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schrijverr · 19 days

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Defining a Killer

Takes place during 3x14: The Return. After learning about killing Sara, Thea thinks of herself as a killer. Oliver tells her that she isn’t by opening up about his own bloody past.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: discussions of death and discussions of killing

~~~

After all the adrenaline of the day, the two Queen siblings sit quietly on the beach of Lian Yu as they wait for the day to come. Soon, they’ll be picked up and charted back to the mainland, but for now they sit by the fire, watching it crackle.

Oliver is intimately aware of Thea sitting hunched in on herself, hugging her knees. He knows the pain of guilt and wishes he could have spared her from it. She doesn’t deserve to feel like this, Sara’s death isn’t her fault, even if it were hands who carried it out.

He wants to say something, make sure she knows that it’s not on her. So, she doesn’t fall into the same trap he did of trying to make up for your father’s mistakes. He carries that burden, so she doesn’t have to and it kills him to see her do it anyway, just because Malcom wormed his way into her head.

Clumsily, he attempts: “Sara’s blood isn’t on your hands. You didn’t kill her, Malcom did by using you.”

The words are ones he’s said before and they haven’t worked then, but he needs to say something, anything, to try and break through to her.

“Tsk,” Thea huffs, hunching further into herself. “We both know that’s not true. I shot those arrows at her. Three of them. Right in her chest. How was that not my fault, Ollie?”

She looks at him, her eyes burning with rage and unshed tears. The rage isn’t directed at him, nor at Malcom, but at herself. And the rage isn’t actually rage, it’s just the emotion she feels, because it’s the emotion that’s easier than all the others.

Oliver knows, he’s been there. Which makes it all the harder to get through to her, because he also knows how many times he’s been in her shoes with someone else in his, and how he never listened to what the person in his position told him. Self-hatred and blame are hard to let go.

“You weren’t in your right mind, Speedy. He drugged you,” Oliver repeats, because it bears repeating, as often as she needs to hear it until she believes it.

“I’m a killer, Ollie,” Thea grits out. “Nothing you can say will change that.”

Unable to stop it and unsure why his brain thinks it’s a proper response to that, Oliver huffs out a snort of laughter at that.

Immediately he wants to take it back, reverse time so he can change it so he doesn’t do that, because it’s stupid. However, before he can say anything, Thea snaps: “You think that’s funny? You think it’s funny that Sara died. That I killed her? You think that’s hilarious, Oliver?”

Oef, not Ollie, but Oliver. Thea almost never calls him Oliver, one of the few people who still sticks with the name that suited him better before he set foot on the Queen’s Gambit. It’s a little bittersweet. She still sees him as who he was then, instead of the killer he is now. Bit ironic that she switched now surrounding this.

Though, it does give him more of an idea on what he wants to say next. “Speedy- Thea, I- I wasn’t laughing at you. Or Sara’s death. I promise.”

“Then why?”

“It’s just… you. You calling yourself a killer,” Oliver says, trying to explain the concepts in his brain with words.

“I killed a person. A person we both knew and loved. I did it in cold blood, she didn’t even get to defend herself,” Thea exclaims. “How is that not being a killer?”

“You’re all torn up about it,” Oliver shrugs, before cringing as he realizes how that sounds. He backtracks: “Which is good. I mean, not the, uhm, feeling bad part, but the feeling about it part. It wasn’t meant as a bad thing.”

Thea eyes him warily for a moment, then unfurls a little as she says: “You’ve been around Felicity too much,” breaking the tension as Oliver manages a genuine smile at reminder of the babbling blonde.

Then the two fall quiet again, staring into the fire.

It takes about five minutes for Thea to talk again. Oliver has been mentally beating himself up for putting his foot in his mouth during that time, unsure of how to start the conversation again, when she does it for him. “What did you mean by I’m all torn up about it?”

“You feel bad about killing Sara. It’s tearing you apart, I can see it. Killers don’t do that, Thea, they don’t. It doesn’t cross their radar that they took someone’s life,” Oliver tells her honestly, hoping the message lands without him having to get personal. He hates getting personal.

“I nearly killed Mr. Wilson today,” Thea says, not refuting him but not agreeing either.

“But you didn’t,” Oliver points out. “If you were a killer, you would have pointed that gun at him and pulled the trigger without giving me a chance to talk you out of it.”

“And how would you know,” Thea huffs, curling back in on herself from where her body language had been a bit more open before. Rejection to what he’s saying. She still feels guilty and she doesn’t believe him.

Another approach, then. Fuck, he really hoped to avoid getting personal. Trying to keep it to a minimum, he simply says: “Because I am a killer.”

Thea’s head shoots up and Oliver smartly chooses to ignore her gaze. He doesn’t want to look at her, never wanted her to know that about him, to look at him differently because of it. From the corner of his eyes, he sees her shake her head. “No, Ollie, you’re- you’re a hero. You’re not a killer, you stopped that.”

“I did stop,” Oliver agrees, because he is proud of how far he’s come in his battle against his internal darkness, but he knows that it’s there and that it’ll never fully leave. He knows who he is. So, he rightfully points out: “But that means I did kill before that.”

“That’s not the same,” Thea argues. “You weren’t killing friends, you were targeting corrupt shitheads. I worked with Laurel back then, I saw the files on some of them. You can’t compare that at all.”

Sometimes, Oliver forgets how little they all know about his time away. How much he keeps hidden, because sharing hurts, sharing shames. He’s a different man now, but that fear of everyone seeing him differently still lingers. Even if playing his old self felt uncomfortable, it had always felt safer than being himself.

Now, he finds himself on a crossroad again. He has to decide what to hide and what reveals will be worth it. Taiana flashes through his mind, how easily her neck snapped beneath his hands. Then she is followed by a slew of nameless faces that he cut through so easily, never feeling guilty or stopping for a second.

It’s not a pretty past, but he promised Thea no more lies, and he can’t risk loosing her. Not now, not over this.

Still, he tries to be vague as he says: “I’ve killed friends. Killed a bunch of people, who might not have deserved it. I wouldn’t know, I didn’t know them, they were just in my way.” He stares deeply into the flames, as if they might give him answers. “I’ve killed a lot, Speedy, during those five years. At some point, I stopped feeling bad. It was just a thing I did.” He clears his throat and looks at her. “That’s what being a killer is. I am one, I know that you aren’t.”

