"Maybe I'll go driving just to drive

Maybe I'll go riding just to ride

Maybe it meant nothing

When I threw another coin in the fountain at the mall"

MATT MALTESE - 'Driving Just To Drive'

.                                   .                               .

"Officer Lance knows."

Everything kind of... tilted a little.

Cali had hoped, foolishly, that somehow nobody would ever find out. Had hoped that leaving the house, leaving Michael, would just be the end of it, tied up with a little bow. And maybe it could have been that easy if she hadn't sent Cassidy over to get her stuff. If she hadn't been so horribly sentimental and materialistic and possessive.

But she owned things from Tommy. From Janet. And she'd rather die than let Michael get his hands on them.

"Where is Officer Lance now?" She croaked into the phone, eyes darting around her empty room as though he might pop out of the shadows.

Cassidy was quiet for an agonisingly long moment, hesitant, and Cali's heart sank as she realised what he would tell her seconds before he actually started to speak. "He's already on his way to the Queen Mansion," Cassidy said regretfully. "He's not happy, Miss Cali."

'Of course he's not happy,' Cali wanted to snap, but that wasn't fair. Not to Cassidy and not to Lance and not to herself.

"I'm sorry," she apologised, allowing one brief minute of weakness before tangling a fist in the swarm of emotions buzzing around her chest and cramming it all into a box. She needed to be in crisis mode if she had any hope of surviving the day. "Where are you now?"

"Outside the police station," Cassidy answered, promptly and alert, responding to the change in her tone almost instinctively.

Cali nodded sharply, even though he couldn't see her. "Alright. Are my things with you?"

"They're still at the house, but they're all packed and ready to transport."

"Is the car with you at the station, or is it at the safe house?"

"It's at the safe house, ma'am."

Cali sighed at the title, but didn't allow herself the time to correct it. "Call Parker. Have him take you back to the house to get my possessions. Bring them here, please. Is Michael out too?" The tiniest flicker of something that might be fear fluttered across her cheeks like a butterfly.

Cassidy, though, squashed the feeling like a bug when he said, almost smugly, "Mister Martin was not released from custody. Officer Lance intends to charge him with breaching a Domestic Violence Order and breaking his parole conditions. He will be returned to prison, Miss Cali."

Michael was going back to prison.

Cali waited for the wave of knee-shaking relief, for the sudden rush of victory or the briefest taste of glee.

Except everything inside her was hollow and silent, drenched in cobwebs.

"Thank you, Cassidy," she said woodenly. "That will be all."

"Of course, Miss Cali," he murmured, his desire to challenge her mood swing clear in his tone before he clicked off the call.

Cali set the phone down very carefully on the bed beside her.

Was she broken? Was that what this was? Because she should be so, so happy that Michael was going to be put away that the decision was taken out of her hands and made for her, that she wasn't in danger anymore. She'd escaped the guilt of betraying him to the police, and now she'd be free again.

And yet...

It was just another person she was losing. And Michael had loved her, once, she was sure of it.

People kept leaving with little pieces of her heart and she was running out of shards to give away. If she lost too much more of herself, she'd end up looking in the mirror one day only to see Malcolm staring back at her.

She had to turn it off somehow. Had to lock down everything that might be used to hurt her and build a wall so that nobody could claim any more parts of her. Protect herself the way she should've done after Tommy and Janet's deaths. Vulnerability just ruined everything.

Unbidden, her thoughts flitted to the nightstand where the vial lay hidden from view, sitting innocently beside her wallet and a random tube of lipstick. The same vial that Lyle had pressed into her hands at the funeral. The vial that she'd tucked away in the drawer before moving to the safe house, because she was terrified of what it might do to her and she was even more terrified that she didn't really care.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. There was no time or space for fear or trepidation. If Oliver was going to throw her to the wolves and Lance was on his way to spill her secret to everyone, she needed to move fast.

'Tommy wouldn't want you to do this to yourself,' something at the back of her mind whispered traitorously as she scrambled over to the drawer and yanked it open.

The liquid in the vial was clear and non-threatening as Cali held it up to the light, ignoring the heartburn she got hearing how much she was about to disappoint one of the only men she'd ever really love.

'This would break his heart,' that same voice insisted.

"He's dead," Cali hissed back harshly, and popped the lid off. "He's got no heart left to break."

