Summary: Slade Wilson has been defeated, but Oliver's family, home, city, business, and team have all suffered heavy damages. A story of rebuilding in the aftermath.
I do not own any aspect of Arrow; I'm just respectfully borrowing the characters for fun (but no profit).
Caveat lector: I have no beta, this thing is going to end up long as hell, and pretty much every subsequent chapter is going to be completely A/U in two short days. Proceed at your own risk. That said, if you do read it thank you very much and know that all constructive criticism is welcome and greatly, greatly appreciated.
True North
If Oliver was the Arrow, then Diggle was his compass, and Felicity…Felicity was True North.
Prologue
It wasn't until they had flown back to Hong Kong, boarded the ARGUS transport jet home, and were several hours over a night-dark ocean that Oliver actually began to think about the events of the past few days. It was only then that the truly heroic amounts of adrenaline still coursing through his veins ebbed enough to allow him to shift from fight-or-flight and focus on anything beyond the immediate moment since they'd left Verdant to face Slade's army. Once Slade's soldiers had begun their unrelenting assault on Starling City, there had been no opportunity to stop or rest, just a constant scramble to stay ahead of the wave after wave of masked men. They'd had no capacity to plan for a future beyond sunrise, when Amanda Wallar promised to turn Starling City into a smoldering crater. Most of time, he hadn't been able to think as far as sunrise, just surviving the current fight, the current moment.
Now in the quiet and relative safety of the ARGUS plan, when Oliver tried to organize those hours, into a linear narrative, he found he couldn't. Moments stood out, frozen in time like over-exposed photographs: waking up to Laurel in the lair; his heart stopping at the sight of Digg and Felicity, still and unresponsive in the crashed van; the feel of Felicity hugging him, frightened, hurt, and trembling after commanding him to keep fighting; Sebastian Blood's chilling, delusional vow to be the mayor Starling deserved; Roy standing and confused, but wholly himself again in the clock tower; Nyssa breaking Isabel's neck in front of the boardroom conference table; Felicity telling him to let Slade out-think him; low light glinting off Slade's katana and her tears; the soft, horrible hiss of static over the com as he waited for Amanda to waive off her drone; staring at a sedated, restrained Slade in an ARGUS cargo jet, looking for the barest twitch, a syringe of Tibetan pit viper venom clutched in his hand. The rest of his memories were fragmented; a flickering, disjointed, strobe-lit jumble movement and battle, sound and heat, advance and retreat.
It didn't surprise Oliver that he couldn't seem to put the past few days into sequential order. It was disconcerting, certainly, but he'd experienced it before. His understanding of what had happened his first few weeks on the island was mostly cobbled together later, the gaps between the brief moments of horrific clarity sewn up with inference, embroidered with supporting details provided in by Yao Fe, Fyers, and Slade. At least this time, he had people he trusts to fill in the gaps.
And there's something else, he realizes. While he can't make the past 72 hours into a coherent narrative, unlike his early days on the island, this time there is a single, slender thread winding through the chaos and unifying the discordant mess of sense impressions and images: Felicity's voice. In every impression, she was with him, either standing beside him or on a com in his ear – guiding him though battle, reminding him of his purpose and his path when he wavered, encouraging him to keep his vow, assuring him there was another way and he would find it when everyone else said killing Slade was the only solution, steadying him as surely as if she had reached out a hand when he faltered.
He turned to where he knew she was sitting, a few rows behind him, across the aisle from John. She was slumped against the window, eyes closed, but he could tell from tension in her jaw and her erratic respiration that she wasn't asleep. She must be utterly exhausted, but, like the rest of them was probably too keyed up on adrenaline to actually shut her mind off and sleep. A twitch of a smile curved his lips; Oliver privately suspected the inside of Felicity's head was far brighter, shinier, and faster than the real world and consequently harder to shut off. Still, experience told him she'll probably crash in another hour or two, her body simply giving out.
The smile faded as he caught himself openly staring. He glanced furtively around, to see if he'd been detected. Digg's face was turned away as he dozed, head resting on top of Lyla's. A smattering of ARGUS agents were seated ahead of them, closer to the cockpit, barely visible with the rows of chairs between them, and all seemingly occupied with other things. Assured he was unobserved, Oliver turned back to his partner, deliberately this time, and savored this rare, quiet moment where he could simply watch her and let her presence prove, once again, that she had escaped Slade safe and sound and whole.
Peace, however, was always short-lived for Oliver Queen. The plane, the first safe-haven they'd known in days, was carrying them back to face the aftermath of what Slade's revenge had wrought and the hard, dirty work of repairing and rebuilding. Oliver knew better than most that some things could never be undone; that some wounds were fatal and some choices irrevocable, a thought that settled especially heavily on him when paired with Felicity.
Things between them had slowly been shifting over the past year. He had felt it even as he staunchly resisted examining it. If he didn't acknowledge the change, there felt like there was still the chance to go back. Though he had started this quest on alone, he wasn't sure he knew how to be the Arrow without Diggle and Felicity anymore, and he was leery of anything that could disturb their dynamic. His declaration in the mansion, even made solely for Slade's benefit, not only disturbed the dynamic, it closed off any hope of return. It was too early yet to say how much he had altered things or what the results would be, but he was sure they could never return to the relationship they'd had in the early days. It made him profoundly uneasy.
As though she could sense his change in mood, Felicity shifted in her seat, grimacing as she disturbed an injury. Oliver found himself rising automatically before he even recognized what he was doing. He wanted to go over and sit in the seat next to her, to get a better look at that ugly gash on her temple, maybe even lend his shoulder so she could rest…. But he stayed firmly put. He didn't trust himself to be that close to her and he couldn't risk shaking their bond even further when things felt so fragile between them. Instead, he allowed a few more minutes to fortify himself. And then he turned away and closed his eyes to try to, if not sleep, at least rest. He didn't look in her direction again until they landed in Sterling City.