How the Light Gets In

by Becks Rylynn

History repeats itself. This is a fact of life. It's the way of the world. Where you've been is where you'll be. Two hundred and eight days after fate rips Laurel Lance out of the world, leaving Dean Winchester in nearly the exact same position his father was in thirty three years ago, someone knocks on his door in the middle of the night. This is only the beginning of the story.

2. You Are Here

AN: Additional warnings for this chapter: Vomiting, blunt discussion of childbirth, panic attacks.

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How the Light Gets In

Written by Becks Rylynn

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Part Two:

You Are Here

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November, 2012

Laurel wakes slowly.

She doesn't have much of a choice. Her body feels heavy and reluctant to return to the land of the living, clinging to sleep for as long as possible before she forces open her gluey eyelids. She blinks weakly and then closes her eyes again, drifting. There is sunlight streaming into the bedroom and she's not wearing her glasses or her contacts, so opening her eyes isn't something she's terribly interested in right now.

She licks her dry lips and rakes a hand through her greasy hair. For a moment, in her half asleep, oddly hungover-like daze, she can't quite remember why her body feels so wrecked and sore. Her breasts, especially, feel hard and swollen. Even her throat hurts. And then, as she slowly comes back to herself, everything comes rushing back to her in this hazy memory of pain, screaming, blood, and a gross overload of other bodily fluids and sounds that, when she is fully recovered, she will be embarrassed to remember she made. Her eyes snap open and her heart jolts and thuds against her ribcage, lips parting in shock.

Holy crap. Holy shit. She had a baby. Last night, October 31st, 11:23pm. She gave birth. She pushed another human being out of her body. She remembers that. It's hard to forget that surreal, mind numbing pain.

She allows her sluggish brain a second of shock, trying unsuccessfully to fathom how on earth she did any of it, from the nine month long horror show to the difficult birth. It all seems so unbelievable. 24 hours ago she was eight days overdue, miserable, suffering from days of contractions that didn't do anything, pacing the apartment, eating pineapple and spicy foods, and begging Dean to have sex with her to jumpstart labor because she was so sick of being pregnant and just wanted that baby to get out. Now she's kind of wishing she was still pregnant. It's just that - her baby was safe inside of her. She was safe and warm, just swimming around and chilling. Now she's out here in this big, scary world, and Laurel has no idea how to protect her from the bad things.

The second of reminiscing passes by, then life catches up to her and she realizes, with a sickening jolt, that the bedroom is frighteningly baby free. The sudden and immense panic is unexpected. It startles a gasp out of her, but before she can have a full on ''where's my baby'' panic attack and start screaming like a banshee, the door creaks open and there's Dean.

He looks tired and somehow both terrified and peaceful, with this soft, slow smile on his face that makes her breath catch. There is a bundle in his arms; this tiny body swaddled in a soft yellow blanket, and there is a voice in the back of her head, telling her that this is the best thing she will ever see, that this moment right here is happiness and that she is so very lucky to be here and to have this, even if she is scared.

''Hey,'' Dean greets, shutting the bedroom door behind him with a quiet click. ''There's Mom,'' he murmurs to their girl. ''You told me she was awake, didn't you?'' He looks up. ''How are you feeling?''

Laurel swallows a bark of incredulous laughter. ''Oh, you know,'' she shrugs. ''Like I just squeezed a seven pound infant out of my vagina.'' She frowns and tilts her head to the side thoughtfully. ''But also kinda hungover.''

Dean chuckles lightly. He can barely take his eyes off of the baby. ''You two had a long day yesterday.'' He must sense Laurel's anxiety because by the time she's shifted herself into a position as comfortable as possible, arms reaching for her baby, he is already halfway across the room. Their daughter is transferred carefully and with this fragile, uncharacteristic tenderness and nervous reluctance from her father's arms to her mother's.

As soon as she lays eyes on the little girl, Laurel feels this dizzying rush of an impossible, overwhelming love and fear. ''Hi, baby,'' she rasps. ''Hi, Mary.''

This is still so strange to her. It feels like a dream. To be holding her child in her arms. When she was pregnant, there was this disconcerting sense of unreality and fragility that followed her everywhere she went. For nine months, she tiptoed through eggshells, not really believing she would end up here. For someone who tries so hard to be positive and optimistic, clinging desperately to any shred of hope she can find, she'd been oddly cynical all throughout the pregnancy. Maybe it had just been the anxiety or the hormones, but she had been so certain that life wouldn't give them this moment. She had been so sure that something would go wrong and they wouldn't get their happy ending.

But here they are, all three of them, in this moment, and they're all still breathing, ready for this new life, this new journey to officially begin. She is a mother. Dean is a father. They have a daughter. Her name is Mary Beatrice Lance-Winchester, though Laurel's going to try her best to push just Mary Winchester rather than that mouthful, she was seven pounds, eight ounces at birth, she's really here, and she is easily the most beautiful and the most terrifying creature her parents have ever seen. Mary is awake in her arms, big eyes blinking slowly, peering up at her almost quizzically while she makes these unbearably adorable high pitched squeaking noises.

She lasts less than a minute, staring down at her beautiful girl, and then something explodes inside of her and she abruptly bursts into tears. ''Oh, crap,'' she blubbers. She gulps and tries unsuccessfully to control herself but she can't. The loss of control is startling and embarrassing. ''What the hell?''

Dean laughs. It's not a mocking or unkind laugh, more tired and fond, but she still finds her cheeks burning.

''It's not funny,'' she chokes out indignantly.

''I know.'' He sits down on the bed next to her and grabs the box of tissues from the bedside table. ''I'm sorry, honey.'' He leans in to press a kiss to the top of her head.

''This is so stupid,'' she mumbles, awkwardly trying to shift Mary into one arm so she can grab a tissue. She gives up on that after about thirty seconds, releasing a frustrated sigh. She has no idea what she's doing here, and it only makes her cry harder. It shouldn't, because she's new at this whole baby thing and of course it's going to be all about learning for awhile but she still sobs miserably. Dutifully, Dean plucks a tissue from the box and helpfully begins to mop up her tears. This also makes her cry because he's just being so sweet and gentle. Which is dumb because it's not like he's doing something so amazing and kind that no one else in the world has ever done. He's wiping up her tears and snot because her arms are full of baby. She doesn't want to be crass in front of her newborn but honestly what the fuck? She is a hot mess right now. This is some pregnancy hormone bullshit. ''I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why I'm crying.''

''You just had a baby. It's the hormones,'' he soothes. ''They're still out of whack. Alex says it's normal. There's nothing wrong with you.'' He unceremoniously flops down on the bed, one hand moving to rub circles on her back. He throws the other one over his face, blocking the brightness of the room from his eyes.

She sniffles and manages a nod, looking back down at Mary. Right. Hormones. She does recall something about that. She should have paid more attention to the post-partum section in the five thousand pregnancy books she has purchased over the last nine months. She holds her breath and tells herself that it's normal, that there's nothing wrong with her. Mary seems blissfully unaware of her mother's emotional distress, looking sleepy and maybe a little hungry. ''Okay.'' Laurel exhales, and tries to think clearly. She looks back over at Dean. ''Um, can I ask you a weird question?''

''I'm always up for weird questions,'' he mumbles into his arm.

''Do I remember throwing up all over myself?''

He snorts. He moves his arm from his face to look at her and his other hand - regrettably, because it felt so nice - falls away from her back to pat her knee through the covers. ''Unfortunately, you do.''

''Ugh,'' she groans, cheeks reddening. ''I was hoping that was just my brain trying to make it seem worse than it was.''

''Nah, you definitely threw up all over yourself,'' he tells her with a nod. ''You puked a lot, actually. But so what?'' He waves his hand carelessly. ''Transition sucked and you had a hard time pushing. It's not a big deal.''

She sighs heavily. ''You're never going to look at me the same again, are you?''

''No,'' he says, like it's the most obvious thing in world. Which, okay, maybe it is, but a little tact would have been nice. ''I'm going to look at you like you're a rock star.''

That's too sweet for her hormones to handle right now so she pointedly does not look at him and looks back down at Mary. ''Your dad's going to make me start bawling again. Don't be scared. I won't always be like this.''

He frowns, eyes closed, and says, ''One time, you saw a Yorkie on the street and started blubbering.''

She presses her lips together and tries to come up with something to say to defend herself. ''Well, it was super cute. And the hormones - ''

''You weren't pregnant.''

She rolls her eyes. ''I was PMS-ing though. So. Same idea. Why do you always bring up the Yorkie? Anyway,'' she says the last word firmly and sends him a warning look. ''Is Alex still here?''

''She's here. She wants to check on you in a few minutes. She just had to take a call from a client. Why?'' Abruptly, his tone changes, and when she glances over at him, there's this anxious look on his face and he's propped himself up onto his elbows to look at her, brows furrowed in concern. ''Are you okay?'' The exhausted urgency in his voice makes him sound like he's worried she's thrown a clot. ''Are you in pain? What's wrong?''

''Whoa, hey, no, relax.'' She nudges him gently and offers him what she hopes is a reassuring smile before he impulsively calls 911. Considering how nervous this whole thing has made him, it's a legitimate concern. She feels bad about that. She feels like it's her fault. She didn't create his anxiety but she knows she hasn't helped. The home birth had been her idea, something that had been important to her, and he went along with it because he wanted her to be comfortable, but he was never fully on board with it. He had been absolutely amazing during the actual labor. He was her rock, calm and steady, far more focused than she had been at some points, outwardly cool as a cucumber even if he was likely screaming internally, but it had never been hard to tell that the home birth had made him incredibly nervous. In his view, no matter how prepared you are or what situation you're in, things can go south extremely quickly. There is no such thing as a controlled situation. It's a valid viewpoint, but she had wanted this experience so much.

If she's being honest, she's not sure she would do it this way again.

It wasn't actually an experience she needed to have. It wasn't anyone's fault that it had been so terrible. It's just that childbirth is terrible. She was healthy, the baby was healthy, their apartment is super close to the hospital, and Alex Danvers is an incredible midwife, an all-around fantastic person in general, and was such an amazing support person to have during this. Other than the fact that she hadn't anticipated just how extreme her emotional response to labor was going to be and the fact that she was shit at actually pushing the baby out, everything had gone as smoothly as it could have. But it had not been the experience she had been expecting, and right now, in the direct aftermath, she doesn't even know if she can properly articulate what she had been expecting.

It had been so important to her while she was pregnant to have a perfect birth. Whatever the hell that is. She had a birth plan, she apparently had something in mind for what she wanted, and she had been so adamant about everything. She had wanted this for a few reasons. Ever since her well publicized relationship with Oliver, and Oliver and Sara's well publicized deaths, she has become a stubbornly private person. The idea of being surrounded by strangers during an intensely vulnerable time had been a repulsive and panic inducing idea to her and with her history of panic attacks, she had wanted an environment that would be comfortable for her. Not that being at home had really helped with that. She had still wound up panicking.

She and Sara had both been born at home. That had been another reason she had advocated so strongly for a home birth. It's just how she was raised. She had grown up hearing these passing remarks - not just from her mother but her grandmother and aunts - about how hospitals were cold and unfeeling, they pushed you into unnecessary surgeries, they forced medical interventions on you without your permission and compromised you and your baby's health and safety. Home births, on the other hand, were amazing and empowering and something about inner strength or whatever. Drake women do not give birth in hospitals. That is just how it has always been. Because somewhere along the line, someone had a bad experience and decided to push their views on every new generation under the guise of ''tradition.''

Except, turns out, Laurel is not her mother. She is not her grandmother, she is not her aunts, she is not anyone but herself.

Dress it up as much as you like, childbirth sucks. It's hard and it's painful and exhausting and completely out of your control. There is no perfect, no magnificence, no glorious, wonderful experience. There is pain, blood, bodily fluids, gore, and, if everything goes right, an alive and breathing mother and child. It doesn't matter where it happens. Or, maybe it does to some people. She doesn't want to invalidate their emotions. But it shouldn't matter. It had easily been one of the most intense, physically and emotionally taxing, and oddly primal things she has ever been through. The whole thing is like this hazy fog of awfulness in her head. She doesn't feel particularly empowered and she certainly doesn't feel superior.

She mostly feels shell shocked, sore, and confused as to why this had been so important to her when the only thing that should have been important to her was getting out alive and with a healthy baby in her arms. Also really, really hungry.

She remembers the uncontrollable vulnerability. She remembers continuously and irrationally begging Dean to help her even though she couldn't vocalize how she wanted him to help her, which - even though he didn't show it - probably stressed him out insurmountably. She remembers that she got so overwhelmed and scared that she wound up having a panic attack so bad that she had to have an oxygen mask strapped to her face while she was trying to push. She remembers sobbing miserably, cranky and sweaty and hurting and scared, begging to go to the hospital so they would give her a c-section, 100% positive that she was going to die, and - yeah, no, she doesn't think she ever wants to go through that again. She was so completely out of it, so outside of herself, that she could barely speak, couldn't think, and everything was so blurred together that it felt like days were going by. She could barely even remember her own name at one point. For someone who ardently strives for control in every part of her life to the point where her need for control occasionally becomes detrimental to her mental state, childbirth was not something she found particularly awesome. It was something she found petrifying and traumatizing.

Why do people choose to go through that again? Obviously she's glad they do because if they didn't she wouldn't have Sara or Sam or Thea but for real. Why? If she ever winds up making the decision to do this again - which, in her current opinion, is highly unlikely - it would be in a hospital with an epidural.

The whole thing was just shitty. Worth it in the end, but still incredibly shitty and upsetting. She should probably share these emotions with someone. Maybe get Alex to set her up with a therapist. Given her history, she should at least let someone know how she's feeling so they can keep an eye on her mental state in the coming weeks. She's already convinced she's going to have to deal with post-partum depression and anxiety; she doesn't want to add untreated post-partum psychosis to the list. For now, though, she decides she's going to shield Dean from this and tells him, calmly, with a smile on her face, ''I'm fine. We're all fine.'' She'll tell him eventually, and he will be wonderful about it, but right now they're both wrecks and definitely not coherent enough to discuss this. ''I just have questions,'' she adds. She licks her lips. ''A lot of questions. And I think I'm going to need help feeding Mary.'' She smiles sheepishly, teeth sinking into her lower lip. ''I-I have no idea what I'm doing.''

''Oh. Okay, yeah. I'll go get her.'' He seems reluctant to leave the bed, even more reluctant to leave them, but he does eventually haul himself to his feet, scrubbing a hand over his face. Watching him drag himself in the direction of the bedroom door, Laurel realizes, quite suddenly, that she has no idea how long she was out for and there's no way Dean would have slept if he was the only parent Mary had with her, even with Alex still there. The poor guy hasn't slept.

''Um,'' she clears her throat, grimacing guiltily. ''Also,'' she tacks on, stopping him in his tracks, ''I need to have a shower but my legs sort of feel like jelly right now so I think - ''

''I can help you with that,'' he cuts in with a nod. ''Do you need anything else? Water? Something to eat?''

''Actually, that would be great,'' she says. ''I feel like I haven't eaten in days.'' It's kind of weird, actually. Her appetite has been MIA over the last few weeks, which was greatly upsetting to someone who loves food as much as she does, but now that she's not pregnant anymore, she's suddenly ravenous.

''Anything specific?''

Her first thought, if she's being honest, is candy. Yesterday was Halloween and she's not going to lie; she's still miffed that she couldn't enjoy her annual tradition of stuffing her face with candy because she was too busy laboring. Probably not a bad thing she missed out on that because she just would have thrown it all up anyway, but she's still choosing to be irritated that she missed out on her candy. However, as much as she wants her Snickers and Milky Way bars, it's probably best to wait until Dean's had at least some sleep before she sends him out driving somewhere. ''Just something quick and easy,'' she shrugs. ''A bowl of cereal or a sandwich is fine.''

''Got it.''

''Oh,'' she looks up sharply, catching him before he can slip out the door. ''By the way, after you help me with the shower, you should get some sleep.'' Maybe he hasn't been through exactly the same ordeal as her and Mary but it's not like it's been a walk in the park for him. He needs sleep, too.

He laughs at the suggestion. ''Babe, I don't think we're going to be sleeping for awhile.''

She raises her eyebrows and schools her face into a firm, determined look. ''Dean.''

He holds his hands up in surrender. ''I'll try to sleep later.''

''You better.'' He starts to leave again, making it all the way across the room to the door before she stops him once again. ''Dean.''

He turns, weary. ''Yes, dear?''

''I...'' She looks down at Mary. Her mind registers the warm weight in her arms and how exhausted and worn out her body is and it all just hits her. It's like this strange moment of realization. Everything that has happened has actually happened and nothing monumentally horrible occurred. She is right here, living a life she had given up on having years ago. She's married. She's holding her child. She is going to build a better city, a better world, an empire meant to save this city and it's citizens with CNRI. All of this has happened. She is definitely about to start crying again.

Of course, the helplessness hasn't gone away. There is an uncontrollable anxiety lurking in her head, the terror is still firmly lodged inside her chest, and there's still a lot of things to worry about but this - This isn't a mistake. Mary isn't a mistake. When her tiny, slippery body had been placed on Laurel's chest, all she could think in her fog of blubbering, incoherent emotion and exhaustion was 'I have no idea what to do with this baby.'

She still doesn't know what to do with her, honestly. All of this is brand new to her. She's never even been around babies. Little kids, preteens, teenagers, sure. She can handle all of that, but babies are the wild card. She never babysat when she was younger. She spent time with cousins while she was growing up but most of them were either older or the same age as her. It's not like she has a wealth of friends either, so she doesn't even know anyone who has kids other than a few people from law school who she's Facebook friends with. The last time she was around a baby for any serious length of time was when Sara was a baby. And she was a toddler, so she has basically zero memory of that.

She did sign up for a course of parenting classes during her pregnancy and managed to drag Dean to a few of them, but thanks to her hectic work schedule and all of the weird shit that has been happening ever since The Hood showed up, the class wound up mostly being a huge waste of money. For God's sake, she didn't even know how to properly hold a baby until last night. Dean had to step in and show her because he could see how paralyzed and awkward she was. It's a damn good thing he has at least basic knowledge of how to keep a baby alive because she is utterly and completely incompetent in this area of life.

She did not think this whole baby thing through. Kids have always been a part of her life plan, yes, but not for a long time. They were always just an idea in the back of her head, so far away, nothing to worry about yet. She hadn't even wanted to start thinking about kids until she was at least thirty. She knows nothing about babies or how to be a mom. These are uncharted waters they're swimming in.

What she does know, however, is that she loves this little girl.

She loves her with her whole heart, all of her soul, every piece of her, big and small. Every broken shard of Laurel Lance loves this big-eyed baby girl.

For now, that's enough. Everything else will come.

''I had a baby,'' she croaks out, and then, naturally, fresh tears start spilling down her cheeks. Because that is just the way things are right now.

