NOTE: This chapter is dedicated especially to @PinkDiamond1016 for their consistent and ongoing support of this story. It's appreciated. All of the support from everybody is appreciated. Thank you so much.
. . .
"Oh, but I'm not bitter, I'm just tired
No use getting angry at the way that you're wired
Ignorant trauma in one afternoon"
DODIE - 'Guiltless'
. . .
Felicity called her the next morning; Cali was only half-awake, her garbled sounds unintelligible, and her brain working at a pace not unlike a snail's.
That did not stop the great Felicity Smoak.
"I know it's early," Felicity started off, and somehow didn't sound apologetic about it, "but Walter asked me to do something else about the Moira thing, and he gave me a book, and Miss Merlyn, I know it's not proper of me to assume things, but this book is full of names. Crazy right? Now I know you're wondering why a list of names is such a big deal, but listen to this. I cross-checked the names against news articles and the media, and it's a match. All those millionaires that were being killed off by the Hood? They were all on the list."
Cali blinked blearily at the blank TV, rubbing a hand across her face in a useless attempt to scrub the sleep out of her eyes. "It's 6 in the morning, Felicity dearest," she slurred, pulling the blanket closer to her chin. "Also, when did you start calling me 'Miss Merlyn'? I don't like it. Makes me feel old. Cali is fine."
"Sorry." Felicity's tone changed abruptly, her voice suddenly clipped. "I told Walter all this last night - I just thought I should tell you too."
Cali sighed into her pillow before pushing her blankets back and surrendering her claim to sleep. "No, Liz, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just had a rough night and woke up in a bad mood. Keep talking. You told Walter about the list of names? What did he say?"
Felicity went quiet for a moment, and Cali took the chance to sit up a bit, yawning as quietly as she could while stretching out against the back of the couch. The kinks in her back straightened with a satisfying and yet grotesque series of cracks down her spine.
Felicity still hadn't said anything.
"Felicity?" Cali prompted around another yawn. "Li-Li? Flick? Lexi? Fifi?" Still silence. Worry made her stomach cramp. "'M running out of nicknames here, honey."
Felicity inhaled rather sharply all of a sudden, and Cali flinched away from the phone at the suddenness of it all. Air-driven sounds were always so much sharper over a call; electricity always managed to twist the soft into the edged, and the angry into the gentle.
Finally, Felicity managed words. "This is Moira's book, right? So theoretically, we can assume that Robert knew about it."
"She could have made the list after he died," Cali pointed out. "The killings only started a short while ago." She very carefully didn't mention that Oliver had only gotten back a short while ago. No use opening that can of worms this fucking early in the morning.
Unfortunately for her, Felicity didn't like to let sleeping lions lie. Much like a dog with a bone, she just wouldn't give it up. "How does the 'Gambit' tie into this then?" She sounded frustrated. "Why keep it so under the radar? Why kill people over it? It was a freak accident, yeah, but nothing more."
Cali frowned down at her hands as she twisted the blanket between her fingers. "Unless it wasn't an accident." It was a suspicion she'd harboured since learning about the boat's recovery, but hadn't been brave enough to voice. Especially not after Walter's scolding. "Think about it," she urged Felicity. "Think about it, and then ask those questions again. Why would Moira hide it, huh? Why tuck it away into a warehouse that was purchased from a fake company?"
Why, why, why-
It was right there, the truth-
"It was sabotaged," Felicity breathed. "I-It had to have been. It's the only thing that makes sense."
Cali slumped in on herself, rubbing at her brow as exhaustion mixed with conspiracy inside her cranium. Thoughts that were too complex for the morning tangled themselves into knots and set themselves on fire. For once, she hated that she was inquisitive - so eager to insert herself into everything, to know every little secret and morsel of gossip.
Of course, what she and Felicity were discussing was purely speculation, but it was speculation that earned her the knowledge about Oliver's secret identity, so she had every faith that she was right this time as well.
Maybe Tommy was right, in part. She wasn't a confession journal, but maybe she was a mockery of a church confessional. People crept up to her ear, whispered their side of the story, and in the end, all she had to do was put the pieces together and she knew things.
Felicity shifted something on her end, and frantic clicking filled the line for a moment. "Okay, so if Moira was involved in all of this, it makes sense for her name not to be on the list. I doubt that Robert is on here - he would have been insane to be involved and then step on a sabotaged boat, much less take Oliver and Sara with him. He was something, but he wasn't a murderer." She paused for an uncomfortable heartbeat. When she spoke again, her voice was hesitant. "There's another name that's conspicuously missing from all of this."
