. Ghosts That We Knew .
AN: Before I get any flames accusing me of plagiarism I'm Physics Magic, hence the similar name (will be linking to here from the Ao3 account as proof of it being me,) I found out recently that I can't access my old account - partly my fault as my laptop broke and I'm one of those people who doesn't remember passwords so they weren't saved anymore. Shame. And thus I couldn't access the account as I couldn't access the adjoined email and so I'm here with a new email, new account and hopefully a new and improved take on a semi-old fic of mine!
Sorry to anyone that enjoyed my two fics about the wait, I don't really have an excuse for it beyond life got in the way and as much as I love writing my real life comes first and always will. Plus losing half of the stuff you've written tends to make you lose your passion for writing. Sorry. On the plus side I'm finally at a point where I have free time, which is amazing, I'm at college and doing work and volunteering and still have time so I'm going back to writing.
However reading through my old drafts, plots and everything for this I've found certain plot points I did to not really be that great and just some of the chapter drafts and some of the uploaded chapters to not be as of high a standard as I'd like. I'm in no way a master of amazing writer but I'd like to think I've learnt and grown in the past year and so that's why everything seems different. I appreciate all of the favourites, follows and reviews on GTWK and HISTD - they all meant and still mean the world to me as they helped spur me on past my insecurities (I'm in no way a confident writer,) so I thank you all and hope that this is an improvement for all of you.
Would love it if some of you could leave a review, just saying about if you prefer this or the old version as if I've tried this and it turns out people preferred the old one then I may just continue with that as everything had been written it just needed editing and uploading. (Yay for google docs!)
And I still need a beta or just someone to bounce my ideas off so I have a general idea of whether it's a great or terrible one. As my plan for a lot of it has changed, before I was more scared to make big changes to canon for fear people would hate it but this time I feel as it's already been a year and less people are probably interested in this anyways I have a lot less to lose.
Summary: Thea Queen wasn't going to let her brother leave her behind on what was meant to be the trip of a lifetime but she'll soon come to regret her decision. AU in which Thea Queen finds herself on the Queen's Gambit on the fateful night that it sank. Five years later she returns to Starling City alongside her brother to carry out their Father's final wish and save the city he failed all those years ago.
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The Return Of Those Lost
Thea Queen runs through the harsh jungle of Lian Yu, away from Kovar and away from all the ghosts they'd be leaving behind. She's sprinting, desperately racing towards the shore alongside her brother in a desperate bid to make it to the sandy beach of Lian Yu in time - it's their one chance at making it home. Their one shot.
And she's terrified they'll miss it.
She grimaces and fights to ignore the pain rippling through her body as the island pulls her back as branches nip and tear and scratch her skin whilst she runs through the overgrowth. She didn't let it slow her down, she wouldn't, pain is one of the things she's learnt to deal with and ignore over the past five years. A few nicks and scratches were nothing compared to what she'd been through, what the both of them had been through - burns and cuts and bullet wounds were permanently etched into her skin as scars. Those injuries had all taught her that pain was a message that you could choose to ignore and she was ignoring it right now as she ran.
Oliver looks back towards her from where he's running ahead, a rare smile playing at his lips as he gestures for her to hurry up. "Keep up Speedy," He teases from ahead, his tone a contrast to the one he'd had for the past year.
She hopes it sticks around.
They climb up the rocky face of one of Lian Yu's hills, it's the perfect vantage point for them to overlook the shore and look out for the fishing boat. Their ticket home. It's the same shore they washed up on all those years ago, two scared kids with no idea of the hell that awaited them - now it was going to be the shore that sends them home.
A small brown spot in the distance, a speck of brown amongst the blue sea surrounding the island. The rickety fishing boat is there, it's there and they're going to be going home. She prays that their light show will be enough, that the men Anatoli paid off will have done their jobs right - they have to notice them. They need to.
