A/N: ZMOG THE FINALE! That is all. Oh and this is essentially a MASSIVE spoiler for the last episode.
Devastate:
To bring to ruin or desolation by violent action.
To reduce to chaos, disorder, or helplessness. To overwhelm.
The Glades were sparkling with devastation. Lights flickered, darted, fell – like so many stars cascading to the earth. And Oliver watched it from the heavens like some sort of demigod. A failed demigod.
Oliver Queen, you have failed this city...
It was hard to distinguish between physical pain and emotional pain. His body had been ravaged. He was bleeding and bruised. A deep throbbing ache poured through his bones and muscles. He could hardly keep himself upright and it was only by clutching onto Diggle that he managed to stand witness to the horror.
And then there was an emotional ache that started at the base of his skull and came down around the front of his face, into his mouth, down his esophagus, and into his stomach. Guilt. Fear. Anger. Helplessness. Urgency.
His mouth went dry.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
The hero was supposed to swoop in and stop the evil from happening. There was to be a ridiculous plot and a nefarious villain. And then the hero. The hero would have been beaten by the villain before. Maybe even twice. At the final meeting, they would have a fight in two parts. In the first part, the hero would fall behind. He would be injured or have a setback. It would seem as though he was losing. But of course, he wouldn't be. The setback would rally his fighting spirit and he would suddenly turn the tables. The fight would crash down around the ears of the villain in the second part. Maybe the hero would be injured again. Maybe he'd suffer some sort of hardship. But he would win. He would incapacitate the villain. He would foil the plan.
It had all worked out according to the cliché. All of it.
He'd even suffered the second injury. He'd endured the hardship of stabbing his best friend's father – the man whom he'd essentially grown up knowing. The man who had been friend with his family for ages. The man whom Tommy had begged him not to kill.
"...the importance of redundancy..."
It was like a kick to the chest.
It was like waking up from a nightmare only to realize that there was an actual monster in the room, pulling you under your bed, into the shadows.
"Oliver?" came Felicity's weepy voice. She was scared. So was he.
"Are you ok?" he asked.
"Yeah..." She sniffed. "The damage seems to be contained on the East side."
The shadows grew darker.
The cold hand of terror closed around his throat.
"Laurel..." he breathed.
The East side of the Glades. Where the CNRI building was. Where Laurel was.
Everything else fell away from him. The city in front of him was a blur. Diggle was just dead weight. His physical pain became an indiscernible fog. Even the roof under his feet seemed little more than a confusing barrier between him and the path to Laurel. All the emotions from before boiled down to raw panic.
"Are you gonna be ok?" he gasped to Diggle.
"Go. Go go go go go," was all that Diggle said.
Oliver ran.
Through the door. Down the stairs. Onto the street. Around the corner. To his bike.
He shrugged into the helmet out of pure habit and didn't even realize that it was on his head. The roar of the motorcycle filled his ears until he could hear nothing else. But, then again, it wasn't actually his motorcycle. It was the noise of fear. It was a thudding, buzzing, hissing sensation that plugged up auditory senses and filled him with ice cold sludge.
Laurel could be dead.
She could be squashed under a slab of concrete – flatter than a pancake. Her blood could be spilling out, making her as cold as he felt. Only permanently cold. Irrevocably cold. She could be crying out for him to rescue her and then she would just cry because he wouldn't make it in time. Or she could very well not be able to cry at all. Her lungs could be deflated. She would only be making unintelligible noises of pain and suffering. Her beautiful eyes would glaze over.
Oliver almost puked in his helmet.
It was all he could do to keep his stomach contents where they were and not hit the frantic pedestrians that swarmed out of the Glades. There were so many of them. All with haunted looks. All with fear and desperation shining madly out of their eyes.
The air stank.
It was thick with dust and dirt - all that remained of people's lives. Was he choking on the ruined bits of a family home? Was that smoke from their burning photographs and precious heirlooms? Was he inhaling their sorrow?
CNRI appeared on the edge of his vision. He could see all sorts of figures outside and he was about to bypass them all when she appeared. Oliver's heart almost stopped beating in relief. He was still far away from her, skulking in the shadows, but he knew it was Laurel. The way she moved. The shape of her body. It was her.
It took every ounce of self control he had not to go running to her. Lance was there and neither of them knew his secret. A bombshell like the Hood's real identity might shatter them all. So he stayed away and tried to control his breathing.
The panic bled out of him and Oliver sort of slumped over the handlebar of his bike. The puking sensation came back and he idly wondered if it was more concussion induced rather than panic induced. But, then again, it was probably both.
He reached a hand up to press against his bleeding shoulder. The pain was far more prevalent now that his fear was gone. But he was alright with that. He'd rather take the physical pain if it meant Laurel wasn't in danger.
She was alive. She was ok. That's all that mattered in—
The building came down.
At first, he wasn't overly concerned. It wasn't very surprising, all things considered. Of course it was going to come down. But Laurel wasn't in it and so, well, let the thing fall.
And then Laurel started screeching in horror. Her father had a firm grasp on her wrist as she flung herself towards the collapsing building.
The raw panic crawled back inside his stomach. She was screaming Tommy's name.
Oliver revved the engine and squealed down a side street that would bring him behind the CNRI building. Fires cackled from busted gas lines. Rubble loomed overhead. Glass crackled under his tires. But none of that mattered.
Oliver jumped off his bike and it crashed to the ground. He jerked his helmet off and dropped it at his side. And then he ran again. Through the ravaged doors. Into the building. Down the hall. Around the collapsed ceiling.
There.
Just inside the main office.
Tommy was pinned.
"Tommy!" Oliver gasped. He slid next to his best friend and started pulling at the large chunks of plaster and concrete. "You're gonna be fine."
