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Black

When she was little it was the color of the world at night, what happened when you closed your eyes, a crayon that she was always having to rip the paper off, what happened when you left bread in the toaster to long. Black was the color of Daddy's work boots and the bruises on Mommy's legs.

Artemis' seventh grade art teacher would later her tell that black wasn't really a color, but an absence of light. The lady would then make a joke of how it was like her absence from class. She found that ironic for she was much more concerned with actual absences of light, with Shadows.

Shadows that stalked her every move; that her sister stole away into. Shadows that would eventually deliver up her mother, beaten and broken. That her father chose over his own family.

Black was a haunting color. Deep and dense, impenetrable as the empty night in which no matter how hard you blink all you can see is darkness.

Green

It was the color of her sister's namesake. Jade, a soft beautiful stone. Her mother had jade comb that had been in her family generations. She never wore it. It sat lonely in her jewelery box in the top shelf of her closet. Artemis only knew she had it because they kept a hand gun on top of it and one time when she was nine she had to scramble up their to get it when somebody broke into the apartment and they were hurting her sister. She accidentally knocked down the box and the contents spilled out all over the floor. Lawrence pawned it sometime after she went to jail.

Green was the color of money. The worn smell of the dye, greasy finger prints, and the iron like aroma of blood.

Spring buds were green on the trees in Gotham central park. Wally's eyes were that color. Green was the ability to grow, to change, maybe that's why she picked it over frosty blue.

Her first bow was green, when her father dropped it unceremoniously on her bed. Artemis could only stare at the near foreign object as she turned it over in her hands.

Lawrence then states roughly that she better train hard and learn how to use that thing quick because she would either be their killer or she would be their whore.

And Shadows didn't care much which.

Green is what saved her from having to be either.

Pink

It was never her forte. Pink was of girly frilly things she was never privy to in the feeble years in which little girls usually get to dwell in the world of pretty things. A world in which everything was beautiful and came tied in a bow and daddy could scare all the monsters away. Artemis didn't play with barbie dolls or an easy bake oven. Artemis didn't dream of princesses fairy tales who rode ponies around magical kingdoms.

Pink was going to girl scouts or decorating cupcakes for her birthday, going to summer camp or having sleep overs; things she didn't do either.

Pink was the color the strawberry smoothie Cameron dumped on her head.

Pink was a punch on bare skin before it darkened into a bruise. Pink were her cheeks as he lay on the floor of the McDonald's and had the tenacity to throw his head back and laugh.

Pink were the lips of the boy with white hair if she kissed him hard enough. He was boy who cooled her bones down from angry red into contented pink.

It was the hideous hue of the bathtub they did it in for the first time. His cell phone went off, Joar had a job for him to do. He sighed heavily saying he had to leave, buttoned his pants, kissed her cheek goodbye, then left.

Pink were the color of the pills she took afterward with a swig of water because she wasn't ready for baby pink. Pink were the counter tops she leaned on and wondered what all the fuss about sex was about and how his mother had horrible decorating taste.

Pink was the color of things that had no place in her life.

Red

A color that meant two contradictory things. Red is for hate and anger and lust and violence and blood and destruction. Red is for love and passion, life and blood, breathing, living things. Red was fire, heat and warmth. Red made your heart beat faster. Without it you would die and too much could kill you. That's the one thing she couldn't quite wrap her head around for a long time, how it could be both.

It was an insufferable boy who wore cheery red spandex and tripped a lot. Who had the habit of sticking his foot in his mouth and being denser than granite. Who made her shout and yell and curse.

Red was color of the hair she happily runs her fingers through and the boy sighed in contentment. His cheeks brightened to said shade when she undid his belt buckle and he whispered okay in a shaky voice as he smiles. It was the sudden entanglement of limbs as his red tongue darts into her mouth. It was the color the world turns as she grasps onto him with everything she had in climax, soft blissful red. He smiled crookedly at her then drifted asleep in the crook of her neck. Red was a warm place you could borrow into and, for awhile, forget about the world outside.

Red was the sirens of cop cars and fire engines that race past her apartment each night. Their cries breaking the night air like the howling of wolves, they circle around until they can find the right spot. They go on past her to another unfortunate soul as she stands toe-to-toe with her father. An arrow in one hand, the other balled into a fist as she harshly whispered, "Get out."

Red was the life the spills from wounds of innocent by standers onto the sidewalk. Red was color her hands turn when she tries to staunch the bleeding. Red was what she can't put back no matter how hard she tried. Red was messy and loud and uncontrollable. Red were all the things that couldn't be undone.

Blue

Blue were the butterflies that flew away in the spring. Artemis watched them forlornly disappear into the sky as her mother lead her long the street by the hand. Her eyes followed them long after they'd turned to polka dots in the bright blue horizon. She was deeply jealous, even as she grows older, of their blessedly ability to fly away. They were free. The five-year-old was saddened by their abandonment of her.

Blue was for loneliness. Sure she had friends. But you couldn't exactly talk to them about the some of the nastier points of her life. Those were secrets Artemis had to hold in the depths of herself. They screamed within her to be released. The deep secrets clawed at her insides and made her bleed making her violent and angry like a wounded animal or a dog that had been kicked one too many too many times. Blue was the color of trust and she doesn't give that to people.