An uncomfortable feeling settled in Cali's stomach. Her chest squeezed. Felicity waited for something on the other end of the call.
Cali was shaking her head even before the words came tumbling out. "Don't say it, Flick. I can't hear it from you, not this morning." Forget stomach cramps and hunger pains, her entire body was aching. Everywhere she turned, his name met her. He was always there, always the center of the web, always pulling the strings. Her voice cracked. "I can't."
And Felicity, sweet and beautiful Felicity Smoak, let it be with a small, "Okay."
Cali was the one to end the call. Felicity didn't stop her.
How quickly things had fallen apart. Or, no, that wasn't quite it. Things had been falling apart for far too long now: this was just her eyes opening to the fragile truth of Starling City. People sent out to die, like lambs to the slaughter.
Robert sent out to die.
There was no way that Oliver's father hadn't known about the list, no way that he hadn't gotten that information to Oliver. How else would the Hood know who to target? Oliver certainly hadn't gotten that from his mother.
Which then begged the question - why kill Robert? If he was on board with whatever this was, whatever scheme Malcolm had helped the Queen family cook up, then why risk so much on making him disappear?
Cali threw her head back into the couch and cursed at the ceiling. Pressure crushed her ribcage, binding her and her knowledge to Janet's apartment, to Janet's couch. Everywhere she turned, secrets were built into walls, trapping her in a never-ending spiral of betrayal and murder and lies.
God, how did she tell Tommy? She couldn't even bring herself to tell him about Laurel and Oliver!
Steely resolve forced her to sit up and open her contacts. No, she wouldn't drag Tommy into this. She wouldn't even tell Oliver. They both had enough to deal with. She would sort this out herself, would go behind Walter's back, go behind Felicity's back.
If anyone else was going to be hurt by her father, let it be her. She'd lived through enough of his travesties. She could live through this too.
It didn't stop her hand from shaking as she tapped Malcolm's contact and pressed her cell phone to her ear. It was warm against her skin - the phone call with Felicity had been mere moments ago, time stretching on in between seconds as such huge secrets yawned before her.
Her father answered swiftly, his voice curt as he greeted her. "Daughter," he said tersely. "If this is a call about the temporary serum-antidote, I do not appreciate the hurrying. I won't rush this, not when it's your life that's on the line."
The serum. Antidotes. Being not-human. Cali had forgotten.
"I need you to tell me," she said quietly, tightly, hotly, the words seizing and catching in her throat, "why you and Moira Queen have a list of dead-and-dying people, and why the wreckage of the 'Gambit' is sitting in a warehouse downtown."
Malcolm's silence spoke volumes.
Cali's heartbreak was audible in her ears - a sharp, shattering sound that whited out her vision with it's loudness. There were things that Malcolm had done - terrible things - that she could set aside. Things she could move past, even if she didn't forgive them.
But killing Robert Queen, killing Sara Lance, killing Oliver-
Cali would never move past this. Would never look him in the eyes again.
She clutched at the phone with both hands. "Did you know it was sabotaged?" She demanded roughly. She didn't want to know, not really, but she couldn't afford to waver now. If she dropped the ball, she'd never pick it back up and then when the terrible things happened, it was on her.
In a near-whisper, Malcolm said, "Calico."
"Did you know?"
Guilt that wasn't hers simmered in her chest.
A breath. "Yes."
An answer.
A confession.
Cali threw her phone across the room.
. . .
A billionaire vigilante and his bodyguard walk into a library.
Cali's not there to meet them.
It reads like a bad joke, Oliver mused to himself as the elderly lady from the front desk, Nancy, hobbled her way into the offices to see if anybody knew why Cali wasn't in today. Diggle, patient as ever, stood silently by his side, eyes wide as he stared up at the sloped ceilings, tracing the bookcases with nothing but his gaze as they climbed towards the roof.
"It's an impressive building," Oliver said softly to him. "One of Starling City's oldest, in fact."
Diggle nodded mutely, still looking up. Something about that gave Oliver pause - perhaps it was the sheer innocence of awe, splayed openly across Diggle's usually stoic face. He seemed so easily impressed by this building, by the architecture of people who had long since passed.
His chest ached something fierce, when he thought about it for too long. Because he'd had that naivety and virtue stripped from him slowly and surely over the course of five years. He'd lost that ability to be wonderstruck by something so remarkably unremarkable.
But John Diggle...
Diggle made a sound low in his throat. "You don't have to look so wistfully at me, Oliver. I'm right here."
