Work Text:
With an empathetic eye roll, Artemis lowers her gun.
“Really, Mouse?” the unsub taunts. “Just going to give up? I thought you upheld the law now.”
“I uphold justice.”
The taller woman laughs without humor. “And yet you carry a badge. The law isn’t justice,” she responds viciously. Her weight shifts backward and Artemis knows what happens next. Her sister jumps off the roof, tucks-and-rolls across an awning, and disappears into the city.
When Artemis was young and frightened and insecure, she let it happen too.
Not anymore though. Quick as a- She lifts her weapon back to aim at Jade’s center mass just as Alvez and Lewis kick open the roof access door and flank their unsub.
To Artemis, this whole scene is ridiculous. Her sister, half in shadow, half in street light, brandishing her dual sai at two vanilla FBI agents. Her grinning gray and red mask tilts to the side as she assesses the new players. Wind flicks the loose bits of green fabric that Dad would backhand them for even thinking about having on a uniform. Even now, Artemis considers how to grab onto them, how to leverage Jade’s weight against herself. As if that’s not the point. A lure.
There’s dust and wood shavings caught in the massive wig that cascades down Jade’s back. When forensics gets their hands on the wood, Artemis is certain it will match with the smashed coffee table that they found six floors below, the latest victim’s blood dripping down its leg.
Alvez keeps his weapon trained on Jade’s tight form, both wound up and ready to spring into action. His radio is dangling on his shoulder. He must have realized what Artemis meant a moment too late and sprinted upstairs with barely enough time to get his vest on.
On the opposite side of the roof, Lewis has a slightly looser aim. Everything in the profile pointed to their unsub being a volatile misandrist and boy were they right. In most cases, it would mean that Lewis or Artemis should attempt to talk their unsub down. Of course, Artemis knows that nothing Lewis says will mean anything to Jade.
“Hey,” Artemis calls before Lewis can start pedaling bull about how the murdered men deserved it. If Jade took the job, they probably did, not that Lewis believes that. Not that Artemis is supposed to believe that.
Jade doesn’t care about that though. Not right now.
Hoping that her teammates will believe that she learned a lot about the unsub they still haven't put a name to in the last two minutes, Artemis continues. “You’ve got nowhere else to go. No allies, no leniency.” Take the hint. Artemis West has no relation to Sportsmaster or Cheshire, thank Oracle, and she’d like to keep it that way. “If you attack, my team will be forced to put you down.”
A slight stretch of Jade’s shoulders. She’s totally rolling her eyes behind the mask. Artemis holds in a groan.
If her sister could stop being so stubborn, Artemis’ life would take a sharp turn for the better.
“Sorry, miss.” A slight slip as Jade instinctively goes for the childish nickname. Three cheers for the word not actually coming out of her sister’s mouth. “Contract’s not done.”
“Your contact is finished,” Artemis bites out. While she didn’t know for sure this was Jade’s doing, when the third body dropped with familiar slash marks, she called in one of her many, many favors with Dick. Fastest way to get Oracle to run a search on claimed mercenary contracts in Washington. Artemis has a far more limited number of Oracle favors that are reserved for Lian being endangered (not that Barbara would accept that as a valid use of a favor; after Robin II’s death, Babs takes endangerment of baby heroes and babies of heroes very personally) and Wally somehow coming back to life a la Conner in the Phantom Zone.
Seeing as Oracle’s the best, Artemis had the decrypted contract in her supposedly deactivated Team email account when she woke up this morning. No confirmation that Cheshire took it because Cheshire’s whole schtick is leaving no trace, but Artemis knows her sister.
Skeevy military types with CPS visits on their daughters' records? Yeah, Artemis wasn’t all that surprised to catch Cheshire’s flowing silhouette out the window when she cleared Brett Harting’s apartment. Brett Harting being the last name on the list of five that Oracle passed along.
“Or are you improvising now?” Too familiar, she barates herself. Stick to the profile. “I don’t know too many contract killers who drop a body for free.” She demonstrably looks Jade up and down. “Not that you look much like a contractor.”
Before Artemis’ time, the team (not to be confused with the Team) took down a contract killer syndicate. Reid’s Moriarty—as Cat Adams is referred to by Garcia and Garcia alone—was a lot like Jade. Shitty dad, no home life. A woman in a men-heavy field who both chaffed against and exploited the rigid expectations.
Miss .45 and Cheshire may have a lot in common on paper, but Artemis is fairly certain Jade wouldn't commit psychological torture via pregnancy. Well. Not to the degree that Adams did to Reid.
Will and Artemis’ psychological torture is more in the form of scrambling to make up details about Jade’s job that Lian can tell her friends at school without those details technically being lies.
The point being, the profile points to sexism as a massive stressor for the unsub. (Artemis pours one out for all the late nights Gideon and Rossi spent trying to figure out that one.)
