Disclaimer: I do not own and/or claim to own any recognizable and/or licensed material appearing in this work of fiction in any way, shape, and/or form. All recognizable and/or licensed material belongs to their respective owners in every way, shape, and/or form. I am not attempting to or making a monetary profit from this work of fiction in any way, shape, and/or form.
AN: Really, really, really short prologue. Hopefully any other chapters will be longer, I try to average 3,000 or more words per chapter or at least get close to it. Hope anyone that reads it enjoys it anyway while I, hopefully, work on a longer chapter.
"For five years I've been here, survived here ever since my father's ship, the Queen's Gambit, went down. I've trained on this island, hunted, survived. For five long years I've grown, I've changed."
A man with long ragged blonde hair down to his shoulders looked to the future, a future within sight, finally in sight. Every second the ship cut through the water in front of him brought him closer and closer to the goal that had kept him alive.
"For five long years I've had one goal in mind, one thing that kept pushing me forward."
"Mr. Queen, we'll be docking in Starling City soon, a car should be waiting for you from your mother."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't the happy reunion with my family, now only my mother and sister."
"Ollie!" Thea Queen ran into her brother's arms, finally seeing him again after five long years as his mother, Moira Queen, looked on with Walter Steele standing next to her, too close in truth.
"It wasn't the friends I left behind."
"Hey man, we're going out soon, just you, me, and all the supermodels we can get." Tommy Merlyn, his best friend stood with his arm around his shoulder. "And we're totally getting t-shirts about this, just imagine it now "My Friend Was On an Island for Five Years and All I Got was This Shirt!" we'll make a killing!"
"Yeah, let's try it."
"It wasn't for the woman I loved."
"Laurel..."
"Oliver!" Laurel Lance pulled the stunned blonde into a embrace, close to crying after five years when he was simply gone, dead to the world at large.
"All of that was pointless,"
The blonde haired man stood in the basement of a warehouse, something he had used family money and his own connections to purchase under the radar, and after a moment he simply nodded to himself.
"Nothing but one thing mattered to me now."
The blonde haired man spent hours dragging in equipment and setting it up, from computers to tables to exercising equipment, everything he would need was looked for and checked off a mental list before he moved over to a work table.
"Only one thing could possibly matter to a man like me now, a man changed on the island known as Lian Yu."
The man began preparing arrows, making them himself as his bow laid nearby, sometimes picked up to test an arrow, notching it and the blonde haired man carefully examined it before setting it down again.
"It's name is Mandarin..."
The man stood at the end of a long range, two buckets of tennis balls set up on tables on either side of him before he took a single breath, knocked both down, and drew up his bow.
"...for Purgatory."
Before any of the balls could even reach halfway down the range, an arrow pierced each of them, stopping them in their tracks as they embedded in the ground.
"That island should have been called Di Yu..."
The man now stood in front of the exercising equipment he had set up, quickly stripping off his jacket and shirt, revealing a multitude of scars and even burns covering his body. Undisturbed by them, the man began his routine.
"...for Hell."
The man went from push ups, to sits up, to using every piece of equipment around him, even a salmon ladder he had set up, one of the first things he had brought down.
"But that island, Lian Yu, forged a boy into a man and a man into a warrior."
The man stopped his exercising after a few trips up and down the salmon ladder, stopping at the top and swinging back and forth for a moment before throwing himself forward and landing in a crouch, his eyes locked on the wooden crate on a table in front of him.
"Lian Yu was my purgatory, it purged the weakness from me, purged the impurities."
The man slowly approached the crate, stopping in front of it and closing his eyes, seemingly lost in a thousand memories every moment, every time his fingers touched the worn and weathered wood of the trunk, particularly the lock keeping it closed.
"Lian Yu gave me purpose, the one thing that fueled my survival, my desire to return to Starling City."
Seemingly under a mind of their own, the man's fingers unlocked and opened the trunk even as his eyes remained closed. Eventually, after a few minutes of nothing but silence, only interrupted by the man's breathing and hardly at that.
"My father, Robert Queen, failed this city."
The man's hands balled into fists as he seemed to remember a particularly bad memory before relaxing, sighing to himself as he opened his eyes and reached inside it.
