☠️ / PROLOGUE:
an empty casket

Maya Black taps her nails on the steering wheel. Her baby blue polish is tarnished and she makes an absent-minded mental note to get them repainted as she gazes out at the road before her, waiting for the traffic lights to turn green.

There is an edge to the air, a coldness that nips at her skin and makes the hairs of her arms stand on end; whilst she would not call herself a particularly superstitious person, she's never been able to shunt the simple method of trusting her gut – and any other day, she would heed that feeling – but today is Oliver Queen's surprise birthday bash.

The crush she has had on him since she was eleven aside, Oliver is Ethan's best friend and Ethan is Maya's big brother. This means her promise of throwing a fantastic party is twice as important, twice as extravagant as it need be and twice as likely to get her relentlessly mocked should it go pear shaped. So she's pressing a little harder on the accelerator than she normally would.

The friendship between Oliver Queen and Ethan Black had been an odd occurrence. Two years apart, they had only run in the same circles in the sense of their familial status, but a well-timed charity fundraiser had resulted in Oliver and Ethan becoming fast friends at the age of thirteen and fifteen, respectively. Thomas Merlyn became a later addition and a happy upgrade from a dynamic duo to a golden trio.

A golden trio who, for all their fondness of Maya, would not hesitate in ridiculing her should the party not be deemed a success.

Everything was in hand, all was on track and on time and Maya was one All good! text from Ellie away from calling the set-up a success, but the next text she got from Ellie is, rather: Bad news my car got towed outside the cake shop so I'm stranded, and now Maya is trying her very best not to break any traffic laws as she attempts to get from one side of Star City to the other in enough time to get back for the birthday boy's arrival in forty-seven minutes.

The plan is for her to meet him for lunch at his favourite restaurant in Orchid Bay, only a short walk from the old Queen Industries steel factory on the industrial complex a few blocks away. Originally, she was going to make up some excuse of seeing Ethan to get him there, but in all honesty, she knows her plan is hardly thought out.

Maya pulls up outside of Young's Bakery with a slightly obnoxious squeal of brakes and spots Ellie rocking on her heels on the pavement out front, she quickly hurls her handbag onto her backseats to make room for her sister. The older Black sibling gets in the car rather unceremoniously and lets out a groan when she drops down into the low height of Maya's car; she lands on the leather seats with a huff and balances the box containing Oliver's cake rather precariously on her thigh whilst leaning out to pull the door shut.

The blonde turns to her younger sister. "Every time I get in here I question why you couldn't get a car with higher suspension. I'm nearly twenty-one, man, I'm old! Stop buying stupidly low cars!"

"You're so dramatic– you could always walk to Orchid Bay, you know," Maya retorts, "Or, maybe park where you aren't gonna get towed? Ever think of that?"

Ellie passes Maya the cake as she buckles up her seatbelt. "That would make your life too easy. We're late – go, go."

Urging her sister to move with a patronising usher of her hands, Ellie takes the cake back and places it on her lap. Maya shakes her head in disbelief and puts her car into gear, making a sharp U-turn and tearing off back the way she came.

"Jesus Christ, May!" Ellie braces herself against the door. "I'd like to get there, er, alive, please?"

Maya laughs. "Nah, you'll be fine."

Ellie mumbles something under her breath before reaching for the glove box in front of her, she rummages through with a concentrated face before victoriously emerging with a well worn Blondie CD.

"Oh," Ellie starts, a thought coming to her as she ejects an American Idiot disc from Maya's centre console and pops the music of her own choice into the CD player. "Astrid can't make it – Green Day, ugh – the babysitter bailed so she's watching Cordy. Rocky's still coming, though."

Rocky has been Ethan Black's rather unfortunate nickname since he was twelve years old – when he briefly took up boxing after binge watching the Rocky films and deciding he was going to be the next Sylvester Stallone, or something. It had only been for a year, but the family had found his stint so funny the nickname ended up sticking, much to Ethan's dismay.

Well founded dismay, in his defence, seeing at twenty-three, with a partner and a daughter, he is still being called it. Without fail, he cringes every time he hears it.

"Hey! Green Day is amazing and–," Maya indignantly pulls the CD out of Ellie's hand, shoving it down her side door, "of course he is. At least Cordy gets the fun parent."

