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Cissie King Jones - Memories

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My hand glides along the stone walls of the shooting range, finding the light switch and flipping it on.  There's a moment's hesitation before the large, glaring lights flick on, row by row, down the lanes to finally illuminate the targets at the far end of the room - the length of the gymnasium - one hundred meters away, measured out with marks along the floor every ten meters.  It is silent except for the slight hum of the electricity through the lights.

My footsteps upon the wood flooring accompanies the hum to a point, when I stop in the middle aisle and set down my box of fifty arrows.  My eyes are fixed upon the targets.  With my eyesight, I see every detail of the piece of paper tacked up upon the styrofoam block in front of me.  The brand name of the target's maker read as easily as if it were just an arm's length away, the slightly lifted corner curling in the humidity, the shadows of the fourfold it had been in before flattened out onto the block...

I breathe easy, putting my case up on the available ledge against the back wall, unlatching it and opening the metal lid to reveal my personal supplies, arrows having been given by the instructors.  The musky scent of leather drifts up in a waft from my arm guard that I slip over my hand.  It covers my left forearm in a long glove, also protecting my hand, thumb, and first two fingers.

I take up my longbow instead of my usual compound.  The compound was easy, good for the quick draws and speed needed for the nightlife.  The longbow needed skill, precision, strength...  It brought back memories... things that stressed me out and frayed my nerves.  I needed to calm down.  I needed to shoot some arrows at a target for stress management almost as much as I simply needed to take my knee to the wood and break the damn bow to be done with it all.

I approach the shooting deck, running my hand over the stiff feathers of the arrows.  The hard edge of them can be as sharp as knives going two hundred feet per second, giving cuts stinging more than lemon on a papercut.  With a long breath, I take on up from the feathers and knock the blunt tipped training arrow.  

I take my stance, relax, knock the arrow, but still have the bow lax in front of me as I simply breathe the now faint scent of leather, close my eyes...  

"You're not coming down from there until you get a bullseye."

The nook is snug between my free hand's fingers, my left holding my bow.  I take a breath in and draw smoothly.  My arms hold against the ninety-five pounds of draw weight.  I open my eyes and stare down the arrow shaft at the target, as I have done countless times before...

"But Mom!"

"A bullseye, Cissie!"  

She reeks of cigarettes, as always.  I glare down at the target, twenty yards away.  It seems like a mile for me.  Only four; how was I supposed to do it?  I'm situated on top of a barstool, hanging from the chair back was the quiver of arrows I was supposed to use, and in my hands was a longbow too taunt for me to ever aim correctly.  I couldn't draw it right; the draw weight was too much.  

"I'm not letting you come down until you get one," she repeats.  And I hated her.  Every day with this, ever changing target distances with steadily increasing bow weights.  

"I've tried," I snap at her.  "I can't do it!"  My arms were already shaking.  There were arrows in the target, albeit.  One on the border of bullseye.  No, not acceptable.  

She turns and leaves as I yell at her.  Tears were useless, but they came anyway in frustration.  It was a childish hissyfit, but I didn't know any other way of expressing my anger.  I throw down the bow in protest as she's exiting the room, going to climb down myself to simply leave.  I slip before she can get back, though.  I lose my grip, I fall.  Tears were real now as I hear my arm snap beneath me.

"Cissie!"  She's not concerned.  I cry my damn lungs out, but she's not concerned.  She's disappointed, she's disgusted.  Roughly, not even paying attention to my arm, she picks me up again and puts me back on the stool.  There's a hint of sympathy, at least, as she takes a lower level bow from the rack.  Just a hint.

"Get an arrow..." She shoves the new bow into my good hand.  "...in the middle of that target...  Now!"  She sounds desperate, like this was a matter of life and death.  I see her shaking, but I just stand with the bow and cry.

"I'll get two tomorrow, Mom, I promise..."  I have to plea with her before she takes me to the hospital to say I fell down the stairs.


The arrow sails after I let the string go with a twang, hitting its mark.  Bullseye, just like how it was beaten into my head.