Oliver picks up the bow and loads in an arrow, scraping the unique arrowhead along the stone until it sparks. Embers spark and fly away from it and as the seconds drag on she starts to worry that it isn't going to spark, that this will be it and they'll be condemned to another five years of hell - that this is the punishment for what they've done.
But then it sparks, it sparks and Oliver fires - the arrow landing dead centre in the heart of the bonfire. It burst to life, flames engulfing the pile of dead bush and wood they'd built the night before and she watches as it grows - the smoke rising and billowing into the sky.
The fishermen couldn't possibly miss this.
"Always a flair for the dramatics," She teases with a small smile. "Ready to go home?"
He nods and returns the smile, pulling up his hood and readying himself for the next part.
The two wait for the boat to turn towards the shore and watch as it approaches, it's then that they jump down from the ledge and fun for the beach. Run towards their would be saviours, she follows behind Oliver as he runs down from the ledge and towards where the fishermen are pulling up at the sand. The heat from the bonfire burns and she eyes up the small monument to the right of them, a mask with an arrow through it's eye - Slade's mask. Her face contorts for a second as the thought of their former friend hits her, as she thinks about what happened to them and the debt she owes him.
She can only hope that whatever happened to him was quick, he deserved that much.
The sound of the men shouting in Mandarin brings her back to the present and she finds herself kneeling down next to Oliver, he's pulled his hood down and revealed his face to them although she doubts they recognise it now. It's covered in dirt, branches and leaves and the beard adds years on whilst she is nothing like the twelve year old girl in the missing posters - not that it matters now, the men gesture for the pair of them to follow and let them onto their boat - shooting them both questions in broken English and seemingly surprised when they answer in Mandarin.
Who are they?
What are they doing here?
Where are they from?
What happened to them?
She didn't answer the final question, there was too much to say and so instead she shakes her head and pulls the blanket they've given her closer. Allowing the heavy fabric to wrap around her and provide some kind of comfort. The men wait for a second eyeing up their new company before the elder of the two nods at the younger and tells him to make way before telling them that he'll take them to Hong Kong.
She smiles and murmurs her thanks whilst her brother does the same.
They're finally on their way.
.
Thea Queen hates boats, which isn't surprising given her history with them; The Gambit, The Freighter and whatever boat had pulled her from the North China Sea. Being on one again has her on full alert, her muscles are tense and she can feel the adrenaline pumping around her body. Oliver's voice helps ground her, helps her focus on something other than the panic inside her because she is panicking. She's so close, they both are and every time over the past five godforsaken years she's come close to a happy ending - something good happening, something terrible has happened and ruined it.
And she's terrified that's going to happen again.
"It's strange," He murmurs, "Seeing the island from a distance like this, it always felt so big. It looks small now, smaller than I'd imagined."
She thinks for a second, turning her attention to the island in front of them and nods in agreement. "Neither of us really had a chance to look at it last time, not that we chose to leave then." Water and fire had torn them apart as the Amazo had sunk, she'd been pulled one way whilst Oliver had been pulled another way. It meant that it had been a year before she could see him again.
At least this time they were leaving together.
"At least this time we know where we're going...we're going home." She murmurs, allowing hope to sink into her tone and a smile to flash across her face.
Oliver squeezes her shoulder before getting up and heading over towards the Fishermen, she watches as the fishermen almost jerk up from what they're doing as Oliver nears them, she wonders if they're afraid. Afraid of the two strangers they found on an island. She would be.
The two men did seem nice enough though, giving them both blankets and making sure they both had plenty to drink. So she wasn't going to judge them if they were afraid, it's something to respect - being kind to who you fear. She hopes Anatoli paid them well.
"Qǐng wǒ kěyǐ jièyòng diànhuà, ràng wǒ hé wǒ de mèimei kěyǐ gěi wǒmen de mǔqīn dǎ diànhuà? [Please could I borrow a phone, so my Sister and I could phone our Mother?]"