Tommy's eyes slid over to him. They were glossy and unfocused. "Another thing we disagree on," he murmured. Oliver was about to ask him what he was talking about but then he shoved the concrete away and his stomach did a summersault.
A piece of rebar was jutting out of Tommy's chest. Like a spear. Or an arrow. Blood oozed out around the metal, staining Tommy's blue shirt.
"Tommy..." Oliver breathed. He was stunned. Literally, stunned. For a long moment, his mind was literally blank. All he could do was stare numbly at that rebar.
"Is...is Laurel safe?" Tommy muttered. "Is Laurel safe? I tried to get her out of here..."
Oliver swallowed the lump that was in his throat. He put on a proud smile that was more pathetic than anything. "Yeah. Yeah, you did. You got her out of here," he told him. "You're gonna be fine."
Because...because that's what the heroes did. They got their friends out of dire situations. Even when everything else fell apart, they got everyone out alive. It had to happen that way. There was no other way for it to turn out—
"Stop," Tommy breathed. "I'm sorry."
"No," Oliver growled. "Don't apologize." He felt tears welling up in his eyes as the panic increased.
"I was angry and...jealous. I...I am my father," Tommy said. His face was sad. Resolved. He wasn't afraid but he wasn't hopeful either. He was accepting his fate.
"No," Oliver snapped. "No, you're not."
"Did you kill him?" Tommy asked.
Oliver hesitated. Yes, probably. He'd stabbed the man in the heart with an arrow. He was probably dead, although he hadn't actually stopped to check for a pulse. But he couldn't possibly bring himself to say those words. He couldn't...
"No," Oliver said.
Tommy looked relieved. "Thank you," he said.
That was it.
Thank you.
And then his eyes slid shut. And his chest stopped moving. And the blood stopped flowing.
"No..." Oliver breathed. Tears were falling now. His face was screwed up in sorrow. "It should have been me!"
He should have been the one to die. He'd failed. He hadn't stopped the undertaking. He hadn't saved Laurel. He should have been the one to have a piece of rebar punching out of his chest. Heroes were the ones who made the sacrifice to save others. Not Tommy. Not his very very good friend Tommy. Tommy who he'd betrayed. Tommy who'd had his life turned on its head a dozen times in the past few months. Tommy who loved Laurel.
This wasn't real.
"Open your eyes, Tommy," Oliver begged. "Open your eyes...Please..."
For the first time since he'd left the island, Oliver felt totally helpless. Not just frustrated, not just floundering, not just shell shocked – helpless. He didn't feel powerful or capable. He didn't feel like he could hit the broad side of a barn with sling shot, let alone an arrow.
Devastation.
To reduce to chaos, disorder, or helplessness.
Oliver was shaking. Great noisy sobs broke past his lips and he did his best to suck them back up again but they escaped despite his efforts and breathed across the stiffening body.
But no. Tommy was just playing around. He'd open his eyes and grin up at Oliver with that wicked smile of his. He'd crack some sort of joke about shafts and then he'd get all angsty about Laurel but he and Oliver would talk it out and then they'd be back to normal. Maybe Oliver would let Tommy hit him. It's what he should have done at the club. Tommy needed desperately to hit something and Oliver should have just let him do it. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. The next time Tommy took a swing at him, Oliver would stand there and take it.
The next time.
Because Tommy was joking.
Because Tommy wasn't a corpse in a collapsed building and the Undertaking had been stopped and everything was ok.
Oliver blinked.
Tommy seemed to transform before his eyes. It wasn't really much of a physical change but something slightly deeper than that. Something sense-able. The man that Oliver loved like a brother had suddenly ceased to be. All that was there was an empty body.
It was as if a switch had been thrown.
Oliver stopped sobbing. He rubbed his face and sniffed in the snot. He was still crying but the torrential downpour of tears slowed to a drizzle. The severe weight of exhaustion pressed down on his body and Oliver sort of curled into himself, scooting away from the corpse and hugging his knees. He sat like that for a minute or two as the building groaned. Outside, muffled by the rubble, he could hear a thick chorus of wailing sirens that was punctuated by screams.
Logic told him that he should leave now but he felt too weary to move. Too sad. Too powerless. There was a crashing to his left.
"Tommy!" came Laurels voice. He heard Detective Lance's voice yelling something at her but she pressed through the ruins anyway. "TOMMY!"
For a split second, Oliver didn't move. He didn't pull his hood up. He just stared at where she was struggling to get through. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to confess his role in all of this. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness.
But then he slowly reached up and flipped the hood over his head. He stood. He caught her eye then and she stared at him. They were still well separated by the rubble. Shadow covered most of him. He was in no danger of her seeing his face. But that didn't mean he couldn't see hers. The moment she locked eyes on him, her face lit up with hope. Hope for a miracle. Hope for Tommy.
"You!" she yelped. "Did you...?"
Save him?
No.
He swallowed a few times and then slowly shook his head. Watching her expression change was the worst part. Comprehension clawed across her face. Her eyes widened. She paled.
Oliver couldn't stand it. He turned and walked out the way he'd come, away from her. It wasn't where he wanted to go. He wanted to rush up to her and wrap her in a hug. He wanted to cry into her shoulder. He wanted to shield her from the grisly sight.
But all he could do was walk away.
As he passed the threshold, to the CNRI building, he heard her bloodcurdling scream of horror. It chilled him to the bone. He almost turned back around but then he heard Lance talking to her again and there was no going back. Not into CNRI. Not into the world of happiness and sunshine. Not into a place of peace.
There was only a tumbling into the dark stinking pit of self-hatred.
And there was no going back.
Fin.