#〘 oliver queen 〙underneath the hood | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raywritesthings · 4 years

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Bird in a Storm

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Tommy Merlyn, Athena, Roy Harper, John Diggle, Thea Queen, Quentin Lance, Ted Grant, Moira Queen, Walter Steele, Raisa, A.J. Diggle, Felicity Smoak, Female OCs, Male OCs Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: The confrontation between the Hood and SWAT on the roof of the Winick Building goes differently, altering the course of Laurel’s career, relationships and efforts to save her city forever, the shockwaves of such an altered path making themselves felt throughout her family and friends. *Can be read on my AO3, link is in bio*

John had only just dropped A.J. off from their morning in the park. He’d given his nephew some pointers and shot a few hoops with him, then sat him down on a bench to finally tell him about how the cops had caught the bad man who took his father away. It was a simplification, maybe, and when A.J. was older, he would get the full story. But John wanted his nephew to know that justice had been done.

A.J. had listened raptly, then asked, “Did the Hood help them?”

John had smiled. Ever since his mother had been saved first by the Hood and then later by Laurel’s vigilante persona, A.J. had become rather enamored with Starling City’s unconventional protectors. If he only knew his uncle was right in the thick of it. “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

He had turned the radio on upon getting back in his car for the drive home, only to find not music, but a news bulletin playing across the airwaves.

“An anonymous source delivered the blueprints to the bomb being developed at Queen Consolidated’s subsidiary Unidac Industries to this station as as reportedly to the police. Eyewitnesses outside the SCPD’s downtown precinct say they saw who appeared to be Moira Queen, the current CEO of Queen Consolidated, being led inside by officers over an hour ago.”

John had sat there, stunned, only able to listen as the news report continued on. Oliver’s mother stood accused of sabotaging the Gambit to kill her husband, having her second husband kidnapped, hiring the Triad assassins to kill Malcolm Merlyn and commissioning a bomb to be set off underneath the Glades.

That last one chilled him to the bone. He had plenty of experience with bombs going off in cities, destroying buildings or cars, killing handfuls of people here and there in an unpredictable pattern designed to cause terror and paranoia. But from the sounds of it, this device at Unidac Industries was so much more than that. No one had been meant to learn it was even a bomb.

Now we know why their symbol was the subway map, John thought grimly to himself.

Something was missing from the news report, however. Where was the rest of Tempest in all this? What about the man Moira had been talking to that night John had spied on her? The man whose voice had been too indistinct to make out on the recording?

“Oliver and Thea Queen have reportedly left the precinct,” the reporter announced, breaking John out of his shock. If Oliver had been at the precinct, then he knew more about what was really happening than the news was telling. And John had a feeling that as long as his friend and Thea were in the spotlight like this, they might actually need a bodyguard.

He called Oliver’s phone and got Laurel, though she quickly filled him in on where they were headed. John drove as fast as he could to the base, made difficult by the number of people out on the streets. Some were shouting, others just wandering around with their mouths hanging open like they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing and hearing. A restless energy seemed to hang in the air.

He parked and let himself in the back, entering the base to find Oliver already grabbing his suit to change and Laurel in her own clothes that she wore at night, minus her jacket.

“Where’s your sister?” John asked when Oliver caught sight of him.

“She’s upstairs with Roy. I need you to stay with them while I track down Tommy.”

John frowned. “What’s Tommy got to do with this?” He knew Oliver was in something of a silent feud with the man, however reluctantly, but it felt like that should be further down the priority list.

“Everything,” Oliver answered simply.

“According to Moira, Malcolm Merlyn was the real leader of Tempest,” Laurel elaborated, causing John’s eyebrows to rise as high as they were able. Their city’s supposed great humanitarian had been planning a terror attack? “She had him killed, and Tommy swore he was going to find out who did it. He would have had access to everything his father had on this device and the Gambit and everything else.”

“So instead of having her killed, he’s taking her down publicly. Setting his father up as a martyr, too,” John realized. “He probably told them your mother had Merlyn killed to stop him from going to them.”

Oliver’s fists clenched. “It’s an easy story to sell.”

“Does your mother have some kind of dirt on Merlyn she can use?” John wasn’t particularly fond of Moira Queen; the woman had been a party to this plot in some capacity or another. But she didn’t deserve to go down for the whole thing. Not when it wasn’t the truth.

“The Dark Archer took it,” Laurel said with a scowl.

“He’s still out there? Oliver, if he’s working for Tommy now, then I need to come with you. I can’t let you go into that kind of battle alone again.” He didn’t want to rub his friend’s defeat at the other archer’s hands in his face, but he would gently remind him if he had to.

“John, I appreciate that, but right now there is a whole city of people who think my mother is a domestic terrorist, and there are some who are going to be angry. If they can’t get to her, they will try to get to me or Thea. If I’m gonna fight the Dark Archer again, I need to know that she’s safe.”

As much as he didn’t want him to be, he knew Oliver was right. John looked to Laurel. “What about you?”

“I’d be pretty outmatched against that kind of fighter,” she admitted. “And that’s assuming I could even get up close to him. Besides, I’m gonna be needed in the Glades tonight. People are panicking. That never leads anywhere good.”

“Alright, you might actually be crazier than he is,” John decided. “The best thing anyone can do is hunker down tonight.”

“But a lot of people won’t be, and people are going to get hurt because of it. I can’t sit down here watching it happen when I started down this path to stop it.”

Oliver was frowning but held his tongue. Either they’d already been over this privately before John arrived or he was keeping his thoughts to himself. He couldn’t imagine it was easy. John had often found himself worrying about Lyla whenever they had run separate missions in Afghanistan. Sometimes he still worried.

Laurel took her wig off the table and bent over to fit it onto her head. She rose quickly, the blonde locks falling down her back. She shrugged into a jean jacket resting on the back of a chair. Then she turned to Oliver, placing one hand to his cheek.

“Be careful.”

“And you.”

Oliver bent his head to meet her lips in a kiss, one hand at the small of her back pressing her closer. John looked away, having no desire to intrude on their moment. This was hard enough for them both already. Then she headed out to the back where she kept the motorcycle Oliver had bought.

John joined his friend by the computers as he brought one of the monitors up. “How are you planning to find Tommy?”

“One of the things I had to do on the island was learn from example. The more I observed, the better off my chances were.”

“Which means…?”

“Which means that thanks to Felicity, I know how to ping a phone.” He stood back up to his full height after clicking and typing away in a far more serious manner than their temporary teammate had done. John wondered what she must be thinking about all the news. At the least, she was probably safe since her small townhouse was outside the Glades. “I’ll change and then run it. You should get upstairs.”

“Alright.” He held out his hand and Oliver clasped it with his. John placed his free hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.” Oliver didn’t need to tell him the thanks was for more than a simple well-wish.

John headed up to the club area of the Verdant, finding Thea and Roy sitting at the bar watching the news on a low volume.

“Mr. Diggle? Where’s Ollie?” Thea asked as he joined them.

“Still downstairs. He’s trying to take care of some things regarding your mother.”

“Okay, what about Laurel?”

“She went back out,” John answered, not missing the spark of recognition in Roy’s eyes. “Said she needed to make sure her home was secure ahead of what’s shaping up to be a pretty rough night.”

“I, uh, I should probably do the same thing,” Roy said, standing up.

“Wait, what? Roy, no,” Thea said, standing with him and taking his hands. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“I’ll be fine. But this is my home, Thea. I gotta do something. Stay here with your brother’s bodyguard. I’ll come back.”

“Roy!”

But the young man hurried out the front door. John went over and locked them behind him.

Thea stood there a moment before sinking back into her barstool. She looked terribly lonely and afraid.

“I know this isn’t easy, Miss Queen, but the best thing we can do is stay out of the public eye right now.”

“They’re really gonna blame me and Ollie for this?”

He looked down. “The truth will become clear eventually, but people aren’t interested in truth right now.”

She said nothing, and he took the time to send a text to Carly, checking that she and A.J. were at home and planning to stay there. The news continued to play in the background, and he tuned it out but for a few snippets here and there.

“Chaos as protests break out outside Alderman Blood’s office. The alderman himself appears to be leading them.”

“People are storming the local groceries, taking food, water and other essentials, many refusing to pay.”

“As you can see below, traffic is backed up several blocks as some look to flee the Glades. Mayor Altman’s statement that the Unidac device is in police custody doing little to calm a public fearing a Biblical reckoning.”

“Susan, is it true we have sighting of who folks have taken to calling the Woman of the Glades?”

John looked up, but just then a pounding started up at the front door.

“Open up, Queen!” A voice called, some muffled jeers accompanying it. “Your mom’s sending us all to Hell, and I want a drink first!”

John shut the TV off. “Sit down behind the bar,” he said in an undertone to Thea. She nodded and hurried to do as told. John crouched down behind a table with his gun drawn, waiting for any sign of the door caving in.

This was going to be a long night.

—-

Tommy surprised himself at times whenever he recalled how little time had really passed since his life had changed forever. Even if he started counting from the day Oliver had come back home and brought the Hood with him, it hadn’t even been a year.

He reflected on this past year as the chauffeur drove him and Athena to the airport. He had finally made a bid for the heart of Laurel Lance, only to find hers would always belong to another. He could only think of their time together with scorn, now. To think he hadn’t needed to throw fundraisers or offer to better himself at all; Laurel’s tastes had and always would be for the bad boy, and seemingly one who used his might to get his way. He wondered how she might feel once Tommy completed his training with Athena. Would she realize what she could have had?

He had been cast out of his inheritance, forced to face the reality that he was a grown man, and what sort of man he wanted to be. While his anger had once burned towards his father for what had felt a rejection, he had realized what his father had felt he needed to do. Tommy’s life had not held much meaning before that; a part of him had always felt life itself was meaningless when good, honest people like his mother were gunned down for nothing. Now, he was the head of Merlyn Global and the last, best hope for both his parents’ legacies.

His life had been placed under threat over and over again in the very neighborhood his mother had lost hers and even in the safer sections of downtown. Starling was diseased, was the only conclusion he could draw, and he felt a smug satisfaction that now the whole city could see it, too. It wouldn’t change anything for the better, of course. They would sooner destroy each other than work towards a common good. Just like how Oliver claimed to work for the good of the people and yet was little more than a killer.

Oliver. His oldest friend and someone he once called a brother. He had always been jealous of Oliver in many ways; he had the loving parents, an adoring sister, the heart of the girl Tommy yearned for and the ability to bed countless others. He had always tried to tell himself that jealousy was irrational and a part of him he needed to suppress. Now he could see it for what it had been: a warning of what was to come. That his supposed friend was really his enemy.

In many ways, Oliver had caused these changes in his life to happen. His sudden return had had Tommy anxious to try and secure an exclusive commitment out of Laurel, only for that to fail thanks to Oliver enchanting her with vigilante theatrics. His attack on his own mother had caused her to take action against Tommy’s father. His dad’s convalescence in Starling General had brought Athena into his life and opened his eyes to what was really happening in their city. So perhaps, in a way, he ought to be grateful to his friend and brother.

He wasn’t.

His thoughts were interrupted as the car slowed to a stop once it passed through the gates to the private airstrip.

“Sir, there’s someone — I think it’s the Hood standing on the tarmac,” the chauffeur called into the back, bewilderment lacing his tone. Athena’s perfect posture somehow straightened up more, but Tommy wasn’t worried in the least.

“Stop the car here and start loading the rest of our things. I’ll deal with him.” It didn’t surprise him that Oliver had tracked them here. His old friend clearly had or knew someone with tech capabilities who would be able to get a look at the flight manifests of Starling International.

Tommy let himself out and walked about ten paces away from the other man decked out in his costume. Athena followed, her hand hovering by her belt where she kept her knife.

“What do you want?”

“For you to tell the authorities the truth about Tempest,” Oliver said, a growl in his voice even if he had realized using that modulator of his was pointless.

“Why, so they can prosecute a dead man? Face it, Oliver, if you were serious about wanting to save this city, you would have needed to turn her in anyway.”

“Don’t pretend this is about saving the city. All you’ve done is caused a mass panic,” Oliver accused him.

“Good,” he replied, watching the shock play out across what he could see of Oliver’s face. “I never said I wanted to save it. And really, all I’ve done is shake them out of their apathy. Funny how an innocent woman can be bleeding out in the street and no one lifts a finger, but even suggest a threat against any of their lives and suddenly it’s riots in the streets!”

His old friend eyed him sadly. “What happened to your mother was terrible. It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“For once, we agree.”

“I know you are better than this, Tommy. What about CNRI? The firefighters benefit. There’s a desire to do good in you in a real way. Not the posturing Malcolm was hiding behind.”

Tommy sucked in a breath through his teeth and released it, smiling as he said. “Funny you should say that. Getting involved in charity work was actually Thea’s idea. Said I should act like I was interested in the things Laurel was. What did Laurel call it…? Oh yeah, my annual attempt to get back in her pants.” He spread his arms wide. “Have to say, it worked for a while.”

He thought he heard the creak of leather as Oliver’s gloved fist clenched around the bow in his hand. For once, his friend could know exactly how he had felt watching him with Laurel all those years.

Tommy couldn’t possibly stop himself from adding, “You know she went down on me after the firefighter benefit? But I’m sure that’s nothing compared to what she lets you do every time you come swinging in to rescue her—”

With a snarl, Oliver drew an arrow and loosed it point-blank at Tommy’s chest.

Athena slashed it out of the air with her knife where it clattered to the ground before he could do more than blink in shock. A rope sprung harmlessly out of it a moment later.

His confidant went on the offensive, lunging towards Oliver, though he blocked the attack with his bow. The two traded blows while Tommy watched, wishing he actually did know this stuff already.

“Uh, Mr. Merlyn?”

He jumped in shock, having pretty much forgotten the chauffeur.

“The plane is ready.”

“Great. You can head back now. Don’t bother calling this in,” he added, holding out a one-hundred dollar bill. The man took it and dutifully went back to his car. “Athena! Let’s go.”

Athena was on the ground but had just swept Oliver’s legs out from under him as well. He gave an exaggerated wince as his once-friend went down like a ton of bricks. She jumped back to standing and came to join Tommy at the stairs, only for a second arrow to come flying and wrap around her.

Oliver had risen onto one knee and held another arrow in his hand ready to aim and loose. “I can’t let you leave.”

“Actually, you can.” Tommy smirked. “Because there’s something I know that you don’t, and after the year we’ve had, Oliver, that’s a pretty good feeling.”

Oliver stayed silent, waiting rather than give him the satisfaction of asking.

“Your mother was too hasty to get her revenge. Walter Steele is still alive.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’ll send you the address myself,” he offered. “Once I’m in the air. But if this plane doesn’t take off with me on it, the other men at that address will be ordered to finish the job. So what’ll it be, Ollie? Keep me here or save a man’s life?”

He could see the conflict that warred on Oliver’s face, knew the moment that he decided when his bow lowered just an inch.

Tommy nodded to himself. He’d known Oliver would have to choose Walter Steele and that he wasn’t really risking anything by offering the choice; how else could his old friend pretend he was a hero? “Just like you couldn’t beat my father at Christmas,” he said, watching Oliver’s eyes widen. “I’m going to learn everything he knew. Maybe once I have, we can settle this.”

He took the knife Athena had managed to work into her hand and cut her bonds for her, then turned his back on Oliver Queen and boarded the plane.

Once he sat down, he took out his phone in preparation to make good on his promise of revealing Walter’s location. Athena sat beside him, perfectly composed once more.

“How long will my training take?” He wondered aloud as the plane finally began to taxi down the runway.

“That depends on the dedication of the student. Your father completed his and rose to become one of our leader’s most trusted within two years. Another girl from your city has also excelled in her training, though she did so by seducing our leader’s heir.”

“A girl from Starling?”

“Yes. I believe she was called Sara Lance in her former life.”

Tommy froze, then a smile stole slowly over his lips. It truly was nice holding the most cards.

—-

Roy ran home as fast as he could, getting his gun and a knife out of their hiding places. He wasn’t going to try and use them tonight if he could help it, but he didn’t want one of his old crowd breaking in to take them and use them instead. With both tucked out of sight in his pockets, he grabbed his hoodie and pulled it down over his face and went back out into the night.

Laurel was going to be out here trying to restore peace to their streets. Why wouldn’t he be doing the same?

There wasn’t much point to jacking a car; the streets were packed with honking vehicles, people trying to leave like they thought the bomb was still going off. Roy couldn’t really blame them.

A block down the road, he saw two men with beers in hand grabbing the arm of a woman trying to go the other way. “Let’s have some fun before the end of the world, baby!”

“Let go of me!”

Roy charged down to meet them, slugging the first man across the jaw as he made a grab for the woman’s chest.

“What the fuck, dude?”

“World’s not ending, so get lost or get put down,” he declared, breathing harshly through his nose.

“Think you’re the Hood, big man?” The second man asked. He surged forward, only to stagger back with a howl as the woman sprayed him with a can of mace. “Shit!”

“Thanks for the help,” she said, and Roy nodded back. She turned and hurried to keep heading wherever she was going. Roy hoped she made it okay.

A wail caught his attention next, and his heart lurched as he noticed a toddler wandering dangerously near the curb, arms reaching up in a plea to be held. Roy ran and scooped the girl up, looking around wildly. Where the hell were her parents?

“Steffi? Steffi! Someone help me find my daughter!”

“Hey, that kid’s got her!”

Roy was grabbed roughly by the back of his hoodie and hauled around to face a potbellied man with a clenched fist.

“I wasn’t taking her—”

“Right, just a Good Samaritan, are ya?”

“Wait! Wait!” It was the grocer, Khan, who cried out. He rushed between them. “I know this boy. He would not hurt a child.”

He noticed who he assumed was Steffi’s mother standing just a few steps back, and Roy slowly lowered the little girl down to the ground. She was still sobbing, and he wasn’t sure she knew how to stop.

“I saw her near the road. I just…”

The man who had nearly decked him sagged while the mother gasped and hurried around him, picking up her daughter and shushing her.

Khan patted his shoulder and Roy looked down at the ground. All the times he’d stolen bits of food or dumb knick-knacks from the guy’s store, and he’d rushed to his defense.

“You should get home, Roy.”

“I’m alright. What about your store?”

Khan’s smile looked strained. “Ya Allah! It will wait until morning.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll come check on you,” he promised. Roy took off running again.

He passed a number of smashed storefronts and people running in every single direction. He still saw no sign of Laurel or even the Hood. Where was the Hood? How could he save Roy’s life and not show when countless others needed him? How did he decide which battles he fought?

Roy stopped for a moment, panting. He took out his phone. Five missed calls from Thea. But a quick check of Channel 52’s webpage gave him at least one answer: Woman of the Glades escorts legal aide office workers to safety amid riots

Of course, her old coworkers. Roy turned and cut across the bumper-to-bumper traffic, hoping to head her off before she got too far.

Several blocks later, a police cruiser was stuck in the middle of the street unable to make anymore progress. A garbled voice blared from its speakers. “Return to your homes. I repeat, return to your homes.”

