This was the story no one would ever hear. The quiet and numb loneliness that made up a small boy. This adorable little foster family took one glance at this child with a warm smile on their face. His sandy curls always bloomed every morning after trudging from bed. The mother of the house clicked her tongue at the sight, and unsheathed a wet comb.

The boy knew three things: His father left, his mother lost her will to live, and now he was an orphan. Would he always be this orphan? Each time this boy dared to Hope a family could love him, it would crumble. Every. Time. His hope meter dropped below zero and all he could muster was a half-hearted scowel. His "siblings" cowered at his presence.

The comb in the hand of that woman appeared as a snake about to coil into his hair, yet he stood silent and let the snake do its will.

When the boy turned ten, his foster families called him unruly and shameful. Not with their mouths, but with their eyes. The boy stripped the local library free of books on ettiqete. He became the proper little gentleman. The shock on people's faces when he requested a new suit and tie so he could go to school brought a snare of pride within him.

Children snickered and called the boy, "Silk Muffin," for the term "muffin" meant that he was not intelligent and the "silk" referred to his pampered and entitled appearance. They loathed him, and parted the sea of people in the locker hall just to avoid his demeaning nose pointed down upon their heads.

The boy's grades suffered, and he had begun to wonder if the "muffin" part of him rang true. He worked harder than any student. The deep graven pencil writings on his homework assignments, specifically math, lightened each week. This changed his name from Silk Muffin, to Silk Albert, after Albert Einstein.

The boy liked the name better. Realizing the progress he had made in his plummeting grades, he noticed the expression of disgust from his peers. Silk Albert was not meant to be a compliment.

When the boy was no longer a boy, and he grew up to the age of eighteen, an old man by the name of Paul approached him one day. It was not your normal encounter. The young man met a girl online, and stood waiting outside the Groggy Bean Lounge. The woman had blonde hair and hazel eyes which reflected the humid hues of earth. The selfies on her profile showed a woman of kindness. She appeared to have a golden doodle, from his guess, and he knew the three of them would get along really well. Her name was Victoria. The young man hoped, a rare occurrence in his life anymore, that she would like him. Pressing the glasses further up his nose, he surveyed the pots of irises near the door. They drooped, half-scorched by the sun.

An old man with chest hair poking out from an unbuttoned collar, sat outside at a Groggy Bean Lounge table. The umbrella shaded his sunburnt arms, and his bushy eyebrows needed a comb of it own. The memory of the snake returned to the young man's mind. "She isn't coming, you know." Chest hair's concrete mixture for a voice lifts the head of the eighteen year-old. He had been browsing through Victoria's profile photos for the twentieth time that afternoon. "What?"

"The model you have in your hand. She isn't going to meet with you."

"And you are?"

"Paul Wesley, father of Jeremiah Wesley, grandfather of Jude Wesley. A nearly retired author, Jack of all trades. You know, I've gotten rather good at woodworking these days." The old man scratches at his belly.

The young man swallowed. "My name...is Jude Wesley." He could see it then. The shape of Paul's nose resembled his own, a slight crooked shape. And his jaw was similar.

"Yes, I know...I realize you have been trying to find your father. I regret to say that he has past on. There was a fire, you know. Tragic." Paul zoned out for a moment, as if reliving a nightmare. "I wish we had been on good terms. He left me behind. Detached from me as if I did not exist."

Jude knew the feeling, but paused, unsure of what this was. All he could do was watch Paul sip his strawberry lemonade with one of those mini floral umbrellas. He didn't know whether or not to be happy, relieved, sad, or angry. The young man joins his grandfather at the table, wary but charged for more answers. The young Wesley adjusted his tie.

"Who was my father?" He asks.

"Your father was the kind of man to be dedicated with his entire being. His work was his passion. He began a martial arts school by the age of twenty-six. Funny enough, he was good at baking pastries and fishing. He married a wonderful woman by the name of Clove. You have her freckles."

Jude leaned in closer, drinking it all in; he abruptly began to believe this man. "All I was told about my parents was that father left us, and my mother committed suicide."

Paul twiddled his thumbs, planning his next words carefully. "No, I'm pretty sure it happened the other way around. Your mother's death happened suddenly. Your father's heart broke even more because he had been the one who found her. Jeremiah didn't know what to do with an infant, and the two of us argued all the time. I taught him everything about what it is to be an author, but he refused the apprenticeship. The next thing I knew, he disappeared from the face of the earth, along with my grandson." Paul sipped at his lemonade once more, then bit into a custard-filled donut. The napkin could not keep up with his chewing.

The younger Wesley processed the information, absent-mindedly keeping am eye out for Victoria; his brow furrowed painfully. Sweat beaded his temples. "Then...how did you find me? And what is this author business you mentioned? He didn't want to write a book?"

