Chapter Text
Oliver crouched behind a car, listening to the infected man walking a few yards in front of him. It still had a face and wore bloodied, raggedy clothes. It was probably bitten just a few days earlier. It groaned and limped on its left foot while dragging its right leg behind it.
At this stage, it was colloquially classified as a “runner”, but this one was partially lame and was less likely to charge at Oliver if it saw him. But it could alert others that wouldn’t hesitate to bite him or rip him apart.
Cordyceps. Before the outbreak five years ago, Oliver had never heard of mind-altering fungi. (That would have required him to pay attention in biology instead of cutting class to canoodle with the flavor of the week.) Experience had been a fast teacher. Any knowledge gaps had been quickly filled with ample infected target practice from the time the Gambit wrecked until now.
He drew back his bow string, aimed, and fired in one smooth motion. The arrow hit its target, lodging itself into the infected’s chest and ending its misery.
He looked around and listened for any more threats in close proximity but found none. Standing, he walked over and retrieved the arrow, wiping the blood and carnage from the tip with a corner of his shirt before returning it to the quiver on his back.
Although the coast seemed clear, he instinctively stuck to the shadows as he made his way out of the suburbs and into the city.
He ducked into an alleyway and nocked an arrow when he saw a figure walking down the street towards him. The swagger in the stranger’s step combined with his dark uniform indicated he was probably law enforcement though he wasn’t wearing the typical SCPD blue. His shirt and pants were all black and he sported a visored helmet.
The officer slowed down and unholstered his pistol as he neared Oliver. He hadn’t made any noise, so the man couldn’t have heard him. But the natural instinct that tells people when they are being watched must have warned him that Oliver was nearby.
The tense silence was interrupted by a woman's voice speaking from the stranger’s walkie talkie.
“Radio check?” the voice asked.
The officer stopped walking but continued to scan the area as he raised his walkie talkie to his face and said “Loud and clear.”
Oliver recognized his voice. Quentin Lance. He lowered his bow but didn’t stow the arrow yet. Even if Quentin saw him and recognized him, he still might shoot. Oliver wouldn’t blame him. He probably would have done the same thing in his shoes.
Five years ago, Oliver had ruined a perfectly good relationship with Quentin’s oldest daughter, Laurel, by running away with his youngest daughter, Sara. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his and Sara’s little pleasure cruise led to the shipwreck which ended her life and should also have ended his.
Sarah got lucky. Her suffering ended before it began. Oliver would have to live in this hellscape until the day he died.
“What’s your 20?” the voice asked.
“By the apartments on 34th,” he said, “I might have found something.”
“Do you need backup?”
“I don’t think so.”
“10-0.”
“Copy,” he said, returning his walkie talkie to his belt.
Oliver saw more details in Quentin’s uniform as he got closer to his hiding spot. He wore a Kevlar vest with FEDRA written in white letters on the chest and shield patches sewed onto the shoulders.
A few seconds later, he found Oliver and shouted, “Hands in the air! And come out where I can see you.”
Oliver complied, stepping out of the shadows with his hands behind his head.
Quentin’s eyes widened. “Oliver? How the hell—?” A quiet moment passed as a look of confusion brightened into a glimmer of hope. “If you’re alive—where’s Sara? Where’s my baby girl?”
Oliver shook his head. All he could manage to say was, “I’m sorry.”
Any light that had sparked in Quentin's eyes was immediately snuffed out and was replaced by a look of deep sadness and cold resentment. He curled his right hand into a fist and Oliver thought he was going to punch him.
Instead, he found a scanner on the opposite hip from his gun holster and held it up to Oliver’s forehead. When the light turned green, he huffed and said, “Damn it! If you were infected, I’d have an excuse to shoot you.”
It wouldn’t be the worst thing , Oliver thought.
Quentin blinked away a tear, cleared his throat, and handcuffed him.
“What are you doing?”
“Everyone who comes into the city has to be thoroughly inspected. We have a checkpoint just down the block.”
“But I’m not infected.”
“Like I give a damn,” Quentin said, pushing him forward.
****
Thea sat in her math class, doodling flowers and dresses in the margins of her notebook. She’d hated school before the outbreak. Now, FEDRA made it even worse.
