AN: Enjoy the update!

(Her hand is on the doorknob when she hears Wally sigh again; when she glances at him over her shoulder he's got his back to her, both hands scrubbing angrily at his scalp.

She wants very badly to tell him that it isn't him who's the problem, it's her; she wishes there was a way to show someone like Wally, who has only known love and laughter and wholeness, the reason why some wounds don't heal, why she won't ever be quite right. She wishes she could tell him that there's isn't room enough for the feelings he ignites inside her, not when she's surrendered herself to the hands of the Metropolis girl and all the hate that flows through her veins.

((... And she won't admit it, but she had thought... Forever is a long time. But she wouldn't have minded some kind of forever with Wally... But it can't be that way. Not for her, at least.))

Instead of answering she turns her back on him, leaving him and all her feelings inside her bedroom.)

"You listening, Sweetheart?"

She blinks at the pet name, careful to keep her face blank as she turns to glare at Roy. "Yes." She says severely, jaw tight as she glances back at Dick. "Robin was just discussing leadership protocols."

Roy looks disappointed in not catching her inattentiveness, the corners of his mouth drooping slightly as Dick calls their attention back to where he's piloting the Bioship. "Technically we were discussing protocol in the event of my... Disposal."

She hears herself let out an impolite snort; her temper is still a little short from her recent fighting with Wally, the anxious buzzing that had been so comforted by his presence now throbbing painfully at her temples. "Disposal? This is supposed to be a simple undercover mission— unless you're planning something a little more exciting?"

Dick seems to appreciate her sarcastic tone, smirking as his eyes flicker to hers beneath his sunglasses. "First thing they teach you at the Bat Cave is always be prepared—"

"—I thought that was Boy Scouts—"

"Shut up." She cuts Roy's joking off, still annoyed. "Get to the point, Rob. I'm guessing this is your weird way of telling us that Red and I are supposed to duke it out for second in command—"

She's a little surprised when Garth starts talking over her, speaking up properly for the first time since they boarded the Bioship an hour ago. "And what of me?" He barks out lowly, looking ruffled at being over looked. "Who is to say that I would not be interested in leading?"

"Garth." Dick sighs. "This is your first mission. You aren't trained to function as a part of this Team yet—"

"But if something were to happen, for instance, in the event of your death and—"

"Save it, Fish Stick." Roy cuts across him, sneering childishly. "If we're ever in a situation where Rob's dead, I'm betting you've been dead for a week."

The air in Athens is much warmer than it is in Gotham City; the afternoon they arrive she realizes quickly that her hair doesn't fair well with the humidity, and suddenly she's battling unexpected frizz. They're only on the island an hour or so before Roy scoffs at her, yanking his own ball cap from his head and shoving it down her forehead, trying to hide her unruly blonde locks and stop all the curious glances that keep being fired her way.

They don't find much of anything the first few hours; all their poking around is hindered greatly by the fact that a large portion of the population speaks exclusively Greek. It's odd; the language barrier hadn't been mentioned in the mission briefing, and their first afternoon is spent mostly in frustration, picking through pocket guides of Grecian phrases and searching for web translators to help them communicate. By the time they retreat back to the Bioship for a half chance at a few hours of sleep tempers are on edge both from annoyance at each other and frustration at the dead-end mission Kaldur's sent them on (in an effort, she suspects privately, to ensure more time alone with Tula.)

"Artemis." Garth muses when the two of them are on watch together; she can tell he's not really saying her name as a means of drawing her attention from across the main cabin of the Bioship, more that he's saying it to simply feel the syllables rolling off his tongue.

She doesn't know why but his tone unsettles her, enough for her to twist in her seat and advert her gaze from where she's been glaring out a window, mind preoccupied with Wally. "... What?"

Instead of answering Garth merely looks at her for a moment, not hiding the way his eyes stray to length of thigh her shorts are exposing. "... You are named for a Greek Goddess." He says simply, eyes finally meeting hers.

She bristles, feeling the familiar wrinkle popping up over her nose. "So?"

Garth tilts his head to the side, the same unusual movement Tula's so prone to doing. "It is... Ironic, yes? I thought perhaps Kaldur'ahm assigned you to this mission because you would be useful."

She feel a pang of anger run through her and she very nearly reaches for her backpack; all their weapons are concealed in civilian clothing, and at Dick's insistence even her bow and arrow are hidden, her quiver sewn into a false compartment inside her backpack and bow compressed and neatly shoved into an outside pocket. For one wild moment all she can think of is how badly she wants to whack him across the face with her bow...

Instead she mutters one choice swear in Vietnamese, familiar to her tongue but alien to both their ears in her lack of us, and stomps back to wake Roy for his turn at watch.

Dick has the decency to wait until Roy is out of the back room before he speaks; she doubts he's really sleeping anyway, more so just lying vacantly on the top bunk of the spare cabin of the Bioship and brooding quietly over the wild goose chase Kaldur's sent them on. She's just settled into the uncomfortable bottom bunk when she hears his mumbling, so quiet that she can hardly hear him over the sound of her body shifting against the starchy sheets.

"You don't like him, do you?"

She hesitates before deciding not to play dumb; rolling onto her side she punches a hollow into the center of her pillow. "Garth? No."

Dick seems to consider this for a moment, a creaking noise telling her that he's shifting onto his back. "Kaldur likes him for the Team though."

The way he says it is slightly off, as if he knows something he's not supposed to. "Well, I don't. He's a rookie, no experience—"

"We were all rookies once, Artemis." Dick cuts her off seriously, and she feels herself scowling in the dark. "... He's supposed to be a pretty good combat sorcerer. Besides, he seems excited— already has his name picked out, Tempest—"

She makes a disapproving noise in the back of her throat. "Whatever. Enthusiasm doesn't mean he'll be good."

"If Kaldur thinks he'll be good for the Team then you have to respect that... You should get to know him."

She rolls her eyes even though he can't see her face. "No, thank you." She grits out between her teeth.

"That's an order, Artemis." He says flatly, the bunk creaking again as he rolls onto his side. "We're going to split up tomorrow: Roy and I are going to go check in at Sandsmark's dig site and see if we can talk with her crew. You and Garth are going to check in at her home, gather some of her DNA in case we need to match it to a body and see if you can find some evidence as to why she might have been taken in the first place."

She feels herself scowl again, curling tighter against her pillow and slightly off put by his words... Match it to a body. "...Fine."

Dick goes quiet not long after that; all she can hear in the darkness is the sound of his breathing accompanied with the occasional creaking of the bunk, signaling that he's awake and thinking but unwilling to say anything else to her, should she actually need some rest.

She feels tired, or at least her body does. After a day of wandering almost aimlessly with little to go on from Kaldur her leg is bothering her again, lines of muscle noticeably twitching beneath the fabric of her shorts. Despite the fatigue and the weariness of her bones she refuses to let herself properly sleep.

(It's cold here, lying on the stiff mattress and surrounded by tile and metal and machinery. A little pathetically she thinks of her bed at the Cave, thinks of her plush mattress and her soft blankets and of warm hands running over her sheets, searching for her in the darkness—)

She stiffens, as if she's actually just felt Wally's arms wrapping around her and yanking her closer; a little stupidly she spasms out of the doze she's fallen into, head jerking round to glance at the emptiness of twin sized bed and blinking the blankness of the back wall into focus.

Even thousands of miles away he's suffocating her, grabbing at her and refusing to let go no matter how hard she struggles to escape. But that's how it's always been with them, another ancient game they never grow tired of playing— but maybe that's a lie, maybe they're both tired now. And maybe she had lied to him too, maybe jumping at the vacant spot on the mission roster had been less about watching Roy and more about running, more about reminding herself who she is without him, more about remembering the cold and the filth and blood stained fingers—

(But he bandaged her hands once, remember?)

(Maybe she needs to stop picking at the scabs, let old wounds heal... But it isn't that easy, is it? That's what these last few months have proven, that no matter how much she may care about Wally, how happy he may make her... It won't work. She's not programmed to fall in love, she's programmed for hate and hunting and blood thirst, everything the girl from Metropolis excels at and there's no room for Wally, there isn't—)

Dick lets out one short-sounding snore in his sleep and she catches herself jumping at the noise again, sleep coated eyes looking around blearily in the early morning half light.

Garth's steps falter, his head automatically turning to look out towards the Sea of Crete. It takes her several seconds to realize he's no longer beside her, her feet slowing at as she turns to look back at him. "… You miss home?"

She not sure why she asks him this, why these are the first proper words she's uttered to him since he had annoyed her so badly on the Bioship— for some reason his stature looks oddly familiar: the unconscious nature of his stare, the way the wind catches a stray piece of onyx hair in the corner of his mouth, the stiffness in his shoulders...

Garth looks round at her as another tourist jostles past him; the streets here are crowded with people, overwhelmingly saturated with the scent of salt and sweat. "… Am I that easy to read?" He asks instead of answering, looking at her coyly.

She supposes she can understand Tula's attraction to him: if she hadn't known Garth, had simply walked past him on the street... Maybe she would have considered him attractive, could have spared a glance at the sharp line of his jaw, the strange violet of his eyes. Still, something in his tone, something in the roundness of his teeth as he grins at her... It doesn't sit quite right.

When she does little more than raise a brow dryly at him he chuckles, looking politely amused at the way she tenses when he steps closer. "And what say you, Artemis— do you miss home?"

(And when he says it she can't help but bite her tongue— except she's not seeing the little Gotham apartment, not seeing her bedroom at the Cave. Without knowing why she imagines the smell of walnuts, feels ginger hair in between her fingers and sees the view of the ocean out of their window—

Stop it.)

"No." She grits out between her teeth, mentally forcing anything reminding her of Wally to the back of her mind.

Garth chuckles at the expression on her face; he doesn't seem to understand that he's being tested, being watched carefully to see if he would be a good fit for the Team... Instead of maintaining an almost unnatural strictness like the rest of them he's been acting as if they're on vacation, lingering at odd spots and tottering along with tourists. Still, she had promised Dick that she would make an effort...

She clenches her hands into fists and reminds herself to stop glaring; they're being jostled by the crowd again, a few locals clicking their tongues impatiently at the fact that they've been still for almost a minute now. "... Kal always goes to the beach when he misses home." She says plainly, gesturing with her head for him to keep walking. "He likes looking at the water."

He seems to get the message and catches up to her after only a few paces. "Ah yes. Kaldur'ahm has been away from Atlan—"

"Garth." She cuts him off before he can say too much.