Thea’s eyes are wide, her mouth hanging open slightly as she looks at him, shallow breaths puffing out her chest.

She opens and closes her mouth a few times with nothing coming out, her hands twitch, as if she can physically grasp something to say out of thin air. Oliver lets her process, preferring the silence over making it worse. He can quietly await her judgment.

In the end, she softly asks: “Do you- Are you- Are you still a killer now? I- I mean, you haven’t killed anyone recently, but- but is it still…” she trails off.

“Is it still something I do?” Oliver fills in the rest of the sentence for her.

Thea nods.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I could still kill someone, if my life depends on it or the life of someone I love. I- I don’t know how I’d feel. I hope I’ll feel bad, but maybe it’s too ingrained now. I didn’t feel bad when I killed the Count. But he had Felicity. I tried to kill Ra’s, but I don’t know how I would have felt if I had succeeded.”

It’s quiet for a beat, then Thea asks: “How did you feel after the first time?”

“Sick,” Oliver answers quite easily. “It was an accident, I got lucky. We rolled down a hill, he hit his head on a stone, I didn’t. I took his clothes, never learned his name, but I’ll never forget his face.”

“That’s- that’s horrible, Ollie,” Thea says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he smiles at her, pretending that it’s not a lie. That first kill was a turning point for him and he knows it. It was necessary. He would have died otherwise. But sometimes he lets himself wonder who he would be, if he had never taken a life. He had hoped Thea would never have to wonder, but here she is.

Shado comes to him, and he says: “The second time was somehow less bad. I felt justified. I shot this man, who’d been tormenting us for a year. He had a knife to my friend. Killing him saved her. Saved all of us. It was heat of the moment. The third time was the worst, more purposeful. Beat a man to death with a rock. I didn’t have to. The others told me to stop, but I didn’t. I just kept hitting until he stayed down.”

He doesn’t look at Thea directly, but he sees her perk up with interest and a bit of horror and confusion. He knows he rarely talks about those years. Thea has always been curious about them, wanting him to open up, but having resigned herself to never knowing.

Oliver had resolved to never tell, yet being here, back on Lian Yu, it makes all those memories come to the surface. It makes him want to share a bit of it with Thea.

“A friend,” he continues, voice growing tight as he talks about Shado, “told me that nothing can make you something you’re not. Everyone has a demon inside of them. She talked about the Ying and the Yang; the opposing forces inside all of us. The darkness and the light, the killer and the hero.”

He gives himself a second to remember her, standing in that lake with him, gently cleaning his face of the blood he spilled in her defense.

Then he takes a deep breath and looks at Thea again. “I used to let the killer lead, now I’m trying to balance what I did as a killer by trying to be a hero. You’ve had your darkness, but you also have your light. You’ve killed, but you’re not a killer. You can become one, but you can also become a hero. And I know you’re more a hero than a killer, Speedy.”

Thea, for the first time since she found out, smiles at him. It’s a bit wobbly and watery, but it’s a smile. He’d give anything to keep her smiling, no matter how little. “Thank you,” she says.

“Course.”

She scoots a bit closer to him and he lifts his arm, so she can crawl under it like she used to do as a little kid, a small tear in his heart healing when she still does so, instead of recoiling away from him after all she’s learned about him today. Maybe this whole not lying thing is working. Maybe he’s finally getting his sister back.

They stare into the flames together, before Thea teasingly asks: “So, are you going to tell me more about this lady friend of yours that you made here?”

Shado’s death still haunts him, but he doesn’t want her memory to die due to his own guilt. She deserves more than that. Still, he’s said and remembered enough today already. So, he hugs Thea closer and promises: “I will, just not today.”

He is half expecting a fight, but Thea just huddles in closer and simply says: “Okay. But I do expect details when you’re ready.”

Oliver smiles at that, rewarding her kindness by saying: “I’ll tell you all you want to know. You already know her a bit, you know.”

“Hm? How so?”

“Remember that Hozen, I gave you?”

“Of course, how could I forget. The rock.” It’s a bittersweet joke and their hearts twinge in sync for the loss of Tommy.

Not wanting to dwell on it now, Oliver says: “She gave it to me.”

There’s a surprised inhalation of air. Thea likely gathered he hadn’t gotten it at the gift shop after finding out about all the Arrow things, but hearing its true origin is probably also different from what she thought. She asks: “And did you reconnect with her?”

Melancholy overcomes him as he looks to the starry sky of Lian Yu that he watched with Shado so many nights, knowing her grave is now nearby. He won’t see her again in his life, but coming here, passing on her wisdom to Thea, makes him feel a little closer to her again.

“I guess I did, in a way,” he says, then adds: “And I know that one of these days, when I don’t win, she’ll be there waiting. And I can tell her all about what I’ve been up to.”

“She’s dead?” Thea asks.

He nods.

“Is she…?” Thea is unable to ask if she is the friend he killed.

“No, not directly,” he says. He still feels guilty about Shado’s death, still feels responsible, but he’s been working to being in a better place. Working towards the light. He likes to think she’d be proud of him for not blaming himself.

Darkness and light. Killer and hero.

She saw his darkness, she saw the killer, but she knew he could be the light and the hero. He’s honoring her by working towards believing it for himself. And Thea will get there too.

A/N:

Honestly, I’m so emotional about Shado and what she meant and I was so upset at her death and how she died, like, my girl deserved so much better </3

Also very emo about Oliver getting her tattoo removed post-season 3 to symbolize him not needing it as a reminder of his guilt, because he realized he isn’t guilty and he doesn’t need that trauma on his back. Which he’s already working towards here.

#rr writing #arrow #green arrow #cw arrow #arrow cw #arrow 2012 #arrowverse #arrowverse fanfiction #thea queen #oliver queen #arrow season 3 #tw: death mention #dc #dc comics #detective comics

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schrijverr · 1 month

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A Second Chance at Goodbye

Instead of running into Mei in Hong Kong, Oliver and Akio run into another familiar face; Tommy. He has the most confusing experience yet, trying to keep his best friend and some kid safe, not knowing why they’re in danger or how Oliver got there.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: mentions of canonical violence

