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It had been years since he’d seen him. In fact, John Diggle had begun to think the opportunity to see his friend again would never come. The day he had been released from Iron Heights Prison had been both a blessing and curse. Having been incarcerated most of his life he had not experienced the rapid changes in the world – everything moved faster and taking it all in was difficult. Inside prison he was respected man, one who knew how to get things, but outside those formidable walls he was just an anonymous face, someone so used to rules and a schedule that he couldn’t go to the bathroom without asking for permission most days.
In his darker moments he considered going the way Yao Fei did when he’d been released. The old man had not been able to adjust to life outside of Iron Heights. In fact, he’d almost killed their friend Tommy in a bid to stay within the prison’s walls. Luckily, the con walked away from that altercation with only a scratch to his neck. A few weeks later, when news of Yeo Fei’s suicide reached them inside, Merlyn said he would taken worse if it had prevented the old man from dying alone, away from the only family he had.
They all would have.
Zihuatanejo. A little town on the coast of Mexico – a physical place that represented hope – is what kept him going. That and promise he made to his friend. Before Oliver Queen had Houdini’ed his way out of Iron Heights he made him memorize directions to the field where he proposed to his wife, Laurel. At the time he hadn’t comprehended why, but after finding his letter and money tucked away, Dig finally understood. Oliver was waiting to see him again. As much as the modern world confounded him, his need to see his friend again outweighed all his fears and any consequences jumping parole might bring. Not that he thought the authorities would make much of a fuss for an old convict like him.
He’d followed the path – he’d received a blank postcard from Fort Hancock, TX a week or so after Oliver’s escape – his friend blazed years before. Excitement like he’d never felt before surged through him. To see his friend again, to see the cool, blue ocean for the first time … it made him think back on the words Oliver had uttered so long ago, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” He hadn’t been able to live inside Iron Heights, not fully, but now – now he could live with the best friend he ever made at his side. Dig could not help the smile that spread across his face and stayed there as the bus ate up the miles to the Mexican border.
He had not thought much of Oliver Queen when he first saw him. Granted, his broad muscular frame spoke of man who should be able to handle himself, but the perplexed look on face had him betting that he’d be the newbie to breakdown that night. One of them always did.
It was an inauspicious way for them to start. Dig losing on account of Oliver Queen, but the fact that he hadn’t made a sound impressed him. Over the next few weeks he noticed that the new inmate was a quiet and observant individual. He kept his to himself and avoided trouble. Though trouble did not always avoid him. His aloof manner had certain elements thinking he was uppity and in need of a lesson. Bruises started appearing on Oliver’s face, but based on the faces of others it was clear he managed to give as good as he got, and seeing how he never turned rat the confrontations became fewer and far between.
That could have been the sum totally of Oliver Queen’s prison life, and what he knew of the man; but since Dig was a man who knew how to get things and Queen needed something they finally got introduced. His request had been an odd one, not the strangest by a long shot, but certainly the most unique. Dig had been hesitant at first when he asked for the rock hammer; he had never and would never bring weapons in. Oliver had huffed a gentle laugh before explaining that it was tool for sculpting rocks, which he collected in the prion yard. He assured him that it had little use beyond that and could not be used for nefarious purposes. “If you think otherwise when you see it, get rid of it, and I’ll still pay,” he had said before bidding him farewell to continue his rock perusal.
A few weeks later when the rock hammer arrived he understood Oliver’s amusement. It would take extreme force to make it a viable weapon though truthfully it was too small to cause real damage, and if he was planning on using it to escape, well Dig figured it’d take at least a hundred years. Turned out Oliver needed less than twenty.
It was after he delivered the rock hammer to Oliver that they slowly became friends, and as they did so, Dig brought him into his select inner circle - Yao Fei, Tommy Merlyn, and Floyd Lawton. The bond they formed between them was strong, and made even more indelible when through Oliver’s petitioning and illegal side work for Warden Darhk he’d been able to open a library in the prison. Until he was released Yao Fei worked in the library beside Oliver and Tommy; and during tax season, Oliver was so busy helping the guards of Iron Heights and other prisons that he and Floyd were pulled in to assist with both.
Oliver made a comment once that, “The funny thing is - on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.” It had amused them – Tommy in particular – that Oliver insisted he was innocent of crime he was convicted of, the murder of his wife and her lover. Everyone else inside claimed to be screwed over by their lawyer, save him; Dig was always honest. He’d been young, hotheaded and foolish, but there was no doubt that he was guilty.
He often felt that his honesty cemented his relationship with Oliver. He valued it above all else, since that was all they truly had to offer the other, though Dig couldn’t help the small skepticism he felt about the man’s claim of innocence. He had no doubt that Oliver thought he was innocent, but he figured his friend blocked the truth from his mind because he could not accept it.
He wouldn’t learn better until Roy Harper came to Iron Heights on a two-year stretch for B&E. He was a young punk, cocky as hell, and they all liked him immediately. Roy talked a good game, but he had young wife by the name of Thea on the outside with a baby on the way that he was determined to do better by; and after Oliver had casually remarked that perhaps he should look for a new line of work since he didn’t seem to be the best thief he’d started studying for his GED.
Prison time was slow time and Roy became Oliver’s newest project, though he’d be one of many who he’d help educate, there was a real passion to see the boy succeed. And Roy, he took to Oliver, wanting more than anything to live the up the potential the older man saw in him. Though some inmates, guards, and even the warden himself would claim that his affection is what drove the young man to confirm Oliver’s innocence, Dig knew better. He had seen the surprise on Roy’s face when it dawned on him that the shady cellmate during his last stretch who’d copped to killing a “tasty brunette and her lover,” only to have the husband serving time for it was the villain Oliver insisted was out there.
That Oliver was innocent, for real innocent, and spent over fifteen years behind bars was something his close group of friends found revolting. None of them blamed Oliver for taking the story to the warden, but Dig knew Oliver blamed himself for what happened to the boy. Roy was willing to speak up, to right a wrong; but Warden Darhk had been unwilling to let his meal ticket go. It cost Roy his life, and for a while Dig feared it had cost Oliver his long clung to hope.
For a long torturous night and a delayed morning roll-call he feared for his friend. Feared what he’d done to himself. Until he’d been escorted into Oliver’s empty cell Dig had been certain that Oliver had gone the way of Yao Fei and taken his life. Instead, Oliver Queen crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. He was free from Iron Heights, from the deeds he’d performed there, and he was finally free to live in the hope he’d kept in his heart.
He was missed after he was gone. They all loved telling stories of the things he’d pulled off and thinking out loud about where he was and what he was doing there. Though he knew his friend’s true destination Dig never shared it with anyone – that was theirs, his promise and eventually his hope.
When he finally did see his friend again, scruffy and working on a small boat, the sun reflecting off the deep, clear blue of the Pacific Ocean Dig felt something he’d never experienced before: peace.