The sadness bleeds back into his grandfather's expression. "Well...for the first time in my fifty years of...I broke the most sacred law of authors to find you and my son again. I used the pen for personal gain. There is power out there. I am the keeper of stories, I suppose. I record them like a historian. Those stories you hear? Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, The Avengers...they are all true. There are many authors. I am one of many, but this remains true. Authorship only passes through blood. It isn't a special power you hold, but a power that binds with the blood you've been given. Usually it is passed from father to son, but a female author is not unheard of either."

"You realize how stupid that sounds?"

"I never implied that it made I initial sense...I'm dying, Jude." The young Wesley's heart lurched at his grandfather's words. "I need you to become the next author. You are my only hope at this point."

"You must be senile." Jude pursed his lips, anxious to hear him out, but sensible enough to conclude that his grandfather is insane. Another half of the spectrum whispered facts into his brain. How is it that Jude only just met him and he says that he is dying, that his father died in a fire, and that his father gave him up after his mother died! So much death...too much of it.

"At least promise to take it for a small while. Marry and find an heir, and you can pass the torch."

Young Wesley turmed scarlet with frustration, confused as to why he even believed Paul in the first place. He wanted to find his father. He wanted to ask him why he left, but everything flipped upside-down. He had no more reason to look and challenge and confront his father in the way he needed to. The pent up rage burned brighter, with no direction to go other than the man in front of him. "I'm not passing any torch, because this role simply does not exist. I'm not a character in a play. I'm flesh, blood, and bone! My blood is as red as the people walking down the sidewalk, not some alien serum for scribbling facts about how Cinderella's fairy godmother sang 'Bibbity Bobbity Boo.'" Jude's face squished itself into his hands, and settled into the silence. When he peeked down, a strip of napkin greeted him, and Paul was gone. Grandpa's number lay scrawled across its patterned texture. Another hope, dashed. Another mystery. He hated mysteries. And once again, Jude Wesley sensed the little boy he once was before "Silk Albert," slithering back into his life.

Jude waited the remainder of the day, and Victoria didn't show up.

She cannot manage to pull away from the guilt that is like sticky toffee around her heart. Sol finds her true self swimming and wrestling against the cling, but Jude added an isomalt dome around all of the chaos sludging and oozing around in her chest. Sol blinks from the ghost of weight in her arms. The weight she had learned to use all that time in Star City fighting alongside the Arrow. The weight of a gun.

In full Scarab gear, Sol briskly wittles between shadows, alley ways, and shuttered windows throughout Hope Valley. Sols past has come to haunt her once again; she regrets that she learned how to snap a man's neck like a saltine cracker.

Sol has done it various times, and she could easily have solved the problem...the parlor trick that Wesley pulled on her all those weeks ago forbade her hands from even flinching toward his demise. A servant pledged for eternity cannot kill its master. This is why her footsteps are breathless and tranquil as she bounds up a small slope into the brush behind the sheriff's office. The frosted glass reveals Mr. Avery asleep in the other cell, the door open. Apparently there is no other kind of bed for him to rest in. Grant, the Mountie that Nyrah mentioned once as a part of the love triangle in the series, is still wounded. Nyrah showed Sol a picture of him once. And since there is no trace of mocha hair or blue marble eyes piercing through the dark, Sol flutters without effort around toward the front door.

The door is too loud. Sol has heard it before, so she steals every millisecond she can spare to slowly open it to quiet the hinges before she slips in. Jude sits cross-legged, almost morose in essence. He peers down at his wide palm, and for the first time, in the moonlight, Sol sees someone different. She questions whether or not the man in the cell is really the one who cursed her with infinite obedience to him. But the essence vanishes as soon as it had arrived when he peers up at her with the most vile smirk.

Scarab senses her own sweat beneath the mask, drifting closer to her master. It is as if she isn't in all there anymore. A purple and black fog envelops her mind whenever Jude requests anything of her. She retains all the memories, but it is as if her body moves willingly in her place. All of it combined with her skill and intelligence. Her mind has not changed; she would still choose to break Wesley's neck at the end of the day, but her convictions are detached from her actions.

A slip of paper is passed through the bars, filling her hand, and then her pocket. Jude's finger brushes his lips.

A split second later, and Sol finds the same deep ache in her chest she sensed before she was cursed. Without thinking, her arms reached behind her, only to stop a fist from grabbing her.

Avery is awake. The attorney and past investigator throws punches as Sol resists arrest, but she dodges them easily enough, and toys with him by ducking and dodging. She eventually has enough and locks his arm behind his upper back, causing him to groan. Scarab proceeds until her arm is around his neck, waiting for his flailing body to wilt. And when he does, she shoves him into the open cell and shuts shrieking door.

Avery is asleep.

Sol fumbles with the note in her pocket since there is no longer any danger.

"Leave me here for now. The next stage shall commence. I need you to set fire to my sister's home."