~~~

Running with Akio might not have been the smartest thing Oliver has ever done. However, at the time it was the only way to keep him alive and Oliver will do a lot to keep Akio alive. The young boy doesn’t deserve to be caught up in all of this.

The botanical garden isn’t safe, though, and no matter how badly Oliver wants to reunite Akio with his family, they have to run if they ever want to do so. Akio obviously isn’t pleased with having to leave the place where his parents were going to be, but he trusts Oliver enough to follow his lead.

Oliver doesn’t know what he has done to deserve that trust, but he cherishes it.

Tatsu and Maseo trust him with their son, Akio trusts him with his safety, Oliver refuses to let any of them down.

His time with Waller has taught him many things, like blending in. The parts he knows best are the worst for it, besides the Yamashiro house will likely be watched. If they want to disappear, they’ll have to go to the more tourist-y area, there Oliver will fit in better and Akio is harder to track, as small as he is.

He leads both of them in the right direction, taking as many twists and turns to lose their tail. His heart rate never goes down, even if they’re out of sight. His mind keeps whirring to come up with a plan beyond getting to the place where they can fit in, because they still have to locate Tatsu and Maseo, then they have to figure out why Waller crossed them and how to get out of Hong Kong without being found.

The men are still on their trail. Not in sight, but not so far they can afford to slow down. Oliver wishes he knew anyone here beyond the Yamashiros, so that he could leave Akio someplace safe and go back to take care of the men following them.

But he doesn’t, so he scans the place, more and more tourists coming in sight. These establishments are less likely to be Triad fronts, since the Triad also wants to avoid the scrutiny that comes with dealing with foreign customers. Maybe that will give them a lesser chance of being sold out and a bathroom to hide in so that they can disappear wholly for a second and regroup.

They never make it to a bathroom.

Oliver does another sweep of their surroundings, checking over his shoulder, before suddenly being in front of a very familiar face. A familiar face that should not be here.

Tommy.

Quickly Oliver calculates how fast he’ll need to get away so this won’t turn into a thing. Alone he probably could probably get away with it, but with Akio there? No chance. Besides, Tommy shouldn’t even be there, Oliver made sure he would get out of dodge. What is he doing here? He’ll need to have a stern word with his friend, since this is about to turn into shit show anyway.

“Ollie?” Tommy whispers, as if he doesn’t dare risk vocalize what he’s seeing, scared it’ll disappear. His eyes are wide and he seems completely frozen.

