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Oliver Queen is pretty sure he’s never going to grow up. Literally.
He will remain a 30-year-old man for eternity, cursed to watch his loved ones grow old and die while he… just… stays.
That’s what happens when you don’t find your soulmate. Or when you’re such an awful person that you probably never had one in the first place.
His little sister turned 47 this year, making her seventeen Physical Years older than him. She met her soulmate, Roy, when they were teenagers. She always says they just knew; they didn’t wait until they turned 30 to marry and have kids.
It’s risky, choosing to marry someone who might turn out not to be your soulmate. To build a life with someone only to have it ripped away in the years following your 30th birthday because one or both of you have stopped aging… Most married couples divorce when they realize, but some stubbornly stay together. They take it as a sign they were meant to be together forever, literally. But their sheer power of will can’t stop The Fog from descending. Eventually, it comes, a fine mist coating their worldview, dulling their senses until the day they come face-to-face with their respective soulmates.
Oliver’s mother described The Fog lifting as a jolt to the heart, the world snapping back to focus after years spent in a haze. Thea thought it terribly romantic and begged her to tell the story often. It’s now burned in Oliver’s brain, almost mocking him for what he will never get.
Moira Queen met her soulmate at a business lunch. Robert sent her to meet Walter in his stead, thinking to manipulate Walter into softening his terms of a merger when faced with a woman. Instead, Robert manipulated himself out of a wife. Oliver’s still not sure whether Robert ever regretted it, to be honest. He did, in the end, get the merger at a greatly reduced price.
Robert Queen was the very definition of a soulmate sceptic up until the day he died. He didn’t believe in the soulmate bond, thought it weakened people. He lived 267 True Years, yet died a spry, healthy 30-year-old. People assumed he’d finally cracked, driven to take his own life rather than continue his soulmate-less eternity. It’s common, after all, choosing to end your life to escape the endless years stretching before you until fate brings you face-to-face with your soulmate. Robert had had three families and built a business empire waiting for the day his soulmate stepped into his life. There was nothing left for him to conquer, and there’s only so long you can live without your soulmate before it’s all one never-ending blur.
Oliver lets everyone believe that.
In the video he left Oliver before ending his life, Robert confessed to having finally met his soulmate four years previously. Twenty-seven year old Isabel Rochev came to Star City to discuss a business partnership and ended up stealing Robert Queen’s eternity. Uninterested in the ‘love’ he was destined to share with Isabel, Robert chose to end his life before his business rivals could see him age. He wouldn’t go out with the vultures circling.
It’s kinder, Oliver tells himself, to let Thea believe their father finally caved to his loneliness. She doesn’t need to remember Robert as the man who robbed Isabel Rochev of the chance to ever know her soulmate. When Isabel turned 30, she continued aging without pause. She’ll live out her finite life never having known who she was destined to be with.
Soulmates are an imperfect science, to say the least. People can waste years of their lives believing someone is their soulmate, only to realize they were wrong when The Fog starts to set in. It doesn’t happen immediately; that would be too convenient. Instead, it creeps in bit by bit in the years after turning 30. Some are hyper aware of it and end relationships the instant they recognize The Fog. Others try to ignore it, trapped in denial until their partner realizes. Those cases rarely end well; Oliver can attest to that.
He’d been with Laurel since college. She had turned 30 first, and they were so sure they were it for each other when she said she felt the exact same as she always did. She was still aging; she knew it.
The day he turned 30, he was sure he was still aging, too. No one could have convinced him he’d stopped. He felt exactly the same day after day. Until one day he didn’t. It started slowly at first, a layer of mist descending over his world. It muted everything that used to make him feel alive.
He fought it for as long as he could. For six more years, he forced a smile, pretended to see the brightness and beauty of the world as Laurel did. But they reached a point when he couldn’t keep pretending. Laugh lines began to show on her face while his remained smooth; she dropped hints that her biological clock was nearing its end. Looking back, he isn’t sure if it’s more or less selfish of him to have told her he didn’t want children. He was already denying her so much, but there was something about fathering her kids when he was harbouring this enormous secret that crossed a line for him.
She started to drift from him as another year wore on. She was unhappy; he knew it. She started staying later at work and spent the time she was at home reminiscing on their younger years.