“Hey, fuck you!”

“Yeah, fuck the man!”

A couple of teenagers in designer ripped jeans and spiked hair threw a couple rocks at the car. Their buddies all laughed.

“Stand down. Return to your homes.”

They weren’t even from around here, he realized, watching another one in the group filming it all. How much of this rioting was just people from outside the neighborhood taking advantage of all the chaos?

“Hey, get the hell out of here!”

A couple of the kids turned in his direction.

“Do you want to start a shooting?” He gestured towards the car. “They’re not gonna throw rocks back.”

The ringleader of the group stepped up and pushed at his chest. “Mind your own business, asshole.”

Roy shoved him to the ground.

“Hey!”

They were on him in seconds, and even if Roy could hit harder than any of them, he was finding it hard to fight his way past so many. He hit the ground, blows landing on his back while he brought his arms up to shield his head.

The whistle of metal through the air preceded a number of grunts, and the punches and kicks let up. The other boys all staggered back nursing arms, legs and backs as Laurel stood there in her wig and mask, seething.

“Get out of my part of town.”

The boys ran off, and she reached a hand down that Roy gladly took.

“We should get you back to the club.”

“I’m good,” he said, rubbing at his ribs.

“Put the weapon down and surrender with your hands up!”

The both jumped at hearing the command. One of the officers had gotten out of the car and was unclipping his gun.

“Come on!” Roy kept Laurel’s hand in his and ran, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest. Of course the cops weren’t interested in lifting a finger when some rich kids were beating up on him but when someone showed up to actually do their job.

They worked together, helping some who had stumbled and fallen or breaking up fights. There were shouts from a building where smoke streamed out, but when Roy raced forward, Laurel snagged him by the arm.

“You’re already having trouble breathing. Wait here.”

She kicked the front door open rather than chance the handle, waited a moment as an initial plume of smoke billowed out, then rushed inside with a hand pressed over her mouth.

Roy waited, hands twitching at his sides. He’d give it five minutes. No, two. Damnit, how long was someone able to go inhaling smoke?

“Hey, boy!”

He turned at the call, spotting an older Black woman two doors down. She was watching the smoking building with fear in her eyes.

“I have a hose. I don’t know if it’ll reach.”

Roy hurried over to the side of her house, grabbing the hose and yanking it as far as it would go in the direction of the building. “Turn it on!”

Water trickled and then spurted out, hitting the front of the building and getting in through the door. It wasn’t like TV; the smoke didn’t immediately start dying out. He couldn’t even tell if it was helping. But he was doing something, right?

Shadowy figures appeared through the smoke, then were spluttering as well as coughing when they were hit with the spray. Roy hastily moved the hose.

“No, it is good!” One man exclaimed, his Russian accent not nearly as thick as some of the others. He gestured for the hose, and Roy passed it to him, watching as the man drank straight from it. He offered it to each of his family in turn, each of them thanking the woman whose hose they had borrowed, a Mrs. Ross according to what they were saying.

The last ones out were Laurel and a woman with gray in her hair who clutched a necklace with wooden beads and crosses. “You save my sister on the buses, you save my family, you are saint.”

“Come inside, all of you,” Mrs. Ross insisted.

“Sorry, I can’t,” Laurel replied, her voice raspy with the smoke. She bent double, hands on her knees. There was a streak of something black on her cheek and the wig she wore looked frazzled rather than silky.

Roy moved by her to indicate he was staying with her. The Russian family took up their neighbor’s offer after many rounds of thanks, and soon it was the two of them left on the street.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just let me… let me breathe.”

He knew how she felt. Roy had no idea how long they’d been at this by now, but the streets seemed to stretch before them with no end in sight.

Eventually, Laurel straightened up. They exchanged a nod, and then were off running again. There was nothing in his head but the pounding of his heart, the whirring of helicopter blades as the news documented their struggle while never stepping in, and the buzz of his phone as Thea kept calling and probably worrying out of her head. It was stubbornness that kept him going, stubbornness and a sense of duty, but he wanted nothing more than to curl up in her arms and sob out his exhaustion.

Several minutes later, Laurel gasped and sped ahead of him towards a car wreck right on the main road. It was a pileup, and it looked nasty.

Some of those who had been involved had seemingly already gotten out of their cars. Blood stained the pavement beneath a few of the cars, indicating where more serious injuries had occurred. Roy saw a group of people gathered around a body that had been dragged to the sidewalk.

But the front of one man’s car was totally dented in, and the doors had crumpled up as well. The driver sat inside unmoving, a cut on his forehead oozing blood.

On the far side of a car, two kids who couldn’t be older than ten or twelve were crying. “Daddy! Daddy!”

He and Laurel each took turns yanking on the door handle. Roy went to the side door and opened it, crawling into the backseat to see if he could pull the man out that way, but he was wedged up against the steering wheel too tightly.

“Smash the window,” a gruff voice suggested, and Roy looked out of the car to see a man all in black with a mask on. He wasn’t the Hood, but who was he?

“Wildcat,” Laurel said warmly, a spark back in her eyes. She took her staff and did as requested.

Wildcat stepped in closer, his teeth grit together as he braced one hand against the inside of the driver’s door and used the other to pull the handle. There was a series of pops and crunches. The door finally opened with a great screech of the hinges.

The man’ kids came running around to their side, but Wildcat cautioned. “Easy, easy. We need to move him slowly.”

Together, the three of them managed it, gently laying the man to rest on the ground. Roy was relieved to see him breathing.

“How do we get him to Glades Memorial?”

The roads were too backed up even if they had a working car to drive him. Shouting and the occasional scream continued to rip through the air. They were surrounded by people, and yet no one seemed to care for anyone else around them.

Laurel’s face took on a pinched look for a moment before she suddenly started scrambling up onto the hood of one of the cars. “Hey!”

Roy exchanged a bewildered look with Ted, backing up a little when she whacked the roof with her staff. He noticed a couple people look up or around their way. Most of them didn’t.

On the roof of the car, Laurel was ripping one of her gloves off with her teeth. She shoved two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that had both Roy, the two kids and this Wildcat clapping their hands over their ears.

“Hey!”

It didn’t go completely silent. The whirr of helicopter blades still filled the air, and distant honking and sirens sounded on other streets. But every eye that Roy could see was now fixed on the Woman of the Glades.

“What we learned today is beyond words,” she began, her voice seeming to ring in the sudden stillness around them. “That there are some who consider human beings nothing more than collateral to pave a new parking lot over our graves. It makes me angry, too. It’s enough to make you lose faith in humanity.

“But we are more than they think of us! We’re better! We don’t step on each other’s necks to get to the top. We help each other.

“I was inspired by the Hood to take to the streets, yes. But I was inspired by this community to imagine the better world that might come if everyone was a little kinder, a little more like a family. Because that’s what I found here.

“So we can take out our rightful anger and fear on these buildings we aren’t allowed to own ourselves, or we can stand up tall and prove to those watching from the safety of their comfortable homes—” One hand pointed straight up to the helicopters still circling the sky. “—that we have our humanity even if they don’t. What’s it gonna be?”

Roy held his breath as he watched the faces of the people around them. Some stood slack-jawed. Others were nodding slowly, determination set in their shoulders and jaws. Still more simply watched, tears still leaking from their eyes.

“I need people to help me move this man,” Wildcat declared in the wake of her speech. “He needs a hospital. Someone to look after his children, too.”

“We can help.” Two men, older than Roy but not by much, came forward. “And my brother can watch the kids.” A teenager hurried to join them.

“I need a phone to call my son,” a woman called out, and her request was soon answered. As Wildcat led the group escorting the unconscious man and his kids away, Roy watched in wonderment as, little by little, the harsh shouts and screams of anguish turned to offers of aid and shared tears. It wasn’t as if a switch had been flipped. He had, he realized, seen brief moments of kindness all night even amongst the panic and boiling anger. But Laurel was making them all see it now.

On the hood of the car, still, she seemed to sag a little in relief, a tired smile rising on her lips. At least until a spotlight suddenly landed on her.

Roy shielded his eyes, heart sinking as he realized one of the helicopters hadn’t been for the news after all.

“Police! Remain where you are.”

Before he could act, a figure in dark green swooped down on a line, grabbing Laurel around the waist. She tucked her legs in, and they landed beyond the abandoned pile of cars in the shadow of two buildings. The Hood slowly let her back down, though their foreheads remained pressed together for a moment. Then the pair slipped away before the police’s searchlight beam could find them again.

Around him, people quickly helped each other make evacuation arrangements. None of them wanted to be around whenever the cops sent boots on the ground to canvas the area. Yet Roy stood there another long, stunned moment as his mind could only process one thing: the Hood was Laurel’s boyfriend. He was Oliver Queen.

Roy staggered back a step, then started running again. With a record like his, he couldn’t afford getting picked up by the cops on some trumped up charge to make them look good for doing something. And he wanted some things answered far more than he wanted to be sitting in a holding cell.

Good thing the one place he was guaranteed to get those answers was the one place he really wanted to be right now. Even if Thea was going to kill him.

—-

Oliver was exhausted even as he pushed on, Laurel running at his side. From confronting Tommy and being forced to acknowledge his friend had chosen a dark path to travel down all in the name of his murderous father, to the drive out to Bludhaven to rescue Walter and back again once he had made sure his step-father would be seen to by the local authorities there, he couldn’t actually believe it had been less than one day since his mother’s arrest. Since the city had turned upside-down.

He had arrived home to a Glades in chaos. Oliver had done what he could here and there, noting the shock on the faces of those he helped. He was known for beatings and killings, after all, not tying tourniquets around people’s legs to stop the rush of blood from a gunshot wound or ferrying them to the hospital. Oliver hadn’t stayed with any one person too long, partly to keep his identity safe and the rest because he was desperate to find Laurel.

And then he had heard her voice.

“We don’t step on each other’s necks to get to the top. We help each other. I was inspired by the Hood to take to the streets, yes. But I was inspired by this community to imagine the better world that might come if everyone was a little kinder, a little more like a family. Because that’s what I found here.”

Listening to her, seeing her standing there with a run in her leggings and her wig a disheveled mess of blonde, she had never been more breathtaking. She wasn’t just trying to save the world; she was doing it.

Just as things had calmed and taken a turn for the better, the police had caught her in their sights with a searchlight. Oliver had quickly jumped into action, swinging with her out of their view and hurrying away through the streets. In silent agreement, they were each putting off whatever questions they had for the other until they returned to the base.

Only there looked to be a slight situation developing outside it when they arrived. A number of men were gathered outside the Verdant’s locked doors, which had been painted in incredibly rude graffiti and negative sentiments towards his family. Every so often, one of the men would knock and holler something, a majority of them sounding half-drunk.

“C’mon, Queen! Open up, open up.”

How long had they been here yelling? Thea was inside, probably terrified out of her mind. Oliver reached into his quiver, but Laurel placed a hand on his arm. Then she stepped forward.

“Hey.”

A few of them turned, some slower and less coordinated than others. “Hey, that’s the lady — Shit, the Hood!”

Some small part of him couldn’t help being pleased at his reputation in this particular instance, and he knew he was smirking.

“The cops are coming through and probably looking to round up any troublemakers,” Laurel told them. “Go home, okay?”

“Or we can leave you here for them to pick up,” Oliver offered. She looked back at him with a raised eyebrow.

The men seemed to get the message, however, and they quickly scurried off, empty drinks and spray cans left behind.

Oliver led them around the side, sniffing the air in disgust at the scent of urine that permeated the alley. Laurel’s face had scrunched up as well. They quickly made their way to the back door to the base, relieved to step into the far cleaner facilities.

For a moment, they stood there, the weight of everything, the aches and pains from battles fought, the weariness that set into their bones overwhelming. But Oliver caught Laurel’s eyes, and suddenly nothing mattered more than being close to her.

They surged together, Oliver’s hands smoothing up her back beneath her jacket and Laurel’s hands gripping his face and knocking his hood back. He took a moment to pull the wig off her head and place it on a nearby table, his other hand coming up to massage her scalp. Laurel moaned against his mouth, and it shot straight through him.

“I’m sure that’s nothing compared to what she lets you do every time you come swinging in to rescue her,” a snide voice whispered in the back of his head. Oliver shook it off with a growl. He wasn’t going to let Tommy and his jealous words poison this. Laurel did what she chose with who she chose, and he was grateful that he was who she had chosen in the end. That was all there was to it.

A loud pounding on the door that led to the club upstairs had them both looking up sharply.

“Ollie, what is so important down there?” Thea’s voice called, a little muffled.

“Be—” he cleared his throat and shouted louder, “Be right up!”

“We gotta get you cleaned up first,” Laurel muttered, displaying her hands, the fingertips of which were all smeared in greasepaint.

She helped wipe his face off, then Oliver changed and hurried upstairs alone. Laurel wasn’t supposed to still be here, after all.

His sister was fortunately distracted from his entrance and didn’t even get a glimpse of what lay beyond the door as she was busy laying into a tired and worse for wear Roy Harper. “—can’t believe you stayed out there, you could’ve gotten killed!”

“I know, sorry, I just—”

“You were trying to find the vigilantes, weren’t you?” Thea accused.

“Yeah, and I did.” Oliver’s stomach dropped when, for the briefest moment, Roy’s eyes flickered in his direction. “But the cops chased them off.”

“And that’s probably a good thing,” Oliver added, making Thea jump and run to him. John sent him a questioning look over her shoulder, to which he gave a single shake of the head in a negative.

“You were down there forever. Did you not hear any of those guys that were lurking around outside?”

“Uh, no. Sorry, I was on the phone. The, uh, the police in Bludhaven, they…” he had no idea how to break this gently. “They have Walter.”

Thea’s eyes went wide as she backed up. “They found his body?”

“No,” said Oliver, and he saw Diggle’s expression turn shocked now as well. “He’s alive. The guy the Feds found, he was tricked. He heard a shot and assumed, but he was wrong.” Alonzo had been wrong which meant Oliver had been wrong. And in telling his mother bad information, he had set her on a path to bringing Tommy’s wrath and the law crashing down on her. Oliver had done this.

His sister, meanwhile, gasped. “Oh, my God. When can we see him? When- when does mom get to see him? What’re we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, Speedy,” he answered truthfully. He had put off all those questions before because he had thought if he could just get Tommy to go back to the police and tell them the whole truth, things would be better. But now Tommy was gone. His mother was still on the hook for a conspiracy to destroy an entire city neighborhood. What did the future look like?

“What’s it like out there, Roy?” John asked, and Oliver was grateful to his friend for taking the focus off him at least for a few moments.

“Not great. And the cops are gonna be crawling all over. They could probably get you home,” he offered to Oliver and Thea.

“I’m not leaving you here alone tonight,” Thea declared, gripping his hand in hers.

“We’ll stay here,” Oliver decided. “It’s best for us all to stay in a group. Unless, John, do you need…?”

“Carly texted me a half hour ago. Bunch of the mothers at A.J.’s school have made the gym into a big sleepover area. They’re staying there until the morning. You’re right, there’s strength in numbers.”

“Ollie, what about Laurel?” Thea asked. “She lives alone.”

“I’ll call her,” he said slowly. “See where she’s at. Um, John, do you want to come help me look for blankets or something? I guess some of us can use the booths to sleep in.”

His friend nodded and followed him back behind the bar. Laurel was listening at the top of the steps, the door cracked open slightly, but she waited until they all headed back down to the main floor of the base to say anything. “Walter’s alive?”

“Tommy told me. I- I had to choose between bringing him in or saving Walter.”

“He was going to have him killed?” Laurel looked aghast.

“It’s what he said. Maybe he was bluffing. But he left on a plane to learn everything his father knew… everything the Dark Archer knew, because apparently they were the same person,” Oliver revealed. “And I let him go.”

“You had to, man,” John insisted. “Whether he was bluffing or not, you made the choice to save a life. Tommy will have to come back sooner or later. We’ll get him to give up the full story then.”

“It’ll be sooner than later,” Laurel added. “He’s the key witness, so whenever your mother’s case goes to trial, he’ll have to show.”

Oliver smiled softly. “I almost wish you were representing my mother instead of Jean.”

“I’m not sure the police would be happy with that kind of conflict of interest,” Laurel pointed out, though a pleased smile played at her own lips. “They didn’t fight it in your case because most of dad’s superiors were convinced he had no case. Ironically enough.” She reached out and took his hands. “But I am here to offer you and Thea any legal advice I can.”

“Speaking of your sister, we should head back upstairs,” John reminded them. “You gonna come in through the front, Laurel?”

“Probably would sell it better.”

He and John grabbed a couple of the hoodies and towels they had down here to use as makeshift pillows or blankets, then went back up to the club. Thea had gotten out the first aid kit that sat under the bar and looked to be touching up some of Roy’s smaller cuts and scrapes while he rested in a booth.

“Laurel’s gonna come stay with us,” Oliver announced as he offered Thea her pick of their meager supplies. It occurred to him they were all running on little to no food, but there was nothing he could do about that problem. He knew he at least was used to sleeping on an empty stomach.

Not two minutes later, Laurel knocked on the front door. Oliver let her inside quickly, locking it behind her and cutting off the wail of distant police sirens. Thea was busy getting Roy situated for the night, so Oliver simply led Laurel back to their own booth.

“Are you actually going to be able to sleep tonight?” She asked quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Laurel pushed him to sit back in the booth first, then crawled in after him, resting her back against his chest and her head under his chin. Oliver brought his arms around her, gladly soaking up the comfort of her presence.

A thought came to him. “What happened to your bike?”

“Had to ditch it behind CNRI,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “The roads were too backed up.”

“We’ll get it tomorrow. If it hasn’t been taken to sell for parts.”

“I’m sorry, Ollie.”

He shook his head. “A bike’s just a bike. You, you were amazing out there tonight.”

She snuggled a bit closer and closed her eyes. “I love you.”

Oliver’s breath caught in his throat, and his eyes felt as though they were burning for a moment. “I love you, too,” he finally managed, kissing the top of her head.

A hush settled over the nearly empty club as, one-by-one, the five of them all dropped off to sleep.

In the early light of dawn Oliver’s phone rang, and he answered it with a groggy, “Hello?”

“Oliver?”

Instantly, he was wide awake. “Mom?”

Was it possible the police had released her? That they had discovered the truth on their own?

“Are you and Thea safe?” Her voice sounded shaky, like she had only just managed to pull herself together.

He sat up, causing Laurel to stretch and yawn as she woke fully. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re both fine. Where are you?”

“Still in the holding cell,” she told him. “They’re reluctant to move me given how riotous the situation was last night.”

“But they haven’t released you,” he said, disappointment resettling in the pit of his stomach.

“No. I’m just being allowed my phone call, finally. Two phone calls, really. You see, Starling General phoned me this morning. It seems Walter is alive and was transferred to their care late last night.”

Oliver’s eyes squeezed shut. His mother would have been notified first as next of kin, but had no way of getting to her own husband. “Mom, I’m sorry.” Sorry she couldn’t see Walter; sorry she had spent a night in a holding cell; sorry that he had been wrong, and because he had been wrong she had lost everything. The last he could never tell her, no matter how guilty he felt.

