Old dreams die a slow painful death…

Just take me away from this life. Let's run away together; take me away from here. I want to be anywhere, anyplace else.

It was an old dream of hers, a reoccurring one. One, that Artemis thought she would never have again. She met the real Kid Fla-Wally… the person behind the persona. It should have displaced the fantasy. They fought, he didn't know her past. Frankly, the dream might have been the easier path, but this was the right one. It was like seeking permission from life for her to be a hero, rather than asking forgiveness and reforming.

In Bialya a small, microscopic part of her was swooning like a lovesick maiden, in a reenactment of one of the stories of medieval knights and chivalry. The dream; the dreams she had for the past few years, were finally coming to fruition. He was more charming and courteous than any fantasized knight. He didn't call her worthless, like her father. Instead he called her Beautiful. He swept her off her feet and he gave her the feeling of being protected. She didn't have the need to be defensive. It was a foreign feeling to her…

The closest experience she had to that feeling was when she was much younger. Her mom and dad were quite busy when she was little, entrusting Jade with her younger sister. One of the many fondly reminisced activities was reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" and creating whole new stories for Alice and the Cheshire cat.

When mom got injured, she took the fall, to protect her family. Artemis felt disoriented, unsettled, exposed. Mom wasn't there to look out for her. She wouldn't tell Dad he had gone too far, gently remind him that: although his girls needed to be strong… they were still his girls and needed love too. It always sucked, being left with Dad for extended periods of time, if Mom had solo work.

...

So Jade, thirteen year old Jade, left. She abandoned her little sister. Artemis had to create her own fantasy, erect her own walls. The Cheshire cat sulked into the encompassing arms of the Shadows, leaving a little lost Alice in her wake. All the previous support she had was stripped away from her leaving a frightened child to her dad's mercy.

Her dad… her dad was not mature enough to raise a child on his own. He was not gentle enough or loving enough. He needed reminders of how to treat a daughter. But no one was left to remind him.

So, although he loved her, it was not the love that Artemis needed, it did not breed feelings of reciprocation. He did not have his wife to curb his sadism. A hand, a voice raised to halt his rage, to guide it along a more constructive path.

So when a father should have been raising a daughter… he instead was training a mercenary. Every aspect of his life controlled with an iron grip. A force on her soul, it twisted and compressed causing microscopic fractures.

Artemis logically knew that it was his way of showing his love. The long brutal training sessions, the harsh life lessons were his hugs and bedtime stories. She knew this logically, but her heart longed for something more, something substantial. He tried to teach her the joy of all of his weapons, the euphoriaof the kill. There was only one weapon that spoke to her: the graceful bow with its singing arrows.

Her dad reluctantly let her settle on this one weapon. But enforced mandatory martial arts lessons, attending classes at the Y and overseeing her advanced instruction. He taught her everything he knew about the bow, and helped her find a path where she would learn more. When Artemis cleanly killed a 12 point buck that hunting season he cried tears of joy. She didn't know what she felt when the arrow slid past the ribs and tore through its heart. She still doesn't.

...

When Robin showed up during the third year of her mother's sentence she thought little of it, a smidge of admiration as an afterthought. Artemis's admiration grew when she realized someone younger than her was accomplishing something exponentially more dangerous, without any meta-human powers, so she made respectful observations. Keeping a wary eye on Speedy was more… professional courtesy. Aqualad… well at that point why not?

Kid Flash… he was different, he was visible, unreserved, he was vivacious in a grim world, a desirable contrast to her depressing situation, he didn't internalize problems, they were things to be resolved and forgotten in favor of focusing on the next one, he didn't get entrapped in his thoughts, he denied the cruelty of reality and replaced it with an idealistic paradigm, he was a symbol to her, a message that her life could be different.

He was one of the catalysts for her decision that she should use her abilities in opposition to her father's ideals. That hope enabled her to choose her own path in life. In an odd way, he was her white rabbit long before she even saw Superboy.

The newscasts and paper clippings distracted her throughout some really dark patches; they shored up the walls encircling her heart. Artemis's sole outlet for her emotions was her weekly letter to her mom. There was the time her father realized that she wouldn't kill an innocent, the one he discovered it was distasteful to her to kill whatsoever and outright refused, or the countless times he tried to convince her to participate in some form of depravity or another.

Kid Flash's optimism, the heroes' major battles, and their minor acts of charity pushed her through her dad's punishment. The hope he produced was a spot of warmth, of weakness in Artemis's otherwise cold, dreary and solitary fortress, built to protect her fragile emotional state.

...

With a wry and wistful smirk, Artemis recalled when on the public broadcast station, she caught him lecturing to a bunch of elementary school kids on science: "Challenge everything. Don't let others' preconceptions inhibit your perspective. Make your own observations, draw your own conclusions."

It was ironic that particular piece of advice was one she took to heart. It was a keystone to her fortress; it helped sift through who could be trusted and who couldn't. A core facet of her personality, it became an ingrained habit to challenge the limits that her father and society placed. But, that advice also made Artemis fumble when they met in person, a challenge she really didn't wish to make.

So she met him, the dynamic changed. She saw Jade and she decided she wouldn't couldn't didn't need anyone. Bialya shifted their dynamic again; it gave a slim chance for her fantasy to live, temporarily. But it wasn't meant to be. Artemis moved on and although the ninja boyfriend crack made her internally smirk, she was lost and couldn't predict where this new direction the dynamic was headed in. That night her dream made what she believed to be its final encore.

Artemis's brain displaced the fantasy of a rescuer with the reality of a brother and a teammate. It is amazing what neroplasticity can do. But there still were the well traveled paths underneath the new ones, waiting patiently to reemerge. For some trauma, weakness, to pounce on like a ravenous tiger, taking the most opportune strike.

He couldn't accept that magic was real; Kaldur used it every time they fought. Seriously! Then he lied to the both of them when he gave some trumped up explanation about beta waves when she asked about the Helmet of Fate. For some reason it seriously irritated her. Everything can be explained and compartmentalized. Yeah, right. She was going to challenge his preconceptions alright, even if it reached deafening decibels.

Fairly safe to assume I don't own and will never own Young Justice. Part 2 is taking a while but will feature the dream and many of the episodes. This was my interpretiation of the throwaway line in Downtime about Kid Flash being on the news.