YJFam Oneshots/Stories

It's Quiet Uptown (Crock/ArrowFam)

There are moments that the words don't reach. There is suffering to terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can, and push away the unimaginable.

"No," Paula Crock whispered. "No! No! NO!" She got louder every time she said it. "NO! YOU'RE WRONG! YOU'RE WRONG! YOU'RE LYING!"

Tears were streaming down Dinah's face, pouring down Oliver's. "Paula," Ollie started, before being cut off.

"NO! SHE CAN'T BE DEAD! SHE CAN'T! YOU'RE LYING!" Paula started to sob. "She can't..." The woman whispered. "My baby. My baby! My poor, sweet baby!" She was racked with waves of uncontrollable sobs as the storm of truth hit her full-force.

The moments that you're in so deep, it feels easier to just swim down. ...And learn to live with the unimaginable.

Paula sat in her chair, baby Lian in her arms. She was babysitting for Roy and Jade again. Wally would be there soon to help her. He always did whenever he didn't have class.Paula knew that he was suffering too. She knew many people were. But none of them had lost a child. Oliver and Dinah were really the only ones who sort of understood. Artemis had been like a daughter to them.

But it wasn't the same. They weren't the ones who had been pregnant with her, gave birth to her, heard her first words, celebrated her first birthday, seen her first steps, watched her the first time that she ever held a bow. Even at the age of five, she was a natural. They weren't the ones who tried to tell the little girl who was trying her best to put on a brave face on her very first day of school that it was ok to cry. Of course, Paula had missed several milestones, like Artemis' tenth birthday and her first period; but she had been there for many more than she had missed.

It killed her to know that there were no more milestones for her daughter- no graduation from college, no engagement, no wedding, no first pregnancy, no first baby. All of the most important days of her life down the drain, because she was murdered at age twenty.She glanced at the picture of Artemis that was sitting on a shelf. It was a picture of Artemis on her ninth birthday, from when Paula caught the little girl jumping up and down from excitement on her big sister's bed. She had stopped jumping when she realized that she had been caught, but she was still grinning, happy.

Tears dripped down Paula's face as she realized yet again she would never see her favorite daughter smile again. Glancing down at the sleeping baby, who now had her grandmother's tears on her small face, only made it worse. It was always hard to watch Lian- it reminded her of things that would never be. The girl's name, Lian Alice, didn't exactly help either.

Paula shook her head, taking a deep breath. She still had one daughter, who had a happy family. It had been two months, she needed to at least sort of move on. She needed to focus on what she did have, rather than what she didn't.

-This part is the same day as Satisfaction, and nothing else will be more than a month after Depths-

—<•>—I spend hours in the garden. I walk alone to the store. It's quiet uptown. I never liked the quiet before.

Oliver Queen walked away from the two Roys, using the excuse of needing to run an errand. He used the backup Zeta tube to get to Gotham. He walked towards uptown Gotham, where the cemetery was. Where Artemis was.

The young woman had been a blessing onto his life. People had always liked to joke that she was just like him when he was her age- which was true, but made him mad as his protective instinct kicked in.

She had quickly become like a daughter to him. It took her longer to trust him, but once she had, he was the loving father figure that she'd yearned for her whole life, the father figure that she deserved. The duo told their stories to each other and were always there for each other when they needed a shoulder to cry on. Ollie was one of the only people that Artemis trusted enough to cry in front of. Oliver understood the weight of that, and did his best to never fail to disappoint her.