The two seem happy to oblige, nodding as one hurries to grab their satellite phone. Oliver mutters his thanks and hurries back over to her, he sits down next to her and they both stare at the phone for a moment. The weight of what's about to happen finally hitting them.
"You ready for this Speedy?" And truthfully she doesn't know, is she ready to go home? See her Mom and Tommy and get to be with them again. Her emotions were at war inside of her, anxiety, excitement, trepidation all rolled into one.
She knows she wants to but the fears still there, the fear they won't be able to reconcile the image of the girl they have with the person she is now.
Looking at her Brother she knows the same war is going on inside of him, his face was blank but she had learnt how to read people years ago. His hands were clenched and trembling slightly.
She knows he had refused to return home once because of the fear he had of the darkness inside of him and because he refused to return without her.
She was glad he was returning home now.
Even if it was more so for her and their Father than for his own sake.
His hands were shaking, she notices, as he dials the number into the phone. Anatoli had checked for them before they'd left and Thea had memorised it off by heart - she remembers how Olive froze as Anatoli recounted the number and how he'd softly murmured to neither of them in particular that the number hadn't changed.
As the dial tone begins and the sound of the phone ringing fills their anxious silence Thea feels the fear surge forwards again.
What if she didn't believe them? Didn't want them? Couldn't accept who they had become? The thoughts swirl inside of her head as the anxiety grows, for all of her bravado and brave words she's still afraid. A fact Slade would taunt her about if he was here with them, in five years she'd never learnt how to not be afraid - only to control and use that fear instead of letting it rule her.
But that skill isn't serving her well now as the silence grows and only the sound of the waves and the dialling of the phone fills it.
Oliver places the phone in between them both so that she could hear too, please pick up is what she repeats over and over again in her head as she silently wills her Mother to pick up. Wills her to not ignore the phone and answer it, she needs to hear her voice. She needs some kind of confirmation that this is real, that she's going home.
That they both are.
"Hello?" A voice rings out, distorted and hard to hear over the sound of the waves around them but Thea hears it all the same. She gasps and feels herself grab her brother's arm, digging her fingers into his skin as she looks at him with a joyful expression.
It's their Mom.
"Hello?" She asks again, her tone bordering on one of annoyance and it's with a start that Thea realises she remembers it. She remembers hearing that same tone when her Mother would tell Oliver off for his drunken escapades and tell her off for whatever trouble she'd pulled at school that day. "Who is this?"
"Mom...it's Oliver.." He begins and Thea stares at the expression on his face, his stoic mask is fraying at the edges as his chin trembles and voice wavers.
He's on the verge of tears, just like her and it's a reassuring thought. He's just as emotional about it as her. They can both hear the barely suppressed sob ring out over the speaker, followed by a choked strangled sound. The voice that follows it is harder but there are tears underneath it. "My son has been dead for five years, he died with his Father and sister...please don't call this number again-"
"Mom!" Thea cries out, breaking her stunned silence as her voice trembles. She can't hang up on them, she can't. "It's me...it's Thea...it's us I promise...please don't hang up! When I was eight I fell off a horse and broke my arm, I always used to beg you to buy the monkeys at the zoo and when I was six I made you a paper mache doll for your birthday and you displayed it for all your friends when they came round." She pauses as she tries to think of other stories, stories she hadn't thought of or spoken about in years but that had come flooding back at the sound of her Mother's voice.
"Mom...I swear...we're both alive...please just listen to my voice..our voices...it's us." Her brother pleads between tears as Thea closes her eyes, silently begging whatever or whoever is out there to stop their Mother hanging up on them. "We didn't die on the Gambit...I'm alive...and we're okay and we're coming home...we're coming back. Just please don't leave us."
"Please don't go," Thea adds with a sob.
"T-Thea...Oliver.." Their Mom breathes out, sounding as if she was on the verge of tears, "Is that really you?" She asks with a hopeful note and Thea knows that is must be as hard for her as them to let the hope set in.