I grab another arrow, go through the same process.  A deep sigh, knocking the arrow, my eyes closed as I draw...

My mother's face...I picture it as the target as I fire again.  And again.  And again.

"I picture that I shoot my Mom," I blurt suddenly in the silence of the archery range at Elias School for Girls.  My mouth suddenly runs dry as I draw again, aim...and it just happens; it's there.  "It's the only good thing I get out of this."

"Why do you still practice it then?"

Dr. Marcy Money sits on the sidelines, watching me and not the target.  Mom always watched the target.  She sits cross legged, arms neatly folded in her lap atop some work papers.  

"...I'm good at it," I murmur, letting the arrow go, having it nestle in the tightly clustered group.  Bullseye again.  Ten years later, I can still hear her.  'You're not coming down until you get a bullseye'.

"Do you like it?"  She asks me.

I pause to knock another arrow, letting it stay loose for the moment.  "It calms me down," I answer, not really sure.  

Dr. Money simply nods, just listening.  I was silent, nothing to listen to...  I draw the arrow.

"Maybe we can make this fun for you," she proposes, looking at her papers.  My aim faulters for once, and there ends up being an outlier from the group.  "Doesn't have to all be work," she goes on.

I look over, and she's smiling up at me.  She gestures slightly for me to go over and sit with her, and after a moment I comply.  I set the bow down next to me and glance over at her.  She brings my attention to the papers.  

"You're fourteen now.  The youngest age group, but if you'd like, I can get you into the Youth Olympics this year."  She glances over at me, smiling kindly.  "You're good, Cissie.  You're better than your mother, certainly."


She had meant it as praise but it meant little to me.  That was exactly what my mother had wanted.  All that pushing...It was meant to capture the attention of Green Arrow while she couldn't.  

"What about my...apprenticeship?"  I ask hesitantly.

"Mr. Queen won't mind, I don't think.  It's just a few months off, and you won't be ignoring your archery."


She knew.  She was the only person who knew of all that.  It wasn't much of a secret that my mother was Bonnie King, Miss Arrowette, when its Max Mercury who turns you over to Child Services.  You couldn't hide much of that life when an event like that happens.  Max couldn't know much of my home life, but when your schizophrenic mother forces you to go off and capture Spazz at ten, they'd have enough sense to figure out she's not fit for parenthood.  She had never been 'fit for parenthood'.

My arms are starting to shake, I'm holding the string taunt too long.  I let out my held breath and let the string go, getting another arrow before I see where it hit.  Green Arrow was just as hard in training, but at least it was ethical.  Roy complained about him without even knowing how bad it could be.  I would rather have a parent who ignored me than forced me to live the life they had wanted.

"What's happened, Speedster?  You used to treat your body like a temple!  But now..."    I laugh humorlessly.  "Now I don't even need my training to pin you.  Your comebacks don't matter.  You're losing yourself to this!  You're drowning by your damn stupidity; I can't...I can't get dragged down with you.  ...So you clean yourself up, or you lose me.  Forever...'"

I draw and fire with speed this time, but it still hits its mark.  Two at a time, then three...

Dr. Money had been the mother for me, the three years I had known her.  A little taste of what growing up was supposed to be like before her fiancee and his friend killed her.  There was nothing the legal system could ever do.  A jury already called them innocent for lack of evidence.

I was there.  I testified against him.

I heard the damn speaker say it.  I saw his and his friend's smug smiles.  Free to do whatever the hell they wanted still.  Nothing was going to stop them anymore, of course not.

Roy didn't have a clue.  He ran away to that, and he had no idea how fucked up things could get.  Ready to put an arrow through someone's heart level of fucked up.  I had been furious with him.  Bottle everything up and just let it rot your dedication and passion away, yet I try and kill someone and it's like everything's alright for me on the inside.  What about the things I bottle up?  

"Now, Cissie.  You're going to lie about the eye test," my mother instructs me.  "You're going to perform badly on purpose, you hear me?"  She's smiling at it all, the oportunity it gave to better myself in her game of doll house.  Just dressing me up the way she wanted, playing out my life in her make believe world.  "I can get you into the test then.  They have an experimental drug to better eyesight, you understand?  It'll help your archery.  You want that, don't you?"

