Sometimes she dreams.
Sometimes she wakes up screaming from those dreams, because everything is so wrong.
Her team doesn't come to see if she's okay, and she doesn't care. She stares at her ceiling, trying to make sense to the jumbles of images that assault her each night.
She falls back into a restless sleep, filled with a Different Aqualad, a Robin that isn't a Fashion Disaster, a green girl, black Superman shirts, and a boy named Wally.
She is sitting under the stars, on top of a mountain over looking a harbor. The water is like dark blue silk, shimmering and reflecting the moon and the stars. A lanky ginger is sitting next to her, with a grin that is positively infectious.
She realizes that they are leaning against each other, bodies meshed like lovers, a perfect fit. She should feel uncomfortable, she doesn't know this boy. He's not Seymour. He's not Cameron.
Hell, she doesn't even know his name.
"Alright, babe?" The ginger asks, intertwining their fingers and smiling. She smiles back and squeezes his hand, but she doesn't know why.
Something just feels right about him.
"Yeah," She says.
She looks over the water, at the port town who's twinkling lights set a fiery, hypnotic glow on the water.
"I'm good."
She changes into her usual purple and black ensemble, trying to shake the boy from her thoughts. She's getting more annoyed the more she thinks about him, who he is. She looses control of her powers for a moment and makes her favorite pillow explode.
She swears and bats away the floating feathers and bits of black velvet. She gives up on looking presentable and decides to go get some coffee.
Her door slides open, and she is immensely glad that she had Gizmo sound-proof her door.
The noise is deafening.
The rest of her teammates are already up, yelling, fighting, and squabbling about who knows what. Really, it's mostly Billy and a couple of his Clones. But she's not in the mood to play under-appreciated mediator between a schizophrenic, bi-polar, multiplying, hill-billy at the moment, so she walks past the ten same people, to the kitchen. She could use a cup of coffee.
Coffee sounds good right about now, she thinks.
She walks through the Cave, barefooted, not caring of the icy pricks that assault the bottoms of her feet.
The Cave is blissfully quiet, which does make sense, the only person that gets up before her is Kaldur. (Who's Kaldur?) And the Atlantean is usually at his morning swim, at this hour. She shivers, for no real reason.
She finds herself in the kitchen suddenly, the abrupt change of scenery boggling her for a moment.
She makes a pot of coffee.
Slowly, her teammates wake up and trickle into the room. The green girl is first, floating in with a cheerful hello, which she would find extremely annoying under any usual circumstances, (how the fuck do you be that chipper in the morning?) but instead she grins and says hello back.
Next is Not a Fashion Disaster Robin. He's wearing civvies and sunglasses, something that incredibly foreign to her, yet she feels like it should be the norm. He's also very peppy, something that frankly scares her.
"You feelin' traught, Arty?" Robin asks, grinning widely. She says yes, she's feeling traught-er than he'll ever be. Whatever that means.
Black-shirted Superman-boy-teen-guy stomps in next. He has a frown on his face. One that says "I'm confused about how everything works and that makes me angry." more than "I hate the world and everyone in it." She finds it oddly endearing. She gets a grunt as her greeting.
She thinks his name is Connor.
Connor turns to Megan and kisses her? Okay, bit weird, but they look kind of cute together. (She feels a little jealous, but only for a second.)
Two girls walk in together, yawning, and still in pajamas. One has pale skin, crystal blue eyes, and long dark hair. The other has cocoa skin, warm brown eyes, with dark brown hair cut boyishly. They smile and greet her and the team. Blue-Eyes gets Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of the cupboard and pours it in a bowl with chocolate milk.
"Zee, throw me the Crunch, would you?"Boy-cut says, not turning from where she's waist deep in the fridge. Blue-Eyes, now dubbed Zee, complies, and she makes a half aborted attempt to catch it before it inevitably hits the floor. But a purple bubble encases the box, and no one reacts with a violent jerk-back like she wants to do, so it must be normal.
She knows it's normal, but she doesn't know why she knows.
"Thanks."
"No prob."
This coffee is gross. Bitter, weak, and no amount of sugar or creamer could salvage it. She scowls at the pink mug, her hand crackles, and she barely restrains herself from blowing the stupid thing sky-high.
"Who got crap coffee?" She demands, looking at her noncompliant team members. All of whom pay her no heed. "Well?" She says, louder this time.
"...Gizmo," Seymour says, not looking up from the Optical Illusions book he's reading.
