Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice or any of it's characters.
Title: Her Own Hero
Characters/pairings: Artemis Crock, Wally/Artemis if you squint
Genre: Angst
Rating: T
Promptee: Done for day one's prompt of the December Drabble-thon on Tumblr! I am forever enamored with the idea/headcanon of Artemis having admired and/or crushed on Kid Flash when she was younger. In fact, I thought, well….just read. ;) Ah, also profuse apologies to my loverly Satellites on Parade, I think some of her headcanon for Artemis' past may have attached to my brain.
Quote for the Drabble-thon prompt was:
I'm the hero of the story; I don't need to be saved.
— Regina Spektor, "Hero"
o.o.o.o
Eleven years old
o.o
Her face hurts.
She kneels in the center of the room on her knees, between her own bed and the one where Jade used to sleep. Delicate flaxen wisps of hair hang loose from her ponytail, tickling her nose incessantly as she stares blankly at the wooden floor. She ignores them, her body focused only on the stinging pain of her throbbing cheek.
Dad backhanded her earlier during her training. Said she was weak, weak like one of those do-gooders on the TV. So he'd backhanded her, and like a good little student she'd bit back the tears even as the left side of her face ached and swelled her eye shut.
Now she is alone, perfectly entitled to letting hot teardrops seep from her lashes and roll down to the floor with soft patters.
But she doesn't.
Because she is Artemis Crock, and according to Daddy, Crocks don't cry.
Her fists clench in her lap. One strap of her overalls hangs down against her bare arm, cold and cool, so she lifts it away and presses it to her bruise; she doesn't dare go into the kitchen for ice. She sighs with relief as some of the pain is leeched from the abrasion.
She loves her dad. She does...or did.
She doesn't even know anymore. He's always been tough to live with, never been very loving, or caring, or nice...but he's taught her how to be tough, how to take care of herself, and even several ways to dislocate some one's shoulder, or where to put pressure on a human's neck so they pass out.
He's even teaching her how to kill.
Her small frame shudders. She doesn't want to kill people. It's wrong, it's so wrong and she doesn't understand why Daddy wants her to prepare to do it...but prepare she does. She's asked him why she needs to train for death and stealth and combat, but all he says it that it'll keep her from winding up the same way as Mom.
And until today, Artemis has accepted that answer.
But not anymore..
Today Daddy dealt the blow that was her final straw.
She'll continue to train with him, oh yes. She has no say in this particular matter. She'll continue enduring his jabs and his insults and his coaxing attempts to get her to punch him harder, or kick the training dummy higher, or hold her fists in the correct way when fighting.
But now she'll train on her own, too, in secret and on her own time. She'll hone her skills with weapon she loves most in Dad's arsenal: the bow. Dad thought the bow was impractical, thought she'd be better off using anything else from the weapons he'd shown her.
But Artemis had felt something click for the brief moment she'd held that bow in her hand. She wanted to learn the ways of archery.
So she would.
Artemis drops the bit of metal away from her cheek and gets to her feet. She pads softly out of the moonlight stretching across the floor on the way to the closet and flings the door open with force when she arrives.
It's empty, save for two things.
The first is the bow and a quiver of arrows. She nicked them one day after a grueling session with Daddy. He had about a hundred of the stupid things and about twice as many arrows, so he wouldn't miss them. She's stashed them in the grubby little space until she's ready, or has the guts, to pull them out.
The other object is a stuffed animal. It's fat and covered in dirt and paint and food, and it's fur is sticking up all over the place. A leering smile of white stands out in the darkness where it rests up on the shelf.
A stuffed Chesire cat.
Her jaw sets in a grim line at the sight, agonizing memories flooding her brain. She remembers very clearly the night her sister left her, little over a year ago. First mom went to jail and they were left alone with dad, but Artemis hadn't been so terrified with big sister Jade there to protect her, to keep her company. But then Jade had left too, gone to find a rabbit hole to tumble down, leaving Artemis all alone with no one but their hard ass and intimidating dad to look up to.
Well, at least some good has come of being abandoned by everyone but Daddy.
She's resilient now. She doesn't rely on Jade anymore. No, she knows how to take care of herself, how to stay strong. She can hold back tears from the worst pain imaginable, and she knows how to incapacitate a grown man by kicking his kneecaps in.
Artemis is a survivor.
Her steely eyes harden as she snatches up the bow and quiver, slamming the door on the creepily grinning stuffed toy that tears at her heart a little each time she looks at it.
It's time to take matters into her own hands.
o.o.o.o
Thirteen years old
o.o
Artemis knows now.
She's knows why she's been training, why her fingers are calloused and bloody from so much practice with the bow.
It's not to kill, not to take other people's lives or to protect her own.
Moist pink tongue sticks from between her pursed lips as she works. The adolescent sits indian style on the faded purple sheets stretched flat across the mattress, struggling feverishly with the tattered old white sock in her fingers. She's attacking it haphazardly with a pair of scissors, snipping away two ragged holes directly in the center where she marked with a permanent marker.
For years Dad had drilled a villainous mode of thinking into her impressionable young head, but she's thirteen now and she's long since known that the things she's being taught are not meant to be used for the right reasons; Dad would have her steal, have her lie and cheat and murder for things in life.
But Artemis will have no part of it.
Artemis wants to be a hero.
A hero like Kid Flash.
She'd seen him on the news for the first time a week ago, and again not even thirty minutes prior to her mutilation of the musty sock.
He'd been standing side-by-side with the Flash, looking flustered and overwhelmed at the crowds of adoring citizens as they praised him and his mentor for stopping the bad guy. He'd almost looked a little scared with all the attention at first, but by the end of it he'd been standing proudly, a glint in the emerald eyes visible through the holes on his mask.
Artemis had been enthralled.
He looked so young. He looked her age, and he was helping make a difference.
She wanted to make a difference. She didn't want to be one of the people causing problems in the world, she wanted to be among those stopping them. Just watching the Flash and his handsome new sidekick getting recognized as heroes for their good deeds had set her blood pounding through her veins, had drawn her across the room until her eyes were almost stuck to the flickering piece of junk that was her television.
She wants that.
And it isn't the fame that is so tantalizing, it's the sheer prospect of even daring to deny becoming what her father has tried so hard to make her into.
With one final snip, the archer-in-training pops up from the bed and ties the badly homemade 'mask' over her eyes. The holes are a little crooked and off center, but she can still see her reflection in the mirror as she surveys herself, imagining a much more confident and older looking Artemis standing triumphant against the enemy, a perfectly badass mask hiding her true identity from those who would seek to hurt her.
Yeah. That's it.
She will be a hero.
And not only will she use her skills to save others, she'll be the hero of her own story. It's time for her to take matters into her own, capable hands.
She doesn't need saving. She'll help herself.
And it doesn't matter that a few years later, when she finally breaks free from her dad's sinister grip and falls headfirst into the most wonderful rabbit hole she could've possibly imagined, that she must always grudgingly thank her dad for the things he taught her. It doesn't matter that Kid Flash turns out to not be the young man she admired on the news(he's arrogant and brash and rude and so full of himself, and she hates his stupid little freckles and his silly red hair). It doesn't matter that she can't tell her new family about her real family.
None of that matters, because she is Artemis Crock, and she is the hero of her own story.