"My father asked me to save it in turn, fix it where he failed to."
Slowly, the man drew an item out of the trunk, his face almost emotionless as he looked at the item in hand.
"I will."
The man set down whatever he had grabbed as he instead moved to another table, clothing laying on it and he glanced down at it, seemingly hesitating before shaking himself of any problems.
"In the end, I didn't come back for my mother."
A brief image of Moira Queen flashed to the forefront of the man's mind before he dismissed it, a frown on his face as Walter Steele stood too close to his mother for comfort as he finished checking the knives hidden up the sleeves of his jacket, checking it for a moment before zipping it up.
"I didn't come back for my sister."
Thea Queen was next, her smiling face as she looked down at her brother from the top of the stairs almost indescribable before she too was dismissed, tossed to the back of his mind as he finished lacing the boots he had pulled on.
"I didn't come back for me friends."
Tommy Merlyn came next, his smiling face as he embraced his all but blood brother in a tight hug, holing back all the tears he had thought he had shed five years ago. Five years ago when he had to go to the funeral of his best friend, his brother. He too was thrown aside, the man finishing pulling on his gloves and made sure they were comfortable, flexing his hands a few times before balling them tightly into fists over and over again.
"I came back for no one."
Face after face came to mind, all of them tossed away as the man instead focused on the task at hand, securing his gear as he turned to the bow and the quiver of arrows, both resting on the table next to the crate.
"I came back for only one thing and one thing alone."
The man checked the number of arrows in his quiver, seemingly satisfied as he set it down and instead tested the bowstring of his bow, being a bit more strenuous with it before eventually setting it down as well.
"My name was once Oliver Queen..."
The man grabbed the item he had pulled out of the crate out, a green hood he secured to the outer jacket before he pulled it on, leaving it down as he slung the quiver on but hesitated when he went to grab the bow, the bow that he had used on the island to hunt, to live, to fight...to survive.
"...now..."
The man set down the bow, moving to the table behind him and picking up the compound bow, made by himself using the equipment around him.
"...I am reborn."
The man now stood on the roof of a building, simply watching the city around him, looking at what he had returned to.
"Oliver Queen is no more, he died on Lian Yu."
The man seemingly saw something, drawing an notching an arrow before firing it and several others immediately after it.
"There's only the Hood left."
Four man dropped dead, arrows piercing their chest before a fifth pinned the arm of the man between them to the wall as a figure dropped onto the car in front of him. The man was understandably terrified, doing his best to pull his arm free but it was worthless, the arrow was lodged into his arm and there was no removing it.
"Markus Smith," the voice was changed, it was far from the voice of a man, more of monster as the man notched another arrow.",you have failed this city."
"I will save Starling City no matter the cost."
The arrow lodged itself into Markus Smith's heart, he didn't even have time to scream before he was dead, slumping against the wall as the man was gone as quickly as he had come, only the distant roar of the motorcycle's engine already fading into the distance the only sign he could have even been there.
"If you're here then that means he's dropped the first one then?"
"That would be correct, my men reported it as it happened."
"Were they discovered?"
"Of course not, I trained them personally."
"Then why do you two have to talk about it?"
"It pays to check."
"Can I just head out now?"
"Of course, just keep doing what you've been doing for months."
"I was planning to."
"My men will continue to watch him as we agreed. What of the other two?"
"One will make contact soon, the other is keeping to their place and is already covering up the murders."
"Good, I will head back out into the city then."
"Peace be with you."
"You as well, especially with what we will soon face."
Oliver Queen slowly woke up, the first sight he took in being the excited face of his not so younger sister anymore.
"What took you so long Ollie?" Thea was standing next to his bed, leaning forward to look into his eyes as the blonde Queen grinned before he pulled Thea forward, catching her by surprise and leading her to land on her back in the bed.
"I had a wild night last night."
"A really wild night."
AN: Well, here goes my firs Arrow story, one I'm going to have a little fun with. Expect hardly anything to remain canon! I'm probably going to update this sporadically through, it's mostly planned out but there's a few more things I've got to do before the outline's entirely finished but for the most part it's finished. Note: Most things for this story are actually already planned out, like any pairings, most major and/or minor deaths, and anything else I plan to do.
Peace.