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Darkness.
So dark in fact that he wasn’t even sure if his eyes were open or closed as he laid in what felt like a pool of water. Or blood. Was it his blood? Did ghosts or gods or whatever in the world the Spectre had changed him to even bleed? He never had when he took the mantle over, but it was only a few days that had felt like months, since he rejoined the 7 paragons at the vanishing point. He looks over and sees it’s not blood, nor is it water he’s simply floating in a small crater in the middle of what? He has no idea. Lying beneath him is the Spectre robe shattered to pieces, the edges looking like they were seared by fire as he realizes then that he’s simply in his Green Arrow suit, the hood half on his head and half off as he moves to a seated position, as best he can, every muscle in his body straining as he does so. He groans once he’s up and tries to look around but it’s just the same darkness. Running a hand through his hair, he remembers it’s length and how much Felicity, how much his wife, would fuss over it being shorter. But not too short, he never heard the end of it when he wanted to keep his buzz cut after Slabside.
Felicity.
And just like that he’s grounded, everything slamming into him like a freight train of memories and emotions. The fight with the Anti Monitor, the energy pulsing throughout his body as he valiantly fought him as the others took on the shadow demons in a much less excruciating battle. Did they win? Did he win? His headed pounded as he hears footsteps, he goes to stand and move to a fighting position but simply can’t find the strength he’s kneeling now, trying to will his body weight to a standing position with zero luck.
“It’s over, Oliver.” He hears the familiar drone voice of the Monitor, or at least one version of him. He squints and the form comes into his view, the suit he wore bringing some light into the darkness. Not much, but it was enough. “What happened?” the broken-down man asks, his voice hoarse. The Monitor doesn’t speak he just turns and moves to walk away and once more it feels like the memories of thousands, millions, billions are flowing through him. And then he remembers what he must do, what he must do to save everyone. To save his friends, his family, his wife, his son, his daughter, to save them all. It was his destiny, or that’s what everyone wanted to tell him the last year of his life.
Focus. He focuses as hard as he can possibly imagine, after the few thousand lives, it begins to have a rhythm, returning those to their lives before this. Before this crisis, before the entire multiverse was extinguished. He makes a few changes, of course, was he being selfish? Sure was. Did he deserve it? He’d like to see the argument from anyone and since there was no manual, he added a few of his own dashes in there. Tommy Merlyn? Alive. Moira Queen? Alive. Sara Diggle? Returned to existence. He sees his wife’s memories and doesn’t dare touch them and as much as he’d love to take away his son’s pain of having lost his Mother on Lian Yu at the hands of Adrian Chase, he doesn’t. Afraid of what the change would bring into the future William he had met in 2019. Looking down at his hand somewhere along the way he notices a brighter color to his skin, no longer the grayish-pale that it had been earlier. Warmth rushes through him and he isn’t sure how to explain it.
And suddenly? It all stops. The pounding headache was gone, the millions and millions of stories in his head, they were all an afterthought. Had he done it? Had he managed to fix it all? He closes his eyes once more, his eyelids feeling heavy. So heavy. He was tired. Exhausted. And in all his years he had thought he was at the brink of exhaustion but never had he felt a heaviness like this. He subsides to the feeling and lays down, amongst the tattered robe of the Spectre whom he had become.
Forest. Trees. That’s what he sees when he awakes and he laughs, though it’s humorless and causes pain to radiate throughout him. So he had failed. His plan? It had failed. He was back in purgatory, back on Lian Yu. Of course he was. Standing to his feet, at least he found himself able to do so this time around. Then he begins to scans the environment, eyes taking in everything in front of him and he quickly realizes, this is not Lian Yu. Moving just a few steps forward there is a break in the tree line and he sees it and despite the fact that his body felt completely shaken and out of energy he runs, he sprints with all his might towards it. Moving towards the east side window and peeking through, he sees J’onn speaking with Felicity, Mia was clung to her hip and Oliver’s breath hitches. They were here. Moving his head only slightly, leaned against the nearby wall, eyes welled up with tears was William, his son.
It worked? He steps back, stunned and shocked as he watches the scene unfold in front of him. Whatever J’onn is telling his wife is shattering her and while she’s standing tall with her head high, Oliver knows. He’s telling her about his fate, about how he died, not just once but twice. About how he brought everything and everyone they had ever known or loved back – minus himself. Oliver feels like the conversation goes on for eons, the anticipations absolutely shattered him, patience is the key here though, his brain reminds him solemnly.