One day, she looked up at him from her place on the couch, photo clutched between her fingers, and he saw the pieces click into place. She was furious, and she had every right to be. There was screaming, tears, and the photo frame flying at his head before her sister was there, helping to pack up Laurel’s belongings and telling her she could move in with her and her soulmate until she figured out what to do.
Tommy came by the next day and greeted him with a fist to the face. Oliver didn’t try to deny he deserved it. It was one of the few things he did deserve, really. He didn’t deserve a soulmate, that was for sure. If he could so callously rob Laurel of the chance to build a life with hers… He deserved an eternity alone.
A couple of years later, Oliver saw the engagement notice in the paper. Laurel and Tommy were getting married. Neither knew for sure if the other was their soulmate, but the evidence remained that they’d known each other since their twenties and both continued to age seamlessly when they hit 30. After everything he’d put her through, Oliver hoped Tommy was the happy ending Laurel should have gotten all along.
Thea still hasn’t forgiven him for it all, but Robert… In the aftermath, Robert took Oliver under his wing, pulled him further into the company that, up until that point, Oliver had only been marginally invested in. It was a family business, Robert said, and one day his family would have to be around to carry out his legacy.
Oliver didn’t know how quickly that day was approaching at the time; he was just glad to have something to throw himself into. He lived and breathed Queen Consolidated, happy he could nurture something in the wake of his disaster, happy that his father still loved and accepted him after what he’d done. Robert Queen was all he had left.
Until suddenly he was gone, too. And all that was left was a video addressed to Oliver explaining the true reason. Robert’s words still ring in his ears to this day. I waited my whole life for a child worthy of inheriting this legacy. I knew the moment your sister told me about you and that Lance girl. You are the only one who can carry on my legacy as I would, Oliver. I leave Queen Consolidated to you. May you carry it to new heights I will not be able to.
The words still twist in Oliver’s gut. It wasn’t a father’s love that drove Robert to take Oliver under his wing; it was a businessman’s greed. Robert saw himself in Oliver. He knew that Oliver could be as cold and calculating and selfish as him. That was the real reason behind all of it.
Oliver wishe his father was wrong, but how could he be? After everything Oliver put Laurel through… They’re the same, he and his father.
In that moment, Oliver resigned himself to his true destiny. There is no redemption for him. He will live an eternity alone. It’s what he deserves. His soulmate, if she exists, is better off not knowing him, just as Isabel is better off not knowing Robert Queen. To wait your whole life to meet the one person so perfectly designed for you, only to find out they’re a selfish, greed-driven monster…
Whoever she is, she deserves better.
It’s this belief that propels him onward. Day after day, year after year, Oliver lives with one goal: grow his father’s empire. It’s all he has left. Thea refuses to speak to him, vehemently denies him the chance to know his nieces. She will not, under any circumstances, expose Lian and Sin to Uncle Oliver’s lifestyle choices. Oliver wishes he could be hurt, insulted, anything… But really, he knows she’s right. He may be molded in his father’s image, but he will not perpetuate that legacy. He will not encourage children to follow in his footsteps.
He is secure in his choice, throwing himself into Queen Consolidated wholeheartedly (or, as wholeheartedly as one can when they lack a heart). It’s ironic, then, that the very thing he relied on to keep him from his soulmate is the thing that undoes it all.
***
He’s irritated when he gets in his private elevator that day. His assistant called down for IT help and, once again, they sent up some bumbling idiot incapable of fixing the problem. He likes to think he’s decent with technology after all these years, but he’s far from a tech whiz. So, it seems, is every other employee they send to his office. He’s tired of wasting his time, so he demands the name of the best employee in the IT department and decides to save them all more headache and just go to her.
Everyone in the department scatters as he storms by in search of the right office. It doesn’t take long to find it.
“Felicity Smoak?” He demands of the blonde ponytail currently facing him.
The woman jumps in her seat before swiveling to face him. She looks young, maybe mid-twenties, and Oliver is about to write her off just then. There is no way this young woman can be the tech genius her colleague claims. Certainly not at her age. Oliver has found that the best employees are the ones who have given themselves to The Fog, and she certainly hasn’t. She’s dressed far more colourfully than anyone else on this floor, maybe in the whole building. The pink of her shirt is a colour he isn’t used to seeing these days, only beat in vibrancy by the bright pink of her lipstick. There’s a startlingly red pen dangling from those bright pink lips that drops to the floor as she registers who he is.
