Work Text:
If someone had told Artemis Crock that revolution would look a lot like carrying the dead weight of a newly-crowned, blitzed-out-of-their-mind Victor from one party to the next, she would have laughed in their face.
She had thought that life would be different, that her actions would make a difference in the world. But every year it was the same. Some kid powered through a sick contest because they were either too stubborn to die or stupid enough to want to live, giving the conspiracy yet another pawn to move and manipulate as they chose.
From one game to the next, Artemis thought mutinously.
But that irritation could have been from the awful heels Ivy had threatened her into or the half-deadweight of Stephanie Brown or being assigned this role again despite there being far more important things she was perfectly capable of doing.
Or you’re just a natural Grumpycat, her inner Wally snarked.
Artemis wanted to punch Inner Wally.
Not that there was anything new about that feeling. In fact, Artemis lived with a low-level desire to punch the most annoying of her somewhat-friends every waking minute. It was practically background noise at this point; she didn’t think she could sleep without it. On the rare nights she could sleep, of course.
The redhead himself met them at the door to the elevator, flashing the grin that drove her absolutely crazy, the one that said, “Watch my right hand, my left definitely doesn’t have a grenade,” the sway in his step only partly for show. Stephanie brightened at the sight of him, throwing herself into a hug that would have sent them both tumbling if Artemis hadn’t stepped in to reclaim some of the kid’s drunken deadweight.
And she had to hand it to the girl: drunken babble spilled from her like water from a tap at the perfect volume and speed to serve as background noise to the bugs. Fourteen or not, the kid was smart.
Wally grinned at her over Steph’s head, and Artemis rolled her eyes. No, this was not another underdog Victor with more stubbornness than sense that she was taking under her wing. That would be insane. She would never do that.
The door to the penthouse bar opened, the pulse of heavy bass spilling out in a bone-rattling wave, and Artemis felt her newest recruit tense. Artemis gritted her teeth and tightened her arm around Steph’s waist, mentally cursing Victors who could outsmart seven trained killers but were stopped in their tracks by a little noise, Games-induced explosion phobia be damned.
But the other blonde set her jaw, forced her body to relax, and leaned into Artemis, completing the illusion and earning a grudging approval of the girl’s nerve. Artemis set a winding course through the writhing mass of Capitol revelry, doing her level best to make sure Stephanie was seen by as many people as possible. This was the last stop before they staged Stephanie passing out, which might not be an act when it came time, now that she thought about it.
For all of Steph’s bullheadedness and her seemingly bottomless stomach, she was only fourteen. She'd held her liquor admirably, consuming the drink or drug offered to her only once for every five times she vanished it.
But that didn’t mean the substances she had consumed weren’t making her sway alarmingly.
Needless to say, Artemis was going to be keeping her and Wally’s frankly inhuman tolerance far, far apart. She smacked the redhead’s hand away from the whiskey he was pushing towards the younger victor, taking it herself and throwing it back with practiced ease.
She tried not to react as he leaned in, his breath ghosting the curve of her ear, and said, “If that’s all it took for you to have a drink with me, I would have done that years ago.”
Artemis popped his shoulder with one of her lighter punches, her eye roll muscle memory at this point. “I wasn’t a fool then, and I’m certainly not a fool now, West.”
“Coulda fooled me,” he cooed, and Artemis ground her teeth to keep from…doing something to his stupid face.
His freckles weren’t as apparent as they would be in two months, after his post-Games tradition of drinking himself into a stupor under the last rays of the summer sun, but even in the erratic club lighting Artemis could make out their familiar patterns. Some days she’d fantasized about playing connect the dots with them to form a dick or something equally hilarious the next time he was passed out.
That she hadn’t yet was testament to her self-control.
Even before she joined the hallowed fellowship of people too stupid to die, Artemis had known of Wally West. The man with the reputation - Capitol boytoy, everybody’s friend, and a willing lover to anyone who spread their legs and winked at him.
He was also a perpetual drunk.
Artemis tried not to judge. She’d been through the Games now, and she couldn’t begrudge anyone their coping mechanisms. Hers happened to be wrecking shit when the memories got too close, generally a training room but more often than not some room or wall in her personal Victor mansion. Not that she lived there, of course. Lian was a big girl, already running and doing cartwheels and handsprings with the most serious expression on her round toddler face and telling stories of learning epic, dragon-slaying katas. But she was still so little - she definitely needed her auntie close by.