“You shouldn’t feel sorry for me,” she told him. “I played Malcolm’s games instead of doing the right thing, and I’ve paid the price for it. I only hope you, Thea and Walter will be safe now.”

Oliver swallowed once, feeling Laurel slip her hand into his empty one. “We will be.”

“If I can ask you to do one thing for me, sweetheart—”

“Anything,” he promised right away.

“Could you go to Starling General? The doctors think it would do Walter good to have some visitors given how long he was alone.”

“Thea and I will go, mom,” he answered her request.

“That’s my beautiful boy.” The warmth in her tone threatened to undo him. “They’re signalling me that my time is up.”

“But Thea—” His sister was still sleeping and wouldn’t even have a chance to talk to their mother.

“Look after her. Look after each other. I love you both so much.” His mother said quickly. The line disconnected before he could reply.

It was quiet for a moment. Nothing but the sound of his own breathing and Laurel’s hand in his. He turned his face into her hair for a moment, hiding from the day and all it would bring. A city in turmoil, his mother imprisoned and who knew what else. He just needed a few moments more before he could face it.

Once he felt in control again, Laurel let him out of the booth, and he went to where Thea lay, one arm hanging off the booth she slept in across from Roy. “Hey, Speedy. You gotta get up.”

“Five more minutes…” Thea groaned, and it was such a familiar, innocent sight his heart ached for a moment.

“We can see Walter at the hospital.”

His sister shot up, blinking and rubbing her eyes. “What? Where? Oh,” she said, taking in the surroundings. Her face threatened to crumple for a moment as yesterday’s events no doubt reasserted themselves in her memory.

“Come on, they think seeing some familiar faces might help him.”

“Is he even gonna want to see us? What if- what if he thought mom was the one who had him kidnapped?”

“Even if he did, he’d know you have nothing to do with it,” Oliver assured her. “Walter loves you, Thea.”

Roy was sitting up, one hand pressed over his ribs. Oliver frowned.

“You need looked at?”

“I’m fine,” Roy said immediately, though it didn’t have the defensive air it ordinarily did. Rather it almost seemed like Roy was hoping to impress him with his answer.

“We’re going to a hospital anyway, so you may as well come.”

“Need a lift?” John had gotten out of his own booth and looked about as well as could be expected for a man of his size having squeezed himself onto a small cushioned bench for the night.

“We have the car. And your family should see you.”

“Would you mind dropping me at my place, though?” Laurel asked, smiling in gratitude when John nodded.

Their group split up into two, Oliver navigating the roads still littered with debris and the odd abandoned vehicle here and there. It was eerily quiet after the night the neighborhood had seen, and the amount of damage done was a lot to take in.

“Why would they trash their own stores and homes?” Thea wondered aloud.

“It’s not theirs,” Roy said shortly. “No one in the Glades owns anything.”

“They couldn’t, thanks to Tempest,” Oliver added on a sigh. His sister shrunk down in her seat, looking sorry she had voiced the question.

They arrived at the hospital and saw Roy off to a specialist. Oliver told them any treatment would be covered by him. Then they were shown to Walter’s room.

They both paused in the doorway. Despite what Oliver had said, he was a little nervous to see his step-father as himself again. What did Walter know? What did he guess?

He was sitting up in his bed, the television playing what looked like grainy cell phone footage of Laurel from last night. Oliver was relieved to see she was unrecognizable. Indeed, the caption on the lower third simply read Who is the Woman?

“Walter?” Thea asked timidly.

He started, then turned his head. A smile rose to his lips, though his eyes were sad. “Thea.” When he opened his arms, Thea ran forward and hugged him.

Oliver entered more slowly, reaching the bedside and saying, “It’s damn good to see you, Walter.”

Walter had the grace to laugh. He picked up the television remote and shut off the screen. “I’m very happy to be back in civilization. I can’t imagine how you went without it for five years, Oliver.”

“From the sounds of it, you didn’t have it any easier.” Of course, Walter may not have been physically harmed, but he had seen the room the man was being kept in with his own eyes, and it was tiny. At least on Lian Yu he had had freedom of movement more often than not.

“We’re so sorry, Walter,” Thea said.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” their step-father told them. “Moira’s choices are her own.”

“You don’t really think…” Oliver said, wincing slightly.

Walter sighed. “No, I don’t believe she ordered my abduction. If Moira had been behind the whole thing, there would have been little point in keeping me alive. But I can’t say I know who I was being held as collateral by.”

“Mom says it was Mr. Merlyn,” Thea told him darkly. She looked back at Oliver. “Would Tommy know about it? Why haven’t we heard from him anyway?”

“His secretary said he left town,” Oliver lied, though it was technically the truth. “He might just want to process this alone.”

“It’s not a terrible idea, regardless if what your mother is saying about Malcolm Merlyn is true or not,” Walter said. “As much as I’m sure you both wish to be there for her, no one would blame you for wishing to get away from all this, at least for a time. Even if it’s to pursue higher learning,” he added with a look at Thea.

“I never actually applied to colleges,” his sister muttered.

“But maybe you should,” Oliver said. “Walter’s right, Speedy. We have no idea how things are going to turn out for mom or the family. The more you can learn and develop your own skills, the better off you’ll be.” Oliver truly didn’t know what he would do if the worst happened. He had no work experience outside barely running a club, and his only skills would out him as one of the city’s vigilantes.

“One thing that is certain that I should tell you both in advance is that I will be filing for divorce,” Walter told them, and he and Thea both looked down. “I wish things had been different, but I cannot remain married to Moira after this, not when I offered to help her find a way out of her situation before it came to something like this. But there simply isn’t trust between us. I’m not sure there ever was.”

“We understand, Walter.” Oliver said quietly.

“That doesn’t mean I wish to see either of you out of my life,” the man added. “When I married your mother, I consented to making Thea, and later you, Oliver, part of my family. That won’t change.”

“It won’t change for us either,” Thea promised, and he nodded along.

Oliver’s phone started ringing once again. “Excuse me,” he told them both before stepping out into the hall to answer it. “Hello?”

“Oliver? It’s Ned Foster,” said a voice he vaguely recalled. The COO of Queen Consolidated. Oliver felt a headache coming on. “I’m hoping to have you come into the office so we can discuss what things are going to look like for you and your family.”

As much as he wanted to just put it off, Oliver knew it would only make things worse in the long run. “Okay, yeah. I can do that. Is it fine if it’s just me?” He didn’t want to have to pull Thea away from Walter so soon. And given that Roy was still being seen to, she would need to stay for him as well.

“Thea will need to sign some legal documents, but your family’s attorney can deliver those papers to her.”

“Okay. I should be there in about ten minutes, then.” Oliver hung up and ducked his head in to let Thea know where he would be going and to call him if anything came up. Then he went back down to the visitor’s garage and drove over to Queen Consolidated.

There were paparazzi stationed outside the building probably hoping he or his sister might turn up. Oliver shielded his face with a hand and marched through the shouting crowd to the front door where security turned them away. Inside the elevator to Ned’s office, he could reflect on some of their questions. Had he known his mother’s plans, what did he think of them, what was going to happen to the company and the Queen fortune. That last question was about to be answered for him.

Ned shook his hand when Oliver was shown into his office. “Thank you for coming by so quickly. I can’t imagine it’s an easy time for your family.”

“No,” Oliver agreed quietly.

Ned grimaced as he sat down. “It’s also not an easy time for the company. You see, the authorities have determined your mother a flight risk, so they’ve frozen her assets. This is a document for you and Thea to sign that will protect the assets your parents left to you.”

Oliver read over the whole thing before signing. He had known this was the case, but the lack of mention of the manor did not speak well to their chances of keeping it. Ned took the paper back and placed it in a folder.

“Now, the trouble is the company. As it stands, the board has voted to remove your mother from the position of CEO. They’re also not open to accepting your or Thea’s candidacy.”

“That makes sense,” he replied, even if his heart was sinking. This was his family’s company, and it was being taken away.

“You have to understand that the board is doing what they can to get out from under this media storm. The stock has taken a serious nosedive, and that threatens the livelihoods of countless employees here and at our various international branches. As it stands, we’ve already made the decision to try and sell off Unidac. We’ll see if anyone takes it.”

“Right. Right,” he agreed. It would be selfish to hold onto the company if it was just going to cause people to lose their jobs. “What, uh, what do we do about income?”

“That’s not really something I can tell you one way or the other, Oliver.”

He thought for a moment. One thing that worried him more than all the rest about losing the company: his base. He had beta sites, of course, but it would be inconvenient to lose his main one.

“What about the Verdant property? Could I purchase it from Queen Consolidated? Most people associate it with me, so it’s probably not something the board will want to hang onto. And it can’t be very valuable compared to the other holdings.”

Ned sat there a moment or two. “That is not an unreasonable request. Let me talk to the board and Legal, see if we can work out a sale. I’m glad you’re thinking ahead for you and your sister, Oliver, and I do wish you both the best of luck through all this.”

They stood and shook hands again, and soon Oliver was descending in another elevator. It stopped on a random floor, and he nearly hit the close doors button — except Felicity Smoak had just walked in, head buried in her tablet. Before she could blindly reach out for whichever floor’s button she needed, Oliver pointedly cleared his throat.

She jumped, eyes widening at the sight of him. “Oh! Uh, hi.”

“Hi.”

“Sorry about your mother,” Felicity said, then immediately added, “I mean, I’m not sorry she was caught. Someone had to do it if you couldn’t — though I can understand that would be a tough position to be in. And obviously this is a really bad position for you to be in. Um… what are you doing here in this specific position?”

“Getting my family’s affairs in order, the best I can,” he told her. “I guess you were right about me ruining lives.”

Felicity winced.

“Walter’s alive,” he added conversationally.

“I know. I was reading about it, actually,” she said, gesturing with her tablet. “The Hood rescued him.”

Oliver hummed.

“Thank you,” she said in an undertone. “And I hope that, you know, you and your girlfriend’s hobby works out for the best.” She blinked and said. “That really sounded dirty, but I meant—”

“Felicity, I know,” he interrupted. The elevator doors opened on the lobby, and he stepped out. “For what it’s worth, I wish you the best.”

“Thanks.” She smiled shyly, and the doors closed on her like that.

Oliver sighed and left his old teammate and his family’s former company behind. If his years away had taught him nothing else, it was that people and places came and went. So long as he held onto what was most important in his heart, he could make it through.

—-

Having not actually gone home the previous day, it was a little jarring to pull up outside her place and find her windows boarded up. So were Anita’s and Jerome’s.

“You need me to stick around?” John asked.

“No, I’ll figure it out,” Laurel said slowly, opening her door and stepping around bits of trash strewn around the yard from her can, which had apparently been knocked over. She would get around to it later. First thing first was seeing if she could even get inside.

Her key worked, and Laurel couldn’t honestly spot a thing out of place. Before she could think on it too much, there was a sharp rapping on her front door. Laurel checked the peephole and smiled as she pulled it open.

“Anita,” she said as she hugged her friend. Anita hugged her back. She was honestly relieved to see she hadn’t been hurt, not having seen her all the last day.

“Was starting to worry you weren’t coming back,” Anita said when they pulled apart. “Jerome did your windows anyway. Soon as we heard the news yesterday, we knew it was gonna get crazy, and we had some extra boards in the back.”

“Thank you so much. You both were safe last night?”

“Yeah, we just stayed put. No way was I letting him go to work last night. Your dad came by around two-thirty, though. Probably woke the whole street up hollering outside your door.”

Laurel winced. She had a number of missed calls, most of them from him. Anita had tried once and Joanna as well, though the latter hopefully didn’t realize she’d seen Laurel last night. “Sorry about that.”

She shrugged. “Can’t blame him for worrying. I was, too.” There was something heavy to the weight of Anita’s gaze on her, but her friend changed the subject. “Jerome’s helping clean up the main street, and I’m making a bunch of the volunteers some food. You wanna help?”

“Yeah. Just, um, just let me clean up my yard and I’ll be over.”

Laurel got all the trash picked back up and back in the can, and by the time that was done Anita had finished most of her cooking. It was probably for the best. Laurel assisted her in carrying it the several blocks where they found a card table had been set up to host what looked like an impromptu potluck.

“Take what you need,” Mrs. Ross was telling a mother with her three kids. “Anita, put yours down on that end. We got paper plates and napkins set up on the other.”

“Laurel!”

She turned at the sound of Raisa’s voice, smiling at the sight of the other woman. “Raisa, hi. How’s your family?”

“We could be worse. The building, someone threw a- a—”

“Smoke bomb.”

“Yes. There is some damage, but we still have our home. I only saw it this morning. The staff at the manor, we remained at the house last night. No one knew what to do after Mrs. Queen…” Raisa looked down, and Laurel patted the woman’s arm in sympathy. “But I wanted to ask, have you seen Mr. Oliver or Miss Thea? They never came home.”

“Oh. Yes, they are both safe. The police actually found Mr. Steele, so they’re visiting with him at the hospital.”

Raisa gasped. “Mr. Steele is alive? Oh, that is good news. If only…”

“Yeah.” Laurel bit her lip, then asked. “Raisa, is there anything you might have heard Mrs. Queen ever discuss with Mr. Merlyn about all this?”

The housekeeper slowly shook her head. “I never intruded. But I always suspected he made her uncomfortable. She would request a glass of her favorite red after any of their meetings to calm her nerves. Was he involved with this Tempest?”

“I’m not sure how much I can say,” Laurel admitted, to which Raisa nodded in understanding. She looked around. She wasn’t much use at the food table accept for eating it. Laurel snagged a couple sandwiches for her empty stomach, then approached Jerome and a few more men tacking tarp up over missing windows. “What can I do?”

She was directed to help another group sweeping out storefronts and setting displays and other furniture back to rights. They were headed to 17th Street, and Laurel took the lead, anxious to check on Pam and her job.

The windows of Green Glades had survived, but every last pot and planter out in front had been smashed. “Oh, Pam.”

Her boss was using the push broom, and Laurel quickly took possession of the dust pan. “It’s to be expected. People want something to control when they feel like they’ve lost control of their own lives. I was perfectly safe upstairs.”

Laurel helped Pam to set everything to rights, then spent a little time at the other storefronts with the group she had joined up with. Someone had brought some kind of speakers, and the music and food helped create something of a lighter atmosphere. Back on the main road, Anita had coaxed Jerome into dancing while he and his group were on a food break, and Laurel smiled as she saw kids skipping around on the sidewalk. People were complicated things, but she thought so long as there were times like these, they could weather through the bad.

“The hell you doing showing up here?”

The angry shout had Laurel turning sharply. A few men had intercepted Oliver, Thea and Roy. The Queen siblings, both changed into what Laurel knew were their less nice t-shirts and jeans, looked unsure how to respond to the harsh greeting, if it could be called that.

“We- we just want to help,” Thea offered timidly. “We’re so sorry—”

Laurel cringed and hurried forward.

“Sorry?” One man repeated with a sharp laugh. “Sorry doesn’t cut it. What your mama did—”

“Isn’t what they did,” Laurel interrupted, coming between the two groups. “They didn’t know.”

“Yeah, they both work in the Glades,” Roy added. “How dumb would they have to be to do that if they were in on it?”

Most of the street had stopped what they were doing to watch this unfold, even a few of the children abandoning their game to stand and stare in confusion. Jerome had pulled Anita close, half-shielding her from the Queens and frowning at them. Raisa had a hand over her mouth, clearly worried for her charges.

“Thea and I were ignorant of what our mother and her associates were involved in,” Oliver agreed quietly. “Ignorance also isn’t an excuse for what could have happened had it not been exposed. What we hope is that we can atone for the things our family has done to yours if you will accept it.”

Laurel stared the men down, making it quite clear that if they chose to reject that offer with anything other than words, they would be going through her.

“They’re right.” A man in coveralls with a receding and graying hairline stepped forward. “Queen isn’t his parents. I heard you try to give Derek and his family a fresh start last fall, before that horrible business at the bank.”

Oliver swallowed once, not seeming to know what to say to that.

“We’re better than them in their mansions. We’re not gonna judge. You wanna do the work? Then do it.”

At the tables, Mrs. Ross gave an affirming hum. Anita patted Jerome’s chest, and her husband looked away and nodded.

“Innocent till proven guilty,” Hank shouted from where he was serving his usual wraps free of charge today. Laurel felt her lips twitch despite herself.

Gradually the small group that had gathered in front of the Queens slowly dispersed, some less happy than others, but Laurel let out a breath in relief.

She turned to the Queens. “I’m really glad you guys came out. It’s not going to be easy, but the more people see the real you, the more they’ll understand why you shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush.”

Raisa joined their group, hugging both Oliver and Thea. “It is a hard time for you both.”

“It’s not just for us. Raisa, the accounts… things aren’t looking good,” Oliver admitted to Laurel’s dismay. She’d known the Queens were going to take some kind of hit over all this, but she had no idea how this might affect Oliver’s ability to operate as the Hood. “We might lose the house. I’ll have to call the staff together for a meeting, but it can wait. This is more important.” He briefly pressed his lips to Laurel’s temple before heading over to Jerome’s group since they were getting back to work. The men grudgingly set him to work, though Laurel thought she saw some of their distrust melt away to grudging respect when it quickly became apparent Oliver was no slouch when it came to manual labor.

“Maybe we could offer to keep an eye on those kids?” Thea suggested to her boyfriend. “Roy has bruised ribs,” she added in explanation.

“Then something like that would be perfect,” Raisa agreed. “Come.” She led the young couple off, only for Anita to join her instead, looking smug.

“So, giving billionaire boy another shot?”

“Shut up.”

The next several days passed in a strange haze. No one quite seemed to know what happened now that the world hadn’t ended. Oliver was busy constantly between getting the outside of the club cleaned up and handling his family’s affairs. Laurel kept herself occupied with cleanup efforts and checking in on her friends and neighbors, both old and new. That had her climbing the steps to her old office building one afternoon and stopping at a desk buried under paper.

“Have to say, kind of glad I was fired before all this,” she remarked.

Joanna’s head shot up. “Laurel! Oh, thank God.” Her friend got up and pulled her into a tight hug which Laurel readily returned.

“I texted you I was fine,” she pointed out with a smile.

“Yeah, well fine for you could mean anything from you caught a cold to your house is burning down.”

Laurel held up her hands in surrender. “Well how’ve you been? Lot of new cases?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Even Anastasia’s moving her butt now. There’s probably going to be a class action suit brought against the Queen family. Anyone who lives in the Glades is entitled to compensation if we win,” Joanna told her. “But that won’t be on the docket for a while. Her assets are tied up right now because of the criminal case.” “I know.”

Jo winced. “How are Thea and Oliver taking it?”

“As well as can be expected. I think they’re just relieved the bomb wasn’t actually, you know.”

Joanna nodded. “Considering how crazy it was the other night without the bomb, I agree with that completely. Have you, uh, heard about the Woman?”