Oliver's lips quirked, but fell flat again before he could bring himself to properly smile. He said, "I know," and then continued to watch his friend watch the glory of the world around him. If he was wistful, well, he wasn't the one who had to see his own expression.
That was how Martha found them, Diggle staring up, and Oliver staring at Diggle. She cleared her throat, one eyebrow already raised, but Oliver felt no embarrassment as he turned to face her. He wasn't there for her.
"She's not here," Martha said bluntly, without any small talk.
Oliver admired her frankness. Diggle, it seemed, did not. Voice pinched disdainfully, he asked, "Did she say why?"
Martha shrugged, unbothered and dismissive, her sharp eyes still settled firmly on Oliver. She was sizing him up - they'd heard of each other in passing from Cali, but never confronted each other face-to-face. Oliver returned her look coolly, tipping his chin up in a silent challenge.
Martha's mouth twitched keenly, and finally she looked to Diggle, who was shuffling on his feet and looking mighty tense. "She said she was having family troubles. Brenden agreed to swap their holiday shifts so she could have her holiday time ealy.."
Diggle glanced sidelong at Oliver, whose lips pursed slightly at the implications. Family troubles could only mean that Cali was having a problem with Malcolm. Oliver got the feeling that Tommy either didn't know about it, or Cali had told him to stay out of it. Most likely the former; Tommy would never leave his sister to face their father alone.
Murmuring his thanks, Oliver rocked back on his heels and prepared to leave. Diggle followed his lead, already angling his body towards the exit. Martha's stony voice stopped them. "Queen." Oliver glanced back, unsmiling. He wouldn't pretend for this woman. Martha's nose scrunched just a little. "You talk to that brother of hers. Screw his head back on straight."
Oliver frowned. Tommy? The last he'd heard of his friend, he was asking Oliver for a job, after Oliver had stopped Helena from killing her father. Since then, Oliver hadn't really heard much of him, just the odds bits here and there while Tommy took control of building the club.
He nodded at Martha, still frowning, and she nodded back. A moment of respect, then, for two people who were as jagged and broken as the other. Both monsters, trapped inside a human body.
Diggle led him out to the car. Oliver didn't say a word.
"Where to, Oliver?" Diggle asked quietly, starting the car but not going anywhere. Not yet.
Oliver held up a finger and pulled out his phone. Tapping on Tommy's contact, he held the device to his ear. Indecision warred in his chest. He'd meant to go and see Cali, get her help for the Christmas party he was sort-of intending to plan. But he couldn't ignore Tommy, not like he had been. If something was wrong between his best friends, he had to fix it.
That was what he did. He fixed things.
Tommy answered with a cheerful, "Ollie!" Oliver squinted at the back of the car seat. Tommy didn't sound upset by anything, but then again, he hadn't sounded upset about anything other than dinner and being cut-off before. "What's up, buddy? I'm not used to you actually, you know, reaching out to people."
Oliver fought a smile, because only Tommy could make something so accusing into something gentle and teasing. "Thought I'd break my pattern. Where are you? I'm going for lunch and don't want to eat alone."
Tommy had the audacity to gasp. "Oliver Queen, not wanting to be alone? Well, I never thought I'd see the day." Oliver rolled his eyes. Tommy continued, "But actually, I'm at your place. Thea got blown off by Cali and was feeling particularly unloved."
"You know us Queens," Oliver joked, even as uneasiness forced tension into his shoulders, "we do make a habit of being by ourselves."
"A habit you shall have to break!" Tommy declared. "Come on, if you hurry, there might still be some of Raisa's Jaffa Cake left for you."
Oliver covered his end of the phone. "Diggle. The mansion. Now."
Tommy cackled wildly over the phone as Diggle hit the gas.
. . .
Settling back in his seat with a content sigh, Oliver surveyed the rest of the table. Tommy and Thea were chatting animatedly, Tommy's voice loud and boisterous, his hands flying around in front of his face. Diggle was sitting quietly, paying attention to nothing in particular, but alert enough to move at a moment's notice.
And his mother.
Moira was staring straight at him, her head tilted just slightly to the side as something dark shadowed her face. She was surveying him, Oliver could feel the weight to her gaze as it travelled over his face. She was looking for something. He wouldn't let her find it.
"Not that I don't love having you here with us, dear," she said breezily, obviously deciding to address whatever she was thinking, "but was there a reason you were seeking out Tommy? You don't usually make a point of stopping by here during the day. In fact," she added, eyes going flinty and narrow, "you're hardly ever here at night, too. Is there something wrong with the house that you keep leaving?"
