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I knew as soon as I saw him that the doctor was right. The Oliver I remembered was lost forever. My beautiful boy. My boy had never been that still, could never have stood that still. They'd shown me the little drawing that indicated all the scars and burns that marked him now, and my heart died a little over each one. I'd been given a gift I knew, having him returned to me at all, but the price for that gift was one he had paid in blood.
Before ... Oliver laughed his way through life, always smiling. Always able to coax a smile out of us, even when we were trying to scold him. Now my boy doesn't laugh, barely smiles.
He's darker now. So much more serious that it hurts me to think of why. Before, Oliver never had a care in the world and now he seems consumed by the secrets that have marked him body and soul. He seems able to hide most of it from others, but I'm his mother.
I've done everything in my power to protect my children. I've tried so hard not to let the things I've done come between us. If they knew the whole truth of me, I'm so afraid I would lose them forever. Thea almost certainly would hate me.
Now I wonder at the cost of what I've done. Was it truly my children, my family, that I was protecting, or just their image of me? Robert is gone, Walter is lost to me and Oliver is nearly a ghost because of me and what I thought I had to do to survive.
I hated having to kidnap my own son so soon after his return, to subject him to even more trauma. I had to be able to convince Malcolm that Robert hadn't told him anything dangerous. Malcolm would have been more brutal and likely left my boy with even more wounds in the name of protecting the Undertaking.
I am an expert at ignoring the things I don't want to recognize, but I've been forced to accept that even if I'd been able to keep quiet about the Undertaking and let it go on unimpeded, I would still never have been free of Malcolm. My silent complicity would have given him even more of a hold over me. As though he needed another hook into me.
I've had a lot of time to think about my actions. It's ironic that I'm here in prison waiting for trial because I finally tried to stop Malcolm. I don't regret acting, but I do regret that my unwillingness to go against Malcolm caused Oliver such pain, reliving Robert's death that way.
His revelation has haunted me since then. The look on his face as he told me that 'someone in this family' had to take action whatever the cost, is one I've repeatedly studied in my memory since. His eyes weren't seeing me or the room we were in. He was sad and resigned, and as he turned to leave the room, the way he squared his shoulders sent a chill down my spine. It was in that moment I realized that he was going back to confront Malcolm. And I knew that Malcolm would kill him.
Over the months I've been here, I've come to a better understanding of the man my son has become. I hadn't understood, before, how difficult it must have been to be thrown back into the world we considered normal. I don't equate my relatively plush confinement with the hell he went through, but I recognize how jarring the change from the isolation he'd been trapped in for so long must have been by going through the reverse.
From the start he made an amazing effort to fit back into the life he'd left, but now I can see how stiff and artificial that effort was. Still is. He holds himself at a distance from almost everyone he knew before, in a way I hadn't appreciated until I found myself trying to reassure Thea that I was fine even though I was waiting to be tried for multiple murders.
What purpose would be served by showing her the pain and the sorrow beneath that 'fine'? I would only distress her without easing my situation. It's still hard to lie to her, but I only have so much I can do for her from here. I wonder what lies beneath Oliver's facade.
Thea and I both know, inside, that things will never be the way they were before the Undertaking. Intellectually I know that I will likely die here, either because I'm sentenced to Life, or Death. Oliver knows this and I can see his pain when it leaks through.
I've learned something else about my son as he visits me. Thea hates to visit me because this is a depressing place, but she acts as though there are walls around us when we talk. Oliver treats this place as the hazard-waiting-to-happen that it truly is. He looks me over each time as if he expects, fears, I'm hiding some injury or trouble, and he always takes care to see where all the other people in the room are.
Jean has said that if I'd been put into the General Population here I probably wouldn't have survived a month, so I try to be as aware as my son whenever I'm moved from my cell. When Oliver was born, Robert had me go through a self-defense course that was supposed to help keep us from being kidnapped. One of the phrases I remember is 'threat assessment', seeing where a potential danger might come from. I realize now that Oliver has been doing this kind of watching since he came home.
Part of me has wanted to ignore all the questions my realizations are bringing forward. What is my son hiding? Why is he hiding it from me? I fear that all those phone calls, those odd absences are part of it and I'm afraid that I know.
