DISCLAIMER: Unfortunately, none of these characters belong to me. If Wally West belonged to me, I would be the only one allowed to play with him ;-) Any dialogue or plot that looks familiar belongs to DC and Greg Weisman and other people who are not me.

Summary: Spitfire is endgame for me. They're going to get married and have babies and grow old together. This is the story of their evolution from teammates, to friends, to boyfriend and girlfriend, to husband and wife, to soul mates and everything and anything in between. Please review! XD

Genre: Friendship, Romance, Action/Adventure, Humor

Rating: T (just to be safe, it might go up later if I'm feeling particularly ambitious)

Characters: Artemis Crock, Wally West

The EVOLUTION of SOUL MATES

Evolution: the gradual development of something, esp. from a simple to a more complex form.

Chapter One: Idol

When she's old and grey, Artemis will still remember the moment when she first heard the name Kid Flash.

She was 13, a snarky, twig of a girl with too much hair and not enough common sense to know when to shut her mouth. She was home alone, as usual. With a mother in jail, a father who was as good as, and a sister who she hadn't seen in 4 years, she was used to having the apartment to herself. And she was perfectly fine with that. She didn't need anyone, dear old dad least of all, to take care of her. She could do that herself, thank you very much. If her father was there, he would probably just make her spar against him or do some other sort of weapons training, and she already had too many bruises that required explaining anytime she had gym class. Not that any of the teachers at Gotham North Middle School cared.

She was making herself dinner when the report came on the news about a bank robbery in progress in Central City.

"This is Iris West-Allen reporting. We've just had word that Central City Savings Bank has been put on lockdown. According to the police, at exactly 3:05 PM, three armed men in black ski masks made their way into the bank and took all the civilians inside hostage. Stay tuned to GBS News for the latest developments."

Artemis quickly became engrossed in the story as she ate her dinner, especially when the robbers tried to make a break for it. Each of the three robbers had one hostage pulled close to them, with a gun trained to their head. As they inched closer to where their getaway car was, the lead crook shouted for the police to stay away from them, or they would blow the hostages brains out.

Artemis was so sure they were going to get away with the robbery when all of a sudden there was a red blur, and one of the hostages was gone. The next second there was a second blur, this time yellow, and another hostage had disappeared. The robbers looked around them uneasily, and the lead crook tightened his hold on the last hostage, a young woman of about 28. It was no use though. The red blur, the Flash, Artemis now realized, suddenly materialized in front of him, and quicker than lightning, knocked him out cold with one punch, freeing the hostage. The two accomplices seemed to get cold feet and turned to run away, but blocking their path was a boy dressed in yellow spandex with the Flash symbol on his chest. Surrounding him was half of the Central City police force.

"Going somewhere?" the boy asked, flashing them a smirk.

Artemis giggled. The boy hero had some spunk. She liked that. The police took all of the crooks into custody under the watchful eyes of Flash and apparently his new sidekick.

"Flash! Flash! GBS News. Can we get an interview?"

"Of course," the Flash said, strolling over to Iris West-Allen, the boy in yellow in tow. "Anything for my favorite reporter."

"Well, Flash, that sure was some rescue tonight," the reporter said. "Would you like to introduce your friend here to the world?"

"Sure," the Flash said. He rested a hand on the boy's shoulder. "This is my new sidekick, Kid Flash."

"Fastest boy alive," the young speedster said, puffing out his chest. He couldn't have been that much old than her, Artemis decided. His bright green eyes betrayed his excitement, even though his demeanor remained nonchalant. Artemis thought he looked incredibly cute with his red hair all wind blown like it was.

"You seem awfully young, Kid," Iris said. "What made you want to start fighting crime?"

"As soon as I got my powers, I knew I wanted to use them to do good," Kid Flash told her. "I don't think you're ever too young to fight crime. Anyone can be a hero, no matter what their age."

He smiled at the camera, and Artemis felt her heart flutter a bit. It wasn't just what he looked like though. It was what he was saying. His words spoke to something deep inside of her. Artemis wasn't stupid, she knew what he father was training her for, what he had been training Jade for before she left. But deep down, Artemis knew she was a good person. She didn't want to do harm, she wanted to do good, like Kid Flash.

"Well, we've gotta run," Flash said. "But maybe you and I can finish this conversation later, over a cup of coffee?"

"Sorry, Flash," Iris said. "I recently just got married and I happen to love my husband very much."