Finally, he turns and makes his exit. And someone else makes their entrance. Moving to the back door he smiles at Felicity’s fingerprint scan on the outside. She had worked so hard to make sure the cabin was well secured upon Mia’s arrival, staying up far too many late nights for her worrying husband to approve of. Pressing his thumb to the door it clicks open and he steps inside. “Felicity?” He calls out, his voice still hoarse, but he knows she’d always hear him, just like he was sure last year that she’d always find him. Stepping through the kitchen and out into the living room he stands there, Green Arrow suit looking worse for wear as he lays eyes on his wife, his strong, beautiful, resilient wife, her eyes bloodshot and the tears still rolling down her cheeks. Mia was still at her hip, the baby scanning the room, almost like she was casing it. And to his wife’s right, William, his face stained with tears and his eyes even redder than his wife’s. They’re both staring at him as he clears his throat. “I…William….Mia…” His voice cracks and it’s like with those words, they shake into actually viewing and understanding the image, the person in front of them.
Oliver was back. Oliver Queen was home. His son barrels towards him and wraps his arms around him, openly crying against the green leather he wore, he leans down and presses a kiss into his messy brown locks. Holding him tightly against him with one arm as his head lifts and he looks up and locks eyes with her. With his wife. “Hey.” He says softly, in that tone, in the voice he reserved for her and her alone. She moves forward and to the other side of him, with Mia still against her and he pulls her into him, inhales her scent, as well as their children’s. Oliver takes a moment, and the ground feels steady, this is the only place he’d ever want to be. The only place. Leaning back he has tears in his own eyes, overcome with emotion. “I’m-I’m sorry you had to think, I was…” He trails off, this whole thing extremely confusing and overwhelming. Because, they didn’t genuinely just need to think he was dead, he was indeed dead, two times by his count and he didn’t want to experience it ever again. Not for another 50 or 60 years at least. Growing old alongside his wife and their children? That was his destiny. Not a sacrificial lamb, not a cop out for the universe. No, this was it.
“J’onn was right, I…I died, twice, it’s a long…it’s a dreadfully long story. I promise I’ll explain it all, but right now? Right now I just need to be with you guys. And I will need that, for the rest of my life.” His wife looks up at him and he lowers his face to her own, pressing his lips to her own, an emotional kiss shared between the two soul mates that said more in action than words truly ever could. He knows she’s confused, emotional, scared, probably every emotion in the book and that’s only ten fold for their 14 year old who was definitely as emotionally all over the place as both of them combined. “Everyone needs to think I’m dead.”
He breaks it out in the open, his wife and son looking up at him as he nods, solemnly. “Oliver Queen died in Crisis. Or at least that’s what the world needs to think, eventually we can tell John…and Thea if the time is right. But for now? It’s just us four.” Felicity looks at him and he’s afraid she’s about to fight him on it but she just nods her head. “And that’s good enough for me..” She trails off, her voice breaking as he holds her tight and presses a kiss to William’s head. “I figure my genius wife can get me a new identity. I knew I couldn’t leave you all...but I also knew I couldn’t just return to that life, I couldn’t be the Green Arrow anymore, I couldn’t be Oliver Queen anymore, at least outside this cabin.”
“I don’t care, all I care is that you’re here, we missed you so much, Dad. Mia…she’s learning new things every day..” Oliver’s heart warms at his son’s words. He had been here, in the world he had reimagined, or in this case, created, he had William stay with them and he had thus made the move to Bloomfield with them last Spring. He wouldn’t keep his son from his grandparents, the last connection he had to his late birth mother, Samantha, but upon meeting the future versions of his children and learning that they had only met in adulthood he knew he had to bring them together. And they were. William already looking like the proudest big brother in the world.
It feels like hours that they stand there, but they all know it’s only mere minutes because, a few seconds later a phone ringing breaks them from the lull and Oliver turns to sees Felicity’s cell phone lighting up on the living room table, John’s face glowing bright in the screen. “Get it.” Oliver says, pushing her towards it, Felicity nods and moves with Mia but then stops turning and placing their daughter into her father’s arms. Oliver was fairly sure he was going to fall apart right then and there, he never thought he’d be able to hold his daughter again, he was sure that the last time he saw her would be on his first death bed, but then she had come to Purgatory and now? Now he was home. And they were here. They were all here.
