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Artemis told herself to ignore the sounds of fighting on the courtyard. Most of the time it wasn't anything close to what she wanted it to be—just a handful of jocks getting stupid or some of the rich kids with too much money and too many drugs available getting a little out of control. She'd never seen it come to much, and she'd also never heard it last for long. If these kids weren't academic, they were idle rich, and that included when it came to fighting.
This time she heard a voice in the middle of it that she recognized, one she wouldn't have expected to hear. Barbara Gordon. They weren't best friends or anything, not that close, but they were friends. Artemis hurried into the courtyard just in time to see Barbara almost get taken down by her own best friend.
Dick Grayson was already bleeding from a split lip, but he seemed too pissed to care, trying to get around Barbara to the senior who might have started all of it. He flipped back, and Artemis frowned when she saw it, frowned even more when she saw him fly up to take the guy down.
“Dick, stop it. Now,” Barbara said, taking hold of his arm and dragging him back with more strength than Artemis had figured she had. “Let it go.”
He looked at her, looked at the kid he'd taken down, and then he stalked away angrily, Barbara running after him.
“Guess that's why they call him a flying Grayson,” someone in the crowd muttered, and Artemis knew that was familiar, too. She shook her head, turning back in the other direction. She figured she knew all of the good places to avoid people, surveillance, and attention at Gotham Academy by now, and she had a good idea where Dick and Barbara had ended up.
She knew she was right the moment she heard Barbara's voice again.
“You shouldn't have done it. You know you didn't have to.”
“Babs—”
“I'm serious. I have never wanted you to fight my battles for me, and you know that you don't need to. Not only because I can fight them for myself but also because I have never cared what they think. I didn't when I first came to this school, when we were first friends, and I don't care now,” Barbara insisted.
Artemis wasn't an eavesdropper. Not usually. Not unless the mission called for it or her family was up to no good. This time, though, she couldn't ignore her gut telling her she needed to know more than she already did. Barbara was a friend, and Dick—well, something had been up with him for a while now. He'd been the talk of everyone when he went abroad for a year, and it had only gotten worse after the pictures started showing up in tabloids everywhere. Then he came back early, causing even more of a scandal because everyone figured he must have done something horrible to have Bruce Wayne yank him back—and whatever it was had skipped the tabloids so it must have been bad enough for the guy to pay millions to silence it.
She wasn't sure that last part was true. What was true was that she'd noticed odd things about Dick plenty of times since she met him, and now it was like he'd had a complete personality shift. The tabloids from the last year and the way he'd actually gotten in fights this year like he was some kind of young rich bad boy after being mostly a quiet sort of almost geek before did not feel right. Considering that he'd snapped a picture of her on the first day she got there, she didn't like this new mini-Wayne side of him. She didn't like “players” period, but for Dick Grayson to be pulling that kind of crap with a girl Artemis actually liked as a friend—no. Just no. That was not happening on her watch.
“It was different when they were talking about me being a circus freak or a charity case. That's old. I don't even care about that, and I never cared about being 'circus' because I have always been proud of that. It isn't even that bad that they were talking about those stupid paparazzi pictures,” Dick said, and then whatever he followed that with was in another language and sounded worse than the kind of stuff Cheshire and her dad would say.
Then again, if anyone had a reason to hate paparazzi these days, it was Dick Grayson. Between his exploits and Wayne's, one of them was in the paper daily and almost constantly on live feeds as well.
“You know none of that matters,” Barbara told him, and Artemis managed to get herself in a position where she could see them, too. “It didn't before and it doesn't now. It's not even real.”
“I know that. You know that. It's...” Dick punched the wall, making his knuckles bleed again, and this time Barbara was the one swearing—Artemis would have forgotten her father was a cop if she didn't say stuff like that every now and then. “It's because they were saying it about you.”
“And I don't need—”
“Babs,” Dick interrupted her, those blue eyes of his dark and troubled. “You are my friend. You have always been my friend, and that has always mattered to me. So much more than I can tell you. I just—the things they're saying you do for me now are sick and twisted and not us but because of those pictures and what they think I did last year, they think you're... you're less than nothing because you're a girl and my friend and we're not even friends with benefits. You're just...”
“What, your little whore or something?” Barbara demanded, and Artemis grimaced. If that girl only knew the kind of stuff that was being said about her behind her back, she would have been the one pounding that senior into the ground.
“Less than that,” Dick said, sounding as disgusted by the talk as Artemis was, which didn't fit with the whole player thing he supposedly had going on—the reputation he'd taken on that matched his name. “You're not paid, so...”
Barbara snorted. “Just forget them. You know it's not true. I am here for you as your friend and I am not leaving just because some idiot thinks I'm putting out for you, too.”
“I meant what I said before,” Dick told her. “I do love you.”
Artemis blinked, though she shouldn't. It wasn't the first time she'd heard the two of them exchange that sentiment—they were good friends, had been for years.
“I couldn't let them say that about you,” he whispered, lowering his head. “You were always there for me. My oldest friend. You have always been different and special because you saw me when the rest of them didn't and you never treated me like a charity case or like I didn't matter or had done something wrong to get taken in by Bruce. You cared about me. You still do even though I'm a mess. If I didn't have you... I don't think I would have survived these past few months without you. I've been such a wreck. When I'm here, I can't show that. I have to be perfect—only perfect means living up to a reputation I never meant to get and I should have come up with something for this now that I'm back but I'm so far from a hundred percent that I can't plan like I would have and I messed up again. You're paying the cost for it and it's not right. I have to stop it somehow, have to—”
“Shh,” Barbara said, pulling him close to her and letting him cling there while he shuddered.
