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!

THE FAMILY WEST
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(18 of 24)

Location:
BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER
(ARGUS designation)

There was a picture frame sitting just there, on her desk, next to the screen. Her father, that great big smile on his face that could once have made her believe nothing, nothing in the world could stay wrong that had gone wrong. Perched proudly on his shoulders, her little brother, Wally, his four-year-old face at the apex of a great rolling laugh. Shoulder to shoulder with her father, there stood her mother, her lively smile carrying on the great joy of the family picture, her eyes turned down to her eleven-year-old daughter she had wrapped her arms around. And she had been that girl once, beaming with the giddiness of a fresh new year of life starting. Her eleventh birthday… Sometimes she would think back and genuinely believe this had been the happiest moment of her young life. She believed it had been the beginning of the end, too.

Just over four years later, her mother would be dead, and after that… after that…

Iris West held on to that picture, kept it where she could always see it as she worked, because she needed to remember, plain and simple. If she ever forgot who they had been, knowing only what they had become would leave her feeling more desolate than ever.

Losing someone, losing anyone close to you, losing family… It could never be easy. To lose one's mother, one's wife, the way they had done, seeing her waste away… Her father had been left to look after her brother and her all on his own. Wally had been only eight years old and what memories would he have of their mother? Did he even remember much of the time before she'd become ill, the time as she could see in the picture on her desk? And Iris herself… She'd been fifteen years old, she'd just spent the last few years looking after her mother, and now that she was gone she was just expected to go back to her life? It was all so much for them to take, but still… Still, could that all be enough of a reason for their family to fall apart the way it did?

She didn't know who she blamed most for the way Wally had pulled away from them, her father or herself. For however much she might have disliked the way he could sometimes act, sooner or later she'd be forced to look at things from his perspective and tell herself it was no wonder. Even so… None of them had seen it coming, it just all sort of came in steps, until finally they had gotten to a point where the only thing they could do was look back and see how far they'd come from the people in that photo.

After her mother had fallen ill, her father had done just about everything humanly possible to get her better. This had started out just seeking differing medical advice, trying to find some treatment they might not have heard about, something that might save her. After a while, he had started looking further away. At times he would be gone for days… sometimes for weeks. And in that time, much as she and Wally would be looked after by some family friends, much as they weren't really left alone, Iris could just see… Wally was too little to understand what was going on, and even as he grew, he still looked lost whenever their father left. Iris would do her best to remind him that things would get better, but even as she'd try to do this, she'd also be looking after their mother.

And then after she'd died, when Iris had told herself she still had her father, that he wouldn't be leaving them again… he did, over and over. Their mother was gone, but their father was still looking for something, and it must have been so important, because if not, then… how could he leave his grieving children for weeks and months at a time?

While he'd be away, she would be doing her best to cope, but it just wasn't happening. She'd spent all this time, clinging to her mother even as she was being pulled away from her, and now that she was gone, she tried so hard to cling to her father, and he would just keep himself too far out of her reach for her to even touch him. But she'd try, in whatever way she could, she'd try. She'd start trying to figure out where he had gone off to, so she might know what was so important out there. She could never find anything though, and so she would try and find out other ways to dig deeper. All she had was a computer to assist her, and soon she would have amassed a number of skills which might have helped her piece together her father's secrets if not for the fact that, once she had those new skills, she now found herself connected to a brand-new world that was so very inviting, so very freeing, to a teenage girl at a disconnect with her own life. For a time even she lost touch with the big picture, with the family that remained to her… like her little brother. On that level, she could fully accept the blame for Wally's growing distant from them… when she had done it to him first. But then their father… he had done it to the both of them first, and if he hadn't, then… if he hadn't…

For all the things she couldn't change that she wished she could change, it could not be said that there weren't things she had done and could count herself proud to have done. For one, she and Wally were starting to mend some of the frayed links of their familial bonds, even if he still insisted on her calling him Wallace now. And then there was her association with some refugees upon her Earth, and all that it entailed. Remarkably, she had lived so close to some of them already, without even knowing. Mr. & Mrs. Queen, for instance, who had been those same family friends who would look after Wally and her while their father would go on his disappearing days.

