A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.

Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.

The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!

Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!

LOST AND FOUND
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(12 of 24)

Location:
BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER
(ARGUS designation)

They had built a life for themselves here over the years. It was more than that, really. They had inserted themselves into this world and held there a position of notoriety, of renown. They lived comfortably, and they were pillars of their community. Every so often, some reporter would wish to interview them, to inquire on their history, to ask the questions many wished to have answered. As known as they were, on some aspects they were perceived as very private people. A simple search, even a more involved one, would dish out a very straightforward background, one that stood up to scrutiny. Early life, education, careers, marriage, and everything they were known for, from business to philanthropy… If anyone ever found it a bit too by the book, they never made any noise of it, and that was just as well, because it had all been fabricated.

Well, not all of it, no. Some of it may have been altered, molded to present circumstances, but at its core, the story was their own, the story of Robert and Moira Queen.

Except those weren't their names, not the ones they had been born to. And that was hardly the most incriminating lie they had been perpetrating. If false identities were bad, imagine how the people would react to know they weren't even human. Imagine how they would react to know not only that the Earth they lived on was a shattered mess of alternate worlds, but that they had been halfway responsible for its creation?

After all these years, it had gotten easier to 'live the lie' every day. By now, they were Robert and Moira through and through, lived their lives as though there was nothing else, as though they had always done it, and there had not been a before. But then sometimes… sometimes, the past would manifest itself, catching them off guard, and then they would have to remember, who they'd been… what they'd lost… who they'd lost.

They had come to Earth, no Main, no Breach, they had come to Earth, seeking refuge, following the destruction of their own world. They had been preparing to wed even as they had been scrambling to engineer their escape from the doomed planet, and so when they had landed on Earth and gone about creating their human identities, they had made their marriage part of their cover by finally having their wedding, there with human customs. This was who they were now, Robert Queen and his wife, Moira. And before long, the Queens would bring a son into the world. They would call him Oliver. For ten years it would be the three of them, before their son would be joined by a daughter they called Thea.

Not three years later, Earth would be ripped apart. Not three years later, Robert and Moira Queen would find themselves trapped here on Breach Earth. Not three years later, they would lose their children.

They couldn't know for certain whether they had lived or died when the rupture had occurred. All they knew was that, when it was all said and done, they were nowhere to be found, and when they thought back to the last moments before everything had changed… In their torn hearts there was no possibility that they had survived. All these years later, nothing and no one had given them reason to believe otherwise. As far as the people of Haven Quarter were concerned, the Queens had never had children. Never would they abuse the memories of their son or daughter.

On this day, Moira Queen had been going about her life, with the precision and the routine of one who relied on the structure of her schedule, finding the alternative to mean a loss of control, a sinking into the depths of a grief she was still attempting to cope with. Leaving her home in the morning, she had appointments to see to, an event to coordinate, errands to run… She worked through these tasks with some amount of ease, but then that was what years of this life had earned her, the cogs turning smoothly. But then it was all suddenly pulled to a grinding halt, when he appeared.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" he spoke smoothly as he came to stand at her side. She froze, looking at him. Of all the things she worked so hard not to think about every day, the knowledge that he was here, too, was right there at the top next to the loss of her children. The two things could not be parted from one another, especially as it was that none of this would have happened if not for him. Malcolm Merlyn had broken the Earth in two and some, and they… they held part of the blame, too. He had caused it to happen, but they hadn't been able to stop him.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice steady despite what chaos may have reigned inside her head.

"Come, now, Moira, can't an old friend look in on an old friend once in a while?" he casually asked, and even without his saying it, she knew exactly what he meant to add to this question. He never said a word, but he didn't have to. He would only have to look at her, and there the words would seem to hang between them. In this case, the unspoken tag went something like 'especially with what we share.'

A moment of weakness, that was always what she had thought of the affair. It would have been little more than a blip, forgotten and submitted to the past without consequence or care, if not for the very, very real consequence of that weakness… Thea.

She had never told Robert, about any of it, and as far as he would have known, their daughter was theirs and no one else's. She had never told him, but she had long ago been left to understand that he knew the truth. She didn't know how he'd found out, or when. All she knew was that, on those times where they allowed themselves the memory of the children they had lost, Thea was very much his little girl, a vibrant thing not yet three years old the last time they'd seen her, and the loss of her weighed on his heart just as much as hers. And Malcolm… Robert was as quietly aware of his part in this as the rest, and it could only add to the disdain he bore for the man.

All these years living on this other Earth, and they continued to dance this dance, living their made-up lives, interacting where common circles forced them to interact but otherwise maintaining the lies of their lives with a marked expertise.

And so for him to approach her like this, out of the blue, Moira knew this could not be routine.

"What do you want?" she repeated herself, looking at him with steely determination. Her unspoken words went something like 'say what you have to say or leave me alone.' He sighed, sounding almost disappointed.

"I have something I thought you might like to see."

"I don't think so," she turned to walk away from him. He caught hold of her arm as she went, stopping her, and she pulled herself free with a sharp move, turning back to stare him down. "Whatever you think you might have, whatever you think might get me to let you back into our lives, I would think long and hard before I…"

"Your children are alive, Moira," he cut her off, and it felt as though he had struck her into silence, as a rage filled her. Of all the low things for him to say to insinuate himself… "I can prove it," he went on, holding his hands out in a gesture of openness. The thing that almost hurt the most was that, looking at him, she could see something there that told her he was either telling the truth or he genuinely believed that he was telling the truth: he thought his daughter was alive.

"How do you know?" she forced herself to ask.

