DISCLAIMER: Why is it called a "disclaimer"? Shouldn't my saying that I don't own Young Justice (i.e. the lack of a claim) be a "nonclaimer"?
Chapter 4: A Night Out...
New York City
December 30, 19:23 EDT
Zatanna Zatara hadn't realized how long it had been since she'd last had ice cream. She'd loved it as a kid (as did all children), but recently, she just hadn't felt the urge for some reason.
Now that she thought about it, the answer was obvious. She hadn't had any since the world-splitting incident.
She'd always gotten ice cream with him as a kid.
It had just reminded her too much of what she'd lost.
"Zatanna?" came a voice beside her. "Your ice cream is melting."
"Right, Dad" Zatanna said quickly. "Esrever tlem" she said, waving a hand over her treat.
"You know, Zatanna" said her father, who had long ago finished his own ice cream. "This is where I proposed to your mother. She used to say that this city at night was as beautiful as all of the jewels in the world."
Zatanna looked down from their perch, sitting on the roof of a skyscraper high above the city. Far below, looking not so much like ants as tiny colored dots, thousands of people lined the streets of New York, half still celebrating a supervillain-free Christmas, half preparing for a hopefully-supervillain-free New Year's Eve.
Zatanna thought about those people. Just normal human beings doing normal human things. Not casting spells, not bending spacetime, not communing with the dead. They didn't have to worry about nanites in the blood cutting off their oxygen or extradimensional beings possessing their bodies and trying to kill their friends.
There was something to be said for being normal.
She looked over at her father. It hadn't even been two full months that he had been Dr. Fate, but it had felt like an eternity.
She still hated him. Nabu. For all of his claims of righteousness, she knew he didn't care about humanity as more than a means to an end. They were tools for the promotion of Order, pawns in a cosmic grudge match that had gone on since the beginning of the universe. A grudge match that had been awfully focused on her body recently.
Of course, Tala and Klarion weren't on her list of favorite sapient entities either. Though most of the Team seemed to have ignored it, Tala had done just as much damage as Tigress. More, actually. And Zatanna wasn't a hundred percent sure how well she really had her under control. As for Klarion, well, he was the reason she'd had to use the Helmet of Fate to heal the worlds in the first place, which, when combined with every other thing he had ever done meant that getting pounded by the Justice League, having his connection to his familiar forcefully severed and being banished to another plane via Nth metal mace to the Lord-of-Chaos-face-equivalent was still him getting off easy.
And then there was Tynan. The "Lord of Balance." Though they had yet to look deeply, Batman and Zatara (who seemed happy to be working together once again, even if neither really wanted to show it) had only barely been able to find mention of such entities in the known magic lore. If they did really exist the way Tynan said they did, they had been keeping a lower profile than their Order or Chaos equivalents.
Tynan had given her the power to subdue Tala and Nabu and seemed to be trusted by Kent Nelson, but there was something about his words that had worried her. "All we ask in return is that you ensure that your world continue as your kind sees fit." That sounded straightforward, but one of the first things any good magic teacher emphasizes is that magical entities love trick wording. As the old magician saying went, 'A fool and his soul are soon parted.'
Well, I guess I'm the fool then, Zatanna thought. But I got control of my body back, saved my friends, saved my dad and set Klarion on fire, so so far, so good.
Zatanna was about to take another lick of her ice cream cone when her hand twitched. For a second, nothing happened. Then, a tremor rippled through her muscles. The cone slipped from her hand and plunged towards the ground far below as Zatanna fell backwards, away from the edge.
"Zatanna!" Zatara cried, grabbing her. Zatanna twitched again as golden electricity sparked through her limbs, knocking her father back. She collapsed in a semiconscious heap, twitching and sparking.
After a few more excruciating seconds, it was over.
Zatanna slowly got to her knees, only to notice that she was on fire. A second or two of desperate scrambling revealed that it was not so much her that was burning as the concrete beneath her, which glowed with unnaturally red flames.
Chaos magic.
Acting on instinct, Zatanna slowly waved her hand. The flames vanished.
Zatara got to his feet and ran over to her.
"Are you alright?" he demanded, snatching her in a deep embrace.
Zatanna started to reply, but stopped, wiping back tears.
"I-I don't know" she said. "I don't know, Dad."
Her earlier thought came back to her: So far, so good.
There was definitely something to be said for being normal.
"He did WHAT!?" Black Canary shouted, narrowly avoiding the release of a full-on Canary Cry.
