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Four times Oliver leaves and the one time he stays.
I.
When Oliver is eighteen he goes to university. Majors in business like everyone expects. And drops out by the second semester - the words go unsaid but - like everyone expects.
His mother and father are mildly disappointed, but their expectations lower and so does the disappointment as he drops out of the second and third universities. Oliver enjoys being the celebrity on campus as much as he enjoys being the celebrity leaving campus.
II.
Laurel is the first girl Oliver has ever loved and he is sure she will be the last. Oliver and Laurel. Laurel and Oliver. He likes to think that even though his body is not always faithful, his heart is always with her. Always. Oliver is young and in love and very, very stupid. When he walks onto that yacht, Sara beckoning from within, he still makes plans for souvenirs he will bring back for her, that maybe they will get chinese when he returns, and, always, what stories he will spin so that they stay together. He looks to the girl inside and thinks nothing more of the girl at home.
Oliver leaves on that yacht and does not return for five years. He thinks about the girl at home a lot during that time.
III.
The Glades are gone. Everyone’s dead. Tommy’s dead. Tommy thinks he’s a murderer. He is a murderer.
Oliver came back from the Island changed. He wanted to change the world around him. He thought if I can make the city good, then I can make myself good. Atonement for crimes he knew he had committed, crimes of blood, and betrayal, and monsters that crawled out from under your bed at night. The kind of monster he could never destroy with a well placed arrow.
“Five years”, He said. “Five years where nothing good happened.”
But Oliver thinks of the list. The one good thing to leave the island with him. The one thing that gave him purpose, life after death. Oliver left purgatory thinking he would go home, returning to a family that, while not whole, was still there and loved, and cared, and represented all that was good with the world. But Oliver watches Tommy burn, hears Laurel’s screams, and feels the flicker of a thousand homes crumbling to ashes and knows that this is hell. The island was purgatory and he was released into hell.
Survival skills are inherent in every living thing, but in some they lie buried, in the people who run into burning buildings, who place themselves in the path of a bullet so that someone else won’t feel it. Oliver does not consider himself one of those people. His reaction is to run.
RUN RUN RUN.
So he leaves Laurel’s screams behind, leaves Tommy to his cremation, leaves Diggle bleeding, leaves Felicity among the crumbling walls.
He feels much calmer when the shoreline of Lian Yu come into sight. Oliver is familiar with the monsters here.
IV.
Lian Yu is beautiful in the way that most things that can kill you are. It has hundreds of colors in its flowers and about half as many that are poisonous. The earth is soft, filled with the decaying underbrush of a healthy rainforest, flourishing in the cycle of life, and there are mines scattered frequently, inches below the brown cover, ready to blow anything that touches them to pieces.
But Oliver recognizes these dangers. Has lived with them and knows them in an intimate way and he is centered and focused here. He thinks that maybe he was never meant to leave and that maybe he just happened to be last on the Island’s kill list.
He is not okay with Diggle and Felicity arriving. Touching her, full contact with another person, brings about the memories of why he had been so desperate to leave the island the first time, of what he missed. She is warm beneath him, glasses skewed and eyes a little unfocused from the blow. Her words are breathy and flippant and entirely Felicity. He is happy to see her. Cannot be anything but happy. Diggle is there standing over them and offers him a hand, solid and firm, unstoppable force meet immovable object type stance. When they arrive at the fuselage, Felicity flits about, both logical and crushing in her argument to return. Like always, he cannot help but smile at her words. He thinks the city doesn’t need a vigilante, but Felicity knows that they need Oliver Queen.
Oliver can’t lie to Felicity. It has always ended badly, mostly with her figuring out the truth anyway.
He tells them he can’t put the hood on and his two friends stand there and call him blameless. A part of him cringes and recoils and another wants to reach out and grab the lifeline they’ve thrown for him because he wants to hear those words for the rest of his life. Felicity and Diggle bring him home and Oliver leaves Lian Yu for the second time.
His feelings are much more conflicted about this departure.
V.
It happens at a party.
Many of old Oliver’s stories began this way and often ended with possible public nudity, occasional drunk and disorderly conduct, and were always considered a success.
This one was decidedly not.
Diggle patrols the upper balconies that outline the large rectangular room, filling in his bodyguard shoes, and only his bodyguard shoes for the night. Felicity stands near the refreshment table holding a glass of red wine away from her light green dress. She’d lightly claimed it was the season, Christmas and Ho Ho Ho, even if I am Jewish. Oliver ambles his way over to her a soft smile already claiming its spot on his lips.
“Oliver.” She tips her glass towards him with a bright smile. The night off seems to be doing wonders for her mood. He nods and smiles in return.
“Felicity. I wanted to see if you were enjoying yourself?” Oliver questions.
“Oh, fine. Red wine, crab puffs and little mint chocolate pastries - what more can a girl can ask for during the holiday season?”
“I’m not sure.” He begins slowly, dipping his head towards her and extending a hand, “But I would like to ask for a dance?”
Felicity grants him with another soft smile, lingering and blinding, before grasping his hand and returning his bow with a curtsy. For once, she manages to avoid any verbal diarrhea and allows Oliver to sweep her onto the dance floor. He very much enjoys the feeling of her hand in his, the fact that she is so close he can feel the body heat, and the thumbs up that Thea shoots him from across the room. Felicity looks up at him, and then lowers her head down to his shoulder, resting it in the crook of his neck like a puzzle piece made for him. For the moment, Oliver Queen is happy and does not question whether he deserves it.