These memories, these damn twisted memories, that no one knew about.  Feelings and thoughts that I could never openly express, because what the hell sort of 'hero' would I be afterwords?  Why did he think I left six years ago?  

"Speedy.  You said you'd stop me, remember?  I...I need you to stop me."

There have been so many times...so many times I wished I'd never said anything.  Just 'yeah, coming back from patrol now.  Don't worry your little red head off, Ginger.'    

I was right there.  Right there, and the guilty party there ready to get what he had always deserved.  

"So you're finally guilty? You kill her and you're suddenly guilty now? Never hear of karma or something?"

Broke his fucking jaw.  He had sat there whimpering and shaking in the corner of the room.  Skipped the antics, skipped the torture shots...  He wasn't deserving of it, but I aimed for a mercy shot.  Make it quick as possible right?  It...wouldn't be so bad on my record then, or something...  

Right.  Crack like an egg thrown off the downtown business building of Star City.  And Speedy would have followed.  And then Green Arrow would have disowned both of us instead of just him.  And who knows, maybe we would have just been scrambled eggs together and things wouldn't have gotten so bad for him.  We would have been there to support one another instead of me being furious and gulity that I couldn't stop him when he needed it.

"I'm sure this scum deserves even more then death, but don't throw your life away."

...Throw my life away, eh, Speedster?  You can't imagine how much that would have just freed me.  To finally hit one of these faces I imagine as these targets, and maybe make at least that one go away.  

"It's alright, Arrowette. This is the right thing to do. It hurts, I know, but it's the right thing."

You didn't know.  You couldn't have known.  What, just because your brother didn't turn out as 'good' as you?  We put these people in jail and they just get out again.  Or they don't even get into jail and are allowed to roam free still with a clear conscious, like nothing bad was ever done.  

"You're more hero than some of the others. You just had a slip up."

Was it really a slip up if it was what I always wanted?  To finally send one of my demons away.  To get rid of a guilty criminal permanently.  To do something instead of constantly having my life manipulated into what others want for me. Or worse, for them.

A final twang of the bow string.  The target is riddled with thirty seven arrows.  Seriously...I don't think one more could fit into the first two rings of the middle of the target.  

Methodically, I sling my bow over my shoulder and walk down the range to pull each one out, breathing easy, calm and collected.  There's a certain clarity to my mind, one clear thought.  The staff would replace the target; I return the training arrows to the box.  Turning back, I return my bow to its case, slip off my arm guard, close the lid and latch it shut.

I stand there, just breathing as I get out my phone and look at the time.  I should get back to the mountain.  Whatever the hell those munchkins were up to...  Sleeping together and joking about gingerbread men to try to get through to an ailing member, because they were no shadow manipulator who could simply know what was going on by just being in the near vicinity of them.  

I scroll down my contacts, staring at one no one ever thought I'd speak to again.  He speaks an unsure greeting, and I smile lightheartedly - as if this was any other call to a boyfriend.  "Deadshot..."  The name feels odd speaking with such a tone, with such an aim in mind.  "...Tyler...  I need to find a couple people..."
So. Never actually read CKJ canon myself, but it annoys me how much the show messes with YJ canon - ...not that this is doing any justice to that pet peeve... This is probably all a very odd mesh up to those outside of my little writing community who don't know my friend and my Young Justice universe... But here you are reading, so it must have some entertainment purposes.

YES. I KNOW CANON. Superboy caught the arrow and Cissie's never actually met Speedy/Red Arrow and she's really with Impulse or something and Deadshot isn't Tyler, probably came out of left field for you people, blahblahblah... Deal.

MY AND ENDELLION'S FANON UNIVERSE. WE CAN MESS AS MUCH WITH IT AS WEISMAN CAN.

I don't own DC or any such affiliated characters. Sadly.
© 2012 - 2024 BlackandWhite1020
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