"Right. Apologies." He mutters quickly, watching as she digs her phone out of her shorts pocket, checking that they're still on course towards the GPS marker Dick had placed for them to find.

"... He has been away from home much longer than I have." Garth says after a moment, continuing their conversation and not bothered by her shushing. "… But I suppose it has certain benefits. You two are... Close, yes?"

She's hardly listening, paying more attention to the map on the tiny screen of her phone. "Sure." She mutters distractedly, tilting the screen so he can see it too. "Close, right. Just like we're getting close now— only a few blocks to go."

Garth looks at her quizzically for a whole five seconds before something clicks, his head nodding enthusiastically as if he's only suddenly remembered what their purpose is. "Of course."

As he says it his breath rustles a stray piece of frizzing hair falling out from beneath Roy's ball cap, smelling so strongly of mint and water reeds that she wrinkles her nose, snapping her phone shut.

Dr. Sandsmark's house is small by American standards; for a long moment her and Garth simply stare and the crumbling white stone and red shutters, trying to work up the nerve to slip past the pointed wired gate and various palms and ferns almost hiding the front door from view. This street is hardly as bustling as the last but there are still plenty of people around them, taking notice of their moment of hesitation. Nudging him hard in the back, she forces him to go first.

Garth looks wary as she pulls the hinge on the gate, forcing the ancient black metal to squeak loudly into opening. "... I do not understand." He says stiffly, one hand reaching out to halt her progress, his fingers cool to the touch against her wrist. "We have found her home. We are finished here, yes? Now we return and report to Robin?"

It takes a lot of effort not to roll her eyes at him; instead of answering she brushes past his hand, continuing on past the gate. "Come on." She sighs. She makes it no more than a pace away when she senses the shift in his muscles, and almost predictably he reaches out to make a grab at her.

But she's used to much warmer, faster hands; she jerks easily out of his grip, hissing under her breath when she feels nails breaking the skin of her bare bicep, scratching reddened lines that disappear under the sleeve of her tee shirt. "What's your problem?" She almost snarls out, hand flying automatically to cover the marks he's left on her arm.

"I was told we were simply locating her home." He says lowly, looking untroubled by both the injury and her reaction to it. "Or at least that is what your Robin said. Instead you are planning to— to break and enter?"

Their arguing is attracting the attention of a neighbor watering his plants across the street, eyes straying at their unusual dialect and sending a clumsy stream of water over a too-green palm; deciding it's not worth cussing Garth out over the scratches she glares at him, ignoring his protests as she advances further up the Doctor's front walk. "Yeah, well. One thing you learn about Robin— he never tells you the full story."

She's not surprised to find the front door locked when she fiddles with the knob, the scandalized muttering behind her signaling that Garth is still lingering at the gate. It had taken less time than expected to find the Doctor's house; she had figured that the excursion would take several hours of them navigating unfamiliar streets, and she had guessed they'd be operating under the cover of dusk, or even nightfall, not in the nakedness of the afternoon... Releasing the door handle she sighs and with a sense of defeat she drops her gaze to her sneakers, trying her best to ignore the buzzing about her temples and the stinging of both the scratches on her arm and failure...

... She's standing on a welcome mat.

(And suddenly she's on Wally's front porch and her mind is whirring and getting lost in the gloominess of the clouds outside— but there's a lump on the mat and before she even has time to consider if it's wrong the keys he's always losing are in her hands and unlocking his door...)

She must have made a sudden movement or noise because she registers the abrupt break-off in Garth's mumbling, watching in interest as she dives down to the welcome mat, flipping it over. "What is it?" She hears him ask, not bothering to answer as she stares with a pang of disappointment at the blank stretch of front stoop beneath it. She can sense the confused look he sends her as she gets back to her feet, now looking around for logical places to hide a spare key— she knows the Doctor is American, and the hiding of a spare key is so remarkably Western, so stupidly middle class and trusting...

Garth comes up beside her just as she finishes checking the top of the door frame, still looking nonplussed as she examines the underside of a flower pot beside the door. "Your cheeks are flushed. Are you feeling well?"

Ignoring him again she spots it: the waist high sprouting of a tiny linden tree and beneath it an obviously manufactured stone, painted into the image of a curled up swan so noticeable that it can't be meant for anything else; dodging around Garth she runs to it, bending at the beginning of the flower bed and flipping it over so savagely that she cakes reddened dirt beneath her finger nails.

"You American girls are quite odd." Garth muses dryly, not looking impressed when she holds up the key ring to show him.

The house is just as small on the inside as it appears on the outside. "Wait by the door." She tells Garth quietly, advancing a few paces forward and reaching out a hand when her hip accidentally knocks against a coat rack to steady the jostled furniture.

The tiny home is filled to the brim with an odd assortment of mismatched furniture and what she supposes must be valuables, reminding her instantly of the second-hand shops her mother used to be so fond of when she was younger. The Doctor's home is so stuffed that it's next to impossible to move without knocking into something—all around her there are plush couches, cushions, and over stuffed pillows, old mahogany coffee tables with rings etched into their surfaces from coffee cups, book shelves overfilled with precariously stacked books and glass vials of soil samples. It looks simultaneously too lived in yet oddly untouched, as if somewhere underneath the light layer of abandonment there's a certain amount of mess that's supposed to be there, supposed to be gently coating the thrumming of the Doctor's existence...

Garth watches her tip toe across the threshold, still looking nervous at their being there. "Is there anything specific you are looking for?" He asks suspiciously, as if he's still half-convinced that their entering the Doctor's house is anything other than strictly necessary. Out of the corner of her eye can see him leaning against the banister of the staircase by the front door, elbow popped up almost arrogantly. "Or are you simply doing this for the thrill?"

She sends him a glare over her shoulder, picking her way beyond the living room and towards the kitchen. "Patience, Rookie." She snorts. "We never do anything without a reason—don't touch anything." She adds, glancing back at him just as he reaches for a disregarded book.

"You do not trust me to be careful?"

"No, I don't." She mumbles a little rudely. "... No offense, Garth, but you don't have a clue what you're looking for." She trails off, muttering more to herself than him. "... The Doctor's single and late thirties, no family, no friends outside of the dig site... And if we're believing Red then she's a bit off her rocker too..." She pauses, retreating from the kitchen and frowning in the doorway. "She must have stumbled onto something big in her research... Can't be a ransom, there's nobody out there who would want to save her."

Garth pays her no mind; when she closes her eyes to indulge the troubled buzzing at her temples she can hear him riffling through the pages of the book she's just told him not to touch. "It sounds like one of your ridiculous surface world stories." He scoffs. "Princesses being kidnapped in the night, knights on their horses..."

It's a bit of an odd train of thought, and when she glances up to question him she realizes that he's picked up a children's book; it strikes her as a bit of a strange thing for the Doctor to have sitting on a shelf in her living room, but she supposes there's plenty of evidence of Sandsmark's pack-rack tendencies. "Whatever." She mutters, wincing and trying to ignore the pounding at the back of her head.. "I told you not to touch anything."

For once he listens, sending her scowl before placing the book back on the shelf. "I could be of assistance." He says defensively, brows furrowing when she nudges an unknown door open with the corner of her sneaker, peering into a bathroom. "Kaldur did send me along for a reason."

"Kal sent you along because he's testing you. Here's the part where we see if you can obey orders."

Garth keeps muttering angrily at her but she's hardly listening, eyes now pursuing closed drawers and the granite counter of the sink; years of thievery has taught her not to move anything around, not to make the place look as if it's been burgled—most importantly, to try to only touch the things she's going to take, should she be caught… Instinctively her eyes pause on a toothbrush holder, pulling it into focus.

There are two toothbrushes on the Doctor's counter.

"Are you finished?" Garth calls for her impatiently when she stops responding to his jabbering.

"Shut up, Fish Stick." She sneers, borrowing Red Arrow's pet name and not sparing him a glance as she keeps staring at the brushes, wondering what to do. She read the mission debriefing on the ride over... Kaldur hadn't including any information that had hinted at there being another person living here. And yet she's staring at two toothbrushes, one bright green and the other brick red, the ends of both their bristles fraying and beginning to look well used.

Kaldur wouldn't forget to tell them something as important as another person living in the Doctor's home.

He wouldn't send them in unprepared to be caught; he's too cautious for that. And yet...

Garth's back to muttering at her but at least he's still hovering nervously by the door and sparing her the questions her actions will no doubt inspire; reaching across the toilet to fumble with the toilet paper roll she takes a generous wad of tissue in her hand, careful to coat her finger tips before she touches anything.

She feels ridiculous as she uses the toilet paper laden hand to open drawers and prowl through cabinets; there's nothing much unusual about anything, everything she would expect of an older woman littering the cabinets: dental floss, expired prescriptions, several hair brushes and old crumpled eye shadow palettes. No other indications of a boyfriend, a roommate, any other adult human being occupying the space but... She hesitates, pulling back her toilet paper laden hand from the inside of a cabinet before seizing both the toothbrushes and wrapping them securely in the toilet paper.

"Is this what all your missions are like?" Garth drawls, sounding bored as she emerges from the bathroom, stashing the brushes in the smallest compartment of her backpack before replacing it on her shoulders. "Kaldur'ahm had led me to believe that there was more... excitement, in this kind of life. For instance, he told me of your recent excursion into Metropolis—"

Her steps towards him falter slightly, and without really knowing why she can feel the warbled muscle in her leg jumping at the memory— and she shouldn't be bothered by this, this is old news, this happened months ago— and yet suddenly all she smells is blood soaked snow—

(—and Wally's making that choking noise in the back of his throat again and there's blood bubbling in the corner of his mouth and he's drowning, drowning, drowning and she's dying too—)

She swallows down the burning sensation on the back of her tongue, avoiding his eyes as she glances towards the stairway. "Yeah, well... Be careful what you wish for." She doesn't notice that she's cut off whatever enthusiastic babbling is firing out of his mouth, still too new to the Team to understand that there's a reason they don't talk about Metropolis, too fresh to read the deadened look folding itself in the corners of her eyes; forcing herself to shove aside the memory she screws her eyes shut for a moment, trying to focus only on the mission and the meaning she needs to find in the two toothbrushes. "... Wait here and be my look out. I'll do a quick sweep of the second floor."

