. "Alright," she told Wayne before descending the stairs, "But I'm not wearing mouse ears."
Conner was the first one to go in for Canary's shrink wrap. Artemis folded her arms and leaned back against the kitchen wall, taking in M'gann's lifeless attempt to stir a batter of cookie dough, Wally's dazed expression as he sat in front of the team flat screen, not really watching it, and Robin and Aqualad's pensive expressions as they didn't pretend to focus on anything in particular.
She hadn't seen Dick since she'd gone down into the cave with Wayne. He hadn't followed though she'd been expecting him to, wanting to talk with him about the failed simulation.
Wayne had drilled her hard on his own 3-D simulation course down in the cave, assessing her individual skills and devising a training regime to work on particular weak points.
Conner stormed out of the temporary psych ward at that moment, interrupting everyone's brooding, his normal frumpy face looking even more sullen. Without a word even to Miss Martian, he stomped off straight for the hangar. No one tried to stop him. M'gann looked away and wiped at her eyes.
"Artemis!" Canary called from within. "You're up!"
"Yippee…" Artemis muttered as she walked in, carefully shutting the door behind her.
Canary had her sit in a huge, overstuffed green chair opposite her, and then just kind of sat there for a while, waiting for Artemis to say something. After several minutes, when she found nothing forthcoming, Canary finally asked her how she was feeling and Artemis snapped.
"Look, me dying during the exercise might have starting things going south but I was coma-girl. Missed out on all the fun and forgetting it wasn't real, so… no trauma. No need for the shrink crap."
Because what she really wanted was to explain to their den mother how she'd seen the Underworld and watched her family kill each other before the Angel of Death, looking alarmingly like Jon the scarecrow, had slowly murdered her.
Yea, that would go over real well.
"You're too tough to need help?" Canary conjectured in what Artemis thought was an extremely patronizing tone.
Annoyed, Artemis huffed, "Whatever…maybe." Maybe she could take a hint.
"Or maybe too tough to admit you need help. Artemis, it's not a sign of weakness to open up to your friends."
Or not.
"I know that," Artemis found herself practically hissing. She wanted to talk to Dick, not sit here and take this. But after his outburst at the manor, Dick was being kind of close-lipped. He'd obviously confronted some of his own horrors in the simulation. It was killing Artemis to not know if any of the others had seen some of the things she'd seen…or gone to the place she'd gone.
"But you still keep secrets from them."
Okay, that was uncalled for, plus majorly beside the point! "You won't tell them! You can't!" It wasn't even that she didn't want to tell her team about her family. It was just the fear of what they might think of her. And she knew Canary knew that as well! What she didn't know was why Canary had to drudge this up.
Canary shook her golden head and raised a hand in a placating gesture. "I won't. But you should. You could start by admitting you're not really Green Arrow's niece."
Was that what all this was about? Did last night take time away from one of their dates or something? Artemis didn't think Canary that petty, not at all. But it was like she was working some angle. "Pffft…right," Artemis said, rolling her eyes as she tried to gage with new perspective the crime-fighting beauty before her. She considered the consequences of telling the team she was the daughter of Sportsmaster and the former Tigris, the sister of Cheshire, and a former understudy in the League of Assassins. She couldn't help the chuckle that bubbled forth as she envisioned Wally's reaction. "Can you imagine what Wally would do with that?" she laughed finally.
Instead of laughing back however, Canary just leaned forward, steepling her fingers like they were finally getting somewhere. "Interesting…so the person you're most worried about is Wally?"
Oh. So it was going to be like that, was it?
Later, when Wally was in the psych ward, Artemis finally got the chance and sat down firmly next to Robin, leaving him no way to escape. Well, plenty of ways, just none of them easy.
Adopting the soothing, patronizing tone Canary had employed, Artemis mimicked, "Want to talk about it?"
But Robin didn't grin, he just leaned forward, hanging his head between his legs. Wearily, sounding so defeated that Artemis found her hand gently rubbing his back in a comforting gesture before she even knew she was doing it, he told her the events that took place in the simulation after her death. How Aqualad had sacrificed himself and how he, Robin, had taken control only to assign Superboy and Kid Flash a death mission.
"But Manhunter said you died too."
"The captain has to go down with the ship. Doesn't mean Wally had to go with me. Or that Conner deserved to be used like a pawn," Dick said bitterly.
"Is that why you're so upset? You think you'll be a bad leader when the time comes?"
Dick raised his head and peered at her closely, frowning. "You think I'm upset because I'm worried about my future leadership potential?" he asked quietly in disbelief.
"No! That's…"
"I'm upset because I couldn't sort out what was real and what wasn't! I'm upset because I was so focused on the mission, so focused on saving the world, that I couldn't feel anymore. I didn't even cry when you died, Artemis. I didn't bat an eye…" At his own little pun, a terrible false mirth bubbled up and he grimly chuckled. "You should have seen how distraught Wally was though. Your death just about killed him."
So that was why Canary had led their therapy session to the land of the speedsters. Wally really did care about her. Artemis now needed to talk to him too, but foremost, she had to get Robin to see that he was being too hard on himself. "But you got 'traught. You kept everyone going. That's an amazing thing," she whispered, trying to comfort him.
He just shook his head. "No, you don't understand. How could you? You were gone." He gently pulled her hand away from where it had come to rest on his back and placed it in her lap like he couldn't stand her touching him. "Artemis, I'm not some unfeeling automaton. I'm not like Bats. But when I watched you disintegrate, I shoved my humanity aside. I let myself become a soulless monster and I destroyed the rest of our team doing what I thought would serve the greater good…the mission."
Artemis flung her arms around his neck and hugged him close. She felt him try to pull away and held on tighter, whispering in his ear, "You know you're not a soulless monster, Dick. Even if you do like math a little too much…"
He finally stopped fighting her hug, his slender frame beginning to shake as he sobbed into her shoulder.