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but, dear, you can't win this fight

For Jade Nguyen, love has always been built on hate.

From her birth, she has always known that she must steal and kill and murder, has always understood that she must bathe in the blood of others. For her family, nothing else has ever been more certain.

They're all criminals, all contract killers, and she's the heiress to a legacy writ in blood and lies and the monsters hiding in the dark. They're the villains, the assassins, the people the sun shies away from.

She's always ever been a child of the night.

So she learns and perfects — sloppily at first, with shaking fingers and tears in her eyes, and — steadier, now, cleaner, rip the cage open and break the bones, and — she's perfect, silent, deadly, but all she sees are the disappointed eyes and steady, unwavering gaze, and —

Her mother drove her away with her fall, her acceptance of a life she could never retake. Paula Crock and Jade Nguyen were too alike, too similar, too — chained by their fates, and — unwilling to step away from the path they were built on.

So, like a house of cards, Jade loses her mother. She hates her, loathes her, despises her very existence. She takes her strength and her will and ignores her, and for her, it's enough.

She hates her enough to maybe even have loved her, once — before Huntress became a shell and hissed and fought with no bite to her anger, before Paula Crock lost herself to prison and failure, before the woman she once knew let her husband do as he pleased.

And hate, she has always known, had been fashioned from love.

For Jade, this meant that she could always, always, always hate her father, could always lash with a viper's tongue and kick with a tiger's strength and hide with a rabbit's silence.

Lawrence Crock and Jade Nguyen were too different to do anything more than clash, and mix, and fight, until Sportsmaster became a deity that she aimed to destroy. The daughter had no more purpose beyond execution, destruction deadly silence — the kind that echoes and echoes but never receives a reply.

Her father drove her away with his love, with his caging of her spirit and shaping of her body, his building her up and up and up by breaking her down and down and down.

At night he'd whisper to her shaking form, eyes shining and mouth set in a grim line. Fight — if she wanted to live; fight — if she wanted to sleep without the monsters holding her down; fight — if she wanted the nightmare to finally, finally end.

And so she hated, hated, hated, bit and clawed and scratched, desperate and shattered and willing to do anything to escape.

For Jade, the hate had never been out of spite.

They both knew it came from what he had molded her to forever be — a vicious cat with bloodied claws, always smiling, always laughing, and never, ever able to set herself free.

Sometimes, Jade thinks that love is built on pity.

It starts with the birth of Artemis, — another Huntress, another killer, but — and how young and innocent she is when she's born. She knows nothing of the world and, for that, Jade is grateful.

But, her eyes are dark, dark, dark, — no light in them to dim, no shine to taint — and Jade can't help but hate how the child is always, always watching, a witness to the world and all it hides.

Without even trying, the infant judges, seeing, and Jade feels the taint hang heavy on her shoulders. She feels the blood on her fingers and the mask on her face, sees the pain she inflicts as she breaks fragile bone, hears the screams and cries as she guts her foes —

One. By. One.

It's not a pleasant feeling, and one she becomes desperate to escape from, if only because she pities the child — another her mother chose to bring into this world.

So as Artemis grows older, and the years pass, Jade hides her life behind a facade of sisterhood, and — hides her pain, her fears, her regrets, buries all of her hurts beneath her skin and shows nothing but love and kindness.

Sometimes, she even fools herself.

And it's not really that her sister drives her away, as it is that she cannot bear to look at Artemis, cannot risk being blinded by this innocence and naïveté that she, herself, has helped cultivate.

There are monsters in the world, child, — demons in her home, ones that forget and love and forget far too much, and — why can't she understand?!

Jade pities Artemis and her hope, but all she can do is smile and laugh and live, and — move on, leaving the little girl to her hate, a scarecrow, the bogeyman, and — all that it entails.

Only once has Jade ever thought that love could be built from itself.

For Jade, it had been the thrill of the hunt, the chase of cornered mice and the whisper of small freedoms. Everything had been dark, dark forests and smiling illusions and the constant dance of limbs and claws.

It had been a hobby of hers, a way to escape her mother and father and sister all at once. Nothing, she remembers, but her and the wind, and the swish of cloth against the beating of war drums that echoed only in her mind.

Too easy, she remembers, how the heroes had fallen — like little dolls with their strings cut, unable to think for themselves and unable to move away from the path laid out for them.

And then the red archer came, and she learned to dance with the fire in her chest and the water in her words, and — she learned to fight and expect more from her life than what she'd been given.

He was like the mother who could not break free of her past — like her sister, escaping and choosing what he'd become — like her father, vicious and cruel and shaping her into something more than the sum of her parts.

He was nothing but a sidekick, and yet — his sheer passion and anger and determination stole her breath away.

She thinks she loved Roy Harper, then, — married him as proof of his influence and her ability to do rather than be —

And then she learned that he had never been real, had never been anything more than a clone.

She expects to find emptiness within her, but all she feels is the eternal hunger and love and affection that she's always felt for the boy — no, man. She saw only him, and she doesn't think his origins define his being.

For Jade, there forever exists the love she felt.

He drives her away because he cares too much about what he isn't, because he allowed himself to fall when his obsession led to his capture — because she is carrying a child and cannot let it see what their father has become.

It isn't until some time later that Jade will understand that love could be built from blood and hate and ashes and hopes and promises — so long as there's enough time for it to set in.

She chooses to keep their child, to let it blossom in her womb while she once more smiles and laughs and grins. It's a conscious choice, one she would never have thought to make in her line of work, and —

She feels whole, untainted, able to keep the shadows at bay. There are no demons to hide from but the ones she brings unto herself, no monsters in her head or bodies on her shoulders or blood on her breasts.

She feels at peace for the first time in her life, and —

The baby she will name Lian, for her sister, and — Harper, for her Roy. She will name her her child for the love she has given Jade, and keep her because this, this, — this is what love should be, happiness and innocence and understanding, and —

Her daughter drives her to leave the business, to rejoin her family, to — to find her husband and fix him and give him a reason to quieten his doubts, to come back and care — not out of hate or old love or pity, but out of the ache in her chest and the beating of her heart, out of the death and pain and loss and need to keep them close, and —

She's never claimed to be heartless, but she's never felt as much as she does now. Lian and Roy and Artemis, and all of her true family, — they've broken down the wall she never knew she had erected.

It's enough, she thinks, even as she leaves her daughter behind.

Though everyone Jade has ever known has driven her away, — out of love and hate and pity and love and — out of fear for all she holds dear, Jade understands the concept better than she once did.

Every time, she leaves, — for freedom, for happiness, for the shadows and the light and her Cheshire mask and broken self — but. Nothing has ever stopped her, or stood in her way.

And, every time, she returns.