At least that’s what Artemis told herself.
She came back to the moment, West’s pale eyes glittering in the flashing lights of the bar, and felt herself swallow. “Where’s–” She spun around, looking for her charge. Artemis breathed easier once she saw Stephanie talking animatedly with Kara Zor-El, Stephanie’s mouth going a mile a minute and the older woman listening attentively and trying not to laugh. Nine’s genetically altered Victor was a force to be reckoned with: she had a protective streak longer than Connor’s and the discipline and emotional control to make her ten times as dangerous. Nothing was getting to Stephanie through her.
“They grow up so fast, don’t they?”
Artemis refused to twitch at his breath ghosting over her ear. “West, has District Five ever thought to harness the power of that motor mouth?”
“Oh, but there are far better uses my mouth can be put to.”
She forced herself to roll her eyes and not let her mind head in another direction: she could already feel his future glee if he knew he was getting a rise out of her. Artemis was tempted to turn around and push his face away with her hand, but she figured he’d do something ridiculous this time, like lick her palm or kiss her hand. Better to let him get this infuriating brand of flirting out of his system than to risk such an act of intimacy snapping her control, making her pin him to the wall and kiss him until he was breathless and she’d wiped that fucking smirk from his face.
Not that Artemis had ever thought about escalating their little give-and-take. Nope. Never.
But if she had, she would also have acknowledged the risks to herself, if only in the privacy of her mind: that, in the end, they were still Wally and Artemis. Whatever they had between them would always be tinged with metal and blood, and any ceasefire between them would only ever be temporary. They’d be back to drawing verbal blood eventually.
It haunted her sometimes in the witching hours of the night, when everyone in the Capitol had taken who they wanted to bed and new secrets were setting their sickly tendrils into the old web of lies, how badly and how often she and Wally hurt each other. Sometimes she wished they could just get along, treat each other with the polite indifference shared between most Victors. Then she laughed and remembered they were Artemis and Wally; getting along had never been an option.
Their first meeting had blown up into months of bitter bickering, with Wally accusing her of only coming over when it was convenient, “like a Career coward,” he’d spat, and Artemis calling him both an attention whore and a whore in general. Neither of them had pulled their verbal punches that day, and three years out, she could still feel the bruises he’d left. And if that was how she felt, the pain she’d dealt him was definitely ten times worse.
Shame was not an emotion Artemis dealt with well. So instead of doing the logical thing and apologizing, she’d taunted him for his obsession with her, and Wally, being Wally, took what she gave him and ran with it. Now, months later, their cat and mouse game of overblown flirting was the norm, with the occasional threat of bodily harm thrown in to make things interesting.
Now the asshole with more charm than sense himself was learning further into her space, heat from his lean body radiating across her back. “Why the silence, Artemis?” he purred, drawing out the s’s. “Cat got your tongue?”
“If you wanted to indulge in fantasies, Wally, I know a dealer for Dreamcatcher. Actually,” she paused dramatically and turned to whisper in his ear, her body flush to his, “some Dreamcatcher might help you to some better jokes.”
A traitorous corner of her mind suggested that the flush in his face might be because she closed the distance between their bodies. Artemis fought mightily against that little corner and tried to convince herself to focus on the smell of grain alcohol on his breath rather than the spicy allure of his cologne.
“No comeback, West?” she said in his ear. “Cat got your tongue?” Artemis leaned back to see something change in his glassy eyes, shifting the pale green into something stormy and potent. Her initial spiteful flirting had never been meant to last, but Artemis would be damned if she was the first to back down (and no, it has nothing to do with you, traitorous corner, we are not enjoying this–).
He nuzzled his nose against her ear and took a second to smell her hair, sending shivers down her spine that she prayed he couldn’t feel. “You know what they say, don’t you? Curiosity–”
Artemis would never find out what ‘they’ were fond of saying because Stephanie chose that moment to throw her not-inconsiderable weight onto Artemis, pitching them both into a now-flailing Wally.
“Ar’emis, I wanna goooo,” Stephanie pleaded, and yep, she was drunk. “Wanna go teduh nex’ party. This one’s booooring. Boring, boring, booooring.”