"H-he's just stressed" M'gann replied nervously.
"He seriously insulted her mom?" Raquel asked, dumbfounded. "He insulted her paraplegic mom?"
"Look, no one here is accusing Roy of thinking before speaking" Robin said.
"Clearly not" said Icon, somewhat uncomfortable. He had merely stopped by the Hall of Justice to deliver Rocket to the Team and meet Black Canary before the impending Justice League New Member Orientation meeting that night. He had not been expecting to be encountering the aftermath of a family feud. Wolf growled, seemingly sharing the sentiment.
"I mean, it wasn't THAT bad" Wally said, trying to defend his friend. He frowned and thought about it for a second. "Well, okay, it was pretty bad."
"No kidding" said Conner, who had resumed flipping through channels without actually watching anything. "I mean, Kaldur tells us to not kill each other and five minutes later, bam."
Black Canary put her hand on her forehead. Of course this would happen without Kaldur, herself or any adult around. "Do you know where Artemis went?" Canary asked.
"She said she was going home" M'gann said. "I don't think she wants to be disturbed."
Canary sighed. "I'll send her mother a message explaining what happened." This couldn't have happened at a worst time short of an impending world-ending catastrophe. As it was, she had too much to deal with preparing for New Member Orientation, processing and analyzing her notes from the rest of the Team's therapy sessions and, of course, keeping an eye on Batman to make sure that the Team actually stayed off duty. A task he seemed to be trying to make as difficult as possible, if his summoning of Aqualad meant what she thought it did.
"She's not a kid, you know" Robin said. "You don't need to call her mom every time something goes wrong."
"Dude, I'm not sure if you're the one to talk about age" Wally whispered to the 13-year-old.
Canary frowned. "Artemis is sixteen years old and a legal minor" she said. "Moreover, as the League's official therapist, I have the power to take all reasonable steps to ensure the psychological health and well-being of any member of either the League or the Team."
"You're doing a great job on Batman" Conner muttered. Canary glared at him.
"I believe this conversation is finished for the moment" Icon said, attempting to change the subject. "Raquel, if you are all set, I will be off." His discussion with Canary could wait for better circumstances.
"Good luck at orientation!" Rocket replied, giving him a small punch on the arm. "I know you'll do great!"
"I should point out that New Member Orientation isn't a test," Canary said. "It's our way of making sure our new inductees know everything they need to know to start working on Day 1. The public expects our new members to be in the news as soon as possible. And you never know what sort of 'welcome party' schemes the supervillains will be up to in a normal year, let alone this one."
"The induction ceremony is tomorrow morning, right?" Rocket asked.
Icon nodded. "Ten A.M. sharp outside this very building."
"Hey, what are we going to do now that Dr. Fate is... unavailable?" Wally asked. "It's not like you can just drop him at the last minute. Or induct him in Zatanna's body. Right?"
"Martian Manhunter will appear on stage as Dr. Fate" Canary said. "No reason to try and explain everything that happened involving him."
"And if they ask why Martian Manhunter is absent?" Conner asked.
"They won't" said M'gann, standing up and shimmering, her skin rippling as her flesh restructured itself. In a few seconds, she was a perfect copy of her uncle.
"I believe this will suffice" she said, her voice identical to that of Martian Manhunter's.
"That's creepy" said Raquel as the Martian shifted back to her traditional form. "Awesome, but also creepy." Wally nodded his head in agreement.
"If that is all settled," Icon said, "then I will be on my way."
"As much as I would love to join you, I need to go find Red Arrow and straighten this out" Canary said. She cracked her knuckles. "He has some explaining to do."
As she disappeared into the depths of the Hall and Icon left via zeta tube, the rest of the Team scattered, each trying to do something that didn't involve reminding themselves of anything that had just happened.
Robin had been staring at the same spot on the floor for two minutes when made his decision, stood up and walked over to the zeta tube.
"Where are you going?" Wally asked.
"I'm going to the Batcave. I've been thinking about Savage and his gang and there's a lead or two that I want to check up on."
"Isn't that work, the thing Black Canary specifically told us not to do?" Raquel asked.
"I'm just going to be reading some stuff on a computer," Robin replied. "That's what normal kids do, right?"
By the time they had a chance to respond, he had already teleported away.
Gotham City
December 30, 21:24 EDT
Artemis closed her apartment door with a slam.
"Artemis?" her mother asked, wheeling herself into the room. There was a shotgun in her lap. Artemis sighed.