Oliver pasted a lazy smile across his lips, leaning forward just slightly. "How could I pass up lunch with my favourite people?" he asked.
Tommy snorted from his seat. "Well, I don't see Cali here, so clearly not your favourites. Second-cousins maybe?"
Thea elbowed him in the ribs hard enough that he squeaked. Oliver's smile got a little more real. "I did actually want to ask Tommy something," he admitted, and his friend stopped dramatically cowering away from Thea in favour of turning his full attention to Oliver. "Did anything happen at the library lately? Between you and Cali?"
It was a minute change - the shifting of Tommy's posture - but Oliver tracked it. He was trained in noticing small details, after all. It was the way that Tommy's feet actually settled on the ground, the way his nose flared just slightly. His lips ticked downwards. His grip on the chair got tighter.
Oliver had his answer, even as Tommy forced a laugh and said, "What? Where'd you hear that?"
He hated to do this, he did, because lunch had been so nice and for the first time since he'd gotten back, there'd been no hiding. Thea and Moira and Tommy and Oliver. Together, like they'd always been. No hiding. No barbs. Just family and Jaffa Cake. The only thing missing had been one Calissa Merlyn.
But he had to know.
For Cali's sake.
He took a fortifying breath. "I went to the library today to check on Cali. She wasn't there - she's on holidays apparently - but Martha said something interesting about you. Something about you needing to put your head on straight. Why'd she say that, Tommy?"
Silence coated everything, sticky and suspicious.
"I think," Tommy said slowly, his good mood wiped away by Oliver, always Oliver- "that what's happened between me and my sister is none of your business, Ollie."
"It's my business because I care about you both."
"You care?" Tommy repeated, the words coated in bitter amusement. How something so lovely could become so charred and blackened, Oliver wasn't sure. But he wanted to find out. "Don't be ridiculous."
Moira murmured a careful, "Tommy," but Thea stayed conspicuously silent.
It was horrible, how quickly their charade of peace fell to pieces. It was Oliver's fault, he knew that and he accepted it, knew that he had to play the bad son and the bad friend to protect them, but it was hurting them too.
He was tired of hurting the people that he loved.
"I'm not accusing you of anything-" Tommy's scoff cut him off. Oliver gritted his teeth and continued, "-but whatever happened was bad enough to worry everyone else at the library. It had to have been big for that. I want to make sure my friends are okay. Sue me for being worried about you."
"We've made up already," was Tommy's sullen answer. "It's fine, Oliver, forget it."
And Oliver could leave it, now. God only knew that he had tremendous secrets of his own - that he lied to everybody every day because he couldn't bear to subject them to the thing he'd become during his time away. But it was Cali, and he couldn't forget the flickering sadness in Martha's eyes, existing right alongside a smouldering protectiveness and defiance that could match his own.
So yes, he could let this go, but he wouldn't. It was never going to be an option for him to let go. For all he knew, Tommy was confronting Cali about knowing that Oliver kissed Laurel.
He breathed out. "You're my friends," he said in a whisper.
It was all he had left.
It wasn't enough.
Tommy jerked his chair back, standing up fast enough that Thea actually flinched. Diggle straightened. Moira put her head in her hands. sat still and he waited.
"You don't get to say that," Tommy snarled, stared up at him unflinchingly. "Not when you pick and choose who gets to know what about you, who gets your favour and who gets shut out. We haven't been the type of friends you think we have ever since you went away, came back, and then chose my sister."
Oliver was sure that Tommy meant well, but... "Jealousy shouldn't ruin our friendship," he said flatly.
Tommy's laugh was angry and painful to hear. "Jealousy?" he spat. "You think I'm jealous?" Yes, Oliver did think that. "I'm afraid. My sister is your damned secret keeper, your confession journal, and she's always going to be that until the day she dies!"He lowered his voice to a venomous hiss. "Sometimes, I wish I didn't love you. Sometimes, I want so badly to be my father, so that I can walk away soon enough to get out without scars."
A fissure crack split through Oliver's rib cage.
He blinked once, slowly, and then shook his head. Tommy's nose flared. "Tommy," said heavily, "it's not about choosing between you and Cali. She finds things out on her own, and then I have to rely on her not to tell anyone. I don't tell people anything. You're one of my best friends, just like Cali is-"
"Then why am I the one of trial?!"
And oh, yes, Oliver had fucked this up rather spectacularly, hadn't he?
"Tommy." He leaned forward. "You're my friend. I care about you just as much as I care about Cali. This was never a game of 'more important.' You both mean the world to me."