And she threw her head back and drank.

.                                    .                                .

"Did you think that I would say 'I told you so'?" Tommy said to her very quietly. He'd been holding her hand for hours now, and Cali had no inclination to ask him to let go. Everything hurt less when he held her hand. "Is that why you never said anything? Because I wouldn't have. Not for this."

She took him in, traced the lines on his face, the worry and regret that seeped through his skin and singed the air. "No, Tommy," she lied, exhaling. "Of course not. He just got into my head. Wore me down. Made me weak."

His grip tightened, and pure agony flashed across his handsome features. "Not weak," he told her firmly. "Never weak. Because you're right here, in front of me, despite his best efforts. You're a survivor, bub. You're always going to be a survivor. He can't ever take that away from you."

She was already crying in earnest, because this kind of gentleness hurt more than the myriad of bruises and wounds. "I got Thea hurt," she choked out. "If I hadn't taken the cat and left him, she wouldn't be in hospital-"

"Cali, you're in the hospital too. Because he beat you to a pulp, and the doctor's couldn't find a patch of skin that wasn't bruised. You have muscle damage, and maybe a concussion. There's scratches all over you. You literally walked all night through a storm!" He leaned forward, forced her to pay attention to what he was saying. "You're my brave baby sister, and you did not let him win."

And then he held her as she cried and cried and cried, and then a week later she was gone, and it took six months for Tommy to bring her home.

.                                      .                                  .

Lance didn't call Oliver back, much to his chagrin.

Instead, he knocked on their front door.

Oliver, not expecting guests, was instantly reaching for Felicity and bundling her away into a corner where she couldn't be seen, ignoring her indignant squeak. He flicked his chin at John, who already had his weapon drawn and trained on the entryway.

Grateful that Cali was presumably still upstairs and out of the way, Oliver crept on silent feet to the door, eyes narrowing at the fidgeting shadow that betrayed whoever was on the other side. This turned into a fight, the weapon that Oliver really had besides his own body was a lovely ceramic vase someone had gifted his mom eons ago.

The knocks sounded again, and a voice joined the fray this time. "Queen!" Lance yelled impatiently. "I know you're in there! Open the door!"

Exhaling sharply, mildly frustrated, Oliver yanked the door open, schooling his expression into something vaguely pleasant. "Officer Lance," he welcomed, stepping back to let the man in. "I was expecting a call, not a house visit."

Lance brushed past him, face white and hands oddly twitchy. "Yeah, sorry. Look, I need to talk to Cali. Where is she?"

"Upstairs," Oliver said slowly. "Last I checked, she was sleeping. Why? What's going on?"

"I need to talk to her," Lance said again, insistently. "Go get her."

"She's sleeping," Oliver argued. "She's had a rough week-"

"Yeah, well, it's about to get so much worse. I'm not kidding, Queen, go and wake her up and get her down here before I go and do it myself!"

"Detective Lance!" Felicity snapped sharply, and Oliver hid his wince as she boldly stepped out of the hiding spot he'd tucked her in and stopped just shy of Lance's front, her arms folded across her chest, face creased in a disapproving frown. "You can't just start demanding things from us because of some threat that only you seem to be aware of! We're all concerned with Cali's safety these days."

For a moment, Lance's wild eyes settled on her face, and Oliver's muscles tensed in preparation of jumping in to protect her. The slightest movement of John shifting his weight told Oliver that his friend was bracing for the same.

But Lance backed down just slightly, taking an over-controlled breath and nodding jerkily. "Fine," he surrendered. "Fine. You're all going to have to know anyway." He jerked his head towards the lounge room. "I think we're all gonna want to sit for this."

Oliver trailed him silently to the couches, and he didn't miss the way that Felicity stuck close to Diggle's side, her expression skewed into something almost...guilty. Did she know what was going on? Did she know what Lance was going to say? Why wouldn't she have already warned him about it?

"Alright," Lance said once they were settled, his dark eyes settling on Oliver warily. "What I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room. It doesn't make it to the press. I've called in a lot of favours to keep this under the radar, you understand? It won't even go to court - I've got a judge to sign off on the return-to-prison warrant. My precinct is under strict orders to keep the details locked down."

What the fuck was going on?

Oliver tried very, very hard to keep his face blank as Lance took a deep breath and finally shone a light on what was supposed to be the biggest danger in Cali's life.