This uncharacteristically content look passes over Dean's face, something brand new for him, and he smiles. It's tender and soft, like nothing she's ever seen before. He must be incredibly tired to let that kind of happiness in. ''You did,'' he tells her. ''Laur, you were amazing.'' He moves back over to her, leaning down to cup her cheek. ''I'm so proud of you.''

''Yeah, you know,'' she smirks. ''You might've mentioned that a few times.''

''And I'm gonna keep mentioning it because that was the most badass thing I've ever seen anyone do.''

''You've literally saved the world.''

He leans down to catch her lips in a brief kiss and then pulls away, resting his forehead against hers. ''Pales in comparison.'' He draws away from her, hand lingering on her cheek for an extra second.

When he's gone, the door shutting behind him, she takes a deep breath. It's the first time she's been alone with Mary since her birth. She swallows hard and looks at her daughter's face, trying to come up with something to say. Mary is less than a day old. It's not like this is rocket science. It's not like she needs to come up with something particularly memorable but, for the life of her, she cannot come up with something to say to this life changing, tiny sentient alien potato. ''I'm so glad you're here,'' she finally settles on. ''Your daddy and I couldn't wait to meet you.''

Mary wriggles, moves her head to the side, and pokes her pink tongue out. She is staring up at Laurel, mildly interested in the giant weepy lady holding her but probably mostly still wondering what on earth happened to her last night and why she's stuck out here and not in her cozy, warm, womb home anymore. Laurel tries to think of a song to sing her, a lullaby, one of the songs she listened to while she was decorating the nursery, but - strangely - the only song she can think of right now is that annoyingly catchy, wildly inappropriate Flo Rida song that, despite the title, is not actually about whistling. That's embarrassing.

In her defense, someone at the local radio station that she listens to must love it because she has been forced to listen to it almost every morning on her way to work for months. It's always in her head now. There's no way she's singing that to her newborn daughter. Mary's going to live a very strange life with the parents she has, living in a city that has some weirdo running around in a green leather suit playing Robin Hood, but there's no reason to start screwing her up right this minute. She figures she should at least give it a few days before her first big mistake.

''Uh.'' she presses her lips together and then takes in a breath. ''So, I know we've just formally met and this may seem forward but I'd just like to apologize in advance for my inevitable screw ups as a parent,'' she whispers. ''I promise you, it's never going to be your fault. I'm just a screw up. Luckily,'' she grins, ''you'll have your dad. He's way better at this. He's done this before, and your uncle turned out...'' She trails off, frowning and tilting her head to the side. ''Well,'' she amends. ''We're trying our best, pumpkin.''

Mary is still making these adorable little squeaking sounds. They almost sound a bit like bird noises. She sticks her tongue out again and closes her eyes.

Laurel has a dim memory of finishing up the nursery a few weeks ago, putting away baby clothes and toys, stacking diapers, rearranging furniture and the artwork on the walls, and listening to this playlist Joanna had made her for the baby. One of the songs stuck in her head for days. She sang it in the shower, while she was making coffee, hummed it while she was running errands or folding laundry. It stuck so much that she even walked in on Dean singing it in the kitchen while he was making dinner. It's a sweet song. In any case, it's not about blowjobs, so it'll have to do in a pinch. She hums thoughtfully, shaking her head to clear her fuzzy head so she can remember the words.

''Come with me, my love, to the sea, the sea of love. I want to tell you how much I love you.'' She is not the best singer in the world, she knows that. She's not even as good as Tommy, who will undoubtedly be the lullaby singer in their lives. She can carry a tune better than Dean, but she's not about to drop her law career and start a rock band or anything. Mary doesn't seem to mind all that much. She calms in Laurel's arms at the sound of her voice. Laurel takes this as a good sign, so she sings another verse. ''Do you remember when we met? That's the day I knew you were my pet. I want to tell you how much I love you.'' There is no grand, exciting moment where Mary smiles or giggles and Laurel bursts into tears. Just a quiet moment where Mary opens her eyes and looks up at her mother, seemingly fascinated. It's more than enough.

Laurel lets out a small huff of laughter, lips pulled back into a smile so wide it hurts her cheeks. ''You and me, little bird,'' she says. ''We're going to soar.''

Mary doesn't have much of a reaction to that either but she opens her eyes a little wider and Laurel chooses to believe that means she's pleased with the statement. She ducks her head to drop a kiss to Mary's forehead, inhaling her fresh baked baby scent. She is still scared of this brand new world she's living in and she's going to be scared for a long time, but this right here - This is love. Whatever happens next, whatever life brings, it's going to be her, Dean, and Mary forever. They're a team now. They're a family. This isn't a happy ending. It's not an ending at all. This is a start. This is the beginning of something incredible. Something wonderful.

She knows that in her bones.

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November, 2016

Laurel wakes violently.

She wakes up trapped in the dark and choking on dirt. It's everywhere - her eyes, her mouth, her nose - and she can't get out. Panic completely overwhelms her senses. She can't find the air. She feels cold, her body shivering uncontrollably, desperate for warmth. There's an unpleasant roaring in her ears, so loud she can't even hear herself gasping for breath. She's drowning.

Somewhere far away, a child is crying and there is a woman's voice speaking urgently. Someone puts their hand on her shoulder, but they can't get the dirt out of her eyes and her throat. Then, finally, a bang; the sound of a door being thrown open and hitting the wall. The ground tilts, and two strong hands grab her wrists, stopping her from clawing at her throat. She doesn't understand why no one will get the dirt off of her. There's all these hands and all these voices, but they won't make it stop. They're not helping her.

Someone is saying her name. At least she thinks it's her name. Yes, it is. A man is saying her name, asking her to come back to him, and telling her that she's okay, that she's safe. She fights to get to him. She fights for air. Wait. Wait, she knows this man. His hands, his voice, the way he says her name. Her husband. Dean.

She blinks, and she's in a dark room, on a bed where there is no cold and there is no dirt. She blinks again, and she's back under the earth, in the ground, in a box, right where they left her.

''Laurel,'' he's saying, firmly and loudly but calmly. ''Laurel, I know it's hard, honey, but you need to breathe. I need you to come back to me. Can you do that? I'm right here with you. You're safe. You're not in the ground. You're in our bedroom. You're right here. You're home.''

She blinks a few more times, back and forth between nightmare and reality before the room slowly comes back to her and she can breathe again. Her vision is blurry and, for a second, she doesn't know where she is or what's happened to her. Is this the nightmare or the reality? She knows Dean and that wherever she is, she's safe with him, but she doesn't recognize this place. She doesn't even recognize this skin. She takes in a few much needed gulps of air, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. Her entire body is shaking in both panic and cold, her hands are heavily bandaged, she's sore all over, and she can't remember why. She presses her back against the headboard and closes her eyes, trying to focus on the sound of Dean's voice.

''Sweetheart, I'm with you,'' he practically whispers. ''Are you still with me?''

''I-I'm here,'' she nods. ''I'm with you.'' He lets go of her wrists but she latches onto his hand with her bandaged hands. He patiently allows her to cling to him like a scared child without saying a word, bringing his other hand up to brush hair out of her face.

''Dean,'' a voice says from the doorway, sounding shaky and disbelieving.

She opens her eyes, and tries to find the voice. There is light streaming into the darkened room from the hallway and two men standing in the doorway. They're just frozen there, staring at her. She squints her bleary eyes and tries to put names to the faces. She loved them. She knows that because she feels it when she looks at them. Love is a reflex. It's an instinct. It's a constant. She feels it whether she remembers why she's feeling it or not. She loved the men in the doorway, and she'll love them again. They're family. They belong to her the same way Thea does. But she doesn't recognize them. Doesn't know their names or who they are to her. It's jarring.

Dean hastily waves them away without even bothering to look away from her.

Laurel takes in a few more deep breaths until - oh, god. Mary. Her baby. She can hear her crying somewhere else in the house. She's calling for her. Thea must have taken her out of the room when Laurel - When she... She swallows thickly, dread and guilt pooling in her gut. She scared her girl. She closes her eyes again, and the flood hits. It comes back to her in quick, disjointed pieces. The casket, the dirt, the blood, the fear, the pain, the grave. She woke up. She came home. She was dead. She doesn't remember how it happened - if it hurt, if she was scared, if she was alone when it happened, if there was blood - but she died. She was dead, and now she's not.

Her stomach lurches suddenly and painfully as she runs through the events of her traumatic homecoming. She crawled out of her own grave. She exploded back into existence, slithered her way back into the world like a - like a monster. Like something out of a horror movie. She screamed.

It hurt. It hurts.

It was agony to leave, and it's agony to come back.

Her eyes snap open. ''Dean,'' she manages to get his name out through clenched teeth, but can't say anymore. Somehow, he understands her because he dives for the trashcan over by her vanity with lightning quick reflexes and manages to get it in front of her about half a second before she starts heaving.

Over his shoulder, he barks out a short, sharp, ''Out. Now.''

She can't see the men in the doorway leave but she hears the door shut and notices the way the room gets darker, the light from the hallway trapped on the other side of the door. In the darkness, she remembers that their names are Sam and Castiel. They're her in-laws. The Laurel she was never would have forgotten them.

There's nothing in her stomach to throw up, so she winds up mostly dry heaving, bringing up bits of stomach acid and the water she drank earlier, but it hurts. She remembers this - dimly. This humiliating, painful part of being alive. There were hangovers, the flu, food poisoning, norovirus, morning sickness, but this is different and it's so much worse. It's like her body is trying to turn itself inside out.

Dean doesn't leave her side once. He holds her hair back for her, carefully and gently gathering it away from her face. ''I know, babe,'' he soothes, when she whimpers and tries to catch her breath in between painful retches. ''I know it sucks.''

Her stomach calms eventually, just enough to stop twisting. She's still shaking and her body feels unsettled, like she's not all here, but it's simply too wrung out to keep vomiting up nothing but bile. Her entire body feels weightless and untethered. She feels outside of herself. As if part of her is still in that grave and it's calling her back. ''Dean,'' she manages to get out, voice hoarse and trembling. There are tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and her heart is thudding too fast, too noisily in her chest. ''What's going on?''

He doesn't answer her right away. He can't even look at her. ''I don't know,'' he admits. He takes the trashcan away and grabs the glass of water he brought her earlier from the bedside table. Because her hands are so shaky and heavily bandaged, he has to help her drink it. If she was in her right mind, it might be mildly humiliating, but she's not.

''I don't understand what's happening,'' she says, after she's taken a few slow sips of water. ''How am I...?'' She shakes her head. ''This doesn't happen.''

''It does,'' he tells her. ''It has before.''

''Not like this.''

He puts the glass back on the table and seems to hesitate a moment before saying, ''It did to me.''

That's horrifying to think about. Just thinking about him going through this makes her feel even more nauseated. People are afraid to die. Humans are afraid of what happens, of the pain, of what may or may not happen next. They're afraid of death when they should be afraid of coming back. Maybe things will be better or clearer in the morning. Maybe she'll wake up and she'll remember who she is. Maybe in the light, she'll really be here. For right now, though, all she's fully aware of is pain and confusion and blurriness. Although that last one might just be because she's not wearing her glasses or contacts.

''You just need some time,'' Dean says. ''You just got back. You'll adjust. And we'll - we'll figure this out.'' He moves like he's going to put his hand over hers but stops, obviously concerned about agitating her injuries. ''That's what we do, right?''

She's not sure if he's trying to convince her or himself with that little speech. Either way, he fails. She gives herself a minute to attempt to stifle the noise of this world she's been thrust back into without warning, and then says, perhaps more demandingly than originally intended, ''Bring Mary back.''

His response is quiet but immediate. ''I'm not sure that's a good idea.''

He may be right about that. She's a broken, shaking mess right now. Still, there is this rush of mama bear rage that sweeps over her and she gives into it so easily, tossing him an icy warning look. She may not be the mother who left seven months ago but somewhere in this house, her daughter is calling for her. If death couldn't keep her from her girl, neither will he. ''I'm her mother,'' it comes out in this scarily calm, quiet hiss. ''She's scared. She needs me. You will bring me my child.''

He raises his eyebrows. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. He seems sufficiently cowed. And yet he's still here.

''I'm her mom,'' she repeats, louder this time. ''I'm supposed to comfort her when she's scared, Dean. You can't keep her from me.''

''Whoa, wait. Laur, I'm not trying to - ''

''I sing to her,'' she blurts out. ''I always sing to her when she's upset. It's been that way since day one. I sing...'' She stops, sentence dropping off. Her eyes widen as she slowly starts to realize that she can't remember the words. She knows the song. It's Sea of Love. She must have heard it somewhere. She knows the tune of the song. She knows it was important. These things are just part of her. It's her and Mary's. It belongs to them. It's a piece of her heart. It doesn't leave. But. ''I don't remember the words,'' she admits, horrified. ''I can't remember how the song goes.''

''You will,'' he says, adamant. ''You'll remember everything. I swear. This is - It's the trauma. It's situation specific amnesia. That's a thing,'' he says, which tells her he's most likely been on Wikipedia. ''It's completely normal. You still have your memories, you just can't get to them right now. You will. I know you will.''

''What if I don't?''

''Then we'll make new memories,'' his response is quick. He sounds so sure. She wishes she could share his confidence. Her disbelief must show on her face because he stops talking, rises to his feet, and says, without complaint, ''I'll go get Mary.''

He leaves her alone in the dark and she leans her head back against the backboard. She struggles not to implode, not to collapse and crumble right here. She feels like she could. She closes her eyes, breathes, and tries to think. Dinah Laurel Lance, she thinks. That was the name on the stone in the graveyard. That's her. She runs the name over in her head. That is her name, she's sure of it. She knows the name. She just doesn't know the person. You are Dinah Laurel Lance, she tells herself. Your daughter's name is Mary Beatrice. Your husband's name is Dean. Your parents are Dinah and Quentin. Your biological sister is Sara. Your other sister is Thea. Your grandparents are Beatrice and Richard. You are here. This is your life.

These are all facts. Facts don't change and shift the way memories do. These are things she knows. These pieces of her are sewn into her. She can't forget them. She is made of blood, flesh, muscle, bones, and sinew, but she is also made of love. These people, the family that lives in these walls, this city - that's love. But there are other pieces of her too. Parts that have yet to be assembled, and she can't find them. She is more than her bones, more than love, more than other people. She is her own person with her own beating heart, her own thoughts and feelings and opinions. She just can't remember. It is there. Dean was right about that. The person she was is still inside of her, but she's locked inside of her own mind and she doesn't have the key.

It's frightening to be without such fundamental parts of you. It makes your whole world feel dizzyingly off kilter. It's even scarier to think you might not ever get those pieces back. Because what if she doesn't? What if she left those pieces of herself there, in that grave, and there's no way to get them back? It's a possibility, isn't it?

Laurel Lance has been unmade. Taken apart and erased from the world. That's just something that happened. She can't change it. Just because she clawed her way out of the earth, half dead and broken, doesn't mean she's actually here.

What if this is all there is?

The door opens and she snaps to attention, forcing everything down, eyes immediately seeking out her baby. Mary isn't crying anymore but her cheeks are red and marked with tears and she's hiccupping sadly. She looks tired and scared, not at all comforted by her dad's warm and strong arms the way she usually is. But when she sees Laurel, her eyes widen and she instantly starts squirming, pushing at Dean's arms to get him to put her down.

This, Laurel knows how to do. This is simply an instinct.

She holds her arms out, murmurs a quiet, ''come here, baby,'' and that's all the prompting Mary needs to attempt a reckless dive out of Dean's arms. He barely even reacts, easily keeping her in his grip before carefully transferring her over to Laurel with a warning of, ''Gentle, kiddo. Mom's not feeling good.'' Which is the understatement to end all understatements.

Mary crawls into her lap, adorably careful, and winds her arms around Laurel's neck. ''Mommy,'' she mumbles into her skin. ''You scared me.''

''I know,'' Laurel mutters hoarsely. ''I'm sorry, Mary. I didn't mean to scare you.''

She pulls away suddenly, eyes wide with fear. ''Don't go away again,'' she pleads. Her small voice is so devastatingly panicked and her grip on Laurel's neck has tightened like just saying the words, just acknowledging her fear, has made it worse. ''I don't want you to go away to Heaven again.''

''I'm not,'' Laurel says, voice sharp. She glances at Dean out of the corner of her eye and watches a pained look cross his face. She hasn't asked him yet. What it was like while she was gone. It's not something she wants to think about but it's hard not to. What happened to them while she was nothing but bones in a box? What kind of horrible sadness did she throw them into when she left? What has she done to her little girl? For seven months, she was rotting. Were they?

Grief isn't a damage that can be easily fixed. It can't be fixed at all. Not with time and not with inexplicable resurrection. Grief is a scar, and this grief is a damage she created. Pain she inflicted on them when she left them here without her. This is on her - this hurt, this frailty, this fear that lives inside of her daughter that people will leave and not come back. No, Laurel doesn't know how she died. Maybe it was out of her control, maybe it wasn't her fault, but does it matter? She still did it. She still left. She is the cause of their pain.

''I'm not going anywhere, baby,'' she says, gently this time. ''I will not leave you. Not ever again.''

''You stay with me,'' Mary orders, sniffling.

Laurel nods. ''I'll stay with you.''

''She just had a bad dream, honeybee,'' Dean pipes up.

Mary peers up at him through her eyelashes, suspicious. Swiftly, she looks to Laurel for confirmation. ''I had a dream that a big snake eated me.''

''That sounds scary,'' Laurel says.

Scary, Mary signs, with a nod. ''You had a bad dream about a big snake too?''

Laurel tightens her lips. ''Something like that,'' she smiles weakly. ''But it's okay.'' Without even realizing what she's doing, she signs, Everything's okay. Her fingers work faster than her brain and by the time she catches up and she's wondering how on earth she knew how to do that, Mary has already moved on.

She moves her own little hands to sign a very firm order of, Promise me.

I promise, Laurel signs, and then tacks on an, I love you.

Mary, a little calmer, relaxes. She flops against Laurel and wraps her arms around her again, resting her head on her shoulder. Laurel holds onto her daughter tightly, burying her face in Mary's hair and breathing in her familiar scent. She tries to remember the other times she's held her, because this must have been a constant before, right? Hugging her daughter. She must have done it all the time. She hopes she did it all the time. She hopes she was a good mom.

Dean is the one who eventually winds up breaking the silence that had enveloped the room, leaning down to whisper in her ear, ''I have to go talk to Sam and Cas. Are you two gonna be okay?''

Mary doesn't even wait for Laurel's response before she's lifting her head enough to order, ''Okay, Daddy. Go away now.''

He arches a brow, looking highly offended. Laurel can practically see him trying to muster up his dad voice enough to say something like, Excuse me, young lady? Or, much more likely in this case, an incredulous drawl of, Wow, rude.

Before he has a chance to even try, Mary leans over to him to whisper, urgently, ''Dad. I gotta talk to Mommy. It's girl stuff.''

His lips twitch. ''You've been spending too much time with Auntie Thea.'' He kisses Mary on the cheek and says, ''Don't talk your mother's ear off. You both need to get some sleep.''