Ellie hums in response, shutting the glove box. "I know. I'm gonna start making them work on a three-one ratio of who has to babysit. Do you think it's too late to ask them to swap?"

Maya thinks for a moment before saying, "Actually, couldn't mom and dad have watched her? Connie loves seeing Cordy."

"Fuck if I know why Astrid and Ethan never go with the simple option," Ellie grumbles, holding her hand up in surrender.

Maya laughs, but the conversation trails off as the two sisters fall into an out-of-pitch run of Blondie carpool karaoke for the rest of the drive. It passes quickly, like the last grains of sand in an hourglass, and they pull up outside the abandoned Queen Industries warehouse in no time.

Ellie shoves the car door open and bum-shuffles her way out, overly-cautious with her hold on the cake.

"Right, the party decs are on the back seat– and the balloons are in the trunk! Caterers are already in there and the DJ should be waiting inside!" Maya rushes, leaning down to look at Ellie through the open door. "You are gonna have to set up the gifts table, though, and–!"

"Maya," Ellie interrupts, crouching down to give her sister a look. "I got this. You've done the hard bit, we can set the rest up. Go get the birthday boy– and don't be late!"

Maya lets out a breath, her eyes closing before she nods. She hears Ellie open the boot and begin gathering the balloons and quickly reaches into the back seat to grab the box of decorations; she turns back to see Tommy Merlyn has appeared to help Ellie. He walks over to her window and she winds it down to hand him the box, Ellie stepping to his side a moment later.

"Hi, Tommy," Maya says, waving at the dark haired boy, who gives her a sly grin and an airy wave in response. She looks at her sister and smiles softly. "Alright, see you in a bit, love you."

"Love you, too." Ellie winks. "Drive safe."

Ellie and Tommy wave her off as Maya heads back towards the road, feeling a little relieved that, whilst she is a little late, she's only a few blocks from Oliver now. Perhaps today could still be a success, she thinks. 

She slows to a stop at the traffic lights on the road outside the industrial complex, taking a second to grab her bag from the backseat and plop it down next to her again. She thinks about calling Connie, checking in and seeing how her little sister's day is going. Maya wonders whether she's still sulking about not being allowed to come to Oliver's party. A fond ache fills her chest.

As the lights turn green and the car pulls away, Maya hears the familiar ringtone of her phone begin to go off and curses to herself.

Maya reaches over to rummage through her bag, glancing between the road and her search, trying to fish out her ringing phone. She pulls it out after a second, seeing Ollie flashing on the digital screen. She accepts the call quickly and holds the phone to her ear, turning her attention back to the road.

"Hey, Ollie," Maya says brightly.

"Hey, Mayday." The nickname is an old one, a silly childhood callback that stuck. Oliver Queen still says it with as much fondness as he did at thirteen years old.

"You okay?" Maya asks, "All good?"

"Well..." Oliver starts. He turns on the spot where he stands. "I'm standing outside the Ackerman Hotel in Orchid Bay. My friend is supposed to be here but she's already about ten minutes late. I'm starting to wonder whether it'll still qualify as a birthday meal by the time she gets here."

Maya grimaces. "I know, sorry! I'm nearly there, like literally two minutes away. Have patience!"

"Well, since it's you asking," Ollie laughs.

A smile sweeps across the girl's face, accompanied by flutters in her stomach. She clears her throat. "How–."

She never finishes her sentence. She doesn't even see the car – not until it rams directly into the side of her and suddenly the world is weightless.

The force of the collision sends her car hurtling sideways, rolling over and over, the sound of leather and steel crunching ricocheting around her skull; the vehicle breaks right through the barriers of a construction site to the right of the road and stops beneath a bridge, the underpass of the interstate leading out of the city.

It felt like eternity, tossing around inside the vehicle, arms, feet, hands, head, all hitting windows and chairs and the roof. She can hear the carnage before even opening her eyes, other cars crashing and horns blaring and people already beginning to clamour and yell. The pressure banging in her head tells her immediately she's hanging upside down, gravity combined with the crash makes her head spin.

But her blood stills at the sound of flames licking to life. She forces her eyes open, the blurry haze revealing to Maya that her car had crashed into the cans of flammable liquid stored on the site, and metal on metal had scraped into a spark. A spark which all too greedily takes to the spilled liquid coating the tarmac road in a trail to her car. It only takes Maya a second to understand the drip echoing in the back of her head is her split open fuel tank.