“The one in the mask?” Okay, Roy really had had a point, she should have thought of a name before starting all this.

“Yeah. She showed up that night, helped me and the others get out of the Glades since there were people outside the building.”

“Wow,” said Laurel, hoping she sounded surprised.

“Yeah, I kind of felt like you a bit. Don’t tell my mom,” Jo added with a laugh. “She doesn’t want me getting anywhere near vigilantes after what happened to you.”

Laurel smirked. “Oh, it hasn’t been so bad.” On the inside, she was relieved; Joanna definitely hadn’t recognized her that night. Her friend would’ve demanded answers by now if she had.

She left Joanna to her work soon after, thinking back to that night. It had been exhilarating and exhausting all at once racing from one end of the neighborhood to the other, first on her bike then on foot. Roy’s company had been a comfort when she had found him, and Ted’s appearance a welcome surprise. And part of her had just known Oliver would find his way back after facing Tommy, that he wouldn’t leave her to face it all alone.

It was strange, though, walking down streets and hearing bits of her own words played back at her. It didn’t really sound like her. Part of that was because it had been captured on somebody’s cell phone, and it didn’t seem like their speakers were the best quality. Another was that, for maybe the first time, Laurel felt like she heard a sense of command in her own voice.

She hadn’t been planning to make some kind of speech that night. Yet she had needed to reach people, some way, any way. And to her own amazement, she had. That was the real power that being a vigilante gave; a voice that was listened to.

By the end of the week, she was back to work at the flower shop. And that was where her father finally caught up to her.

It was startling seeing him enter the florist’s. He seemed so out of place and knew it, too. Pam opened her mouth to start her customary greeting, but Laurel said, “That’s okay, Pam. This is my dad.”

“Oh. Well, what a delight to finally meet the man who helped bring my lovely assistant into the world,” Pam said, and if Laurel wasn’t mistaken, seemed to be at least somewhat serious about it.

“Yeah, uh, good to meet you, too,” her dad mumbled. “Listen, can I talk to my daughter for a moment? I’ll be quick about it.”

“I suppose,” Pam agreed. Laurel had been sort of hoping she would say no. But she squared her shoulders and came around the counter to join him outside.

“Stopped by your place that night of the riots,” he began.

“I know.”

“Where were you? Where did you go? You know how badly I panicked when I realized you’d left the station?”

“Dad, we’ve talked about this. I’m living my life, my way now, you know?”

His shoulders slumped, and his head shook from side to side. “Look, I’ve accepted that you’ve made a life here in the day-to-day. But riots are different.”

“It’s not different for any of my neighbors and friends who have nowhere else to go,” she pointed out.

“But you weren’t even home!”

“I was at a shelter,” she lied, and thought she was more convincing than even with Joanna. Laurel had practiced this one because she’d known it was coming. “One of the local schools was letting people stay in the gym and needed volunteers to help keep things organized with all the kids. I was too busy to notice my phone at first, and my battery died overnight so I couldn’t call you back.”

He paused, scrutinizing her. “So you weren’t out there that night?”

“Why would I be?”

Her dad studied her another moment, then pulled her close. “I just worry about you, honey. You know I- I’m used to knowing everything about what you’re up to. I miss that.”

Laurel looked down. “I know those times made you feel better, but they weren’t what I needed.”

He blew out a breath. “I know.” A rueful grin rose on his lips. “You know, it’s funny. I keep going back over what she’s told us so far, how it was all for her kids.” He didn’t have to clarify which her he meant. “Her kids never would have wanted her to do it.”

Laurel blinked. Implied or not, that was one of the nicer things her father had had to say about Oliver in a long time.

“Maybe we all just kid ourselves. Maybe we don’t know what our children want, cause we don’t ask them or we think we still know best long after they’ve grown,” he continued. He cupped her face with one hand, thumb brushing the corner of her lip that had only just finished healing from that night she’d gone toe-to-toe with the corrupt SCPD officers. “But how’s about you keep me in the loop just a little from now on, eh?”

Laurel smiled, though she hoped he didn’t think it was sad. There were parts of her life now that she knew she would never share with her father. He just wouldn’t be able to take it, and it had the potential to destroy his career. “Yeah. A little.”

With a one-armed hug avoiding her dirt-smeared apron, he let her get back to her shift.

At night, she and Oliver patrolled together which more than made up for the time spent apart during the day. The nights were busy given that after the crackdown on the riots, the police had once again retreated back out of the Glades. They didn’t talk much about what was going on with his family, though she knew he had been to see his mother at least once more.

She also knew the day of Mrs. Queen’s hearing to determine if she would be allowed bail. It was a closed session given the possible danger to Mrs. Queen’s life if someone with revenge fantasies like the Savior had had decided to show up, so after her shift, Laurel went to the Verdant to wait, Roy keeping her company when he wasn’t needed to wipe down the scant few tables that were occupied.

When Oliver and Thea entered with morose expressions behind John, Laurel didn’t need them to say that Mrs. Queen would be spending the time before her trial behind bars. She stood from her stool and offered each of them a hug.

“We knew it wouldn’t happen,” Oliver said in monotone. “It just…”

Laurel squeezed his hand, unable to say the words he really needed to hear with Thea and Roy present: this wasn’t his fault.

Oliver gave a small shake of the head. “We need to talk about the future. Thea… I really think you should consider Walter’s suggestion.”

“I’m not just leaving home,” Thea said immediately.

“What’s this?” Laurel asked.

“Walter thinks it would be a good idea for Thea to take some time away from Starling while she considers her options regarding higher education or a career. You don’t have the guarantee of an easy life anymore, Thea. A college degree is something you might need someday.”

Thea scowled but had no argument.

“Look, all I am suggesting is that you take a vacation for a few months while the worst of this dies down a little. Take some online classes to improve your transcript, write a few college essays in preparation to apply.”

“While you stay here?”

“I have to stay here. I own a club, and I can’t afford a new manager.”

“What if you and Roy went together?” Laurel suggested.

Roy blinked. “Me?”

“What?” Oliver immediately demanded.

Laurel rolled her eyes. “Thea does not want to be separated from everyone she cares about, so if you’re staying here then her boyfriend is the next best option. It’d be good for Roy, too, let him see some more of the world.” She doubted her younger friend had had a vacation in his life. “And as long as they promise to behave themselves, I don’t see why it’s a problem. They’re both adults, and we went on trips together at their age.”

“We didn’t behave ourselves,” Oliver murmured in her ear, and Laurel smirked.

Thea, meanwhile, seemed to be warming up to the idea. “So Roy and I could take a trip together so long as I fill out some applications? Okay.”

“I want you to take this seriously, Speedy.”

Thea waved a dismissive hand, already getting out her phone to start looking at vacation hotspots. She grabbed Roy’s hand, but he stayed put.

“Find a table. I’ll be right over.” Once Thea was our of earshot, Roy said, “I can’t leave right now. The city’s a mess.”

“Roy,” Laurel said.

“Look, I figured it out. You’re — you know,” he said to Oliver after a furtive look around. “I want to help you. I helped Laurel the other night when things were crazy.”

“And you were hurt pretty badly,” Oliver pointed out. Roy looked about to argue, so he held up a hand. “Take the vacation to heal and to think about what you’re asking for. This kind of life is not easy, and sometimes, it takes more than it gives. If you come back and are still committed, Laurel and I will discuss it with you then. That fair?”

Roy didn’t exactly look happy about it, but he seemed to realize it was the best offer he was likely to receive. “Fine.”

“Good,” Laurel said. “Now go plan your trip with your girlfriend.” Roy left the bar for Thea’s table, and Laurel turned her attention on her own boyfriend. “Now we need to talk about you.”

“Me?”

“You’ve been sleeping downstairs, man,” John said, coming forward now that the discussions surrounding Thea and Roy were over. “And not even on a real bed.”

“The island didn’t have real beds,” Oliver deadpanned.

“But you’re not on the island anymore. And you shouldn’t have to feel like you are,” Laurel pointed out. “If you needed a place to stay, you could have asked one of us.”

“One of you?” He repeated with a raised eyebrow.

“Figured you’d like having options better,” John explained.

“And I know better than to assume we’re living together,” Laurel added lightly.

Oliver’s face fell. “Laurel, you didn’t assume anything. I told you we could do it even when I knew I wasn’t ready.”

“And now?” She asked.

“Now I would love nothing more than to be with you,” he told her. A smile spread across her lips, which didn’t stop him from leaning in to kiss them. “I’ll bring my things over tomorrow.”

“My day off. Perfect.” It was far from perfect, she supposed. Instead of a spacious downtown apartment with a five minute emergency vehicle response time belonging to a lawyer and the heir apparent to a Fortune 500 company, they would be sharing a cramped one-bedroom on a forgotten street in the poorest neighborhood as a florist and the owner of the least popular club in all of Starling City. But it felt, in a funny way, far more them than the children their parents had tried to raise them to be, and in a way that was its own perfection.

That morning, she was in the middle of her workout when a knock came at the door. She hadn’t actually expected Oliver this early, but she called to him, “One second!” before grabbing her towel and heading over to unlock it. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Ted!”

Her old teacher nodded at her. “Morning. Mind if I come in?”

“Sure.” Laurel grabbed her tank top off the couch and threw it on as well, noticing that Ted had stopped by the heavy bag she had only just been working at. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. Just was thinking, I might need this back,” he explained, gesturing to it.

“Oh,” Laurel said, her shoulders drooping.

“Seeing as you’re welcome to start lessons back up any time,” he added, turning around to look at her with a sheepish smile. “Turns out you were right and there’s, well, still stuff we’re needed for out there.”

Laurel grinned. “I knew there was still fight in you.”

“Wouldn’t be much good at teaching it if there wasn’t. I’m not kidding about the bag, though,” he added, but Laurel just shoved at his arm which had him smirking.

Ted stayed for a moment or two longer where they hashed out a schedule, both for her lessons and for nighttime. He wasn’t so keen on getting to know the Hood just yet, and Laurel knew it was something she would need to talk to Oliver about first anyway.

After her teacher left, she thought about hitting the shower before Oliver arrived, but there was another knock at the door. Laurel pivoted on the balls of her feet. “Coming!”

She checked this time to find Anita waiting rather than her boyfriend. Laurel opened the door and showed her friend in. Anita carried a bag with her, which she held out for Laurel to take.

“Finished this last night,” her friend explained as Laurel lifted out her black leather jacket. She smiled. She’d been using the jean jacket at night for now, but it just hadn’t been the same.

“Thank you so much,” Laurel said, running her finger over the arm where the tear had been. “Hopefully by Christmas I’ll have made something all by myself to pay you back.”

“Yeah, well look the whole thing over before you thank me,” her friend said.

Laurel did, puzzled at first, with her eyes widening as she turned over the jacket to see the back.

“I should have asked before I did it,” Anita said. “But I kept thinking about that photo you’ve got of the thing in its cage and how it wouldn’t shut up, and I thought it was sort of like you, you know? Trapped in a shitty situation but not gonna go out without a fight. But that’s why I did the wings spread,” she added, stepping forward and smoothing her fingers over the yellow embroidery thread. “It symbolizes freedom. And that’s what you are now, Laurel. You freed yourself.”

She stared down at the outline of a bird with wings spread, a strange sort of lump sticking in her throat.

“I mean they’re probably gonna call you the Bird Lady or something stupid now,” Anita muttered, and it shocked her enough that Laurel looked up to meet her friend’s eyes.

“I—”

“You don’t gotta explain it. I won’t say a thing more about it.”

Her eyes watered and spilled over as she moved forward and wrapped her free arm around Anita in a hug which she returned. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You don’t hate it?”

“I love it. Really.” She sniffed once and let go, stepping back. Laurel hugged the jacket to her chest, smiling.

Yet another knock on her door had her quickly tucking the jacket back in the bag even if she suspected who this finally was. Laurel let Oliver in, her smile widening at the sight of the bag he had slung over one shoulder and one box tucked under his arm.

“Hey, everything okay?” He asked, reaching out and wiping at her cheek with a calloused thumb.

“Yeah. Come meet or re-meet one of your new neighbors, Anita.”

Anita’s eyebrows shot straight into her hairline. “Billionaire boy’s living here? This is one for the books.”

“It’s uh, Oliver,” he said awkwardly, holding a hand out.

“Well, welcome to the neighborhood, Ollie,” Anita greeted as she gave it a firm shake. Laurel stifled a laugh behind her hand. “I gotta head out, so have fun unpacking, you two.”

“See you,” Laurel told her. The door shut, and she spread her arms a little, turning one way and the other. “Well, make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking the box and setting it on her counter. “This is for you.”

“Everything you own fits in one bag?” Laurel asked dubiously. “Also you really don’t need to be getting me presents right now.”

He shrugged. “I missed your birthday.”

“You paid to fix my front window.”

“Well it’s our window now, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, I really want you to have this.”

It clicked, and Laurel reached for the box. “Is it—?”

She opened it to find a rather sleek ensemble in black and dark blue. Laurel couldn’t identify the material it was made out of, but she imagined it was sturdier than her leggings. A brand new wig and mask sat underneath.

“It’s amazing, Ollie.” She felt far less guilty knowing he’d already paid for it before his financial situation had become precarious. Laurel dove for the bag and her jacket, holding it and the undershirt of her new suit up to see how they might look together.

“Is that a… bird?” Oliver asked, eyebrows furrowed as he peered at the design on the back.

“It’s a canary,” Laurel answered. She set both items back in the box, smoothing the jacket down so the embroidered image rested face-up. Then she went to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “And it’s what I’m going to start calling myself out there.”

“The Hood and the Canary,” he said. “Doesn’t quite go together.”

“You could always pick your own name for yourself,” she offered. “Instead of letting everyone else decide it for you.”

“Maybe. If it weren’t for you going out there, the Hood probably wouldn’t even exist anymore,” he admitted, and Laurel tilted her head in an unspoken question, her hands sliding to his shoulders. “I became the Hood to fulfill my father’s mission. And in a lot of ways, I failed because I was playing my parents’ game. Sticking to the shadows, paying more attention to the wealthy than the victims suffering from those with wealth. Starling City is going to take a long time to get better, and it has to start here.”

“That all sounds good to me,” she agreed. “And now that you’re doing things your own way, without all the family secrets, I think we really can make a difference. Whatever’s coming, we’ll handle it together.”

He smiled down at her. “Then let’s save the world.”

Laurel met him on her tiptoes for a kiss to seal that promise.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing #bird in a storm

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tangled23works · 4 years

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No Time To Die

The bonus chapter of my @olicitytropes fic is finally ready! Enjoy!

Read on Ao3

Or keep reading here:

Felicity’s morning could have gone better if she weren’t stuck in a semi-formal brunch with the Queen family. Among the potted plants and decorations stood three people who couldn’t have been more awkward if they tried. On the surface, they were just waiting for Thea and Roy to start eating. The side looks and pursed lips however were telling a different story.

Thea’s insistence was the only reason why Felicity had woken up this early on this beautiful Sunday morning and driven to the orangery, a structure built inside the Queen property but not attached to the mansion. This place was always used for Sunday brunches when the temperamental Starling weather allowed it.

Felicity stared at the building in awe every time she visited. The roof was glazed and the sides were all covered in tall windows to allow the sunlight in. Moira Queen had surprisingly developed a green thumb somewhere along the way and had filled the space with orchids. The plants were really mercurial and demanded a great deal of attention but Felicity had heard her say that gardening was the only thing that got her through Oliver’s absence. The word of course conveyed none of the actual hell that the family had survived while losing both Oliver and Robert in a boat accident.

Felicity had been just a junior IT analyst when she met Thea two years ago. Needless to say she had been intimidated at first by Thea’s perfection, lack of incoherent babbles and overall coolness. It didn’t take long though for her to realize that there was something wrong with the 17-year-old girl. Thea’s pupils were always dilated, her visits to QC were not frequent but always ended in disaster and one rainy afternoon she had found her in the company’s bathroom trying to inhale some kind of white powder. Felicity had freaked out so much, she had called her friend Roy for advice.

Considering the events of last week, she might owe Roy a gift. A really big gift. Felicity might have been the reason he met the love of his life but he had helped her out of a tight spot again. Twice now he had run towards danger when she needed him. Felicity sighed, making a mental note to buy Roy tickets for the Starling Jets VS Central City Rockets game. He would try to refuse but she was certain that deep down, he was dying to go.

“You’re here!” Thea squealed as she finally arrived.

Sometimes Felicity felt so much older than her 19-year-old friend.

“Your majesty called?”

Thea smacked her arm affectionately. “You know you love me, Liss.” Then she leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “Ollie’s in a mood.”

Felicity resisted the urge to roll her eyes. When was Oliver NOT in a mood?

“Where’s Roy?”

“He couldn’t make it.”

Thea didn’t say it out loud but they both knew where Roy was. Iron Heights penitentiary. Visitors were only allowed every two weeks on Sundays.

“It’s just gonna be the four of us?”

Thea twined her arm around Felicity’s. “Mom threatened to invite the Bowens but Ollie vetoed her suggestion.”

They approached Moira and Oliver who appeared to be in the middle of a standoff. They reminded Felicity of that famous scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where everyone was ready to shoot their gun but waited for the others to attack first. Huh, that was probably the reason why Thea had invited Felicity in the first place. As a buffer between her mother and older brother.

“I’m here,” she announced. A little too enthusiastically in Felicity’s opinion.

“Good. Raisa’s pancakes are better eaten warm,” Moira said, sounding cold and extremely polite.

Oliver’s expression was thunderous but at least his welcome was warmer and less threatening.

“Hey, Speedy.”

“Ugh, worst nickname ever!”

According to Thea, Oliver was not staying at the mansion these days. No one knew where and with whom he spent his nights but he at least had - begrudgingly - agreed to be accompanied by a bodyguard.

The light was shining on his handsome face and Felicity got distracted by his jawline. It reminded her of something but she couldn’t figure out what… The biggest injustice in the world was that she routinely made a fool of herself in front of Thea’s brother; the most handsome man she had ever met. In one infamous occasion he had declined a Mimosa and asked her simply to pass along the juice which had caused an epic babble about how she had noticed that he paid attention to what he put in his body. Thea and Roy, gleeful jerks that they were, still teased her about that one.

“How are you, Oliver?” She spoke slowly and carefully. That way she would have fewer chances to embarrass herself.

“Fine. I did not expect to see you here.”

Could he be any less welcoming?

“Shut up, Ollie,” Thea interjected. “Since I can’t go anywhere these days, I’m allowed to invite my friends over.”

“You wouldn’t be under house arrest if you hadn’t wrecked my Porsche.”

Thea stuck her tongue out at her brother and he shook his head at her antics. Their bickering made Felicity smile. Oliver always seemed uptight and tense as if he expected someone to jump from behind the furniture and attack him. Thea’s foolish behavior was the only thing that could make him laugh.

“Children, please. Let us enjoy this beautiful morning without further discussion about this family’s propensity for accidents.”