"Michael Martin has been staying with Cali since his early parole release after the earthquake."

For Oliver, it went a little bit like this:

He'd never met Michael. Never seen him. He'd found pieces of his touch in the way that Cali would react to things, the way she would curl in on herself the minute someone's tone changed, the way she tripped over herself to apologise for things that weren't even remotely close to being her fault. The way she'd softened into something that Tommy had needed to protect, the way that, in five years, everyone had gone from barely noticing her to falling about the place to look after her.

He'd seen the news reports in passing, had heard Cali explain in halting sentences who he was to her, and how she'd finally gotten out. He'd found the courage to talk to Thea about it exactly once, in the solitude of the early morning hours, and he'd asked about what had come after.

The things he'd learned had gouged deep and aching wounds into his rib bones. He'd truly considered killing the man for his actions.

But he hadn't. Because Michael had been in prison. And Cali had been healing. Thea had been healing.

He glanced at Felicity wildly, and there was no spark of realisation on her face. Her hands were clenched in her lap, and her eyes were glossy, but she looked resigned instead of shocked, instead of betrayed.

And in that moment, Oliver well and truly hated her.

"You knew?" He rasped, desperately struggling to keep a hold on the dark and seething thing that was attempting to crawl up his throat. "Felicity-"

"Yes," she whispered, cutting him off. She didn't raise her head to look at him, or Lance, who had gone still beside him on the couch. "Yeah, I knew."

He couldn't... He just couldn't fathom it.

He flicked his attention to Diggle, who's throat was working as he swallowed down whatever it was he wanted to say. "Did you know?" Oliver challenged lowly. "Did you let it happen too?"

There was a hollowness to Diggle in that moment - like everything had been stripped out of him in one big blow and he was just left sitting there, some husk for people to pour more shit into. "No," he answered, just as quiet as Felicity. "I didn't know. Not for sure. I suspected, though."

He needed to get out. Get away.

The walls were closer than they had been a few moments ago. Why did his chest burn? It'd gone so quiet - all he could hear was his own breathing.

They were watching him, weren't they? Spiralling out of control.

Control. He needed control. Slade had taught him how to do that. Control was what kept you alive.

"Is he going back to prison?" He asked Lance, tone gravelly. "How did you catch him?"

Learn all the facts. Assess the situation. Secure your exits. Deliberate your next move. Ensure all threats are neutralised before you betray your weak spot.

Lance, at least, looked vaguely sympathetic, somewhere amongst his own anger. "Yeah, Queen, he's going back. One of the conditions for his parole was he wasn't allowed to be around her. And since we've had some witness confirm his residence with her, the judge signed off on the breach immediately. He won't be coming back out until the end of his sentence."

It was still too lenient. It was too good - far better than the filth deserved. Oliver wanted to kill him, wanted it more than anything in the world, but...

"Officer Lance," Cali said from the doorway, and all at once, everything inside Oliver went awfully, painfully, cold.

To the eye, there was nothing all that different about her. No new blemishes on her skin, no injuries. Her hair was the same colour and length that it had been. She'd changed into a baby blue sweater and black jeans. She looked like Cali.

But there was something about the way she held herself, something about her eyes. The Cali that Oliver had seen before, asleep and nourished by the warmth of the sun, she'd frozen over. It was the way her lips were downcast, her eyebrows furrowed faintly, the brief stain of contentment and personality wiped away.

Being around Cali always felt like being bathed in honey - sweet and nourishing and golden. But now, Oliver looked at her and Cali looked back and all he could feel from her was the overwhelming sense of nothing.

Void. Null. The absence of something you'd never noticed was there. A silence that was louder than a scream.

"You," Lance said, voice tight, "are in a world of trouble, missy."

Not even a twitch, not even a shadow across that devastating face. "Cassidy already informed me as to the current circumstances." God, even the way she spoke- "Do you intend to charge him for his part in the altercation?"

"What altercation?" Diggle asked, looking equally disturbed by the way she was acting. "What the hell happened?"

All the air had been stolen from Oliver's lungs. It felt like someone had just punched him in the throat.

"We had noise complaints," Lance explained without tearing his focus away from Cali. "I found Cassidy and Michael fighting. Separated them, arrested them. Cassidy had gone to get her things, Michael found him. Cassidy told me the whole story. So no," he said to Cali, "we won't be charging him. Self-defence and all."