"It's us. Really and truly it's us, please don't hang up!" Thea swears desperately, she couldn't let their Mom go without talking to her, they had had to wait five years to just hear her voice again and she doesn't want her to leave them now.
A sob echoes through the phone, followed by another and that's all it takes before they're all crying. Her Mother's voice comes in through the speaker and Thea strains to hear it over the sound of the waves and interference, "No. No I'd never, I'm not going anywhere. Oh my beautiful boy, my sweet girl...I never thought, I'd hoped-" She cuts herself off and Thea wishes that her Mother was standing in front of them. "I-Is your Father with you? Did he make it too?"
Thea looks at Oliver with an agonised expression and a silence stretches out between them, she doesn't know what to say to that. Do they tell her what happened or just confirm the truth.
It seems their silence is enough because she breaks down into a fresh set of sobs again and Oliver moves the phone closer to his mouth so he can be the one to soothe her. "I'm sorry Mom, he didn't make it off of the Gambit." Thea thinks of the grave made of stones, thinks of the gunshots and her own cries and nods at Oliver. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is lie.
A choked gasp accompanies the admission. "Oh, sweethearts. I can't imagine what the pair of you have been through, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." More sobs follow and Thea feels her cheeks are wet and tastes salt on her lips, she realises she's crying too.
"Where are you?" Their Mother asks finally.
Oliver answers then, "Off of the coast of Hong Kong, a fishing boat picked us up. We got lucky." He wraps his arm around Thea and rubs circles into her back in an attempt to comfort her.
"We're not sure other than that but we're coming home Mom. I swear." Thea adds with a sniffle, "I love you."
"We'll see you soon! I promise." Oliver says into the phone adding onto what she said, his voice starting to steady but the teartracks still stain his face. White streaks through the dirt caked onto his face. "I'll phone you once we're at the embassy, I swear as soon as we get there I'll do it. We're coming back home Mom."
"We promise!" Thea chimes in, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Okay," Her Mother murmurs and Thea can tell she doesn't want to end it. She doesn't want to say goodbye to the children she's just gotten back but Thea knows the fishermen will be wanting their phones back and she needs a moment to steady herself because her Mother's voice has shattered the resolve that she thought she had. "I'll see you soon Oliver, Thea...I'll see you soon."
"We know," Thea replies softly, "We love you too."
"I love you both!" Is her Mother's parting phrase. The line goes dead and Oliver reluctantly hands over the phone to the fisherman waiting nearby, the man had been hovering the whole time and Thea glares at him slightly, giving it bad with a choked mutter of thanks. She lets him pull her closer, the tears are still running down both of their faces and the fishermen are eyeing them from a distance - likely wondering who exactly their two strange island dwellers are but she doesn't care about them.
Hearing her Mother's voice means it's suddenly all real, they're going home and they're going to see her again. Going to see everyone they left behind again. And they're going to finally carry out their Father's wishes.
Oliver would get to fulfil his mission and she would get to do hers.
They were both on a mission to carry out their Father's wishes but Thea's was different, her Father's video message - his message to her asked her to do something other than right his wrongs. And atone for his sins. He asked her to look out for her brother too and that is exactly what she's planning on doing because Anatoli was right - the deal with the Hood could only go on for so long and eventually something was going to break.
She's just going to make sure she's there when it does.
Her brother is going to save the city and she's going to save him from himself, she owes him that much.
She's going home.
She and Ollie.
They're finally going home.
.
The Glades late at night is a scary place, often described as terrifying and downright dangerous by the elite of Starling City, Thomas Merlyn isn't one of them. He's sat in the Rebecca Merlyn Memorial Clinic, where he now spends most of his nights - a fact he's sure would have appalled the younger version of him, staring down a pile of paperwork that has grown at what is, quite frankly, an alarming rate. He's not having the best of nights, a terrible one really.
