Title: Held Accountable.
Words: 2432
Genre: Fix it/Angst
Pairing: Laurel/Oliver
Status: Done
Summary: Oliver doesn't just get to say his piece. Laurel won't stand for his abhorrent behavior and Oliver needs that.
"In a special report, Lonny Machin has just been apprehended by the Star City Police Department. DA Laurel Lance was on site to oversee his detainment."
Seeing the truck come back empty handed, there was only one person stupid enough to do what just happened. The reason that they had gotten him off the streets in the first place. "You don't look pleased. I mean it could have been a ghost, honey." Her father cajoled.
Her face didn't move at all. She picked up her purse and kissed him on the cheek. "I have someone I have to see," She told him.
"That's the scary lawyer face, you throwing the book at someone?" He asked.
She nodded and laughed a little. "He'll be lucky if the book is all I throw at him." She said. She saw the raised eyebrow. "Don't worry, everyone's going to be fine. But someone just needs a little reminding of what justice actually means." She promised him.
When she arrived, there was no one sitting at that bright white platform, something she missed. She missed seeing her friend up there everyday, doing what they did best. She hated the idea that her friend who found great purpose in this might have to give it up.
But he came in. And thoughts were quelled. The anger about what he did was still there of course. "Have you completely lost your mind?" She asked him as he strode in, looking for something new. And he didn't even really look at her, went right past her to get at the computer.
He shook his head, "Not up for a debate," He said in a tone that suggested she get out of his hair, rather than proceed on. He tried this many time in the many years that they had known each other, there was never a time it was successful, much less now.
"Good," She laughed, sardonically, "Because there is nothing to debate. What you did-" She started.
He interrupted and finally looked her in the eye, "What I did? I did what I had to do." He said, defending letting a criminal back out on the streets. Defending his shitty actions fueled by grief, by bloodlust, hell by revenge. "After you made it necessary." And there it was. Everyone else's fault. Not his. Hers. It was always her fault, according to him. "Machin was only arrested by the SCPD because you gave him up."
He said that as if it wasn't in the best interests of most people to give him up to the justice system. If to keep him off the streets was the bad thing. As if doing her job, her actual job, the one she got paid for was somehow the dirty little secret that everyone should keep hidden.
She shook her head, "You were holding a man prisoner as some sort of personal vendetta." She told him. How couldn't he see the slip. How couldn't he see that they, all of them, Thea, John, Felicity, not to mention, herself and him, they were better than that? They needed to be better. Otherwise, who really were they to say that their moral clause was the right one? "And this is not the first time you have kept people prisoner without them being able to assert defenses for themselves. We have a system in this country that we live in. And we cannot just turn our back on it. Because if we do, we're not heroes, we're just sociopaths in leather, and I'm never going to be one of them. Your personal vendetta be damned," She spit
"Do you know how many people Damien Darhk and I have killed over the past six months?" He asked her.
It was the first time he admitted to killing people. He prided himself on not killing. She knew this, but he knew that there was blood on his hands. Maybe this would be the moment he realized where he needed to go, she thought. And then he opened his mouth again. "This might be a vendetta, but it's not personal."
"I don't know what's worse." She said as he turned back to that computer and tried to start something again. She took a step forward into his space and invaded it. If he wanted to act like a goddamn barbarian than he was going to get a barbarian's fucking welcome. She was not about to be pushed around by some musclehead, "You actually believe that or you expect me to."
"I put a tracker on Machin," He said in a calm voice, trying to lead her focus to the screen, "he will lead us to Darhk and then we will take both of them down," He said.
She couldn't be swayed by it. It sounded a like an idealistic plan. One made in the fit of the moment. One that someone not fully capable of all the consequences would think is the best plan, but damn if just for a moment, she didn't want to think about it. But she couldn't. She needed to see all of the flaws in that plan, because someone had to. Someone had to keep them safe. "And when your master plan doesn't work, you just set a murdering psychotic back on the streets." Because it wasn't an if, it was a when. Machin was smart. He would figure out he tracker eventually.
And Oliver knew an combatant when he saw one. He was good at fighting. He went straight for the kill. He didn't play with his food normally. He just ate it. He knew exactly what her weak point was.
"Like you did with Sara." He said in a quiet voice.
And her eyes narrowed, because she could barely see the soul behind his eyes. Where was it? Didn't he know? He had to know. "That's not fair," Her voice cracked.
They stared at each other for a good few moments, before Diggle came in and looked at the both of them, facing off, at an impasse. "What's going on?" He asked.
"Oliver broke Machin out of custody," Laurel informed Diggle. This way, maybe he would fight fair. Maybe there would be some sort of thinking about it stage to this insane plan that formed in the nanosecond it took to think about trackers.
"What?" Diggle asked. At least he had the same reaction she did to this whole thing. At least she knew that these feelings were justified.
"Using Machin to get to Darhk." He said in his authoritative Arrow voice. He was very good at that voice. It would come in handy one day if he had kids, but they weren't his kids and this wasn't a team where he got to be the automatic leader. "If either of you has a problem with it, you know where the door is." He said, like that was the end of it.
Oh, if he knew.
"Laurel, give us a second." Diggle asked. Not really asked, basically just expected her to go. He expected her to let him sort it out, but she shook her head.