Garth glares at her when she stomps back to the front of the house, rounding the banister to climb the stairs and almost desperate to get away from him; she can smell the familiar salty smell all Atlanteans carry with them as he catches up, sandals catching on her heel as he comes up behind her. "You are not the leader of this squad." He scoffs. "Robin is."

"Well," she sighs, the buzzing and pounding against her skull doubling, "when Robin's not around, I'm in charge."

Garth reaches up a little too eagerly behind her, one of his hands catching hers on the banister. "If I am remembering correctly that responsibility was to be shared by both you and Red Arrow."

"If you have a problem with it you can talk to Kal when we get back." She huffs distractedly as she flinches out of his touch, glancing around as they emerge onto the second floor. It's just as crowded as the one below, the tiny landing filled with potted ferns and more book shelves, several closed doors leading to what she can only assume to be bathrooms or closets and maybe a bedroom— or two? "Go back downstairs, Garth, I mean it—"

She's just turned towards the door opposite when she spots an open door at the back end of the hall—she can see bookshelves and another ancient and battered looking desk, can see the frayed edges of an under watered plant, and without finishing her sentence she feels her feet thundering against the creaking floorboards towards it.

It's a study, quite a well-used one at that; she can see papers scattered along the desk, can see a light on a laptop computer still blinking, a green light on the bottom signaling that it's fully charged and no doubt almost fried from being plugged in so long—it has to be Sandsmark's office, has to be the only place in the house, if any, where the Doctor would keep her work.

"Kal." Garth repeats after a moment, not looking nearly as intrigued as she is by the office as he hovers around the door frame.

"What?" She says back vaguely, her mind too busy racing and thundering around the office, trying to quickly and efficiently scan every bookshelf for information.

Garth doesn't immediately reply, instead surveying her almost leisurely as he shifts his weight, leaning cockily against the wall and apparently no longer troubled over their trespassing. "You called him "Kal." It is just odd to me… But I suppose, as you said, you are close."

"What?" She repeats jerkily, forcing her attention to the scattered papers on the desk and glancing up to look quizzically at his smirking. "Yeah—Yeah, we're friends." She mutters, already turning back to the Doctor's desk. "Don't touch anything, remember?" She scolds as an after thought.

He sighs but obeys her, shifting his weight from foot to foot again before propelling himself fully upright, walking at a measured pace towards her. Her hands are still busy with the papers, trying not to disturb them too much from their original position as she barely picks at corners, wondering if they're worth taking. "He always spoke most highly of you." He says lowly, coming round to stand behind the desk with her as she tugs the hem of her shirt over her hand, reaching for the knob of a drawer to open it.

"… You have joined with him, yes?"

He asks her the question just as she starts tugging the drawer free of the mahogany frame, intending to pull it out gently so as not to disturb its contents; it takes a half second for her to register his meaning and the almost lecherous tone of his words, and suddenly before she can even restrain her muscles her hand is yanking the knob violently in her surprise, the whole of the drawer sliding out of its compartment and smashing onto the floor, spilling its contents with an ear splitting loudness.

"I—What?" She stutters, feeling herself redden as she glares up at him, quickly growing furious at the half-amused look on his face. "What did you just— Oh my God— Fuck." She gasps out, completely flustered at the mess she's made, papers fluttering and spare pens clattering around at her feet.

Garth smirks when she blushes and quickly crouches down to try to retrieve the contents of the drawer, kneeling in front of him. "I have never made a surface woman blush before." He grins, apparently missing the annoyed wrinkling of her nose. "The crimson color is quite pretty on you."

"What are you—" She snarls disbelievingly, so beyond horrified and disgusted at his words that for a moment she stops trying to fix her mess and simply hides her face in her hands, finding it suddenly very difficult not to punch him. "Garth. Stop talking right now or I swear to God—" She doesn't know how she wants to finish that sentence, and rather than struggle to try to find something terrifying enough to threaten him with she decides to swallow her mortification; avoiding the way he's still looking down at her she decides to throw delicacy aside, shoveling the drawer's contents back inside and ignoring his raised brows.

He watches her until she finishes with the drawers contents, thigh aching at how her muscles are stretched over her knees. "Forgive the question." Garth says smoothly, crouching beside her but not moving to help with the mess his created. "I assumed… Apologies. I forget you surface worlders are less open about these matters."

Like an idiot she blushes again. "Uh."

There's a brief pause, and to give herself something to do with her hands other than hide behind them she straightens a few of the papers she's stacked precariously; they aren't quite sitting flat in the drawer and upon closer examination she realizes that the only thing not disturbed by her dropping the drawer is a small, leather bound book. She's just managed to extract it and place it more neatly on top of the papers when Garth places a hand on the cover, cool skin encasing hers and stopping her from moving all together. "… Apologies again." He says quietly, and to her embarrassment he places another hand about her elbow, helping her up as if she's incapable herself. "It is only… You are a beautiful woman, Artemis. I could not help but imagine..." He pauses, letting out a dry chuckle. "For everything else he may seem, Kaldur'ahm is still a man. And he does have eyes that... Wander."

"Oh." She says a little weakly.

There's a long moment where he looks her hard in the face, eyes raking over her the way Wally's so often have, tracing her features and the sloping angles of her face— except it doesn't feel like it had felt with Wally. She doesn't feel as if she's being caressed, memorized... Instead it reminds her of grubby hands on the subway, or the mischievous fingers of school boys reaching out to ruffle her skirt in the hallways... "It's fine. Whatever." She mutters, not meaning it but not knowing if it would be considered appropriate by League terms to punch him square in the jaw for being so presumptuous and insulting; rather than risk leaving it her to own judgment she bends down, retrieving the drawer and putting it back in its place.

She gets as far as fitting it back in the mahogany sliders when he speaks again, voice soft. "... Tula and Kaldur have joined." He murmurs quietly; she's not quite sure if she imagines the half step he takes closer to her, her eyes glaring hard at the leather bound book and wishing he would stop talking. "It happened when they were quite young… I remember hearing about it, Kaldur'ahm was pleased, thrilled by first love…"

She feels herself blushing a deep crimson, aware that her eyes are bugging out of her head with discomfort as she extracts the tiny book from the drawer, pretending to be more interested in it than she is. "… Right." She mutters, clearing her throat.

She makes as if to move away, immediately stopped when his hand flies out again, tightening its grip on her elbow. She doesn't know why but suddenly she's almost afraid of him, afraid of the way his jaw is tilted downward and his violet eyes are surveying her through over-long, black lashes. "I know you think I am a fool, Artemis. But I understand as well as you do why Kaldur'ahm invited Tula here. And I understand just as well why he is displeased by my presence, and why he sent me here under the guise of testing my talents. He is one of my greatest friends. You do not become close with a man without knowing how his mind works..."

To her annoyance Garth actually plucks the book out of her hands and disregards it with a careless toss onto the surface of the desk, scattering the Doctor's carefully organized papers and nudging a button on her keyboard, forcing the screen of the laptop to light up; before she can stop him with an annoyed quip or even take a step back he's grasping at her empty fingers, keeping her still. "... But of course, you know that as well as I do. Perhaps you even understand what I am thinking now—"

She follows his train of thought just as he takes a step closer, ducking his head; a little jerkily she snatches her hands out of his, moving back so quickly that she bumps her hip painfully against the mahogany desk, cheeks reddening with anger. "W-what? Garth!" She snarls, blushing.

For some reason he smiles, as if the way she backs up several paces in fright and anger is somehow endearing. "You are blushing again."

"Oh my god—" She yelps, and without thinking she starts fumbling with the zipper of her backpack, trying to get hold of something, anything sharp, to put between them. "I-I'm with Wally! We're in the middle of the mission!"

To her surprised Garth isn't off put but her reaction, smirking at her as the realization of the inaccessibility of her arrows is realized; as if anticipating her lunging around him he steps in front of her, boxing her against the edge of the Doctor's desk. "You are being naive, Artemis." He says, voice low as he sneers at her. "My heart belongs to Tula. But if Kaldur is sampling my prize, perhaps I should sample his—"

"I'm not his prize! I haven't even slept with him!" She snarls out angrily, reaching up to shove him off her; she's out of practice, anxious at his company and from his talking of Metropolis, and as easily as she had with Kaldur a few days ago he grabs painfully at her wrist, hardly wincing as her bare fist collides clumsily against the side of his neck— she hears herself cry out when he throws her arm off of him, slamming it into the keyboard, her fingers spasming and catching on wires, yanking them from the laptop. "Stop it, Garth—" She shrieks, flinching when he laughs at her.

She nearly jumps when she hears a high pitched voice cry from the door way, firing out one syllable of a language she can't understand; they haven't been stealthy, have been the complete opposite of quiet, and now they've been cornered— Garth's just as distracted by the noise as she is, and in the half second or two his attention is diverted she manages to throw him off of her, taking a bit too much pleasure in the way he stumbles backwards, back colliding with the edge of a book shelf.

—And if they're about to die right now she's going to go down fighting, going to drag as many goons with her as she can and above all she won't do it with the taste of Garth's salt slicked saliva still on her tongue—

(because she had died once, and if she had to pick a way to die again it would be tasting walnuts and buttery popcorn and the unknown sweet smell always in the back of Wally's throat—)

She's almost too busy planning to die to turn her attention to the door way, and when she finally does she feels herself blanch.

Sandsmark has a daughter.

And suddenly everything she's seen in the Doctor's house makes so much yet so little sense— Sandsmark has a child. Which means the daughter should have a father... Where's the father?

(And without meaning to she's suddenly reminded disgustingly of her own childhood; reminded of the loneliness and the fear and the ever constant idea that she was going to have to make her own way in the world. And she can't help but remember the darkness of her bedroom in the night and how afraid she was, remember starving for food and attention and for someone to love her, remembers how the hallways stank with abandonment and rejection and—)

Or at least she has to be Sandsmark's daughter; the girl has to be ten, maybe eleven—either way she's tiny, hardly in her teen years and so little of a threat that she instantly feels all her muscles relax, the defensive position she's adopted slacking and raised fists falling back to her side. She's staring at them, wide eyed and angry from the doorway, messy blond hair like her mother's pushed back over her shoulders with a headband.

The overlarge blue eyes stare fixedly at them both for a moment in shock before something in her expression changes, the tiny features seeming to set into something she can only think of as determination. As if the little girl has been trained for this sort of thing, as if coming home from school or wherever the hell she's been she's used to finding strangers in her home; suddenly scowling at either of them she raises her fists, tiny tongue smacking a pink bubble of gum over her lips before she speaks in a language Artemis can't understand.