She pretends not to hear him. Laurel doesn't know how she knows that she's pretending but she does. It comes to her in this slow, rolling sort of memory. When you tell Mary something she doesn't want to hear, she'll pretend not to hear you. Dean isn't great at telling the difference between when she genuinely can't hear and when she's faking it because she's got him wrapped around her little finger. Laurel could always tell. She can remember Mary Winchester, I know you heard what I said. She remembers I know you can hear me, Mary Beatrice and Mary's stubborn and giggly response of Uh-uh, Mommy. Got bad ears.

''I'll send Thea in to check on you two in a few minutes,'' Dean tells her, snapping her out of the short, burst of memories.

She manages a nod. She admits it's nerve wracking to watch him walk out of the room and leave her alone with Mary. She does know how to do this. She knows how to be a mom. She's done it before. It's a code written on her bones. It's just that this isn't the Mary she left. It has been seven months. That's forever to a three year old. A four year old, she reminds herself. Mary is four now. She worries it might be too long. What if she's different? What if Mary's different? What if she's not the mother Mary needs anymore?

Once Dean is gone, Mary looks at Laurel, locks eyes with her, and says, in her most serious voice, ''Mommy.'' She pauses dramatically, and Laurel holds her breath, waiting for questions she cannot answer. Mary heaves out a put upon sign and says, all in one breath, ''Daddy won't let me get a kitty.''

Laurel exhales shakily, relieved. She doesn't know if the ache in her throat is a laugh or a cry. ''Daddy's allergic, little bird,'' she says, automatically.

Mary groans, but moves past it incredibly quickly. Because she's four. ''Kitty can stay in my room. I'm gonna name it Nemo.''

Laurel laughs quietly. Somehow, perhaps through mom superpowers, she manages to get Mary lying down under the covers. ''But then Daddy wouldn't be able to come into your room anymore.''

This, apparently, had not occurred to Mary because her eyes widen in horror at the thought.

Laurel lies down on her side so she can face Mary. ''I don't think we can get a kitty, sweetie.''

Mary sighs again, but doesn't say anything else for a long time. She looks like she's thinking so Laurel doesn't bother her. She watches her kid's brows furrow in concentration and can't help the sleepy smile that spreads across her face when Mary puts her hands behind her head, looking completely relaxed and at home. ''No kitty,'' Mary says, finally. Then her eyes light up and she turns to look at her mom. ''But what about bees?''

''Bees?'' Laurel arches an eyebrow. ''Why bees?''

''I love bees. Honey bees. Like me,'' she beams. ''Uncle Cas taught me about them.''

''He did?''

''Yes. Honey bees are good and important.''

''Really?'' Since she can't sing their song right now, Laurel scoots closer to her daughter and relaxes against her pillow. ''Can you teach me?''

.

.

.

The next time Laurel opens her eyes, it's light out, and her entire body hurts. Everything that happened last night is still fresh in her mind but everything else is still missing. She'd fret about that but right now she's still stuck on how physically awful she feels. She feels like she's been hit by a truck. All of the energy and adrenaline she had last night has drained right out of her and now she's just some broken husk of a person who punched her way out of her own casket. That is not a normal thing. That is not something human bodies were ever meant to go through. She feels like she has been demolished. She's honestly not even sure how she's even standing right now.

Logically, she never should have made it out of the ground.

Laurel forces her heavy eyelids open and blinks against the sun. The alarm clock on the bedside table says it's nearly ten in the morning. Reluctantly, she drags herself up into a cautious sitting position and glances beside her. Mary and Thea are both still fast asleep. Most of the time, Mary tends to sleep like her dad: on her stomach, hands curled under the pillow, blankets half on half off because she - again, much like her dad - runs hot. But today, she's burrowed under the blankets, on her side, facing Laurel, one hand reaching out toward her mom like she's trying to make sure she's still there, even in her sleep. Thea is curled into a 'c' shape, facing Mary, safely bracketing her into the bed to prevent her from rolling off. Laurel watches the girls sleep for a minute, comforted by the peaceful, steady rise and fall of their chests. Once she's satisfied that they're both okay, she heaves herself out of bed with great difficulty.

She falters on her unsteady legs, rolling her shoulders and trying to shake off the pain. She feels lost, standing aimlessly in her bedroom, trying to figure out what to do next. How does this song go? She must have had a morning routine. That's a thing, right? People have routines. She pulls open the closet and squints helplessly for an embarrassing amount of time before she remembers to grab her glasses. She fumbles her way through getting dressed as quickly as possible. The bra is a struggle, partly because she can't quite recall how to do this properly, and partly because her fingers are bandaged and useless right now. She does succeed in her getting dressed endeavor eventually, throwing on a pair of yoga pants, a threadbare t-shirt that she suspects might be Dean's because it's way too big to be hers, and a hoodie.

She slips out of the bedroom, down the hall, past Thea's bedroom, and into the bathroom that's across from Mary's room. It's funny. She can't remember if she has any serious allergies. She can't remember meeting her husband. She can't remember her wedding or being pregnant with her daughter. She knows the names of her parents and sister but can't picture them in her head. She doesn't even know her own favourite color. Yet she knows the layout of this cozy little house in the suburbs like the back of her hand.

Impulsively, once she's safely locked herself in the bathroom, she rips the annoying bandages off of her hands. They're not bleeding anymore. She doesn't need them. She looks down at the angry red, the dried blood, the smell of Neosporin clogging her nostrils. They are like this because she had to claw her way to air so she could live. Her fingernails are torn away and her skin is sliced because she almost died. Again, apparently. She looks at her reflection in the mirror. She looks hollow. She looks pale, haunted, and unrecognizable. She doesn't look right.

She takes a step away from the mirror, stunned, but can't look away from her ghastly reflection. She doesn't think that she looks alive right now. Just to be sure, she checks her pulse. Nope, she's definitely alive. She takes her glasses off and puts them on the sink carefully, so she doesn't have to see her reflection clearly. Hastily, she turns on the faucet and tries to wash the blood and the sickly, medicinal smell off of her hands. She splashes her face with cold water, clenches her teeth and shakes her head to clear away the half second of panic when it reminds her, ever so briefly, of the dirt.

Once she lets her body take over, it's not hard for it to start moving on autopilot. She may not remember her morning routine. Her body does. She doesn't think about what she's doing, she just does it. It's nice to not have to think for a few minutes. It's only when she's putting the mouthwash back in the medicine cabinet that things go wrong. Her hand reaches for her contact lenses and she comes back with a box of Paw Patrol band-aids instead. She stops, thrown. She rifles through the cupboard and then the drawers, but they're nowhere to be found. It hits her as she's looking through the bottom drawer, slamming into her chest violently. Her contact lenses and solution aren't here because they've probably expired by now. Because it's been over half a year since anyone used them.

Everything that was hers has been pushed aside, thrown away, or stuffed into the bottom drawer. It's not just her missing contacts, or her lotions and makeup all shoved into the bottom drawer, or the way Thea had to dig through the cupboard underneath the sink to find her lavender shampoo last night. It's everything. She is a stranger in her own home, her own skin, her own life.

She doesn't live here anymore.

And this is just the start. Whatever life she had before the dirt, it's gone. It's all been stripped away from her. Did she have a job? Friends? People that counted on her? Can she get any of that back? That seems unlikely. What is she supposed to do now? Start over?

Laurel sighs and grabs her glasses, accidentally knocking something else resting on the porcelain into the sink. She puts her glasses on and snatches up the long silver chain with the key shaped pendant. She was wearing this last night. It's a beautiful necklace. It's a little rusted now and it's caked in dirt, but it's pretty. It must have meant something to her. Been important to her somehow. Her engagement ring and wedding ring had been taken off of her but this necklace she had gone to her grave with. Why?

She holds it up to the light and tilts her head to the side. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, attempting to relax her body enough for something to potentially slip through whatever blockage is up in her mind. Nothing happens. She tries again. She thinks it might have been a gift. Okay, that's a start. A gift from Dean? No. Not Dean. Her sister? No. Not her either. Someone else. It was either her birthday or Christmas. She thinks birthday. Yes, that sounds right. It's cold at Christmas and she hadn't been cold. Christmas is someone else's birthday. Her birthday is in - It's in April. She was turning twenty-eight. Someone fastened the necklace around her neck. He was laughing. She hugged him.

''This is beautiful,'' she had said. ''Thank you.''

''Hey,'' Dean had called out from somewhere else. ''Shouldn't the husband be the one to buy the jewelry?''

''The husband went gooey sentimental this year,'' another voice had said. The voice is so familiar. She knows that voice. His name is right there on the tip of her tongue. ''I could buy her all the jewelry in the world and your gift would still be better. Dude, I cried when you gave her that thing.'' Then he looked at Laurel and said, ''Seriously though, you like the necklace, right? I can return it if you - ''

''Tommy,'' she had said, placing a hand on his chest. ''Stop. I love it.''

She opens her eyes. Oh, god. Tommy. How could she have forgotten Tommy? He was her best friend. He was more than that. He was her family. He was her steady hand in the years after... After... After something. He died for her. He died because of her. She slips the necklace in her pocket, out of sight but close, and tries her best not to break down. If there is one thing she would like to forget, it's the way Tommy looked when she finally managed to crawl her way through the wreckage of her empire to get to him. Figures it would be one of the first things she remembers in vivid detail. She doesn't know if spectacularly bad luck is a regular thing in her life but given the current state of everything, she's willing to bet it is.

She can't deal with this right now. She loved Tommy. She and Dean both loved Tommy so much. He was theirs. She's glad she remembers him. He's an important part of her that she doesn't ever want to lose. But it hurts. He died. He died, and he took her with him.

There's this image of him in her head from the day he died. It was earlier in the day, before everything happened, and he must have been over to see Dean and Mary because when she got home, he was just leaving. She remembers now. She remembers how tired she was, the brief conversation they'd had about his deteriorating relationship with someone named Oliver and the decision he had made to work for his father (she's not sure who his father is but her blood boils at the thought of him). There was an apartment. She stood in the doorway and called after him, reminding him that they had a lunch date for the next day. She remembers how he turned his head, threw her a cheeky grin, told her he wouldn't miss it for the world, and then he turned away and he was gone.

She's kept that moment, that image of him, of that last brilliant smile, in her head ever since. She knows that now. She doesn't understand how she could have forgotten. She's tried to use that last smile to replace the image of him broken and bleeding in the debris. She also remembers that she kept that standing lunch reservation. It was for every other Thursday at noon at this place called Bella's. For months, she went alone and never told anyone. She remembers when she stopped breastfeeding Mary so she could take the anti-depressants and the sleeping pills she had been prescribed, she stopped ordering food for lunch and started ordering wine. Pinot Noir, to be specific.

She grimaces, swallowing thickly. She doesn't think wine is a good memory. She also has this distinct, unnerving feeling that Tommy's lifeless body isn't the only one she's cradled in the dark. She has this vague recollection of sticky blood on her hands, wet pavement on her knees, leather crinkling in her fingers, and screaming and screaming and screaming.

She tries to shake it off. She doesn't want these memories. These are not memories of a life. These are memories of pain. She wants to remember what it felt like to hold her daughter for the first time. She wants to remember falling in love. She wants to remember how it feels to laugh. Is that so bad? Does that make her selfish?

Laurel blows out a breath and pads out of the bathroom and down the hall, in the direction of the kitchen. She can hear voices and the sound of people moving around. Spoons clinking around in coffee mugs, bacon sizzling, coffee brewing. She can't decide if the smell of coffee and bacon is making her feel hungry or sick. Both, maybe. She doesn't enter the kitchen. Can't quite bring herself to face them. She hangs back, just outside of the door, and listens to their conversation.

''And you're sure this is her?'' A voice asks. Her mind works overtime, trying to identify the voice and determine if that is Sam or Cas. She eventually settles on Sam, though she could be wrong.

''She passed all the tests,'' Dean says. He sounds tense, like he's sick of answering that question. Or like he doesn't want to entertain the possibility of there being another answer to it.

''Dean,'' the voice - Sam - says gently. ''You want this to be her. I get that. But - ''

''It is her.''

''Well, what about Siren?''

''Dinah,'' a warning hissed out through clenched teeth, ''is in that stupid fucking Geneva Convention violating pipeline.''

''Are you absolutely certain?'' Another voice - a deep, gravelly voice - asks. Cas. She feels confident with that guess.

''I called Cisco and made him go down there and check at four in the morning just to make sure,'' Dean sighs. He sounds tired. ''He was cranky and he still hates me for what I did to Caitlin last month, but he did it. I could hear her telling him to fuck off in the background. I'm sure. This isn't a con. This is Laurel.''

If she's being honest, she's almost a little irked by how sure he sounds about that. She thinks he should be more skeptical about this. It's dangerous that he's not. Skepticism and disbelief are the safety protocols, right? They should be. She's still skeptical about this, to be honest. But he's thrown all of himself into passionately, 100% believing that this is her. He wants so badly for what he lost to be standing here, whole again. She's not looking forward to his reaction when he finds out she can't be that person again. She's not the wife or the mother or the friend who died seven months ago. She is not whole. She's something new, something fractured. Laurel went into that grave. She thinks something else might have come out.

She doesn't go into the kitchen. She turns away from their voices and heads in the opposite direction, to the back of the house and the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard. It's disorienting at first. She steps out into the late morning air and immediately stumbles, blinded and overwhelmed by the brightness of the sun and the unbearable noise of life. She holds her hand up to block the sun, squinting and blinking against the light.

There are birds chirping in the trees, cars driving past somewhere in the distance, and a lawnmower starts up in one of the neighboring yards. The sounds are startling and she has to force herself to breathe, to relax. She slowly shuffles her body, achy from disuse, further out into the chilly air. She leaves the safety of the back porch and wanders out into the yard because she wants to feel the grass between her toes.

There is an apple tree in the backyard. There's a garden, a shed with a kiddie pool leaning up against it, patio furniture on the deck, and toys scattered around the crunchy, frost tipped grass. Laurel does not recognize any of these things. None of it triggers any memories the way the necklace did, the way her daughter and husband did. None of this feels like it belongs to her. This place was her home once. It was her shelter. She can remember how to move through the house without getting lost but she can't remember living in it.

Then again, maybe she just didn't spend that much time in the backyard. Maybe if she goes and stands in the kitchen, it would trigger something. Maybe she spent a lot of time cooking or baking or something. Maybe she baked pie with the apples.

She looks up at the apple tree. She watches the birds. The sunlight is coming through the branches, silhouetting the birds and making everything glow with the warm light. It's gorgeous. She lets her eyes slip shut and just stands there for a moment, basking in the sunlight, in the stillness. She feels the icy grass under her bare feet, the light breeze combing through her hair, and she breathes evenly for the first time since she opened her eyes to darkness and panic.

Sweetheart, I'm with you, Dean had told her earlier, before the sunlight, when she was lost in the dark. Are you still with me?

She opens her eyes. She considers the question. She was here before. She can be here again. Memories or not, there will always be the sun. It has to rise every morning, and so does she. What right does she have to do anything less?

Laurel looks away from the apple tree. The birds are still singing in the trees. The neighbor is still mowing his lawn. Life is still moving, still going. The world is still spinning, and nobody in this neighborhood knows what happened. Nobody knows the dead rose last night. She steps away from the apple tree and trudges through the grass over to the garden. She makes an attempt to remember if this is hers or Dean's, how important it was, what was in it, but she gives up pretty quick. It doesn't matter anyway. The garden isn't much of a garden anymore and not just because of the cold weather. Everything is wilted, overgrown with weeds, and the flowers are all dead. She crouches down and moves her hand through the weeds without focus. It's a shame. This was supposed to be a place of life.

She tries to picture herself gardening. She tries to see herself right here, kneeling in the grass, in the warm sunlight, wearing sunscreen, one of those big sunhats, and gardening gloves. She can see it. She just doesn't know if she can trust that memory. Is it a memory or a dream?

She looks at the garden. She gives it a minute to see if she suddenly has some big recollection of how to fix this, how to bring this place back to life. Nothing comes to her. Her head is quiet. The only thing she can hear are the birds and the sound of -

Wait.

She stiffens, inhaling sharply at the familiar feeling of eyes on her. She swallows. She doesn't even have to turn around to know who is standing there. She clears her throat, just to make sure her voice will work when she attempts to speak, and rises to her feet. She turns, slowly, eyes finding him standing on the deck. He looks pale in the morning light. He looks like he needs to get some sleep. He still looks awed to see her standing, breathing, blinking, illuminated by the sun behind her.

They don't say a word to each other. No greeting, no questions, no answers, nothing. She's grateful. She wouldn't even know what to say. For a brief moment in time, he seems content to just look at her. Dean is still standing on the porch, closer to home, and Laurel is still standing by the garden, farther away.

He's the first one to break the eye contact. He looks away from her, hesitates, and then he spins on his heel and goes back inside. Which is...strange. She feels a little indignant about that.

But, yeah, okay, sure.

This is a weird situation. She's a mess. He's allowed to be too. His emotions are just as valid as hers. She turns back to the garden, helpless and wondering if this whole coming back to life thing will help or hurt her family. It's not like this just affects her. It's all of them. It's Dean, it's Mary, it's everyone who had to suffer through losing her and now has to suffer through getting all of these wrecked, sharp pieces back.

The back door slides open and when she whirls around, Dean is striding towards her, holding a heavy jacket and a pair of slippers. ''Laur,'' he says. ''Come here. You're shivering.''

''Oh.'' She lets him wrap her up in the big winter jacket. ''Right.'' Because people get cold. That's a thing that happens. Human bodies are fragile and have to be taken care of. ''Did...'' She pauses and allows him to start leading her back over to the deck. ''Did I garden?''

''You did,'' he nods. He helps her up onto the deck and pulls over a chair, gently pushing her down into it. ''You always wanted to have fresh flowers in the house, so you decided to start your own garden.'' He puts the slippers on her feet and sits down on the chair across from her.

''Everything's dead,'' she mumbles, drawing her knees up to her chest. She has to admit the jacket and slippers do feel nice. She liked the cold grass because it felt like icing her still sore feet, but this is also pleasant. She likes the warmth.

''That's my fault,'' he confesses. ''I tried to keep up with it after you...'' He doesn't say the word. She wonders if that's for her benefit or if he has spent seven months unable to say the words 'died' or 'dead' or 'gone' or even the gentler term of 'passed away.' ''I didn't know what I was doing.'' He leans forward, elbows on his knees. ''You never told me. I never asked how to do this without you.''

She gets the feeling he's not just talking about gardening. ''Dean.'' She grasps his hand and squeezes gently, trying to give him something she's not sure she remembers how to give. It's an automatic response. Her body just does it. Like brushing her teeth or holding Mary close. He's hurting. He's in pain. She wants to make it stop. ''It doesn't matter now,'' she tells him, even though it does. It all matters. Every bit of it.

He seems to recognize this because he doesn't look like he believes her. He also doesn't correct her. He doesn't remind her that everything matters because everything hurts. He looks grateful for the lie. He glances down at her hand holding his and, like a switch has been flipped, he changes right back to caretaker. ''Hey.'' He takes her other hand, extremely careful. He seems to think she's the most fragile thing he's ever held. ''Sweetheart, what happened to your bandages?''