Another supplier has dropped out, alongside a sponsor. The Glades has lost its PR Appeal and it's becoming too dangerous of a place for drugs to be delivered. Even the legal kind. His last delivery was held up over birth control and before that the windows of the clinic were smashed in because they'd patched up the wrong person in the midst of yet another gang war.
The place his Mother had died trying to save, died loving, is going to hell and he's powerless to stop it.
He hears shouting outside, bottles being thrown and sirens somewhere in the distance - the Glades version of a birdsong. Just another confirmation of the state of the city. The Glades is rotting and being left to self destruct and he's running out of things he can do. Medicine and treatment can only go so far without supplies and his money can only do so much.
But he owes the clinic his life, he owes some of the people of the Glades his life and even if some will only ever see him as the rich playboy son of Malcolm Merlyn he's still Rebecca Merlyn's son. And so he refuses to sit back and do nothing. His Mother would have wanted him to do something and she's the only parent who's wishes he actually cares about. And it's that refusal to do nothing which means his nights are often spent pouring over paperwork and using his Merlyn charm to try and actually keep the place open and running, instead of throwing back shots and finding himself in a random woman's pants.
He still wakes up nursing a headache, it just has a different cause now.
He thinks it's better this way, there's only one woman he has eyes for anymore anyways.
If she can forgive him that is.
The buzzing of his phone jerks him out of his thoughts and he forces back a tired sigh as he answers it, "Hello! Thomas Merlyn-" And a trembling voice cuts off his usual greeting.
"Thomas-" It's Mrs Queen and instantly he's on alert, she sounds as if she's on the verge of tears and immediately he starts to gather his things. The woman is like a Mother to him and she's rarely the sort to show emotion, she can be warm and affectionate but she's always composed.
The fact that she's breaking down over the phone to him means something monumental has happened. And there are few things that would shake the typically composed Mrs Queen like this and a part of him doesn't want to know if what he's thinking is true.
"Mrs Queen?" He question as he shoves the files into a bag and fumbles to turn off the computer, "What's going on?"
"God Thomas," She chokes back a sob, "Are you near a television right now?"
He isn't and his brow creases as he tries to work out what exactly is going on, there aren't any televisions in his office and he wonders why he'd need to see one. "Mrs Queen is everything okay? Is Walter-" Sometimes news would break about Mrs Queen and her husband before he could find out but she's never rung him before. Never tried to give him a heads up. His hands are shaking as Mrs Queens' sobbing builds and his unease grows.
News about the company has never reduced her to tears before.
Only news about her family has and the only time he's heard her cry so much was five years ago when the Gambit sunk. He hopes that nothing like that has happened again, that Walter's okay because he fears that the Queen matriarch won't be able to survive another tragedy.
But her next words put those fears at ease.
"It's not Walter." Moira murmurs and Tommy wishes she'd just tell him what's going on. "Tommy, it's Oliver and Thea-" Those words send him on a spiral as the the possibilities flash through his mind, they're dead and their bodies have been found, they're alive and they've been found, only one of them has been found.
He hopes, prays that it's good news.
He can't lose them.
"They're alive." She finally says and the revelation sends Tommy into a sobbing mess himself as his world turns on it's axis.
Oliver and Thea are alive, his surrogate siblings are alive and they're coming home.
They're finally coming home.
He's finally getting them back.
.
AN: And so I chose to make it clearer from the start about who's going to be POV character: Thea (main) Oliver (main-ish) Tommy (secondary) and then small snippets of other POV's where it works best. So for example, without spoiling anything, during the Undertaking it will flick around to give an idea of the extent of the destruction and to show who/if anyone has died.
What do you think of the changes made in regards to Tommy? I promise there's a reason for them and they'll be explained in what's hopefully a good way that makes sense for his character. Tried to sow in snippets regarding all three of them and what's happened to them over the past five years so hopefully some of those hints caught your attention and hopefully this is an improvement on how the story was before.
Hopefully some of you will be willing to stick around, haha.