Jade’s wrist twitches slightly. Artemis braces, but her sister doesn't throw the sai. “That’s the point, fed.” Artemis very bravely resists the urge to roll her eyes. At least when Artemis was on the Team, she wasn’t operating legally—as Jade insisted was better at Lian’s ninth birthday party. “People don’t look for what they don’t expect.”
“So there’s another name?”
Jade scoffs, stupid fake hair catching in the wind. “That would be telling,” she taunts. “I thought you feds liked to figure it out on your own. Or are you not cut out for this line of business? Make the career jump a little too hastily?”
How does one make the career shift from Adjunct Professor of English at a tiny private university to a federal agent tasked with tracking down serial offenders? It’s quite simple.
Be minding your business in the English Department’s faculty longue when a student front desk worker tacks (not staples, otherwise the custodial staff comes looking for blood) a flier for a guest lecture hosted by the Criminology department. Then, you remember that your good friend Dick Grayson has read all of the lecturer’s books and will never let you hear the end of it if you had the chance to hear the Dave Rossi speak and missed it.
From there, a downhill slide. Attend the lecture. Ache for the life you had chasing down criminals. Remind yourself that you’re out of the hero game for good, for Lian, for Wally, for Tula, for Jason, for your mom. Realize that you could chase down criminals without being in the hero game. Wait for your eavesdropping niece to actually fall asleep and ask your sister’s flight risk of a one night stand turned husband (who you could now claim common law marriage with, ew) how he feels about moving to Virginia. Apply to, join, set records in, and generally excel at the FBI Academy and attract the attention of Unit Chief Emily Prentiss.
Simple, except when your morally-gray, chronically-absent sister takes a job offing frogmen a stone’s throw from your bullpen.
Instead of groaning loudly at her sister’s barbs, Artemis takes a confident step forward. Jade might hurt her, but she won’t do permanent damage to the person raising her daughter. Not that Alvez nor Lewis know that, obviously. They shift anxiously, shooting her warning looks.
If Artemis recalls the team’s history correctly, Lewis was in the restaurant when Adams was arrested.
“Drop your weapons, come with us peacefully.” Try as she might, a little bit of whining creeps into her voice. The words are different but the sentiment is the same.
Please, please don’t go. It’s Dad and you and me.
“Think I’ll pass.” Jade remains amused and aloof. “I have a few more things to tick off my to-do list. I’d let you help, but…” Her sister adjusts her grip on her sai. “You’re not exactly in my class.”
You should get out too. I’d let you come with me, but you’d slow me down.
Artemis holsters her gun a split second before Jade’s front handspring (which Artemis taught her!) lands her within striking distance.
In this family, it’s every girl for herself.
Jade immediately goes high and Artemis ducks under the strike. In her periphery, Lewis and Alvez swing their weapons, trying to get a clear shot. Sai are notoriously a close combat weapon though. They won’t get one.
Her bow is collecting dust in some storage facility a thousand miles away in Star City and her visual sweep of the roof when she caught up with Jade hadn’t revealed any loose piping or two-by-fours like one would find lying around any self-respecting Gotham roof.
Thankfully, Artemis went to the Robin school of avoiding a hit. She can dodge with the best of them. She wishes she wasn’t wearing the bulky bulletproof vest, but Prentiss would have her head if she found out Artemis cleared a scene without one. Again.
It helps that Jade is clearly playing. She even lets Artemis get a few jabs in between her wide swings. Precise, but not to the untrained eye.
At least she’ll have a story to bring to the water cooler next week.
Jade spins around, adding momentum to her swing. Artemis grabs her arms and twists, forcing her to drop the weapon. She repeats the tactic, which Jade acquiesces to.
Work out over, Jade seems content to let Artemis cuff her and rattle off her rights.
Artemis can’t help but narrow her eyes at the sudden docile turn. Lewis grabs one arm and Artemis grips the other.
As they march Cheshire down to the lobby where the rest of the team waits, Artemis picks up the interrogative thread. “Who’s the sixth target?”
Jade hums.
Since pushing suspects in custody down the stairs is generally frowned upon, she jostles her sister instead. “You wouldn’t let me take you, unarmed, if it didn’t benefit you.”
Quickly, she runs the case back through her head. Three ex-navy seals were found murdered in their homes in the past week. The local PD and the local feds couldn't make heads or tails of it and with four star generals breathing down his neck, the police chief was forced to call in her team. Another body dropped the day after her team arrived, the same day Garcia forced the DoD’s hand and got access to the classified files connected to their vics.
Four survivors of the same mission gone bad ten years ago. One other survivor, whose body is now cooling a few floors below.
One survivor of the dirty job. There’s always someone calling the shots. It’s not uncommon for contracts to get split when there are different military ranks involved. Enough mercenaries are ex-pat veterans to have hang ups about that sort of thing.
Jade sure doesn’t and Lian’s college fund did receive a hefty deposit last week. More than the typical half before the job, half after it’s finished.
And Artemis didn’t miss the photo in the police chief’s office. A younger face shaking hands with some general, Navy Cross stitched to his uniform dress.
