NOTE: Short chapter this time :) 

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"You're an expert at sorry, and keeping the lines blurry"

TAYLOR SWIFT - 'Dear John'

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Tommy didn't show up for Thea's preliminary hearing.

Oliver knew why - didn't blame him for it, really - but there was something in the back of his mind that told him that if Tommy were here, the sick feeling in his stomach would go away. Thea was afraid, even if she couldn't stand to admit it to herself or to him, and the tight grip Moira had on his arm told him that she was the same.

Oliver settled a practiced, easy smile on his face and nodded as Thea turned around to face him one last time. So young - he forgot that she was really just a girl, angry at the world but not yet broken by it.

"Docket ending 1-10-5-6, People vs. Thea Dearden Queen. Possession of a controlled substance, driving under the influence of a controlled substance. "

Something eased in Oliver's chest. No mention of Cali's injuries adding to Thea's charge. He wondered if Tommy had anything to do with that. If he did, Oliver owed him a bottle of some kind of alcohol as a thank you.

The judge shifted. "Counsellors, I understand you've reached a plea agreement?"

"We have, Your Honour." Thea's defence attorney stood. "Given that my client is a juvenile, the people have generously agreed to probation."

Good, yes. This is what they'd briefed Oliver on.

"Juvenile?" The judge repeated. "Says right here that she's eighteen."

Okay, so this was not what they'd briefed Oliver on.

"She is eighteen now, but at the time of her arrest, she was still two days shy of her eighteenth birthday. Miss Queen has no priors."

Movement, to his left. Oliver glanced over his shoulder, and the sick feeling in his stomach lessened only slightly at the sight of Laurel.

The judge shuffled some of the papers, drawing Oliver's attention back to what really mattered. "It says that her passenger, Calissa Merlyn, sustained serious injuries from the accident and is still recovering in hospital. Why is that not on the charges, Counsellor?"

Thea glanced back at Oliver, mouth parted and eyes wild. She was panicking. To be honest, so was Oliver.

"Miss Merlyn was charged with Contributory Negligence, Your Honour. An agreement was arranged in which those charges would be dropped if the charge against my client for grievous bodily harm was dropped also." The defence attorney shifted his weight. "The point stands that Miss Queen has no priors, and is only facing two charges."

Contributory Negligence? Oliver frowned at the back of Thea's head. Cali had known Thea was high? Why hadn't she stopped her from driving? This whole thing could've been avoided if Cali had simply told Thea to stay home.

"Well-" the judge did not sound forgiving, and Oliver could feel himself tensing up again, "-just because Miss Queen's family swipes her priors under the rug doesn't mean they don't exist." A pause, to emphasise how terribly this was going. "You get your client off, and you help your boss avoid dealing with the drug that's sweeping across our city like the plague. Everybody wins except us, the people of Starling City."

"Your Honour, with all due respect-"

"Miss Queen-" Thea jolted, obviously not expecting to be addressed directly, "-like it or not, you are now the poster child for this menace. Maybe if people see that the Queen family can't get away with using Vertigo, they'll think twice before using it themselves."

No.

No, no, not to Thea. Don't let this happen to Thea-

"The plea arrangement is denied." The banging of the gavel was like a gunshot, striking Oliver right through the chest as Thea turned around to him again. Moira's hand was clutching desperately at his arm again. "This case will proceed to trial."

Possibilities tumbled through Oliver's mind like an avalanche. Maybe Laurel could help, maybe the cops? He didn't have anything as the Hood, didn't have anything he could use to protect Thea. There had to be something, some little thing he could use to just...just make it a little easier on her.

Moira was dragging him up, the defence attorney was leading them to a small room, but Oliver's brain was too busy twisting through the limited possibilities he had. He vaguely noted Laurel not following them, vaguely noted Thea's fear being locked tightly away behind petulance.

"They can't do this," Moira said coolly, and those thoughts scurried away as Oliver drew himself back to the present once more.

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Tommy was having a really, really, bad day.

"I told you," he hissed through gritted teeth as the harried looking nurse frowned down at her clipboard. "That man is not allowed into this room. He has no visitation rights."

"Mr Merlyn, with all due respect, there is no documentation to say that your father isn't allowed to be around your sister. As her legal guardian, he has the right to be here."

