Chapter Text
“Abigail.”
Dad’s voice drags her out of a dream. She tries to turn over and sink deeper into sleep, but he shakes her gently.
“Honey, wake up.”
She jerks up to sitting, and Percy makes a whuffling noise and uncurls next to her ankles. “What’s wrong?”
“Take it easy,” Dad says, laying a hand on her shoulder, which is exactly what he would do if the house were on fire. But she knows by his smile and by the absent stroke of his hand over Percy’s coat that everything is all right. “Bundle up, put some shoes on, and let’s go.”
“Go where? What time is it?”
“It’s nearly one.” The smile broadens. “And you’ll see.”
Bleary-eyed, she does as he says, and she follows him downstairs with Percy on her heels. They step out into frigid fog so faint and still it seems almost a shame to disturb it.
Mom is already waiting in the passenger seat of Dad’s car with a sleepy smile, juggling travel mugs and adjusting the heater. She passes a mug to Abby as she climbs in the backseat. “Earl Grey latte with rose syrup. Don’t let the dog try it this time. That was gross.”
“What’s going on?” Abby says, scooting over so Percy can clamber up next to her.
Dad smiles the way he does when he is deeply enjoying knowing something you don’t, and he puts the car in gear.
They drive south of the city, where cliffs rise over the Pacific. Percy leaves wet nose prints all over the window, and Mom turns on terrible noughties music, all whiny boys with guitars. Abby knows it from soft rock stations. A boring old standard comes on, and Mom says, “Oliver, you remember this song. It was all over the radio from one coast to another the summer we took that road trip.”
He shakes his head.
“Yes, you do. You knew every word.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Honey, I will be loving you til we’re seventy, the singer swears, and Mom smiles, sinking lower in the seat. “Remember when seventy sounded really implausibly old?”
Far past the city lights, the deserted road cuts a sinuous path along the coast. The fog clears, the sky turns the blue of wet ink, and a hundred feet below them the ocean ripples silver with moonlight. Dad pulls over on a thick stretch of shoulder. He and Mom slip out of the car, and their breath frosts before them. “Abby, come on.”
“But it’s cold.”
Dad pulls a fuzzy blanket from the trunk, and Mom puts her hands on her hips and says, “Get your butt out here.”
Percy jumps down first, tail wagging, and starts sniffing his way along the guard rail.
Mom and Dad settle on the hood of the car, and Abby climbs up between them in bemusement. The metal is warm through her flannel pajamas, and Dad wraps all three of them in the blanket. Then Mom and Dad lean back on their palms, eyes on the sky.
Over the soft, continuous shhhh of distant waves crashing, Abby says, “What are we looking for?”
“Just be patient,” Dad says.
When the first star shakes loose from the firmament and dives into the sea, Abby gasps.
Next to her, Mom giggles in satisfaction, and then she starts to sing at the slightly too low pitch of someone unaccustomed to it: “Happy birthday to you.” She gives Dad a meaningful glance, then a nudge. “Happy birthday to - come on, Oliver.”
In a dutiful monotone, he joins in: “Happy birthday to you.”
Mom nods approval, and in out-of-tune chorus they sing, “Happy birthday, dear Abby. Happy birthday to you.”
Grinning, Abby pulls her knees up and hugs them to her chest. “Oh my God, you guys.”
Dad nods serenely at another comet as it flashes overhead. “As you can see, I arranged shooting stars for the occasion.”
Abby headbutts his shoulder.
“You don’t think I can do that?” he says, looking down at her. “I’m the mayor.”
“Mmm,” is all Abby replies.
Mom reaches around her to rub his back. “Well done, darling.”
Finally, he cracks a smile. “Thank you.”
Still shaking her head, Abby points at a cluster of brighter stars off to her right. “Is that Gemini?”
Dad leans close, sights along her arm, and moves her pointing finger thirty degrees to the left. “Over here.”
She tips her head sideways. “It doesn’t look like two guys.”
“Apparently in China they don’t think so either,” Mom says. “To them it’s part of two other constellations, right?”
Dad’s brows knit at her. “You remember that?”
“It was a memorable night.”
“Gross, Mom,” Abby mutters, keeping one eye on Percy, who has found something interesting to dig up.
“Not that kind of memorable,” Mom says. “We were stuck in the snow in Blue Falls National Park at two in the morning, and he had a concussion.”
Ah. Of course. “What were you doing out there?”
“Saving my life,” Mom says cheerfully, bumping Abby’s shoulder with hers. “I made him talk to me to keep him awake, and he told me a story about two stars - two lovers - separated by the silvery river, the Milky Way. They could only meet once a year when a flock of birds made a bridge for them.”
Dad shakes his head. “I’d forgotten those stories.”
“I guess Hong Kong was a long time ago,” Abby says.
“I didn’t learn them there,” he says very quietly. “Shado taught me.”
Most of what Abby knows about Shado, she heard from Mom. “I don’t think he’s ever really forgiven himself for her,” she said, turning an apple over in her hands at the kitchen island one night. “It’s hard for him to talk about her.”