“Hi, I’m Oliver Queen,” he continues formally. He wants this over with as soon as possible. He doesn’t have time for bubbly, overly-idealistic blondes.
Felicity Smoak recovers from her shock rather quickly, her eyes flicking up to meet his. Oliver opens his mouth to explain the issue, and then her bright blue eyes lock on his and a jolt runs through him from head to toe. They’re such a bright, full blue. He can’t remember seeing a colour so vibrant in years. Everything about her, really, is just… so… colourful.
And then the reality of what is happening smacks him in the face.
Oh, crap.
***
He flees her office faster than is probably socially acceptable, let alone professional; he couldn’t stay there a moment longer than necessary. Felicity Smoak is his soulmate and she is… beautiful. He didn’t expect to be so immediately taken with her. In every scenario he’d considered, the jolt hit him and then he continued about his day as though nothing had changed. He thought he would feel more dread than anything else, but this feeling bubbling up in his chest, the sudden sharpness of the world around him… It’s intoxicating. He has no idea how his father could have experienced this awakening and run screaming from it.
And then he remembers who his father was, who he is. The Queen men are monsters at their core. No woman deserves to be bonded to that. Felicity Smoak, whoever she really is, deserves to live out her life free of his darkness.
Despite his resolve, Oliver finds himself with several IT issues that require Felicity’s personal assistance over the next few months. He can’t help himself, even as he knows he’s digging a very, very deep hole. There’s just… something about her that keeps him coming back. He can’t stop. He has no intention of acting on anything. He just… wants to know her.
They establish a routine of sorts; it’s almost a game. He brings her some bizarre tech problem, she solves it, he indulges his urge to talk to her, to learn anything and everything about her life, and then he goes back to his office and tries to forget. He never succeeds. If anyone actually knew Oliver anymore, they’d find his attachment to the IT girl bizarre. Luckily, he doesn’t have that problem.
When he finds out she’s dating someone, he’s relieved at first. Maybe whoever it is has already met their soulmate as well. When they turn 30, they’ll both continue aging, convinced they’re growing old with the one they’re meant to.
But that isn’t what happens. Her boyfriend turns 30 first, and six months later her eyes are rimmed red when Oliver emerges with a hard drive he’d ‘accidentally’ wiped. He isn’t prepared for the despair that fills him when he sees the pain darkening her eyes. He certainly isn’t expecting his overwhelming desire to bring back the lighthearted, babbling blonde he’s come to expect.
He tells himself over and over again that this is a dangerous game, one he shouldn’t be playing. He should be focusing on the company, on putting contingency plans in place. He’s dying, after all. The company has to live on after him.
But there’s a growing voice in the back of his mind telling him he isn’t really dying; he’s finally living. It’s getting harder and harder to shut it out.
***
He visits Thea in her hospital room when visiting hours are almost over. He doesn’t want to upset her; he just wants to see his sister one last time.
She surprises him by being awake, her pale blue eyes finding him standing awkwardly in the doorway. He isn’t sure what she’ll do at first. It takes him aback when she gestures for him to approach. As he does, he notices the flecks of green mixed with the blue for the first time in years. He’d forgotten that detail.
He perches on the edge of the hard, plastic chair beside her bed, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. For a long while, they stare at each other, studying the changes time has wrought. At first, he thinks he’s the only one with changes to notice, but then the smallest of smiles curves her lips upward.
“You met her,” she says, voice soft and tired with age.
Oliver swallows thickly. “I did.”
They sit in silence for a while longer, Thea refusing to break it, Oliver afraid to. Finally, his sister caves. “What are you going to do about it?”
He sucks in a deep breath. He’d considered what he would say if she asked him this. The honest answer has evaded him until now. Ever since he laid eyes on Felicity Smoak, he’s been warring with himself. He’s always had a plan for this moment, and yet a growing part of him can’t carry through on it all. Here, now, faced with the reality of having met his soulmate… He isn’t afraid to lose the life he’s worked so tirelessly for. It wasn’t ever really a life, to be honest.
What Dad should have, is what he thinks. But he’s come too far in this lie to give it away now. Thea deserves to keep her memory of their father, not have it snatched away at the end of her life.
“What you would do,” is what he says. The pride swelling in his sister’s eyes assures him this decision is right.