The Demon King, an arrow fanfic

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

"Oliver stop! This is not you!" Felicity screamed in terror as Oliver was about to bring his sword down on Diggle's torso. "Oliver stop! -Oliv- I'm pregnant!" Her last words rang clear as day in Oliver's mind, shattering the compulsion that the league had on him. He froze mid swing - his sword dropping with a loud clatter as he turned slowly to face her. Felicity, with tears in her eyes, stared wide eyed at Oliver - having revealed her biggest secret to the whole world.

To Oliver.

REWIND THREE MONTHS AGO.

Oliver, having given up his life, his humanity, his identity to save his sister Thea, was now in the League of Assassins, a group of cold-hearted individuals with nothing to lose. They robbed him of his old life, robbed him of his identity. There was no more Oliver Queen. Only Al Sah-Him. Only darkness. He did it to save Thea's life. It's what Oliver did. He put others that he cared deeply about above him, above his own needs. Some bridges you crossed on your own, no matter who drove you to the edge. Ra's had given him absolutely no choice. He came after his family. His only blood relative. His last living relative. That was a big mistake.

Hell's frozen and Heaven is burning.

There was no way back from this hell. Not even Death could save him from his new found identity. There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. Sure he had his visible scars, but the ones that no one could see were the deepest. He didn't want to leave Felicity. There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. It was a decision that he had grown to live with, whether he wanted to or not. The second you stop questioning yourself is the second that you become the monster. And Oliver Queen had stopped second guessing himself three months ago. Sometimes you deal with the devil not because you want to, but because if you don't, someone else will. As much as we have free choice, absolute destiny is immutable. What is meant to happen does, through one measure or another.

This was his new destiny.

FAST FORWARD TO THE PRESENT.

To Oliver.

Oliver took a few steps and fell to his knees with jarring force. In the silence, she felt the past and the present shift and mix, but that was a mirage. There was no way to comfort the lost boy he'd she had the grown male. She had him right in her arms, and for a brief moment of whimsy, she imagined that she was never, ever going to let him go. Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong. His mind tried to tell him.

His eyes look too bright, the way the do in people who are in love, people who are enraged, and people who are completely bonkers. She was sure he was the latter. He wanted to believe her, but more importantly he believed in her because she knew already that he was quite lost, more lost than he would ever be, and yet she still believed in him.

Hurt shouldn't pile up like this inside of someone. No one should suffocate beneath pain on top of pain. You should have time to breathe, time to scream it out until it doesn't exist anymore. She stared back at him, and he knew they didn't have very long, that he had to get away from there quickly. But he didn't rush her because he knew that she'd seen things she should never had witnessed, and that right now, she was making the biggest decision she would ever make.

This is what it looks like when someone's fighting for his soul, he needs his friends to believe in him. The fastest way for us to help make him into a monster is to look at him like he is one. She had said that, once upon a time. It has been said that there must be a villain for every hero, a demon for every angel, a monster for every god. Despite what we are, I do not believe this. I have seen the villainous act heroic, and men called heroes act villainous. The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.

Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening and ignoring the stinging pain in her side from when Oliver had knocked her out of the way. No crossbar in the world could protect her from what lay ahead, and neither could a tiny knife ticked in her boot - though there her tiny knife would most certainly remain - and neither could a man, not even Oliver. She had to be her own strength, complete unto herself.

They crashed and collided in ways she didn't think were possible between two people. If she wasn't careful, she was going to be in over her head before she realized what was happening. It's funny, really: the older you get, the more you know about the world. The synapses in your brain fire at a higher level and quicker function, your knowledge expands. But you lose part of yourself, that part able to imagine great armies that wait for nothing more than your command; the dragon that hides under your bed that only you can see, its long emerald tail flashing in the darkness; the ghost that lives in your attic that only moans at 3:23 in the morning. When you lose that innocence, the world's hues become dark and muted, and you know that dragons aren't real. There is no army. There is no ghost in the attic. But when you're nine? When you're nine, it's all probable, it's all realistic, and even more so, it's all true.

She watched the black ocean in his eyes and saw this flash behind them and understood what he had meant the night before all of this, the night they slept together, about the insanity that had gripped him. He was not so far gone as to be lost, but he was close, and she knew it had come from her turning her back on him as she had started to flee. Whether she wanted to or not, she anchored him to this world, and she was the only thing he'd known, maybe for his whole life.

He was head over heels in love with her. No, that didn't describe it. He was tearing his fucking heart out and throw it at her, beg her to take it into hers. He was falling from the greatest heights with no safety net below. He was giving everything of his own life for hers, giving up every inch of his soul so she could wear it proudly. He was a former king on his knees in front of the queen. A jester begging for a chance. He was powerless, helpless and at her mercy. He had no illusions about his addiction to her. She had her fingers sunk firmly into his heart, and could do with it what she wished. The gentle sound of her words became the shushing of his blood in his head, and he willingly listened, hovering on the edge of consciousness, bathed in the oblivion of whatever drug they had given him to bring him home.

She did nothing to try to control the shakes that rattled her body,and didn't attempt to stop herself from crying. Tears left both of her eyes at the far corners, slipping out. "If I was truly as brave as I thought I was, I'd have let him go. But I love him, and I wasn't that brave." Felicity said as Diggle hoisted Oliver's unconscious body up and over his shoulder and began their trek out of the Underworld.