She shrugs, unconcerned. ''I took them off.''

''Laurel,'' he says, ''you're hurt. You have open wounds.''

Abruptly, she pulls her hands away from him and holds them to her body protectively. It's an irrational panic, maybe even childish, but she doesn't want him to put those bandages back on her. They made her feel confined and restricted. It felt like her hands were tied. She couldn't even drink a glass of water by herself. ''I didn't like them,'' she says stubbornly.

''I know you didn't like them but - ''

''I don't want them back.'' She shakes her head firmly. ''I need my hands.''

''You still have your hands,'' he assures her. He's speaking to her with this calm, patient, quiet but firm tone of voice that sounds unusual for him. It takes her a second to realize he's speaking to her like she's Mary. It is somewhat patronizing but given the fact that her breathing has sped up and she's about forty-five seconds away from full blown hysterics for no fucking reason at all, it's also probably necessary. He's approaching her like a wild animal because she is one right now. ''Don't have a panic attack,'' he says, with a half hearted smile. He scoots his chair closer to her and brings his hands up to rub at her temples with his index and middle fingers.

It feels weirdly familiar, like they've been in this position before. It does feel nice. It's oddly relaxing, too. The panic doesn't instantly drain away but it starts inching back into whatever dark cave it lives in inside of her. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths to quell the ridiculously unnecessary panic in her chest. ''I used to have panic attacks?''

His prolonged silence is answer enough. ''Every now and then. Is this helping?''

''Yeah. Did you - Did we used to do this a lot?''

Again, a pause. ''I wouldn't say a lot,'' he says. ''Sometimes. If you needed a little help.'' It's a half answer at best. When he draws his hands back after a minute or two, the loss of contact is disappointing, but she doesn't have a panic attack and her breathing is easier. ''We won't do it like we did before,'' he tries. ''We'll only put band-aids on the worst of it, leave the rest, and just keep the area clean. Does that sound good?''

She gives him a slow nod. She doesn't bother saying anything. If she opens her mouth, she's just going to sound like a stammering, scared idiot. She looks down at the deck and tries to rein herself in. He doesn't bother her but when she risks a glance at him, he looks like he's trying to restrain himself from asking her if she's okay. ''All right,'' she offers. ''We can do that.''

''Good,'' he says. ''That's good. So, uh, how are you feeling otherwise?'' When she doesn't answer, he scoots his chair closer to her and prods, carefully, ''Laurel.''

She considers lying to him so he won't worry. She could tell him that she's feeling better. That she's slow and weak right now but getting better. Or she could tell him the truth. She feels shaken, confused, and scared. She's sore all over, every part of her aches, and she feels sick to her stomach. Not unlike a hangover. Her hands sting. Her body feels hollow and warped. She doesn't trust that she's actually here. She could tell him, warn him, that she's not sure she can be the woman he loves anymore. She could tell him that what came out of that grave isn't what he put in there and he needs to lower his expectations. She could tell him any of these things - a harmless lie or the brutal truth. But she doesn't particularly want to say any of these things, so she doesn't.

''Tommy's dead,'' she blurts out. She looks up at him, trying to gauge his reaction to that. It comes out in this harsh, blunt deadpan. He flinches. She grimaces at her own lack of tact. ''Last night.'' She shifts in the seat, pulling the sleeves of the jacket over her hands. ''I asked you to call him. But he's dead. I remembered that. I saw my necklace in the bathroom - the one he gave to me before he died - and I - I remembered him. I remembered he died.''

''He - yeah,'' he ducks his head. ''I'm sorry. I wish you didn't have to...'' He looks back up at her. ''It's bullshit that he's not here,'' he says, straightforward and still, even after all of these years, frustrated. He was so angry with Tommy for dying. He was vehement that he was on his way to her that night, that he should have been the one to risk his life and run into that crumbling building for her, that Tommy should have stayed out of it, should have stayed home, should have stayed safe, not because of some macho 'she's my wife and I own her' crap but because he also loved and lost Tommy. She remembered that when she remembered Tommy. With the memories of his life came the memories of the blast crater he left behind.

She lowers her chin to her knees and watches him. She doesn't say anything. She just listens to the birds. ''Do you - Do you remember anything else?'' He asks, hesitantly.

She shrugs again. ''I don't know.'' She raises her head and puts her knees down, folding her hands in her lap. ''There are bits and pieces,'' she admits. ''Some things I just know. The way home. You and Mary. I know my parents' names. I know I have a sister named Sara. But I don't remember what she looks like. So much is missing.'' She looks at the wounds on her hands and furiously tries to blink away the tears gathering in her eyes. The salt would sting if the tears dripped onto her wounds and she's most likely dangerously dehydrated right now so she'd like to keep the tears in, if at all possible. ''I don't know how to get it back.''

''Maybe you just need a trigger,'' Dean suggests. His hand has reflexively moved to her knee. ''You said you remembered Tommy after you saw your necklace, right?''

She sniffles and pulls her sleeve over her hand again so she can wipe her eyes without hurting her injuries. ''I guess.''

''Laurel, you will get it back.''

''Will I?''

He can't answer that.

She sits back in her chair. She looks him over. You know, she does remember him. There is something in her head about him that's not completely locked away. Everything's sort of fractured right now but she'll get a glimpse of him in her mind's eye, these quick flashes of him doing completely mundane things like standing in the kitchen, lying in bed, walking into a room, holding a baby, and in every one of these out of context not-quite-memories, he is looking at her and he is smiling. It's nice. It's love. She likes the way he looks at her.

He's in love with her, and she's in love with him too. It's just terrible that she can't remember their story. Everyone has a story. Nobody should have to forget theirs. She does know that she loved this man so incredibly deeply. She still does. And she is so very sorry for what she's about to do.

''Dean.'' She says his name clearly, without hesitance, and it does not feel at all strange on her tongue the way other names do. ''How did I die?''

He doesn't look surprised by the question nor does he look eager to share. She gives him some time to formulate an answer. ''You'd had surgery,'' he says. ''There were...complications.''

''What does that mean? What were the complications?''

The pause before his answer is longer this time. ''You had...'' He scrubs a hand over his face. ''It was an embolism. It went - I don't - to your brain? Your heart?'' He looks, suddenly, haggard and beaten down. She has to squash down the instinct to tell him to stop, to go back to bed and sleep, to forget she ever asked. ''I don't know exactly. I'm sorry,'' he exhales. ''I'm fuzzy on the details. I should have asked more questions. I know the doctor tried to explain it to me but I -I honestly can't tell you what she said. I was underwater.''

She takes that in for a minute, licking her lips. An embolism would have been quick. Maybe it didn't hurt too much. Maybe she didn't suffer. Except - ''What was the surgery for?''

He looks at her silently for a long time until it becomes unnerving. ''You were stabbed with an arrow. It punctured your right lung. They had to go in to fix it.'' He says it fast and clinically. Like he's worried that if he takes more time to explain, if he thinks about the words, he'll break down.

She's not sure how to react to that. She feels like she should be surprised by that because it's an absurd thing to have happened. Why was she stabbed? Why an arrow of all things? She's somehow not surprised at all.

''Do you remember Damien Darhk?'' Dean rubs his hands together. The sunlight catches his wedding ring and, instinctively, her hand flies up to the chain around her neck.

She runs the name through her head and tries to put a face to the name but nothing comes up other than a disconcerting but brief moment where it feels like she's choking. It passes before she can even bring a hand to her throat, so she brushes it off and shakes her head.

''He was a bad person and you were trying to stop him.'' That seems like an oversimplification. She gathers there's probably more to the story, but whatever. She doesn't need to know the intricate details of who her murderer was at this point. ''He was a piece of shit who didn't fight fair and he thought he was indestructible. He wasn't.''

''But he got me.''

''Only because he cheated. He was a coward.''

There's that choking feeling again. ''You keep saying was,'' she points out. ''Is he dead?''

''Incredibly dead,'' he confirms.

That's an interesting detail. Something stirs in her gut when she sees the look in his eyes. ''Who - Who killed him?'' It's an unnecessary question, of course. She already knows.

Dean lowers his head and she notices the way he brushes his thumb over his wedding ring. He doesn't verbally answer her, but when he slowly lifts his head to meet her eyes and she sees the look on his face, it's answer enough.

''You killed him.'' It's not a question.

He blows out a breath. ''I know you probably don't agree with what I did,'' he says, tiredly. ''But I couldn't let him - ''

''He's really dead?'' She cuts him off. ''He's gone?''

He clenches his jaw. ''He's gone.''

She nods. ''Good.'' If he's surprised by that, he doesn't show it, although she swears she sees a bit of relief in his eyes before he looks away. She tilts her head to the side. ''How did you do it?''

He frowns. ''Does it matter?''

It does. She's not sure why but it does. ''Yes.''

''I stabbed him in the lung.''

A vengeful smirk crosses her lips and she looks down so he can't see it. ''That's poetic.''

''I thought so.''

''Um,'' she clears her throat. ''I know this is going to sound strange but do you know if he made me beg? Before he - Before. Did he make me beg for my life?'' It's an odd question. She's aware of that. It might also be unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It's hard to explain. She has this vision in her head of some evil villain twirling his mustache and torturing her and laughing and making her beg for her life before slaughtering her and it makes her skin crawl. She may not fully understand who she is but she knows, at her core, that Laurel Lance does not beg men to spare her. She hopes she didn't give him the satisfaction.

Whatever those last moments were like, she hopes she was brave.

''No,'' Dean answers quickly. ''He didn't make you beg for your life,'' he says, which is simple. It's the follow up that complicates things. He gives her this small comfort and then his voice hardens and he adds, in this low, eerie voice, ''But I made him beg for his.''

It should definitely scare her. The flat tone of his voice. The lack of remorse. The implication that not only did he kill her murderer but he tortured him first. See, she gets the feeling that this isn't her. There is righteousness in her bones. A sense of morality, of good. In theory, she should disapprove of his actions. Killing is wrong. Revenge isn't justice. All that shit. But it's not that simple. It doesn't matter if she was brave in the end. All that matters is that there was an end. A sudden, brutal, violent end at the hands of some halfwit bad guy. This man murdered her.

Let the punishment fit the crime. You can't murder a Winchester, leave the other ones standing, and have the audacity to expect to live.

Do you know what Winchesters consider the murder of a family member?

An act of war.

He was living on borrowed time the second he chose her as his victim. She knows that the way she knew the way home. She may have a heightened sense of morality, but there is also a darkness that lives inside of her that she'll never be able to get out. She doesn't have to remember that to feel it. Dean has it too. Darkness calls out to darkness, after all. She wonders if she saw it in him from the moment they met.

Damien Darhk brutalized her. He took her away from her daughter. He stole precious time from her.

She thinks she can live with his death.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. The birds still sing in the trees. A car pulls into a driveway next door. A screen door creaks somewhere in the neighborhood. It is nice here. It seems so soft and normal and idyllic. She was probably happy here. She probably lived a nice life until the day she walked out that door, left her daughter, her husband, her garden and her apple tree, and didn't come back. ''Were you...'' She trails off, swallowing the lump in her throat. ''Were you with me?''

''I - Not...'' He clears his throat. ''Not when you were stabbed. I was with you when you...'' He still cannot say it.

''I'm sorry.'' Maybe it's not surprising that he was with her but she finds the idea of him having to watch her die unbelievably painful.

He, on the other hand, waves it off. ''Don't be. That's where I was supposed to be. I needed to be with you.'' He says it so matter-of-factly.

''Was it peaceful?''

''It was, uh, sudden. You were fine and then you weren't. It was - I was with you. We were talking. You seemed fine. Then you said you didn't feel good and you...'' He swallows noticeably. ''You seized. And then you were just...'' Gone. ''I don't think you would have known exactly what was happening.''

Well. She supposes that's something. She doesn't think she would have wanted to know what was happening. ''Thank you,'' she gets out, after a few minutes of silence. ''For being with me.''

The corners of his lips tick upward but the smile on his face is sad and there's a look in his eyes that she doesn't like. ''Where else would I have been?''

She offers him a wobbly smile. It feels foreign on her lips. It doesn't quite belong there yet. Still, she keeps it there. People smile. That's what they do. It seems to have quite the affect on him because he stares at her, eyes watery, like she is something he has never seen before.

He recovers swiftly, moving on. ''We should go inside.''

She takes one last look around, at the peacefulness of the backyard. ''Yeah.'' She lets him help her to her feet. She tries to put everything else out of her mind and she focuses on the feel of his hand in hers. ''Wait. Dean.'' She squeezes his hand and reaches out with her other arm to grasp his. He turns to look at her and she just sort of looks at him for a moment. Drinks in the sight of him.

Dean has green eyes. They're very nice eyes. Kind when he wants them to be, harder when he needs them to be. Soft when he looks at her, even softer when he looks at Mary. She knows what those eyes look like when he's angry, scared, sad, laughing, lustful, surprised, and happy. She knows what his eyes look like when he's in love.

She knows his lips. She knows what they feel like on her lips, on her throat, her shoulder, her thighs, every part of her. She knows what they look like when they're curled up in a smile and when they're turned down in a frown. She knows his hands. They are warm and calloused, strong and safe. They've never hurt her, they'll never hurt her. They used to shake sometimes but they haven't in a long time. She knows what they feel like when they run down her back, her hips, when they roam her entire body like he's mapping her out.

She knows that stubble on his cheeks. Right now, it's just a few days worth but she knows that lazy beard that he usually saves for the summer unless he's just too tired or busy to bother shaving. She knows she enjoys that beard. She knows that shirt, his wedding ring, the freckles splashed on his face and body. She knows what his body feels like when it is against her body. The trembling, the sweat, what it feels like when he's inside of her, what it feels like when his lips and his tongue dip lower, beneath her belly button. She knows those toe curling back arching orgasms.

He rarely, if ever, takes his wedding ring off because he's so proud of it. He hates when people refer to her as Dean Winchester's wife but he gets a kick out of being referred to as Laurel Lance's husband. He is a good father. He is an amazing father. He's a better parent than she is - a far better parent. He always knows what Mary needs, he always knows how to comfort her, help her, make her laugh and smile, even on the days when she's so frustrated with her hearing impairment. They're lucky, her and Mary, to have him.

She knows Dean Winchester inside and out. His heart, his body, his mind, his soul. He pledged that to her years ago. This man, she knows, is hers. She does not own him nor does he own her and they certainly don't belong to each other. They belong with each other. She loves this man, this heart, standing here in front of her. She loved him until the day she died. She loves him beyond that.

These are not things anyone could ever forget.

She's not confident she belongs in this world anymore, but she belongs with him and with Mary. If you build a love like this, create a family, and work hard to keep it then nothing can erase that or take it apart. Not even death. She's counting on that.

''I missed you,'' she tells him. ''I'm not sure where I was when I was gone. If it was Heaven or somewhere else. I don't remember any of it. But I know I missed you. Did you miss me?''

That's a stupid question. He wore her wedding rings on a chain around his neck for seven months and looks at her like she's a goddess.

He manages a laugh. ''Oh, pretty bird,'' he gets out. ''You have no idea.''

She smiles at him. Still shaky but it feels real this time. She inches closer to him and lays her scarred hand over his heart. He places his hand over hers, covering her cold hand in warmth. She'd really like to kiss him now. She considers her next move carefully and then she pulls herself up onto her tiptoes, wraps one hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him. He hasn't given her permission to kiss him and he seems sort of hesitant at first, most likely because he doesn't want to take advantage of her while she's vulnerable. And, yes, she is vulnerable right now, but that doesn't mean she can't give her consent. She is missing memories. Not the ability to give her consent. She knows what she wants and she wants to kiss her husband who she loves very much.

It doesn't take him long to give in, melting and stepping into her space. He moves his hands to cup her cheeks and deepens the, admittedly chaste, kiss she started. She starts out analyzing the kiss. He's a good kisser. The tongue is a nice touch. It's not overly sloppy or messy, but it's there. The abundance of gentleness he shows her is a welcome and lovely surprise. But the analysis ends pretty quickly when her emotions and her body take over. She makes this pleased noise in the back of her throat and curls herself impossibly close to him. This is a kiss that tingles and shivers. Warmth pools in her chest, travels down to her stomach, travels lower and lower until her legs feel weak with it. She can feel it everywhere.

All of that is nice and all, it's more than nice actually, but it's not just that. It's not just the emotions, the love and the lust, or the way her body physically responds to the kiss. It's that when her eyes close and that adrenaline hums through her blood, sending her spinning away, she gets this flash. This lightning fast blinding white behind her eyelids, and it's like something is knocked back into place.

When they eventually have to pull away, breathing shakily, foreheads pressed together, his eyes are still closed so she watches him for a second. She runs her fingers through his hair, gathers her thoughts together, and then says, ''You wouldn't let me take back the dress.''

His eyes fly open. He draws away from her and she watches the realization dawn on his face. ''What?''

''My wedding dress,'' she says. ''When I got pregnant, we cancelled our plans for a big wedding because it wasn't practical. But you wouldn't let me take back my dress.''

''Well,'' he sounds rattled. Also, possibly dazed. Apparently she is also a good kisser. That's good to know. She's going to file that away for later. ''You loved that dress.''

''I did,'' she agrees, because she remembers that now. Her wedding dress was beautiful. It wasn't overly puffed up nor was it super light and flowy, it was like the perfect in between with an intricate embroidered lace overlay and the cutest cap sleeves. It was such a romantic dress and it made this incredibly pleasing swishing noise when she twirled around. She felt like a queen in that dress. ''We got married at the courthouse,'' she keeps going. Her voice is shaking slightly and she feels dizzy from the jolt of just getting this one memory back, a dull headache forming behind her eyes. ''It was what was easy and we just wanted to get it over with. We did everything the way we were supposed to. We applied for a marriage license, jumped through all of the hoops, made a reservation at the courthouse, and we didn't tell anyone. We said it was just a formality, just paperwork, not a big deal. We'd been together for a few years, we lived together, we were having a baby, we were a family. We thought we were practically married anyway. Then the morning of the wedding, I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth and you were in the doorway and you told me I should wear the dress. You said it was a wedding dress and we were getting married, so why wouldn't I wear it? I thought it was ridiculous. I didn't even know if it would still fit. But I wanted to humor you, so I put it on. I was pregnant so the dress didn't exactly fit the way it should have and we had to use safety pins and creativity and, like, sheer willpower to keep it closed. I didn't even care. I loved the dress, I loved wearing it, and I loved the way you looked at me when I was in it.''