"He's a lucky man," Flash told her, smiling like he didn't just get turned down on national television. Beside him, Kid Flash began cracking up, and his mentor elbowed him in the ribs so fast that Artemis wasn't even sure she had seen it. "Well, goodnight, folks! Come on, Kid."

With a wave to the camera, Kid Flash took off after his mentor. Iris West-Allen began speaking again, but there was a jingle of keys at the door, and Artemis dove for the remote to turn off the TV. She just managed to press Power when the door opened and her father's muscular form entered the apartment. He looked between her and the TV.

"What were you watching there, little girl?"

"The news," she replied. There was no point in lying. He would know. He always did. "There was an attempted bank heist in Central City this afternoon. They got caught."

Lawrence snorted, sticking his head into the refrigerator. "Amateurs."

He popped off the top of a beer bottle and took a long chug, eyeing her. Artemis didn't look away.

"Ready for training tonight?" he asked her.

She nodded obediently, but she had a plan forming in her mind. "I was thinking…Maybe we could try archery again?"

Two years later, her mother was out of jail, and Artemis found herself suddenly free from her father's grasp for the first time in 6 years. No more training, no more tests, no more mental or emotional abuse. She was free to be what she had wanted to be so desperately since she first saw Kid Flash on the news. And she kept up with him the whole time too. She was watching when he and Flash took on Captain Zoom for what seemed like the 50th time. She was watching when he and the other sidekicks got to go to the Hall of Justice. Overtime, she had come to realize that more than admiring Kid Flash, she seemed to have developed a minor crush on him. Which was ridiculous because he was a superhero who would never have anything to do with her.

She had taken to patrolling her neighborhood with her bow and arrow. Her father had taught her well. Her bow was like an extension of herself now. Batman and Robin never really came up to the North Gotham area, so Artemis had taken it upon herself to keep the area as safe as she could. It was a quiet night until she came upon a boy in a black t-shirt with an S on it, fighting off a crazy robot. Artemis knew that she should probably have let someone, anyone, else handle it, but she was stubborn and there wasn't anyone around.

Except for Robin and Kid Flash himself, she soon found out. Following the path of destruction left behind by the Superman wannabe, Artemis found herself at Gotham Academy. There she watched from nearby as Kid Flash and his friends tried to defeat the robot, which seemed to have all the powers of the Justice League. She tried to help but she was a bit preoccupied herself with the robot monkeys who had decided to attach her. One by one she got rid of them, until only a few were left. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of yellow, and turned her attention to what was happening in the gym below her. What she saw almost made her heart stop.

Kid Flash was in the clutches of the robot who was slowly crushing the young speedster. And just like that, all her father's training went out the window and Artemis panicked. She had to do something. It was Kid Flash. He wasn't just her crush; he was practically her idol. In her mind, he stood for everything good in the world; for truth, justice, bravery and all that crap. She couldn't just let him be crushed to death while she stood there and did nothing. A robot monkey was crawling up her leg, so with one hand she reached back and grabbed an arrow, stabbing the monkey through the head with it in one fluid motion, before notching it and taking aim at the giant robot's head. She took a fraction of a second to focus, as any deviation meant she might hit Kid Flash himself, before she let the arrow fly.

It was straight and true, but the robot must have heard it coming as it phased so the arrow passed right through him. Artemis was disappointed, but realized that the robot's phasing allowed Kid Flash the opportunity to slip out of the robot's grasp. She gave herself a mental pat on the back, before turning to destroy the rest of the robot monkeys. Only when the last one was destroyed did she let herself peak back into the gym.

The three of them had somehow managed to destroy the robot, and had been joined by two other people, a dark skinned boy and a green girl with red hair. To Artemis, they looked as if they were…a team. A burning desire floated through her. She would give anything to be a part of something like that. She deflated almost immediately though. She would never even be considered for such a group. With connections to criminals in her immediate family, Artemis would be the last candidate to ever be on a team with a bunch of younger superheroes.

Get your head out of Wonderland, Alice, she thought bitterly, collapsing her bow.

She hid out of sight until the group of 5 was gone, before fading into the shadows.

A/N: Just so everyone is aware and we're starting on the same page, I'm awful at completely stories. Like terrible. So, your reviews and encouragement will really help me put this together. If anyone has ideas of what they would like to see, I'm open to anything! Please let me know in a review or a PM what you'd like to see and I'll try and get it together.

REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW! :-) Please?

Next Up: Teammate