Threadbare | Arrow

Chapter Nine

"I've been thinking lately

What would you say if you saw me?

Would you be proud of what I've become?"

MICHAEL SHULTE - 'The Love You Left Behind'

.                   .                  .

Standing in front of Starling City Public Library felt a little bit like coming home, and a little bit like getting stabbed by ten knives coated in poison. The doors, brand new and made of beautiful carved oak, looked entirely natural against the cracked but still proud stone that the front face of the building was made of. Still standing, despite the quake. Despite everything Cali had inadvertently done to it.

She didn't know who was inside. Who wasn't, anymore. She hadn't let herself look into it since Tommy's - something she was kicking herself about now.

She'd abandoned the people here. Had left them to their own devices while her father killed almost everyone that she loved. How many people had he taken from her that worked here? How many lives had she forfeited by taking this position when he bought it for her, by getting close to them and bringing her problems right to their front door. For not warning them, like she hadn't warned Janet.

She took a deep, fortifying breath and ran her fingers over the wrinkled sticky note in her pocket, decorated with Oliver's messy scrawl.

'Had to go into the office. Didn't want to wake you.'

He wasn't in the habit of leaving her messages when his responsibilities called him away; clearly, the conversation they'd had had unravelled something in him, had shaken him in some way that had left stains of guilt and regret in the loops of his handwriting.

But despite whatever reason had prompted him to write her the note, she treasured it all the same.

The first step she took inside the foyer knocked any sense of calm she'd been clinging to.

The space where towering bookcases once stood proudly was now hollow and cold, the dizzying height of the ceiling now sent even higher to the naked eye. The luminous chandeliers that Cali had introduced during her first month there were gone, the metal couplings still attached, suggesting that they'd been torn from the roof and shattered on the ground, rather than manually dismantled.

Blankets were piled neatly away in three stacks beside the battered desk that had once been Nancy's pride and joy, and boxes of canned food lingered off in the dark corner by the office, where the general public wouldn't take care to look. Remnants of its time as a safe haven for the people, she imagined.

"Took you long enough to come back here."

And it...it still sounded like her. Was still her voice, no matter how many jagged edges had been carved into it. Cali turned around slowly, uncertainly, scared of what she would find, and...

Martha still looked the same. A bit haggard around her eyes, one of which seemed a bit more cloudy than the other. But her short hair was the same shade of auburn, her lips still pursed, still that look of general disdain for Cali's entire existence. She was dressed down - black slacks and a pale yellow top - and she still managed to look effortless.

The wheelchair she was in was scuffed and slightly dented, the leather handles supple under Naomi's perfectly manicured fingers.

Cali cleared her throat, swallowing thickly in an attempt not to burst into tears. "Hi," she croaked, shuffling her feet uselessly and not meeting either of their expectant gazes. "Um...Just came to see the place. See how it held up."