Artemis' life has always been a mess. Being raised by villains was something that marked you forever and no matter how much people tried to understand, they couldn't. You have to live it to know. It's the only way.
From mess to mess her life progressed. It was always different, but she could always spot the disarranged point of her life.
She remembered her childhood years. Those were tinged by a red mess. Blood mess. She remembers robberies and kidnappings and all kinds of stuff that her parents used to do. She remembers Jade's messy hair after she came back from the first trainings her father started. She remembers when her hair became a mess. When there was blood and dirt and sweat and tears that she couldn't let them see. She remembers using a bow and thinking that she could use it for something other than what her father taught her to. She could not make a mess with it. But that, unfortunately, was far away.
She remembers the biggest mess to ever happen to her: her mom going to jail. She remembers the lonely nights in which she wished she wasn't alone, and the nights her dad was there and made her train and she wished she was. She remembers the house was a mess. She remembers thinking that she was so far deep in all of it that there was no coming out of it.
And she remembers joining the team – becoming a hero – and thinking what a mess it would be if – when – they found out about her past. About the mess of a life she had. She remembers messing up lots of things because of this fear.
Which is why despite the some sort of hurt expression in his face, she laughed when her boyfriend mentioned that this whole trying to go to college thing was a mess.
"What? Why are you laughing?" He looked actually offended that she was making fun of his suffering.
She got up from the table in which she was trying to write a letter to Stanford and walked over to him, sitting on his lap.
She kissed him deeply and had to contain the grin trying to appear on her face, settling for a small smile. "If this is what a mess is gonna be from now on, Wall-man, then I'm all up for it."
And maybe it was the light look in her eyes or the small smile on her lips or the evenly breaths she was letting out, but he smiled and kissed her again.
"Me too, babe."