Behind them, Oliver hears some commotion, the men chasing them most likely. He can’t afford Tommy causing a scene. Besides, they’re looking for a duo, not a trio.

“Not here,” he hisses, grabbing Tommy’s hand and dragging him along, making sure to push Akio in front of them, so that they’d look like two Americans from the back.

“What’s happening?” Tommy asks. “How are you alive? How are you here?”

Oliver ignores him.

“Who is this?” Akio asks, sending a curious look at Tommy, but not a suspicious one. He’s too young to distrust the world like Oliver and his parents, Oliver hopes he gets to keep that.

“This is my friend, Tommy,” Oliver says with as much enthusiasm as he can. He’s always been a natural with kids and being a big brother to Akio comes easy to him. He crosses his fingers that the talent doesn’t leave him now.

“Okay,” Akio nods, easily accepting that. “Nice to meet you, Tommy. I’m Akio.”

“So the kid gets an answer?” Tommy bristles, fighting Oliver’s dragging grip. His friend has just miraculously returned from the dead in the same city Tommy’s hope was crushed a mere few weeks ago.

But he isn’t his friend at all. He’s shifty and cold, tense where he used to be easy going. There are no smiles, but a tense brow. And on top of that, he seems to have mysteriously acquired a child. A genuine, actual child. One that doesn’t look to be his.

“Yes, Akio gets an answer,” Oliver snaps. “His question is easy to answer, yours requires privacy and safety, neither of which are available right now. So if you want to live, you keep walking, right now, Tommy.”

He needs Tommy to move. He can’t have him slip through his fingers after managing to keep him out of harms way. He can’t lose Tommy. It’ll break him.

His answer shocks Tommy into walking again, which is good. What isn’t good is him being horrified as he asks: “What the hell happened to you?”

Oliver had hoped that if he were to make it home, he could hide this part of himself from his loved ones. The monster he’d become. However, Tommy is now right smack dab in the middle of it, seeing what has come of him.

“Too much,” is all he can answer. “Do you have a hotel room nearby here? Promise to talk when we’re there.”

“You better,” Tommy says pointedly, before telling him where his hotel is.

It’s different from where he was before, probably didn’t feel safe after Oliver kidnapped him from there. Guilt churns in his stomach, but a small part – that he hates – is relieved, he knows firsthand how unsafe that place was.

The unexpected tactic of changing their look with the addition of Tommy, plus the way too expensive than smart of town that they’re going to, makes it that they’ve properly lost their tail on the way. It makes Oliver breathe a little easier.

With Tommy’s wealth comes privacy, so no one sees the trio enter the lavish room. Akio’s eyes widen as he gawks at the room. “This is so cool. Does your friend own a plane too, Oliver?” he asks, voice awed.

“He does, buddy,” Oliver replies to Akio. The small light in the darkness the kid provides is worth more than gold to him. Then he turns to Tommy, surprised he hasn’t say anything yet. Unable to help himself, he snipes: “A plane he should’ve taken anywhere but here.”

“Oh, don’t you dare,” Tommy snaps, anger returning to take over the fear from before. “I have more reason to be here than you. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“And that’s the best thing right now,” Oliver retorts angrily. “Do you have any clue what kind of danger you’ve put yourself in by being here?”

“It’s not like I can help it. Dad has the jet and I had to attend to business in Tokyo. My lay over had issues. What is your excuse? How are you alive and apparently in peril, which I’ve seen nothing about, by the way.”

“The bad men are trying to get us,” Akio pipes up helpfully.

“The bad men?” Tommy repeats, eyebrow high.

“Thank you, Akio,” Oliver says, giving the kid the kindest eyes he can manage right now. “Why don’t you go and take a rest while I talk to my friend here.”

Akio nods agreeable. Oliver doesn’t know what he would have done if Akio was a more difficult child. “Sure. Your friend is rude.”

That gets a chuckle out of Oliver despite it all. Amused he says: “He is rude. But I can handle him, don’t worry. Now go. Stay in sight.”

“Okay.”

“Now talk,” Tommy demands, the second Akio has sat down on the other side of the room, poking through the decorative books on the shelves. “Where did the kid come from? Or the bad men?”

Tommy says ‘bad men’ mockingly, but it’s not a joke to Oliver. He still has no clue what happened to Tatsu and Maseo. If today ends badly, the might have to tell the kid, as Tommy put it, that he’s never going to see his parents again.

“I was with his parents. We got separated,” he says tersely. Not really in the mood to play twenty questions, especially not about where he’s been these past three years.

“By the bad men?” Tommy says again, sounding disbelieving.

“Yes.”

“You can give a little more fucking information than that, Oliver,” Tommy explodes suddenly, boiling over what he’d been keeping in. “You died. We all mourned you. I went to your fucking funeral. And I’m supposed to believe you were just here, in Hong Kong? Getting caught up in god knows what?”

“Yes, who the fuck do you think kidnapped you so you would get the hell out of here, Tommy,” he hisses back. “You can’t be here, right now.”