They sat at the beautifully set table and Raisa served them a spread worthy of any high end restaurant. Felicity inhaled her cup of coffee - hey, it was only her first - and smothered her pancakes in Nutella. If she had to suffer through brunch with Moira and Oliver, then she could at least enjoy it.

She looked up and found him staring at her plate with a raised eyebrow.

“What?” She tried to raise an eyebrow of her own and failed.

“Nothing.”

He got a serving of scrambled eggs and salmon on his plate. A more healthy choice but one that could make Felicity gag. Especially this early in the morning. It was so ironic that Starling City’s prodigal son, the one who used to end up intoxicated in various events, was now such a health freak.

“I can feel you judging, Queen.”

“I can see your blood sugar rising, Smoak.”

Thea started coughing which probably meant that she was laughing her butt off. On the inside, of course.

“I hope that you don’t mind but I asked Walter to join us.”

Oh, boy. It was no secret that QC’s CFO, Walter Steele was enamored of Moira Queen, CEO. The relationship (and Felicity wasn’t sure she could actually call it that) had come as an unwelcome surprise to Oliver when he had returned from the dead. According to Thea, her brother had asked Walter point-blank if he intended to sleep with his mother. Walter had reacted with dignity to the accusation but his next visits were infrequent and always when Oliver was out of the house. Thea was kinda mad about it because she loved Walter and viewed him as a surrogate father.

“Is this visit necessary?” Oliver asked. He put down his fork and seemed to be concentrating on a point beyond Felicity’s left shoulder. During their interactions he rarely ate more than a bird as her bubbe used to say.

“Yes, it is,” Moira replied, decisively. “There is your mandatory court appearance to discuss. Or have you forgotten?”

“What does it have to do with Walter?”

“It affects QC. Darling, your name is on the building. One day you might decide to follow in your father’s footsteps-”

The chair fell down with a bang as Oliver got up suddenly.

“I didn’t study business management in any of the four colleges I dropped out of,” he remarked.

“Did I tell you that Felicity met the Hood?”

Thea’s question fell like a grenade. Felicity blushed scarlet when both Oliver and Moira focused on her.

“Meet is an overstatement. I didn’t actually meet him. I just saw him,” Felicity said while trying to kick Thea under the table.

“Don’t be modest, Liss. You saved his life. My best friend is a badass!”

“Thea!”

“Sorry, Mom. I would have said she’s a badbutt but it sounds ridiculous.”

Oliver’s lips curved. Of course it didn’t exactly reach his eyes but for him it was like a full blown chuckle. He sat back down and focused on Felicity.

“So, Miss Smoak how did you meet the vigilante?”

Felicity fidgeted under the scrutiny of both Moira and Oliver. Describing her encounter with the vigilante seemed disloyal. It sounded silly because he hadn’t actually prohibited her from discussing their meeting but she was protective of him. And she was sure that Oliver would end up mocking the Hood. Felicity couldn’t imagine two people as different as Oliver Queen and the man who dressed up in green leather and fought bad guys in the Glades. One had lived a pampered existence, with the exception of a few years in a jungle of course, and the other risked his life everyday to save the lives of people he didn’t know. In fact she was willing to bet that underneath his cashmere sweater Oliver Queen had a body built at the gym, nice to look at for sure, but nothing like the Hood’s lean, mean, fighting machine.

“Oh no, I’ve lapsed into song lyrics.”

“Excuse me?” Moira was looking at Felicity as if she had grown a second head.

Felicity turned to Thea who was fighting another smile, “I didn’t say that outloud, did I?”

“Yeah, Liss.” Felicity resisted the urge to bang her head on the table while Thea, the traitor, kept pushing, “You didn’t answer Mom though. Tell them how you met the vigilante.”

Felicity poured milk into her second cup of coffee.

“It’s not a big deal. I found him hurt on the street and kept him safe until he was well enough to leave.”

“But you took him into your house, Liss. You were really brave-”

“And incredibly stupid. That man is a psychopath.”

“He isn’t, Ollie! He saves people!”

Moira put down her fork, gently. “Nevertheless, Miss Smoak took a great risk welcoming a man like that into her home.”

Felicity’s cheeks were burning. She just knew that the older members of the Queen family would disapprove of her actions. After all, the Hood hated one-percenters with good reason.

“What would you have done in my shoes, Mrs Queen? I couldn’t very well leave him alone to die in the Glades.”

“If I had found the Hood, I would have called the police,” Moira replied with a superior smirk that grated on Felicity’s nerves.

Thea must have sensed that Felicity was about to go off on a tangent so she interrupted them quickly.

“What do you think, Ollie?”

“I think that this guy needs a better nickname than the ‘Hood’.”

They all laughed at his irreverent comment.

“How about the ‘Bow’?” Thea suggested with a twinkle in her eyes.

“The ‘Quiver’?” Oliver countered.

“The ‘Arrow’,” Felicity said. Which actually was a decent code name. Much better than the ‘Hood’ and a lot more defining than the ‘Green Guy’ which is what detective Lance usually called him during press conferences. “Nicknames aside, I still think that he can potentially be great for our city. He might be obsessed with stealing from the rich to give to the poor but in my eyes and in the eyes of everyone that lives in the Glades, that man is a hero.”

Felicity’s passionate speech was met with silence.

The Queens were celebrating Oliver’s official return from the dead with a lavish party. There was just one issue. The man of the hour was not home yet.

Oliver leaped the gap between the two buildings and landed on the roof with ease.

Tonight he was not Oliver Queen. He was the Hood.

He heard someone gasping and the subsequent click of a photo being taken but he didn’t stop long enough to check. It was dangerous to engage in Hood activities before night fell but he didn't have much time. After all, he had a party to attend.

The tip had come as Oliver was leaving the court. After being officially recognized as Oliver Queen, returned to the living, he had been antsy. He wanted to be active, to be doing something useful for those who needed him. He didn’t want to be the son of a dead man and heir to Queen Consolidated. He wanted to direct this anger, this feeling of being trapped somewhere. He wanted to fight. So when his phone had beeped with the information that someone was abducting teenagers in the Glades he had jumped at the chance.

Oliver ran along the roof and shot an arrow with a grappling hook to cover the distance between this building and the next. The buildings in the Glades were not constructed as thoughtfully as the rest of the city. Sometimes they were literally one on top of the other, other times they were so far apart that they required special arrows.

Arrow was what she had called him.

It was weird but during the last three weeks no matter if he was dressed in Armani suits or green leather, he couldn’t help but think of her.

Felicity Smoak. The bane of his existence. The woman who had protected him that night after his fight with Helena and then defended his alter ego passionately to him and his mother.

She had called him a hero. If only she knew how wrong she was… Oliver Queen was not a hero. At best he was this city’s revenge against the people who had wronged it. At worst he was a man made for darkness.

But Felicity knew nothing about it. This was his mission. His burden to carry. And somehow, she was dangerous to him. He could sense it with the part of his primordial brain that had saved his life countless times on the island.

Vowing to stay away from her, he climbed on a balcony and saw that he was over Tempest, a well-known dive bar where low-life criminals hung out. His leg was bothering him again but he ignored it. The first thing he had learned on Lian Yu was how to shut down pain. It was a military trick and Slade had warned him it could be dangerous if you were fatally injured and ignored your body’s signals but since this wound was already healing, Oliver would be fine for a few hours.

In the alley behind Tempest, a lone figure was waiting.

“What took you so long?”

Sin was far too young to be living alone in the Glades and definitely too young to be going out for a drink at Tempest but she was also his best informant. He had promised Sara he would keep an eye on her when he got to Starling and he would make good on that promise.

“You said they’re taking teens off the streets.”

“Yeah.”

When she didn’t volunteer anything else, Oliver crouched low and jumped from the fire escape. He landed with a soft thud which made her smile.

“You said you were hurt.”

“I was. Now I’m better.”

He wasn’t used to people asking about his wounds. Oliver Queen might have a few friends but the Hood had none. And that was how he liked it.

“My friend Max was taken last night. They found him in an alley with blood leaking from his eyes, nose and ears. They say he OD'd but they’re wrong. Max was a pickpocket but he wasn’t a junkie. He didn’t even smoke weed with the rest of us.”

Oliver shook his head at the thought of Sin smoking at all but that was a fight for another day. If someone was indeed taking teens off the streets, he had to take them out. And fast.

“I’ll look into it,” he promised.

“Good,” Sin nodded with satisfaction.

The faith she had in him reminded him of Felicity Smoak again.

“Did you find anything more about the book?”

The question was not unexpected. Ever since she had tried to pick his pockets and found the old notebook, she had been fascinated by it. Oliver could understand her obsession well. Back on the island he had examined it compulsively every day, trying to figure out why his father would give him an empty notebook and order him to keep it safe. There was nothing written on it so the reason for secrecy was lost on him.

“There’s something else,” Sin said.

He tilted his head in question. Sin was familiar with his lack of verbal communication so she didn’t hesitate.

“There was a man poking his nose into a warehouse around here last week.”

“What kind of man?”

“One of the bigwigs you always see on TV. Like the Queens or the Merlyns.”

Now that was interesting.

“Describe him,” he ordered.

“Ted saw him. Black, polite, asked Ted for directions.”

That didn’t give him much.

“Anything else?” he asked roughly. He was beginning to feel a little impatient.

“Yeah. Ted said the dude was British. Spoke with a real funny accent.”

The blaring sound of police sirens interrupted their conversation.

“You better pick up your feet. You might be hang-up on that book but your friend detective Lance is hang-up on you.”

Oliver appreciated the warning but it was unnecessary. He was well aware of Lance’s current obsession with the Hood.

He gritted his teeth and climbed back up the fire escape as fast as he could. Sin gave him a mock salute and disappeared quickly.

The sirens sounded closer as he resumed his running and jumping from one rooftop to another.

Escape via the roofs seemed ideal until he came up to a gap even he couldn’t cross by arrow. Growling under his breath, Oliver was forced to jump down and cross the empty street.

“I see him,” a voice yelled.

Running away from detective Lance wasn’t Oliver’s idea of fun. Especially since he had to be back at the mansion for his ‘welcome back’ party.

He flattened himself against the nearest wall and waited for the threat to pass. Lance and his men were like a dog with a bone. According to his mother, the Mayor wasn’t happy with the fact that a vigilante was loose on the streets targeting this city’s upstanding citizens. So the Mayor kept pushing Lance for results and Lance kept hunting Oliver with maniacal dedication.

“We’ll get the bastard tonight,” Lance vowed but his voice came from far away and Oliver felt safe enough to attempt another escape.

However, the detective had become wiser during the weeks they played their cat and mouse game. This time he had actually asked his officers to double back so when Oliver emerged from the alley, he fell into a trap.

Oliver didn't know who was more surprised. Him or the poor officers.

The man in front of him recovered first and pointed his gun at him.

“Don’t move!”

Not moving was not an option. The bow would be no use in such close quarters. Hand to hand combat was the only choice.

Oliver stretched his arms overhead and jumped, grasping one of the nearest fire escape rails. The move saved him from getting shot because the officer had fired his gun reflexively.

Oliver used the momentum he had gained and kicked with his feet the man closer to him. When the officer fell unconscious to the ground due to the force of the hit, he swung and dropped, rolling away as he hit the asphalt. He didn’t want to hurt them but they left him no other choice. Detective Lance would have heard by now the shot so he was about to have more company.

The blow from behind brought him to his knees. One of these fuckers had managed to get close to him when he wasn’t paying attention. Oliver twisted and grabbing the officer’s legs, he managed to topple him to the ground. His head hit the pavement with a sickening thud but there was no time to regret the action.

The third officer was approaching and he didn’t seem in a mood to retreat. Oliver charged him and it was clear from the surprise on his face that he wasn’t expecting that. Oliver slammed his fist into the man’s face repeatedly but the officer was clever enough to try to knee him in the balls. He avoided the sneaky attack and felt a savage satisfaction when the next punch broke his attackers nose.

Only the sound of sirens coming closer than ever stopped Oliver. He was running before he had the time to process his next thought. A dumpster at the corner of the street gave him enough leverage to jump and then he was climbing again, his fingers straining for holds before he managed to reach the roof.

He stayed hidden only for a few moments just to make sure that he hadn’t killed any of these idiots and then he ran like hell. He had to have an important talk with his mother’s suitor. Luckily, he knew exactly where to find Walter Steele.

There was no ‘Oliver Queen is back from the dead’ party without Oliver Queen himself.

#olicity fic #my fic #no time to die #stay safe people #and keep reading

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laurelwinchester · 5 years

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Fic: How the Light Gets In (SPN/Arrow, Dean/Laurel)

Oooh boy this chapter turned out way more intense than I thought it was going to....

Additional warnings for this chapter: Additional warnings for this chapter: A character deals with postpartum anxiety/depression. Another character deals with the effects of severe sleep deprivation and insomnia. Mentions of a past suicide attempt and suicidal ideations.

This chapter also contains references to school shootings (notably the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that took place in Newtown, Connecticut) and the culture of fear that American children as young as preschool aged and their parents are forced to live with every day they go to school in modern day America.

Part Thirteen You Will Ache Like I Ache

Here is the general rule of thumb, a piece of advice to keep in the back of your mind, a warning: where there's smoke, there's fire.

If she is being honest with herself, which she so rarely is, Laurel has been smelling smoke since that first meeting. It was the salt and pepper shakers. It was that old radio. The tea towels, the floral curtains, and that ancient coffee maker. The witch got every detail of Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen right. It was so spot on it was literally like a time warp. Even if she had combed through Laurel's every memory of that kitchen, she wouldn't have been able to create such a flawless replica. Not unless she had been there herself. Not unless she had her own memories of those magnets on the fridge and that coffee creamer shaped like a cow and the way the whole house smelled of bacon and coffee in the mornings.

There has always been a fire.

Right from the moment her eyes snapped open six feet underground. Something has always been burning.

She just ignored it. Pretended she couldn't feel the heat. Acted like she wasn't choking on the smoke. She's still a Drake underneath it all, just like her lying mother, and Drakes don't like to talk about the burning things.

It's like what happened when the hooded vigilante first showed up. She knows the ins and outs of Oliver Queen - always has, always will. He is far from a mystery to her and yet she still couldn't figure out he was the masked man until Slade Wilson burst into her house to give her the world's worst candygram. She spent the better part of two years adamantly refusing to see what was right in front of her for no reason other than she so badly did not want it to be him.

Dean knew from the start. Took him and Sam 48 hours of bare minimum surveillance to confirm it.

But she took two years.

Now here she is again.

Oliver was always the vigilante, Edie was always the witch, and Laurel has always been the moron who keeps her eyes closed so she doesn't have to see what's right in front of her.

History repeats itself.

Read more on AO3

Or start from the beginning

#the flashbacks in this chapter wound up longer and way more intense than i intended #so um....enjoy!#read the warnings though #laurel lance #dean winchester #dean x laurel #otp: never my love #;)))#fic: how the light gets in #arrow #supernatural #spn x arrow #my fic #how the light gets in

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hope-for-olicity · 5 years

Text

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - March 29th, 2019

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them. This and all previous Fabulous Olicity Fanfic posts can be found on my blog.

Run to the Water multi-chapter Complete by @someonesaidcake - The year is 1912, Oliver was 9 and far too old to be babysitting that nonsensical girl Felicity whose parents owned the cattle ranch where his parents worked and lived, but she won him over with oat and raisin biscuits and soon became his little blonde sidekick...with a completely unrequited crush on him. Years later she returns from boarding school and more than bush fires ignite in the changing times.... https://archiveofourown.org/works/7455738/chapters/16942293

Re-Airrow 2x23 by @lostolicityscenes - Holy Smoaks! Here we are at the finale. This was another fast paced and tightly plotted episode with so many epic Olicity moments. But, one thing I still wonder about is how much Felicity knew going into the mansion. She seems genuinely shocked when Oliver says I love you, yet later in the episode Oliver replies “we both did” when she says “you really sold it.” So I wrote this sort of AU that casts that first scene in a different light. I think he meant to say it, but realized how much he MEANT IT in the moment. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed Season 2 of Re-Airrow. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/183631815031/re-airrow-2x23

Will Fate Allow? multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Seeing her parent's marriage dissolve at a young age made Felicity yearn for a healthy marriage of her own. She thought she'd finally found what she was looking for when Billy Malone showed up offering her what her heart desired. She thought she was happy and had everything she could want, but things began to unravel. Slowly she turned to someone who had become an unparalleled constant in her life...Oliver Queen. Oliver and Felicity are the definition of polar opposites. He is the mob boss that strikes fear in the hearts many, while she is seen as the sweet girl next door, but there is more to both of them underneath the surface. Along the way, they become connected to one another leading to their lives being intertwined forever. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16521596/chapters/38699951

Not My Dog by @sentence-fragments - Oliver lost his dog. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8298470

Hey Baby, I Think I Wanna Marry You by @felicityollies - prompt: impaired judgement - After a night of drinking and laced brownies, Oliver and Felicity find themselves fooling around. What they didn’t expect was for one of them to propose marriage. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034534/chapters/26572173

It Takes Two by @mogirl97 - When Oliver Queen finds himself short of a partner for his upcoming Crossfit competition, he resigns himself to having to drop out... until he walks in on a blonde stranger in the gym and has a change of heart (in more ways than one) https://archiveofourown.org/works/11788236

Forgotten Treasures by @muslimsmoak - Oliver and William are trying to find their way with each other and it doesn’t help Oliver when he finds will’s green arrow action figure thrown in the garbage. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806263

Impaired Judgement by @wetsuiton - Felicity takes a bullet for Dinah and gets super cute and loopy on the pain meds https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084547/chapters/26651937

The One Where Drunk Felicity Checks an Item Off Her Bucket List by @wrldtravler - With the help of a little liquid courage, Felicity finally attempts to check off the most unthinkable item on her bucket list with a little help from the Hood. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819325

The Fan multi-chapter WIP by @leuska - For the past couple of months, Felicity Smoak, previous child star known to the world through her alter ego Lisy the Tech Whiz, who ended her career and her growing popularity at the age of thirteen rather abruptly, has sporadically received disturbing notes and gifts in her mail. Police believe the notes to be just little tokens of appreciation by a former fan. Despite having left the spotlight over a decade ago and living in anonymity since, the fan mail keeps coming, increasing in frequency as well as intensity. The last drop is when Felicity receives another letter with a love note. A scary, ominous note. A note written in human blood.FBI director Amanda Waller tasks her best Agent to the case. Oliver Queen, a criminal profiler, is currently working on a special task force formed between SCPD and FBI to catch a man dubbed the Start City Slasher, who has murdered at least three young women in the past nine months. Agent Queen is not thrilled with the prospect of holding a former princess’ hand through her problem with a simple stalker while a serial killer is still at large. However, once meeting her, Oliver finds there is nothing easy or simple about Felicity Smoak as their worlds start to intertwine. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17726573/chapters/41820368

Do You Remember multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - Eight years after Oliver and Felicity became teenage parents, they have everything they could have ever hoped for and more. They have a good life in a nice house. Their marriage is happy, and a second baby is on its way. The calm they have settled in is interrupted abruptly when a stalker starts terrorizing Felicity. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409059/chapters/40978307