She sends Garth a warning look before she quickly glances back at the little girl in front of them, trying to stretch her mouth into a welcoming smile. She's never been much good with kids, but she supposes she'll have to try. "Hi there." She says as warmly as she can. "What's your name?"

The little girl stares at her long after she finishes speaking, repeating herself in her unknown language after a moment.

"Oh—" She pauses, frowning. "Uh—We're with the Justice League." She says slowly and loudly, the fake smile she's wearing faltering when the little girl's face remains suspicious, no trace of recognition on her face. "This is... Tempest. And I'm Artemis."

Almost immediately the girl's platinum brows shoot up and wrinkle her forehead. "Artemis?" She repeats.

"I—Yeah." She says stupidly, and for a strange half second she wonders if her mantle has somehow become well known, universal, like Robin or Kid Flash or even Aqualad; this odd hope is immediately dimmed when the little girl takes a step forward, her arms raising and framing themselves around an invisible bow.

"Artemis."

The girl mimes the firing of an arrow and she realizes that this little girl—this stupid little girl, who's been alone with nobody to take care of her for only a few days yet already looks so distinctly uncared for, so much so that it takes her a moment to swallow down the bile rising in her throat when she sees dried shampoo on her ears and hair unbrushed— actually thinks she's stumbled upon a Grecian goddess in her mother's study; for a half second she almost snorts. "Uh, not quite." She hears herself chuckle, memory picking up as she turns to Garth. "Kaldur told me once—Atlantean is loosely based on Greek right?"

"Not purely Greek." He says stubbornly. "It is also highly influenced by Latin and—"

"But you can figure out what she's saying?" She cuts him off quickly, eyes narrowing and trying to tell him without speaking how important this is. "You can tell her who we are? That we don't mean any harm—"

She jerks when she feels a hand tugging at the bottom of her frizzy pony tail, the little girl having advanced further into the bedroom and now touching her curiously, as if expecting her to burst into sparkles or show her magic of some sort. "Please, Garth." She says between her teeth, trying to smile and hating that after everything she's being forced to beg for his help. "Ask her what her name is."

Garth holds her gaze before he sighs, as if not understanding why they don't simply turn on their heels and run; he doesn't yet realize how delicate the situation they're in actually is, how lightly they have to tread to make sure this doesn't spiral out of control— she knows better than he does how easily that can happen. She takes a step back from the little girl just as Garth opens his mouth, voicing loudly and clearly something she doesn't understand.

The girl's head whips to Garth the second he speaks, and she can tell immediately that whatever he's saying isn't quite right; the girl's brows are furrowing and she's looking puzzled, as if she's only catching a few words that he's saying. "I am telling her that we mean no harm." He relays to her as she slips her backpack off her shoulders.

The little girl's eyes flickers back to her just as she's made a grab from the little leather bound book that had so caught her eye before, and hurriedly she tries to look casual, lifting it up from its place on the desk and putting it back almost immediately; she can tell by the notice of the girl's gaze that it's of some importance, but she'll have to be careful with how she takes it. "Tell her that we're from the Justice League—"

"I do not think that is wise, she seems quite infatuated with the idea that you are the goddess you are named for—"

"I'm not lying to a kid. Follow orders."

Garth scowls and then relays her message, and in the moment the girl is distracted she shoves a few more loose papers into her bag, deliberately keeping her distance from the important looking leather bound book so not as to arise too much notice, glancing up when she hears the little girl respond with words she understands. "Wonder Woman." She bursts out, glancing between them excitedly and catching her zipping up her bag and holding it loosely by the straps.

"Yes, Wonder Woman." She smiles, not missing the way the girl's eyes narrow. "Ask her what her name is."

She hears Garth fire out the question but this time the girl doesn't look back towards him, her eyes holding her own as her hand strays towards the leather bound book again, her instinct telling her that she should ask before she takes it. "Her name is Cassandra. She prefers Cassie." Garth tells her. "… She is wondering why we are stealing her from her mother." He add almost as an afterthought.

She winces when Garth takes the book off the desk, waving it impatiently at the little girl and adopting a lecture type tone. "What are you saying?" She asks quickly, noticing the way Cassie blushes angrily.

"I am telling her that she should be grateful we are here, that we will be finding her mother for her—"

"You can't just leak out details of the mission—"

Instead of heeding her he continues to talk rather meanly in his gruff, half-mangled Atlantean; she's not sure what he's saying but at once Cassie frowns, shaking her head and babbling away angrily in Greek and trying to take the book back. She wants to strangle Garth when he lifts the book up high out of the little girl's reach—this is wrong, all wrong, they should have bailed the second they were caught—Cassie's voice increasing in pitch, cheeks reddening further.

"Garth." She says severely, glaring at him and forgetting not to use his real name. "It's not worth it—"

Garth chuckles out something mean sounding, waving the book high above his head. "What are you afraid of? She is a little girl, they are the weaker sex here as well, yes—?"

As if she was waiting for it Cassie snarls, feet kicking up from the floor boards so hard that they splinter the wood, fist extended high above her head; she hears the sound of a childlike battle cry, hears the sound of knuckles colliding with Garth's nose and watches the little book go soaring out of his hands in his shock.

It doesn't matter what else is going on—for a moment, all she can focus on is the little girl smoldering with rage, turning her angry eyes onto her as Garth crumbles to the floor, her feet a clean foot off the ground.

Cassie is flying.

"Holy shit." She hears herself say as the girl in front of her lands too lightly against the hardwood.

Out of sight she can hear Garth groan, the sound of his impact still echoing in her ears. "W-what the fuck..." She mutters to herself, eyes bugging in shock. Accusingly Cassie turns towards her, her tiny body now much more threatening as she utters something angry and intelligible at her. "Garth?" She asks weakly, not surprised when she doesn't hear a response.

"I—" She begins, staring at Cassie with widened eyes. She's not equipped to talk down a hurricane of a person, but her instinct is telling her that it's wrong to keep quiet, wrong to let Cassie come to her own assumptions about who they are and what their purpose here is—besides, she doesn't much like the idea of attacking a child, no matter how powerful and dangerous that child may be. "You shouldn't hit people." She sounds ridiculous, trying to adopt an almost maternal tone. "Especially people who are associated with the Justice League."

Her words mean nothing to Cassie, her tiny fists still clenching and cheeks still reddened; when she takes a step forward she acts without thinking, hand fumbling with her bow to extract it from an outside pocket of her bag. It's borderline useless without her arrows, which despite Dick's insistence at their placement have proven impossible to get to quickly; still, in light of Garth's behavior and Cassie's shocking strength it's comforting to snap it into place and hold in front of herself defensively, her palm sweating and waiting to see what will happen.

It's a small movement, so tiny she's not sure she even sees it; there's a moment where Cassie's teeth pause in her grinding, brows shooting up and scrunching the skin between her eyes and her headband. "… Artemis." She says.

"Yeah." She nods, eyes drifting to Garth as he hears him start shifting. "I'm Artemis." She pauses, convincing herself that it isn't really a lie and glancing down when Cassie's ankles flex against the splintered flooring, the tiny body propelling a few inches off the ground to better look her in the eye. "The Goddess of the Hunt." It takes a lot of effort to maintain eye contact and not glance back behind her where she thinks the little book fell.

"A-Amazon." Cassie stutters out after a second, squinting at her.

"No, I'm not an Amazon." She says in the same soothing tone, pausing to better look at her. "... Y-you know Wonder Woman? Are you… Related to her?" She asks, gesturing pointedly at the gentle bobbing Cassie's feet are making against the floor in her weightlessness; as if suddenly self-conscious the girl lowers herself back to the hardwood.

Garth decides to take this moment to emerge from behind the desk, blood dripping down his nostrils as he claws his way up the mahogany, looking stunned. Cassie seems suddenly much calmer, her eyes fixed on her hungrily and taking in the pose she's still holding with her bow. "… Garth, tell her you're an idiot." She says quietly. "Tell her you're not from here, that you're from Atlantis and don't understand our customs."

She doesn't miss the scowl that crosses his bloody features but he seems to have learned his lesson, voice sounding muffled through his broken nose as he speaks. She clearly hears the word "Atlantis" when he says it, and registers Cassie's interest when her brows raise again, her mouth jabbering something back that she doesn't understand.

"Atlantis." She repeats, forcing Cassie's attention back to her and compressing her bow with a snap of her wrist. It takes only a few careful steps across the room before she reaches Garth, jerking him up rather gruffly and ignoring the way he leans too heavily on her, her hands fumbling with deliberately high neck of his tee shirt until it's pulled down, revealing his gills. "He's from Atlantis. Under the water?"

Cassie frowns but no longer looks angry when she releases Garth roughly, leaving him to his own devices for a moment as he struggles to cope with the blood still gushing from his nose. "Tell her we need to borrow some of her mother's things to find her. Make it very clear that we're going to bring both them, and her mother, back."

She listens carefully as Garth speaks, looking away from the conversation for the sake of finding the little leather bound journal that's been marked as so important; despite not understanding she can tell that he's being very careful about how he words things, can feel eyes on her back as she grabs the book from where's it's been half wedged behind a book shelf.

She's just straightened when Cassie says her name again; she turns back to her she sees the fright on her face, the shred of hope that her mother is being looked for, that she's going to be okay. "Artemis?" She repeats, looking at her with wide eyes, glancing down to where she's clutching the diary.

"… That's right." She says, fumbling with the zipper on her bag; it takes her a second to find the pocket that's hidden in there, to find the stash of pointed arrows she's been saving in case something goes wrong. Out of the corner of her eye she can see a blood smeared Garth finally being useful and quietly extracting the laptop from the Doctor's desk. She tries her hardest not to feel as if they're doing something wrong.

"I'm Artemis." She says clearly, offering the little girl her arrow as a truth she can't offer her in words.

(... Souvenir...)

"So… A ten year old girl broke Garth's nose?"

She can't stop the smirk that promptly erupts on the borders of her lips, glancing in the side mirror and trying not to be too gleeful when she sees the Atlantean in question gingerly pinching the bridge of his bleeding nose. "She sure did." She says as evenly as she can.