"Did you send Cassidy?" Felicity spoke up, addressing Cali, valiantly attempting to keep her emotions at bay as she stared down her friend. "Did you pick us over him? Because I've been waiting-" She broke off, face twisting with pain. "I've been waiting for you to see us."

But there was no mercy, no love, no expression on Cali's face as she beheld Felicity. "I directed Cassidy to retrieve my belongings, yes. I was tired of men having the freedom to impact my life. Oliver, Sebastian Blood, Michael. I needed to shed the dead weight."

"Why'd you let him in?" Lance sounded almost as ruined as Felicity. "If your brother had been here, you would've broken his heart."

"I think you'll find, Officer Lance, that my brother is buried in Dolor Cemetery. My choices no longer have any effect on him."

It was...clinical, the way she spoke about it. Like he meant...nothing. Like he hadn't been her entire world ever since she'd been born. Like he was someone she'd known in passing. Like his death hadn't touched her, like she hadn't nearly died from shock just from feeling that bond between them snap.

None of that coloured her tone of voice. None of that touched her face, her eyes.

Lance stood up slowly, approached her as though he were approaching a wild animal. "You listen to me, Cali," he started. "I've seen what that pathetic excuse for a man did to you last time, and I know that he hasn't been any gentler this time. Tell me honestly - should you be in hospital?"

"No," Cali answered flatly. "I'm fine. And you are not my father."

"Well someone's gotta look out for you, kid."

"You have an actual daughter who needs your coddling much more than I do."

Oliver didn't have all that high an opinion of Quinten Lance, but watching the pain and rejection crawl across his hunched shoulders summoned an overwhelming wave of pity that had him pushing up from the couch and crossing to Lance's side, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"I think it might be best for you to go," Oliver murmured. "Before she says something else she doesn't mean."

Lance didn't turn to face him, but he nodded once and shook himself off. "Right," he said, appropriately subdued. "Of course. I've done my best to keep the questions away from Miss Merlyn, so there should be no need for her to report to the station." He fiddled with his police cap, and then exhaled sharply. "Right. Well, you all have a good night."

And then he was brushing past the stony visage of Cali and disappearing back out the front door, and the only thing Oliver could do was watch him go.

He didn't particularly like Lance, but it was still somehow one of the saddest things Oliver had ever seen.

"You took it," Felicity realised from behind him and Oliver whirled around, confused, but her attention was fixed solely on Cali and finally, there was the slightest hint of anger in her voice. "You stupid girl - you took it, didn't you?!"

Oliver didn't have the slightest hope with keeping up with whatever the fuck was going on. "What's she talking about?" He demanded, gazing at Cali but gesturing uselessly at Felicity. "What did you do to yourself?"

Cali fixed her dead eyes on him. "It became apparent that my constant emotional fluctuations caused me to make some unsavoury decisions," she answered smoothly, without any kind of ragged emotion. "Decisions that put people at risk. Decisions that inhibited my ability to...function, as it were. I've remedied it."

"You've let Malcolm win," Felicity countered heatedly, standing up but not advancing forward. She was trembling just slightly. "Don't you understand? By consuming the contents of that vial, you've let him win."

"He's gone," Cali said, tone still heavily modulated by that thick and cloying blanket of nothing. "Like my entire family. So really, if you classify dying as defeat, then I'm the winner."

And there was something... There was something to that, to her words, that made Oliver's ears prick like a dog. Gone, she'd said. Not dead. Ordinarily, he might've blamed subconscious denial, but she'd spoken so easily of Tommy's death before that it surely couldn't be that. But he had no other ideas, no capacity to tease the clues together, no time.

"God, just listen to yourself." Felicity crossed her arms over her stomach looking mildly sick. "You told me you got rid of it. You swore."

Cali didn't flinch or shy away. She just stood, still and quiet, and blinked once. "I believe we've had this fight before, Felicity. I haven't been known to keep to my vows lately."

It was almost like watching someone get stabbed.

Oliver should know, given that he'd witnessed it before.

Felicity's eyes went wide, her mouth gaping open as she fought to process Cali's cruel barb. Her breathing hitched, her grip on her own arms tightened, and her shoulders curved inward. It was pure despair that rippled across her face, pure anguish that fostered itself on her pinched lips. This conversation - this version of Cali - was wounding her on some deep level that would be slow to heal, slower still to forget.