Impaired Judgement by @cruzrogue - John Diggle is out of it by an aphrodisiac truth drug and its awkward field mission. He tells Felicity how he appreciated her and then it leads to how he thinks she is very beautiful and sexy and how he tried to control himself in the beginning before Oliver got a clue and they were just friends. When Oliver shows up Diggle needs his help too. John has no clue what was said. Oliver and Felicity promise to never tell him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806272

What's Yours is Mine by @laxit21 - This is some pure, unapologetic fluff. I’m not sorry. https://laxit21.tumblr.com/post/183633727946/whats-yours-is-mine

PrepPy GoThic LoVe multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue - New Freshman at MIT, Felicity wants to party and she meets another drunken party guest Oliver and they hit it off. Not really thinking of consequences have a wonderful time together. Oliver been to two different schools and this one he finally wants to do better because of a beacon of hope that rubbed off on him with just one night a passionate gothic girl changes him for the better. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805543/chapters/26631204

From Somewhere Within multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - Their connection has always felt natural to them, safe and secure. But others tend to fear what they don’t understand, and as far as their enemies are concerned, the world isn’t ready to accept two people who can know each other the way that Oliver and Felicity do. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009244/chapters/37356257

To Sacrifice the Sun multi-chapter WIP by @emmilynestill - Oliver and Felicity are ARGUS agents working on a mission in Mexico, the two share some very important history. http://archiveofourown.org/works/7510744/chapters/22505918

One Night multi-chapter WIP by @suttons-brady - Felicity paces back and forth in her bathroom, fingers playing with each other in front of her stomach and her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. How the hell did she get here? She prides herself on being smart -- on being a genius, actually. Hell, she skipped eighth grade! So how in the hell had she ended up here, burning a hole in the floor of her bathroom, waiting for a flimsy plastic stick to tell her if her life is over? http://archiveofourown.org/works/11076792/chapters/24706029

Providence multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated - Will Queen has struggled in silence in the year since he was shot. But when a shadowy crime lord known as Domino targets the only woman Will’s ever truly loved, fate forces him to confront his demons in ways he never could have imagined… Whether he wants to or not. Amelia Prescott has fought to take control of her life since learning two years ago that her personal and professional worlds were manipulated by others. But nothing can prepare her for just how hard she'll have to fight to set her own course, especially when her heart belongs to a damaged man and a crime lord threatens her every professional move... And her life. Destiny brings them together, but as chaos reigns and personal demons haunt Will and Amelia both, it may also threaten to tear them apart. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919056/chapters/42308753

Love and Little Cupcakes multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - Felicity loved sweets so much that she paid no attention to her lovelife. Until Thea Queen came into her store wanting fabulous cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. SO ADORABLE! http://archiveofourown.org/works/12400539/chapters/28216053

I Regret Nothing by somewhereelse Season 2 Missing Scene/AU. Drunk! Oliver is sassy. Sober! Felicity is over it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823810

Wait, Did I Already Do That? by @laureningall - Thea is a woman on a mission. She wants to take Felicity out for a ‘belated bachelorette party’. Needless to say, a busy day leads to impaired judgment and some unintended consequences for Felicity during her night out on the town with the girls. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837235

seemingly impossible (but not untrue) multi-chapter WIP by @alexiablackbriar13 - Young genius historian Dr Felicity Smoak unknowingly and accidentally calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript within the Oxford Bodleian Libraries - a book that has been lost for centuries. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Felicity wants nothing to do with magic, despite her unruly and powerful abilities. But her discovery of Ashmole 782 sets the world of creatures stirring; with a mystery afoot and new, dangerous magical abilities manifesting for her to navigate, she is approached by the enigmatic vampire biochemist Professor Oliver Queen, who seems to have a deep interest in both the manuscript… and her. Based on A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224353/chapters/37923743

2 + 2 Equals a Family multi-chapter Complete by @mogirl97 - When Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak both reach for the last Lego Batman set on the shelf at the same time one December night while holiday present shopping for their kids, they have no idea that their chance encounter is going to change their lives. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853030/chapters/26760468

With the Speed of an Arrow multi-chapter WIP by @academyofshipping - Oliver Queen’s elite and silver-spoon life has taken some blows in the past few years, but he is still the carefree billionaire everyone knows of and loves. When his role in the family business is in jeopardy and he is introduced to a motley of new people, his status quo is threatened. With a changed perspective, Oliver realizes his feeling for his best friend and anchor-in-life, Felicity Smoak, may be more than just platonic. OR A modern adaption of Jane Austen’s Emma with a gender swap* and no island. *Knowing that gender is not binary https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559846/chapters/38799857

The Proposal multi-chapter WIP by @spaztronautwriter - When Felicity Smoak finds herself in a bind, she enlists the help of her assistant Oliver Dearden to help keep her from being deported and losing her job. The problem is, in order to do so, they kind of have to get married... http://archiveofourown.org/works/13727445/chapters/31538406

Overwatch multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A burglary attempt convinces the Mayor of Starling City to hire Smoak Technologies to strengthen his security. But between the sassy AI watching him 24/7 and the personal trainer with his own reasons to kill him, Oliver may wish he’d stuck with his baseball bat for protection. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500640/chapters/41221793

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 //

#FabulousOlicityFanficFriday #olicity fanfiction #fic recs

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thegreenxrcher · 3 years

Note

Dio falls asleep while reading a case and using Oliver's lap as a pillow. Oliver is stuck on the couch until around one hour before patrol now, because Dio's not moving away, he's too comfy.

Oliver had been reading as well - skimming over some information he might have missed and he was about to speak until he learned that Dio had fallen asleep. He didn't had the stomach to wake him up - he didn't sleep as much as he wanted him to - so that meant not moving at all.

He leant back and got comfortable himself while he slowly reached for the blanket hanging over the couch and draped it over his man and stroked his blonde hair softly. "I love you..."

#〘 oliver queen 〙underneath the hood #〘 dionisus rosali 〙his golden templarium crow #goldentemplariumcrow

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sidxiil-a · 5 years

Text

[ SPOOKY MUSE AESTHETICS ] :

bloodied knuckles ･ tear stained cheeks ･ rust ･ a busted lip ･ claws ･ fangs ･ a bloody nose ･ chattering teeth ･ a dark space underneath the bed ･ scratching noises on a wall ･ creaking metal ･ fog ･ dancing under moonlight ･ lips dripping blood ･ heavy breathing in the dark ･ a feeling of unexplained dread ･ a figure in a dark corner ･ dirty peeling wallpaper ･ a bloody handprint on the wall ･ sobbing in the dark ･ bite marks on the skin ･ eerie whispers ･ a hood covering a stranger’s eyes ･ the growl of a hidden animal ･ the sound of a blade being sharpened ･ a deep, dark forest ･ walking on the streets alone at night ･ a cobweb-filled, abandoned building ･ eyes darting in paranoia ･ a heavy beating pulse ･ the feeling of being trapped ･ struggling to get out a scream ･ boards covering broken windows ･ a quiet graveyard ･ a gas station in the middle of nowhere ･ a road that never ends ･ heavy fog rolling in ･ the scent of blood in the air ･ eerie old photographs ･ walking along train tracks at night ･ a chill going up the spine ･ gathering crows ･ a dusty, dimly lit study ･ mist over a deserted cobblestone street ･ ghost towns ･ shadows around a campfire ･ the sound of chanting ･ church bells tolling ･ an orange harvest moon ･ a broken down carnival ･ a dirty stuffed animal abandoned ･ wiping bloody hands on fabric･ nightmares ･ waking up in a panic ･ a power outage ･ heavy lightning storms･ a secret trap door ･ the feeling of being watched ･ fear from trauma ･ a ouija board set out on a table ･ an eerie doll ･ a scream of anguish & pain ･ withered plants ･ a room that’s been forgotten & gathered dust ･ owl eyes in the dark ･ curled, dead tree branches ･ a ritual altar ･ flickering candles ･ a lantern held up in the dark ･ fear of being followed ･ creaking floorboards ･ repressed, horrible memories ･ clenched teeth ･ soft, echoing piano keys ･ an old book covered in dust ･ many pairs of glaring eyes ･ stumbling in pitch black darkness ･ being stranded in the middle of nowhere ･ tarot cards on a table ･ a trail of blood

Tagged: @rxsurrxcted Tagging: @jp-todd-rp @robin-decoded @oliver-queen-rp

#;;about #//thanks for the tag!#//sorry it took forever #//it's been a busy few weeks

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smoaking-greenarrow · 6 years

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Overprotective Oliver fic idea: maybe one where felicity is being stalked by someone (like a creeper, old lover, the press) everywhere she goes even when she is with someone. Like at a restaurant, grocery store, coffee shop, on the streets, close to work, close to home etc.

A/N: Okay, not exactly the prompt, but the closest my muse was feeling ;)

They’d been fighting a lot.

No, not fighting. Disagreeing.

Disagreeing and making love. Back and forth, back and forth. They were struggling to see eye to eye again. To get on the same page. But at the same time, they were thriving. Reconnecting. Remembering everything that made them so incredible together. Seven years ago, falling in love with him had been inevitable. And figuring things out now…also inevitable.

Still, it was a pendulum of emotions. And it was hard. She hadn’t expected it to be so hard.

With a sigh, Felicity finished putting the clean laundry into their dresser, tired after the last couple hours of getting the house ready for William to come home. As she stepped out of their bedroom, flicking off the light, something hidden beneath her jewelry box caught her eye. She frowned, turning the light back on and reaching for it.

Her skin was pale, but not unattractive. She had pretty pink lips and soft blonde hair.

Realizing that it was a corner of a photograph, Felicity slid it out, looking down at the image of herself, standing beside her step-son. The picture she’d sent with John the first time he’d gone to visit her husband at Slabside. Oliver had kept it all this time? Kept it intact through the riot and all the creepy Level Two stuff?

Well, it wasn’t completely intact; the picture was torn, right down the middle, and she frowned in confusion. Someone had ripped it, and Oliver had taped it back together. Continued to hold on to it.

“Oh, Oliver,” she let out a deep breath, her heart squeezing in her chest. Felicity set the photo back down carefully, handling it with as much care as Oliver had, on top of her jewelry box this time. Because here, he didn’t need to hide it or protect it from harm. Here, it was safe.

He wanted to know what it was about this woman. What it was that captivated the Green Arrow.

Making her way out of the room, Felicity started unpacking the boxes and arranging their things, trying to make the new apartment feel more like home before William arrived.

She hummed to herself, cleaning and organizing as she moved through the rooms. Eventually, she glanced up at the clock, frowning. Her husband should have been home to help her by now.

One more minute, and then he would move. Out from the dark corner of the house. She wouldn’t see him coming.

As if on cue, her phone began to ring, and Felicity snatched it from the kitchen counter, seeing Oliver’s face on the screen.

His breath caught in his throat, his eyes wide as he watched.

“I was just thinking about you,” Felicity answered in greeting, a smile pulling at her lips.

“You were?” Oliver asked, and she knew he could hear the smile in her voice, and that he was answering it with his own.

“Mm-hm,” Felicity hummed, “I was just thinking; ‘where is my big, strong, handsome husband, and why is he making me do all of this unpacking by myself?’”

Oliver huffed, “I’m sorry, I’ll be home in just a few minutes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he rushed, and she could hear him starting his car. “On my way.”

“Well,” she paused, leaning against the counter, “why don’t you tell me what you want to do to me when you get here.”

His heart slammed against his chest, feeling it race. Oliver was on his way.

Her husband inhaled sharply. “Fe-li-ci-ty,” he practically moaned her name. She’d missed that so much.

“What?” She asked, feigning innocence, “there must be a surface somewhere in this place that you haven’t bent me over yet.”

He gasped again, followed by a soft groan this time. “Don’t get any ideas. I was just training with John. I haven’t sparred like that in a while, and my back is killing me. I’m going to need a bed.”

Felicity chuckled, “okay, fine. You can just lie back,” she pondered slowly, a little thrill running through her to be talking about it, knowing he would be there in a matter of minutes. “Let me do with you as I please.”

“Damn,” Oliver grunted, and she swore she heard the car accelerate.

Plans had to change. He couldn’t take her in time. Oliver would know.

“Hurry home,” Felicity teased, covering her lips with her fingers.

She was too wrapped up in their conversation to notice. To see him. And he slipped by easily, ducking into the bedroom while she had her back turned.

After hanging up, Felicity set her phone on the counter, turning her attention to the boxes in the kitchen. She knew that as soon as William walked through the door, he’d ask for an Oliver Queen home-cooked meal. The thought made her smile, pulling dishes out of their boxes and organizing them into the cupboards. As long as the kitchen was unpacked and ready to be used, her boys would be satisfied.

Pulling the black hood tighter around his face, he watched her intently. There was no way he’d make it out of there with her. Oliver would find them.

Felicity glanced up when she heard a pair of keys outside the door. She leaned against the counter, crossing her arms and watching as Oliver pushed his way inside.

He seemed a little riled up, in a rush, and she bit her lip. “Hi,” he breathed, kicking the door shut and quickly closing the distance between them.

She didn’t have time to respond, he dropped his bag and hauled her against his chest in a matter of seconds. And then, he was kissing her. Felicity smiled against his lips, “you’re kinda sweaty.”

“I thought you liked it,” Oliver mumbled back against her lips, and she felt him smile, too.

Despite the arguments they’d been having about good and evil and gray areas, there was always love between them. Respect and trust. They were happy, even when they didn’t agree with each other. And that was a win in Felicity’s mind, considering where they were when they first met. “I love you,” she whispered, telling him for the millionth time. Making up for all those months she’d been unable to say it.

And Oliver groaned as if the words were precious, leaning into the kiss even more, his tongue sliding against hers.

After a moment, he pulled back, looking down at her with his soft eyes. “I love you, too,” he said, his expression echoing the sentiment. “Let me take a shower, and then we can unpack two of those boxes…before I take you to bed.”

Felicity scrunched up her nose, holding up her index finger, “one box.”

Chuckling, Oliver bent down to kiss her again, “you drive a hard bargain,” he mumbled, making her laugh.

When he pulled back with a sigh, Felicity shook her head, still amused. “Be quick!” She swatted his ass, and he turned to wink at her as he retreated to the bedroom.

Letting out a happy sigh, Felicity turned back to the box she was working on, choosing to put the glassware in the windowed cabinet by the fridge. Before she could even set one wineglass inside, Oliver’s sharp “Felicity!” startled her.

“What?” She whirled around, her heart hammering at the fright and at how harsh his voice sounded.

He stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, his eyes furious, the photograph in his hands. “What is this?”

She gaped, wondering if he was upset she’d found it and left it out.

But then he turned the picture around, his eyes wild as he scanned the house, his back tensing. And when she looked down at the picture, at the X’s drawn over her and William’s faces, the wineglass fell from her hand.

Oliver rushed to her, tossing the photograph on the counter and taking her face between his hands. “I didn’t do that,” she blurted, shaking her head.

Her husband nodded, his hands soothing her, fingers in her hair. “I know, I know,” he breathed, “that’s not what I meant.” Oliver tightened his grip, guiding her face to look at him. “Did you leave the house tonight? Did you go somewhere?”

“No, no,” she panted, “I’ve been here the whole time. Oliver, I saw that picture twenty minutes ago…it wasn’t like that.”

In response, Oliver pulled her a little closer, both of them realizing what that meant. With her head cradled to his chest, she could feel how tense he was.

“Oliver,”

It was an unfamiliar voice, but it had Oliver whipping around, yanking Felicity behind his back, shielding her between his body and the refrigerator. She peeked her head out from behind his arm, her hands gripping the back of his shirt.

The man in front of them wore a black hoodie, pulled up over his head. There were scars and bruises all over his face. He was small, mousy. Almost as short as her and probably weighed less.

But muscle didn’t mean much when there was a gun pointed right at her husband’s head.

Felicity’s heart twisted in her chest. In the tense silence, she saw through the gun and the shadowed face, the bloodied wreck of a man underneath. And she recognized him. The one who had been there the day she found out about Oliver and Level Two. The one who’d said he was Oliver’s friend at Slabside.

“You need to listen to me,” the man whispered, his eyes only on Oliver. “There are some people who want to kill me. You need to save me, Oliver. That’s what you do, you save people. That’s what you said, that’s what you do.” His words came out in a frantic rush, similar to her babbling, but much more deranged, a hint of madness in his tone.

To her surprise, Oliver lifted his hands, nodding along. “Okay,” he offered quietly, peacefully, “Okay, Stanley. Just tell me what’s going on. Tell me who is after you, and we can take care of it together.”

God, he wanted to believe him. But was he lying?

Felicity watched, perfectly still, as the man choked on a sob. “That’s all I want,” he blubbered, “you and me. Being a team again. Together again. That’s all I want!”

“All right, Stanley, then you need to put the gun down.”

It was a trick.

Stanley shook his head, his eyes sparking. “I fell for your lies before, Oliver. And you locked me in that room. You left me. You left me!”

“I had to save those people, Stanley,” Oliver answered lowly, keeping his voice even despite the escalating man before them. “I couldn’t leave with you and let them die. That’s not who I am. I know you understand that now.”

Of course. He understood. He understood better than anyone in the world. Better than Felicity Smoak.

A long moment of silence passed, and then Stanley shifted the gun, training it on Felicity. Without taking his eyes off of Oliver, he mumbled, “I need to talk to her. Alone.” Oliver held his arm out, caging her in behind him and simply shaking his head. “I need to talk to Felicity,” he repeated.

Stanley’s hand shook.

Oliver didn’t answer.

Stanley waved the gun. “Either I talk to her or I kill her right now!” He screamed, veins popping in his forehead as his face turned red.

“Okay!” Felicity yelped, reacting to the man’s snap of sanity. But her husband held on tighter, keeping his eyes trained on Stanley like he was just waiting for the moment his guard went down and Oliver could pounce. The problem with this man, like no one else they’d faced before, was that he didn’t have a guard to let down. There was no logic, self-preservation, or strategy to be found in his eyes.

And this could end very, very badly.

There wasn’t a bone in Felicity’s body that doubted she and Oliver would both be dead in ten seconds if Stanley didn’t get what he wanted.

“Oliver…” she mumbled, loud enough for Stanley to hear, “it’s okay, he just wants to talk. He’s your friend. I know him, we’ve met.” She nodded to Stanley, watching as he nodded back, “he wouldn’t hurt me.” Felicity lied through her teeth, but it had the desired effect.

Good, she understood. He didn’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve to be hurt.

Stanley nodded, “yeah, yeah,” he exclaimed, relaxing a bit. “She’s right, I just want to talk!”

Felicity ignored the knot in her stomach, her instincts screaming at her, and quickly slipped out of her husband’s protection. His hand shot out to stop her, to pull her back, and there was suddenly a bullet in the steel refrigerator door right next to her head.