She scratches her fingers down his stubble lightly. It's a muscle memory thing. She knows he likes it. ''I remember everything about that day, Dean. I remember that when you first saw me in the dress and I saw the look on your face, that was when it sunk in that I was getting married. I remember that we completely forgot that we needed witnesses so we just wound up asking the first two people we saw at the courthouse. It was a - a detective from Central City and his daughter. They were so sweet and happy for us even though they didn't know us. I - I didn't have any flowers so she ran out while we were waiting in line and came back with daisies that she used to make me a flower crown.'' She laughs lightly. Now that the memory has been wedged back into place, it's hard to believe she ever could have forgotten it. ''I remember standing across from you, saying my vows. I was practically bouncing up and down in excitement and I could hardly get the words out. I think the judge was trying not to laugh at me. I was so giddy that I couldn't stop smiling. It wasn't just a formality. It was our wedding, and it was perfect. I remember that.''

''Yeah,'' he says, after a moment of silent gaping. ''I remember that too.''

She smiles wistfully, drawing her hand back and stepping away. ''We were happy,'' she says. ''Weren't we?''

''We were.''

She's not sure why but that makes her want to cry. She pulls the jacket closer to her body with one hand and reaches up to hold onto her wedding rings with the other. This shouldn't be happening. None of this should be happening. She shouldn't have died in the first place. It was unfair. ''Do you think we can get that back?''

''We can do anything,'' he responds, almost carelessly.

''You sound optimistic,'' she points out. It feels like that might be an odd thing to say to him.

He seems to think so too, if the way he barks out an incredulous laugh is anything to go on. He looks out into the backyard. At the apple tree, the garden, the birds, the sunlight coming in through the branches. ''I was never an optimist until I met you. You tend to bring that out in people.'' Cautiously, he steps closer to her to bring his hands to her shoulders. ''Listen, Laur.'' He pauses, licking his lips slowly while he tries to come up with the right words to say to her. ''I'm not - I'm not good at this. I'm not a motivational speaker. I can give you a dirty joke or two but I don't know how to inspire people the way you do. But I need you to know who you are.'' He leans down a bit so he's eye level with her. ''You're a hero,'' he says. ''You, Dinah Laurel Lance, are one of the best parts of this, of all of this. You have a softness in you that a lot of other people don't. Some people mistake it for a weakness. Even I did at first. I thought you needed to be saved or taken care of. I was wrong. Your strength comes from that softness. I can't do that. I've never had that kind of strength. You walk around with all of this unimaginable grace streaming out of you, and it's impossible not to feel that. People fall into your gravity and their entire world changes. You make people better, stronger, kinder just by being around them. You let the light in. You did it for me, for Mary, your sister, Tommy, Thea, even Sam and Cas. You've also done it for yourself. I've watched you rebuild your broken heart over and over and over again, and you can damn well do it again. I'm sorry you don't remember, okay? I am. I hate seeing you in pain. But you're still you, Laurel. None of this changes that. This is just a setback.''

She sniffles. Those are all nice, heart swelling words full of love and sweetness. It's just not that simple. ''I feel like this is a pretty significant setback.''

''Maybe, but, look.'' His hands move down to grasp hers carefully. ''Thing is, babe, it's what happened. We're here. You and me. Right? We can deal with whatever happens next because that's what we do. And I don't need - We can make new memories if we have to. We can do all of that. But you're here. I got you back. Maybe it's selfish, I know it's selfish, but whatever else is coming...'' He shrugs. ''Let it come. If someone out there wants you, they'll have to go through me. I'm not letting anything take you away again.'' He is trying extremely hard to sound tough and fearless and brave. He doesn't want her to be afraid. She appreciates that. Except that he's failing. It's not at all hard to hear the undercurrent of panic in his voice. The memory of her loss is a fresh wound. It's still something that leaves him paralyzed with fear and grief. She hates that. She hates that she did this to them, that she put them through this, however unintentional it was.

She also doesn't believe that everything will be okay now that she's back. She doesn't feel as relieved to be alive as she should. What's happening here - this open defiance of the natural order of things - is wrong. Her very existence is wrong. She is not a miracle. She is a consequence. Something has gone terribly wrong here.

Somewhere under the denial and the desperation to believe that they can go back to the way things were, Dean knows that too.

There's something coming. Something bad. She can feel it, smell it, practically taste it in the air, and he can try but he won't be able to protect her from it.

Laurel doesn't say any of this to him. She just smiles weakly and pulls him in for a hug. When he wraps his arms around her and holds her close, she closes her eyes and tries to find the safety in his arms that she is sure used to be there. She can't.

''Have you called my dad yet?'' She asks, voice muffled against his shirt. She doesn't want to move away from the embrace. She does draw back, albeit reluctantly, when she feels him stiffen.

''Not yet,'' he admits, sheepish. ''I know you asked me to but I - '' He shakes his head. ''Doesn't matter. I'll call him now.''

''No, wait.'' She grasps his arm. ''Don't,'' she pleads. ''Don't call him yet. I don't want... I need...'' She takes in a deep shuddering breath and can't look him in the eye. He is not going to like what she has to say next. ''I need to go back to my grave.'' She looks up at him. ''I need to show you something.''

.

.

.

Laurel makes it through breakfast without any major meltdowns. It's an awkward affair and she knows that there are more important things that they could be doing right now but she refuses to leave the house before Mary wakes up and Dean seems intent on getting some food in her before they go anywhere.

Cas is quick to hug her when he sees her, standing and wrapping her up in this careful, tender hug. He smiles when the hug ends, somewhat suspicious but mostly encouraging. She smiles back.

Sam is more hesitant, staring at her for a long time before he puts the spatula in his hand down and reaches out impossibly slowly to touch her so softly and reluctantly it's like he's scared she'll disappear if he touches her. When she doesn't, he wraps her up in this huge bear hug, lifting her off the ground, and he kisses her hair.

These hugs do feel comforting and they do feel familiar, but not quite enough to trigger any memories. Another thing is that after they've hugged her, they don't seem to know what else to do with her. They're glad to see her, she can tell that, but neither of them seems to know what to say to her and she certainly has no idea what to say to them. She has this urge to apologize to them for some reason. For the shock of her leaving. For the shock of her coming back.

Dean, Sam, and Cas all have this effortless bond and repartee - both familial and professional - that she can't keep up with. They want answers, they want a plan of action, they want to call people, put out feelers, get in touch with their contacts in the supernatural world to see if any of them have heard about anything big going down or if any of them have felt any ''vibrations'' as Cas puts it.

Meanwhile, she sits at the table and tries to listen to what they're saying while Dean bandages up her hands again. She manages to get down most of the water and some of the orange juice that he puts in front of her. She feels like that's a pretty big accomplishment but that's about it. She has nothing to add to the conversation. She can't help them. She tells them as much as she can about what happened but it's hard to get the words out so she mostly just tries to focus on eating.

It's strange to eat. It really shouldn't be this hard. Sam puts this massive plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in front of her, cleaning out the fridge and the cupboards to offer her the option of multiple jams, cream cheese, butter, Nutella. It's sweet but just the sight of food sends her stomach recoiling. She knows she should be hungry. She hasn't eaten since April. She, according to Dean, loves bacon. She should be famished. As it is, her appetite is practically nonexistent and the smell of the bacon is turning her stomach. She figures it's just because her body is still adjusting. She's been out of commission for a long time, her system is bound to be out of whack for a few days. That doesn't make it any less frustrating. She manages to choke down a few bites of egg and some toast, mostly out of pure spite. She's not overly confident it's going to stay down but it's a start. Dean must notice her struggling because he takes the plate away and puts some vitamins in front of her instead, and she offers him a grateful smile.

It's easier to be here, she finds, when Mary is around. Mary comes charging into the room, tripping over her own feet and narrowly - thanks to Uncle Sammy - avoiding a faceplant, and calling for her, with Thea hot on her heels. With her girls around, Laurel can focus all of her energy on them. She slips into Mom mode like it's her second skin, lifting Mary onto her lap and nudging at Thea's shoulder with what she hopes is a playful smile. Both of the girls seem to want to be as close as humanly possible to Laurel and she's willing to roll with that. She doesn't want to scare them or worry them like she did last night, so she keeps a smile on her face, does her best to act normal, and everyone stops talking about what a messed up situation they're in.

Thea is not her child. Thea is not a child at all. She's not at all fooled by the smile or the determination to keep things light. Mary, however, is four. She doesn't understand the tension, she doesn't know why everyone looks so serious or why her parents look so unsettled. All she really understands is that her mother went away for a long time and now she's back. That's enough to make her day.

With her in the room, there is no conversation about how or why, no talk about the daunting task of informing people that the corpse they put in the ground seven months ago suddenly has a pulse again. It's almost, for a little while, like a normal family breakfast. Things are almost okay.

It's not a feeling that lasts long.

Less than an hour later, Laurel is standing in the grass, trying not to lose her breakfast all over someone's final resting place while Dean, Sam, and Cas inspect the carnage of what was supposed to be hers.

She doesn't want to get too close. She knows it's an irrational fear but she's afraid that the earth might want her back. She stands back, a safe distance away, and pointedly does not look at their faces as they look at the desecrated grave. She looks at Dean, just once, and immediately wishes she hadn't. He's crouched in front of her grave with this sickened expression on his face as he slowly picks up the dirty shoe with the broken heel that she had abandoned last night. He doesn't move for a long time. It doesn't matter that he's been through this before. He still looks disturbed by the overturned earth, the splinters of wood, the specks of blood on the trampled flowers. Whatever happened to him when he left his grave behind, it wasn't this.

In the daylight, the chaos of the destruction is quiet and sinister. It's not just the bloody flowers, the overturned earth, and that damned shoe that is sending unnatural shockwaves through her boys. That would be too easy. What's throwing them off, plunging all of them into a stunned silence, is the state of everything else.

Her headstone is in pieces, practically disintegrated on the grass like someone took a sledgehammer to it and just kept smashing and smashing until it was nothing. Only it wasn't a sledgehammer. The same can be said for the ones around hers. Headstones, statues, candle holders, vases holding flowers, everything has been shattered and ruined. They're all lying broken on the grass. Glass crunches under their feet and stone crumbles down around them.

These are - were - people's memorials. Cemeteries are supposed to be a place of peace and rest for the dead. It is supposed to be a place of respect. All of these poor people, lying under the earth like she was, with grieving family members who come to lay flowers at their monuments, have had their rest so violently, gruesomely disturbed. There is brand new hurt here for the families of these people.

Laurel turns away from the living to focus on the dead. She wanders a little farther away, over to a broken angel statue a few feet away. It's an older statue, naturally decayed from years of the sun and the rain. At one point, it must have been beautiful. Now the head has been broken off and the wings have been cracked and ruined. She kneels down at the base of the statue, yanking the sleeve of her hoodie over her hand so she can wipe away what looks like at least a decade's worth of dirt and moss to read the name. She draws in a slightly gasping breath and when she exhales, she lets out this small, distressed, unbelievably guilty noise that comes right from her gut. The girl here died in 2003. She was sixteen years old.

Her name was Mary.

She picks up a small, jagged piece of what used to be a wing and rubs her thumb over the sun bleached stone. As a mother herself, it's not hard to imagine what this poor girl's parents must have felt. Losing your child is every parent's nightmare. She can't help but think about what she would be feeling if this was her Mary. If she had channeled the grief of losing her girl into making sure she had a beautiful monument that everyone would see when they walked in. If that memorial was so carelessly destroyed. She would be heartbroken. She would be pissed off.

''I'm so sorry,'' she whispers. ''I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.'' Maybe she can make this up to the girl's family somehow. Pay for a replacement statue. At least apologize somehow.

She turns her head to look back over at her family. Dean and Sam are still standing in front of her grave, talking quietly. She can't hear what they're saying but she can see that Dean is still holding her shoe. He's got both hands wrapped around it, cradling it to his chest. It seems to be a professional conversation but, after a few minutes, Sam gets this tight lipped, concerned look on his face, and he stops talking. He takes his hands out of his pockets, reaches a hand out, and very gently takes the shoe out of his brother's grasp, slowly tossing it back into the overturned earth. Dean looks at his hands like he's not sure what to do with them, and then, rather abruptly, he shakes his head and snaps out of it. He turns his head, catches Laurel's eye, and she looks away.

Cas is not with them. Cas is -

A shadow falls over her and she looks up at him, startled. She takes one look at his face and that's all it takes for her to realize that he knows. ''Laurel,'' he says, kindly but still rather tentative. ''Are you all right?'' He offers her his hand and she takes it, letting him pull her back up to her feet.

''I'm...'' She glances back at Mary's smashed angel statue. No, she is certainly not all right. There is something very, very wrong with her. She doesn't know what happened or how but she came back wrong. ''No.''

Cas nods like he understands. He probably doesn't. ''How much do you remember about what happened last night?'' He seems like he's working very hard to make his voice sound not suspicious. He still sounds suspicious. And with good reason. ''Do you know what did this?''

She laughs hollowly, bitterly. ''Sure. I know what did this.'' She winds her arms around herself and summons up the courage to meet his piercing eyes. ''I did.''

.

.

.

It's been a shit morning.

In all fairness, most of Oliver's mornings are shit nowadays, but today has been something else. When John had asked him how the meeting with the parks department had gone, Oliver had told him flatly, ''Less than stellar.''

An understatement.

The meeting had been an unmitigated disaster. In one single forty-five minute meeting, the entire parks department had let him know, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't respect him, they weren't planning on acknowledging his authority, and if he cut their funding they were going to fight back as hard as they could. To them, he was unqualified, uneducated, and completely undeserving of the position he was currently in. The parks department has officially gone rogue.

The fucking parks department.

Who the hell saw that one coming?

In theory, he is the Mayor of this city. He could potentially just make them respect his authority. Except, honestly, they're not entirely wrong. Which is why he's here sulking instead of storming into the parks department with some poorly thought out speech about togetherness and being a united front for the city. Oliver sighs and digs his hands into his pockets, staring up at the larger than life bronze statue of Black Canary. Of Laurel. Okay, so, it's not perfect. Contrary to popular belief, he does know that. I mean, it's not like he's blind. He has eyes. It's just all that's left. It's all he has left. Laurel has been a part of him in one way or another since he was fourteen years old. It doesn't make sense for her to just be gone.

People say home is where your heart is. Home, for Oliver Queen, has always been Laurel Lance.

Do you know what he has left of his home?

A scarf.

She left it in the bunker sometime last winter. It's two toned, black and green. It's long enough to wrap around her neck a few times and, for a long time, it smelled like her. It doesn't anymore. He hung it on the back of his closet door so he can see it every morning. When he realized her scent was starting to fade from the delicate fabric, when he closed his eyes and couldn't quite get her smile right, he felt like he was cracking. He cancelled all his meetings, stayed at home, ignored phone calls, and drank a six pack. He doesn't even like beer. He panicked. He panicked because there has to be something left of her. It's Laurel.

It's Laurel.

He can't do this without her. He never could. She doesn't get to leave him. So, yes, fine. He'll admit it. He had the statue built because he missed her. He had the statue built and he put it on the pier where they had their first date because he wanted to go home. He hadn't meant to upset her family. Truly, he hadn't. He'd just wanted to go home. Is that so bad?

''Rough morning, Mr. Mayor?''

The familiar voice loosens the tension in his shoulders ever so slightly and he turns around, smile slowly forming on his lips. ''Sara.''

She grins but it's not her usual infectious smile. It's a little weaker and it doesn't quite reach her eyes. ''Hi, Ollie.'' She doesn't hesitate to step into his arms when he reaches out for a hug. She seems smaller in his arms somehow. She doesn't fit the way she used to. When they pull away and he gets a good look at her, concern begins to nag away at him. She looks skinnier, shorter even, like her shoulders are being weighed down by something, and there are these pronounced dark bags under her eyes. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what that weight on her shoulders is. She keeps looking over her shoulder at the statue. The fragile looking smile on her face can't hide the sadness in her eyes.

''You look tired,'' he blurts out before he can stop himself.

''Wow,'' she drawls. ''You sure know how to charm a girl.''

''Sorry,'' he says, with an attempt at a smile. Gently, he places a hand on her upper back and starts to steer her over to a nearby bench. ''I just worry,'' he tries to sound nonchalant. ''You're getting enough sleep?''

''Oh,'' she shrugs her shoulders. ''You know.'' It's a pointed non answer.

''What about food?'' He asks. ''You're eating, right?''

''God, Oliver.'' She laughs and takes a seat on the bench, crossing one leg over the other. ''You sound like Dean and my dad.''

Neither of those are comparisons he ever wants. He folds his arms and studies her for a brief period of time. Her smile, the one that is meant to be playful and disarming, is cold and unconvincing. There is a hardened edge to her eyes that tells him he should drop the subject. He has never been good at doing things he should. ''Maybe they have a point.''

That's when she drops the smile. ''Here's the point,'' she snaps. ''I'm not a child, and none of you have a leg to stand on when it comes to the importance of self-care. You're all barely alive anyway.''

''Wow,'' he says when he manages to find his voice. ''Ouch.''

Regret pools in her eyes but she stubbornly turns her head so he doesn't see it. ''I'm sorry,'' she says, voice softer this time. ''That was harsh.''

It was. It also wasn't wrong. He can't argue against her point without sounding like a hypocritical asshole, so he just loosens his tie and collapses onto the bench next to her. If Laurel was here, she would know what to say. He's found himself thinking that a lot lately. What would Laurel do? It's not just Sara either. It's everyone.

Captain Lance is stumbling through life slowly dying and drunk, and other than picking him up from dive bars and carting him home on the days Dean doesn't pick up his phone or just plain doesn't want to deal with his father-in-law's drunken verbal abuse, Oliver doesn't know how to help him.

His relationship with his team is becoming more and more unstable. He's trying to juggle his leadership roles as Green Arrow and the Mayor but he's finding it harder and harder with every passing day. His interactions with Felicity are fraught with hostility and snide remarks, John has settled into a continuous and unnerving silence, and Curtis probably thinks they're all deranged assholes who hate each other. He has come to the realization that he grossly underestimated Laurel's importance to that team. Somewhere along the way, when he wasn't looking, she took his team away from him and became the glue. All that's left is her glaring absence now. They are falling apart without her.

He is losing Thea. His baby sister. She's been his heart and soul since the day she was born and he is losing her. More than that, he's losing her to Dean fucking Winchester. Of all people. And he doesn't know how to stop it, how to get her back. He doesn't know how to be the Ollie she needs to fix her hurt, and their solid foundation has started to crumble under their feet because of it. Oliver knows how to die for Thea, but he doesn't know how to live for her. Dean, apparently, does. He can be the big brother she lost all those years ago, the father she never truly had, the mother that was torn away from her, the piece of Laurel that's left, he can be everything she needs, he can take care of her, and all Oliver can do is watch her fall away from him.

Laurel would know what to do. She would know how to fix this. She'd look after Sara and her dad, she'd smooth things over with the team and keep them on track, and she always knew how to bring Oliver and Thea back together. Even with all of this Mayoral stuff, she would know what to do. The truth of the matter is that Laurel had been far more qualified to be Mayor. He hadn't told her but she would have been his pick for Deputy Mayor. She would have been able to help him learn the ropes, help him understand the red tape and the political bullshit, even the stupid parks department she would have been able to help with.

If Laurel was here, if she was standing in front of him right now, things would be better. The world wouldn't be as muffled or dreary. But she's not here. She won't ever be here again.

