Dark Nights; Red Dawns
Tobi is a good boy
I do not own Arrow or DC Comics
Set in Season 3 of Arrow, after the events of Episode 10.
All was still, except perhaps the brief murmur of leaves rustling in the trees.
Out of his gear, Roy felt vulnerable, as if the red hood he wore would one day become blood, his own blood, his enemy's blood, the city's blood.
He wondered briefly if Oliver ever had thought of his own death and his own blood, staining the green leather with the sticky substance.
Every night, he risked his life, fighting. He knew he might die, when he first joined in Oliver's crusade. He knew this, yet at the time it seemed so foreign and strange. Like it could only happen to others. Roy had seen others it, he had seen it in the Glades and certainly as 'Arsenal' he had seen plenty die.
Hell, when his mind was overcome with the Mirakuru serum, he had killed another person. Even then, the concept of death was a strange one, as if viewing it from a far off distance. The guilt, the guilt, would be there perhaps forever. Roy sometimes could still see the man's face in his dreams.
Now each night it seemed as if the victories from before were made useless and as a fresh wave erupted. Without Oliver, he and Diggle struggled to contain each one, fighting with a darkness that would never abate.
Out of habit, he wore the hood up, covering his face. It was just coming up towards dawn, the hazy smog of Starling city rising up into the atmosphere. It was the same hoodie that he had worn when he first met Oliver, and it reminded him of the older man. Somehow, Roy thought that it could bring him closer to his mentor.
He wondered if Oliver would have been proud. Roy snorted briefly, earning odd looks from the few people outside.
Of course, Oliver would be proud.
Would be.
The older man had not only become a mentor to Roy, he had become a friend, a father. Roy looked up to Oliver, and Oliver looked to Roy to ground him.
How could he go on, without Oliver?
Roy crested over the hill, towards Verdant and what Cisco had roughly termed 'the Arrow Cave.'
He would go on without Oliver.
Not for Oliver.
Not for himself.
He would go on.
The Red Hood would rise and with it, a red dawn for Starling.