There was the repetition cue they’d prepared early in the evening. Even through the haze of booze and drugs, Stephanie was overwhelmed and she wanted out.
Artemis wrapped an arm around the girl’s waist and slung her arm over her own shoulders, telegraphing an eyeroll to whoever might be watching. Just another Victor on a bender, folks, nothing to see here.
When she had Stephanie arranged to her satisfaction (and her breath under control– shut up, traitorous corner), she turned them to face Wally. “Well?” she asked. “You going to make yourself useful?”
“Yeah, make yerrself useful!” Stephanie giggled.
“Aw, but I was having so much fun being an attractive waste of space,” he teased the younger Victor, moving in to take her other arm. “Like an ornamental fern or a horrible lamp from a great-aunt.”
Artemis felt Stephanie relax slightly once she was bracketed by two older victors. Wally had clearly noticed the kid's discomfort, so he kept her distracted with his running commentary until they were down the elevator and well away from the building. The breezy evening, no matter the distant chaos of Capitol parties, seemed to give Stephanie her second (fifth? sixth?) wind, and she immediately challenged Wally to a silly word game Artemis had no idea how to play. Hopefully the few blocks would go by fast.
Two blocks, forty minutes, and a lot of lost optimism later, Artemis heard Stephanie moan halfway through a tirade about puppies, the girl’s face going alarmingly pale.
“If you’re going to puke, tell me right now.”
“‘m not gonna puke,” Steph slurred, swaying despite the arms of both the older victors. “‘m Steph’nie Brown. And Steph’nie Brown doesn’ puke—“
She lurched forward, unloading the contents of her stomach onto the pavement. Artemis hurriedly eased her down so Wally could pull her hair back (why did he have hair ties on him?).
Artemis resisted a sigh. They’d been so close.
“Clearly I missed something,” came a familiar drawl, and Artemis gritted her teeth.
“You have anything to add to this discussion, Grayson, or are you going to join West in being an ornamental waste of space?”
Dick didn’t say it, but Artemis knew that look. Inwardly he was cackling at her, and the next chance she had, she would be wiping the floor with his face.
“What Artemis means to say is that we were, ah, unavoidably detained,” Wally drawled from his crouch on the sidewalk, too preoccupied - or too far gone - to see his best friend’s demon smile and be appropriately wary.
Dick ambled over to crouch where Wally couldn’t hear, occupied as he was with rubbing Steph’s back and keeping her hair back. “Foreplay going that well?” Dick grinned, and Artemis almost decked him right then and there.
But the chaos man with a death wish just smiled, knowing she wouldn’t do anything with Wall– West and an impressionable and very ill younger Victor in the vicinity. He touched Stephanie’s shoulder as her dry heaves petered out. “Hey Steph.” She moan-groaned in response. “You want a piggyback? We’ve only got two blocks to go.”
The girl nodded, then clearly thought better of the gesture when it made her head spin. Wally helped her up from the ground, Artemis supporting her from below, and somehow they got Stephanie on Dick’s back, her arms around his neck and his hands securing her knees.
Dick smells nice, Stephanie thought, burying her face in his shoulder. He was warm and solid and so, so nice, and he was just the greatest, you know? “Best big brother ever,” she mumbled into his shirt.
“What was that?” she heard his voice distantly.
“Nothin’. Just glad it’s you carrying me and not those two– two, two lovebirdies.”
“They’re pretty pathetic, aren’t they?” he teased back.
“And obvious! Soooo obvious,” she groaned, the world deciding to set her brain on a little spin after she raised her head from his shoulder. “I mean, come oooon.” She gestured wildly to the pair already half a block ahead of them, bicker-flirting as if they weren’t totally and completely gone for each other already. “Look at them!!”
Dick patted the arm left wrapped around his neck. “There, there,” he comforted dryly. “It’s not like you've been best friends with both of them and had to suffer through this song and dance routine for years. Talk to me once your suffering has reached that level.”
“Can I tell ‘em? I wanna tell ‘em.”
“You do that and you’ll be messing up the bets of literally every Victor in Panem, and I can't allow you to do that in good conscience.”
Stephanie took a moment to work that out. “C’n I tell them after you’ve cleaned th’other Victors out?”
Dick cackled - his real laugh, not the laugh he did for the cameras.“I knew I liked you for a reason.”