“You were my kidnapper?” Tommy shrieks.

Okay, so, Oliver’s bad. He shouldn’t have brought it up, but he’s in now and he’s always jumped in head first, no turning back. “Yes, that was me,” he says defiantly. “It was that or put a bullet in your brain. I kept you alive.”

“What? Why the hell would putting a bullet in my brain be an option?”

“Because no one can know I’m alive. Not yet.”

“Why not!”

The yelling is escalating with every response and Oliver knows they’ll have to pipe it down if they don’t want anyone to overhear. So, he takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. Tommy has every right to be mad at him, he would be too if he thought Tommy was dead only to run into him, seemingly perfectly fine.

He needs to quickly come up with something to tell Tommy, the less information, the better. He is still caught in Waller’s trap and Tommy needs to stay as far away from her as possible.

“I’m paying off a debt,” he says and it’s basically true. “These people, they saved me. They fished me out of the water. I owe them.”

Truthfully, Oliver knows he doesn’t owe Waller jack shit. She did nothing but keep him here, further shaping the monster and turning it into her personal attack dog. To her he is nothing more than a weapon to point in someone’s direction.

If you’d asked him earlier today, his answer might have been different, but that was before the attack by the boat.

Waller is the one person, Oliver has never managed to get a proper read on. He thought he had finally earned his freedom, his ability to go home, but now he isn’t sure. From one moment to the next, he’s turned into a loose end to tie up. He doesn’t need Tommy – or anyone back home – to get their hopes up, to hear from him again, only for him to die once more. He can’t do that to them, he has seen what his first death has done to them.

Now Tommy is concerned, his anger dissipating when Oliver’s did. Tommy has always been the more mellow between the two of them. It aches how easily he forgets his anger towards Oliver to worry about him. It’s a soft emotion that Oliver hasn’t afforded himself in years.

“What kind of debt are you paying?” Tommy asks.

Oliver swallows, he can’t tell Tommy about all the violence, about the darkness that has crept into his soul and blackened it. But Tommy deserves some kind of answer. “The dangerous kind. I’m dead to the world, no one will miss me if I die, no one will think me a suspect. That’s useful to some people.”

“People who want bullets in heads,” Tommy summarizes, making Oliver flinch as he hears his own words echoed back at him. He wishes he hadn’t told Tommy that.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I can’t have you flashing my picture around town. I tried fleeing before, they threatened Thea. You know I can’t have them do anything to her.”

“God, Ollie, that’s terrible,” Tommy gasps, looking nauseated.

“I know, but it’s how it is,” Oliver replies, not actually knowing. All the shit he has been through – is still going through – has become his normal. It doesn’t register as terrible anymore.

“But if you’re use is that you’re dead, won’t they cut you free if you’re alive? Like, we need to call everyone right now, get the news out that you’re okay. They won’t be able to do anything if you’re alive right?”

It’s a good idea and if anything else happened today, Oliver would have taken it with two hands. But he still has to take care of Akio. And he doesn’t know what Waller’s plan is. He isn’t out of hot water yet.

“I haven’t completed this mission yet, people are still in danger. I have to get Akio back to his parents, they’re just as trapped as I am and I owe them a lot for their kindness. I can’t abandon him, I have to make sure he’s safe.”

“You’re really going to let everyone you know and love suffer, because you feel you owe these people?” Tommy can’t believe what he’s hearing. His mind is still reeling from all he has learned today, what kind of person Oliver has turned into, but this aches.

Tommy now knows that Oliver was within reach before, that he chose to kidnap Tommy and scare the shit out of him, crushing all hope he had to send him away. And now he’s again picking these people over his family. Over Tommy.

Oliver is the only friend he has ever had, the person he’s kept going for, because he knew Oliver would want him to, would want him to fight, so that if he miraculously survived, they could be reunited.

However, the more he talks to Oliver, the more it seems the other doesn’t want to be reunited. He talks about these dangers, but Tommy hasn’t seen anything besides Oliver’s paranoia and the kid’s account of there being bad men. He can believe Oliver is caught up in something, but he doesn’t feel trapped to Tommy, more like reluctant to leave. That chafes. Tommy wants to do something, get angry, shake Oliver until he sees sense, but he just stands there watching his friend.

Across from him, Oliver seems to hunch into himself a little, but Tommy only notices because he is observing very closely and knows Oliver well. Oliver rubs his thumb against his forefinger, appearing to be nervous.

Tommy almost believes the anguish when Oliver says: “I’m not picking them over anyone. I’m making sure no one gets hurt. If I leave now… I don’t know what will happen to these people and they’re my friends too. They’re also loved ones. I can’t just leave them behind. I also can’t risk saying I’m coming back, only to die, before I can do so. That would be worse.”

He stares into Tommy’s eyes imploringly, hoping the other will understand. Tommy doesn’t. How can these people be so important to Oliver, after everything? Is he going to leave, just like his father had?