"My 9th grade English teacher was Mrs. Hatch, and I got a B in the class" she said. Batman had not yet developed a permanent solution short of tattoos to ensure that Artemis and Tigress could be distinguished, so for the moment, codes and little-known personal information would have to do.
Paula Crock relaxed, putting the gun down. Artemis's fist clenched slightly for a second before relaxing. The ability of her own mother to trust her on sight was just another thing Tigress had taken from her. That Vandal Savage had taken from her.
"Artemis, dear," asked Paula, "is everything alright?"
Artemis looked at her mother. She looked at the adventurous young woman who had fallen in love with the man she had thought of as a daring rogue. She looked at the wife who had stayed with him to try and protect her two young daughters. She looked at the criminal who had paid for her crimes with nine years in jail and a broken spine. She looked at the mother whose lucky fall had, apparently, saved her younger daughter from a life of crime. And she looked at the brave woman who had mended her ways to become the best parent she was able to be. The brave woman whose integrity that idiot Red Arrow had just finished besmirching in his obnoxious, holier-than-thou manner.
"Everything's fine" Artemis lied. She started to head towards her room. "I'm going to bed."
She had just reached the door when her mother spoke.
"She isn't you, Artemis."
Artemis whirled around.
"What do you mean?"
"This… Tigress" Paula said. "Though I do not fully understand everything Batman told me about your experiences and your encounter with her, I know enough to know that however similar you two may seem, you are not the same person." She wheeled herself closer and put her hand on Artemis's. "And I know you may not believe this right now, but I do: Even if I had not survived that night, all those years ago… I believe that you still would have made the right decision. That you would still be the righteous young woman you are today. That you would still be someone I could be proud to call my daughter."
"But what about Jade?" Artemis asked.
"Jade has made her decision" Paula said, turning away and wheeling herself towards the kitchen. "Just as you have made yours. I can't say I agree with her, having made the same mistake myself, but she is an adult. She can make her own choices and accept the consequences."
"She chose Tigress over me" Artemis said. "She helped her ruin my life. She almost killed two of my friends. She left me to be killed or brainwashed so she could hang out with my replacement."
Paula stopped, briefly. For a second, had she been facing Artemis, the archer would have seen the tears in her eyes.
"She has made her decision" Paula said again. "She can and will accept the consequences."
The two were silent as Paula reached the door. She was about to go through when she stopped and turned again.
"Remember, Artemis," she said. "No matter how much nonsense you hear about time travel or fate or destiny, there is really only one truth." She paused for a second. "You control the things you can and accept the ones you can't. That is the way of the world At the end of the day, though, your true measure as a person comes down to your choices. And, as your mother, I trust that you will make the right ones."
Artemis stared at her mother for several seconds before entering her room and locking the door.
Paula closed her eyes and sighed. Jade, she thought. Where did I go wrong?
Then she turned around and entered the kitchen.
Artemis sighed loudly as she sunk back into her chair.
"This is going to take a while, isn't it?"
"Probably" Black Canary replied. Artemis sighed again. Nothing like good old fashioned Black Canary therapy sessions.
"I suppose 'I was unconscious the whole time so I don't need any therapy' isn't going to cut it this time?" She cracked a small, nervous smile.
"You know that you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to" said Canary. She paused for a second. "But yes, I think it would be for the best if we went into a little more detail."
Artemis smiled some more. It was weird. Somehow, after all of the hell Savage had put them through, talking to Black Canary didn't feel so bad.
Artemis rubbed her leg absentmindedly.
"How's your ankle?" Canary asked. Artemis stopped and thought.
"It's great, actually. Zatanna does good work. It's funny, really. Vandal Savage snaps my ankle and it ends up the only part of me that's NOT sore."
They both chuckled a bit. Black Canary had a fair share of bruises from the incident as well.
"Okay," said Artemis, her tone getting serious "let's get down to it: Three days ago, I was kidnapped and replaced by an alternate timeline version of myself who ran around throwing out my family secrets and trying to kill my friends while I'm busy having a psychic dig through my head with a spoon." She paused. "And it's your job to ask me how I feel about it."
"And how DO you feel about it?" Canary asked.
"Well, it's certainly not how I was expecting that day to go."
Canary leaned forwards. "Artemis, you've been through an enormously traumatizing experience. All I want is to help you get through it."
There was silence for several seconds.
