Disclaimer: I own nothing. The lyrics are from the song of the same name by Stanfour.
Warning:
This is still a WIP, but there will likely be spoilers until Collateral. The following takes place during Shield.


Life Without You

How I need to hear you
Hear you so softly
Hear you say anything

The picture wasn't enough. He wanted more, but he couldn't ask for it. She did save his life after all. Picking up the empty bottle in his hands again, he frowns as he holds it up to his eyes. It wasn't that reassuring to know the only way she survived her captors was the hope that a cyanide antidote would work.

Looking around the penthouse, it felt like an empty wreck. The possessions money could buy paled in comparison to when he'd enter the room and see her smile. Oliver was skeptical that even in sunlight the room would have any more life than it did right now. The furniture was just a space filler, a illusion that he had everything when he felt nothing inside.

Descending the elevator, he pulled out the phone, desperately trying her number again, despite the doubt that things had changed. But he still wanted to hear her voice, in any way that he could, and although the number was no longer in service, it was still attached to her name on his phone.

It was only her name, just thirteen letters, but it reminded him that she was real, that she did love him. That was something, especially considering she had gone to such lengths to make herself disappear from the world.

The thunder boomed above him, the lightning lit up the sky as he ventured down the couple blocks between the clocktower and Watchtower. The weather was fitting to his mood, pent-up anger trying to understand why she did what she did, but no actual emotions like the rainless streets. Bringing his head up to face the world in front of him, flashbacks began to play in his head, but the most prominent one was the moment she grabbed his hand, dragging him down the street while accusing him of falling for her.

She was right, and now he was forced to live without her.

He half-heartedly pressed the buttons to get up to Watchtower, the place where he usually found himself smiling, but right now, it'd be a miracle if he'd open his mouth at all. The numbers went up, as the reality of not seeing her behind the doors became clearer again.

Sure enough, Watchtower's doors let out a tiny squeak as Oliver opened them, but the emptiness filled the room just the same as it did as he searched all of the possible databases for just a trace of her. Oliver wasn't expecting to find anything then, and he wasn't optimistic to find anything now.

All this time, he had protected other people's loved ones, and now he had finally let someone in… oh who was he kidding, she was the one who let him in. But he never expected to lose her this fast, that they wouldn`t have a chance to talk, to figure out their relationship, because he could technically call it that because of the two and a half seconds they had spent confirming their feelings.

If only he had been more careful... quicker... a better hero... she would be here, they could figure things out. Now, he could only hold onto a fleeting hope that she would come back... come back to him. He sat down on the steps, antidote bottle still in his fingers, feeling lost in what leaving this bottle meant, and what he was supposed to do.

It wasn`t long before he heard Clark enter the room, and it's then that Oliver realizes that Clark had no idea what Chloe did for him. He has to tell him, and then likely hear the now famous Boy Scout lectures only seconds after, but that didn't matter to him anymore.

He had failed her, and this life, this emptiness was his punishment.

This is life without you