The thing about a room full of rich people is that, while security is a plenty, unfortunately, so are the number of people who find the room a prime target for robbery. Even more unfortunate is that tonight someone has decided that a room full of rich people is more than a target, and is an opportunity.
The doors crash open and four men enter the room, guns raised and bullets spray the room. Oliver grabs Felicity and yanks them hard towards the nearby buffet tables for cover. Felicity pulls him to the ground when she sees a gunman begin to sweep the room again with a wave of his gun. Oliver yells in surprise and rolls to land above her, covering her from the danger overhead. He spots Thea, belly on the ground, near the end of the table and drags Felicity towards his sister. Her dead weight is nothing to him, except, as he looks down, a sign of her approaching unconsciousness. Red spreads around her stomach, bright and growing, like a festive addition to her green dress and Oliver panics. He directs Thea to place pressure on Felicity’s wound and Felicity gasps in pain. Oliver’s hands frame her face and his eyes can’t decide to focus on her eyes or her wound. He is making deals with whatever deity exists in hell or heaven and whispering for her to stay. Oliver watches the blossoming color on her dress and all he sees is red.
Oliver is never without a weapon. There is a knife strapped to each foot, and another one easily obtained from inside his jacket. He grabs an overturned chair and smashes it over the head of the nearest gunman, the other three turn towards the sound and, with a quick trigger finger, immediately shoot. Oliver grabs the man’s shirt lapels and turns, using the unconscious man as a barrier and he feels the impact of each bullet, before throwing his body aside. Diggle is firing from above and double taps one man in the chest and another in the arm. Before anyone can blink Oliver is upon the final gunman and wrestling the gun away before then burying his fists in the man’s face. Over. and Over. and Over. Until Diggle has run downstairs and physically pulled him off and away from the violence. Everything is muddled and muted, and it feels like an eternity before John’s words finally make it through the mask of rage that contorts his entire being.
“Oliver! Oliver look at me!” Digg’s hands are on his shoulder, tugging and shoving him into awareness.
“Digg, hospital, Felicity.” His hands leave bloody traces on Diggle’s sleeves as he pulls them back towards the table where Felicity and Thea last lay. Diggle swoops Felicity into his arms carrying her out towards the arriving police cars and ambulances that follow close behind. Thea grabs his hand and follows after them. Oliver watches them load Felicity into the ambulance before quickly turning to the parking lot, Diggle is already next to him, keys out and jingling in the cold night air. Snow tumbles down from the sky and Oliver tastes ash in his mouth. Thea continues to follow her brother, still grasping Oliver’s red stained hands.
-------------------------------
Thea had left a short while ago, with both her and Diggle trying to cajole Oliver into going home as well.
“Oliver.” Diggle looks at him. “You should go, get changed, she won’t be out of surgery for another couple hours.”
But he can’t move, frozen in the hallway and every muscle in his body is screaming for him to leave and Diggle is right there telling him to go and Thea’s already left and he can’t move. He can’t move. Because the only person who he needs to hear is lying 100 feet away with her insides bared for all the world.
“I can’t.” And Oliver’s voice cracks a bit. “I’m afraid, Diggle.”
“If I start walking” he swallows, choking on his fear, self-loathing, “If I start walking, I won’t stop. I’ll run and I won’t come back and I need to be here. I have to be here.”
Oliver can’t breathe. He’s felt this before, terror so acute, of losing another person and, oh god, he thought he was numb to this. Oliver is drowning in his own fear and he comes to the startling realization that he has never learned to swim here. Diggle drags him to a chair and makes him put his head between his legs.
“Digg. Digg.” He bleats painfully. “She has to be okay. I don’t… I can’t…”
A shudder runs through his body, the adrenaline draining. It is all Oliver can bring himself to do, to sit there, unmoving, in the waiting room, unable to catch his breath.
Hours later, when they wheel Felicity out and she is sleeping soundly in her room, breathing through tubes, kept alive by drugs, and held together by modern medicine, Oliver begins to move forward. He sits by her bed and holds her hand and the world begins to come back. Oliver swears if she stays with him he won’t leave and doesn’t care how illogical the statement is because he will promise the impossible, believe in the impossible, if it means Felicity stays.
He doesn’t leave for days, glued to her side except to use the restroom. Diggle brings him food, clothes, and forces him to shower in the small bathroom. Oliver crashes on Day 3 and John drapes a thin hospital blanket over his shoulders, taking over the vigil at Felicity’s bedside.
When Diggle returns from a food run he is surprised to find Felicity awake and aware, albeit drugged. She is stroking Oliver’s hair like a safety blanket and looks completely content, which would be true were it not for the bullet hole in her side.
“I didn’t have the heart to wake him.” she croaks out,
“He would want to know when you woke.”
“Please.” She manages to squeeze out. And he hears what she’s saying.
Please let him rest.
Please let me stay with him like this, just for a little bit.
Please let us pretend we’re all okay.
So Diggle sits next to her and talks, filling in the silence.
When Oliver wakes it is like so many fantasies he’s had. Felicity is smiling down at him, hair tousled from too much time in bed, one of her hands running through his hair and the other clasped gently in his too large hand.
“So…” Felicity slurs out and smiles, “I hear I took your breath away?”
He manages to smile too. He can’t help it with her.