"You wanna know the weird thing?" Artemis asked. "What am I saying, of course you do. The weird thing is, I was SO desperate to keep my family a secret, so desperate to keep the rest of the Team from finding out…" …so desperate to keep Wally from finding out… "…and now that they know… nothing. Poof. No big deal. So, in some ways I'm kind of relieved that it's all out in the open." She smiled just a bit. "I don't have to hide anymore."
"That's good" said Canary, taking a note on her clipboard.
"Of course, I'm still going to smash Tigress's pretty little face in the next time I see her. Jade too."
"Cheshire?" Canary asked.
"Yeah. My dad being involved in something like this? Typical. I'm really not surprised, and I stopped caring about him a long time ago. But Jade? I know she's not a good person, and I know I have no real reason to expect anything from her, but still… she's my sister, and she takes part in this scheme to ruin my life? While I'm getting my brain ripped out, she's dancing around with a fake me trying to kill my friends?"
"You feel betrayed" Canary suggested.
"Of course I feel betrayed!" Artemis shouted. She started to say something, thought better of it and slouched back into her chair.
Canary frowned. The old 'too tough to need help' Artemis of previous sessions was gone, shattered by her recent experiences. That wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Artemis…" Canary began.
"I want to hate them" Artemis said, looking down at the ground. "Tigress and Jade. I want to hate them. They deserve it, don't they?"
"I can't really answer that" replied Canary.
"I want to hate them… but I can't. Whatever else she's done, Jade's still my sister. She's still my family."
"Artemis, it's very natural that you would feel conflicted. Loving family members is a core part of being human. It's not something you can control, even if you want to."
"Whatever" said Artemis, shrugging. "As for Tigress, you'd think it would be easy to hate your evil twin that stole your life. But…" Artemis trailed off.
"But…?" Canary asked.
"She had the chance to shoot me. I was down, it was point blank, there was nothing I could do. But she didn't. She hesitated. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure she knows why either. But she did."
"I can't know for sure," said Canary, "but it would seem logical that there would be an instinctive hesitation to shooting your identical twin."
"If anything Vandal Savage says can be believed," Artemis continued, staring straight at the ground, "her life wasn't all that different from mine. She just didn't have my mom to help keep her on the right path. I want to say that I'm confident that I'm a better person than her... but I can't. I can't say for sure that, if I'd been in her place, I wouldn't have turned out the exact same way. And that idea? That idea that everything you stand for, all of your ideals and desires and motivations, are the result of a lucky fall fourteen years ago? That's terrifying."
"Artemis..." Canary hesitated, uncertain as to what to say. She decided to be honest. "I wish I could reassure you, that I could tell you for certain that that wouldn't be the case, but I can't. I don't know a lot about time travel or variant universes or interdimensional travel. I don't know if your mother dying would have caused you to turn out differently. But what I do know is that none of this changes who you are now or what you believe is right. Might you and Tigress have ended up the same? Yes. Did you? No. You are not her, Artemis, and you will never be."
"So everyone keeps saying" Artemis muttered under her breath.
"The point is, as much as I want to, I can't seem to properly hate Cheshire or Tigress. And if you can't hate the person who tried to steal your identity, kill your friends and ruin your life, then who can you hate?"
Canary thought for a second. "I don't know. But I do know that hate won't solve anything. It won't stop Savage's plans, or make him pay for everything he's done. And it won't make you feel better."
Artemis tucked her legs up to her chin. For a second, she wasn't a super-tough bow-wielding vigilante. For a brief second, she was a nine-year-old girl holding a teddy bear as she watched her big sister walk out the door for the last time.
"I know."
Artemis stretched her bowstring, feeling the tension in the wire. She felt the slight calm that always overtook her whenever she was about to fire. It hadn't always been like this. Bows used to make her nervous, like all of the weapons Dad had showed her how to use. Well, except for the nunchucks. Those had been pretty fun to swing around, at least until she hit herself in her cute little seven-year-old face and broke her nose.
But the thing about bows was that you couldn't fire them nervous, at least not with any accuracy. With a bit of focus, you could make a gun shoot where you wanted pretty easily, but a bow was a part of your body. Everything you felt, it felt. If you were shaking, if you were tense, if you were breathing just a little, you would miss.
In order to work the bow with the level of precision Sportsmaster demanded and her current job required, each shot required complete calm. No matter what emotions were spinning around – fear, anger, despair – they all had to go until the arrow was away. That was the secret. That was how she had been able to hit Wally's EMP device with Red Inferno shooting fire at her and the knowledge that she and all of her friends were going to die if she missed.