His eyes were blue. His skin was even kind of blue. His hair was white as a burial shroud. Artemis thought looked like someone had stuck him in a freezer for a few hundred years and just recently let him out. He said hi to her in a cheerily voice and smiled at her while she did was glare at him. He was different. She trusted him.

They would eat popsicles on the roof together till their mouths and hands we stained sticky blue. She would use him for target practice and he froze her favorite toys in blocks of ice so she had to stick them out on the side walk and wait for them to thaw in the sun.

Then he iced over her heart and left with his father. And she thought that it would never thaw.
So her heart was blue and stayed that way. There wasn't enough sun in the world.

Yellow

Bright and happy and overwhelming. Yellow was the color of her hair she saw in the mirror each morning. It grew from her scalp in while tuffs that she had to struggle to contain in a pony tail. Cameron always mentioned how it always made her look extra girly when she wore it down. It made her look like Alice, from the movie, Alice in Wonderland. And she was rather silly for getting lost and then not beating the every loving shit out of that cat for not giving her directions as Icicle Junior comments chomping on buttery popcorn.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where-" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

Those lines haunted her, another shadow on her back. Cameron never did get the meaning he just thought the Cheshire cat was being an asshat.

Yellow was the glow of streetlamps as she ducked and covered among the shadows. But now she was looking for the bad guys. Not running with them.

Artemis always wondered who, which of them, betrayed who. Icicle Jr. ended up in Belle Reeve and she continued on the fight. Who was the lamb and who was the knife?

Yellow was the color of treachery. Something she did quietly. The Light had pretty much already dismissed her so it wasn't like it was readily noticed. But it wasn't until a man with yellow hair and warm smile that made her miss her own asshole of a father asked her to turn coats that she finally realized that she could cast off the shadows and step into the light. Not an evil Illuminati of lights. Yellow was Artemis knowing what path to was the warm burnish that grew around the edges of her life. Yellow was little flickering flame that grew inside of her. Hope.

It made the ice around the edges begin to drip.

Yellow was a boy who melted it in full. A boy in tight spandex who talked too much and too loudly. Who told her, her hair was a genetic anomaly. Who knew more about science that she could infinitely grasp (but little else it seemed). Yellow was his innate ability to be both wise beyond his years and complete and utter moron. But Artemis did well with contradictions. They warmed her up and softened her limbs. Made her flexible, malleable, alive.

It was the shade of the moon over head as Wally sang out a gentle tune while the pair staked out an abandoned building waiting for the drug traffickers to show up. His chin tilted upward toward the sky, his voice slightly hushed and heavy in the frigid air. "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky, twinkle, twinkle little star how I wonder what you are."

Artemis watches his breath float up toward the yellow moon. He sits leaned up against the edge of the roof arm's crossed in black stealth gear with a slightly bored expression on his face. She decides inwardly that she prefers him in yellow and red. They suit him better. He glances at her sleepily with a tired half smile when he catches her studying him.

She leans across and kisses him softly. Then she sits down beside him with her head on his shoulder as they wait for the drug cartels to show up.

Yellow were all the answers in her life that made absolute perfect sense, but were impeccably hard to finally come to.

White

White is all the colors blended into one.

White are the the dancing embers of sparklers that break the empty night and illuminate the edges of Wally's face as he holds them in each hand. It is the fourth of July the following year. The team stands around outside Mount Justice waiting. They'd celebrated with a cook out and M'Gann had bought sparklers.

Artemis stares at the jumping lights as they dance in her boy's eyes. It's then that she realizes that she loves him. Like a candle wick catching fire or the collapsing of a glacier shelf, slowly then all at once. She grabs the edges of his face and kisses him hard. Wally is so completely engrossed in the movement of their lips against each other's he forgets about the tiny fireworks in each of his hands. He suddenly pulls away hissing. He waves his hands around and winces in pain. Artemis chuckles at him. The warmth inside of her is brimming as gazes at him under the white light of the full moon. The night is quiet and their friends are a little ways off lighting little lights of their own.

All at once one the air rivets with sound as if shooting stars are crashing to Earth. Her eyes drift upwards to the beautiful explosions. Every color illuminates the sky in a blinding fashion.

"Come on," she says grabbing Wally by the hand and racing toward the top of the hill. He picks her up and they run faster and faster, the cool night air rushing past at alarming speed. They run so fast she feels like she's drunk. She smiles so big the sides of her mouth hurt.

They reach the crest of the hill and puts her down. The view is panoramic the whole world seems to stretch beneath her feet. They stare up in awe at the booming lights and grand explosions in the sky over the harbor. Each and every brilliant color reflects in the dark waters of the harbor. After several moments her grabs around the waste and spins her around. And suddenly the air echos with laughter. She is almost surprised when she realized it is spilling out of her own mouth. The sound melts in with his and the sounds of the fireworks going off into the distance.

Happiness is white. At least her's is, because it took everything, every color of the spectrum blurring together to bring her to this point, to where she belongs.

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