She will not die today.

Maya wrestles with her seatbelt, numb fingers fumbling with the buckle until it gives and she collapses downward with a dull thud onto the ceiling below. The fire is raging now, roaring high in brilliant amber and saffron hues, engulfing the strewn wreckage of her car in front of her, swallowing the fuel-soaked pieces whole like a pack of hungry wolves.

The thick fumes creep closer and snake into her car, filling it, obscuring her sight and her lungs, turning her tongue ashen. Eyes blurry and stinging, Maya weakly tries to move, to force open her door, to try and save herself from the fate fast approaching the hood of her car. It's pointless. Her body hurts and her chest aches and the door will not open. She can taste the blood in her mouth, metallic and warm, can feel the heat of the fire scorching her scraped skin. The pounding in her head grows more persistent.

She will not die today.

She shifts until her gear stick is digging uncomfortably into her back and kicks at the window of her door. She kicks until it shatters.

Maya drags her body back around, feeling every part of it cry out for her to stop moving, but she will not. She tries not to choke on her sobs while she drags herself through the shattered window, over the shards of glass that cut her soft flesh and dig in deep. She tries not to breathe too deep as she pulls herself from the wreckage and into the day. She topples onto the road, cold tarmac biting into her burning, bleeding skin.

Maya finds her world descending into darkness, her throbbing head begging for her eyes to close. For just a moment of solace, for relief. She barely has the strength to keep dragging air into her smoke infested chest.

She will not die today.

And as she finally surrenders to that darkness, a surge of heat and flame assaulting Maya's limp form and telling her the fire had finally buried the car she lay in moments ago, a dark silhouette emerges from the haze of smoke.

The explosion can be heard blocks away. It leaves a sour taste in Oliver Queen's mouth as his phone slips from his ear, falling from his hand and clattering against the concrete? the line to Maya still flickering on his screen.

He runs towards the source without a second longer of hesitation, his legs carrying him the few blocks to the underpass like it's nothing.

Standing there, the red of the raging fire beneath the bridge reddening his skin, the feeling in his gut was trying to drag him to the Earth's core. When he catches a glimpse of the car through the flames, he wishes it would. His mind immediately goes to Ethan, to his friend, to the man whose little sister is somewhere among the destruction before him.

Her name rips itself from his throat in a strangled yell, he hardly even recognises it as his own voice, as he shoves his way through the people and cars. He breaks past the line of officers who have rushed to the scene. He only stops when the heat of the fire makes him recoil.

Oliver freezes. His legs buckle and he crumples to the ground, knees hitting the rubble like a deadweight. Another explosion erupts from the burning, seething metal.

Arms and hands grab onto him, trying to haul him out of harm's way, away from the wreckage, away from Maya.

He lets them.

The funeral takes place two months later. When the investigation has been closed on the crash, all leads explored regarding why there was no body, the police file it away as a cold case. It does nothing to comfort the grief splitting Maya's family apart, the heartache that leaves a gaping void where she should be.

The ceremony is bleak. It rains.

Charcoal clouds crowd the sky and thunder down fat droplets of water on the black umbrellas failing to conceal the tears of those attending.

Ellie Black chokes out a poem until her throat closes up and her voice cannot speak, until she cannot read the verses for the tears in her eyes. Oliver Queen manages a few lines of a tearful eulogy before his white-knuckled grip on the stand and the crack in his words prompts Thomas Merlyn to guide him back to his seat. Joseph Black holds his wife's hand as she weeps into his shoulder and grips their youngest child tightly. As the music starts up and the mourners leave, their son stands unmoveable over the lowering coffin.

There is no closure here.

The Black Family buries an empty casket and the world moves on.

☠️ Y'ALL. it's been a hot minute. do people still do authors notes??? i feel extremely old returning to this lil app after 2 years of writing NOTHING

☠️ anyway,,, the prologue!!! nothing fancy or major, just maya's backstory and the set up for act 1!

☠️ whilst this IS a barry allen fic, maya's relationship with ollie is a long standing facet of her character from like... ten years ago when i created her, so it's a dynamic pretty fundamental to her development, so expect more oliver presence in act 1 <3 and some barry-but-we-don't-know-it's-barry cameos bc they're red string of fate type soulmates yknow