If Cali ever woke up with regrets, he doubted that Felicity's clemency would come easy.

"I think it's best if you leave us to our worries," John said to Cali, voice commanding and yet somehow gentle. He made a sweeping motion that Oliver recalled seeing before, and Cali's attention sharpened. "If you would let us have the room? Thea will be home in a few hours if you wish to see her, otherwise I would suggest you catch up on some sleep."

And Cali just...didn't argue.

Instead, she melted away into the house without another word, and the three of them were left listening to her footsteps on the stairs.

"So much shit just happened," Oliver breathed.

"I need some water," Felicity decided, sounding faint.

So Oliver and John followed her to the kitchen and they said nothing as she filled a glass with ice cubes and cold water from the fridge and drained the glass in mere mouthfuls and put it back down on the bench. They didn't comment on how pale she'd gone, her red lipstick looking like a splash of blood on her face.

But Oliver knew that he couldn't shelter her forever. "What was in the vial? What did Cali take?"

Felicity shook her head slowly and looked away, and so it came down to John to sigh and tell the story. "Malcolm made something to counteract the effects of the serum. It was supposed to freeze Cali's...abilities, dull the influence of other people's emotions on her. But Felicity dug up his research and-"

"It freezes all emotion," Felicity said tightly, turning to scrub at her glass in the sink so she didn't have to look at him. "Shuts off those sensors in Cali's brain, so that she can't feel anything. Lyle gave it to her at Janet's funeral. She promised that she wouldn't take it. That she would drive naturally, no matter how bad. I told her I would be there with her throughout the whole thing."

It was such a Malcolm thing to do - such a Malcolm thing to hand Cali temptation in a bottle and expect her not to take it, but know that she would.

He'd set the perfect trap, and Cali had let herself free-fall right into it.

"I've never been a fan of the easy way out," Oliver said, doing his best to ignore the fatigue settling in amongst his bones. This was too much. This isn't what he left Lian Yu for. "Not when she's causing this amount of damage. I understand that she lost Tommy, and Janet. Everyone in this city lost someone that day. They don't get some magic potion to make that go away."

John's body tensed. "Oliver, I don't think you realise-"

"Realise what?" He fired back, feeling antsy and overwhelmed and entirely out of his depth. "That she's lost everything? Of course I realise that! She's drowning, I know that. I've made it worse, I understand-"

"No, you don't understand!" Felicity shouted suddenly, slamming her hands down on the bench hard enough that Oliver couldn't stop a flinch. She whirled to face him, eyes fiery. "You weren't here! You left! And we were the ones who had to stay here and watch her fall to pieces! We were the ones who listened to her cry and cry and cry until she was gagging, or-or listen to her scream herself awake every night! We were the ones who put her on an IV drip and-and forced her to eat something because the minute that Tommy's heart stopped beating, the minute she lost her brother and Janet and yes, even her father, something in her died too – and we were the ones that had to keep her alive!"

"Felicity," John said quietly, but with no small amount of pain.

But Felicity wasn't done, not even close, and the sight of crystalline tears welling up in her eyes tightened the vice grip around Oliver's heart.

"She went somewhere," Felicity said, desperate and angry and grieving. "She went somewhere far away, and we couldn't reach her. You could've done that. You could've brought her back. But you couldn't-couldn't- you-" She sucked in a ragged sob. "You left. You left and Cali went hollow and I thought we were gonna lose her! That I wouldn't catch her in time and she'd just...fall. I was afraid that if someone wasn't with her for every second of every hour of every day, she would curl into a ball and just die. She didn't talk for a month! She didn't know our names! She wouldn't get out of bed, or let us touch her, or-or live anymore!"

Oliver wanted to sweep her up into a tight hug, wanted to bury his face in her hair to hide his tears and beg for her forgiveness the way he'd begged for Cali's. "I didn't know," he choked out, and looked desperately at Diggle, who was clenching his jaw and staring resolutely at the ground. "If I'd known-"

"If you'd stayed, you would have known," Diggle said, and he had none of the accusation that Felicity had, but it still made Oliver reel back. "If you'd been here, for us and for Laurel and for Cali, you would have known. And maybe we wouldn't have had to fight so hard to keep her away from that edge."

