Chapter Text
It has been a weird day.
Roy wakes up to a new layer of a pristine, frosty coat of snow covering completely the roads of the city, which doesn’t help the annoying feeling of nothingness that had been scrambling his brain since the day before, some unruly emptiness that insisted on making its way to his system every winter. If he's honest, the feeling is always there, creeping around the corners of his mind, waiting for an opportunity to jump on him and strip him out of the happiness he fought so hard for, but the endless white landscapes simply make it easier for it to settle. If it was up to Roy, he would have spent the day lying in bed covered in blankets, ruminating on every single mistake he had ever made in his life while watching some truly terrible Hallmark Christmas movies, but that's not allowed today. He has a kid and a resurrected father figure that needs him around, so he gets out of bed and makes his way to Ollie's house.
He and Lian are staying over, because it's just more convenient than driving here two days in a row. Dinah isn't here yet — and Roy has a feeling she will put off her arrival until the last minute — so it’s just them, Ollie, Connor…
And Mia.
Roy doesn’t know her very well.
He can’t exactly blame Dinah for her suspicion of Mia when they first met her — he thinks that it was more her old, unresolved resentments speaking than something Dinah actually thought, but it was a cruel thing to say nonetheless. It becomes worse now after Ollie has given Roy the full rundown on Mia’s life story. He listened to the whole thing feeling like there were rocks in his stomach, and ended up being utterly revolted that a girl so young had already been torn apart by the world like that. But he doesn’t know her other than third person knowledge of the things she has been through, and he has seen her just a couple times before this Christmas thing, and some of those interactions had been very, very awkward to say the least.
It’s worrying, because for now she’s trying to flirt and make moves on Ollie, Connor and he, and they all shut it down as soon as she starts it and they understand why she acts like this, but what if she tries it on men who’ll accept her offers, who'll take advantage of her vulnerability? It makes Roy’s skin crawl. He feels hypervigilant around her, which is why he is the first to notice she has been gone for too long while they were all having hot chocolates at the table.
“Huh, where’s Mia?” Roy asks. He’s watching Connor teach Lian how to play Mahjong, and trying to learn it himself. She insisted on bringing it to show off to her Uncle Connor, and turns out Connor knows how to play it. Roy should have figured. “She said she had to go to the bathroom like, an hour ago.”
“Maybe dad’s cooking didn’t go down very well,” Connor says. “No, Lian, that piece is locked.”
“Nonsense. Mia loves my cooking,” Ollie says.
“We should check on her,” Roy insists, a little uneasy by how nonchalant they both seem to be about it. This is how he ended up shooting heroin alone in bathrooms without anyone noticing, he thinks, but he cuts the thought off before it can grow into something worse.
Connor looks at Roy. He does seem worried, his lips pressed together in a thin line, but he shakes his head. “Mia likes her moments of solitude. It’s not unusual that she disappears somewhere in the house and comes back a couple hours later.”
“She asked us not to follow her,” Ollie adds. “We don't want to make her, you know, more uncomfortable than she probably already feels.”
It's fair. Still, it doesn't sit right with Roy. “Well, she didn’t ask me not to follow her. I'll go look for her.”
“But Daddy, you'll miss my game!” Lian says.
“I'll be right back, bug,” Roy says, already getting up.
“Roy…” Ollie starts, but Roy is already walking out of the room.
“Let him,” he hears Connor say. “Maybe she'll talk to him.”
Mia is not in any of the bathrooms of the house, and when Roy knocks in her room, there’s no reply either. He finally finds her on the balcony, which is insane because it's freezing outside, and she seems to only be wearing an oversized hoodie, sweatpants and socks — the same clothes she was wearing inside. Roy himself is only wearing a sweater and jeans, but he lets himself out to the balcony anyway.
He shivers when he’s immediately met with cold wind on his face. “Hey,” he says, and Mia looks up from the chair she's sitting to briefly look at him.
“If you’re looking for a quickie, I’m afraid I don’t feel so sexy right now,” she says in a deadpan tone that has Roy full-body wincing.
“I already told you to cut that gross talk, Mia,” he scolds, but it’s gently. “Mind if I sit with you?”