Felicity plays it off well, a much better liar than her husband had been all those moons ago when he showed up at her cubicle with his bullet clad laptop. It breaks his heart to hear John emotional over the phone and he trusted his brother more than anything but right now he had to believe this, he had to for now, when the time was right? They’d loop him in. They would. Oliver and Felicity needed their brother and their children needed their uncle. With Mia in his arms Oliver moves to sit on the couch, William joining him as Felicity finished up her conversation with John. She tells him that the search failed, Oliver Queen wasn’t on this earth…wasn’t in this universe, or from what she could tell any earth. John sounded destroyed when she spoke the words to him and she almost wavered but she stayed strong, Mia letting out a wail in the background which gave her a good way out to end the call.
The rest of the evening is a blur, just talking, and laughing. Actually laughing with his family, something in his wildest dreams he never would’ve imagined. William had been trying to fight sleep for most of the night and finally around 10 he succumbs and falls asleep against his father’s shoulder, Mia sound asleep in her carrier just to the side of them. They all knew she’d be more comfortable in her crib but they wanted her close, they all just wanted to stay close and relish in this. Relish in the fact that they were together again. They were a family again. William slept like a rock as Oliver held his wife in his arms, pressing kisses against every inch of her face, her cheeks, jaw line, her neck, and with each one he’d whisper just loud enough that he loved her. That he loved her more than anything, missed her more than anything. And with each one Felicity would murmur, her fingers tangled in Oliver’s long locks, “bigger than the freakin’ universe.”. And it was, their love was bigger than any universe, any multiverse, any crisis. It was stronger than any Oliver had ever known, and since he was, basically a god and had been flooded with memories of billions he knew that they indeed did have it. They had a love bigger than any universe, than any multiverse.
They were the end all be all. If the Monitor was really searching for the love paragon he was certainly in the wrong place, although none of that mattered now. It was all in the past and it was the furthest thing from his mind. Even as the president of the United States comes up on their television screen, the tv had been on low for hours now, the lull of sound helping put Mia down, both William and Felicity had told him, in almost perfect unison. She spoke of the Crisis, of one man’s ultimate sacrifice. Of one man who gave everything for their world, for the universe. Oliver Queen. He doesn’t shudder but his wife does and he moves a hand to her cheek, gently running a calloused palm against her soft, gentle skin. “I’m right here.” He reminds her quietly. “And I’m not going anywhere, for a long, long time.” And that was a promise, an oath, a vow and one he would stick to, forever and always. “I’m holding you to that..” she mutters softly to him. As he nods. “I was planning on it.” He smirks, his wife the strongest willed woman, human being on this earth or any other, he knew that she’d never let him out of her grasp ever again and he was sure that he wasn’t ever going to leave her grasp.
No place he’d rather be.
As the newscast as well as a moment of silence for the man lost comes to an end. He grabs for the remote. Moving to his feet it’s only then that he realized he was still in his suit. “Why don’t you shower and meet me in the bedroom? I’ll put Mia down.” He smirks. “Are you saying that I smell like death. Felicity Smoak-Queen?” With a raised brow, he ponders. “Too soon.” She teases pressing a kiss to his lips as she picks up Mia’s carrier gently and Oliver turns to William. With ease he lifts their teenage son into his arms and carries him into his bedroom tucking him in but not before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I love you, son.” He smiles, yet another wave of tears rolling down his cheeks.
He does as his wife asks and showers, changing into a pair of sweats inside the bathroom as he looks down at the discarded leather at his feet. He must’ve been staring for a while because, he then hears a soft knock on the master bathroom door. “Everything okay in there, baby?” His wife asks softly, sweetly. Scooping up the suit he opens the door and nods. “It’s perfect.” Moving to the closet he grabs a bag that he had once used for gear, an old quiver inside and tosses the suit in alongside it, not needing to turn around to know his wife was watching his actions from across the room. “I don’t need it anymore.” He says as he shuts the closet door, turning back to face her. She steps forward and breaks the distance between them as he wraps his arms around her, for the first time since he had returned, being able to fully embrace and wrap themselves in one another. They fall into bed and it doesn’t take long before they move to make up for lost time, Oliver needing to make love to his wife to just prove, in the most important of ways, that he was here. That they were both indeed here.
Home.
That was the last thought that flutters through his brain when his eyes close and he drifts off to sleep alongside Felicity whom had only fallen asleep a few minutes earlier, Oliver’s arms wrapped tightly and securely around her.