"I'm telling you that he can't be here!" Tommy raked a hand through messy hair in frustration. The nurse's chin was raised stubbornly. The name stitched on her uniform read Anita. "Anita, listen. I really need you to keep Malcolm away. He's a cold, calculating, manipulative bastard who doesn't care about his children until he needs something from them."

Anita shook her head, even as her hard-set disdain melted into pity and apology. "Your father might be a bastard," she said, gentler now, "but he's investing a great deal of money in this hospital, and the higher-up's are adamant that he be allowed in without protest."

Of course. Of course it was about money, about power, about influence.

Tommy took a very deep breath, let it out through his nose very slowly, and very carefully squashed the urge to throw his fist into the wall beside him. It wasn't Anita's fault that Malcolm was a douchebag. She was just a nurse trying to do her job.

"Would we be able to get a warning when he's coming, at least?" He forced out with a pained grimace. Anita nodded wordlessly. "Thank you."

How on Earth was he going to tell Cali?

Tommy wandered back into his sister's room. She was sleeping for the moment, her steady heartbeat visible in the dimness of the room. She'd been the one to wake up next to Malcolm, two days after the accident and the afternoon before Thea's hearing.

Tommy had missed the entire event, missed supporting Oliver, just to try and sort out the problems that ripple effect had caused.

Like Cali screaming, at the top of her lungs, and accidently ripping out her IV. Like Malcolm, startling backwards into the swarm of nurses who'd appeared the second Cali's heart rate had accelerated. Like Malcolm arguing as he was shoved out of the room, like Cali refusing to calm down until she'd been sedated, like the nurses calling Tommy in a panic as they said things like 'trauma' and 'scans' and 'possible cerebral injury' and 'confused mental state'.

Tommy took the time to coach them through Cali's general responses to strangers, and the nurses hummed and ahhhed and whispered as they came to conclusion about PTSD and abuse.

Except, Malcolm was still being allowed in to see Cali, and Tommy was so angry about it, he might just be seeing red. It wasn't fair! Just because Malcolm could pay the right people shouldn't mean that he could just stroll into the room and ambush his daughter!

Cali shifted on the bed, and Tommy was instantly by her side, clutching at her hand as he watched her heart rate spike and then settle again. Another blip in the system. It seemed to be happening a lot.

Movement drew his attention to the door, and he drew a breath in preparation to snap at some more nurses, but it was only Laurel. She was dressed in her court attire, hair loose but pinned back off her face. Simple, but still gorgeous. Thea's hearing must be over then.

"How is she?" She asked quietly, moving swiftly up to Tommy's side.

Tommy cleared his throat. "She keeps waking up, which is a good thing, but the nurses are worried about her not being aware of her surroundings. They say that not being lucid is a sign of head trauma, even though their scans show that nothing's wrong."

"And her fractured arm?"

"Healing quicker than they expected. At this rate, she'll only need the cast for another two weeks before she's good to go."

Healing quicker, like the bruise that had healed in less than an hour. Tommy honestly didn't know how he was going to stop the doctors asking questions if Cali's fractured arm was only fractured for a week or so. He was amazed that Malcolm's experimental serum hadn't shown up on her blood tests.

Then again, the doctors might have just been paid to ignore it. Malcolm was good at getting people to look the other way.

Laurel looped her arms around Tommy's torso, linking her hands at his waist and gently leaning her weight into him. Her hair was freshly washed, and smelled like the generic vanilla shampoo she liked to pretend she didn't care about. Tommy pressed a kiss to her head in silent thanks.

Having Laurel like this, having her so close, almost made him forget about the invisible strain on their relationship. Tommy wasn't an idiot. He knew that Oliver's feelings for Laurel hadn't gone away, just like he knew that Laurel's feelings for Oliver were still there, just buried.

This relationship between him and Laurel, this mutual emotion that might not be love, was an uphill battle. He was always going to be fighting against Oliver, even if Oliver didn't realise it. Laurel wanted Oliver first, was only holding herself in check because Tommy was in her heart, somewhere, too.