“Are you keepin’ the pot?”
“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’
“Why not? Arnnn-“ Wow, words were hard. “Aren't you really good with numbers?”
“I am,” he said, smirk clear in his voice as he hitched her a little higher on his back. “Good enough and with close enough proximity to their pigtail-pulling that I can’t be trusted to not rig the system.”
Stephanie giggled. And giggled. And couldn’t stop giggling until she was coughing so hard a part of her thought one of her lungs was going to fly out onto the pavement. When she came back to awareness, Dick had gotten her kneeling on the pavement, holding her leaden arms over her head for her.
When her breath was back and the world wasn’t such a nauseous blur, she started, “So, so who– who’s holdin the pot, pot, pottery thing? I wanna rip– rip off all you elder fools.”
Stephanie could hear the smirk travel from his face across his body. “It’s Babs - Barbara Gordon to you. The scary redhead from Three?”
“Oh herrrr, her, her yeahshe’scool. I got fifty!” she shouted. “Fifty on nineteen months!”
“Nineteen?”
“They're stub–stubborn and weird ‘nough to not stick to years or half years. And it’ll, it’ll, it’ll be a number, a prime number. Cause I said so.”
Dick was laughing as the two in question wandered back into Stephanie’s field of vision. “What's so funny?” Wally asked Dick.
At least Stephanie thought he asked Dick. But it didn't matter because she was going to answer anyway. “Yur face, West. S’reeeeeal funny.”
“You are just corrupting the youth, I swear to whatever god is out there,” she heard West say, followed by Dick’s mock-indignant, “As if you’re any better.”
After that, things got a little blurry - okay, a lot blurry - and all Stephanie retained was a plush velvet entrance room, the murmur of voices, and the clink of faraway glasses. Then they were in the back of some private room and through its hidden door and Bruce was there and Stephanie lurched for him without thinking, sending her crashing to the floor.
When the room stopped spinning and the lights stopped multiplying, Stephanie found herself safe - safe safe safe - in the circle of Bruce’s arms. Her eyes were ahead of her brain because before she’d even thought about it, tears were tickling her cheeks because she’d been so scared and all she wanted was to collapse into Mom’s arms and cry until the world was better but Mom was gone—
Bruce turned her so her face was in the hollow of his shoulder as sobs shook her whole body. “Let it out, little robin,” he whispered. “Let it all out.”
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours - time was weird when you were drunk - but eventually her tears slowed, leaving her face sticky and snotty and Bruce’s shirt damp from the same. Bruce was rubbing her shoulder, his voice a warm rumble in his chest.
“You back to us?” he asked quietly. Stephanie gave a weary thumbs-up, not trusting her head to move or her mouth to make words. “I’ve got a warm towel right here - want Artemis to help you clean up?” She nodded, feeling impossibly tired.
The older girl was suddenly there, no shift of cloth or shoes to warn Stephanie she’d moved - how did she move like that?? - her rough hands gentle as they drew a warm, damp towel across Stephanie’s face. Slowly Stephanie felt the remains of the night dissolve, leaving her limbs heavy and her heart an empty hole.
When a toothbrush with toothpaste was offered to her, she took it, muscle memory taking her through the motions more than any conscious effort. She spat into the bucket placed in front of her and accepted another swipe of the warm towel across her face. She didn’t feel scared anymore. Actually, she didn’t feel much of anything. Her brain felt detached from her heart and her body, and she watched like a distant stranger as Dick set up an IV drip in her arm.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she heard Bruce ask.
Stephanie cracked open her eyes - when had she closed them? - to see Artemis and Wally crouched a safe distance away, trying to look as non-threatening as possible, while Dick sat closer, hovering like the mama duck he totally was. She thought back to watching their Games, these older, far cooler, but so, so broken young adults. They’d been through all that and still they were trying to help her.
Unrelated but still of immense importance to Stephanie was the fact that, between them and Bruce, anyone trying to hurt her would be lucky to receive a swift death. She was safe.
So Stephanie nodded her head, neck aching with the effort, and steeled herself. There would be no going back from this - but really, what did she have to live for if she didn’t?
“Tell–” she coughed to clear her sandpapery throat and cradled the cup with a straw that Dick passed to her. “Tell me about the Justice League. Tell me what I can do to help.”