She would say that she had learned their secret purely by chance. They would say she had learned it by skill and should be noted for it as was her due. Even so, to discover that the man and woman who had opened their doors to her brother and her, who had been the perfect image of normal were bona fide aliens from another planet, now that… that had taken some getting used to. Of course that was only half the story, and it might have stayed the entire story, as far as she knew, as far as they would have had her know, but then there was that curiosity again, and then… Then she'd discovered the existence of another Earth, of other parts of her own Earth that essentially co-existed over one another, what were referred to as quarters. The Queens had gone on to tell her that they had in fact landed on this other Earth before ever coming to her Earth, to this quarter in particular.

That might have been the end of it, except for the fact that, now knowing their secret, and with their knowing what she could do, she had somehow gone and made herself into an asset to them. There were others like them, other aliens on their Earth, in their quarter, and while they could all blend in for the most part, that did not mean that the secret of their origins was one in need of protection. And so she had become that for them, an ally they could count on in time of need. She was so proud to know she was counted on for all this, yet one more thing that had kept her from seeing the growing state of disarray within her family.

Through the Queens she had met Tommy Merlyn. They hadn't specifically told her he wasn't human, not at first. But then she'd learned how Tommy's father and the Queens had long had something of a complicated relationship, going back to days before their arrival to Breach Earth. And then there it was. He was alien, too, although he and his father were not on the best of terms. As she'd later discover, it had to do with the fact that his father had brought him here, from one Earth to the other, keeping hidden the fact that he had ever gone anywhere. Then he'd learned this truth, and many others along with it, and then they'd gone their separate ways. That was the main reason why the Queens still talked to him and not his father.

Tommy had become a good friend to her before long. For that reason, when he'd found out the truth about her father, he had told her. He'd looked so stricken, having to show her who her father had become, but she… She was just devastated… betrayed… Tommy had spoken of his father like he was simply vile, despicable. And the only way he'd been able to tell her what her father had been up to was for the reason that Malcolm Merlyn and Joseph West were working together.

When Tommy had shown her the images he'd captured, when she'd pulled them up on her screen, with the sunny family photo right there in her periphery… she'd had to focus all her energy on not breaking down, on keeping it together, and she genuinely didn't remember if she'd pulled it off. To the casual observer it would have been impossible to know, but Iris had taken one look at the man in the first photo and she'd known… that was her father. All those images, showing him in that dark costume, with that bow and quiver…

Suddenly she had a whole new avenue to explore in digging for her father's secrets. She hadn't been paying near as much attention to what he'd been doing, not since she'd gotten caught up in new interests. It would be something she'd come to regret for the rest of her life, because if she had then… Maybe she could have stopped him? Maybe not, but she couldn't help but wish there'd have been a way.

There wasn't nearly as much to find as she would have hoped, even now when she had this new lead. As little as she'd been able to find though, she couldn't unknow what she'd discovered, and the next time her father had visited her, she had told him. She'd told him she knew his secrets. To see the truth, right there in his face, to see the minute changes in his expression… It was as though she was only now realizing… Her father had been dead right alongside her mother. He lived… but he was gone… This man was not her father, he was some other person, who associated with terrible people, who did terrible things. Suddenly, it left her with something new to fear. He always spoke of taking Wally under his wing… She couldn't let that happen. For her mother's memory, she could not let her baby brother become as corrupted as her father had done.