Oliver leans his arms on his knees and wrings his hands, watching the people mill around the Black Canary statue. His knuckles throb dully, a constant ache these days because most of his sparse spare time is spent with the punching bag.

''I'm sorry I didn't come see you sooner,'' Sara speaks up.

He swings his eyes to her. She looks a little more relaxed, eyes focused on the statue. It occurs to him that this might be the first time she's actually seen it. ''You were with your family,'' he says.

''I was,'' she agrees. ''I was...'' Her lips curl up into a genuine grin. ''It was my niece's birthday. But,'' she looks at him, lips turned down into a serious frown. ''You're my family too, Oliver. I hope you know that.''

He hadn't, actually. ''I do now.''

They lapse into another relatively comfortable silence and he leans back against the bench. He focuses on her presence, her comforting warmth beside him, and he tries his best to be present in this one moment. To just be here with her for a few minutes. He tries, with everything he has, not to wish she was Laurel.

''Can I ask you a question?'' She asks after awhile.

''Sure.''

''Does this city feel like home to you?''

It's an unexpected question. He's not sure how to answer it. ''It's the only home I've ever known.'' Other than Laurel and Thea. ''Does it feel like home to you?''

''I...'' She stops. She looks frightened somehow, and young. He forgets sometimes how young they all are. How young they were when this started. He feels like he's been doing this for decades, like he should be eighty years old. He's not even in his mid thirties yet. Laurel didn't even make it to thirty-one. ''She's everywhere, Oliver,'' Sara whispers. ''You know what I mean?''

It would be impossible not to. Star City is full of ghosts. They walk with him every day. He sits in his big empty loft all alone with the echoes of Tommy and Laurel. He broke a glass the other day because he couldn't get them out. Just squeezed it so hard it shattered in his hand because their laughter, their voices, the image of them smiling and alive, of them cold and dying and dead were bouncing around his skull, festering in his brain like an infection. He stands in his office, posture stiff and rigid with his parents on either side of him, the stench of their blood filling his nostrils, the feel of the judgmental eyes burning through him.

He's not Dean. He doesn't have all these people offering to help him, fawning all over him and pitying him. He doesn't have Laurel's baby girl to look after, to use as a focal point, an anchor to keep him here. He doesn't have the leftovers, the pieces she left behind. He doesn't get that life. He could have. He should have. There is no doubt in his mind that if he had made different choices, if he hadn't been such a fuck up, he would be the one raising Laurel's daughter.

The Winchester/Lance family is lucky. Maybe they don't feel it right now but they are. They have each other. All he has left is a sister who would rather be part of their family than his and a statue that doesn't even look right.

No, Star City isn't home. It's just another island.

He doesn't tell her this. He doesn't tell her any of this. He just says, ''I know what you mean,'' and hopes that's enough. He hears her inhale sharply and when he looks at her, she's wiping her eyes. He doesn't even get the chance to try and comfort her.

''You come here a lot,'' she says, nodding at the statue. ''Don't you?''

Every day.

He shrugs. ''Sometimes.''

She nods but looks like she doesn't believe his nonchalance. He can't read the look on her face. That's bothersome to him. ''He hates it,'' she deadpans. ''Dean. He hates this thing.''

Is it bad that he doesn't care? ''He hates everything I do.''

She hums contemplatively. ''He ranted to me about it, actually. He told me it was disrespectful. I disagreed. I thought it was a great idea,'' she admits, offering him a soft smile. ''See, legends are myths, Ollie. Heroes are false. Nothing real, nothing tangible. We fight our secret wars, stop our secret villains, protect the timeline, protect our cities. We hide in the cracks of time and the shadows of dark alleys, clawing for solace and redemption and some semblance of meaning. I didn't want that to be her. I wanted the world to know she was here. I wanted them to know what they lost. I wanted the whole world to mourn with me because I was so resentful that people could be happy without her. You know? I'd come here and I'd go out in the world and see people smiling and happy, just living their lives, and I'd think, How dare you. It seemed so unconceivable to me that people could ever be happy in a world without her in it. So when Dean told me about this statue, I was grateful. It means she left a mark. She was here. Star City's very own beacon of hope. I thought, she'll make the history books now. They'll love her forever.'' She smiles sadly and tears her eyes away from the statue. A bitter smirk flickers on her lips before dying away. She looks at him, eyes steady and angry, and says, plainly, ''I was wrong.''

He should have seen that one coming.

She takes longer to elaborate than expected, taking time to come up with the right words, and all he can do is sit there, squirming and uncomfortable, trying to muster up the energy to be defensive.

''I know what happened at the funeral,'' she says, and that's when he knows he's in trouble. ''Do you know that there were people there who didn't even know she was married with a child?'' Her voice is worryingly casual, like they're just having a conversation about the weather. ''That's how intensely private she was. She worked her ass off to be able to separate her personal and professional lives and she did it to protect her daughter and her husband. You destroyed that protection at her own funeral.'' She says it all so breezily. She doesn't break eye contact once. ''She wasn't even in the ground yet and you just stood up and thoughtlessly obliterated everything she had spent her entire life building. Her reputation, her career, her safety, her comfort. You invaded her privacy and you very nearly smashed Dean and Mary's lives to pieces.''

Oliver can't help but try to defend himself, even though logically he knows there is no defense. ''I didn't mean for - ''

''I'm not saying this to be cruel,'' she sighs, tired. ''I'm honestly not. It's just what happened. This is what you did, Oliver. You told the world her biggest secret. You did it without the permission of her family and you did it for one reason and one reason only. To save yourself. You almost cost me what little family I have left when you put them in that position.'' She is still so matter-of-fact. Like she's not sitting here tearing him to shreds. ''The only reason Dean isn't sitting in Iron Heights right now is because someone convinced the police to drop their investigation into him. If they had decided to run with their theory that Dean was the Green Arrow, if they charged him as an accomplice, if they made an example out of him, Mary would have been taken away. Do you get that?''

How could he not? People act like he's somehow incapable of understanding the ramifications of his actions. People bring up what he did at the funeral as if he's some kind of hapless fool who needs someone to explain to him what he did wrong. He knows what he did wrong. He knew it was wrong when he stood up, he knew when he started talking, and he knew when he saw the look on Dean's face. If none of that clued him in then what happened after sure as shit would have. Oliver stood at Laurel's grave and let her husband beat his face into something vaguely resembling hamburger meat and he didn't even try to fight back because he knew what he had done.

But he did it.

It happened.

He made an impossible choice because he was desperate. He made a split second decision because he didn't know what else to do, because he felt helpless and small, and because he needed to protect the ones left alive. And, no. He hadn't, in the moment, thought about how unmasking her would affect her family. Truthfully, it hadn't even crossed his mind. That's on him. He's aware of that.

A lot of this is on him.

''I wouldn't have let them take Mary away,'' he says.

Sara shakes her head. It's not enough. He knows that. ''You violated my dead sister.'' It's harsh and blunt and cruel. It makes his chest tight and his breathing speed up. It is also true. ''You violated the ones she left behind.'' She looks at the statue, somewhat despairingly. ''Now you go and do this. Once again, without her family's permission. In fact, Dean flat out said no, didn't he? But you did it anyway. It's your world, right, Mr. Mayor? Screw everybody else.''

''Sara...''

''Laurel never cared about having her name in the history books,'' she says. ''She never wanted that. She did what she did because she believed it was the right thing to do. She wanted to help people. She didn't consent to being your fucking martyr.'' It's the only real hint of anger she's shown so far. She has said this, all of this, so quietly and softly, disappointed but not angry. It's unsettling; that distinct lack of anger. ''Here's where we are,'' she begins again. ''I'm not asking you to do anything. I am telling you. You will remove this statue and you, as the Mayor of Star City, will offer a public apology to my brother-in-law for the great inconvenience you caused him. I love you, Ollie,'' she leans in close to him, ''but if this thing is still here the next time I'm in town, I will destroy you like you destroyed her.''

It's not even a threat. There's no heat, no warning, no rage behind it. This isn't Dean beating the crap out of him. It's not the devastated, thinly veiled disgust that Thea couldn't manage to hide in time. This is a promise. It's a fact. Sara will do what she says and she won't regret a second of it. Sara can't save her sister, can't bring her back, so she'll do what she has to do protect her legacy and the family she has left.

He releases a breath. Maybe it had been a stupid idea in the first place. He looks at the looming monument, tall and rigid, lacking the warmth, the humanity, and the compassion of the real Laurel. It's not her. It was never her. He always knew that. He just needed something. There had to be something. He wanted an image of her in his head that wasn't her bleeding out in his arms or her lying on a slab in the morgue.

Two young girls, sisters by the looks of it, scurry past the bench they're sitting on with their mother and baby brother trailing after them at a slower pace. They are both holding bouquets of flowers and they look determined. They walk up to the Black Canary statue, huddled together, and they tenderly place the flowers at the base of it. Their mother swings the little boy up onto her hip, twirling a daisy in her other hand, and watches the girls from a distance, close enough to hear them but far enough away to give them their privacy. One of the girls rushes over her to retrieve some items from her mother's purse, and the girls add what looks to be hand drawn cards to the flowers, putting them under candles so the wind won't blow them away.

It's an incredibly sweet gesture.

Oliver glances over at Sara. Her eyes have softened at the sight of the sisters - one brunette and tall, the other blonde and short, like the world is making a very clear point right now - but when her lips start to tremble, she tightens them stubbornly and goes stoic.

He wants to tell her that this isn't the first time this has happened. He wants to tell her that every day, when he comes here on his lunch break, there is something new. Flowers, cards, letters, children's drawings, stuffed animals, candles, small mementos meant to honor Black Canary. To mourn her. It gets breezy down here, especially at night, so every evening he has someone from his office come here, box up the offerings, and put them in his office.

His office is full of boxes.

Sara wanted the world to mourn with her, and they have. Maybe not the whole world, but this city? They mourned. They mourn. Green Arrow fights for this city as a whole. Black Canary fought for the people in it. And she never willingly left them. Green Arrow and all of his variations chose time and time again to leave, to abandon his post. The only time Black Canary ever left them was when she was taken. The citizens of this godforsaken city have not forgotten that.

Black Canary wasn't just loved. She was beloved.

He feels bad that he hadn't expected that. He feels even worse that she never knew that. It probably never even crossed her mind that people out there could love her the way they love her.

It's still not enough, is it?

Oliver keeps his eyes on the mother. The girls have placed their flowers and their cards for Laurel at the base of the statue and have moved on. Their mother lingers behind for an extra moment, looking up at the statue. There's a look on her face that he can't really describe. If he had to guess, he'd say she might be someone Laurel saved. The woman looks at the baby on her hip, walks up to the statue, and lays the daisy down.

He looks away. ''They took my limbs, Sara.'' He admits this very quietly. He's been so afraid to say it out loud. She makes a sighing noise and when he looks at her, she's turned away from him, blinking away tears. ''It's been seven months,'' he goes on, ''and it's not getting any easier. It just gets harder.''

''Tommy died years ago,'' she points out. ''Has that gotten any easier?''

No. Not at all. He still picks up the phone to call him on a regular basis. Still calls the familiar number and gets halfway through leaving some mundane message before he remembers. ''I'll take the statue down,'' he says.

''Thank you.'' She reaches out to put her hand on his knee, squeezing.

''We did this,'' he says, without thinking. ''Didn't we? All of this.'' The words don't stop. ''We got on that boat. We didn't care what we were doing. We didn't think about how much it would hurt her. We got on that stupid boat and we killed them all. One choice, Sara. One wrong choice and we lost everything. We hurt so many people. Ruined so many lives.''

''We did,'' she agrees, voice shaky. ''But,'' she shifts. ''If we hadn't, my niece wouldn't be here.'' She frowns, concerned. ''There was life after that choice, you know.''

He laughs. It's bitter and angry. It makes her jumps. He has never made her jump before. Seven months without Laurel, just seven months, and he is already becoming unhinged. ''Not for everyone,'' he mutters. ''My parents, my best friend, the love of my life - they're all dead. Every single one of them. If we hadn't gotten on that boat, they would still be here. They would be happy.''

Sara says nothing for a long time, but he can feel her eyes burning into him. He hears her take a deep breath and somehow manages to make even that sound exasperated. ''You mean the ex love of your life.''

He freezes. He goes wide-eyed and still as heat creeps up his neck until it reaches his ears. ''What?''

She eyes him warily, critically. ''You called her the love of your life,'' she points out needlessly. ''You meant the ex love of your life, right? As in former? No longer. Because you've both moved on. Haven't you, Ollie?''

''I...'' He has no defense. He has no excuses. He can't even muster up a lie. He takes in a breath, holds it, and then exhales It takes one look at the expression on his face for pity to completely engulf her. He can see it in her eyes.

''Oh, Oliver.'' She sounds so sad. She reaches out to touch his cheek. It's the same thing Laurel used to do. ''Even after all this time?''

Yes, even after all this time. He's Oliver. She was Laurel. They were supposed to be written in the stars. Luckily, he is saved from answering the question and delving into this supremely awkward conversation by the sound of his phone buzzing in his pocket. About a second later, he hears Sara's phone make a short, sharp ringing. He digs his phone out and gives the text message from Thea a quick onceover. His heart sinks into his stomach in dread.

''So,'' Sara says, eyebrows knitting together as she stares down at her own phone. ''Did you happen to just get a text from Thea?''

''I did.''

''And does it also say emergency in all caps with like half a dozen exclamation points?''

His phone buzzes again with a follow up text from Thea telling not only him but the whole team to get down to the bunker asap. Oliver lifts his gaze from his phone, locks eyes with Sara for exactly three seconds, and then they're both up and running.

.

.

.

May, 2016

There is blood on the Black Canary suit.

It's dried now, stained into the leather. There is so much of it. He can still smell her perfume but the coppery scent of blood has overwhelmed it almost entirely and when he lifts the mangled suit to his face, searching for Laurel, he can't find her there. He can't find her anywhere. The state of the suit still shocks him. It shouldn't. Of course there would be blood and he knows it makes sense that they had to cut it off of her in the ER. But it's distressing to see it this way, reduced to shreds, bloodstained and crumpled. There is a hole in it from where the arrow - his arrow - went in.

Oliver puts the suit down on the table and sits down. He looks at the suit. He looks at the duffel bag it's supposed to go into. He looks at the cardboard box he's supposed to put her belongings into. How strange. How wrong. That her entire presence here can be put into a box.

He touches the soft leather again, hand lingering. There's an ache in his throat that hasn't gone away for a month. It's been a month. He doesn't want this to be happening. He doesn't want any of this to be happening.

Thea was the one who found the suit, after.

Somehow, during the chaos and the messy, unrelenting pain of that night, it had gotten lost in the shuffle. Her boots, her fishnet gloves, her mask, they had all been returned to her family before she even got out of surgery, but the actual suit itself had been MIA. It hadn't been a priority at the time. The priority had been Laurel. The assumption had been that it was most likely still in the ER but when Oliver and Thea had gone back to the hospital the next morning to retrieve it, nobody knew where it was. Flying off the handle and losing his mind on some poor nurse who was just doing her job had not been Oliver's proudest moment. Not that he has a whole lot of proud moments. He and Thea had been desperate to get that suit back so after she pulled him, ranting and raving like a lunatic, away from the nurse, they split up to look for it.

Thea found the suit. Oliver found Thea.

He was in the lobby of the hospital. There were two people standing over by the coffee cart and when he'd heard one of them say, ''There's some kid in the morgue having a meltdown over one of my bodies so I thought I'd give her a minute,'' he had taken off in a run. He skipped the elevator, took the stairs two at a time, raced down the hallway, and wound up coming to a screeching halt when he saw her. His thoughts had been of Thea and finding her. He hadn't even thought about who - what - she would be with.

She was standing there, frozen in place, arms curled protectively around the Black Canary suit, next to what used to be Laurel. She had pulled the sheet back to look at her and Laurel looked... It wasn't Laurel. It didn't even look like her.

''I couldn't leave her,'' Thea had wailed, anguished, like when he'd had to drag her, kicking and screaming from their mother's body. ''I didn't want her to be alone.''

He'd given her a hug. Folded her into his arms and tried to protect her, to shield her with his body the way he used to be able to do. Neither of them had been able to look away from the body.

She bled, you know.

Laurel bled in his arms. That is his experience, no one else's. She bled in his arms just like the rest of them. His parents, his sister, his best friend, his fiancée. They have all bled for him, been slaughtered and maimed for him. What is he supposed to do with that? What does one do with all of that loss?

The whole way to the hospital, Laurel bled all over him. He can still feel her blood on his hands, soaking his gloves, under his fingernails. He can still smell it on him. All over him. The memory of her blood won't go away. He remembers that. He remembers all of that. He remembers vomiting in the alley behind the hospital. He remembers being on his knees in the dark, too tired to fight because it was Laurel's blood he had to go wash off him. He remembers wailing too. That's just what happened. He fell to his knees, he pulled at his own hair, he scrubbed at his hands until they were raw, and then he put on his street clothes and calmly walked back into the hospital because he didn't have the luxury of loving Laurel anymore.

He remembers every second of that night just like everyone else does because none of them will ever forget it.

But it's the way she looked in that cold morgue that won't leave his head, not even for a second. Every minute of every day, the image of her unnaturally stiff body, skin gray, lips blue, hair limp, face slack and unmoving, chest eerily still, lurks in the back of his head. He doesn't sleep much anymore. He can't eat. She won't let him.

He looks away from the suit and leans back in his chair.

Dean wants the Black Canary suit. He doesn't give a shit about the Canary Cry device but he wants the suit. He had informed Oliver that he was taking it with or without his permission. Said he didn't trust him not to give it to some ''random nobody off the street the second you forget Laurel ever existed.'' Such a ridiculous and insulting idea. As if he could ever forget her. As if he could ever hand her suit, her mask, her title, her identity over to someone else. The only reason that would ever happen is if he has some sort of psychotic break.

He doesn't want to hand the suit over to Dean. Selfishly, he wants to keep it here. He feels like it belongs here. He wants to put it back on the mannequin. He wants to put it next to his, next to him, so that he will see it every single time he reaches for that green. He wants a memorial. Dean gets everything. He gets the pillow with her scent on it, her shampoo, her pictures, her wedding rings, her clothes, her unseen but palpable presence, her sweet kid who looks so much like her. He gets the apple tree, the garden, the marriage, the memories.

If Dean Winchester gets to have Laurel Lance, why can't Oliver Queen at least have the Black Canary?

Except that John had been clear that the suit needed to go to Dean. ''He's her family, Oliver,'' he had said. ''He should be able to decide what happens to her legacy. Don't you think she deserves to go home this one last time?''

Oliver pulls the black duffel bag over to him and slowly, regretfully, begins to put the pieces of her away. He puts the boots in first and then her tonfas. He folds the suit in carefully, adds the gloves and her makeup, the wig she used to wear, and then places the mask on top. He looks down at items in the bag; this important piece of her identity reduced to what can fit inside of a bag. His eyes catch the mask for a moment and then he zips the bag shut. Just like that, the one and only Black Canary is gone.