Garth's scowl deepens when Robin lets out a chortle of impish laughter from the backseat, and despite herself she glances at Roy; it's a little odd, seeing a thin smile fighting to emerge over the tightly clenched knuckles flexing around the steering wheel. "And what? You just let her?" He snorts, taking his eyes off the road stretching in front of their rented Jeep to send her a wry look. "Doesn't say much about our Team if some untrained kid can get the better of two of its members."

"I wouldn't call it getting the better of either of us." She counters. "Garth had it coming and I didn't see a sense in cheating him out of a valuable learning experience."

Robin lets out another loud sounding cackle when the Atlantean glowers at her, rapidly bruising eyes narrowing at her in the side mirror. "If this is what you surface worlders call learning then I look forward to returning to Atlantis." He sniffs.

She catches herself exchanging another grin with Roy and promptly stops, feeling odd strange about being so friendly. "… Teasing aside, this kid was… Well, she wasn't just some kid. Speaking of which, what's the ETA on members of the Justice League?"

Automatically she glances over her left shoulder, twisting in the passenger seat and looking expectantly at Robin, watching him fuss with the pocket of his denim civvies and extract his cellphone. "… Batman is rendezvousing with local child protective services as we speak and making arrangements. Nice going on that one, by the way." He adds, glancing up, accusing eyes barely hidden behind sunglasses. "This was supposed to be a stealth mission. Bats isn't happy that we have a witness."

In answer she goes back to sitting straight in her seat and moodily re-adjusts her seat belt so it better settles between her breasts. "Whatever else she may be she's still a kid, Rob." She says icily. "As far as I can tell she's been living on her own since her mother vanished, and that was over a week ago. Don't tell me it would have been better to abandon her."

An awkward silence falls in the Jeep, and surprisingly it's Red who reads it correctly, his head turning ever so slightly towards her questioningly. She decides to ignore whatever he's asking, whatever it is about her own abandonment that Jade may have told him, and in response his knuckles tighten on the wheel.

"But you got something, right?" Dick presses, leaning forward and sidestepping the awkward pause, his hand pressing against her shoulder. "Anything that will give us a clue about what she was working on? Why she would have been taken?"

"Obviously." She grabs her bag off the floor of the car and throws it a little roughly over her shoulder, smirking when she hears the rush of breath leaving his lungs that signals her hitting his diaphragm. "A few papers, her laptop—Cassie seemed hell-bent on protecting her mother's diary and we got that too, it's the little black book on top."

"Perfect, hopefully—"

"That car is following us." Garth pipes up, leaning forward and sticking his head between the gap in the two front seats, frowning when she jerks back from his closeness. "The black one? It has been behind us for quite some time—"

All three of them glance out the back window, Roy's eyes flickering up to the rear view; she hadn't been paying their surroundings enough mind, a rookie mistake, head still throbbing with a mixture of anxiousness and adrenaline—it's a black sedan, the same four door that's been behind them since they left the city…

"… Perhaps it is a coincidence." Garth continues, reading their suddenly stiff silence incorrectly, going back to sitting normally in his seat, tilting his head back to resume the pinching of his nose. "This is the main highway out of the city, yes?"

"Could be." Robin says carefully, keeping his voice deliberately even in a way that tells her his mind is racing. "But that's an American model. Be pretty uncommon around—and look at the tinting on the windows."

She feels the bottom of her backpack colliding with her shoulder, the edge of the stolen laptop inside it digging painfully into her shoulders. "Priority Alpha is getting back to the Bioship and getting the intel back to the Cave." Dick tells them all, pulling up the map application on his phone and suddenly acting ten times older than he really is. "Bioship is eight miles away… We're going to try to lose them, but if we can't we have to be ready for a fight. Roy, a right when you're ready—there's a rest stop five miles from here, and if we have to we let them take us we do it there, in the woods with more cover. Worst case scenario no civilians get hurt, no cops are called, and the Bioship will be within an easy range— Priority is protecting the intel. Artemis, keep the backpack on, if you have to break away from us and get to the Bioship on foot—"

It's painfully obvious when Roy jerks the wheel, foot audibly pressing against the floor and propelling them at a break neck speeds through highway traffic. For the first time in her life she's thankful for Garth, and thankful for his never ending need to ask questions and for the way hearing talking oddly calms her. "And what of you? Did you discover anything at the dig site that would warrant their following us?"

"Nothing." Roy grits out, wincing when the tires squeak.

When he doesn't go on Robin fills in the gaps. "Nobody in her crew knows where she went, nobody knows why she would have been taken; we didn't press them too much, they seemed scared, they had a job to do, and we could still barely communicate—" Robin trails off when he glances out the back window again, sunglasses nearly slipping down his nose when the black sedan behind them copies the same awkward crossing they've just done across the four lanes of traffic. "I don't know why Kaldur didn't mention anything about the language barrier, if I had known I would have packed tech that could have prepared us for that—"

"Doesn't matter." Roy cuts him off, teeth gritting as they all watch the black car getting closer. "We're in it now. And whatever it is... It's coming."

Roy's not even finished with his cryptic warning before the screeching of tires drowns him out; as if knowing what they're about to do or what they're planning the black sedan following them squeals its way across several lanes of traffic, cutting off several other drivers and creating a loud chorus of honks as its tires wail behind them. Suddenly the little Jeep feels crowded, as if there isn't enough air inside it, not when so many civilian eyes are being drawn to them and following the interesting display of speed and sound.

"I think we can forget about losing them." Roy grits out, biceps popping through the material of his tee shirt as he glances wildly over his shoulder, trying to cross another lane of traffic and towards to the turn off he's trying to hit.

Instinctively she rips her backpack open; there isn't enough room to pop her bow open in the front seat but she at least needs access to her quiver— she shoves the Doctor's laptop and her journal more securely into the bottom of the bag, fumbling to make sure the compartment with her arrows is open. "Artemis, backpack on." Robin reminds her sternly, reaching into the front seat and tapping insistently on her shoulder.

"I know, Rob, I need my—"

"They are coming!" Garth yells out in panicked voice.

True to his word she hears the tires squealing again, the unknown sedan speeding dangerously close behind them as she zips the bag as securely as she can allow it; a little clumsily she struggles to twist her wrist to snap her bow into formation, ignoring Roy's annoyed grunt as it bursts open, knocking him painfully in the arm. Before she can do more than raise the bag to her lap she can hear Garth's wail of shock, can hear the metal of the roof denting as a pair of feet collides with it—

She hears the unfamiliar noise of metal crunching, of several voices gasping or yelling, and before it even registers in her head what's happening the metal ceiling above her is being penetrated by the pointed tip of a javelin—for one moment her heart stalls, for one moment her blood freezes, and the javelin pierces Roy's skin beside her, striking through metal and ceiling and plastic and skimming a deep red line into his forearm and it's Sportsmaster, Sportsmaster's here and now she's choking on the scent of blood and debris falling from the ceiling—

She's going to die, she's going to die—

Roy screams, a loud and guttural noise that's nothing like the breathy choking noise that she's heard Wally make before; this is less real but more terrifying, and suddenly he's more beast than man as the car jerks. The roof above them is being peeled back and Roy's blood is spurting across the dashboard and when she finally gets the sense to look up in surprise she realizes it's not Sportmaster she's looking at, it's another Shadow, another human being clad in black with a mask to distort their face, another person who's exactly like—

Before she can finish the thought the faceless Shadow is reaching inside, gloved fingers clawing at her lap; Robin seems to pull it together first, his eyes alone protected by his sunglasses from the wreckage falling from the ceiling, and snarling as he lunges forward in his seat to join her in the front, nimble body wedging between the seats as another Shadow propels itself from the unknown black sedan and into the back bumper of their Jeep.

Their car is swerving and Roy is screaming, and she feels her backpack being ripped from her hands seconds before Robin lands on her lap, foot digging into her thigh as he launches himself upwards through the wreck of the roof the Shadow's just stolen her bag through; she can heard them struggling, can hear the sound of knuckles sinking into flesh and Garth's increasingly worried pants, can hear the sound of more feet colliding with the roof top and can feel other javelins spearing the outside of the vehicle, trying to get inside.

"Robin!" She screams out, finally forcing herself to pull it together, unbuckling her seat belt and rising up on her seat, head poking out of the hole the Shadow created.

"I got this!" He screams back, and he's moving so quickly that she can hardly see what he's doing, her mind oddly fogged by what's happening— Sportsmaster isn't here, she doesn't need to be afraid but she needs to focus, she needs to trust the Metropolis girl— and as if reaffirming this the backpack comes tossing back inside the Jeep, clattering hard to the floor and spilling her arrows everywhere. "Get that on and defend Roy, he's injured!"

"I'm—" She hears Red's annoyed tone call out, probably on the verge of telling them he's fine, to keep fighting; she's not even fully back inside the vehicle before she hears his feral screeching cry again, feels the Jeep swerve; there are more Shadows now, more javelins peeling the metal of the vehicle off, the heel end of one smashing through the window and showering Roy with glass, the blunt end of the weapon hitting his temple hard.

"Red!" She screams out, feeling herself tense up as she watches his entire body slacken into unconsciousness; without thinking she lunges across him, bow jamming wildly out the window but with enough force to strike the Shadow painfully in the chest, winding whoever is under the mask and forcing their body to crumple off the vehicle and shatter on the road behind them.

"Garth!" She snarls out behind her. "Garth, do something—"

She spares him enough of a glance to know that he's panicking as much as she is, stick straight and watching what's happening with horrified eyes. The whole of the Jeep is swerving and shaking, and more out of instinct than anything she lets out a frantic noise in the back of her throat before throwing herself onto Roy's lap; she's never driven a car before, never sat behind a wheel—she can feel Roy's foot still pressing weightily on the gas pedal, forcing them to increase speed. "Garth!" She screams out, glancing over her shoulder to where he's is still cowering in the back seat. "Garth, pull Robin back in here, I'm going to try to—"

She stops speaking as she hears Dick's grunt of pain—she can see a cliff coming up can see where they're going to go over if she doesn't get this under control—giving up on ripping Roy's foot off the gas she slams both her feet down on the break, Roy's head thundering against her shoulder as Garth reaches up through the ceiling, feeling around for Robin… She can get rid of the Shadows if she rolls the car, she just need Dick inside it, she needs to keep him safe, Wally will kill her if anything—

Garth just manages to tug Dick safely inside when she loses control, her hands jerking the wheel roughly to the right just as their stretch of pavement breaks into gravel and wilderness; it's not a cliff exactly, not like she first thought, it's more a busheled stretch of hill, a mess of rocks and brambles and whatever else she's giving the chance the kill them as she braces herself— pressing Roy into his seat she yanks his arms around herself, trusting in the sturdiness of his bones to keep her alive before the whole of the car loses control, sending them rolling violently down the hill.