In my mind I go back to the night the vigilante confronted me in my office. He was so angry and demanding, wanting to know what I knew about the Undertaking. But when I mentioned Oliver and Thea, holding the picture of them as though it could shield me from those arrows, he lowered his bow. I took the chance he gave me to shoot him and I was so grateful to have escaped that I ignored the niggling question of why he would care about my children.
When Oliver came home that night, he was odder than usual, though I didn't see it immediately, didn't really see it until I started putting pieces together here. He claimed not to get reception at the club, but that was the first and only time he'd ever mentioned it. I remember the look in his eyes as he promised that the vigilante wouldn't bother me again and I remember the way he winced as I hugged him. And I remember that the night the vigilante frightened me into admitting what Malcolm was planning, it was Oliver who was struck, only Oliver who was hurt.
When I remember that the first time the vigilante was seen was when he rescued Oliver from the men I'd hired to kidnap him. When I think about the fact that the men I'd hired had been the vigilante's first victims, I'm torn. It frightens me to think what I'm thinking. If I'm right, my attempt to protect my son may have done more harm than just the physical.
However much I may want to ignore them, there are nights I find myself inundated with images of Oliver's face. I don't want to remember the nightmare I woke him from his first night home and how dangerous he looked before he realized where he was. All the other times I ignored the bruises and cuts, right up to that last day when he came to me and said he'd confronted Malcolm and I didn't ask about the raw cuts I could clearly see. I know what Malcolm is physically capable of and yet I didn't understand what those cuts might mean.
I know that if Oliver spoke to Malcolm about the Undertaking, it wouldn't have been a civilized discussion over coffee. Anyone who questions Malcolm meets with a violent rebuke and Malcolm would not have hesitated to hurt Oliver. It didn't occur to me then that the fact that Oliver was standing before me meant that whatever Malcolm had done, Oliver had survived. It still shakes me to think about it.
Oliver told me that Walter had given him the copy of the List that he brought to me. I had been focused solely on getting rid of it, of convincing Oliver that he should forget all the questions he had about it. Now I can only see the look in his eyes, the determination and the disappointment. The vigilante had a copy of the list, was using it to more directly redress those crimes against the city and its citizens. What if the copy he'd been using was Robert's? What if Oliver knew that the copy I burned was mine?
I remember how pleased I was that Oliver had opened his club, even though it was in the Glades, even though it was in the factory Robert had closed. At the time it had seemed like a positive step forward, part of reintegrating himself into the world. I wonder now if Tommy hadn't joined Oliver in the venture, would Malcolm have pushed me to talk Oliver out of it? Or would he have taken a more direct approach and damaged the building to prevent it being used?
Looking at it now, in light of my suspicions, I have to wonder if that would have stopped my son. If what I fear is correct, the club would have served its purpose whether it opened or not, simply by virtue of being a place he could go and spend time that didn't need to be accounted for. And suddenly it makes sense that he would call it Verdant.
Worse still, if what I fear is correct, I came very near to killing my son. If I had taken a few seconds more with my shot might I have killed Oliver? Could it have been Mr. Diggle wearing the vigilante's hood the night Oliver and I were 'attacked'?
Now Oliver has to save Queen Consolidated from the consequences of my actions. I hope he'll be able to hold it together until the storm passes. The company itself is solid, but investor confidence will need time to forgive the company for my failings.
The question foremost in my mind now is how can my son forgive me? If I'd confessed it all to him the first time he asked, could he, could we, have prevented Malcolm's mad plan? Could we have saved Tommy?
When I'd said I wasn't the mother of all those people in the Glades, I'd forgotten about Laurel and her legal aid clinic as well as Tommy and the club. After Rebecca died, Tommy all but lived in our house. Right through high school, he and Oliver closer than brothers. Laurel and Sarah were both in and out like family, too.
No wonder Oliver had to get away, leave town. Thea at least had her Roy, but for Oliver and Laurel, Tommy's death seems to have broken the bridge between them, leaving them each alone in their grief. I have much to atone for.