As she drew, she daydreamed of going to a formal dance with her boyfriend, Roy. He’d told her he couldn’t dance, but in her mind, they swayed back and forth on a crowded floor as she rested her head on his chest like Buffy did when Angel unexpectedly showed up at her prom.
The thought filled her with frustration and she scribbled out her absent-minded sketches.
She was only 13 when the world ended. She’d abandoned any hopes for a homecoming, spring formal, junior prom, or a senior cotillion before she even started her freshman year. Now, the glamorous life of the American teenager was confined to the boxed sets of her favorite shows she’d left in her room back at her childhood home.
“Thea,” Mrs. Valdez’s voice snapped her out of her trance.
She looked up.
“Solve the problem on the board,” her teacher said.
Thea stood and walked to the front of the room where the devil herself handed her a short piece of chalk.
She stared at the equation. It might as well have been written in Greek. There were too many letters and not enough numbers.
Calculus was the absolute worst. She did alright with algebra, but this felt much more difficult. Roy was good at math. He helped her with homework when he could, but she could never quite wrap her head around it.
She glanced over at the clock above the door. There were still 15 minutes left in class. That was more than enough time for Valdez to revel in her struggle.
Thea found the derivative, but then stared blankly at the green chalkboard. Her mind went blank when she heard students whispering behind her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying not to cry as she turned to her teacher and handed back the chalk.
Valdez smirked and nodded. Thea did the walk of shame back to her desk as the teacher called on a kiss-up from the front row to replace her.
She pretended to pay attention for the rest of class, but embarrassment and feeling her classmates’ judging eyes on her made it impossible to focus.
When the bell finally rang, she quickly stuffed her pencil, notebook and textbook into her backpack and beelined for the door, accidentally brushing shoulders with the girl from the front row who had swooped in just in time to save the lesson. She annoyed her before, but now that annoyance had boiled into disdain.
That‘s all school was now; science, math, survival skills, and ”history”. Only utilitarian stuff. No art, no sports, no drama, no music. Those stupid cordyceps destroyed everything that made life worth living.
Everything except—
Thea’s heart started racing when she felt warm, calloused fingers weaving through hers. She followed Roy as he pulled her into a supply closet and shut the door behind them. The small space between mop buckets and brooms forced them to stand inches apart, making it the perfect spot.
He held her even closer with one hand and messed up her hair with the other. They kissed like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. The new semester had just started and they didn’t have any classes together, so it might as well have been a century even though their last clandestine meeting was only two days ago.
This closet had become a very convenient meeting spot between classes over the past two weeks. They repeated their dirty little habit every other day (B days) between 3rd and 4th periods when they both had their second to last classes on the same side of the building. Not seeing each other at all made A days excruciatingly long.
They spent as much time as they could together outside of school, but curfew was so early and work assignments ate up several hours of every evening. This left them with weekends and a few minutes every other day.
“How was math?” he asked, pausing their kiss to breathe.
“Awful,” she said, “I wasn't paying attention and Valdez embarrassed me in front of the whole class. I felt so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” he said, “You got into calculus.”
Thea ignored his comment and asked “How was history?”
“Kinda hard to concentrate when it’s just a bunch of revisionist crap,” Roy said as he tucked a ringlet of hair behind Thea’s ear, “I was just thinking about you the whole time.”
She kissed him again, combing upward through his hair on the back of his head with her fingers.
“Is that new perfume?” he asked as she kissed his ear.
“Do you like it? I traded with a girl in my dorm.”
“It’s nice,” he said as he nuzzled her neck.
They continued their makeout session for a few minutes as the tiny room heated up several degrees. What felt like only seconds later, they were interrupted by the bell.
Thea rolled her eyes. Roy swore. Five minutes wasn’t enough time between classes.
“Meet me after work,” he said, “out by the old Walmart parking lot. We need to talk.”
“That’s never followed by good news.”
“It is this time,” he said, “but I can’t tell you about it here. Too many ears.”
“What about curfew?”
”Just make sure nobody sees you.”
Thea nodded, curiosity adding to the high from the hormones that were still coursing through her body.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, “Mr. Carter’s going to tank my grade if I’m late again.”
“You’re already late.”
“You know what I mean. I just need to go first since my next class is on the other side of the building.”
Staggering their exits reduced suspicion of their secret rendez-vous.
“We really need to find a more convenient closet,” he laughed.