She looks away. “You can do whatever.”
Not a very warm invitation, but Roy takes it anyway, sitting in the chair right next to hers. “It's fucking freezing here. Why don’t you go back inside? We were thinking about making more hot chocolate.”
Mia just shrugs. “I don't mind the cold.”
“Okay, Elsa,” Roy jokes in hopes that will make her relax, but it doesn’t. She seems tense from head to toe, eyes unfocused looking ahead but nowhere in particular, her posture tight and unmoving. “Hey, Mia?”
He leans towards her a little, and Mia snaps her head to the side like a startled animal, flinching. Roy blinks, alarmed by her reaction, and he draws back, moving away, still keeping his eyes on her. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but you don’t seem okay. Did something happen?”
The tension in her seems to reach a breaking point at his question; she pulls her legs to the chair so she can hug them in a fetal position. She’s trembling a little, but Roy doesn’t know if it’s from the cold or something else. “I don't belong here with you guys. I need to go- away. Somewhere. I shouldn't be here.”
“Hey, hey, breathe,” Roy says, trying to keep his tone as soothing as possible. He has an instinct to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder, but stops himself before he can. “What do you mean? Why do you think that?”
“It's obvious.” She buries half her face in her knees in a way that makes her seem small and wounded. “You guys are all family and I'm just some street bitch that's getting in the way.”
Roy can’t help a distressed gasp hearing that, his heart breaking into a million pieces. “What the hell, Mia, none of that is true. Don’t talk about yourself like that, okay?”
“But it’s true,” she insists, and Roy knows the tone in her voice, an ugly certainty when you’re so sure all the most horrible things you think about yourself are undeniable and unchangeable. Her eyes start to water and she hugs herself tighter. “And your daughter, she’s so cute and small, and I wanted to pick her up and hold her, but I couldn't. I’m just- I just feel too dirty. I feel like I shouldn’t even be around her.”
“No- of course not. That’s bullshit.” Roy feels at a loss for words. In all of his years as a vigilante, he has seen and dealt with his fair share of sexual abuse and rape cases, and has sent more than a dozen of rapists to prison where they belong. But this is different, seeing the fallout, the way it has completely twisted Mia’s view of herself. He struggles to think of something to say that can offer her some solace, something that might help, because if he screws up this conversation he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. “Mia, listen to me, okay? I’m Lian’s father, and I think you’re perfectly suited to be around her. There is nothing wrong with you. You’re not dirty. You’re a survivor.”
Roy can practically see Mia fighting against the tears that seem inevitable, but she does seem to relax the slightest bit. “But I still shouldn’t be here, and it will be worse tomorrow, when Ollie’s girlfriend comes. She hates me.”
“No she doesn’t,” Roy doesn’t hesitate to say.
“I know she does. I saw the way she looked at me that day, okay?” Mia squeezes her eyes shut, and wipes away the tears that fall with the back of a hand. “She thinks I’m just some whore.”
“No she doesn’t,” Roy insists, a little distraught. “She saw you once. Look, don’t let Dinah’s badass exterior fool you. She’s a softie on the inside. She just needs a chance to get to know you.”
Mia sniffs. “What if she doesn’t like me?”
“Then you make her like you. I’ve seen you like three times and I already like you. Dinah will come around to you in a minute.”
Mia gives him a small nod, not looking fully convinced. The tension on her has melted away to a quiet sadness. Roy looks at her attentively, and then tries leaning in again, just a little bit. She glances at him but this time she doesn’t flinch.
“Mia, I don’t want to make you feel inadequate or anything, but you clearly have a lot of baggage,” Roy says, hoping he is picking the right words. “I’m glad you’re talking to me, but I’m not always around. The ideal would be that you were in therapy, but if you don’t want that, why don’t you at least tell Connor about these things? He would never judge you.”
Mia makes a face that Roy can’t quite read. “I don’t know. Connor’s weird.”
“Not that I disagree, but weird like how?”
For the first time during the conversation, Roy sees a hint of a smile on her face. It’s gone in a second, but it was there. “Weird like… I don’t know. He seems, like… pure. I know he was a monk or something, but I don’t think he thinks about earthly matters, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t even curse. It’s weird.”
