Hymn for the Missing

Shakespeare's Lemonade

Rating: T

Genre: Mystery/Angst/Friendship/Romance/Family

Summary: Oliver returns to Starling City with no memory of the past eight years except for Malcolm Merlyn rescuing him in the mountains. As he tries to remember who he is, he gets different stories from all sides and questions who he can really trust and who he became in all that time.

A/N: Set after 3x09. Title comes from a Red song. Someone named BeijingDoll made a great Olicity fanvideo to it on YouTube.

Pairings: Mentions of past Oliver/Laurel but endgame is Oliver/Felicity. Probably mention of Tommy/Laurel and Thea/Roy as well, but I haven't decided on those pairings.

"Where are you now? Are you lost? Will I find you again? Are you alone? Are you afraid? Are you searching for me? Why did you go? I had to stay. Now I'm reaching for you. Will you wait? Will you wait? Will I see you again?"
~Red

Prologue: six months ago

There are no words for this kind of agony. It's a special kind of chaos; of anger and fear and gut-wrenching sorrow all colliding and fighting for dominance. The concept of coherent thought or expression is utterly negated by the overwhelming onslaught of raw emotion. She has never felt this way, never felt so much. Can the human brain even process this much feeling?

But it's not her brain that hurts. It's her heart. Literally. There has been a sharp clenching sensation in her chest ever since she heard the news.

Oliver Queen is dead. Oliver. Her Oliver.

He can't be dead. Can't be gone. But he is.

Felicity would rather feel nothing that feel this. It's as if her heart is trying to claw its way up her throat, and she's half inclined to let it.

She knows somewhere in the back of her mind that Oliver wouldn't want this. Her suffering would kill him. But he promised to come back. He promised he would win. He didn't. He's dead. And Felicity died up there on that mountain with him.

As dead as she is inside, she can't seem to stop living. She hasn't slept or eaten since Merlyn came to the Arrow Cave the night before last. Her mind won't stop running through scenarios of what could have happened, what she could have said. She sits on the floor of her living room and screams his name until her voice is gone, and the tears won't come anymore because she's dehydrated.

Maybe the worst part is not that she's in pain, but that she's acutely aware of that fact. Her mind won't just shut off and let her suffer in peace. She can't stop thinking about it.

Yet still, there is the nagging almost intrusive feeling that he can't be dead—that Oliver is invincible, indestructible, absolute. It doesn't help that they have no body. Knowing that Sara "came back from the dead" twice leaves Felicity with a gaping lack of closure. But she feels that he's dead, and she's knows that's not very scientific, but no matter what, she can't seem to pull herself out of it.

As if in defiance of the world crumbling to pieces around her, someone knocks on the door. Felicity stares at it from her spot on the floor. She doesn't move to answer it, doesn't even twitch. A seemingly eternal space of silence passes.

Then a voice calls from the other side. "Felicity? It's Roy."

She knows he knows how to pick a lock, and she just about makes him, but he would only do that if he were afraid something had happened to her. Something had, but not what he might think.

So, Felicity stands up, knees cracking, and goes to the door. The fact that she's in her pajamas and hasn't showered in two days doesn't really bother her, but the look on Roy's face when she opens the door says it all: she's a mess. She knew that, but she doesn't like the confirmation. Not that he looks great either. The bags under his eyes say he hasn't slept either, and Felicity is shocked that she has the energy to care.

"Hey," he says lamely. "Do you mind if I hang out here a while?"

She does, but she's not going to say that. She wants to be alone, but she shouldn't be, and he probably knows that. Without saying anything, Felicity stands to one side of the door and lets Roy inside.

"Where's Dig?" she asks, not bothering to hide the pain in her voice.

"With his family," Roy answers. "But you and me... well, I don't have any family, and your mom's in Las Vegas and she wouldn't understand anyway, so..."

"Roy," Felicity stops him. "You're starting to sound like me with the rambling."

It would be funny if they weren't both so devastated. Neither cracks a smile.

"You think we should tell Thea?" Roy asks as they sit on the couch.

Felicity isn't prepared to have this conversation. She isn't prepared to have any conversation. She wants to curl up in a ball and die.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't know anything."

Then Roy says what Felicity has been thinking for the last two days: "You think he's really gone?"

There are so many things she could say to that, but she settles for the facts. "Why would Merlyn lie?"

"Why wouldn't he? He's always got some agenda."

"But he wanted..." He wanted Oliver to win, but Felicity can't say his name.

"Yeah," Roy concedes. "Guess this is a loss for him too."

"Don't even think about comparing."

"I'm not. I just mean... He didn't get his way. You know, that whole 'enemy of my enemy' thing he was going for."

"Except we didn't have a problem with the League of Assassins until Merlyn made it a problem."

"I'm not saying he's not a snake. Just that you're right—he's got no reason to lie about this."

"Is that supposed to make it better?"

"No, I just... I wish we could know for sure."