“How’s my hair?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Thea quickly took out the elastic that had been holding the top section of her hair in a half ponytail.
“How’s that?”
Roy ran his fingers through a few sections, covering a freshly-formed hickey before saying, “Looks good.”
“I love you,” she said. Then she kissed his cheek before opening the door and stepping into the hallway, leaving him with a stunned look on his face.
Thea was practically floating as she speed walked down the hall. She hadn’t planned to use the L word today. It just sort of happened. She could tell he loved her back, but they’d never said those three little words out loud. Until today. She meant what she said. Whether or not he was ready to say it back, it was true.
She rounded the corner to the hallway and was almost to Mr. Carter’s door when an announcement came over the PA system.
“Thea Queen, please report to the office. Thea Queen, please report to the office.”
Her stomach tied itself into a knot. Someone must have seen her and Roy sneaking into the closet and snitched. They’d implement hall monitors just because two seniors wanted to be together. It wasn’t fair. Couldn’t she have just one spark of happiness in her day? Was that too much to ask?
She turned around. Ironically, the office was down the same hallway as their closet. She slowed her steps. There was no point in hurrying when she was about to lose the privilege of seeing her boyfriend at school.
When she eventually reached the office door, she opened it, fully expecting to see the principal ushering her into his office for a reprimand.
Instead, she saw the slightly older face of a man she thought was dead.
He had some facial hair now, but other than the deep-set exhaustion in his eyes, he was the same brother she’d grown up with.
Tears welled in her eyes when a voice she’d thought she’d never hear again said “Hey, Speedy.”
*****
“Ollie?” Thea asked. She was too shocked to say anything else. Instead, she ran to him and he wrapped his arms around her as both brother and sister cried.
She’d grown up. She wasn’t the scrawny little 13 -year-old he remembered. She was taller now, though not by much. Her voice had a raspier quality to it. But she was still his Speedy and he was still her Ollie.
“You died. Y-you we’re dead. How—?” she asked, refusing to let go as if she was afraid he’d somehow disappear again.
“That’s a long story,” he said, “What do you say you skip class and we can go tell Mom I’m back?”
Thea didn’t respond for a moment then stepped back and said, “Ollie, Mom died three years ago.”
A knife twisted in Oliver’s stomach. Thea had been all alone for three years? He should have been there for her. Maybe if he’d stayed home, he could have saved their mother too. Things should have been different and it was all his fault for leaving. It was all his fault for being so selfish.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, “I should have —“
“We all should’ve done a lot of things,” she said, “at least now I have you back.”
The secretary excused Thea for the rest of the day and the siblings walked quietly outside.
Without discussing a plan, they automatically started walking down the sidewalk in the direction of what used to be Queen Consolidated.
“It was cordyceps,” Thea said, breaking the silence and addressing the elephant.
Oliver stayed quiet as he listened.
“Mom, Reisa, Walter, and I—“
“Walter?” Oliver asked. He recognized the name of his dad’s best friend and business partner, but wasn’t expecting to hear it used in the same sentence as his mom, his sister, and their maid.
“It was weird for me too,” Thea said, “He and mom got married about a year after you left.”
“A year?! Were they seeing each other before?”
Thea shook her head, “I don’t think so. Not that you have any room to talk.”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t matter. They both got infected two years after that.”
Thea walked slower and started shaking.
Oliver grabbed her shoulder and forced her to stop walking.
“Our house was supposed to be safe,” she said, her voice sounding half angry and half scared, “We had the best security. Everything was supposed to be fine. We were supposed to be fine.”
Oliver wrapped his arms around her as she started crying.
“Clickers found a broken spot in our fence,” she said, “Our property’s too damn big. I watched it from my bedroom window. They got Raisa in the garden. They—they tore her to shreds.”
Oliver held her head as if protecting her from the trauma she’d already endured.
“I heard gunshots and screams coming from downstairs and all I could do was hide in my room.”
She stopped talking and sobbed into his shoulder, struggling to breathe.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s alright.”
“I shot them, Ollie,” she coughed out the words like they were poisonous, “I couldn’t leave my room for two days, but on day three, I found one of Walter’s guns and I- I—“
“They weren’t Mom and Walter anymore,” Oliver said softly.
“It was still their faces,” she said, “It was still their screams.”
“You had to,” he said, gently stroking her hair as she cried into his shoulder, “You had to.”