It wasn't a secret really, which was brilliant, because if Tommy had to bear someone else in his life harbouring a secret, he might just up and leave Starling City. Oliver and Cali had a secret big enough to cripple a country, plus all of Oliver's five years on the island. John Diggle gave away nothing, but Tommy knew there were dark histories hidden beneath that suit.

Laurel's feelings for Oliver weren't a secret. They just...weren't something Tommy wanted to address, so he left them alone.

Cali shifted on the bed, and Tommy's grip tightened instinctively. She wasn't waking up, just moving, but he watched her face intently anyways until she settled down again. There was nothing to indicate pain - if he squinted he could see mild discomfort, which he assumed was typical for head trauma and fractured bones - so he eased up again.

"Janet broke up with her," Tommy told Laurel in a whisper, without looking away from Cali's sleeping form. "Wrote her a note and left before she got home."

Laurel winced, cursing softly under her breath. "Rough. Surely she had a reason?"

"Mm, yeah, but that's not really the point. Cali was really broken up about it." Tommy worried at his bottom lip for a moment, wondering how much he could say without compromising Cali's confidence. "Janet wasn't right for her, not with the trauma she has, but Cali loved her a lot. Coming home expecting a girlfriend and only finding a note must've killed her. I don't think she'd gotten out of bed in days until I got there."

A miserable sight, yes, but a familiar one. Tommy remembered the days after Michael, after six months had gone by and he'd finally found her and brought her home again. It had been much the same then as it was now: Cali staying in bed for days on end, not eating, barely sleeping, without the energy for hygiene or grooming or living.

What Tommy couldn't understand was why she'd fallen back into such a state. Janet hadn't broken up with her until after she'd already exiled herself to her bed, so he was completely in the dark about the catalyst.

She'd been okay at the Christmas party, oh so long ago, but Tommy remembered her slipping away halfway through, remembered seeing the heavy expression on John Diggle's face. He was definitely missing something.

More secrets, of course.

There was a knock, and Anita stuck her head in, an apologetic expression on her face. "Your father has just gotten off the elevator," she told him. Her eyes flicked to Laurel briefly before she looked back at Tommy. "He would like to speak with you - only you."

Tommy exchanged a look with Laurel, who understood even without words. She detangled herself and straightened up, brushing one hand down her thigh nervously. "I'll see you tonight?" She checked.

"Yeah," Tommy agreed, leaning forward to brush a kiss against her lips. "I'll bring home some takeout."

"You owe me some Thai."

Tommy grinned. "Yes ma'am."

Laurel returned his chaste kiss and then followed Anita out of the room, leaving Tommy alone with his sleeping sister.

Tommy sat heavily in one of the chairs and waited for trouble to walk through the door.

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Okay, in Malcolm's defence, he wasn't visiting Cali out of any sort of misplaced resentment. And while he had paid the hospital to overrule Tommy's numerous requests and allow him visitation, it had been his last resort because nothing else had worked.

So really, he wasn't trying to be a terrible person. It just...turned out that way.

And he'd also been slipping the supposed antidote into her IV every now and then in an attempt to cure her strange empathic powers before she could actually learn to use them.

He grimaced, straightening his tie one last time before heading into Cali's hospital room. He had no doubt that Tommy had already been warned of his arrival - one of the nurses had moved particularly quickly when he'd stepped off the elevator - but Malcolm wasn't bothered. He was here to talk to Tommy anyway.

"You visiting her so often is almost funny," Tommy said casually without turning around to face him. "I mean, last time she was in hospital, we couldn't even get you to answer your damn phone."

Malcolm crammed his hands in his pockets as he wandered around Calissa's left side, so he could watch his son's face. "That was then" he said. "I was a different person. This is now - I've changed."

Tommy snorted disbelievingly. "No you haven't."

Malcolm didn't want to argue with him - he knew that facing Tommy here, by his injured sister's bedside, wasn't going to be easy. So instead of opening his mouth and picking a fight, he just sat down, facing his son, and let out a heavy breath.

Cali looked better than she had that first time he'd sat here. The cuts along her face and forward didn't seem so angry and inflamed, and her pinched expression had melted away into something more neutral. The hospital's medications and vitamins had put the colour back into her skin, even as her cheekbones stood out starkly.