"Well, tell him if he gets shit coffee again, I'm kicking him out."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm serious!" She snarls, eyes flashing.
"Uh-huh."
"Motherfu- Ugh. Whatever." She says with disdain, sipping the horrible coffee.
"If yer gunna be pissy 'bout it, go to the store yerself!" A Billy yells from the couch, then punches it's double in attempt to distract it from the racing game.
"Shut the hell up, Billy!"
"Make me, Twitch-Witch!"
/Everyone on the team is civil with each other. Or at least, compared to her real team. There's no death threats, no flying knives, no one's getting electrocuted by one of Gizmo's "pranks", and a Billy Numerous isn't trying to strangle someone - or himself.
A blur of red hair and yellow pajamas zips into the room, almost ramming into the stove, but stopping just short.
No one reacts in fear or surprise, so this must be normal also. In fact, no one really reacts at all, besides Different-Robin's bland, "Morning, Wally."
Wally turns away from the stove, mouth filled with bacon, and three plates of eggs and pancakes.
He looks adorable, sexy like this, even.
Not that she thinks that. No, not at all.
"Hey, babe," Wally greets, pecking her on the lips.
She wants to hex him, who the fuck is this guy?
Or maybe kiss him back, because something just felt oh-so right.
She kisses him.
"Ugh, get a room." Robin groans, letting his head thump on the table.
Wally smirks and kisses her harder - tongue? Okay, sure.
Robin groans louder, and they break apart. She's sure that her face is bright red, but Wally looks unfazed.
"We have a mission today!" Megan tells them happily. A mission? Like, they had a boss that wanted them to rob a place? Somehow, she doubted that, these guys seemed too nice to even think about stealing.
Connor grunts, but it seems like a happy grunt.
His mouth is full of food at the moment.
"Sounds fun." Zatanna says, spearing a few eggs on a really fancy fork.
Seriously. It had dragons etchings on it. She doesn't know where you could get one, but she wants it.
"We did not do as well as we could have, last mission, Team." Kaldur says, sitting down at the last remaining seat, dripping wet. "Batman was not pleased. We should try harder this time."
Batman?! She wants to shriek. We work for Batman?!
Okay, they're definitely not villains. They're heroes. She wants to freak, since when was she a hero?
(But it feels oddly normal, just like every other insane thing here does.)
Robin rolls his eyes behind his mask. "Batman was fine with the mission, he was just really angry that we gave away our position."
Rocket blushes and sheepishly says, "Sorry..."
Batman is terrifying, she doesn't get how they can talk about him so nonchalantly.
"Billy, I fucking swear-"
"Twitch-Witch! Twitch-Witch!" A Billy chants, dancing around obnoxiously. A couple other Billys are goading him on, and four others are immersed in their video game.
She grinds her teeth, hands crackling with pink lightning.
"Cut it out, Billy." Seymour interjects, a cool voice of reason.
The Billy stops, and blows a raspberry at the Cyclopes. Jinx hits him with a hex, and storms off.
Seymour, of course, follows.
"AUGH!" She screams, releasing her anger on an unfortunate sparring dummy.
"Jinx?"
"Go away, See-More."
"You talk, I listen?" He offers. And she has to admit, it's a tempting offer. So she sighs, and drops her hands, turning to face him.
"Billy's a fuckwad." She says, a mean scowl etched into her face.
"But that's not all that's bothering you."
"...I've...been having these...dreams, I guess,"
She yells and screams and cries.
All in the comforting safety of her pillow, of course.
The mission was a success, mostly. They were able to stop the bad guy, destroy the Doomsday device, and save the planet. Success.
But not.
Wally had gotten injured, the idiot. She doesn't know why she cares about him this much, but she thinks they're together in this cluster-fuck dream world.
The idiot speedster is in the med bay, Different-Robin not leaving the chair beside his bed. (Something really weird to her, her Robin didn't seem like the kind of person who would do that.)
She would almost say that the two boys were together, what, with all the bickering going on; they sound like an old married couple. But, that thought is almost immediately discarded.
Wally would never cheat on her, and the gooey, romantic looks Zatanna and Robin are always giving each other definitely give her a clear look at their relationship.
Wally is still an absolute idiot. (An absolute idiot that risked his fucking life for her.)
The guy had an acid gun - even though his Doomsday device was going to cause an Ice Age - and had almost shot her with it while her back was turned. Kid Suicide had gone and jumped in front of it.