It had taken years of practice to reach that level of calm. Now, no matter how frustrated or panicked or depressed she was, all Artemis needed was the pull of a bowstring, and for a split second, all of that emotion would fade away.
Bows were so simple, compared to life. Just pull the string and release.
Artemis put her bow down and checked her quiver. She thought back to the good old days of amateur solo vigilantism when she'd just had a bunch of pointed arrows and a few crude homemade blunt ones. Now that she'd gone corporate, Green Arrow had lovingly showered his 'niece' (well, they didn't need that cover story anymore, now did they?) with all of the utterly insane arrow-based gadgets he'd managed to come up with. Strangely enough, half of them were actually useful.
Deciding she had enough ammunition for the night, Artemis slung her quiver and bow over her shoulder, pulled her mask over her face and quickly checked her costume in the mirror. She still hadn't forgotten her third night out, when she'd put her shirt on backwards and not noticed until she'd gotten home.
Satisfied that everything was in place and that she'd waited long enough that her mom might actually believe she was asleep, Artemis walked over to her window, opened it and stepped out onto the fire escape, ready to work off her anger on Gotham City's famed native thug population.
"Going somewhere?" came a voice above her.
Artemis whirled, drawing her bow and notching an arrow, the type of which she wasn't a hundred percent sure (as Green Arrow had told her, the key to being a successful superhero archer was to make good educated guesses while always pretending to know what the arrow in your hand did).
"Careful with that" came the playful voice of Robin, sitting on the fire escape a floor above her. "You might poke someone's eye out!"
"What are you doing here?" Artemis asked, lowering her bow and returning her arrow to her quiver.
"What?" asked Robin. "Can't a guy just stop by a friend's house?" He hopped down beside her. "I know you can't really appreciate this," he said, "but it's actually pretty convenient that the rest of the Team knows your identity. Means that I can stop pretending that I don't know where you live."
"That's moderately creepy" Artemis replied. "And how do you know where I- oh. Right. Batman."
Robin shrugged. "If it makes you feel any better, he didn't actually tell me anything about you. Had to dig it up myself. But it honestly wasn't difficult. I mean, your superhero alias is your first name, for crying out loud!"
"Yeah, yeah," said Artemis, annoyed. "Do you have a point, Boy Blunder, or are you just here to bug me?"
"Well, you seemed stressed and all after the whole, well, everything, and it seemed like you were going to end up punching someone's face in. So I thought if you were going to patrol, we might as well do a team-up. You know, since we can acknowledge that we live in the same city now."
"And what if I tell you to go mind your own business and do it on my own?"
"Well, then I'd leave, of course" Robin replied. "But I'd have to take this back with me."
He gestured down into the alley below, where two motorcycles were parked.
"How did you bring that with you?" Artemis asked.
"Autopilot" Robin replied. "Look, are we going to patrol or not?"
Artemis frowned. This was not how she had planned the night to go.
On the one hand, she really wanted to be alone right now. If Robin's normal behavior was anything to go by, he'd be needling her the entire night.
On the other hand, he was a member of the Team, he knew Gotham at least as well as she did and he'd bothered to come all the way out here.
Also, he was basically the only reason she was currently at home, not brainjacked and not replaced by her evil alternate-dimension counterpart. Surely that meant she owed him something.
She shrugged and smiled ever so slightly.
"Let's ride."
Man, I am really terrible at setting up these one-month challenges at convenient times. Good thing I put in the two-month disclaimer!
Fun fact: Originally in this chapter, Zatanna and Zatara were going to go to Coney Island instead of hanging out on top of a skyscraper. Which, let's admit, most of us would do if we had magic too.
Oh, I forgot. When I said there weren't any important changes in the updated draft of WCS, there was one minor thing: The Light's operation in WCS now has a codename: Operation Guillotine.
Proper epic codenames are important, okay?
Review Response Time:
BVC: I'm glad you think my fic is well-thought out (I assume the competition for Number 1 is that massive Season 3 fic I keep hearing about?) and my Supermartian is beautiful. That'll make it even grander when they eventually break up and M'gann starts dating an Atlantean.
Ash9: It's actually relatively simple to set up this many plot points. You see, you start with your list of characters to kill off, and then... Well, I should probably stop talking now.
I'm glad everyone else appreciates the level of set-up, because a) these arguments and therapy sessions take a ton of work and b) we've still got more to go.