“Come one, Tommy, say something. You know I’m right. It’ll break mom and Thea to get their hopes up, only to have them crushed.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re so certain that you might die.”

“You don’t know these people like I do. They’d kill a person for being an inconvenience. Going against them can go wrong, very wrong. I can’t risk doing that until Akio is safe with his parents. Please, believe me.”

Oliver is getting frustrated and desperate. He can see that Tommy’s hurt, but he also can’t budge. If he didn’t have Akio with him, this whole thing would be perfect, but Tatsu and Maseo have trusted him with the safety of their child, he can’t let them down. He has let enough people down these past few years, he can’t add another name to the list of people he wronged.

“Fine. Whatever,” Tommy spits. It’s not fine at all, but Oliver is still as bull headed as ever. Out of all the things that remain, did it have to be that? He knows there’s no convincing him.

“Thank you, Tommy, thank you,” Oliver says, sounding so very grateful that Tommy almost feels bad about the plan forming in his brain.

“Sure,” Tommy says, still not sounding very happy. “At least let me offer you a shower, you stink, dude.”

For the first time in three years, Tommy sees Oliver smile. It’s small, barely a ghost, a poor imitation of the smiles Tommy knows Oliver used to be capable off, but it’s a smile. Tommy tries to imprint it the best he can.

Oliver checks in with Akio, making sure he’s okay with everything, before he goes to the bathroom, grateful for the opportunity to get clean. With how today is going, who knows when the next time will be.

Mostly, however, he’s grateful that Tommy stopped arguing. Seeing his friend in these circumstances is both the best thing and the worst thing that has happened to him these past few years. He doesn’t want to spend what limited time they have arguing, because the time they have is limited. And that hurts.

Fuck, Oliver wants nothing more than to leave with Tommy, to go back home and be happy. But right now he’ll drag home so much shit, so much violence. He can’t do that to them. It’s better for them to remember who he used to be. Tommy sees that now. Unhappily, but still.

Now that they’ve stopped for a moment, he has time to think. Tatsu and Maseo are still out there, looking for Akio – unless they’re dead, a voice whispers that he ignores – he needs to find them. It is likely that they’ll go to the botanical garden, much like he and Akio had earlier. Waller might not expect them returning there, it would be a good place to start, though less visibly this time.

As Oliver mulls over the next steps in the shower, Tommy decides to talk to Akio a little. Oliver mentioned the boy’s parents being caught up in this. He must know something.

“It’s Akio, right?” he opens.

The boy gives him a glance that Tommy tries not to find too rude. Then he nods: “Yes, I’m Akio. Are you done being rude?”

Akio has a good attitude, Tommy can give him that. Strained, he says: “Uhm, yeah, sorry about that, just surprised. I’m Tommy.”

“Oliver’s friend.”

“Yes, Oliver’s friend.”

“I’m also Oliver’s friend,” Akio tells him proudly. “He has a sister, but he can’t hang out with her, because he is hanging out with me. He told me so.”

A fresh wave of anger comes over Tommy. Thea has had to miss her brother for years and here this snot nose is, taking her place. However, he pushes it down. Tommy has a great poker face. Instead he smiles: “That’s nice of Oliver. What do you do when you two hang out?”

“Well, today we had to run from the bad men, but usually he plays games with me when he and Otōsan come home. Oliver can’t cook very well, but Okāsan has been forcing him to help. He can make rice now and he’ll swipe me candy when he helps,” Akio recounts happily.

Playing games, learning how to cook, swiping candies? None of that sounds very dangerous to Tommy. His mind is now fully made up.

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Tommy says to Akio, fighting to keep the scowl away. “I have to make a quick call, are you okay here?”

“Course.”

He steps away and dials the number of the police. Oliver doesn’t want to tell anyone from home, but that’s because Akio is in danger. Apparently. If Tommy can get Akio with people who can help, then Oliver has no reason not to come home.

The cops pick up, luckily they speak great English. Tommy says: “Yeah, I have a kid here, ‘round nine. His name is Akio, says he lost his parents and bad men are after him. He and a friend of mine are here right now. He was trying to help him, but we don’t know where his parents are. You can help? That’s great.” Tommy easily gives the police the address.

Not soon after, Oliver comes back out of the shower, looking more clean and a little less tense. That is good, soon he’ll be able to get rid of all the tension.

“You’re in a better mood,” Oliver comments. “Not mad at me anymore?”

“I fixed the problem,” Tommy answers, feeling very self satisfied.

At Tommy’s words, Oliver’s heart drops. Whatever Tommy did, it can’t be good. He knows that his friend doesn’t have the same understanding of how problems can be solved as he does now and that he has no clue what sort of hot water he and Akio are in.

“What did you do?” Oliver asks… well, demands. Low and growly.

Tommy frowns at the reaction. “Geez, don’t thank me all at once. I called the police. They can find his parents and we can go home.”

Oh that’s bad. Very bad.

“Akio, come on, we have to go,” Oliver calls out immediately, holding out his hand and waiting until Akio has taken it, before he starts to leave.