Fucking idiot!
He didn't grab the gun with superspeed. He didn't whisk her away. He didn't knock the villain down.
He didn't do anything, except for be a goddamned idiot.
She couldn't handle looking at his unmoving body, it was too much.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know... They're really weird..."
Wally gets better, thankfully.
But he's still not well enough to go on the next mission with them. He complains the whole time, saying that he has speed healing and he's fine.
But Batman still doesn't let him on the next mission. Something about the acid causes it to multiply. Even if the smallest traces of it are left, it will come back and continue to ravage his body.
So Wally's stuck in quarantine. She tries to squash the worry that wells inside her.
They get debriefed. Klarion is causing mayhem in South Italy.
She feels nervous about fighting her old mentor, but another part of her wants to call him a idiot and kick his ass.
It's really confusing.
"Do you wanna talk about them?"
She doesn't. At all.
These dreams seem sacred. An important part of her. She doesn't want to share them with anyone.
burning
Burning.
BURNING!
Seymour looks at her worriedly. "If you're sure..." He said reluctantly.
"I'm sure," She says, taking a deep breath. "I'm really sure."
"We were thinking of robbing the museum." He says, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "Didn't you, uh, didn't you say there was a necklace you wanted?"
She smiles. "Yeah, actually." She's a little surprised he remembered. But then she remembers this is Seymour, the second sanest person on the team; besides herself, of course.
Actually, he might have to take the spot as "Sane Member" soon, these dreams are going to drive her off the edge.
Where am I?
Who am I?
"You're awake!"
They break into the museum, something that is pathetically easy. Those guards might look intimidating and professional, but they were anything but. She almost was sure that they could have just waltzed in through the front doors (Billy almost did) but she held the team back.
They entered through the vents. She ignored Gizmo's loud swears and Mammoth's and Billy's complaints. She just focused in going in the right direction.
That necklace had Luck powers and while having a mystic object in her possession was a plus, the tangible goal and stress of a robbery kept her mind off the dreams.
Mostly.
"They took you, and I was soooo worried!" The boy says loudly, hugging her tightly. His hair is up in horns that don't looks so different from the way she likes to style her's. Which makes sense, he did train her. She was like his sidekick. And the red-eyed cat is definitely weirding her out.
She wants to frown, why would she be afraid of Teekl? But Teekl seems absolutely terrifying, even though she'd spent most of her life around the familiar.
They make it out of the museum okay. After a second of scaring Billy about "Mummy guts!", and Seymour being stupid about the necklace. ("Isn't it suppossed to bring good luck? And if you're all about the bad luck...?")
What did he know? She was the sorceress around here!
Then, a streak of red and yellow flashed by.
"Jinx?"
Her heart ached. There was something horribly (wonderfully) familiar about it.
It slowed down fractionally when it came towards her, almost as if it was hesitating. Then, there was a rose in her hand.
Words seemed to echo around her, with a longing quality and she knows that voice and those colors. And there's a name that goes with them and a title and a multitude of bad nicknames and entirely wrong ones.
She's just staring at the rose, and trying to remember. It's a nightmare, what's the dream? The dreams might be real, and she's terrfied.
She mouths his name, holding the tears back and her hand is shacking, she doesn't-
"Art-m's," She whispers, voice like sandpaper.
"Wally," She whispers, and the alarm blares.
She's running and she wonders why he didn't stop
This has been sitting in my head for months, years, even. Ever since Artemis was introduced in YJ, actually. I have finally gotten my words onto paper/pixels/whatever and am proud.
This could be a one-shot. This could have a sequel. I don't know.
If there is a sequel, it won't be formatted like this. It will be a regular story, that involves Artemis/Jinx getting her repressed memories back, and Wally being there, of course. The rest of the YJ Team would come in, absolutely ecstatic to see their friend again.
((It is my headcanon that Jinx's secret ID is Linda Park, and Artemis can't go back to being Artemis. She's been 'dead' for two years. So she would have that civie ID.))
I would completely disregard Invasion. Absolutely. I would think that Yj would have fallen apart, everyone going their separate ways. Robin forms the Titans, Wally goes solo, M'gann and Connor are the heroes of Happy Harbor, Kaldur goes back to Atlantis (Garth taking his place), Zatanna does her Vegas-Magician thing, and Rocket is traveling the world.
There will be angst like whoa. And fluff.