The hell had happened to Dick while he was abroad?
Artemis did not, for one minute, buy that he was that messed up because he was a playboy.
The bell rang and Artemis forced herself off to class, mind full of a few thousand things, a theory that must have always been in the back of her mind coming into focus and distracting her from her classes for the rest of the day.
When Artemis thought about it, she didn't know why it wasn't slap your forehead and say hello, Megan obvious. Some random kid taking a picture of her when she showed up at Gotham Academy, telling her they'd laugh about someday. The times Dick Grayson would be missing from school when Robin was with Batman or the team. The mission Robin had given them that took them to Haly's circus, former home of the Flying Graysons. The whole Robin going undercover thing coinciding with when Dick went abroad and not long after Bruce Wayne adopted Jason Todd.
The idea of Dick Grayson having been Robin and now being Nightwing was almost fact by the time Artemis got to Mount Justice later that day. She hadn't been able to do anything with the information, wasn't sure what she was going to do—walk up to Dick or Nightwing and say she knew who he was?
Yeah, that seemed smart, didn't it?
He'd always known who she was, and he'd said it didn't matter, but he hadn't shared his identity with anyone on the team, even after he'd given up being Robin, and she figured he had reasons for refusing to share it—same with her. She'd always respected it before, but that was before that undercover mission had done so much damage to him.
“What's eating you?” Wally asked, nudging her during the briefing.
“Tell you later,” she said, not specifying when later because she didn't know that she could ever tell him what she'd figured out—and she still didn't have much proof, which would make Nightwing deny it for sure.
She'd have to wait.
Opportunity and proof came at the same moment.
The mission had gone well up until close to the end. Artemis was almost out of arrows when Kaldur ordered her to regroup with Nightwing and Batgirl. They had been quiet for a while now. Artemis was almost getting used to it from Nightwing. He used to be a talker, but these days he wasn't, and he refused the mental link—his head was not asterous and he didn't want that spilling over the link, he always said when M'gann offered. Kaldur accepted this as long as Nightwing didn't work alone and the person with him was linked, which had saved them all from another fight.
Batgirl seemed preoccupied, though, and she'd barely spoken. Artemis wasn't sure if Kaldur was worried or just wanting to clean up and go home by sending her over, but she had just turned the corner when she heard voices again.
“Nightwing!”
Artemis pulled out an arrow and fired it off at the sound of Batgirl's voice, taking down the guy that almost had the jump on Nightwing. He looked up, confused, like maybe he hadn't been there for a moment. He frowned, turning back to the fight—with the exact move Dick Grayson had used earlier that day to take down one of the guys fighting Batgirl.
As soon as he was down, Nightwing started moving away, forcing her to go after him.
“Damn it,” Artemis said, knowing she had to do something about this. She didn't know what the hell she would do, but she couldn't help thinking that maybe she should just tell him that she knew. He'd said it was hard pretending at school, and he wouldn't have to around her. It might help because they all knew Nightwing was still screwed up. Better these days, but not completely traught or asterous or anything else he might have said before that damned mission.
She saw Batgirl get in front of him, stopping him by taking Nightwing's arm and talking to him, making Artemis wish she had super hearing of her own or something. She wanted to know what they were saying. She moved closer, not saying anything through the link and letting them talk because she knew now that Barbara Gordon was Batgirl, just like she knew Dick was Nightwing.
“I completely froze,” Nightwing said. “I don't know how it—I was fine one second and then I did a roll out of the guy's way and when I stood up—it was—I don't know what happened. I was fine.”
“You know you're not,” Batgirl said. “This is very common with post traumatic stress, and you know you have that. You haven't been hit by it in a while, but it hasn't gone away.”
He reached up like he wanted to tear his hair out. “I can't do this. I lost it for a moment. I froze. What if that had—it could have—something could have happened to you and I'd have let it happen because I'm just—”
“Human, Dick, you're human,” Artemis said, closing the last of the distance between her and them. They were out of the earshot of the guys they'd been fighting, and she figured getting through to him now was worth the risk.
“Artemis, I could have gotten Batgirl killed and I have no business being out here and—what the hell did you call me?”
“Your name,” she said, looking over at Barbara and daring her to contradict her. “Yeah, I figured it out. Not hard to do when you take down a rich jerk senior and creep employed by the Light in the exact same way on the same damn day.”
“No, I—”
“Spare me the protests. I'm not an idiot. I know what I saw and I know all the other pieces fit, too. Look, it's okay. You're human. You had a moment. We all do. You remember mine, don't you? You had to yell at me to get traught. I did, but I couldn't have done it without you. I may have finished that fight, but you started it. So we do it again. You have my help to finish the fight. I am one less person you have to pretend in front of at school. You had one before, and now you've got two.”
Batgirl shrugged. “She's got a point. It would help. You know the only reason you're okay with me is because you accidentally told me more than you wanted to, but it's helped. You needed it. Needed me.”
Dick didn't seem convinced. “We are not talking about this now.”
“Fine. We'll do it tomorrow. At school,” Artemis said, and Dick groaned. She smiled, exchanging a look with Barbara and knowing she'd already won.
“One more thing,” Barbara said, stopping Artemis before she could zeta back home. “Wally knows.”
“What? He knows?” Artemis shook her head, almost unable to believe it. “I can't believe he managed to keep that a secret.”
Barbara shrugged. “I think that Batman scares him enough to keep him from talking. He's terrified of what he might do if he lets it slip that he knows about Nightwing's identity—and the rest of ours because of it.”
Artemis nodded. “It's actually good that he managed to keep it a secret.”
“So you're okay with that?”
“Oh, no, I didn't say that. He's gonna pay when I see him next.”