“Are you serious right-”

Oliver doesn’t let Tommy finish his sentence. There are red dots on the wall and Oliver knows those a bit too well. Without thinking, he drags both Akio and Tommy to the floor, milliseconds before the men outside open fire.

Tommy screams loudly, though luckily not in pain. He gives Oliver wide eyes, as he yells: “Why are the police shooting at us?”

“Because they’re not the police,” Oliver yells back. He knows how easy it is to intercept those calls and how easy it is to fake being a police officer, he pulled it off with Maseo when they kidnapped Tommy.

Oliver hugs Akio tightly to his chest, covering him the best he can. This is the second time today that he’s been shot at, that is already two times too many for any kid. What he wouldn’t give to make it so Akio didn’t have to go through this.

Around them, the shooting slows down. Might sound good on paper, but Oliver knows that’s because a ground team must be moving in. They’re going to have to run again soon. “Are you okay?” he asks Akio, needing to know the state he’s in before they move.

Strong, brave Akio nods and says: “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Oliver lets out a relieved breath, hugging Akio one more time, before looking around. He turns to Tommy and asks: “Is the front door the only way inside?”

“Y- Yes,” Tommy answers, shaking. He hadn’t believed Oliver when he told him about the dangers, he called the police. Now he’s getting shot at. Just what is Oliver caught up in?

“Good, I want you to get low and take Akio and go into the bathroom. These men are not just here to kill us, they’ll kill you as well,” Oliver tells him, way too calm for the whole situation.

Still, Tommy recognizes the trust Oliver places in him when telling him to take Akio with him. It is clear he cares about the kid – and Tommy tries to ignore how he didn’t take that seriously either and now both Oliver and Akio might get hurt because of it – and says: “Yeah, yeah, get low, okay.”

Oliver nods again, before saying: “Go, go, go,” pushing the two towards the bathroom as he gets between them and the door. Tommy doesn’t know what he thinks he can do against a bunch of armed men, but he’s too scared to question it when Oliver appears to know what he’s doing.

More shots are being fired and Tommy watches through a small crack as men with guns enter his hotel room. Then he watches with surprise and fear as Oliver fights them skillfully. Whatever debt they had Oliver pay, they taught him crazy shit so he could.

However, he is still outmatched. He might have one down, but the other is still on him. Tommy is about to lose hope when the one with a gun on Oliver is suddenly shot down himself. Two more people entering the room, a man and a woman, cutting and shooting down whoever is still left.

Once the danger has passed, the woman yells: “Akio? Akio. Akio!”

The couple is probably Akio’s parents, Tommy deduces, which is confirmed when Akio scrambles past him to run to them. He falls into their arms, the three having a tearful reunion. Tommy can’t imagine how scared they must have been for their son, if these were the bad men that were after them.

“We followed them,” the man tells Oliver, who nods seriously. It’s a little creepy how much his friend looks like a solider getting debriefed in that moment.

Cautiously, Tommy comes out of the bathroom, looking at the two new people and his destroyed room. The man looks vaguely familiar, though Tommy can’t place him as the police officer, until he asks Oliver: “What is he doing here?”

“Apparently on his way to Tokyo, before there were issues with his layover,” Oliver sighs. Akio being back with his parents is good, but he wishes Tommy didn’t have to get caught up in it all.

“Well, he needs to get out. Quick. The four of us all have targets on our backs. Waller is planning something and she obviously has no issue killing anyone that gets caught up with us,” Maseo tells them.

“I can’t just go, what about you all? We can all leave together,” Tommy says. “I can pull some strings, we’ll be on the next flight going anywhere but here.”

“Waller isn’t above shooting a plane out of the sky to kill a single target,” Oliver says morosely, remembering Fyers well.

Tommy swallows at the dark look on his friend’s face, the ease with which those words fall from his lips, as if that is not an insane thing to do. When the parents arrived, a bit of hope appeared in his chest, but it seems like his friend is slipping through his finger again.

It’s further confirmed when Maseo agrees: “She has men all over the city, we won’t make it out of here alive.”

“So what are you going to do?” Tommy asks them. “I can’t just leave you here to die on me. I refuse. I’m not leaving unless I know you’re gonna be safe.”

Oliver knows Tommy means it, so he makes an executive decision: “We’re going to get to Waller first. Taking her off the board will clear the road for us.” He looks at Tommy and says: “But I can’t do that when I know you’re still here. You need to go home.”

“What? Are you crazy? You want me to just leave you here?” Tommy exclaims.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do,” Oliver tells him without hesitation. “Because no one can suspect you from anything, until Waller is gone. So, you’re going to book the next available flight, I don’t care if you have to fly economy, as long as you get away. And then you’re going to go home. And if all goes well, I’ll be there a day later.”

“And if it doesn’t go well,” Tommy points out the obvious hole in that plan.

Oliver gives him a rueful look that Tommy hates the second he sees it. He hates it even more when Oliver says: “Then we didn’t succeed and no one else has to be hurt again.”