It's bone smashingly, heart wrenchingly violent, the way they roll down the hill; she hates hearing her brain rattling inside her skull, hates hearing the ragged yelling and painful breathing of her teammates around her, hates that halfway through she can hear the guttural yelling of the unknown people behind the Shadow masks as they're ripped from the Jeep and forcibly smashed into the dirt and ploughed over by metal. It's all happening too quickly and she's terrifyingly dizzy and she half fools herself into thinking that somewhere underneath all the screaming and glass shattering she can the distinct sound of arteries bursting and spurting stranger's blood over her skin...

Before she can even gag properly at the thought her head kicks back and knocks against someone else's skull, and suddenly all she sees is blackened spots bursting in front of her eyes.

Wally's beside her in bed, hair mused from the half sleep he's been fussing himself with for the last hour. He jumps when she touches him, arm smacking loudly against her pajama clad thigh before he realizes where he is, settling back into her pillows and allowing her to soothingly stroke his hair off his forehead. "You don't have to wait up for me to finish, you know." She tries to scold him over the cover of her textbook.

As if he can sense she's about to take her hand back Wally tilts his head underneath her touch, trying to tempt her fingers back into fiddling with his fringe; traitorously, she catches herself indulging him. "I don't mind." He sighs out, apple eyes fluttering open to look at her sleepily.

"Well, I do." She says seriously, finally forcing herself to go back to her homework. "This could take hours still, and you're falling asleep waiting..."

Wally lets out a disapproving hum but still looks content as he rolls towards her. "So wake me up when you finish. Come on, Black Canary isn't even in the Cave tonight, who cares if I sleep over—"

"Wally."

As if sensing he isn't about to win their repeated argument he sighs, shifting underneath her blankets until he's curled around her like a cat. "Fine..."

The silence is familiar, comfortable like it always it; for a while there's isn't a noise in the room except the scratching of her pencil against her loose leaf, orthe occasional turning of a page in her textbook. Wally starts snoring twice and each times she wakes him.

His breathing changes after the second time though; it's no longer level, or tired. There's a quiet sort of alertness to it, and as she thinks it she watches as his hand emerges from the blankets to touch the tendons of her wrist, forcing her to pause her writings. "... Artemis?"

And instantly she knows that tone of voice, recognizes the silence that comes before it— he's about to tell her that he loves her.

For the first time, ever, she isn't afraid. "... Yeah?" She swallows thickly, dropping her pencil to look at him.

Except— Something's wrong. He's not smiling, he's — he's suddenly got a death grip on her wrist, looking terrified and pale and broken on her bed sheets. "Artemis!" He screams in her face, and the loudness of his desperation seems to reverberate in her bones and before she can even respond he's screaming again, shaking her violently, nails piercing her skin and dragging pieces of flesh from her bones—

"Ar—" He tries to say, blood bursting from his mouth and bullets reining down on him again; his skin is erupting in front of her eyes, pieces of him soaking her bedding—

"Artemis!" Roy yells loudly in her ear, shaking her.

She hears herself suck in a rattling breath and immediately chokes on the smell of fresh blood; it takes several seconds to remember where she is, remember what's just happened. Before she even has time to try to breath again she can feel bile rising in her throat, and uncontrollably she vomits.

"She'll be alright." She hears him tell someone in the back seat, presumably Dick. "Come on, we need to get out of this thing."

They're all still in the Jeep, which although mangled beyond repair managed to box them into a compact shell that no doubt saved their lives, managing to come to a stop on its side; wincing when she feels Roy moving underneath her she glances down to where his arms are still wrapped stiffly around her, immediately blanching and nearly vomiting again.

Roy's arms are shredded.

It's so much worse than anything she could have imagined, and the second she sees it she suddenly becomes uncomfortably aware of the occasional dribbling of warmth off his elbows onto her lap; he must have taken the brunt force of the airbags with his forearms, the impact alone no doubt breaking his skin but combined with the flying glass and metal... When she looks it again she can see several flimsy layers of skin hanging off of him like tassels, as if he's been grinding a cheese grater into his skin.

"R-Red..."

She tries and fails to say something out of thanks to him for taking the blow for her, listening to the sound of the others exiting the car; as if knowing what she's trying to do Roy flinches. "Do me a favor and keep your mouth shut up, Sweetheart." He says lowly. "Let's get out of here."

It's easier to take orders than to try to fight him on anything; silently sparing him the effort of trying to bang open the smashed-in door she does it for him, having to hit hard against it nearly dozen times with her bow before it does them the favor of opening.

She can hear him saying things to her but she's not listening; the shock of crash is making her oddly feral, or perhaps it's just the lingering effect of the odd dream with Wally. Either way she's scanning their surroundings, carefully memorizing the slops of every boulder and the fanned edges of every plant. Almost subconsciously she can feel herself taking inventory: scratches and cuts all over her legs, a bump on the back of her head, blood coating her front that she's sure is just Roy's. All in all she's doing well, too well, all things considering.

Roy clambers out behind her, looking white as a sheet but otherwise unharmed. "Are you—" She starts, clearing her throat when her voice breaks. "A-are you alright?"

In answer he looks almost curiously at the bleeding swatches that are his forearms; when he reaches up to pluck a dangling piece of skin off she has to look away, nauseous. "Other than this, yes. Looks worse than it is." He pauses to look, almost annoyed, at the wreck of the Jeep. "Guess I'm not getting my deposit back." He adds dryly.

"... I don't get it." She says slowly, shaking her head. "We should... We should all be way worse than this."

"Who's to say we aren't?" He says after a moment, looking out over the mangled hood of the Jeep.

She follows his line of sight, seeing Garth first— he's just like the rest of them, stupidly unscathed but even more so for some reason. There's hardly a bruise or cut on him, the only indication of the recent trauma of their crashing being the slight ruffling of his hair and the dirtiness of his clothes. For one wild moment she can't quite place together what Roy's telling her, can't read the worried expression in the corners of Garth's eyes, and as if somehow understanding what she doesn't the Atlantean drops his gaze to the ground, willing her eyes to follow.

No.

She hears herself say the word out loud, repeating it again and again with heightened intensity; her heart is suddenly thundering so loudly in her ears that she can't hear what Roy says next, can hardly feel the uneven ground beneath her feet as she scrambles around the car. "Dick!" She cries out.

(And like she had when she was screaming Wally's name to no response she feels the Metropolis girl snarling and bursting inside her veins; suddenly she's not a human anymore, she's raw desperation, animal impulse, death and darkness and wretchedness banging loudly inside her ears—)

((Because Dick is like her little brother, and maybe she had wanted to protect him the way Jade had tried to protect her; and she can't fail at this, can't fail at this too—))

In response she hears the loud sound of retching, the boy in question ducking his head between his knees to vomit as she stops clumsily in front of him— the crash has done something strange to that old injury in her thigh, she feels as if she's carrying her weight all wrong. "I'm fine." He slurs out after a moment, shaking his head as if to clear it before he lifts his sick covered chin clumsily to look at her, the movement so slow and uncalculated that she has nearly five seconds to stare in shock at the expanse of exposed scalp and blood gushing from the top of his head. She feels her mouth fall open— Dick's supposed to be a survivor, he's supposed to... He's supposed to be unfaltering, unfailingly annoying and clever as always, he can't... He can't be hurt.

As if reading the expression on her face Garth decides to start talking to fill the stunned silence. "I believe he just has a concussion."

For some reason her temper flares, all her annoyance at Garth and terror at the almost-loss of Dick bubbling in the back of her throat and forcing her to turn towards him, snarling. "Shut up." She snaps, practically spitting. "Just a— And why aren't you hurt, anyway?"

She doesn't blame Garth for the offended look that crosses his hardly bruised features, apparently not happy with her either. "Atlanteans have notoriously thick skin." He says evenly, glaring at her for a long moment before getting up from where he's perched on the ground and going back to salvage the wreck.

It takes all of her strength not to turn around and hurl herself after him, wanting to kick every inch of his supposedly thick skin until he's raw and bleeding; instead she catches herself biting her lip, hands scrubbing over her face. "... Fuck." She whispers to herself after a moment, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes.

She had no idea what to do.

For some reason Roy stays quiet for a moment; she can sense him watching her in the odd quiet of the clearing they've crashed into, only the disgusting sound of Dick's occasional vomiting breaking the silence. "... You alright?"

She lets out a haggard sigh, the heat of her breath warming her hands. "Yes." She grits out between her teeth.

If there's something else he's going to say she's saved the trouble of answering, Dick's voice sounding in the silence. "... A-Artemis?"

It scares her, how small and terrified he sounds; for what feels like the first time in a while he seems quite young. As if there's some larger part of her that's much softer and maternal than she would ever allow herself to be listening to the quailing edges of his voice she abruptly turns on her heel, pulling her hands from her face and disregarding her annoyance with Garth. "I'm here."

Dick looks almost blindly in her direction when she speaks— the shades lenses of his glasses are so beyond shattered she's sure he can barely see through them, only keeping them on to preserve his identity— not noticing the way her nose wrinkles as she kneels in front of him, knees coating unpleasantly in the warmth of his sick. Instead of saying anything for a moment he mumbles at her, head lolling dizzily until it's back between his legs. "—You're not hurt?" He asks her suddenly.

He sounds almost half-alright for a moment, but any hope his words give her quickly dies when he gags again, stomach trying to spit up something no longer inside him. "Yeah. I'm fine."

There's more muttering that she can't understand and worriedly she glances at Roy, wondering what to do. "... Wally would have killed me." Dick says distinctly.

(And in the back of her mind she's the one with a concussion and Wally's sitting in her sick, holding her hair out of her vomit and pressing a hand against her blood slicked head.)

The Metropolis girl demands her attention again, forcing her to cast aside memories and focus.

It's not much to go on but it's the only comfort she has, following this distant memory of Wally's example; deciding the time for modesty has passed she leans back onto her heels, looking sternly at Roy. "Take off your shirt."

"What—"

"Do it." She cuts him off, holding out her hand expectantly until he finally gives in and strips.