She'd been staring at that picture by her screen, as she too often found herself, when she'd been visited by the Queens. It was an unexpected visit, especially the both of them together, but they had this look on their faces – which she could see via her security feed – that told her this was business. She'd buzzed them in, waiting for them to make their way down into the basement. With very little preamble, she had been handed three photographs. Two of them showed an individual, one a man, the other a woman, and looking at them there was something oddly familiar, though she couldn't quite say what it was. The third image… It was hard to understand what she was looking at, although after a moment she could speculate the masked man and woman on the third image were those same two from the first images.

"What am I looking at?" she asked, turning back to the pair still standing next to her. They looked to one another, and then Moira Queen turned back to her.

"Our children," she told her, and Iris blinked, looking down at the images. Yep, that was the something familiar alright. But since when did the Queens have children. "They live on the other Earth, we… we were led to believe they had died, many years ago, as we… came to this Earth."

"We would like you to confirm that they are genuine, in whatever way you can," Robert Queen added. Iris looked at the pictures again for a moment, then gave a quick nod, moving to action.

The images were scanned, fed through a number of programs, along with images of the Queens, taken from the security feed. Before long she was first able to confirm that the images had not been doctored. And then, in comparing the image of the unknown man and woman with those of Robert and Moira Queen, she had discovered two things. For one, the man undoubtedly bore traits inherited from both of them, but the woman… She matched Moira, only…

"Robert is not… He's not her biological father," Moira had been forced to explain, looking to her husband, who'd remained silent. "So then it's really them?"

"Yes, absolutely," Iris told them, and the silence weighed over them for a time. "Who gave you these pictures? If your kids are back on the other Earth, how…"

"Malcolm Merlyn," Robert revealed, and by the look on his wife's face, Iris guessed Moira hadn't wanted him to mention this part. It was too late though, and as Iris processed this revelation, she looked back to the image of the young woman. Neither of the Queens would say it, but she didn't have to be told. One look at the woman's face, and she knew.

This was Merlyn's daughter, this was… Tommy's sister. Did he know about her? Should she tell him? And then if this was happening now… What was Merlyn up to, telling the Queens about this now? Was he up to something, and if so… What was her father up to?

After the Queens had left, Iris had gone digging some more. If there was any trace of her father and Merlyn doing anything together, she was going to find it. She had to…

She had another visitor later that day, and this time she left the basement, locking the door behind her, before she went and let him in. Wally did not know about what she did with the Queens and their friends, or with Tommy and his own secret dealings, and she preferred to keep it that way.

"Wally, what are you doing here?" she asked as she opened the door. He gave her a look. "I am not calling you Wallace, not unless you do something that will make me throw in your entire name, first, middle, and last, alright?"

"Dad came to see me," he informed her, walking past her and into her living room, where he sat down.

"Did he?" she asked, stopping just inside the room, arms crossed. "What did he want?" Wally frowned. He didn't understand the suspicious look in her eyes, and why would he? He knew even less about what their father was up to than he knew about what she'd been up to.

"He just wanted to see how I was doing, to spend time with me. It's this thing that families do, you know?"

"Keep going down that road, I may use your full name just yet," she gave him a look. After a moment, they both smiled, though hers still carried some of the anxiety over their father, what he'd done, what he might do, and how he might rope Wally into it. She finally moved to go and sit with him. "So you're here now, tell me… What have you been up to?"

Every so often she would be fortunate enough to get to sit with her brother and talk for a good long while. It would almost feel like they were back in the old days, before their mother's death, before her illness had progressed as it did, before the cracks started to show in their family. It wasn't the same, of course. They had been children then, the pair of them. But even so, in those moments of open conversation, she would get to see the boy who had been her brother, who had been smiling so brightly in the picture that sat next to her computer screen. Whatever they had become, her brother and her, whatever issues she may have had with some of the choices he'd made, in times like these she was reminded that this other boy was still in there somewhere. Her brother was still there… Which was more than she could say about her father.

Joseph West was up to something. He and Malcolm Merlyn were up to something. Give her any chance, any at all, and she would find out what it was. And she would make sure that they were stopped. No one was getting hurt on her watch.

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming June 5th!