Abby will never stop finding it strange that her parents have known her since she was a blob on a sonogram, but she has known them for less than half their lives. There was a time when they were strangers to each other, and there were people they loved whom she will never know and who, under some other set of stars, might have made them happy.
It all could have been so different. One whimsical left turn instead of a right, and they might never have ended up here at all.
But it’s the fourth of January, and Dad ordered the light show. Abby leans against his arm, and she scans the sky. “Thank you for this.”
“This isn’t your whole present,” Mom assures her. “When Jon and Tish get back from Gotham, we’re going to have a nice dinner and go full birthday.”
Abby bites her lip, but she nods.
“Sweet sixteen,” Dad says, tucking the blanket around them more closely. “I’m unclear on this - are you supposed to get sweeter, or are we supposed to be sweet to you?”
“If I get any sweeter, I’ll melt in the rain,” Abby says airily. “Guess it’s gonna have to be you.”
Dad sits up straighter, frowning over at the guard rail. “Percy. Percy!” He shakes his head, slipping free of the blanket. “The hell is he eating?”
By the time he has finished coaxing the half-chewed moldy sandwich out of Percy’s mouth and tossed it over the cliff (holding Percy’s collar, “because I wouldn’t put it past you to jump after it, buddy”), Abby and Mom are huddled together, shivering.
“Time to go home?” Mom says as Dad leads Percy back to the car.
On the long drive back into Starling, Abby uses Percy for a pillow in the back seat, and she listens with half an ear to Mom and Dad’s quiet murmurs up front.
“Yes, I talked to him yesterday. He and Terry tracked down the shipment that got away from us last month.”
Mom sighs. “You had him working a case while he’s supposed to be on his first vacation with his girlfriend?”
Perhaps it’s petty, but Abby can’t help a small measure of relief that there was some Arrowy, fisticuffy reason for Jonny to be three thousand miles away on both New Year’s Eve and her actual birthday. She still can’t believe he took Tish to see Aida on Broadway. If the big jerk paid any attention at all, he would know Abby has been dying to see that show for two years.
Dad chuckles, his fingers tracing the seam of the steering wheel’s leather casing. “I think they had plenty of fun. He still sounded hungover on the phone. And now we know the identity of the Three-Sixteen’s’ buyer in Gotham.”
“Oh, excellent. It’s been a while since we’ve crashed an arms deal.”
“You’ll have to pass it to McKenna and coordinate if you can.”
“I’ve been meaning to set up a TTC lock to share that kind of thing with her.”
“A what?”
“It’s a new kind of lightlink that uses alternating encryption sequences to - ” Mom yawns wide, and her head tips back against the seat. “Mmm. It’s magic. It’s computer magic.”
“Best kind. How secure is it?”
Shop talk. Abby drifts off.
The next time she opens her eyes, she can just make out their profiles in the glow of the dashboard lights, keeping watch over the road winding away before them.
When Jonny comes home from Gotham, he smiles for a week straight. Not even a minor fender bender that dents his Beemer can wipe that goofy look off his face.
“I’m glad he’s in such a good mood,” Mom tells Abby at the kitchen island one night, “but he’s sent me the wrong email attachments four times since Monday.”
Abby slides a platter of grilled asparagus her way. “Somehow I doubt he’s just that excited about your arms dealer thing.”
“He’s twitterpated,” Mom says on a sigh. “Happens to the best of us.”
Abby nods ruefully. “You’re strolling along, minding your own business,” she says, hands walking in the air, “looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden, you run smack into a pretty face. Bam!” She makes big, moonstruck eyes. “You begin to get weak in the knees…” Her hands shake in front of her. “Your head’s in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather.” She flutters her fingers down to the marble countertop, plants them there, and leans ominously toward Mom. “And you completely lose your head.”
Mom laughs, reaching across the island to poke her with the blunt end of her fork. “Just wait ‘til it happens to you.”
Abby sits back, folding her arms. “It’s not going to happen to me.”
“Oh, well, if you’re sure.” Mom spears a hunk of potato straight from the serving dish and pops it in her mouth. “I’ll tell Dad,” she says, slightly muffled. “He needsh shome good newsh.”
At Abby’s birthday dinner that Friday night, Mom and Dad give her a beautifully wrapped box that fits in the palm of her hand. Inside are a set of car keys, and she nearly cries with happiness.
Jon and Tish present her with a beautiful handbag in exactly the style and color Eva Marquez carried in the film adaptation of Flor de Caña. The card reads: To carry those keys around in. Love you, junebug. Beneath Jon’s illegible signature, in freakishly perfect handwriting, it says: Happy birthday! With love from Tish.
Abby is certain Jon didn’t pick out the handbag, not least because he is a complete potatohead at presents in general. Only a month ago, he was struggling to come up with a gift for Tish.
“How about a piano?” he asked Abby the first week of December.
“What?” Abby looked up from her homework. “Jonny, no.”
“She had to sell hers when her dad died, and it just seemed like the sort of thing she’d - ”
“You cannot spend that kind of money on the first Christmukkah present.” Abby pointed her pen at him. “You will freak her out.”