She's never been trained formally in first aid, but she knows the basics as well as any person: to get a wound to stop bleeding you need to apply pressure. Still, it takes a certain amount of time to rip the blood stained cotton of Roy's shirt into strips and even longer to wrap the thickest pieces around Dick's skull like a ridiculous looking bonnet, trying her best to ignore his sometimes vague muttering and swearing.

It doesn't do much; almost the second her makeshift bandage touches his head it's soaked through, the same thing happening several more times as she applies more layers. Swallowing thickly and deciding she's done her best she turns her attention to Roy. "Shut up." She tells him wisely before he even starts speaking, gritting her teeth as she wraps what's left of his shirt around his shredded arms and stab wounds.

Before Roy can respond to this Garth returns, handing her a bunch of her arrows and the backpack. "I have checked, all the intel is still inside." He says simply.

She hears herself say her thanks, fumbling to a finish with the ratty bandages on Roy's arms; the lack of things to do is starting to make her uneasy, nervous. "… What now?" She asks the clearing as a whole.

In answer Dick vomits again, a loud retching sound forcing her eyes closed at the smell of bile; biting back her own sick she forces herself to look at him, not to appear disgusted as he rubs vomit off his chin, looking slightly more focused. "Same as before." He slurs out, gagging slightly but managing to swallow the sensation back down.

"… Dick?" She hears herself ask weakly.

Ignoring the sound of his own name he sighs, both hands going up to either side of his face as if attempting to stop his head from spinning off his shoulders; she can tell he's trying his best to stay present, trying to keep them alive. After a moment he releases his head, fingers getting caught on her bandages before finding their way to his pocket, retrieving his cellphone and flipping it open. "... Come here."

It takes her a second to realize that he's talking to her, that he's attempting to ask her something; at first she simply watches him fumble with a small looking red button on the side of his screen before opening the map application. Stupidly she assumes he can't read the map with his head injury, can't distinguish the symbols and trails and wants her to do it for him. It's only when he gestures a little helplessly at her with his phone that she realizes what's really happening.

"No." She blurts out jarringly, shaking her head. "I mean— Red, get over here. Dick's down, you're leader now."

For some reason Roy shakes his head, still looking a little stunned at her having come out of her shock so quickly to tend to them all. "I don't... It's you, Artemis."

She lets out a frustrated noise but she doesn't fight him on it; the heat of the day is beginning to disappear and they're burning day light, injured and alone in the wilderness. Ignoring the anxious buzzing about her temples she goes back to kneeling in front of Dick, trying to keep her thoughts only on the moment. It takes her a few seconds of staring blankly at the cellphone before she feels herself beginning to form a plan, fingers scrolling a little aimlessly. "… Okay." She says after a while, squinting at the bright light. "… We're three miles from the Bioship. We can make it by foot, although it might take a while… Is Batman still in the area?" She adds hastily, glancing at Dick.

Dick mutters for a moment, unreadable. "—that little girl. I just sent an emergency signal, could be hours before he comes for us."

"Then our best bet against the Shadows is to keep moving." She finishes for him, glancing at the mangled remains of her Team, brows pursed. "I'll bring up the rear. Dick and Garth in the middle—Garth, you'll have to support Dick, it's going to be getting dark and he's already dizzy. Roy lead and wear the backpack, if anything happens break ahead, come for us with the Bioship—"

"No go." Roy interrupts, eyes narrowing. "Between the two of us you're faster, and even with my arms beaten up I can fire a stronger arrow than you. We're swapping positions. You lead, I'll pull up the back. You wear the pack."

Dick gags again and she decides against arguing. "Fine. Just—" She pauses, removing the backpack from her shoulders and unzipping it quickly.

"What are you doing?"

Withdrawing the mysterious leather book she reseals the bag, slinging it back on her shoulders. "Sandsmark's diary." She explains, thumbing through the pages and seeing nothing of interest other than the unfamiliar writing. "Cassie wanted to protect it, it has to have something that needs to be kept safe…" Trailing off she ignores his raised brows; reaching behind her she tugs at the waist band of her shorts, tucking the palm sized diary into the seam of her underwear.

"You're right." Roy snorts, and for a moment they might as well be back in the Cave, bickering. "Nobody's going to want to look in there."

It's beginning to grow dark now; in the unfamiliar landscape of the Grecian wilderness everything feels more threatening, every whispering breeze or shadowy rock a potential for their own deaths or worse, the loss of the intel they've been scrambling to recover. With every second step her leg throbs indignantly, and despite longing to collapse in the dirt she bites the inside of her cheek, willing herself to keep moving.

They walk along slowly in relative silence for almost an hour, the only noise between them their huffing and occasional requests to stop and rest. She's not stupid: she knows the League of Shadows. She knows they won't stop until the contract is fulfilled, until the intel they're carrying is successfully in their grasp.

She's also not stupid enough to pretend that they'll make it out of this as unscathed as they are now, to pretend that she thinks they'll be able to ward off another attack— Dick is still muttering indistinctly and unable to hold his own, and Garth has been almost useless for the entirety of the mission... And even on their best days her and Red couldn't fight a whole squad alone. But maybe she's stupid enough to hope that they'll be within range of the Bioship before it happens, that they'll at least have an escape from the fight, that there might be chance they'll be able to end the skirmish quickly or help will come at the last second...

... At least one League member is in the area and Robin told them he sent the alert...

She wonders vaguely what Kaldur was thinking, sending Garth along… He's still raw, untrained to work properly as a part of their group. But even if he hadn't been so green it doesn't change the fact that the mission Kaldur had prepped them for... It wasn't anything like what she's facing now. She had been expecting a low ball stake out, a lot of dull moments and opportunities to think. Instead they're stranded in the wilderness, Dick is injured and the longer she walks in her leg the more it hurts—

She cuts her own thinking off as she extends her bow in front of her, gently prodding a fern out of the way so as to get a better view into the clearing in front of them; the dirt around them has been growing increasingly water-logged for the last while, the bottoms of her sneakers now completely soaked through with mud. As she gazes into the clearing ahead she can hear the gentle trickle of water, as if they've stumbled across a natural spring.

But it isn't the spring that silences her thoughts; she can sense movement just beyond her line of sight into the trees, can sense something, either human or beast, lurking in the shadows in a way she couldn't before. Before she can open her mouth the whisper a warning Roy's cutting her off, speaking out loudly from behind her. "You have to admit," He says, and something in his tone tells them all not to say anything about the whispering shadows, to simply listen to the sound of his voice. "You don't see stars like this in the city."

She realizes what he's doing, allowing them to turn their attention upwards without being suspicious; under the guise of looking at the evening sky she can see the quivering of branches and leaves, as if people are lurking there and hoping the breeze will hide them.

"Beautiful." She hears Garth murmur behind her, and she's surprised to hear the tenseness there, as if he too understands what's happening.

Prodding onward a bit more carefully she leads them towards the spring, where the foliage is less dense and there's room to move should they need it; she can sense the lure of a fight just like she can sense the unknown figures lurking in the darkness, can sense that with Dick concussed and Garth being... Garth, she'll need to get them out of the way before a fight breaks loose. Glancing over her shoulder at the Atlantean in question she jerks her head towards the spring, sending him a quietly serious look. "Go sit down and rest. We can get moving in a—"

She feels the shift in the air only seconds before she hears it: the sound of metal cutting through the breeze. It's coming from behind her, as if to strike her in the left shoulder and cripple her from using her bow—

She doesn't even get the chance to defend herself; before she can side step whatever is coming for her Garth lunges forward, forearm slashing upwards and using his own flesh defend her. Feeling her eyes go wide she stares hard at sharpened blade of a sai as it's thrown off course and forced to disappear into the squelching of the mud, her muscles still tense in shock. "Garth—" She starts, stomach churning. "What—"

As if her words are what they've been waiting for the figures in the darkness begin to swarm them, drawing weapons and emerging from unexpected places; she can hear Roy calling out shock, furious at Garth abandoning his position as he's forced to shove Dick unsteadily out of the way. It's madness all over again, and it feels like Metropolis all over again, and her mind isn't working, she's not focusing, because suddenly she's looking around for Wally, who isn't even here for her to save—

Breathe.

She finally pulls the strange purple of Garth's blood into focus—it's odd, the slashing of the sai against the thickened skin of his forearm is bleeding but only slightly, the wound too shallow for that kind of blade. Behind her Red's screaming, the sound of his arrows blocking out whatever annoyance he's having with the stillness of her shock. "You are the weaker sex." Garth hisses at her, clutching his arm and turning back catch Dick as Roy shoves him roughly out of the way again. "Regardless of who I am to protect. It would be shameful—"

"Shut up!" She barks at him, nearly turning around and slashing him over the shoulder with her bow for being so stupid; instead she reaches into the depths of her backpack and withdraws one of her recollected arrows from the clumsily sewn pocket, notching it quickly against her finger and firing it to ward off the incoming attack of a Shadow. "You're such a—Take Rob to the spring, protect him, not me—"

The order is hastily given but he seems to understand the importance of following it; rather than watch him safely out of the line of fire she scrambles for the fabric quiver again, fingers fumbling before she extracts another arrow, spinning on her aching leg and ready to fight, ready to kill as she aims into the darkness of the trees—

"How sweet." A voice sighs out, so dangerously smooth and drawling that she nearly drops her bow at the sound; she can sense a body in the trees but the words sound as if they're coming from all around her, reverberating inside her and scratching painfully at the walls of her suddenly breathless lungs. "And they say chivalry is dead."

Jade.

And as she hears her sister's voice she can also feel the energy in the clearing shift uneasily; there's a loud sound of an arrow tip bursting through skin and when she risks looking out of the corner of her eye she can see a body falling, can see a mask slipping off a face and blood spurting from a neck. In his shock at her appearance Roy's misfired, he's— he's killed someone, actually killed someone—

"What's the matter Red?" Jade sneers, finally emerging from behind the shadow of a tree and no longer bothering to keep herself hidden in the darkness. "Is that an arrow in your quiver or are you just happy to see me?"

"... Cheshire." She hears him breathe, the softness and tenderness so striking like Robin's voice has been before; Roy's afraid of her sister, he can't fight her, doesn't know if he can—

It's old habit more than anything that makes her respond to her sister's taunts; before she can stop herself her eyes are ripping back to where Roy's standing behind her, frozen with a shocked look on his naked face. And more than ever she remembers their conversation in the kitchen... She sees her sister make a lunge for him and without thinking she releases the arrow from where it's been resting on her finger tip— she can't let Roy face Jade, if he does they're done for; ignoring the pain in her thigh she swings her bow like a club, catching her sister so hard in the abdomen that she's knocked off course, the sai in her hand releasing with shock and twanging loudly into the trunk of a tree.

