Author's Note: Hi guys. This is a multi-chapter fic – I hope – based on Mitch Albom's For One More Day. AU, so there aren't any superheroes or anything and Speedy only exists as Roy Harper. Everyone's background is about the same as in canon, only without the whole superpowers thing, and Wally lives with his uncle while Roy lives with Ollie Queen (Green Arrow) and Dick Grayson with Bruce Wayne (Batman). Oh, and Roy's an alcoholic, not a druggie, simply because I'm not sure I can weave a high!Roy into the whole doom-and-gloom atmosphere. =] I also made Connor Hawke the adopted son of Ollie Queen instead so it would fit into the plotline better. Hope you enjoy!

I: Prélude

A mountain collapsed before my eyes

and disappeared beneath my feet.

-Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself.

You want to know how I survived. You want to know how I went from a 4-point average student at law school to a forgotten alcholic without a job. But first, why I tried to kill myself, right?

It's okay. I don't mind. People do that. Measure themselves to me, I mean. It's like I'm the line dividing the two halves, between life and death. Between sanity and madness. If you don't cross the line, you're safe. You'd never consider stepping in front of a bus or throwing yourself off a building – but if you do, you might. They figure that I crossed the line. And I don't blame them, not really. People look at me and say, Could I ever get as close as he did?

The truth is, there is no line. There's just you, your life, and what you choose to do with it. Mess up or succeed or do whatever damn thing – but in the end, it's all down to what you do, what you've done. Who is there to catch you when you fall.

Or who isn't.

.

I think I started to lose it when my little brothers died. They weren't really my brothers, not by blood – but God, we were closer than if we'd been real siblings. Sometimes, when our guardian weren't there, it would just be the three of us, doing whatever we wanted to do, breaking rules and getting into trouble and after everything being just as close as we were at the start. I was twelve, one was ten and the other was two years younger, and we hung out and laughed and talked together, firmly believing that nothing could shake our friendship.

Things like that don't last forever.

We started drifting apart when I entered university as a law student. Looking back, I was the one who left, not them. I was young and rebellious and got into law school on a scholarship, thinking that the present was all that mattered and everything would be fine as long as I graduated well. I threw my entire being into studying and it paid off, at least at school; I was the top of every class and scored near perfect marks on every test. I told myself that doing well in school was all that mattered and believed it, too; I believed it like a fool and lost everything as a result.

My brothers died on a wet November morning. I wasn't there when it happened, and I should've been. So I lied. That was a bad idea. A funeral is not a place for secrets. They held them together, two graves dug in the earth at the same time, two small gray markers placed in the ground engraved with fancy letters. I watched the dirt fall into their graves trying to convince myself that it wasn't my fault, and my girlfriend held me tightly and whispered, "I'm sorry you didn't get to see them one last time, Roy," and that did it. Because the fact was that I hadn't bothered to see them one more time, that I hadn't bothered to say goodbye – these thoughts crashed over me like a tidal wave as I broke down and knelt with tears dripping down my cheeks and water seeping into my shoes.

After the funeral, I returned to university. That was a mistake. I got drunk immediately after I got back, overslept, stumbled into third period with a hangover, tried to make a move on the teacher and got expelled as a result. And something changed.

You know how one day can completely bend your life? Yeah. I do. For what seemed like forever, my brothers had been there, sometimes irritating and frustrating but still laughing and cheerful and alive. Whenever I got dumped by a girl or hung up on booze to return at three in the morning with a pounding headache, they would be there for me, slightly teasing, slightly amused but always there to help me. When I started law school, I'd begun to wish they'd leave me alone, always thinking that they were a nuisance, an annoyance, and so I stopped answering their calls and told them to leave me alone.

But then they did. They died. No more visits, no more emails. And, almost unconsciously, I started to fall apart.

I moved back to the huge mansion of my guardian, spending the day looking for a job and the night getting drunk at bars. My guardian and I locked horns constantly, so to speak, him yelling that I was throwing my life away and me screaming that it wasn't his business. My girlfriend visited me sometimes, bringing me to see a movie, eating at Italian restaurants; trying to bring me back to the present. I resented her attempts and made no effort to hide it. We fought more often and her visits grew shorted and less frequent. She left in tears more often than not and I almost always ended up at the bar giving myself a hangover from several bottles of beer. The problem was, we were both proud and it was hard for her to be in a relationship with a twenty-something year old jobless guy kicked out from university and living in the past. One night she and my guardian found me passed out on the floor cradling an old picture of my brothers and me laughing and splashing each other with water at the local swimming pool.

I left my family shortly thereafter – or they left me.

I am more shamed of that than I can say.

I moved to a small apartment. I grew resentful and distant. I didn't bother trying to contact my friends or family, and they didn't either. Frankly, I can't say I blame them. My brothers might have been able to get to me – they were always good at that – but they weren't there, and when you lose those dearest to you, it feels like you're going into every fight alone and without backup.

And one night, in November, I decided to kill myself.

Maybe you're surprised. Maybe you're thinking, a guy who did so well in university and had such great friends, surely he wouldn't sink this low? Maybe you're thinking that, well, at least he had the whole "dream come true" part.

You'd be wrong. All that happens when your dreams come true is the slow realization that they weren't what you'd expected.

And in the end, it won't save you.

.

What drove me to do it, what pushed me over the edge, was my guardian. Or more exactly, what he did.

He adopted a new son. He was called Connor Hawke. He was seventeen. He was "a wonderful person" and "a fantastic son."

I had never met him.

I only knew because of what it said on my guardian's letter.

Oliver Queen is pleased to announce that he has accepted Connor Hawke as his adopted son and legal successor of his property…

A perfect rectangle of white paper and words written in that achingly familiar scrawl, arriving at my apartment a few weeks after the event. Apparently, through my drinking, depression and currently jobless status, I was no longer good enough to appear as Oliver Queen's son. I was too much of an embarrassment. A nuisance. All I received was a picture of a tall, handsome seventeen year old with blond hair and tanned skin and an honest, open smile, showing unconsciously how much better he was than me.

My replacement.

And a glimpse of whom I'd once been.

I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Roy Harper. Just Roy Harper. Not Roy Harper, son of Oliver Queen. Just Roy Harper.

I threw the letter and the photo aside and walked out into the rain.