“Okay. So, um. Jewelry?”
In the end, Abby found the perfect thing - vintage sheet music of Tish’s favorite jazz standards. She cried when she opened them, and Jonny puffed up like he’d earned himself an Olympic gold medal in boyfriending.
So tonight, Abby hugs Jon and thanks him profusely for the gift, but she’s careful to lean around his shoulder and mouth, “It’s perfect!” at Tish.
“There’s more,” Tish mouths back.
But Mom is fantastically distracting, walking up behind Abby to cover her eyes and frog-march her to the door for the unveiling of the vehicle. Then Abby’s head is full of gorgeous shiny coupe and big ridiculous red bow and pretty little BMW logo. After a lecture on safety features, Dad wants her to take it for a spin right this very second, and who is she to argue with that? He has to slide the passenger seat way, way back to fit, but he must not mind very much, because he mirrors her beaming smile.
So Abby nearly forgets the little data key Tish slipped her in a repurposed jewelry box.
Two days later, when she finally slips it into her glassbook, she discovers it’s a library of a thousand songs. She has to laugh a little bit, looking at how meticulously organized Tish keeps her music. Everything is tagged exhaustively by artist, era, genre, tempo, dominant instrument, and - for God’s sake - mood.
She writes a thank you note on Snoopy stationery, and she slips the key into her new favorite purse.
In February, a terrible sinus infection finally kills Jonny’s good mood.
“Is he seriously going Arrowing like that?” Abby asks Dad, watching Jonny sneeze three times in a row on his way to the front door.
“Evil has never heard of sick leave,” Dad says, and then he tips his head at Mom curled up against the other sofa arm. “Or maternity leave.”
Mom lifts her head and rubs her temples. “Mmm, remember that time I forgot to mute my end of the comm when I took a puke break?”
“I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit, just listening.”
“Morning sickness,” Mom says, patting Abby’s knee. “It runs in the family. You’re welcome.”
Abby doesn’t sleep well that night. Sometime after one, she wakes from a nightmare, mostly because her tossing and turning has woken Percy, and he is playfully pouncing on her feet moving under the covers.
She gets out of bed and finds a light on in Mom’s study. Watchtowering from home again.
“Yes, I’ll get it for you,” Mom says, more clipped with Jonny than usual. “Fine. Nothing. Just a headache.” She leans her head on the heel of her hand. “Should I? That hadn’t occurred to me.” She winces. “Sorry. It’s making me grumpy.”
“Hey, Mama,” Abby says.
Mom looks up. “You ok?”
“Fine,” Abby says, sidling in to sit on the loveseat. “How’s crime?”
“Louder than I’d like,” Mom admits. She glares at Percy, who is trying to follow Abby into the room. “Sit.”
Forlornly he takes up a post right at the threshold of her office.
“Abby, honey, take the comm?” Mom says, pulling off her headset. “Just keep an eye out for SCPD - the blue blinkies on the map - and give Jonny a heads up if he gets close. He’s the green blinky.”
Abby comes around to sit on the desk and put on the headset. “Hey.”
“Hey.” The mild surprise sounds kind of funny in the Arrow’s inhumanly deep voice, but not nearly as funny as the stuffy, “Whad are you doing ub?”
“Just walking you home,” Abby says, smiling. “Watchtower’s eyes hurt.”
Leaning back in her chair with her forearm over her eyes, Mom says, “I’m just resting them.”
A few minutes later, the green blinky pauses on the corner of a rooftop. Abby frowns at it. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a gouge in the brick,” Jonny says, and at first it sounds like gouch in the brig. “Not one of mine, though. I’ve never come this way before.”
“Is someone else defacing buildings?”
“Nah, I think this was Dad.” Jonny sounds pleased with the idea.
Abby smiles. “Let’s put a plaque on it.”
“God, you’re a brat.” The green blinky starts moving again. “Is Mom asleep yet?”
Abby swivels around to look at Mom slumped low in the armchair, eyes closed and mouth slightly open. “Think so, yeah.”
“Her headaches are getting bad again.”
“I know.” Abby swivels back to the desk. “Take Philpott home instead of Ulloa.”
Mom’s in bed when Jonny trudges through the back door. A chamomile tea bag is already waiting in the soup bowl-sized mug that Elaine brought Abby from Disney World. Abby picks up the steaming kettle and sets the tea to steep.
“Sudafed,” she says, holding two pills out to Jon. “Drowsy kind. It’ll knock you right out.”
He downs them with tap water, and then he rips a paper towel off the roll and blows his nose with an impressive honk. When picks up the tea mug, his bleary gaze comes into focus on the tiny pink letters: Drama Queen. “Had to be this one, huh?”
“It’s the biggest.” With sympathy, she adds, “At least you saved the day, right?”
“Better than that,” he says thickly. “I gave the arms dealer my germs.”
She tips her head at him.
“I sneezed into the bag before I put it over his head.”
“Truly, the hero Starling deserves.” She points at the kitchen doorway. “Go to bed. Go.”
With a last, self-pitying sniffle, he takes his giant mug of tea upstairs.