"The airbag was tampered with," he told Tommy quietly, without looking away from Cali's face. "Someone at the party unscrewed it, made sure it wouldn't deploy in an accident. Thea's was tampered with, but whoever did it didn't finish the job and it went off like normal."

And Tommy - who was always reduced to a necessary truce when his sister was in trouble - forced away the snideness in his voice and asked very seriously, "You think they meant to kill whoever was sitting in the front?"

Malcolm eyed him keenly for a moment, satisfaction curling in his stomach, before he said, "Her brakes weren't fully operational either. The crash was a set-up."

Somebody trying to kill Thea? Malcolm could almost approve of it. It would certainly stop Moira from exposing the Undertaking - she'd be too heartbroken over the loss of a child. If it hadn't resulted in Cali lying in a hospital bed, unconscious, Malcolm might have applauded the entire operation.

As it was, he had his best people working on finding out who was at the party, and who had access to the car. He had no doubt that Tommy would go to Oliver with the news, which meant that Moira would find out, and Malcolm was fully expecting her to try and investigate the incident herself. If he could figure it out first, he had a little more leverage over her if her loyalties started to wander too far.

"You've been here not even ten minutes and you're already back to scheming." Tommy, in that moment, sounded like everything that Malcolm wanted him to be. Cold, righteous, driven. Oh, how Malcolm would love him so if he could get that sort of energy out of him without threatening his sister. "You're horrible."

"Oh Tommy-" Malcolm knew his smile was predatory, "-you have no idea how horrible I am."

And, look-

Malcolm did not enjoy tormenting his children. He didn't wake up each morning and think to himself, 'Today seems like a good day to be an absolute ASSHOLE' but sometimes that was just how it went. He'd never had the best of tempers - something Cali had apparently inherited - and the smallest things triggered a tidal wave of rage so powerful he was nothing but the smallest fish, swept helplessly along.

Then there were days like today, when he needed to make himself the bad guy. If Tommy had no expectations, if he wasn't under any illusions about Malcolm's character, it would make hearing his next announcement so much easier to bear.

"I've been slipping the antidote to the serum into Cali's IV, and that's why I've been bribing the hospital to let me visit."

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The first thing Tommy was aware of feeling was fucking cold.

Malcolm's words brushed against his face like a brisk wind and settled in his chest like an iceberg, freezing and heavy and absolutely deadly. The sheer magnitude of what his father was saying - it was almost unbelievable to think that he would stoop to such lows.

Tommy opened his mouth, only to close it and grind his teeth together. This was worse than anything he could've imagined.

"I hope she kills you when she wakes up." His voice was pure ice, sharpened and solid and ready to sink Malcolm into the depths of his unending anger.

Malcolm, may the gods damn him, gave him a fucking smirk. "If she couldn't' kill me the first time, what makes you think she'd be able to do it the second time?"

And what in the world was that supposed to mean?

Malcolm's smirk twisted lightly as Tommy only stared. "She didn't tell you?" He motioned vaguely at the body on the bed. "Calissa dearest threatened me in my office, oh, a few weeks ago now. She'd uncovered a few...alarming truths about me, you see, and decided she'd take my fate into her own hands."

"You're lying."

"Tommy." Malcolm shook his head. "I really thought you'd know better by now."

"You just said you were a different person now!"

"And I am! Just not in the way you naively decided to think!"

Tommy fumbled for the words to properly express the stinging betrayal that was crowding his senses, hollowing out his insides with ease. These truths that Malcolm was forcing down his throat - because he wasn't lying, this time, which somehow made it all so much worse - they were going to drown him on dry land.

Cali had threatened to kill their father. Had attempted it, in his office. That'd been the trigger for her complete meltdown.

Threatening Malcolm had cost her everything. It had cost her Janet. It still might cost her the life she'd struggled so hard to build.

But why? What truth was so horrible that she felt the only way to keep herself safe was to kill Malcolm? What kind of fucked up life was he living that he was trying to justify this? There was no justifying murder!

There was no justifying...there was no justifying either side to this story.

"What did you do?" He asked lowly, and Malcolm's cruel smirk slipped.

"I'm sorry?"

"What did you do? Why did Cali threaten you?"

"Surely you don't think this is my fault?"