Roy can’t help the chuckle that escapes him. “Oh, you’re right. Believe me, I get it.”
Mia turns her head to look at him, her face still half-hidden. “You do?”
Roy nods, smiling sheepishly. “Yeah, I mean. I have been doing things I shouldn't and fucking up my life majorly ever since I was younger than you. Connor sometimes seems like a fucking saint. He's only human, too, but still. It’s hard to compete.”
Mia sighs. “Yeah. I guess… I guess it's why I talked to you instead. I knew you've, huh, fucked up majorly before.” Her eyes briefly glance at Roy's forearms, and they’re covered by the sweater now, but Roy has an idea what she's thinking about, some old track marks he has that haven’t healed properly over the years. She looks away quickly, seeming almost guilty. “Sorry. It’s just- I knew a lot of people who were doing it or recovering. I've seen scars like those a lot.”
“It's alright,” Roy says. He was wondering when the subject would come up with her anyway, and he was planning on using his experiences to try to relate to her somehow, to show her she's not the only one with a charged past in this family. “You can ask if you want.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she says, still sounding kind of guilty. “It's not my business.”
Roy smiles faintly. “Well, I know all your business without you telling me, so I guess it's only fair.”
Mia chuckles humourlessly. “Yeah, I guess. But you don’t have to tell me everything. And anyway, what I meant by what I said is that even though you've also fucked up before, you’re still a hero, and you got clean. Connor is nice, I know he likes me and he wouldn’t judge me or whatever, but… I don't know. You get it, right?”
“I do,” Roy says softly. “What about Ollie?”
It’s the natural progression of the conversation, but it’s also something Roy has been pondering in the back of his head ever since he met Mia — how’s Ollie treating her, if he’s actually taking this second chance God himself gave to him to be a better father, if this time he’s committed to do things right. Because Ollie can’t fuck this up with Mia. He can’t fill a kid with hope and admiration and dreams and ruin it again. He has to know better now. He has to have learned his lesson.
He studies Mia’s expression carefully while she thinks about it. “I’m grateful for everything Ollie has done for me,” she says slowly, as if she’s still thinking over her words. “He saved my life twice. And I talk to him about stuff sometimes. He’s easy to talk to. But, it’s like, I don’t feel this shitty all the time. And when I feel like this- I guess I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or make it his problem. So I just go to my room or come here and stay away for a few hours until I feel better.”
Roy hums. It’s good that Mia is talking to him, but that same uneasiness from before when Oliver just dismissed Roy’s worries about where she was comes back. “You don’t have to deal with anything alone, Mia.”
Mia looks away from him again, staring pointedly at the sunless sky, and then he’s consumed by a wave of this warm, fierce feeling of protective fondness. He met this girl weeks ago, but he decides at that moment he will do anything in his power to make sure she never has to know the ugliness of the world that raised her ever again. “Hey, you have your phone here with you?”
She nods. “Yeah, why?”
“So I can add my number,” he says. Mia raises an eyebrow but fishes her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants, unlocks it and gives it to him. “You can text me or call me whenever you want, okay? To talk about whatever you want.”
He finishes adding his own contact and gives her phone back to her. She stares at it for a moment and looks back to him with an almost imperceptible hint of suspicion in her eyes, but Roy catches it before she can hide it away.
“I want you to be happy,” he says. “I don't want anything else from you, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to give me anything else either. Got it?”
Mia’s eyes go slightly wide as if she wasn’t expecting this, and then looks away again. “You guys all say stuff like that so easily. I can’t turn down the hall without someone wanting to give me a pep talk.”
Roy laughs. “Yeah, capes love their pep talks. Get ready for a few more years of it.”
“What a nightmare,” she says, but her tone sounds a lot lighter than it was when they started talking, and relief washes over him.
“Why don’t we go inside now?” he says. “My face is going to freeze.”
“Weak,” she teases, but slowly she gets up from her chair. “Can we still make more hot chocolate?”
“It’s almost dinner time, but why not? It’s what Jesus would have wanted,” he jokes, and Mia laughs, and it feels like things fall into place a little more.