And that’s how they live for the next year. Comfortable. Safe. William starts school in Bloomfield in the spring, they give him a month off to adjust and he’s so smart he doesn’t fall behind in school work at all. In fact despite moving schools and taking chunks off at a time, he’s still head and shoulders above all of his classmates. Mia? She’s growing like a weed, now over a year old and not just walking everywhere but running everywhere. She certainly was Oliver Queen’s daughter and there was absolutely no doubt about that. Felicity had gotten Smoak Tech off the ground and despite it’s youth it was already thriving. She was already making lists of most influential companies when 2020 came to an end. Oliver couldn’t be more proud of his growing, evolving family. He? Had a new identity, one that his wife had put together in the days since his return from the dead. Although everyone here basically knew who he was, the whole Patrick Rockland act didn’t seem to hit well. But the good aspect of Bloomfield was that it’s resident primarily consisted of retired Argus, FBI, Special forces and they weren’t keen on asking questions because, they’d likely get their own questions in return. Oliver still didn’t know what he was going to do for an income, not that he needed one, he had pondered a few things, a self defense and martial arts academy at the top of his list. But for now? He was just a father, and a husband, and nothing made him feel more complete, made him feel so whole as his family did.
They had roped John as well as Thea and into his return from the dead just a month after Crisis ending. They were overjoyed that their brother was alive and while a shock and possibly some resentment about not being clued in sooner, they were just glad they could swing by for visits and know their brother as he continued to grow into the father and husband that the universe never wanted to give him the chance to be. Eventually they’d tell his mother, Tommy, Roy likely already knew but Thea swore up and down she didn’t tell her husband but Oliver knew his baby sister better than that. One thing was sure though? When Barry Allen came knocking at the door in December 2020 to ask Felicity Smoak to help their new ‘league’ of heroes out, he got a right fist to his jaw, told to never return and the door slammed shut, quickly. Oliver watches from the upstairs, a room that was hidden from all view from the outside as Barry ponders knocking again before deciding better (shocking) and speeding off. Oliver knows it’s cruel but he hopes he never see’s the man again. He deserved a little bit of a selfish streak after all the years of putting anyone and everything before himself and his families needs.
Once Barry is gone, Oliver heads back downstairs picking up a glass of wine he had previously poured, but not yet given to his wife before they were so rudely interrupted. “Should I break out the hard stuff? That punch was even better than the one you gave Black Siren…” He says, leaning over to where his wife was standing, her back still to him as he nuzzles his head into her shoulder. Upstairs Mia was fast asleep as was William, a long day of decorating for the holidays, chasing his baby sister and hot cocoa had knocked the teenager out cold. “No, not the hard stuff…not the mom juice either…” She trails off and turns to face him, in her hand a small box wrapped with a green bow, Oliver looks down, studying it and then returning his gaze to his wife’s face.
“Honey, we agreed to wait for the kids…first night of Chanukah isn’t til Thursday..” she was the one so adamant on waiting, because, if not Oliver would’ve already started piling on the gifts he had hidden throughout the house for both his wife and children. “I know what we agreed to, but this one…just really couldn’t wait.” She steps forward and hands him the box, he goes to argue but the look on her face tells him he isn’t going to win this one, god or not there was no beating Felicity Smoak when she had her mind set, and this was one of those times.
Unwrapping the bow he opens the box and immediately his heart seizes in his chest. “A sonogram?” he asks, like he needs confirmation of the black and white image staring back at him. She nods and grabs his free hand that wasn’t on the box and leans over pressing a soft, gentle kiss to her husbands lips. “Yeah, I know…Mia is just barely one but…surprise?” She asks, her hand reaching up to rest against his cheek. He grins, wide, nearly jumping into the air when it all hits him like a ton of bricks. Another baby? Another chance to be there every single step of the way…
“Oliver…” She trails off, a bit of fear teetering in her tone as he shakes his head, snapping out of it as he lifts his wife up into his arms managing to do so even with the box in his grasp. “We’re having a baby…again! Oh my god Felicity…I love you so much!” She seems to breathe a sigh of relief as she laughs and wraps herself into his grasp as she presses a finger to his lips. “Shh, you’ll wake the kids..I want to surprise them with it.” He nods, agreeing as he places her down.
A few weeks later on New Year’s Eve they break the news to William and Mia. A few weeks after that to John and Thea when they discover it’s going to be a baby boy.
And then? On a crisp fall day in September 2021, Nathan Queen was born.
END