Sometimes, Artemis could bang her head against the wall and never stop.
“The police chief,” she gripes. “Really?”
“West?” Alvez interjects. “What about the police chief?”
Artemis used to think she was stupid. Turns out, exclusively spending time with the veritable geniuses that made up the Team (not to mention being trained by the fucking your-best-is-never-enough Batman) really skewed her baseline for typical deductive reasoning skills.
“Call Garcia and have her check Dunnings’ service records. He’s military. Probably the one running the Rotten Fish op. Mercs like Cheshire don’t let themselves be captured without a reason.”
Lewis raises an eyebrow. “You got an ID?”
“Cheshire’s on the FBI’s most wanted list.” At like, the very bottom. Jade and Jason have a pissing contest about who's ranked higher. Jason did the heads in a duffle bag thing. Jade executed a state senator. It’s been a few years since those events, but neither has completely dropped off the list.
Whenever one jumps ahead of the other, they get drinks and the lower ranked criminal buys.
Alvez ends his call. “West is right,” he informs them. “Garcia just confirmed that Dunnings was on the op. Prentiss should be getting him into protective custody.”
The last bit is clearly meant to deter Cheshire. You know, the most stubborn woman alive.
Artemis keeps her opinions to herself long enough for Prentiss to direct them to a reinforced van backed into the loading dock by the apartment building’s dumpsters.
Jareau and Rossi are gone, probably going to wrangle Dunnings—an ex-navy seal police chief—into actually going into protective custody. Artemis gets the honor of sitting in the back with the unsub.
Cheshire grins, not that anyone can see. Artemis just knows.
Alvez thumps twice on the locked back door of the van and the SWAT agent starts driving away. They don’t unmask her. The policy now is to hang onto the suspect long enough for the Justice League to take them off federal hands. An internal memo inspired by one of Red Hood’s helmets exploding in an evidence lock up after the crime lord activated the C-4 stored inside with a remote detonator. (Jason bumped up to the #64 spot after his escape and Jade complained for two months about the sheer number of virgin margaritas Jay managed to chug down in one night.)
The sound of traffic slowly makes its way through the thick walls of this moving cell. “So…” Artemis starts. “You coming to Lee’s soccer game this weekend?”
Now that there’s no risk of her team overhearing, Artemis doesn’t mind dropping pretense. Sure, she'd prefer it if Jade didn't kill people. But Jade’s shaped up in a lot of ways. She only takes jobs after independently confirming that the targets have demonstrably no sanctity for human life and most of the payout is wired to the many Harper-Nguyen-Crock (legally, West) bank accounts meant to keep Lian set for life.
Jade steers clear of villain associations, no matter how good the pay or reputation is. And—most importantly, in Artemis’ opinion—she visits Lian more than once a year. Not enough, Lian can never get enough of her mom, but it’s way better than Lee's toddler years.
Altogether, Artemis isn’t too concerned about Jade taking out her final target. She just hopes her sister waits to escape until after Artemis has transferred her into someone else’s custody. Way less paperwork that way.
She’s drawn from her musings by Jade’s scoff. “What, you going to let me out of these cuffs?” If her sister had any mobility, she would be crossing her arms indignantly.
Like you need my help. “She asks about you all the time.”
“You should stop telling her about me then.”
“Jade-”
“I am trying, Artemis. I am. I took a job in this country and you know how much I hate doing that.” A lot of Jade’s League of Shadows work had been located in the US. There are a lot of enemies to the Cheshire mask and, unlike Artemis, Jade never updated her look.
She sighs. “And I appreciate that. Except that I wouldn’t have known and Lian certainly wouldn’t have known if not for my team being called in.”
“You really think that poorly of me?”
“What?” Now that they’re alone, Artemis can pinch her nose to her heart’s desire. Maybe before she gets home tonight, she can sneak down to the Bureau’s training mats and bang her head against one of those. Less concussive than a wall, according to Khalid.
“You really think I’m so sloppy an assassin that I would use the same weapon on five connected murders? I practically wrote my name when I used my sai on every target!”
“Slicing someone’s carotid isn’t exactly the same as sending a letter.”
“It is in this family,” Jade insists.
Unfortunately, she’s right. “So what? You want me to tell Lian that you said ‘hi?’”
Jade gets a touch—a touch—chagrined. “If you could.” She sighs. “And I’ll- I’ll try to make her soccer game.”
Mentally, Artemis fist pumps. It took nine years, but progress!
“What are you going to do about the cuffs?” Artemis was never so naive as to think their team would be holding Jade more than a few hours. Will still likes to reminisce about the time Jade escaped a Taipei prison via rocket launcher explosion exposing a getaway helicopter. “Secret lock pick? Take out a guard? I vote not me, Doctor Fate told me I’m not allowed to have any more concussions.”
“Now that would be telling,” Jade says mysteriously. Artemis rolls her eyes. Some things never change.