Jade's winded, diaphragm stunned and lungs without the support needed to breathe; grabbing more arrows she senses the renewed movement in the clearing, the Shadows they've knocked down beginning to rise with the intent of avenging their fallen as she takes her aim. "Red!" She screams over the din, forcing his attention back onto her and not to where he's been staring at Jade, frozen. "I'm taking Cheshire. Watch my back—"

And they've been loud, too loud in the darkness; where there was once a small squad of three Shadows there's suddenly at least double that emerging from the darkness and beginning to swarm them, drawing weapons and emerging from unexpected places; she can hear Roy crying out in pain as he's taken from behind, the tip of the javelin skimming his shoulder before he turns back, growling and reaching to the small quiver on his thigh to extract an arrow.

She hears an annoyed huff of breath and locks eyes with her sister for a long moment, staring hard into the Cheshire Cat mask and imagining she can see a piece of Jade there. It feels suddenly as if they're both much younger, pitted against each other by their father and competing to see who can scratch the other one's eyes out the fastest—but this time she won't lose, she won't—

"So." Jade drawls a little breathily through the mask, still mud covered as her head tilts slightly; it bothers her, the ease with which she observes the taughtness of her position, almost amused by the way her arrow is notched against the string and aimed at the exposed column of her throat. "You're leading your little Team now are you? Hm. Dad won't be happy..."

At the sarcastic mention of her father she feels her shoulders tighten. "You would know." She says as coldly as she can, tensing as Jade's hand moves almost leisurely to her garter to retrieve another sai. "... The Shadows are using javelins now?"

"Let's call it a bit of inspiration on my part... I've been looking back fondly on old memories recently." Jade drawls, jaw tilting to better survey her. "So what happened to Aqualad? Must have been something awful if they had to resort to putting you in charge." She can sense the way Jade's eyes fall to her hand, wondering if she's going to fire. "But even then, there's still Boy Wonder… But of course. He's currently indisposed, isn't he?"

She can read the way Jade' muscles are popping in the same way hers would; before her sister can properly throw her sai she's adjusted her aim and releasing her arrow. There's the familiar shifting of air and the sound of metal colliding with metal, the two twanging in the air and dropping heavily in the darkness.

She hears Jade clicking her tongue again behind her mask, and immediatly she knows she's done it—her sister isn't stupid enough to turn her back on her to pursue Robin and Garth further, not when she's firing arrows and still wearing the backpack the Cheshire Cat so desperately wants. Jade hesitates before she bends down, not watching her relocking of position with a new arrow as she extracts her old one from where it's wedged itself into the mud. "Oh my. A real pointed tip? Against your own sister?" Jade muses, straighting and gesturing at her with the muddy metal tip. "Maybe you are a Daddy's girl after all."

"Shut up." She snarls back stupidly, pulling another arrow taught, intent on hitting her target this time.

"Make me."

It's a stupid taunt and still she falls for it, releasing her arrow exactly like Cheshire wants her to; it's poorly aimed and she's not surprised when she misses, but her lack of arms is exactly what her sister's been waiting for— Jade lunges at her, and with no other choice she braces herself, bow extended defensively as Cheshire attacks her head on, hands trying to rip the weapon upwards and out of her hands and she leaps over her head. She can feel all her muscles popping, disconnected, ripping from her bones as her sister tries to disarm her, pulling out her back as she manages to keep one hand on her bow, the whole of her weight rocking violently onto her bad leg.

That moment, that one moment of pain and violent lightning tearing up her spine is all Jade needs; that half second where her ankle rolls and snaps at the severity of the movement and the unevenness of the terrain, the heart beat before her knees buckle is more than enough for her sister to rip her bow from her hands and slam it down hard on the joint of her shoulder, sending her sprawling on her stomach into the mud. Mechanically she feels her sister clamber on to the middle of her back, ripping her arms out from underneath her and yanking them backwards until they feel as if they're about to pop out of their sockets—

And she had to play this carefully, has to keep the diary safe—

"Is that really the best you can do?" Her sister sneers at her, seeming to delight in the way she stops struggling, afraid of jostling her hips and accidentally revealing the book; too easily both her wrists are contained in one of Jade's palms, gloved fingers impervious when she attempts to bite the fingers now removing the backpack's strap from her shoulders. "Really, I'm embarrassed for you—"

(And the Metropolis girl is as impulsive as she is determined, and she refuses to give up, refuses to be defeated—)

Her hands are released long enough for Jade to slip the bag off her shoulders when almost childishly she gropes behind her; it's a bit pathetic, how desperately she struggles underneath the slightly bigger woman but it's worth whatever embarrassment she has when her sister's mocking laughter turns into a snarl of pain. She's managed to seize a fist full of coarse black hair and unthinkingly she yanks on it as hard as she can, listening to her sister spit with pain as the Cheshire Cat mask is ripped from her features, a few clumps of hair pulled bloodily from her scalp as she's forced to double over.

Jade screams into her ear, the noise sounding oddly choked as she presses her throat as tightly as she can against the swell of her shoulder; it's a last ditch effort, Jade still has her arms free and for a moment she can feel her instinctively clawing at the back of her hands, struggling for air and thrashing on top of her, shoving the diary further along the seam of her underwear and making it nearly impossible to notice—

Let her die, let her die—

Her sister is suddenly more than her instinct; Jade grabs a sai from her belt and plunges it into her forearm— it's a strange shot, hardly fatal and hardly damaging to her tendons but the shock of metal breaking skin and twanging against her bone is enough for force her into letting go with a shriek. She can sense foot steps around them, retrieving the backpack and retreating back into the darkness and why isn't Roy fighting anymore, where's Roy—

"So what— you're not above fighting dirty now?." Her sister snarls into her ear, encasing both her wrists in one hand again while the other clutches painfully at the back of her head, pressing her cheek into the mud and the blood tipped sai into her hair. "Bet the pep squad wouldn't approve of that."

It's pointless to struggle but she still does, her feet kicking out violently and breath coming in nervous whines; the mud here is so water logged that even with more than half her face exposed she's having difficulty breathing, and for the first time in a long time her old fear of drowning bucks hard to the surface of her mind. "Fuck off."

Jade seems to be enjoying her helplessness, the desperate panting firing out of her nose; her whole body tenses when she feels the cold metal of the sai trail down the back of her neck, pausing on the warbled skin of her scar that she knows is exposed. "But you know who would love it? Dad..."

As if experimentally she feels the sai slip, piercing the thickened skin just slightly and forcing her to let out a sharp hiss of pain; unwillingly she feels tears beginning to sting in the corners of her eyes but she won't let them fall, she won't cry in front of Jade—

The sai digs once, hard, into her skin before pulling back all together; rather than keep torturing her the older girl leans in, pressing her lips once to the wound she's just produced before pulling back, whispering in her ear. "He's not pleased with either of us now, is he?" Jade breathes, ignoring the way she's shaking with fear and pressing a warm kiss to her cheek, no doubt leaving an imprint of her own blood behind. "It was quite cute, that warning you left with Red..."

The taunting had been one thing but the blood stained kiss is more than enough to infuriate her again; it's useless trying to fight back now, with the Shadows having long since disappeared into the darkness with the intel. The only thing she can do now is humiliate Jade. "I should have let him come after you." She snarls, face still partially smashed into the mud. "I should have let him kill you."

It's not much but for some reason Jade pauses, pulling back far enough to look her in the eye. "... What?"

"I should have let him kill you." She repeats, voice quavering but gaze steady. "I wish you were dead."

It's far from quiet in the clearing but for some reason it's silent for a moment, the only thing in the world that really seems to exist is the expression on Jade's face; for some reason she knows they're both remembering the day her father tortured her with his javelin, remembering how her sister had stepped into save her life. There's horrifying a half second where she thinks she sees Jade's heart breaking behind her eyes.

"Is that what you think?" Cheshire hisses, face suddenly transforming into an animal's, nose wrinkling and lips snarling as her teeth snap out words. "Is that what you think?!"

She's expecting the sensation of a sai being carved into her and cries out when she feels hands snapping at her neck; before she can even properly inhale her last breath of air her face is being turned full forced into the mud, her sister's fingers clamping around her throat and trying to open her mouth, trying to get her to inhale and drown in the dirt— it can't last longer than a few seconds but the sensation of gagging and inhaling mud seems to last forever; her lungs are aching with an effort not to breath and her limbs are beating out wildly and struggling against the weight of her sister.

She's going to die, she's going to drown like Wally did in Metropolis—

And she'll never see him again, never get to feel his warm skin under her fingers or inhale the sickly sweet scent of walnuts...

And in the thousand things she could be thinking of with her last breath, out of a thousand faces of Teammates and friends and her mother she thinks of Wally; tries to recall the features she traced on the Watchtower, the warbled triangles that painted his cheeks and the exact shade of green his eyes were— and maybe now it's finally safe to admit it, now that she's dead and no longer a burden, maybe as she feels the darkened, sticky pieces of her mind imploding and she can say yes, maybe she does love him after all—

She can hardly hear anything between her own brain wailing into oblivion and mud flooding into her ears but she does hear screaming, most of it coming from Jade; she can tell she's being insulted and cursed and can tell most of all that she's about to die. She cries out when fingers scratch at her eyes and try to get them to open but she won't, she won't look death in the face— the beginning sensation of weightlessness is hitting her, much louder than the pain of her screaming, oxygen deprived lungs...

But the weight is gone and she's jerking herself out of the mud, lungs aching as she pulls in air and then starts coughing violently; she's curling up on all fours and can hear yelling above her wheezing—

She coughs so hard her vision bursts into black and she hears the screaming of Garth's voice— Garth's alive, he's... He's fighting? And he's saying words she doesn't understand and all she can hear is the rushing of running water and the speed of wind and— and this is a dream, or-? Her elbows give out and suddenly she's back to lying face first in the mud, body too exhausted to keep going, to do anything other than thirstily draw in air and stare unfocused at her own hand, bleeding and splayed in the dirt.

She feels the freezing droplets of rain hitting her skin, and shivering she retracts into darkness.

AN: This was by far the most difficult chapter for me to write, but I hope you all enjoyed it regardless. Please Read and Review!