"I needed to grieve." He would always argue that – would always parade selfishness as though it were a miracle.

Felicity's voice was venomous and boiling with something far darker than he'd thought her capable of. "Well, I'm so glad that you made peace with Tommy's death, Oliver. I'm so glad that you got the chance to mourn far away from this city, where nobody could blame you for it happening. I am so fucking glad that you got to make the choice to come back!"

"You're the ones who went out to Lian Yu to find me!"

"BECAUSE CALI WAS TRYING TO GET HERSELF KILLED!" It was nothing short of a scream, a roar from a dragon. Felicity's face was red and blotchy. "Because I had to watch her wither away, had to watch her hide the bruises, had to watch her justify misery! Because she went back to Michael as soon as she could because you weren't here! And I'm sorry that I couldn't do that! I'm sorry that I wanted her healthy again! I'm so fucking sorry that I couldn't lost another friend!" She sucked in a heaving breath. "I'm sorry that we needed you too."

Somehow, somewhere, a decision had been made that Oliver wasn't allowed to fall apart.

It almost seemed as though everyone had deemed that his time on the island was time enough for his emotions, that now he had no right to cope however he needed to cope. That he just had to suck it up for the sake of everyone around him – so that they could fall apart instead. So that Cali could try and destroy herself again and again and again because she'd only ever held herself together for her brother and now Tommy was dead.

He shook his head, all at once feeling very old and tired. "I held his hand," he told them quietly. "You know that. I was by his side when he died. I had to listen to him rasp out his approval over the fact that I killed his father. I had to be the one to tell him that Cali was fine-"

"Do you want a fucking medal?" Felicity asked shrilly. "Huh? Do you want a pat on the back and a handshake for being a decent fucking person to a dying person?"

Diggle shot her a look. "Nobody is discrediting what you went through," he said to Oliver, sounding resigned. "But what you're talking about – what you went through with Tommy – that's what it's been like with Cali. Listening to her die. Watching her disappear and knowing why and still not being able to help her."

"You could have taken her away from Michael at any time," Oliver argued. "You could have prevented her so much more pain!"

"She made us promise." Whatever heat had kept Felicity burning was dying off, and now everything about her was just...sad, and tired. "She made me promise. She said that if I took him away from her, she'd move away, and we'd never find her again until her body turned up in a ditch. So, we had to let him stay there with her, had to let him beat her and hurt her and convince her that she killed her brother. We had to. It was the only way we could keep her alive."

There was something buried in those words that he realised wasn't meant for him. Something that was desperately trying to justify the torment they'd let Cali go through, something that was trying to honour their actions. Something that needed the type of forgiveness that Oliver couldn't give them.

"Cali used that vial to escape the guilt," John explained as gently as he could. "Once she realised the truth about Michael was coming out, she knew she wouldn't be able to live with the repercussions. That doesn't make her a coward. It just makes her human."

He'd never meant to imply that Cali was anything other than a warrior with a spine of steel. Oliver knew some of the things that she'd survived, knew what she'd endured only to watch the life she wanted slide just out of her reach.

So no, he didn't think that Cali was a coward. But he knew that she was taking the easy way out, that she was done fighting.

"You can shout at me all you want," he told Felicity and John, rubbing his temples with one hand. "You can throw my absence in my face as many times as it takes for you to feel better. But I know her - longer than both of you, if not better - and I know that she doesn't get to have a free pass. She's grieving, she's guilty, she fucked up and made a lot of mistakes. So have I. When she wakes up from this, because she will wake up, she'll want to be held accountable."

"This isn't the island," Felicity retorted. "There's room for softness here."

'So be soft with ME,' he wanted to plead. He was tired of being crucified for the same things that Cali was being protected for. He'd suffered at the hands of others, too, during those five years. He'd gone through trauma after trauma, and lost himself, just like Cali. He'd been used and abused and discarded too, watched friends walk away or die. He had nightmares too. He bore the physical scars of his past too.

But this wasn't about him, or his hurt feelings.

So he surrendered the battle to Felicity and her impenetrable, righteous fury. Surrendered to John, forever playing the bodyguard even if he only ever seemed to defend others from Oliver.

"I'm going to go talk to her," he sighed, reeling each tender thread of emotion and balling it up in a dark crevice. Aches and pains and neediness would have no further effect today. "I'll see you underneath the club for our usual gig."