He gulps down the quickly growing hysteria and grabs the cardboard box off the table. If he doesn't do this fast, he won't be able to do this at all. It's unnaturally quiet here today as he moves around, putting her belongings in the box, cleaning her out. He handles each little thing, no matter how inconsequential, with the tenderness he should have shown Laurel while she was here. It doesn't make the regret and the guilt go away, but it's all he can do. In the box goes a travel mug, chapstick, a pair of heels, a sweater, some workout gear, and some hand lotion. He puts it all in the box and tries not to think about how fucked up it is that someone's whole life here can be summed up in a box full of random crap. It's not even a big box.

It feels wrong. She doesn't belong in a box. She deserves to be standing here, whole and alive, smiling, laughing. She had such an amazing smile. She smiled at you, and suddenly there was nothing else.

He does another sweep of the bunker, adding a perfume bottle, a tube of mascara that he thinks might be hers, a knit cap, and her worn out converse. She'd been wearing those the night she... He comes this close to keeping them. Or maybe the perfume. Dean would probably notice if her favourite shoes went missing but it's not like this was even her regular perfume. It's just the cheap knock off back up bottle she kept in her purse. He holds the bottle in his hands for what is probably a creepy stalker length of time and then he puts it in the box. There is a scarf and a book over by Felicity's computer. They had both been found shoved in one of the many drawers around here. He walks over to grab the book and the scarf but when he grasps them, two pieces of paper fall out of the book and flutter to the ground. He puts the box down to grab them. One is an old receipt for a coffee and a muffin that she must have been using as a bookmark. The other is a picture.

The color drains from his face when he sees it. He's seen it before, of course. She kept it here for a reason. In the picture, Mary is sitting in front of a brightly colored birthday cake with two candles in it, and she is laughing. Full on belly laughter with her eyes squeezed shut and this wonderful, innocent joy displayed so clearly on her little face. Her parents are in the picture too. Dean is crouched down next to her, lips pulled back into this huge smile that looks blinding even just from the glimpse of his profile. Laurel is leaning down to kiss her daughter on the cheek, hair curtaining her face from view, her body language so relaxed and content with her family. But this is a picture of Mary.

She looks so much like her mom. She's got a decent amount of Winchester in her, just enough to be noticeable. Like the smile. That's all Dean. But there is no doubt that she is Laurel Lance's daughter. Laurel is in every inch of her. It has always hurt, just a little bit, to look at Mary Winchester. He's not proud of that. It's not her fault, none of it has ever been her fault, and it's not like he resents her existence. He just resents that she's not his.

Now it's unbearable to look at her face and see the echoes of Laurel and all of the love she left behind.

She used to look at this picture every night before she put on her suit. He'd asked her about it once. ''It helps,'' she had told him with a soft, sweet smile. ''I do what I do to help people, to help everyone, but it all comes back to her, you know? That's just part of being a parent. I'm building her a world. Hopefully a better one.''

He looks at the picture for a long time. He wonders if Mary will remember that. If she'll remember what her mother was trying to do for her by being Black Canary. He wonders if she'll remember her voice, her smile, the way it felt to hug her. He thinks it might be a longshot. Some pieces of Laurel will probably be permanent, but Mary is three. She has a whole lifetime of memories ahead of her and some of the old ones won't be able to stay with her. What a cruel and unfair thought. Laurel was so incredibly, intensely devoted to her daughter, and now Mary probably won't remember any of it.

He puts the book in the box and puts the picture on top of it, eyes staying with Mary, with the faceless vision of Laurel, and then he looks away. He curls his fingers around the soft fabric of the green and black scarf. He does not put it in the box. She was never much of a scarf person, but she did have her wardrobe staples. This was one of them. She'd wear this on the coldest days of winter. He always thought it was rather poetic that it was green and black. He holds the scarf in his hands, motionless. He stands there for at least a solid seven seconds and then he hears the elevator.

He makes a split second decision to turn around and hastily stuff the scarf into a drawer. He makes it back to the box just as the elevator doors open and busies his hands by needlessly rearranging the items in the box. Mostly in a pathetic attempt to avoid the inevitable unpleasantness. Behind him, someone clears their throat. He bites back a sigh. He had really been hoping Sam would be the one to come pick up her things. At least with him there's only a 30% chance of getting punched in the face on any given day. Should have known he wouldn't have that kind of luck. He turns, bracing himself for impact.

Dean is standing there, arms crossed over his chest with this decidedly Laurel-like posture and body language. It's exceedingly unsettling, actually. Guess it shouldn't be. They definitely had an influence on each other. He definitely changed Laurel. Not always for the better, in Oliver's, admittedly biased, opinion.

Dean narrows his eyes. ''Well?''

Oliver, who has never been great with self control, just can't help himself. ''Hello to you too, Dean,'' he greets, perhaps too snidely.

In return, he receives a growling snarl of, ''Go fuck yourself.''

Nice. Real nice. He does not succeed in biting back that exasperated sigh. So this is how it's going to be now. He's not naive. This is how things were always going to end up between them. They have never been friends and they were never going to be friends. That bridge burned down before it could even be built. Their interactions have been becoming increasingly antagonistic and hostile since Laurel started working with his team. He pretty much knew that they were headed towards openly being enemies. He just hadn't anticipated the circumstances.

''Is this it?'' Dean's voice is gruff and impatient as he moves briskly up the steps and over to the box.

''Everything I could find,'' Oliver lies.

Dean doesn't respond. He glances inside the box briefly and then pulls the duffel bag over to him roughly. He unzips it and rifles around inside, apparently trying to make sure everything is there. Oliver doesn't even bother with feeling offended. It's not an unfounded concern, honestly. Dean picks up the Black Canary mask and pauses for a moment, running his fingers over it.

Oliver keeps his mouth shut about the lost look on the other man's face. Despite his dislike of the guy, he doesn't want to kick him while he's down. Even with the lights dim in the wide open space, it's still easy to see that Dean looks like shit. He looks marginally better than he did at the funeral but that's not saying much. At the funeral, he was just this pale ghost of grief and homicidal rage - most of that rage being directed at Oliver - with dark circles under his red, vacant eyes. He looked like just being left alive was the greatest struggle. Or, no, not being left alive. Being left behind. At least now he looks like he might have gotten some sleep at some point and there's some color in his cheeks, albeit very little. ''How are you?'' He can't help but ask. It's a stupid question. He regrets it as soon as he says it.

Dean raises his head to give Oliver a half incredulous, half annoyed look like he can't believe anyone could possibly be that damn stupid. It's actually a pretty mild look. Considering. He arches a single eyebrow. ''Well,'' he starts, and his voice is this cold, blunt delivery that, for one little word, sounds tremendously intimidating. ''My wife's still dead. Mary's miserable. I'm stuck cleaning up the mess you've made of my life. So I could be better. Luckily for you, I don't exactly have the time to stick around and take you apart. So congratulations, buddy,'' he sneers, throwing the bag over his shoulder and hefting the box into his arms. ''You got away with it.''

And there it is.

Oliver closes his eyes, rubbing at them with the palms of his hands. He doesn't even know what he can say about this anymore. He made a mistake. He knows he made a mistake. What he did at the funeral - he'd take it back if he could. He's told him all of this before. He's apologized. His face is barely healed from the brutal beating he let Dean inflict on him after the funeral. None of it has made a difference.

''Dean,'' he makes one more attempt. ''I'm sorry.''

''I don't care.''

''Will you let me help?''

Dean shakes his head and roughly shoves past him. ''I don't want your help.''

Oliver figures he should probably let it go. Dean clearly doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to be here, doesn't want anything at all from him. They are not friends. But Dean was Laurel's, and Oliver should have been better with her, he should have treated her with more respect. He can't undo what he did but maybe he can try with her family. ''There has to be something I can do,'' he pleads. ''Just tell me what to do here. Tell me how to fix this and I'll fix it.''

It's a fruitless request, he knows. There is no fixing this. Dean does stop. He stops, back to Oliver, and he is quiet for a long time. Slowly, he turns back around. Oliver clenches his fists and has to fight to stay still, to maintain eye contact. The look in Dean's eyes is not the crazed, wild, murderous look he gave him before he attacked him in front of her grave. It is not grief. It is a flat, hollow, dark look. It's just this calmly sinister look. Quite frankly, it's creepy. ''You want to know what you can do?'' His lips curl back into his ugly, broken, savage looking smile. ''I'll tell you what you can do, Oliver.'' He walks back over to him, drops the box and the bag on the desk, and swipes the picture from on top of the book. ''Here,'' he shoves the picture at Oliver's chest. ''Keep this.''

That is not what he had been expecting.

''You want me to keep a picture of your family?''

''I want you to remember,'' Dean says, tilting his head to the side. ''I want you to look at that every day, just like she did, and I want you to remember what you took from my little girl because trust me, you worthless sack of shit, she's never going to forget.''

Something in Oliver snaps at that and he pushes down the pain, anger flaring in his eyes. ''I didn't kill Laurel.''

''Oh, fucking bullshit,'' Dean snaps. ''You created this,'' he spreads his arms wide and looks around. ''Whatever the hell this is. You came back, you put on that suit, you started all of this, and she got swept away. She got caught in your crossfire.''

''You think Laurel became the Black Canary because of me?''

''I think she wouldn't have been in that prison if you hadn't come back.''

Oliver starts laughing. It's undoubtedly the wrong thing to do and he thinks he might sound like a deranged mad man, but he can't help it. ''If you honestly believe that then maybe you didn't know your wife as well as you thought. She would have put on that suit with or without me. Black Canary never needed Green Arrow.''

''Except she did that night, didn't she?'' Dean spits out bitterly. ''She needed you to watch her back. And what a fucking bang up job you did!'' When Oliver doesn't take the bait, doesn't give Dean the fight he so obviously wants, he shakes his head. ''She didn't need a mask to be a hero,'' he says, quieter.

Oliver takes a few breaths. ''No,'' he agrees. ''She didn't. But her whole life was leading up to that mask,'' he adds. ''You know that.''

Dean doesn't have a snappy retort to that. He stands there for a minute, eyes glassy, and then he runs a hand over his face. All at once, he seems to shrink, all that false bravado and anger draining away from him until he just looks miserable and weary. He looks like a widower. ''You know,'' he has to clear his throat. ''Mary had a meltdown last night. I mean, she was inconsolable. I thought she was in pain. I thought maybe it was her ears because she gets these - she has earaches. Or maybe it was a headache because she gets those too. But it wasn't any kind of physical pain. I tried to help her, Thea tried, Sam tried, but nothing was working. I did everything I could for her. I made sure she had water, her stuffed shark, her blanket, her favourite pillow, I set her up in bed with me so she wouldn't have to be alone, but none of it helped. She just couldn't calm down. She couldn't even tell me what was wrong. I just had to sit there with her while she cried.'' He peers inside the cardboard box to inspect the contents, pulling out the sweater. ''Finally,'' he continues. ''She managed to calm down enough to tell me that she wanted to die. So she could go be with her mom.''

Oliver does not know what reaction Dean is looking for. He knows he stops breathing when he hears it. He thinks of Mary on her second birthday, laughing. He thinks of Laurel telling him that she is building a world for her daughter. He thinks of her bleeding in his arms. Of her cold on that slab in the morgue with Thea howling next to her. Everybody's been howling since she left. Nobody can stop.

''My three year old daughter told me she wanted to die,'' Dean repeats, as if it hadn't been enough of a blow the first time. ''I don't think she understood what she was saying, obviously, but she understands that Laurel isn't here anymore. She sure as hell understands that she misses her.'' He hasn't looked at Oliver once during his horrifying story time. He's still staring down at the sweater. ''I told her no. I said we had to stay here but that I was with her and I wouldn't leave her. She just cried harder. She didn't want me. She wanted her mother.'' He puts the sweater back in the box, raising his head to look at Oliver. He doesn't even look angry. He just looks empty. ''Laurel's in the ground,'' he says. ''Her daughter is suffering.'' He grabs the duffel bag and the box. ''That's what I know.''

That's all he says. He doesn't try to dig the knife deeper. He doesn't jump to violence. He just states the facts. Laurel is dead. And yes, Mary is probably suffering without her. These are just facts. They also hurt more than fists ever could. Dean starts to walk away, and Oliver lets him. He wishes there was something he could say. He wishes he could make things better for Mary, even for Dean, but he can't. Laurel died. Laurel was murdered. There is no fixing that.

''I loved her too,'' he says, because that's all he can say.

''Then you don't love in a way I understand.''

It is the strangest and the coldest insult anyone has ever hurled at Oliver, and it stings like hell. He doesn't know what to do with it. He can't even defend himself because he's not sure there is a defense.

Dean gets a good distance away before he stops. He doesn't turn around right away, choosing instead to just stand there. Oliver hears him take in a sharp breath and watches him square his shoulders, and then he turns. ''Was she scared?''

It's not a question he wants the answer to. Oliver opens his mouth to tell him not to ask that question. He doesn't want to answer it. ''She passed out.'' It just falls out of his mouth. ''She didn't have time to be scared,'' he lies.

Dean doesn't give up. ''Did she say anything before she passed out? You - You were with her. You were with her the whole time. Did she say anything to you?''

Oliver thinks about the blood on his hands. He thinks about the blood in her mouth. The sound she made when the arrow went in. He thinks about the gasping noises, the gurgling, the pain and the tears and the complete and utter terror in her eyes. He thinks about the last thing she said to him. And then he thinks about Dean. It's not hard to put himself in the shoes of Laurel Lance's husband. If their places were switched, if Oliver was the one with the wedding ring and the years of memories, the unendurable grief tearing at his insides, what would he want to know?

''She wanted to go home,'' he says, after a few seconds of careful deliberation. ''She wanted to go home to Mary.''

It's not the full truth. He considers it merciful.

Dean doesn't say a word. He gives a short, sharp nod, his lips tighten like he's trying not to shatter, and there is this fleeting haunted look in his eyes, but he doesn't say anything. Briefly, very briefly, he meets Oliver's eyes. Then he turns and walks away.

Oliver waits until he's sure he's gone, until the elevator doors close and he can hear it going up, and then he turns and looks out at the empty cave. What he has built here is an empire, a fortress. This place holds power. His power. He has a kingdom, and all it cost him was Laurel. Tommy. His mother. Power is not a home. He would dismantle this entire organization, rip everything out, if he could just have her back. Black Canary can exist without Green Arrow. She always could. She's never needed him. As it turns out, Green Arrow may not be able to exist without Black Canary.

Feeling unshakably numb, he retrieves the scarf from where he hastily stuffed it away, keeps the picture of Mary clutched tightly in his hand, and wanders back over to the table, taking a seat in one of the empty chairs. He looks at the scarf. He looks over at the empty mannequin. She had told him that she needed to get home to Mary. That hadn't been a lie. It had been one of the first things she said after the arrow went in. There was blood on her lips, her teeth, leaking out of the corner of her mouth, and she had been near hysterical from the pain and the fact that she was rapidly going into shock. ''I need to go home,'' she had slurred. ''Please, Ollie, please, you have to take me home. I need to get home to Mary.''

He had promised her that she would go home to her daughter. That she didn't get to die on him. Her pleas to go home hadn't been the only thing she had said to him. In the back of the van, speeding to her hospital, with her basically curled up in his lap, her hands pressed to her wound, his hands pressed to hers to keep the pressure on, she had begged and pleaded and cried. ''Please don't make me leave. Please don't make me go. I don't want to go.''

He hadn't known what to say to that. ''I-I'm not making you go,'' he'd tried to say. ''I swear, Laurel, I promise. I don't want you to - I want you to stay. I want you to stay here with me.''

She hadn't heard him. Over and over until she passed out, she pleaded to stay. It was probably only a few minutes - at the most - but it felt like hours. After the funeral, after the beating, John had all but dragged Oliver back here to clean him up. He'd been a barely conscious, swollen, bleeding, slurring mess. He's not sure if the pain had just been overriding his control, if the funeral had made her loss real, or if the guilt had finally dragged him under but it had been the first time he had openly cried. ''Why did she think I was the one making her leave? I would never - I never wanted that.''

''She didn't think you were making her leave.''

''She begged me.''

''Oliver,'' John sighed, sorrowful. ''She wasn't talking to you.'' The words had held a lot more weight than one would think. ''She just didn't want to die.''

A heaviness settled on his shoulders that day and it hadn't left since, the helplessness of that night in April clinging to him. Oliver wonders, sometimes - all the time - if she had stayed, if she had lived, what would she remember of those fragile, bloody moments? Would she remember that he held her? Would she remember what he said to her while she cried? That he tried to comfort her? That he begged too? If she was here right now, would she remember what he had whispered in her ear, those little words, for the final time before she slipped into unconsciousness?

He holds on tightly to the scarf and the picture of Mary.

Here are some more facts: There is a multiverse. An explosion of alternate worlds, parallel realities. All these other earths, each one a little different from the next but all of them - for the most part - with the same cast of characters. He knows nothing about these different earths. He doesn't know the people, how they work, how they fight, how they live. The one thing he does know, without a fraction of doubt, is that in every world, in every lifetime, in every single story, every Oliver Queen loves every Dinah Laurel Lance.

It's an inevitability.

He likes to think that maybe, just maybe, in one of these worlds, one of these lives, she loves him back. Maybe, somewhere out there in this mess of mayhem and loss, there is an Ollie and a Laurel who get to find their way to each other through all of the sorrow and all of the battles and they get to stay with each other. He thinks about that a lot. If they're out there, these alternate versions of them, the ones who had a chance, he hopes they're happy and he hopes they're together.

She didn't love him in this world, not anymore, but he can't stop. Every time he tries - Shado, Helena, McKenna, Sara, Felicity - he only winds up loving Laurel harder, deeper, with every damaged piece of him. You have no idea how enraging that is. He's aware of how pathetic that is. How hopeless it would be even if she was alive. How terribly unfair it is to all those other women. And it's not like he didn't love them too because he loved them. He still loves Felicity. Would probably marry her in a second if she'd let him. This is just different. This is his life. It's been his life since he was fourteen years old, standing in the hallway at school getting sassed out by the pretty new girl for being a jerk.

Laurel is in his veins. She's in his bones, his blood, the very fabric of his being, and he can't get her out. He's never been able to get her out. She was his home before this, before all of this, and she still is. Six feet underground, happily married to someone else, or flying through the night with him, she is always going to be the picture in his wallet, the best part of him, the love of his life.

It's destiny. They were destiny.

She's home, for better or for worse, and he wants so badly to be able to go home. He doesn't want to be on an island without her anymore.

Oliver pulls out his wallet and digs out that familiar, worn out picture of her. Nine years he's had this picture. It's been nearly a decade since they were together and he doesn't love her any less, hasn't forgotten what it feels like to kiss her, to have her look at him and knock him off his feet. He thinks that is just part of loving her. Once she's in your heart and in your head, she never leaves. Not even for a moment.