“No one except me,” Tommy says, broken. He doesn’t know if he can do that.

“Yeah…” Oliver agrees, wishing he doesn’t have to put his friend through this. But there’s no other way, he needs Tommy to live. He knows what their own chances are, he knows that Tommy might never recover.

“I can’t accept that.”

“You’re going to have to, because if you’re here, I’ll be distracted and off my game. I need the peace of mind if I want to pull this off. I need to know that someone will look after Thea, make sure she doesn’t do something stupid, if I don’t.”

“Don’t say things like that. Like you’re going to die,” Tommy accuses, wanting to cling on to anything that will make this moment stop. Alas, the world isn’t so kind.

“It’s just in case. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You promise?” Tommy says, because he’s losing, no matter how badly he wants to fight it, he knows he’s losing.

“Only if you promise to leave and be there for Thea.” It’s a little manipulative to throw Thea in there, but Oliver knows the promise to him will keep Tommy from doing something stupid if he can’t hold up his end of the bargain.

“Of course.”

“Then I promise,” Oliver says, holding out his pinky like they always used to do when they were kids, hoping Tommy won’t see the fingers he crosses behind his back.

“Promise,” Tommy responds, looping their finger together for a moment.

The two of them hold eye contact for a moment, both of them trying to imprint the other’s face, filled with the fear that this might be the last time. Oliver didn’t get to say goodbye to Tommy before he went down on the Gambit, he doesn’t let the moment pass now.

Oliver hugs Tommy with all his might, not saying goodbye with words, because Tommy will never accept that, but pouring all the love he has into the hug.

Tommy hugs back just as tightly, trying to memorize the feeling of Oliver in his arms. He wants to believe that Oliver will come back, that he’ll keep his promise like he has always done when it comes to Tommy. But he knows the chance exist, Oliver wouldn’t have made him make the promise about Thea if there wasn’t. So just in case.

Neither of them say anything, holding on until Maseo says they truly have to go. Then they reluctantly let go, sharing one last look, before Oliver follows the Yamashiros out the door. It’ll be two more years, before Tommy sees his face again.

For now, he just stands in the rubble of his room for a moment, processing it all. He feels like a machine when he finally starts packing, numb as he makes his way to the airport and gets on a random flight to Greece. Later his father will yell at him for not going to Tokyo to do the one thing for Merlyn Global that he requested, but Tommy will just let it wash over him. Oliver wasn’t right behind him.

Oliver’s life, meanwhile, gets a lot more difficult than trying to take down Waller so that they can go, having to stop a bio attack and failing miserably at it. After what he does in Hong Kong, not just to Akio, but Shrieve as well, he can’t just go home.

He checks up one everyone, sure, fighting the temptation to crawl through Tommy’s window to tell him he’s okay. The only thing that stops him is Thea, who is there for a movie night, oblivious to the pain shared between Tommy and Oliver, though one is unaware it is shared. He can’t bring the darkness and taint her too, he can see from here that Tommy hasn’t been sleeping well. The guilt nearly swallows him whole.

When Waller comes with a proposition for a new job, he’s almost glad that she drugs him and drops him on Lian Yu. The island feels like a fitting punishment. He just hopes Tommy will forgive him for breaking his promise, if he makes it out alive.

Once he’s back home after two more years, he is terrified when Tommy walks through the door of his childhood home.

“What did I tell you, yachts suck,” Tommy jokes, not letting anyone catch on to what happened in Hong Kong, though his eyes tell Oliver that they’ll talk later.

The later is the next day, when the two go out on the town. Before they can get in the car, Tommy hugs him properly, much like he had done in that hotel room. Through tears and with a tight voice, he says: “I’m so happy you’re alive.”

Oliver has grown even less used to friendly contact, but hugs back anyway, whispering: “Me too, Tommy, me too.”

“What happened to I’m right behind you?”

“Waller,” Oliver answer simply, deciding it would be best to omit Russia, Tommy probably won’t forgive him for that. “Lian Yu was her way of punishing me.”

“Fuck her,” Tommy grumbles and Oliver laughs despite it all. It feels good to be back home with his friend again.

Not returning home to Tommy might not have been the smartest thing Oliver has ever done. However, at the time it was the only way to keep him alive and Oliver will do a lot to keep Tommy alive. His friend never deserved to be caught up in the bullshit that was the last five years.

But for now, he lets himself be glad that he is home, that Tommy is home, that neither of them died and he gets to try and be happy again. To be alive again.

A/N:

This isn’t meant as a Tommy bashing fic, I really like the guy and I totally get where he’s coming from, even though it’s the worst thing he can do for Oliver right now rip. I hoped I showed his side enough :D

#rr writing #arrow #green arrow #cw arrow #arrow cw #arrow 2012 #oliver queen #tommy merlyn #akio yamashiro #tatsu yamashiro #maseo yamashiro #arrow season 3 #arrow flashbacls #arrowverse #arrowverse fanfiction #arrow fanfic #argus oliver queen

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