Tommy's lips pulled back, baring his teeth in a snarl. "I don't give a damn about whose fault is it!" He rocked forward in his seat. "What did you do?"

But Malcolm stood strong in the hurricane of Tommy's emotions and kept his lips pressed tightly together. He wouldn't confess. He never did. And Tommy knew with crushing certainty that when Cali woke up, she wouldn't tell him either.

He was always left on the outside, always the one who wasn't keeping the secrets, always the one who nobody cared about until they needed him.

He stood up.

"Get out," he ordered, and didn't back down or cower away when Malcolm stood up as well. They were both rather tall - i was the only thing Tommy had inherited from his father that didn't make him feel sick. "You're never coming near either of us again."

"Tommy-"

"Get out and never come near us again."

Malcolm looked down, eyes finding Cali's face one last time. He reached down, as if to brush her hair off her face, but Tommy whipped his hand forward and smacked Malcolm's fingers away. He didn't want Malcolm anywhere near her, couldn't bear to watch the man who'd admitted to such devastating things be a father to his children.

Malcolm, for once, did as he was told. With his smugness vanquished and his mouth pinched and his expression unhappy, he adjusted his suit jacket and made for the door.

"The bribes," Tommy said without turning around, before Malcolm could leave for good. "The antidote. The visits. It all stops now."

Malcolm's only response was, "The antidote was the thing keeping her asleep. She should wake up and make a full recovery in the next few days."

When Tommy turned around to throw the empty glass from the side table, Malcolm was gone and Anita watched with wide eyes as the glass shattered against the doorway. Tommy heaved a shaky breath, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"He never comes back," he said to Anita lowly. "I don't care what the damn higher-ups say. That man never comes near my sister again."

Anita nodded wordlessly, and Tommy collapsed back into the seat. His phone was in his hand before he knew what he was doing, and he opened Oliver's contact in his messages with every intent to tell him...

Tell him what?

Tommy sat with his phone in his hand, fingers poised over the keyboard, and he never typed a damn word.

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Paul Jacobs was not having a very good night.

Granted, his nights were usually comparable to literal trash being set on fire and then inhaling the fumes and ruining a lung, but tonight was particularly and notably worse than ever. First, the coffee cart got his coffee wrong, and gave him some sweetened latte crap with caramel syrup, instead of his hazelnut, half-strength, no fat Flat White.

If there was one thing he hated more than life itself, it was caramel.

Then, he couldn't find the key to his house. Which was currently locked. With nobody inside After standing around for nearly an hour and searching every possible nook and cranny, every crease in his clothing, every tucked away pocket in his bag, he decided to simply break a window. He could afford the damages now.

Strangely enough though, nce he was inside, the damn lights wouldn't turn on. He wasn't some kind of animal. He couldn't see in the dark.

What he could see, though, was the figure outlined by the moonlight, right in front of his glass patio door.

"You better be careful breaking in people's homes now," Paul said jovially, surprised in his own casual attitude at someone literally invading his house. "That new vigilante seems keen on sticking pointy things into people."

The figure didn't say anything at first, so Paul ignored him momentarily, heading to the kitchen and humming to himself as he snaffled a fresh red apple from the basket. The power being out meant that he'd have to replace the stuff in his fridge come the morning, but it wasn't like he couldn't afford it now.

The pay check he'd just cashed would cover the rest of his life.

"Hey buddy," he said, after a few more minutes of silence. "You gonna say anything?" Another brief pause, in which Paul contemplated his own life choices. He couldn't say he regretted many of them. "You want an apple?"

The figure moved too fast to see in the dimness, and Paul dropped the arrow with a shout as searing hot pain tore through his right shoulder.

"You sabotaged Thea Queen's car," the figure growled lowly, slipping through the shadows until he was leaning over Jacob's hunched over body. "You put Calissa Merlyn in the hospital." The black arrow twisted and Jacob's strained yell broke off into a hoarse scream as agony raced up and down his arm. "You're going to tell me who paid you to do it and why."

"Sure man, whatever! Just stop!"

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Paul Jacobs was not having a very good night, in that he wasn't really having a night at all.

The police found his body lying on the kitchen floor, a midnight black arrow sticking out of his throat and a half-eaten red apple lying innocently next to his head.