Threadbare | Arrow

Chapter Twelve

Mature Content Warning

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"I found a martyr in my bed tonight

She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am"
FUN. - 'Some Nights'

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Oliver left for Russia only a few days later, bundled up in a thick layer of clothes and secrets. John, Felicity, and Isabel Rochev went with him, flanking around him like an entourage as they left Cali standing by the car while they made their way over to the jet that was perched on the tarmac waiting for them.

Oliver had told her about it in short sentences that same morning, words clipped and voice terse. How John's ex-partner - a woman named Lyla Michaels - had gone missing in Moscow looking for the man who had killed John's brother, and Oliver had offered to help his friend find her. He had...connections, he said. With the Bratva.

Oliver knew the freaking Russian mob.

Somehow, he managed to keep surprising her.

And then Isabel Rochev had tagged along. She had smiled at Oliver with those sinful lips, looked at him with those sinful eyes, and told her she was going with him. That she didn't trust him on his own. That perhaps he needed a keeper. And Oliver hadn't done much to stop her before she moved around him and boarded the plane.

Cali tried not to be jealous, but just for a moment, she thought she saw a gleam of some kind of animalistic satisfaction in Oliver's eyes. Thought his mouth might have twitched up at the corners by the faintest amount.

For a fleeting moment, Cali saw exactly how good Oliver might be with someone like Isabel Rochev, and something in her chest kind of just crumpled in on itself.

She managed to shove it all down enough to paste a convincing enough smile on her own face, and Oliver didn't falter when they finally made eye contact with each other, his own expression dissolving into something warm and lovely as he set aside whatever mask he'd selected for the trip. For that brief flash between them, she could see him, the Oliver that she loved. The Oliver that would not be boarding that plane, the Oliver that would not be going to Russia with Isabel Rochev, the Oliver that did not exist whenever it was anybody but the two of them.

Isabel Rochev might provide a passing amusement, like a toy gifted on Christmas day to a young child, but she couldn't claim that like Cali could. Cali was the favourite toy, the first pick, the one that Oliver actually loved.

It wasn't until the jet's engines were howling away in preparation for take off and Cali was ushered back into the car and driven away that Janet's voice threaded back through her thoughts, supple and familiar and sad.

"He will chew you up and spit you out and never, ever say sorry for it. The moment you start thinking of yourself as his, CC, it's already too late."

Cali stubbornly set her jaw and stared out the window as the silent driver eased them into the traffic heading back into the heart of the city, and tried to forget all about her waitress and her warnings. After all, Oliver was one of the only people she had left. If Cali wasn't allowed to be his, then she wasn't able to be anybody's, and that was the kind of life that she wasn't sure she could ever live.

"And what about belonging to yourself?" Janet challenged silently in her head. "What about being your own woman?"

She didn't know how.

Maybe once, so many years ago, she might've been just fine being by herself. Answering only to herself. She'd been her mother's daughter, raised in the lap of luxury by parents who loved her and each other. She'd had Tommy, who still loved her even if he never really went out of his way for her on a daily basis.