"Is this how everyone felt when he disappeared the first time? Like the world suddenly came to a stop and nothing made sense anymore?"

"I don't know. His family never talked about it much."

"This can't be happening," Felicity whispers, more to herself than anything.

"Yeah," Roy agrees. "What the hell are we supposed to do now?"

~oOo~

It's a long train ride into Starling, but far less conspicuous than hopping off a plane with a lot of security and witnesses. No one is going to notice a guy in a bulky jacket and baseball cap at a train station. No one will remember or identify him.

When the trip is finally over, it feels anticlimactic. The city looks different in the way any city would after two years. Nothing special.

Tommy Merlyn shrugs off the boredom as he heads for the storage lockers across the station. He paid a rather unsavory but discreet guy a lot of money to find him a place and leave the keys in locker 42. Along with them is a slip of paper with the address of Tommy's new home on it. Everything has been arranged through a series of intermediaries. No one knows anyone else's name. Tommy never thought he would be that good at keeping secrets, but that's part of a long list of things he never thought he'd do. Faking his death for one. It hadn't been intentional, but it's become convenient lately.

It's the news of Oliver's disappearance more than anything that brings Tommy back. More like rumors about the Arrow, but it amounts to the same thing in Tommy's eyes. If Oliver isn't out there fighting crime, then something is wrong. Especially since Tommy's father is still out there somewhere, undoubtedly with new plans to cause chaos.

Tommy finally understands. He gets what Oliver was doing all that time—that lonely, thankless job that gave him more trouble than satisfaction. It's not about being seen as a hero by the masses, or even being considered a decent person by your closest friends. It's something deeper that propels people to become the monster that the other monsters fear. Tommy isn't sure how long he can stare into the abyss before he becomes something more like his father than like his best friend, which is his whole reason for coming. He needs to find Oliver quickly. The one thing Malcolm never had was someone to hold him back from the edge, and Tommy suspects that it's Oliver's friends who separate the two.

If only he had a single lead to go on. Tommy can't help feeling a little pessimistic as he drives through the city. He doesn't really know where to begin with Oliver, other than actually going to his friends, but Tommy isn't ready to do that yet. He's been dead too long to just reveal himself to anyone. He always thought that if he ever came back, it would be Oliver that he saw first. Maybe it was the way Oliver watched him die that made Tommy want to perform some kind of reversal, to show up and somehow make everything better.

He's more cynical than that now. He doesn't know why it took him so long to become so, but he's almost sorry for it.

~oOo~

The last thing Oliver sees is a pair of deep blue eyes before falling off the edge of the Earth.

He shoots upright, reaching for anything solid amongst the rough sheets. He finds a wooden bedpost and grips it tightly as he can to remind himself what's real. He's not sure about anything else right now.

"Hey," a familiar voice cuts through his confusion. "It's all right. You're safe."

Malcolm Merlyn sits beside him and puts one hand over Oliver's chest as if to forcefully slow down his breathing. His other hand rests on Oliver's shoulder.

They're in a small log structure that consists of one square room. Perpendicular to Oliver's bed is another narrow bunk. Across from that is a fireplace and a thick wooden table.

"Where are we?" Oliver asks, trying to stand. His legs don't see to want to cooperate, though.

"What do you remember?" Malcolm asks, pushing him back into a sitting position and getting up to retrieve a small bowl from the table.

He hands the bowl to Oliver and sits on a small stool across from him. In the bowl is some kind of nondescript soup, and Oliver is suddenly aware that he's hungry.

As he eats, he wonders: what does he remember? The fall? No, that was a dream. Before that...

"There was a storm," Oliver says. "I was on my dad's boat. How did I get here?"

Malcolm looks somehow shocked and pleased all at once, which is odd. "You don't remember anything after the boat went down?"

"What? Went down? No, I don't even remember that. There was a bad storm, but..." Oliver sets the empty bowl aside, and actually manages to stand, though he's terribly wobbly. "What happened?"

Malcolm's expression changes to one of obvious pity. "Oliver, that was eight years ago. You were the only one to survive the shipwreck."

Eight years. The only survivor. His dad is dead. Sara is dead.

"No..."

Oliver takes a step and almost falls over. Pain radiates from his right side and he half falls back onto the bed.

Malcolm puts a hand on Oliver's arm and looks him in the eye. "You were severely injured three weeks ago. You have to take it slowly to regain your strength."

"Three weeks? What..."

"I know this is a lot to take in, so don't think too hard. Your memory loss is probably the result of the trauma you've suffered."

"What happened to me?" Oliver asks flatly.

Malcolm shakes his head and squeezes Oliver's arm. "Try to rest," he says. "We'll have plenty of time to talk."

All at once, that seems like the best idea Oliver has ever heard, and he doesn't think to wonder what was in the soup as he loses consciousness again.

This is very much a work in progress, and I don't know how often I'll update, but I wanted to get this out there before 3.10 airs. Let me know what you think.