Tommy pushed away from the table and stalked towards the doorway. "No," he said, stopping just on the threshold. "No, we meant the world to you before you drowned. We don't mean anything to you now. We're just...pawns. And I'm tired of playing your games." He shook his head. "You can have your job back. I don't want you bribery or your pity."
And then he walked right on out the door, and when the door slammed shut, Oliver felt the reverberations ripple through his chest, his throat, his damn bones.
He hadn't meant to choose a sibling, but he had.
Once again, he'd made the wrong damn choice, chosen the wrong damn person-
A helpless glance at the others at the table spared him nothing. Nobody was on his side here. Nobody was ever going to be on his side when it came to caring about people. And it was because of that - that uselessness and lack of support - that Oliver tumbled through all the wrong words.
"I didn't-" His hands trembled as he tucked them down by his side. "I-"
Thea barked a burning laugh and stood up. She didn't even spare him a look. "You can never just stop, can you?" She asked rhetorically, shaking her head. "You always have to push and push until you push everyone away. Well, Ollie, if you want to be alone, just fucking say so instead of tearing everyone else down too."
She was gone before Moira could reprimand her for her language.
Oliver slumped back in his seat, feeling the back of the chair press uncomfortably into his spine. This was why he'd hesitated to come back. They didn't need him. He was just causing trouble. Displacement settled under his skin, triggering an itch he knew he'd never reach.
"Oh Oliver," Moira breathed, and the disappointment that painted her tone was almost too much to bear. Oliver ducked his head. "Oh my darling boy. You can't stop yourself, can you? You always have to be the one in control of everything, always the one holding the reigns."
He felt, oddly enough, like he was twelve years old again. Young, angry at the parents who were never home. Lonely. Scolded.
Afraid.
He ducked his head, touching his chin to his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing, Mom."
Moira watched him, unforgiving even as she softened in response to his heartache. "You've always had a sharp tongue," she told him sadly. "This time, I fear, you've used it to kill something precious."
"I never chose between them."
"It wasn't that you chose between them, dear, it was that you just didn't choose him." Moira gave him a gentle look. "Tommy has always been possessive, jealous, insecure in his friendship with you. He gave a lot to try and find you. And you've repaid him by confiding in Calissa and Calissa only. You've shut him behind a glass door. He can see you, but he can't hear you. All he can do is watch you give your trust to someone else. He thinks he's been replaced, by his own sister no less."
But surely that wasn't Oliver's fault! Trauma constructed that glass door, not him, not consciously. And he hadn't been choosing people! Everyone who knew things about him had found out due to circumstance only.
But there was no way for him to explain that to anybody. Because the only people who knew, already knew.
"As for Calissa," Moira said, firming up a bit. "I want you to tell me what she does, what it is about her, that makes you...smile so much."
There's a nostalgia to that request that surprised him. Because his mother didn't sound bitter, or angry, she just sounded sad. Like she'd missed out on something and she knew that the moment had passed and would never come back.
He flushed, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. "There's nothing special to Cali," he said lamely, splaying his hands.
Moira suddenly looked very old and tired. "Oh Oliver, of course there's something special about her. You're different around her. Lighter. Happier. More yourself. With us, with Tommy and your sister and me, you put up walls. There's masks. You lie and you fake your way through it, but with her..." She trailed off.
"There's nothing special about Cali," Oliver said again, like a broken record, and Moira just looked at him. They sat there silently, until she gathered herself and excused herself from the room.
Diggle said nothing, but the look he gave his charge said enough.
Oliver closed his eyes and wished.
. . .
Cali opened the door after the first knock, which seemed to startle Oliver, who still had his fist raised. "What?" She snapped, knowing that she was glaring, knowing that Oliver wasn't at fault, knowing but not doing anything to fix it.
She didn't want to fix it. She was sick of fixing things.
She still had to fix Malcolm's mistake, so that millions of people didn't pay the price.
Oliver blinked. "I-Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she insisted. "Is there a point to you being here?"
Go away, go away, go away-
Oliver seemed to dither around his question and Cali tapped her foot impatiently. She didn't have time for this. She wanted to be alone for a little longer, throw a few more things around her apartment, and then go over to her old home and confront her father about it all.
Finally, Oliver mustered enough courage to ask, "Plan a Christmas Party with me?"
Cali considered him, took him in head-to-toe. He seemed...smaller today, less to his usually dominant presence. Something had obviously happened, and if she were in a better place, she might have asked him about it.
But she wasn't in a better place. So she met his eyes, said an empathic, "no," and closed the door in his face.
. . .
If ever Oliver had chosen between two people, and he'd chosen wrong.