He puts the picture back in his wallet and adds the picture of Mary, placing her, very carefully, next to her mom. Dean wants him to remember. So he'll remember.

He'll remember what Damien Darhk took from that little girl, took from him, as he drives an arrow into his eye socket.

.

.

.

November, 2016

Laurel stands in the wide open cavernous space and spins slowly, eyes taking in every inch of this place. She's been here before. She has no idea what this place is or why she would have been here, but she's been here. Many times. It seems like a strange place for her, for anyone, to be. But she knows this place. It's not hers the way the house was but she thinks... She thinks maybe she used to work here? Her eyes find the leather suits displayed so proudly and arrogantly on the mannequins.

She glances over at the other people in the room. Sam and Cas had stayed behind to sweep the cemetery but Dean and Thea hadn't been keen on leaving her side. Both of them had taken the fact that she somehow screamed the cemetery down surprisingly well.

Thea had been the one to suggest taking her here. In the car, while Laurel was sitting in the back seat with Mary, Dean and Thea had bickered quietly in the front seat. ''Look,'' she'd said. ''I know you two have gone from frenemies to all out enemies but if she's a metahuman, my brother can help.''

To which Dean had spit out, ''If she's a meta, we can just take her to Central City and they can help her.''

''Sure,'' had been the dry response. ''Except that you've been blacklisted from Star Labs because of that stupid stunt you pulled last month with Di - ''

''Fine,'' he'd cut in sharply, and Laurel had watched as his eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror. ''We'll go.''

A lot of the conversation had gone over her head. She doesn't know where Central City is, what a meta is, who Thea's brother is, but she knows what that flash of uncontrollable panic in his eyes meant. It was guilt.

Laurel looks at the two of them, murmuring quietly, without a doubt talking about her. She looks at her husband for a minute, trying to figure out what he's feeling right now. If he's worried. If he's scared of her. She swings her gaze to Mary. Her little girl is standing behind Thea, one arm curled around her leg, the other cradling her stuffed shark to her chest. Thea, for her part, has one hand rubbing circles on Mary's upper back without breaking her conversation with Dean. Mary keeps looking around the room like she expects someone or something to jump out at her. She knows this place too, and she doesn't seem to want to be here.

Laurel sinks her teeth into her lower lip, torn between comforting her daughter or walking around this strange place, trying to trigger some memories. Hesitantly, she looks back to the mannequins. She wanders over to the cases and her eyes zero in on the empty one. It stings to see that mannequin so bare, though she's not sure why. She stares at it for a minute, frowning and struggling to remember how something like this ever could have meant so much to her. She narrows her eyes, thoughtful. She thinks she used to be here. In some way. She used to feel at home here.

''Laurel?''

She jumps, caught off guard at the sound of Thea's voice.

''Sorry,'' Thea smiles, gentle but nervous. She places a steadying hand on the small of Laurel's back. ''Are you okay?''

''Oh, um, I'm...'' She presses her lips together. ''I guess I'm not sure.''

''That's okay,'' Thea says. ''There's no rush.'' She gives it a minute and then tries again. ''Do you - Do you remember being here?''

''I don't know.''

''Well,'' Thea lifts a shoulder in a deceptively unconcerned shrug. ''You'll get there. Don't worry about it.''

''Do you think I'm broken?'' The words push themselves through her lips before she can stop them. She immediately wants to take them back. They feel somehow too childish and too heavy at the same time. It's not a question Thea - or anyone for that matter - can answer right now.

Thea, with her sweet, kind heart, still tries. ''No.'' She sounds so easily confident with her answer. ''People don't break. They bend, they bruise, and then they get better.''

Laurel finds herself minutely floored by that statement. ''That's very wise,'' she comments softly.

Thea laughs. ''I'm not really all that wise. I just believe in healing.'' She looks at the leather suits, her eyes finding the red one. She looks, for a second, both wistful and resentful. ''We stay resilient, no matter what we endure,'' she says strongly, and then offers Laurel a small smile. ''My mom used to say that.''

''She sounds like a strong woman.''

An uncomfortable beat. ''She was.''

Laurel casts a sidelong glance at her, taking in the quiet but ever present grief. She doesn't comment on the past tense. She's not sure what to say to comfort her. She probably would have known seven months ago.

A high pitched yelp followed by a soft thud catches her attention and both she and Thea whirl around. Mary has tumbled to the ground, tripping over her feet and landing hard on her hands and knees. She looks vaguely stunned, her poor shark knocked right out of her hands, but she's not crying. Even though she doesn't appear to actually be injured, there are still three adults rushing towards her. Dean gets there first, seemingly appearing from nowhere to swiftly lift Mary back up to her feet. Thea is quick to sweep the lost shark off the ground, kneeling down in front of the girl to return the shark.

''You good?'' Dean asks, before he leans down to whisper something in Mary's ear that makes her laugh.

Mary nods, sniffling.

''Need a band aid?'' Thea asks.

''Because you know Auntie Thea has some really cool band aids in her giant nanny purse.''

''That's true. I do. I have so many band aids, Mary.''

Mary blinks, smiles slowly, and thrusts her hand out to Thea.

And Laurel...doesn't actually have anything to do here. She hangs back, feeling out of place and in the way. Dean and Thea seem to work well together. They have a system, born most likely out of necessity but still something that runs smoothly, like a well oiled machine. They've learned to co-parent. Laurel is not part of that system, that machine, that family. She's not needed. She is Mary's mother, will always be Mary's mother, but she hasn't really been a parent in seven months. She backs away from her family, feeling useless.

She releases a breath and goes back to examining this - this place. She wonders, idly, if all of this belonged to her. She can't imagine that. It doesn't feel quite right. She never would have had this much power.

''Mommy!'' When she turns back around, Mary is sitting perched on the table, clutching a fistful of band aids. She waves them at her expectantly. ''You do this part,'' she says, like it's completely ludicrous that anyone else would ever put a band aid on her when clearly that is mom's job.

Thea, digging around in what is, in fact, a comically large purse, smiles to herself.

''Oh,'' Laurel says, ''right, sorry.'' She glances over at the bare mannequin one last time and then goes over to her daughter. Mary is not hurt, but she's extremely excited about the band aid. When Laurel presses a kiss to her daughter's completely uninjured hand, it comes to her. Something in her head lurches and she remembers. Mary loves whimsical band aids. She's not the greatest walker in the world due to consistent balance issues stemming from her uneven hearing. She's still in a stroller on long walks and she much prefers to be carried. It used to greatly distress her. Even if she wasn't hurt, the fall would scare her. She would cry every time. So Laurel started buying cute little band aids with all of Mary's favourite characters on them. She and Dean made a big deal out of it, made the band aids into these great treats, and it worked. Falling doesn't scare Mary as much as it used to. ''Better?'' She whispers, after she's carefully placed the band aid on Mary's hand.

Mary smiles happily down at the band aid. ''Frogs,'' she says. ''Mommy, I love frogs.''

''You love all animals,'' Thea says, taking a seat at the table.

Mary gives Thea a very stern look and signs, Not snakes.

Thea laughs. Not snakes, she signs back in agreement.

''I don't like snakes,'' Mary informs Laurel.

''I don't like snakes either,'' Laurel says, even though she's not sure that's true. Maybe she loves snakes? She doesn't know. She doubts it.

''That's okay,'' Mary says brightly. When Laurel sits down, the little girl scooches off the table and into her lap. Laurel has to push back a wince because she's still fairly injured, body littered with cuts and scrapes and bruises, but she's not about to deny her daughter a cuddle. Daddy says he can protect me from the snakes, Mary signs, and then leans in to whisper, awed, ''Even the giant ones. He can protect you too.''

Laurel grins. ''That sounds like a plan.''

From off to the side, out of Mary's line of hearing, Thea mumbles under her breath, ''He'd run screaming from a snake and everyone knows it.''

''I wouldn't run screaming,'' Dean retorts, once again, popping out of nowhere. ''I'd just walk away at a brisk pace.'' He places a black box on the table, cutting off Thea's sarcastic response, and everyone goes quiet.

Mary makes an ''ooooohhh'' noise and then says, ''I know what that is. I'm not supposed to touch it.''

''That's right,'' Dean agrees. ''Not ever.''

'' 'Cause it's Mommy's,'' Mary nods.

He flips the box open, and Laurel suddenly cannot hear what anyone else is saying. Now that thing belongs to her. No one else has used it. No one else will ever use it. No one else even can. It was made for her and her only. It used to fit around her throat so perfectly, not like a collar but like an extension of her. It was her safety net, her borrowed strength, her greatest weapon. Until now, she supposes. She doesn't need the feather to fly anymore.

''Laur?'' She blinks, tearing herself out of her trance, and looks up at Dean. He is looking at her with this carefully made stoicism, like this is a business conversation and he's being professional. As if she didn't rip herself out of the earth and scream the boneyard down without breaking a sweat and without the aid of this. ''Do you remember this?'' He asks.

''It was your Canary Cry device,'' Thea jumps in. ''Before.''

Yes, she knows.

Her mouth has gone dry at the sight of it. Who the hell was she the last time she was here? What did she do here? ''I remember power,'' she says. ''But,'' she shakes her head. ''It came from this.'' She gestures to the device. ''It never came from me. I never had power without it.''

Thea frowns deeply. She looks like she vehemently disagrees with that idea.

Dean leans down to brace his hands against the table. ''But what if you did?''

She shakes her head again. ''No. No, that doesn't sound right.''

He doesn't listen. ''What if you always had the power and this thing was just in your way?'' He snaps the lid of the box shut loud enough to make Thea jump and Mary frown in annoyance. ''What if this real Canary Cry has always been inside of you, Laur? Maybe it's been there the whole time and all you've ever needed was a trigger.''

She brings one hand up to her throat and tries to stifle the panic. No. She doesn't want that. She doesn't want this - this thing inside of her. This isn't power. This is destruction. She could hurt people with this.

Mary, who spent most of the conversation unwrapping band aids, cranes her neck to look up at her mother's face. She grins widely. Laurel smiles back, or at least tries to. ''Mommy has superpowers like Elsa?'' Mary asks as she peels a band aid off the wrapper and sticks it to the front of her shirt.

Dean says, without missing a beat, ''Oh, now, your mom's always had superpowers, honeybee.''

''Yep,'' Thea nods. ''Nobody in the world can ruin a pot roast the way she can.''

Mary giggles and sticks a Captain America band aid to her forehead. It lightens the mood instantly, albeit temporarily. Laurel's heart is still hammering in her chest and the sickening feeling of dread is caught in her throat like a sob that wants out but she's still breathing, isn't she? No panic attack in sight. She keeps her eyes on Mary, her sweet kid with her adorable smile, just like her dad's. Nobody talks about the absurd idea of superpowers.

The peace doesn't last long.

When she lifts her eyes back up to Dean, he has straightened, eyes on something over her shoulder. The easy smirk on his lips has dropped off and his posture is rigid. Even Thea's body language has changed, eyes widening slightly before she turns her attention to Mary. ''Sweetie, come sit with me for a few minutes.'' Something about the tone of her voice must get to her because she slips off her mother's lap without protest and skips over to Thea.

Laurel never even has a chance to ask what's going on.

''Laurel?''

The voice comes from behind her; a quiet, disbelieving murmur of her name. The sound of her name in this person's mouth jolts her a little but she doesn't know why. She tilts her head, curious but not overly emotional the way she was when she heard Dean say her name. There's something but it feels muddled. She tries to put a name and a face to the voice. She rises to her feet and turns around slowly to face -

''Ollie.'' The name falls through her lips easily. She recognizes him when she sees him standing there, staring at her in shock and awe. The memory of him is incomplete, a blank slate in her head. She knows him but she doesn't recall how she knows him. She knows he is associated with equal parts hurt and love, but she doesn't know who he is to her now. He looks like he's about to fall over, so she tries to be as gentle as possible. ''Hi,'' she greets softly, sending him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. ''I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.''

He steps back, even though he's nowhere near her. ''I... I don't...'' He can't look away from her. ''Dean,'' he says, eyes still firmly on her. ''What did you do?'' He sounds like he's going to cry.

Dean says, ''Would you believe me if I told you I didn't do this?''

''Hey!'' A voice cries out, sounding indignant. This particular voice sends Laurel spinning. ''I know you're super privileged and all but you know that when you take a cab you have to pay, right? I would have thought that the Mayor - '' The blonde stops, her sentence breaking off abruptly as she comes to a sudden stop next to Oliver. Her eyes find Laurel. Nobody moves. Nobody says a single word. ''Laurel,'' she gets out. Her hands move to cover her mouth, wide eyes filling with tears. ''Oh my god,'' she whispers into her hands. ''Is that...'' She looks over at Dean, hands falling limply to her sides. ''Is it her? Is this real?''

''It's her,'' says Dean. ''She's real.''

Laurel says, ''Hi, Sara.''

That's all Sara needs. Her entire body sags and she starts crying, letting out these loud, gulping, relieved sobs. Laurel doesn't think she has ever heard anyone sound so relieved. She opens her arms and her sister runs to her, just like she always has.

This is one of the unchangeable facts about Laurel Lance.

Everything she is, everything she has, it all goes back to Sara in the end. It begins and ends with this. Her first little girl. Her entire life has been six degrees of Sara; a cycle of love and anger and hurt and laughter, of failing and falling, of devotion and desperation. They are woven together, two sides of the same coin, unbalanced and uneven without each other. It doesn't matter that the world doesn't want them to exist at the same time. The Lance sisters fight their way towards each other through everything. Through endless battles, through the ocean, the mountains, their own damn graves. They find their way back every time. They reach for each other through the water and the dirt and the blood, and they don't let go. Even when the universe is telling them it's wrong to hold on so tight. That's the way the story goes. It's Dean and Sam. It's Oliver and Thea. It's Laurel and Sara. Always and forever.

Laurel - much like Dean and Oliver - has made terrible, selfish, impossible choices for her sister. She was willing to destroy, to upend her life, ruin friendships, risk her own soul, just to bring Sara home. She has stripped herself apart to give this girl life, and there has never been one single second where she regretted that.

When half of your heart is walking around outside of your body, stuffed into some reckless child who wants to fight the world to save it, you do what you have to do. You keep it beating. When you are an older sibling, you are given a responsibility. You are shown a life that matters so much more than yours. You keep that kid safe. It doesn't matter what you lose in the process or how many things you have to take apart to keep something else together. All that matters is that you do your job.

Laurel remembers that now. She remembers everything. It's Sara. It has always been Sara. It will always be Sara.

Dean told her she needed a trigger and when Laurel looks at Sara, the light streams in.

It is not a gentle remembrance.

Both the good and the bad memories come rushing back to her in waves, taking their places in her heart and her head, thrumming through her bloodstream, warming her up.

She remembers Sara as a child, bright eyed, laughing, full of wonder and hope and joy the same way Mary is now. She remembers her dancing in a field of wildflowers on that camping trip they took one summer. She remembers when Sara fell, the cracking sound her skull made against the pavement, the way her blood felt on her hands. She remembers the way she looked on that table in the Foundry, eyes open and lifeless, unnaturally stiff and rigid.

She remembers falling in love with Dean, feeling weightless and floaty around him, closing her eyes and jumping all the way into that love. She remembers it was so easy with him that sometimes all she could think when she looked at him was where the hell have you been? She also remembers the horror of his alcohol withdrawal when she was pregnant with Mary. How it got so scary and dangerous that she wound up having to leave him because the sick, rageful, desperate man who needed ''just one more drink'' and would have done anything to get it wasn't her husband anymore. It had been, she remembers, the first and only time she has ever been scared of him.

She remembers everything about her baby girl. She remembers being pregnant, feeling those kicks, learning she was a girl, giving birth, holding her in the arms in that sunlit bedroom singing Sea of Love. She remembers the first smile, first laugh, first words, first steps. She remembers gardening with Mary, playing with her, taking her to the movies, reading from that old copy of Where the Wild Things Are, telling her every night, ''No matter where I go, a piece of me will always be right here with you.'' She remembers all the words to Sea of Love. She also remembers the day she was told about Mary's Pendred syndrome, numbly listening to the doctor say things like hearing loss and thyroid problems and possible goiters. She remembers having to sit there and watch, completely helpless, as Mary lost all of the hearing in her right ear by the time she was two. She remembers all of the sleepless nights where she and Dean sat at the dining room table talking about the astronomical prices of hearing aids and how shitty their insurance was.

Laurel remembers the good things. She remembers all of it. She remembers smiling and laughing. She remembers loving with every little piece of her. She remembers being loved. She remembers becoming Black Canary. How Oliver wasn't on her side but that didn't matter because she had Dean, Sam, Ted, and Nyssa. The way she felt the night she put on that mask for the first time. She remembers soaring and feeling so alive in the night, standing on rooftops, looking down at her city, the wind in her hair. She remembers putting on her grandfather's old record collection and slow dancing with her husband in their living room at one in the morning. She remembers happiness. She loved it. She loved being here.

However, she remembers everything else too.

Addiction, anger, loss, spiraling and drowning and struggling and being constantly beaten down. She remembers being torn apart, degraded, mocked, and abused by the people who claimed to love her.

''You're not a hero,'' Oliver had told her once, thinly veiled disgust evident in his hypocritical, controlling voice.

''The daughter that lived,'' her father used to spit out, bitter and disappointed that she was the one he was stuck with.

She remembers the breathless agony of her death. The torment, the fear, the anger, the desperation, the knowledge that she was dying for nothing. The arrow had hurt, sure, and everything that happened in that hospital room had been anguish and misery, but what had really stung was having to die knowing that she was dying a pawn; depowered, violated, and dismantled for no reason other than to make a man feel bad. She spent her whole life trying to make it better, make everything better, and she didn't even get to die a hero. She died a violent, misogynistic, pointless death. Her life was spent pushing back, fighting against the men who wanted to hold her down and control her and in the end, they won.

She didn't even get to think as Oliver's arrow was jammed into her lung, At least I've done enough to make my daughter proud of me.

No. Instead, she got to choke. She got to listen to Damien Darhk's pleased, mocking voice tell her, ''I want you to give your father a message from me. I want you to tell him I'm a man of my word.'' She was made into an object in a man's story and all she could do was listen and choke on her own blood. She never even got a chance to fight. She got to think, around the blood in her mouth and the panic in her throat, If you wanted to hurt him, you sure as hell picked the wrong sister.

The memories hurt as they come home to her. It feels like she is being torn, like her insides are being ripped apart to make room for these memories, this life she lived. It feels like it's all being brutally hammered back into place in her head. Her body is under attack. She feels too hot and worryingly dizzy.

Sara is the one who draws back from the hug first, holding onto her sister's hands, peering at her with worried eyes. ''Laurel?'' She sounds alarmingly far away. ''Are you okay?''

Laurel looks down at their joined hands and when she raises her head, her vision blurs and the ground shifts beneath her feet. The last thing she sees, before everything falls away, is her sister's eyes. She thinks, as the darkness comes to greet her again, that forgetting may have been a mercy.

But that's the tragedy of her life, isn't it?

Laurel has never been given mercy.

.

.

.

end part two