Oliver let out a pained noise as Felicity flinched from the boom of the gun. She squeezed his hand, meeting his eyes. Offering him some silent assurance, trying to calm the erratic breaths heaving in his chest. And then she pulled away from him again, knowing that the next bullet would be in her head, or Oliver’s, if they didn’t comply. Quickly.

Stanley seemed even more worked up after firing the gun, and Felicity saw that his grasp on reality was not quite right. She approached him with open hands, her heart sinking into her stomach because she could see the look in his eyes. Any lick of reason he’d had was released with that bullet.

So, she almost expected his next move. It was written all over his face, but she didn’t know how to avoid it.

As soon as Felicity was close enough, Stanley grabbed her, spinning her around and pulling her back against his chest so she was facing Oliver. She watched her husband’s expression break; murder all over his face, and he lunged forward.

Oliver made it halfway across the kitchen before she felt the cold gun pressed against her temple. And Oliver froze. Stanley dragged the gun down her cheek, caressing her with it, his breath heavy in her ear. It made her skin crawl. “Pretty blonde hair and smooth skin,” he whispered as if the words were just for her, but Oliver heard.

His jaw clenched with a rage she hadn’t seen in him in a very, very long time. “Let. Her. Go.”

“I can’t,” Stanley groaned, and Felicity could feel his hands shaking. In fact, his whole body was practically shaking like a leaf.

He was scared.

“I can’t,” he repeated, whipping his head back and forth. “She has to come with me. Every Oliver Queen needs a Felicity Smoak, every Green Arrow needs an Overwatch. I can’t let her go! She has to come with me!”

“Stanley,” Oliver said evenly, holding his hands up in surrender, yet Felicity could see him inching closer, his movements too subtle for the unstable man to notice. “You were a good friend to me at Slabside. And we can be friends like that again. But not if you hurt her. If you hurt Felicity, I can’t forgive you. And I want to forgive you.”

He does?

“You do?”

“Yeah, Stanley,” Oliver lied, “I do. If we’re going to stop those people who are after you, then I can’t be worrying about Felicity.”

No, no, no. That wasn’t right.

“She’s a distraction…” Stanley replied slowly, the gun pressing a little harder against her head.

“No, no!” Oliver got his attention back. “The truth is, there aren’t many people I can trust right now to keep my wife safe,” he let out a deep breath. “You always had my back in that prison, Stanley. We worked well together. I need people like you that I can trust.”

She could tell that Oliver’s approval, his praise, was exactly what Stanley wanted to hear.

It’s what made him hesitated. What distracted him.

Felicity met Oliver’s eyes, and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.

“I wouldn’t have made it out of there alive if it weren’t for you,” Oliver continued, seeing the way Stanley relaxed at the same time that Felicity felt it. “And I could really use your help now. Keeping my family safe.”

“You’d trust me with Felicity and William?” Stanley asked, turning his face into her hair, making her shiver. Feeling his nose in her hair made her want to take a twelve hour shower. And she hated that he knew their names. That he’d manipulated Oliver into some semblance of friendship. Judging by the flash of anger in Oliver’s eyes, the short snarl of his lip; he felt the same way.

“Of course,” Oliver nodded anyway. “You coming here proves to me that you’re a loyal friend. I trust you with their lives and my own.”

“Oh, Oliver,” Stanley finally, finally exhaled, “you have no idea how good it is to hear you say-” as he relaxed, he loosened the gun.

Without any thought, Felicity turned her head and bit his hand as hard as she could.

Stanley cried out, dropping the gun to the floor.

The next thing she knew, Oliver was on her, gently but firmly pushing her to the side before he laid one solid, knockout blow to Stanley’s jaw.

As he fell, Felicity kicked the gun, across he room, far away from the unconscious, unhinged man at their feet. She breathed heavily, looking up at her husband.

“Come here, come here,” he panted, reaching for her and pulling her into a tight hug. His arms wrapped around her like a fortress.

“From now on,” she mumbled into his chest, her voice muffled, “your friends are being put through a very strict vetting process. Conducted by me.”

He laughed breathlessly, but there wasn’t much humor. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, holding on to him tighter as he pressed kisses into her hair. His lips skimmed down to her temple, touching the same spot the gun had been, kissing her there. “We’re okay.”

#Arrow #Olicity #Olicity fic #Olicity fanfiction #Arrow Season 7

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

Text

Coldflash Bingo - “Subversive” (Rated PG)

Summary: When Barry discovers something dangerous hidden underneath their daughter's bed, he jumps to conclusions that prove the trust Len broke between them hasn't entirely healed. (1757 words)

Notes: Written for the @coldflashweeks Bingo card prompt 'Father Len'.

Part 6 of Father-hood

Read on AO3.

“Did you have a good time at the museum today, Bug?” Len asks, fishing a ring of keys out of his pocket.

“Yup!” Lisa chirps, beaming at her father as if today, Friday April 12th, were Christmas. “Loads!”

“Really? It’s only what? The fifty-six hundredth time you’ve been there?”

“True, but I rarely get to go there with you.” She takes his arm and hugs it tight. “Thanks so much for agreeing to chaperone this time.”

Len stops messing with the front door and drops a kiss on the top of her head. “Any time. The Central City Museum happens to hold a special place in my heart. I’m sorry that I was nabbed by security for clearance before I could go in. I hope that wasn’t too embarrassing for you.”

“Nuh-uh! That was awesome! Watching you get interrogated by CCPD like some undercover super spy, knowing they were going to let you go the second they called Dad! But it wasn’t entirely fair, either.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, you got marked for being an ex-criminal. But there are a bunch of kids in my class whose parents actually are criminals. Like every day.”

Len arches an eyebrow. “Like who?”

“Donna Bright’s dad is insider trading. Liam’s mom prints counterfeit coupons and sells them on the Internet. And pretty much every single one of Patty Roster’s older brothers are selling drugs.”

“You don’t say …” Len files that information away, making a mental note to do a background check on the parents of everyone else in Lisa’s grade. “That’s good to know.”

He finally gets his key in the lock and the door open. The second they do, they’re greeted by a sizzle of red and a pair of fiery eyes.

“What is this!?” Barry demands, holding his hands open for Len and Lisa to see.

“What’s what, Daddy?” Lisa asks, looking at her father strangely.

“Yeah. Don’t play the pronoun game with us, Red. We just walked through the door.”

“This!” Barry looks at his hands, but there’s nothing in them. He rolls his eyes, zips back upstairs, and returns, holding something that looks suspiciously like a gun up to Len’s face.

“Oh, that.” Len grins. “That’s …”

“… a cold gun! I know! I found it in Lisa’s room! And it’s child sized! I mean, where would you even get something like this? Actually, don’t tell me! I’m sure you have all sorts of connections in the seedy black underworld of Central City …”

Len snickers. “Seedy black underworld? And you say I talk like a comic book villain.”

“… and if you tell me about them,” Barry rants on, “I’m going to have to run out and round everyone up! You included!”

“Daddy?” Len feels Lisa grab his hand and squeeze, genuine fear vibrating through her whole body.

“Now hold on, Red. Don’t start jumping to any conclusions.”

“How can I not when I find things like this hidden underneath Lisa’s bed?”

“Why don’t you ask me what that is before you start talking about dragging me off to Iron Heights … in front of our daughter?”

“I’m sorry, Lisa,” Barry says to his frightened little girl. “I really am. But this is serious, Len! I know you like to play around with her, break into STAR Labs and Queen Tower, and we all indulge you. But there has to be a line! This isn’t a toy and it isn’t a game! This can have a very real effect on her life! We talked about that!”

“Yeah, we talked about it,” Len says. “That’s why I didn’t give her a cold gun!”

“Oh yeah? Then how did she get this?”

“I built it!” Lisa interjects. “Mommy helped me!”

“I find it hard to believe that your mother would help you build a cold gun!”

“It’s not a cold gun!”

“What is it then?”

“It’s a polarizing deflector,” Len declares, though not entirely square on what those words mean. The gun in Barry’s hands is heavy and expensive – that he knows. “Otherwise known as a digital beam steering device. Lisa designed it for the school science fair, and Felicity had Cisco build it. Lisa asked him to make it look like my cold gun because she thought it’d be cool.”

“But I don’t like the color,” Lisa admits. “So I’m going to re-paint it. Pink, I think.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Barry asks.

“Because I wanted it to be a surprise! That’s why I hid it under my bed. I didn’t think you’d look there!”

“If you’d stop hiding Brussel sprouts under your bed, I wouldn’t have to look under there!” Barry runs a hand through his hair and goes quiet. He’s thinking, but he doesn’t lift his eyes to look at them, and the expression on his face, Len can’t read. It’s a mixture of anger and confusion, sadness and defeat. It breaks Len’s heart because he never intended this discussion to end this way – not with Barry looking like he’s lost some huge battle when there wasn’t one.

“Hey, Lisa?” Len puts a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and steers her toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you go grab yourself a snack while I have a little one-on-one with your father?”

“Yeah, okay,” she says, taking her science project out of her father’s hand along the way. “I’ll need to give this a once over. Make sure it wasn’t wrecked or anything.”

After that remark, Barry’s expression goes from defeated to downright fractured.

Len waits until Lisa rounds the corner to the next room before he speaks. “What’s up with you, Red? You’ve been seriously on edge the past couple of days.”

“I have not.”

“Whatever. I know you weren’t too thrilled about missing the field trip today.”

Barry shrugs, but he still doesn’t look at his husband. “I always go on the field trips. I’ve been going on them for years. But she wanted to take you this time around. No harm, no foul.”

“I’m not buying that and you know it.”

Barry shakes his head. Len puts a hand to his husband’s chin, turning his face so he can see his eyes.

“Talk to me, Bare. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

Barry sighs. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. You don’t deserve it.”

“I’m a big boy. I think I can take it.”

“It’s just … when Felicity had Lisa and we brought her home, I had so many dreams, so many visions of how she’d grow up. How she’d turn out. When you took off, it was just me alone with our little girl, and for a while, she was my mini me. But she’s growing up to be like you more and more every day. And that scares me a little.”

“I wasn’t always a criminal, Red. Once upon a time, I was a little kid like Lisa who wanted to grow up and become something other than my dad. Someone worth knowing. But I lost my way. I’m trying to go back to that. Marrying you, having Lisa, those were all steps in that direction. And I messed up. I know I did. But I’m back on the right track.” Len tilts his head, looking at Barry through narrowed eyelids. “Would it be so bad if our daughter turned out more like me than you?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Barry says quickly, genuinely. “I think I’m a little jealous that somehow you became the fun parent, and I ended up the strict parent.”

“Oh, Red.” Len wraps his arms around his husband’s waist. “To be honest, I don’t think either of us is the strict parent. I think you’re better at making sure she eats her vegetables and gets to school on time. Otherwise, we’re pretty much the same. A regular bowl of fun.”

Barry shoots Len a confused look. “I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or not.”

“You should.” Len pulls him close, kisses him softly on the lips. “And along the vein of being fun parents, I recommend blowing off the rabbit food for tonight and ordering in. Pizza, chicken wings, something deep fried and dipped in chocolate ...”

Barry chuckles. “Not that fun. You’re having a salad with that.”

“As long as it’s a taco salad, it’s all good.”

“You know there’s no such thing as a taco salad.”

“There’s no such thing as a Rocky Mountain Oyster, either, but you don’t see that putting a dent in that industry.”

“Ugh!” Barry pulls a face in disgust. “Fine. But you can order dinner. I don’t have it in me to voluntarily order that much cholesterol.”

“I remember a time when you’d eat that for breakfast.”

“That’s before we had Lisa.” Barry shrugs. “Priorities change. People change.”

“Yes, they do. Please try to remember that more often, will ya?”

Barry nods, then zips away upstairs to finish clearing out rotting food stuffs from under his daughter’s bed before dinner time.

With her father gone, Lisa returns to the living room, apple in one hand, her science project in the other. Barry is right, Len thinks. She’s gone from straight-laced future forensic scientist to Rogue-in-training in a few short years, and Len does feel guilty about that. But he feels a tremendous sense of pride, too. Lisa has positive influences out the ying-yang – Barry, Felicity, Oliver, Cisco, Dr. Snow, Kara Zor-El, all the heavy hitters. A few of them even have their own trading cards. She’s being raised by a community of the smartest, most law abiding and compassionate people on the planet, and it shows. She’s the smartest in her class, and well on her way to skipping enough grades that she might graduate college before she turns eleven.

But somewhere in that exceptional young girl, along with the bright and shining future as a hero and the potential for a Nobel Prize, there’s room for him, too.

She’s the most perfect human that’s ever entered his life. She’s never judged him for being low brow or for his past.

Or for the company he keeps.

She’s the coolest person he’s ever met in the whole damned universe, and he gets the privilege of calling her his daughter.

Len gives his daughter a side-eyed smirk when she shoulders her gun. “Well, then … should we tell Daddy about the matching parkas we bought?”

“No way! Did you see that vein throbbing in his neck?” she says, taking a bite of her apple. “I’m not sure he can handle that right now.”

#cf1bingo2019 #coldflash #barry allen #leonard snart #the flash #captain cold #frankie wrrites

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flurrywhipdies · 5 years

Text

Corrupted - Ch. 1

This chapter is quite short but I will add some changes once I publish it on Wattpad. :D

Enjoy.

"Cyan, LOOK OUT!"

Something exploded behind him, and he launched quite two feet into the air because of its impact on the ground. He landed with a loud thud and his face scraped the ground, earning himself a nasty scratch on his right cheek. He groaned as he tried to stand up, arms wobbling like jelly as he tried to push himself off the ground.

But as he did, something large and powerful and what felt like a huge claw violently grabbed ahold of his little blue neck, the sudden weight making his arms collapse and caused his face to smash against the hard dirt. Blood leaked from his lip. The claw was blocking his windpipe, almost crushing it as it lifted him clear off the ground.

He snapped shut his eyes as he desperately thrashed around in its grip, opening his mouth to scream yet unable to make a single sound. He tried clawing at its arm, he even tried kicking even though his legs couldn't even reach its huge body, but it was no use.

With difficulty, he opened his eyes little by little, and what met his gaze, the creature that was currently crushing his neck, was absolutely terrifying.

Whatever it was, another one of its claws was raised above its head like a deadly set of blades, a nasty, psychotic grin of pure evil plastered on its face. It looked ready to strike into his heart, and then it would be over.

One of its milky white eyes with pink edges had a psychotic, crazy tic that pulsed rapidly, as if dancing with victory. Its glare was bright and dazzling, and the look of death was swimming in them.

He couldn't stop it. The claw launched itself towards the direction of his chest . . .

...

A gust of wind blew across the beautiful green hills of Paradise.

Ah, spring.

Cyan's second favorite season of the year after winter.

The nice chilly breeze blew across his face from his right as he leaned against a tree, hidden under the shades provided by the leaves, with his arms folded across his chest. It was refreshing. The end of his striped blue scarf billowed slightly from the soft wind, his bright cyan hair bouncing along with it.

The blue square teen, who was only nineteen at the moment, was quite alone, but he was enjoying the somewhat rare moment of solitude. As his name suggests, Cyan's hair and skin were bright cyan all over, like the colours of an exotic lake, and his pupils were the colour of a deep blue ocean, pure beautiful blue sapphires embedded in his eyes, which had unintentionally charmed countless fangirls. Bangs of his blue hair swept to his right across his literally square face and his closed right eye. He was wearing a simple navy blue blazer jacket which sleeves only reached three-quarters of his arms with a white shirt underneath, and black short pants that barely reached his knees.

The wind was so relaxing he felt like getting a shuteye right there and then. Just as he was about to doze off, his sharp hearing alerted him of faint, indistinct footsteps on the grass of someone walking towards him.

He groaned internally. Why now of all times? As he wasn’t feeling like meeting anyone else, he kept pretending to be asleep.

Cyan kept his eyes closed as the person approached him. He wanted to keep doing that, but not until he heard the soft, mellow voice of his one and only girlfriend.

“Cyan, I know you’re awake,” Kinn giggled. Cyan blushed with embarrassment and immediately gave up.

“Fine,” he smiled at her, before stretching and yawning. “You sure nobody followed you?”

Kinn nodded. “‘Course I am. I know how much you needed some alone time so I came here on my own.”

She sat down next to Cyan before zoning out as she watched the clouds above moving slowly while enjoying the spring breeze. Kinn was a beautiful young woman. She was about three years older than Cyan, and for some reason she was much taller than him. Her beautiful strands of short periwinkle blue hair was soft to the touch, bangs swept across her squarish forehead similar to Cyan’s, and her deep blue eyes were wide, pure, and innocent. Cyan had never seen her wear clothes with short sleeves, and even though she wasn’t wearing her favorite light blue sweater, she was wearing a hoodie jacket with the same colour, hiding her soft sky blue skin underneath. Her eyes were closed as she leaned against the tree next to Cyan, a soft, calm smile on her face.

Cyan secretly smiled. Perhaps he really did need her company. The only reason why he wanted to be alone was that he was extremely popular. Almost everyone in Paradise knows about the amazing Quartet, the group of four shapes who saved Paradise from a terrible power called the Corruption. The Corruption was some sort of ‘virus’ that can spread everywhere, everyone and on everything, turning them ‘pink’ and control people’s minds, and if it succeeds, painting the entire world with pink, as if someone had poured a giant bucket of pink paint over the lands. Anyone with a weak will can get Corrupted in a single second.

But the Quartet — Cyan, Equilia, Verdan, and Ferris — all harnessed and shared the full power of Purity itself, so powerful that the Corruption cannot take over them. It can hurt them, yes, but it can’t ever control them. Not too long ago they managed to banish the Corruption and the Queen off of Paradise, and Purified everyone who survived. They became legends.

Cyan was rather happy that the past Corruption happened. Because of it he met new friends, the fellow protectors of Paradise, got himself the kindest, purest girl in the world as a date, and became famous for saving the world. But being famous has its downsides, of course.

Everyday, groups of the Quartet’s fans would find them and ask for autographs, pictures, and even flirt with them, which Cyan found repulsive. He had a girlfriend for heaven’s sake! Usually when the crowds find him alone with Kinn, she would wrap her arms around him, lift him up, and run as fast as she could away from the crowd.

At least he was alone with her for now. He breathed in the sweet spring air again.

And groaned internally again when he heard more footsteps.

It sounded like multiple pairs of legs, but not more than five. He could already guess who they were and completely gave up trying to sleep.

“Hey, Cyan!” a feminine voice called, and Cyan opened his eyes and looked over to his right to see his best friends — Equilia, Verdan, and Ferris.

Of course, just like every other shape in Paradise, the Quintet’s heads (including Kinn) were all shapes. Cyan and Kinn’s was a square, though Kinn looked more like a soft-edged cube, Equilia’s a triangle, Verdan a pentagon, and Ferris a circle. But the Quintet was unique, because somehow not many of Paradise’s inhabitants had simple shapes for heads.