"No," She said, out loud and both of them looked at her. "You heard me." She said as she shrugged her purse off onto the table where it landed with a nice thud.
Diggle looked a little worried. "I think it's best if I talk to Oliver right now," He said, trying to dissuade her from the look of fire in her eyes.
She shook her head. "Talk if you want, but what I suspect you want to do is the same thing as he's doing. And I'm sorry, I'm not about to let him hamfist this plan because he thinks that because he started this, he gets to run it." She told Diggle and he softened a little. They'd been doing things Oliver's way for so long that sometimes it was easy to fall into that trap again. But she was right they were a team. They weren't just following orders. She looked to Oliver, who noticed the steel in them. Nyssa trained her to be forceful, but he didn't think she trained with words too, "We told you when you came back that you were not the leader of this team. If Thea knew that you let that man run free, what would she have to say? Would you take her more seriously?
"No, Oliver. You don't get to tell people they fucked up and then proceed to not only make the same mistake with someone who was arguably worse, but then throw it back in their face. You don't get to bring your sister back from the dead, but keep giving me shit about how I did it with mine. You don't get to tell me how to do my daylight job when you can't even manage to keep the woman you love out of harm's way in the daylight. She was shot in the daylight. In the middle of the light.
"You don't get to talk to me, to us that way. And you should know better. If Felicity was down here, she'd kick your ass royally for the things that you've done in her absence. She is not just yours. You are not the only one who lost her. And you need to be goddamn better for her, because if the piece of good you were trying to be for her everyday is lost, then what is she really in that hospital room for anyway?" She asked him, picked up her purse, and left, door slamming behind her.
She was parked out of Felicity's room, Donna in there with her, but she had her nose in a magazine. Well, not a magazine, more like a periodical, National Computer Sciences Monthly. And she was reading it, out loud sometimes when she didn't understand something. Which seemed to be often in this periodical.
This was Laurel. She'd struggle through something for you if she loved you and you loved something. Laurel wanted to keep Felicity up to date on what the new stuff. He wondered if they talked about this stuff often. If she struggled through these magazines every month just so that Felicity would have someone to talk to about this stuff.
Felicity never talked to him about it, that he was sure of. He was good with computers too. Laurel knew how to work her smartphone like a pro, but the minute something went wrong, she immediately took it to the genius bar. She didn't even try with her gadgets, but here she was reading and digesting something for a sick friend, so that she would have something to talk about that was relevant to her friend's interest.
Maybe he still had a few lessons in humanity still to learn.
But god, help him, he didn't deserve these amazing women who stood up to him, who told him no, to actually teach those important lessons. Somehow, he got them.
She sensed someone in the periphery and looked up. The displeased look on her face was fair, he thought, after what they'd been through. "Here to bark orders again?" She asked as she looked back at the periodical and at a chart even he didn't understand, but he was almost positive that Felicity would love.
He shook his head. "No, here to apologize." He said. The look of surprise as she tore herself away from her magazine amused him a little, hurt a little too, but he supposed that was the look that he needed to get rid of by being a better person. "You know back in tenth grade when I wanted to be the group leader in a group where there wasn't supposed to be a leader, you did this same thing. You told me exactly how it was." He told her.
She nodded. "We were in theater and we were supposed to be learning how to workshop and you thought since you were the director, you got final say. But what we were supposed to be learning is that in workshopping, you have to take direction from everyone." She smiled. "I do remember calling you out."
He grinned and looked at her. "Sometimes, I'm not going to be the best person. Hell, I'm not usually a good person. But you, you and Felicity, you make me want to be better. And you two never have a problem calling me out on it," He said as he looked over to her face in the door, she looked so ragged, but so beautiful. "I need you to keep calling me out on it. You help me focus on being better." He told her.
"Kind of a half assed apology," She cracked as the smile came to her face. She'd forgiven him, the look in her eyes that said that he needed to burn in hell for the things he said was gone and that more than anything achieved his goal.
He sighed and looked to her. "How about this?" He asked, "I'm sorry for making you feel like you weren't a valuable part of the team and that your judgment didn't have as much value as mine. We need you to do your daylight job. It makes the rest of us better that you constantly question our status quo." He told her. "And I'm sorry for not seeing how hurt you were by all of this too. I was so focused on Felicity and my grief that I didn't see yours."
Donna came out and saw Oliver sitting next to Laurel. "She's resting right now, but in about half an hour, she should be good to go for some new visitors." Donna grinned. "She'd love to see you two."
Laurel nodded. "We're gonna be right here." She said as she took Oliver's hand, the full sign of forgiveness between them. She looked over at Donna and smiled, "If you wanna go grab something to eat, we'll be right here."
"You sure?" Donna asked, looking at Oliver.
He confirmed. "Laurel's got a periodical to finish up, probably so she can talk tech with Felicity and I, well, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but it's gonna be right here. So go, have a nice meal, take a shower, do something for you, Donna."
Donna smiled, "You know, Felicity she's lucky to have you two," And her eyes twinkled with something that Oliver only ever saw in Donna when she was talking about how great Felicity and he were as a couple. He didn't know what that meant, but he liked it.