"Let's just say I've had some… contact, with the other Earth." He wasn't going to say what this contact was, and at this point she didn't care enough to ask. All she wanted was to hear the rest.

"And?"

"And…" he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out what she soon saw were a trio of photographs. He handed her the first two, surveillance photos, by the looks of them, and as her eyes processed their content, they quickly betrayed her by welling up with tears. One of those two photos showed a man, and she only had to see his eyes to have the image of her son, all of twelve years old, flash up in her mind's eye. Oliver… That was him, no doubt to it. And the other… The other showed a young woman, and Moira's fingers couldn't help but reach out and trace at those features… Thea… her little girl… Oh, Thea… Oliver… Her heart felt like it hadn't beat with as much life in so many years, but now, now it was making leaps and flips. Her children… "Hey…" Malcolm put his hand to her shoulder, and it took a moment for her to realize he was doing it before she could shake that hand off and look back at him. "Sorry," he spoke, as she tried to pull herself together again. She was clinging to those photos like a lifeline.

"Why are you telling me this now, why alone?"

"Oh, even I know better than to confront Robert Queen in private," he told her.

"But that's not all of it, is it?" she didn't buy his excuse.

"I am telling you now because I've only just found out," he spoke with a firmness she knew enough to recognize as honesty. "And I am telling you at all because, whatever our past may be, and regardless of the fact that you will never acknowledge me in that way, we share a daughter, and I owed you as much. Especially with what she and your son have been up to."

"What they've been…" she frowned at him, just as he held out the third picture. In the moments after she'd taken it from him, he was gone, and she was left standing on her own, the third picture held on top of the other two. Moira stared at this new image, and if not for the ones she had been shown just before, she would likely not have understood what she was looking at. But she had, and she did, and the revelation, compacted with the knowledge that the two of them were alive at all…

Whatever she'd had left on her schedule for the day had been forgotten in that moment, as she'd gone to find her husband. He had been at his office, but she had called him and urgently recalled him home. She had hoped her tone would impress that urgency on him, and as he came speeding through the door soon after, she knew it had done just that.

"Moira? Are you alright? What's the matter?" he asked, approaching her where she sat. She motioned for him to come and join her, and he did, continuing to look at her with the worry she had given him with her call.

"Malcolm Merlyn approached me today," she came right out with it. She could see the anger rising in him, aimed at the man, not her, and she silenced him before he had even said a word. "He gave me these," she placed the first two photos on the low table in front of them. She watched Robert as he turned and looked at the images, watched the moment when he looked at the man and woman on them and saw them for who they were. He picked up the two photos, one in each hand. He stared at the picture of their son, at the picture of their daughter… Knowing their source, she could see a part of him wanted to see trickery, but there was no denying what they had now both seen. No trick to it, they were Oliver and Thea in those photos. They were alive.

"How long do you think he's been holding on to this information?" he asked after a minute, his voice coming off just a bit hoarse.

"He claims he only just found out recently," Moira replied.

"And you believe him?"

"For now I have no reason to doubt him. But, no, not really. Whether he's telling the truth or not, right now all that matters is that they're alive, Robert." His anger at the other man could not hold against the power of that statement.

"They're alive," he repeated, a smile creeping up on to his face, up hers, too, as he reached out to embrace her. She let out a deep breath, holding him.

"There's something else," she told him after they'd pulled away again. He tensed hesitantly. She held out the third photo to him.

It had been taken as covertly as the other two had been, but this one was different, for the precision which had been needed in order to capture it. To Moira it had instantly brought the idea that, in order for whoever had taken the picture to actually take it, they would have had to know the two of them would show up… and they would have had to know that it was them under the masks they wore.

Robert had looked back to her, the same realization hitting him. It was all so much for them to grasp at once, even though the knowledge that the two of them had lived and grown to adulthood, it should have been a foregone conclusion that the two of them would inherit the abilities that their heritage entailed. And now they saw that, not only had they inherited those abilities, but they were using them, in disguise but using them all the same. Malcolm had left before Moira could question him more, ask him what else he knew, and the only conclusion she could reach was that this had been exactly his intention. He had dropped this information in her lap, and maybe now he figured she and Robert would have no choice but to reach out to him again.

"Why would he go to you with this now?" Robert asked her. She looked at him, the words failing, but her eyes saying plenty. Robert bowed his head for a moment before looking back at her. "There has to be a reason."

"I've been thinking as much," Moira allowed herself to speak. "Whatever he's up to now, you and I know very well what he's capable of. If it's anything like that, then we need to stop him." She didn't want to say aloud what she had started to think, but at this point she had to. "Do you suppose he decided to show us these as a warning? Stay out of it, or this time they'll be lost for certain?" He reached for her hand, gave it a squeeze, and she squeezed his hand back.

"Not on our lives," he vowed, and she nodded.

They may have been stranded on their own when they had first come to this place, but things were different now. Robert and Moira Queen had allies. These were not the people who knew their public image alone, no. There were those here on this Earth who knew they were not of this world, of any Earth, because they weren't either. And if Malcolm was planning something now, they were not going to let him get away with it. Once they had been unable to stop him and they had paid the price, as every other citizen of Earth did… as their children did…

Their children… It had been one thing to believe they had died all those years ago, but now that they knew they were alive, it carried some of its own pain to imagine it, to imagine the two of them, orphaned so young, fending for themselves… Moira looked at the pictures, wondering about the lives they'd had, the people they'd become, if what it led them to were those masks… What had they been doing out there? And if they were ever reunited…

"We have to get to them," she spoke, a determination pressing itself into her words as she looked back to her husband. "They have to know we're still here." He had that look in his eyes, too.

"We'll get them back. I promise."

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming May 5th!