So many people think they know who Oliver Queen is, but no one knows him. That requires trust, a kind of trust that he was no longer capable of. The years away had torn that trust from his very soul. Day and night, I have watched over him, almost since the moment he returned from the dead. His mother hired me after he ditched a string of underqualified bodyguards. At the time, a bodyguard was not what he needed and he knew it. And if I were being honest, I should have figured that out sooner. His daily battle for survival in that hell had turned him into a weapon and he didn't need me to keep him safe. To this day, I don't know everything that happened to him in the five years he was away. I don't think I ever will. What I do know is that when I met him, he was on a mission and he wasn't going to let anyone slow him down. Part of that mission was being Oliver Queen. I only saw what he wanted me to see. It wasn't long before I knew what that mission was, and it wasn't as a result of me protecting him, it was him protecting me. With this new information, I thought I knew who Oliver Queen was. Oliver Queen was a threat, devoid of any hope of redemption, and he needed someone to protect the city from him. The only way to do that was to become his soldier. I got wrapped up in his darkness and I did nothing to stop it.
If I believed in fate, this would have been easier to explain. But I don't, so I suppose it was just a happy coincidence. A woman changed everything. Have you ever heard the phrase 'behind every great man is a great woman'? Well this woman wasn't standing behind Oliver Queen. She was standing right in front of him, right up in his face. She would tell him things I never had the nerve or the foresight to tell him. I am a soldier. I follow orders. Not blindly, but for me it is easy to follow orders when they don't expressly require me to cross any moral lines. She is not a soldier. She is a light. She is morality. She is trust. He didn't know that needing tech support for a bullet ridden laptop would be the best thing that ever happened to him.
It's not for the reasons you think. It wasn't love at first sight. It wasn't romantic. It was purity. Unlike the rest of Starling City, (myself included), this woman wasn't closed off in any way. She was so completely herself, that it was the only thing you could see. No mask. When he got back from her office the first time, there was no great change. I didn't notice anything different. We continued the way we had. It was only later that I met her. I saw him look at her. I saw him trust her. And everything I thought I knew about Oliver up until that point got flipped on its head.
The way she looked at him. Knowing he was lying straight to her face and unashamedly trusting him anyway. She looked at him and she didn't see what I saw or what his family saw or what the public saw. She didn't even see what he saw. She looked at him as she saw his soul. She looked at him like the great man he would one day become was already on display for the world to see.
The way he looked at her. To him, looking at her was like looking at a world where betrayal and darkness could be burned away by hope. She didn't know it yet, but Felicity Smoak would be the one to save this city.
That was the day I realized I didn't know Oliver Queen. No amount of time or shared experience would change that. Because Oliver wasn't himself until he found himself in her eyes, and she in his.