Finally, regret flickered to life somewhere behind Felicity's scowl, and John's brows had furrowed. "Oliver-" John started, one hand half-raising, but Oliver waved him away with a bitter smile and slipped out of the kitchen with another word.

.                                    .                                .

It was no secret that the children had favourites. Most children do, for whatever reason, even if they never dared to admit it to anybody but themselves. Mothers loved their sons and raised their daughters, fathers doted on their daughters and strengthened their sons.

The Merlyn family was no different.

This was not to say that Malcolm and Rebecca didn't love their children equally! No, indeed, they adored both Tommy and Cali, and smothered them in affection and gifts and praise.

But the fact of the matter is that Tommy would always run to his mother when he couldn't hold back the tears any longer, and Malcolm was always the one soothing Cali's hurts. That was the way it had been and would always be. Rebecca kissing away the scraped knees on her darling boy, and Malcolm humming loud enough to drown out his baby girl's soft weeping.

And...in the time that came after, when they were all at once left to clean their own wounds and chase away their own mental shadows.

So they built themselves into the image they'd been raised with - Cali would hold Tommy close whenever the hurt got too much and let him cry in her embrace, and in turn he would gather her to him during the hard nights and keep the darkness from taking her.

They'd only buried one body, but they'd lost both parents that day. And that kind of grief did strange things to people.

And then they buried more bodies.

And then 'they' became 'she'.

That kind of grief did strange, terrible things to people, and children who lose those that raised them when they're young never outgrow that tiny grain of hopelessness that sat in the same spot that their heart used to beat.

.                                    .                                .

There was a breeze that lingered in her room, and maybe it seemed to sit in the chair beside the bed, and maybe it was breathing, and maybe it watched the way she put on her makeup, and maybe it was sad or wistful or longing.

Because there were no such things as ghosts. But there was such a thing as a shift in the air pressure, half a voice whispering its confessions in the ears of the living.

And maybe, to that not-quite-spirit, the next little bit went something like this:

Oliver entered without knocking. Cali didn't outwardly react to the intrusion, instead calmly finishing off her eyeliner with a smooth hand. "You've spoken to the others, I take it?" She asked with no real inflection.

It was torment that flickered across Oliver's face, tinted with the kind of deep sorrow that was only ever caused by love. "I don't understand," he confessed tiredly, not bothering to reach for her. "I thought I did. I should understand. But maybe Felicity was right to yell at me, because I just don't get it."

"It's quite simple," Cali said, swapping her eyeliner for mascara. She still looked breathtakingly beautiful, but it was a hollow kind of pretty that only masked an ugly pit of nothing. "My brother, father, lover, and half the city died. There's five stages to go through, remember?"

Oliver seemed aged and weary to the wind, and moved as if his very core was brittle and aching. He sat on the bed and watched Cali through her mirror. "Was Michael a part of those stages?"

The mascara tube hit the vanity a bit too hard, but Cali sounded perfectly disinterested when she responded, "Michael was my wooden plank." At Oliver's blank look she exhaled and turned to face him. "Like 'Titanic'?" Oliver frowned. "Surely you've seen that movie - it came out before you died for five years."

"I wasn't exactly the romance movie type in that period of my life," Oliver said with a wince. "I think Laurel said she wanted me to watch it with her, but I was shit at feeling my feelings, so I never did."

Cali raised an eyebrow. "You're still shit at feeling your feelings," she said flatly, without a smile.

The breeze blustered just enough to stir some stray strands of Cali's dark hair, and then settled again.

"Explain to me what it means," Oliver prompted lightly, leaning back and resting his weight on his hands. "The wooden plank thing."

Cali took a moment to study him, and the little bubble of wind grew a little bit bigger at the way her caramel eyes brightened just the slightest hint. "He kept me afloat when the water got in," she finally said, and no depth or modulation reached that voice. It was just dead, dead, dead. "He stopped me from drowning. But I was still freezing to death anyway."

Oliver fell silent at her words.

Cali's attention flicked just briefly to the chair where the little bubble of wind sat, and it was only then that the wind realised it had a face and a name.

So Tommy Merlyn raised a hand and waved at his sister, offering her a sad, sad smile, and then he let the wind carry him away into the brightness of the day.