“Hey, Lili,” Cyan greeted back. Equilia smiled. Equilia, or Lili for short, was an optimistic teenager, just about Cyan’s age but a few months younger, and she was one of Cyan’s closest friends ever, but of course more of a best friend than a crush. Her charming olive yellow eyes were wide, and she was beaming a happy smile on her sunny-yellow skinned triangular face. She was wearing her trademark milky yellow hood that hid the back of her head, neck, and her entire torso and arms. She told Cyan once that it made her look mysterious, and she loved it. Covering her legs was a pair of baggy black trousers.

The pentagon, Verdan, or often referred to as Dan, was calm, cool, and collected, but any updates on his favorite fandoms and he’ll completely lose it. His skin was a bright grass green, and a few bangs of his hair with the same colour hung on his head, barely grazing his right eye. His eyes were a deep forest green, similar to emeralds. He was smiling a calm smile, but hidden behind those calm forest green eyes and warm smile was a priceless humor. Verdan was the jokester of the group despite his calm attitude, usually bringing smiles to the rest of the Quintet’s faces whenever they feel down. Usually he would be wearing his favorite red basketball clothes, but at the moment he was wearing a black hoodie jacket with a dark green pentagon pinned on his chest and trousers similar to Lili’s.

Ferris was quite the innocent girl, but not as innocent and pure as Kinn. She was the youngest of the group, being eighteen years old while everyone else was nineteen, but except Kinn, who was already twenty-two. Her eyes were bright orange, with a hint of yellow like honey. Of course, her skin and hair were a zesty orange, like the sunset but a bit more neon. Her curly hair stuck up messily on her forehead while the rest of it was tied up in a curly ponytail. She was wearing the exact same clothes as Verdan but instead of a green pentagon, she had an orange circle pinned on her chest.

“Where were you?” Ferris pouted. “We walked everywhere trying to find you.”

Cyan yawned as he stretched. “Escaping fans, what do you expect?”

“Y’know, Kinn coulda helped you on that matter,” Verdan smirked. Every time someone mentions Kinn, Cyan’s face would blush ever so slightly, but he was able to hide the red-and-blue contrast on his face this time.

“Yeah, but I’m not in the mood to even see their faces,” he retorted.

Verdan laughed. “Anyhoo, I think Luna wants to see us, and Kinn,” he then said, a more serious expression on his face this time. “She said she wanted to show us something important.”

“Luna? Why?” Cyan asked, confused, as Kinn blinked. Luna was an old acquaintance of theirs, a unique shape with helicopter propellers on her back connected with floating white pearls. They had befriended her and worked together with her back when they saved Paradise from Corruption a few years ago, but she then preferred to stay alone after the incident. So it was strange for Cyan to have her call them all on something.

Because that would mean bad news, wouldn’t it?

Hopefully not.

Cyan pushed away the thought into the back of his mind as he stood up. Verdan only shrugged as he did. “Not sure. But like I said, she’s got something to show us.”

“Hmm.” Cyan walked over to the group, giving Lili a quick high-five as he did.

“Let’s go.”

-C-

#corrupted #jsab #hell yes im doing this #upcoming fanfic

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raywritesthings · 4 years

Text

Still Believing

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, Sebastian Blood, Slade Wilson Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen (Pre-Relationship) Summary: Oliver isn't quite as quick to dismiss Laurel's accusations against Sebastian Blood and learns the truth about the alderman's allegiances as a result, forcing him to change his approach towards the woman he loves. *Can be read on my AO3 or FFN, links are in bio*

Oliver sat on a roof, watching the front of Sebastian Blood’s campaign office, and thanked his luck that Digg had gone home early to watch AJ for Carly. He knew exactly what the other man would be saying about his choice to monitor his recently made friend in light of the revelation about Officer Daily only hours ago at the Starling City Cannery. But he wasn’t quite as ready as everyone else to give up Laurel’s hunch just yet.

There was too much that didn’t make sense. Blood’s missing file, the fact that the Man in the Skull Mask had kidnapped Laurel after her accusations against Blood and the fact that he’d abruptly gone so public after weeks of Oliver’s fruitless questions and searching.

Daily being the man underneath the mask was just convenient. Too convenient, and it answered nothing about where the mirakuru was and who had supplied the recipe. It smacked of a cover-up, a fall guy.

Hadn’t he and Diggle pulled the same move only last year? Suspicions got a little too close and he arranged for Digg to go out as the Hood. Their plan had gone off without the complication of Diggle dying from it, of course, but the principle was the same; make everyone including the person accusing him think they were wrong, even when they were right.

Laurel herself had compared Oliver and Sebastian only recently, saying how she wasn’t quite sure she knew the real them. And she wasn’t exactly wrong in Oliver’s case, so why would she feel the same about Sebastian unless it was true? Particularly when Oliver thought he knew what she’d been feeling regarding his newest friend.

“I will take care of Laurel,” the alderman had said, and Oliver had felt something off about it, hadn’t he? That wasn’t a blind spot. That was gut instinct, the kind he had honed on the island to warn him when he was in danger. Only it hadn’t been about him this time, it had been Laurel.

She’d been well and truly taken care of, hadn’t she? Discredited, fired, and forced to kill. If Daily had been the one behind it all, raiding her apartment for the drugs she’d taken would have been enough to silence her. Why even risk his life?

Oliver knew Laurel wasn’t in a good space right now, that most were willing to dismiss her as an unreliable witness. She needed help, but if Daily wasn’t really the Man in the Skull Mask then she and countless others were still in danger. He owed it to her and the people of this city to be certain beyond a doubt that Sebastian didn’t still have some role to play.

Down on the street, there was movement as Sebastian left his campaign office with three other men in tow. They got into a car driven by a fourth man that was parked out front and pulled away from the curb. Oliver quickly descended from the roof to his bike stowed in an alley and followed at a safe distance.

It would be easier if Felicity were on the comms to follow Sebastian’s car on CCTV, but she likely quietly agreed with Digg, so Oliver couldn’t involve either of them until he had proof. It was a good thing he was practiced at tailing the old fashioned way.

Sebastian’s car pulled up outside an otherwise unremarkable office building, and he and his entourage entered it. Almost all the lights were out in the building, so it was easy to see just where they might be headed for. Oliver made his way around the building, onto the roof, and rappelled down between windows, staying out of sight flush against the brick.

He stopped his descent when he was level with the office still lit with a single lamp and only managed to make out Sebastian’s voice because the man shouted with such clear relief.

“It's done! They think it was all Daily. He sacrificed himself for our cause.”

So it had been a setup after all. Laurel hadn’t been wrong. But then, was Sebastian truly the Man in the Skull Mask, or was he merely reporting back to the real one?

Oliver heard the low murmur of a voice he could not quite make out, yet something about its timbre sent a shiver down his spine. The next thing he heard was the unsheathing of a sword.

Several gasps and grunts of pain followed, bodies hitting the floor. Oliver chanced just the briefest look and nearly froze at the sight.

Slade.

It couldn’t be real. He flattened himself against the brick again, willing himself to stop seeing ghosts. It couldn’t be Slade in there mercilessly slaughtering the men Sebastian had brought along with him. Slade was dead. Had to be.

Yet his one-time friend’s voice continued to taunt him through the glass. “Your incompetence has now cost you four lives, alderman. Fail me again, and yours will be the fifth.”

It couldn’t be a hallucination. Hallucinations didn’t cause real damage, kill real people. Hallucinations didn’t provide a radical alderman with a sample of the mirakuru that he could turn into a new batch for a new legion of super soldiers. The pieces were all falling into place now, and he was left feeling frightened and a fool.

He should have snapped his old friend’s neck when he’d had the chance, even if the thought roiled his stomach now. How many lives had already been lost because he hadn’t?

Oliver heard heavy footfalls and no more because he fled. If it was Slade, and he caught Oliver here—

What did it matter? He was already caught. Slade had gotten into his city under his nose and begun an operation. One that included Sebastian Blood becoming mayor and Laurel being silenced.

His blood ran cold. Laurel. Slade knew better than any just how much she meant to Oliver. He could have had her killed at the cannery if he’d wanted. Which could only mean he had something worse planned.

Oliver stopped in another alley some streets away, struggling to draw breath. He didn’t know what to do, how to keep her safe. He needed to keep his distance and throw Slade off his game… unless that was what he wanted.

Sebastian had just put Laurel through the last forty-eight hours clearly on Slade’s orders. Slade wanted Oliver to not trust Laurel, to withdraw from her and leave her on her own. What better way to make sure she was unprotected?

Even at her best, Laurel was no match for Slade or a man enhanced with mirakuru. Oliver wasn’t always confident enough to say he was. And Laurel was nowhere near her best these days. He needed to keep her close.

He could visit her as the Arrow, let her know that she had been right, and then… what happened then? Would Laurel want to try and find more evidence? If he told her he would take care of the situation, would she even listen? She’d be more likely to go out there on her own than to just take his word for it. What was the word of a faceless man, a stranger?

Every instinct rebelled against the conclusion his mind was drawing. Laurel wasn’t supposed to be part of this side of things. She was supposed to be safe. Yet even thinking that, he could see that wasn’t the reality. The reality was Laurel was mired in all kinds of danger, from Slade to Sara’s League, and all he had succeeded in was keeping her ignorant of it.

Could he really do it? Change everything about his approach for over a year and try a new way? There was every chance she would never forgive him, but a greater chance that she would come out of this alive.

Oliver swallowed down his fear and nerves and changed directions, taking his bike further downtown instead of back towards the base.

---

Laurel dragged her feet as she entered her apartment, leaving all the lights off as she set her things down and settled on the couch. She did not have the desire to do anything but sit in the dark with her own thoughts and failures.

How could she have been so wrong? Everything had felt like it was pointing at Sebastian; his mother’s confession and subsequent death, the missing file, just the sense of unease she got around him, like there was so much more to his vision for the city he wasn’t sharing. Like Malcolm before him, she thought she could sense an undercurrent of rage to his passionate rhetoric.

Maybe she’d just wanted to be able to unmask the mastermind before it was too late, since none of them had managed it last year. Maybe she was just balking at anyone getting too close to her right now, and she’d made up some reason in her head for why she shouldn’t get close to Sebastian after all. Maybe she was just a useless addict like her father and everyone else thought she was.

How had it come to this? She’d just wanted the pain to dull a little, not to question her own perceptions of her life. Why had she been so… weak?

She wanted to tell herself that this was the wakeup call. Time to get back up and put an end to all this spiralling. But what did she have to really make an effort for anymore? No job, barely anything like friends, a disappointed father, a wreck of a love life… was there a point to get better, when there wasn’t much of a better she could expect in return?

Her lights already being off, just the slightest click of the latch on the window was the only warning she had. Laurel staggered up and back, reaching wildly for the desk drawer. Where was — had they taken her gun? “Damnit!”

“It’s just me,” the Hood’s modulated voice spoke, and Laurel felt her breath release as she slowly turned back around. He was standing there, bow strapped to his back and both hands held up. Her head slowly shook side to side.

“I didn’t think you’d come see me, after what I did.”

“You really think I can judge you for killing a man in a fight?”

If she were in a better mood, she might have smirked at that. He had a point. “No, but… I was wrong.”

“You weren’t.”

Laurel froze. “What do you mean?”

Slowly, he walked closer. “I took the liberty of following Sebastian Blood tonight. He met with an associate and told him that Daily played his part in their plan. He was just a decoy.”

Her fingers trembled. A part of her wanted to deny it — how could Daily be that fanatically loyal to a man or a cause that he would throw his own life down just to discredit one lone drunk? Just what could Sebastian be building? A part of her ran both hot and cold at once. How dare they take away what little she’d had to keep going for just to take away her voice!

“Who’s his associate?” If she knew that, she’d know more about what Sebastian was trying to do, how to stop it.

But the Arrow hesitated. “Someone dangerous.”

“Oh.” Laurel’s eyes closed. She should have seen this coming. “You’re saying goodbye again.” It was what everyone did, wasn’t it?

“No.”

She wondered if she had heard that right and opened her eyes. This close, she could see the Arrow’s mouth twist in a conflicted frown, one that seemed so achingly familiar if only she could just think straight for a minute.

“This man knows me. He knows who matters to me. No amount of removing myself from your life will change that.”

Laurel’s stomach did a strange sort of flip flop. She had always maintained there was nothing more to her relationship with the Arrow than a mutual desire to see justice done, at least whenever they were on good terms. To hear him say she mattered when she’d been doubting it herself… But she needed to keep focused.

“What are you saying?” She prompted him, hoping it sounded at least somewhat gentle. She didn’t want to spook him.

“I’m saying that I don’t know a better way to keep you safe than to tell you the truth. And I’m sorry.” There was the slightest beep of some kind of device, and then he reached up and pulled down his hood.

Even in the dark of her apartment, he was unmistakable. Laurel’s back hit the shelf behind her with a gasp, a trembling hand going to her temples.

“Ollie?”

He stared at her, his eyes still shadowed by the mask he wore. He said nothing, seeming to realize she needed a moment.

She needed more than that. She needed a drink or something because she- she’d hunted him. She’d blamed him for Tommy’s death no matter how much of a projection of her own guilt it had been. He’d probably thought he deserved it, too, and yet he’d still saved her from the Dollmaker. He’d still shown up when she’d called for help about her suspicions towards Sebastian. Because he still cared.

So much of the vigilante’s actions became clear to her in that moment with just that realization. All the times she had wondered why her, or what he really thought of her, why he seemed to want to work together and yet held her at arm’s length.

She reached out now, slowly, and he let her touch his shoulder. She needed to feel the leather of the suit he wore, the hard muscle underneath, to know he was solid and real. Before she knew it, she was hugging him.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, and wasn’t fully sure what she was even referring to. All the times he’d saved her? Everything he’d done for the city? Finally just telling her what was going on?

He brought his arms around her slowly, and his cheek rested on the top of her head for a moment that stretched between them. She wasn’t sure what happened when either of them moved, and a part of her didn’t really want to. She felt safe and warm in a way she hadn’t for all that time since the Undertaking, and she didn’t want it to go away.

“You’re really okay with this?” He wondered aloud.

She shrugged in his hold. “I always knew the Arrow was someone under that hood, and that he wasn’t choosing to share that with me. I guess now I can see why you had a reason.” He’d been unwilling to take risks with her safety last year after Vanch, not because he didn’t think she was cut out for it, but because she meant more to him than just being a good lawyer. She was important to somebody in this world.

Of course, her tired and dazed mind eventually remembered why he was even telling her this now. Laurel slowly tilted her head back to look at him. “Who is it that Sebastian’s working with and why does it worry you this much?”

She watched him swallow, eyes not quite meeting hers. “His name is Slade Wilson, and he’s… someone I knew on the island. Someone I thought was dead.”

Laurel shivered. “Was he one of the people who tortured you?” It was one of those things she couldn’t help recalling every so often, even though she hated thinking about it. About the pain he endured for all those years.

Oliver hesitated, then nodded. “For some of it. Before that, we were friends. And I… I showed him this.”

He let her go, and Laurel hugged her arms to herself at the loss of contact, watching as he withdrew something from one of the pockets of his suit. Her heart jumped into her throat.

It was the photograph. The silly little wallet-sized photograph her dad had gotten copies made of after her college graduation. He’d said it mattered more than high school anyway. Laurel had rolled her eyes at the time, but snuck a copy to take down with her to the docks, to give as a favor to the boy who’d captured her heart.

And he still had it. Had both, really. Through a shipwreck and five years of who knew what Hell, he had hung onto that photo. She’d never realized he would’ve wanted to keep it.

“Slade knows what you mean to me, Laurel, and what he’s here for is more than just to plot with Sebastian. He wants revenge, and he will use anything and anyone I care about to get to me. But most especially you. I’m so sorry.”

It was like something had snapped in her, the jagged broken bits of her fitting back into place, and she could breathe again. Could think and feel like a normal person again. Her lonely mess of a life had some sense to it at last, and she felt more like the woman she remembered herself to be. So Laurel shook her head.

“I haven’t been hurt yet, Ollie. Yes, I’ve lost my job, but that wasn’t because of you. It was because of what I was doing to uncover Sebastian’s secrets. It would’ve happened whether this Slade Wilson was in town or not.” She had to wonder just where and how Sebastian fit into this revenge scheme Oliver was talking about, but that was something they could figure out. “They probably think I’ve been taken care of, so I’m safe.”

“I don’t know for how long,” he insisted miserably. “Slade will come after you.”

“Then I’ll defend myself.”

He shook his head. “He’s stronger than anyone I know, Laurel. Including me. And…” he paused, looking uncomfortable, before saying, “you’re not well.”

She looked down at herself. The thin, frail arms. Her clothes that seemed to swallow up her slight form. Had she really let it get this far? Some of the fear and shame from before when her father had turned his back on her in the interrogation room welled back up within her, stinging her eyes, but she pushed it down.

“I can get better.”

“Really?” He sounded afraid to hope. She could relate to that feeling.

“Really. I- I thought I was alone, that you and my dad were just acting out of obligation or something. That I’d ruined everything with the Arrow… I didn’t think anyone could still believe in me.”

He’d followed Sebastian just to prove her right. He’d seen some kind of worth in pursuing it, no matter how messed up and irrational of a person she seemed to everyone else.

“I don’t want to let that down, and I don’t want to just lay down and die for some maniac with a grudge match against you. I’ll get better,” she promised.

His shoulders relaxed with a small smile, and he pulled her close again. “Thank God.” His lips pressed to her forehead for a breath.

“Ollie…”

“Yeah?”

Laurel didn’t speak. She wanted to ask just what she did mean to him that had him so worried about this Slade Wilson, but it didn’t feel like the right time. This was so new, and she had so much work to do to get back into a good place for herself. So she just held his forearms a little tighter.

“Thank you.”

She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, just breathing in the quiet space between them. It was one of those rare moments in her life she didn’t want to end. But she was starting to have trouble keeping her eyes open.

“You should get some rest,” Oliver said, as if reading her thoughts.

“So should you. You’re the one with a job to go to in the morning.”

“You’re gonna find something,” he said immediately. “I’ll help.”

She actually believed him. The Oliver who had returned from the island seemingly full of good intentions but empty promises had only been half the story. Now that she knew what lengths he went to for this city, she thought she could start to trust him again.

They pulled away from each other, Laurel reaching out one last time to cup his cheek, her thumb rubbing the edge of the mask he was still wearing. “You’re okay now?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be okay until Slade’s been stopped,” he admitted. “But I feel much better than I did. Thank you.”

She smiled. It had been a while since she’d felt like she could actually help someone. It felt good. “Goodnight, Ollie.”

“Goodnight, Laurel.”

She walked to her hallway but paused there and watched as he put the hood back up and left through her apartment window, stealing across rooftops into the night. The vigilante; her oldest friend; the man she — despite telling herself she shouldn’t — loved. Life was starting to make sense again.

She would call her dad in the morning and ask him what she needed to do to get herself out of this path she’d gone down the same as him. Just picturing the relief it would give him had her smiling. She could be more than a burden or an annoyance to people. She was more than a bunch of failures.

Those thoughts echoing in her head like a mantra, Laurel turned in for the night, re-determined to take on the world come the morning.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #oliver queen #laurel lance #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing

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