Blood On My Name
There's a reckoning a-coming
and it burns beyond the grave
its lead inside my belly
cause my soul has lost its way
Oh, Lazarus
How did your debts get paid
Oh, Lazarus
Were you so afraid
When the fires, when the fires have surrounded you
with the hounds of hell coming after you
I've got blood, I've got blood on my name
when the fires, when the fires
are consuming you
and your sacred stars won't be guiding you
I've got blood, I've got blood
blood on my name
The first time he took a life he had done so in a panicked rage. Shado had been in danger, a nameless intruder threatening her. He had failed Yao Fei, the man who had protected him and taught him the meaning of survival, the man who had inspired a loyalty he did not realize he was capable of – a man he had been unable to save. He could not fail his daughter. A woman he ... Oliver could not say with certainty that he was in love with Shado. He cared about her, wanted to be worthy of her but if he had truly loved her he would have given up the fading picture of Laurel and allowed himself to fully feel all the emotions that the courageous beauty inspired.
His inability to do so was not about Shado or even Laurel who had become the face of everything he'd lost and to which he wanted to return. It was about him. Even in that moment, stripped of so much, he was selfish and in is need he took both, damn the repercussions. The full magnitude of those consequences would not be evident until they reverberated through his life years later inflicting a price more steep then he'd ever imagined possible. If he had known the cost he would have to pay Oliver would have done things differently.
Hindsight would become one of his great tormentors.
At the time, he had only had that instant. The island had taught him that living in the past was dangerous and hoping for the future was futile. There was only the present, the moment in which he was living, the now.
His only solace, the tender embrace that made surviving in this hell on earth bearable was in peril. He could not lose her. Shado was more than a friend and a teacher, more than a warm body in which to lose himself – she and Slade had become his family. Pieces of who he had been before the island had been torn away from him, leaving behind only the fundamental essence of who he was and that man, well he would do whatever it took to protect his family.
Extricating Shado from the men who had captured her had been the work of that man. What he had done next in a furious rage was done by the monster he was slowly becoming.
The weight of the rock in his hand hadn't registered nor had the crunch of breaking bones has he repeatedly struck the man underneath him. It was not until Oliver became aware of the wet, sticky feel of blood on his hands that he realized what he had done. He had taken a life. Violently. Without a thought. The need, one he had been wholly blind to, had sprung forth and he acted without care, a low thrumming in his own blood spurring him on.
He'd raced into action, driven by the need to protect, but somewhere during the confrontation it had changed. He had changed. What had been driving him super-heated into the need to end, with finality.
Oliver felt dazed looking down at his hands. They had once been privileged, never knowing a true day's work. They had been soft, weak – a reflection of him as a whole. That was just as true now that his hands were hard and covered in calluses, painted in blood. He had become a weapon.
A lethal one.
Two shots to the chest. He could tell himself he did it for Sara so she wouldn't have to or that it had been a mercy. Ivo would have died slowly, painfully and no one deserved a prolonged miserable ending, but the truth was that Oliver had to be certain. Ivo had stolen so much from him – the peace and family he managed to create on the island, the notion that he could and would protect those he cared about, the girl Sara had been – all lost to him.
So Oliver needed to know, regardless of the weight, that Ivo was dead. That the doctor would be unable to inflict anymore damage, prevented from ruining anymore lives. He had to be finished and it had to be by his own hand so he would never doubt the validity that Anthony Ivo was done. Ended.
He pulled the trigger the first time and flinched ever so slightly, still fighting what he was becoming. But he needed the certainty so he pulled the trigger a second time in quick order and for the first time he brought death consciously.
Torturing and killing General Shrieve felt like a necessity. The terror he had unleashed had to be answered, as did the aching hole in Oliver's heart over Akio's death. The cheerful boy had captured his heart, reminding him what it was to be a brother, a protector. With Akio he had loved wholeheartedly for the first time since laying eyes on his baby sister. There had been no one to punish when he had been forcibly separated from Thea, bad luck and Mother Nature capsized his father's yacht, and those were not entities he could confront.
Shrieve, however, was another story. The corrupt General was solely responsible for the loss of Akio Yamashiro's young life and Oliver had been intent on making him suffer the consequences of his actions. For hours he laid into the man's flesh, making him writhe and shriek in pain. He had done it all without any remorse or second thoughts. Even as the last remnants of life drained from Shrieve's eyes he did not balk.
When his work had been completed Oliver collapsed on the floor in front of the mangled body and felt nothing. The knowledge that Shrieve could never again present a danger to another had given him a sense of satisfaction, but that feeling was a distant notion that barely registered. The carnage splashed across the room, over his own body, none of it computed.
It was the pained and horrified voice of Tatsu that finally brought Oliver back to himself. Only he was not Ollie Queen feckless playboy anymore. He was neither his mother's beautiful boy nor his father's last chance at redemption; he was certainly not the big brother Thea worshiped with adoring eyes. There was nothing good left in him. All of that had been whittled away from him a slice at a time in a process more painful than being strung up by Billy Wintergreen.
He was a monster. And he could never go home.
He saved a life. For a man becoming accustomed to taking it, saving a life had felt like a novelty. Oliver knew that rescuing one life could not make up for all the ones he'd taken or the ones he was indirectly responsible for losing. Because of that he had been half hoping that the magical cave he followed Constantine into would deem him unworthy and that his penalty would be severe.
When he had apparently been judged worthy the vaguest glimmer of hope sparked inside him; he had mere hours to foster that spark before it was drowned in the waters of Lian Yu. The island had killed everything decent within him, losing his second chance to a nameless prisoner in an act of self-preservation should not have surprised him but that ember of hope had burned brighter than he realized.
Squelching it hurt in a way he could not even begin to put into words. He had been resigned to his fate making the first glimpse of escaping it an addicting nectar he knew better than to drink. Though Oliver had never wanted to be this thing he had become, he had learned repeatedly that there was no escaping it.
He'd known the moment he'd awaken cuffed to a chair that he was going to have to kill the men who had taken him and his oldest friend. He could tell by the sound of Tommy's breathing that he was emerging from the effects of the drugs they'd both been given. Since he was the one seated with the ring leader standing over him Oliver knew that the kidnappers had no real interest in Tommy, making him expendable.
No one could know his secret – what he was and what he was capable of, especially Tommy. To protect his friend from their abductors and from himself, he had to remove the threat. Swiftly and permanently.
He acted with precision and without malice, simply doing what was required; a honed weapon fulfilling its function with efficiency.
When his best friend learned that he donned a hood and stole through Starling City at night as the Vigilante seeking justice for those who were incapable of getting through more legal and respectable channels he'd called him a murderer. As he had killed in a barbarous manner with malice aforethought Oliver had been unable to refute Tommy's claim. Knowing that Tommy died believing him to be nothing but a heartless trajectory of dead bodies broke something inside of him that he'd been unaware even still existed.
He had been a weapon for so long that Oliver had accepted that there was no other way of being. Not for him.
Holding Tommy's stricken face in his hands, pleading with to stay, to live … knowing that if anyone deserved to die that night in the crumbling ruins of the Glades it was him and not his friend transformed something inside of Oliver. For so long he had been trapped with no choice. He had been trained to survive by any means necessary, but then he returned to Starling, mission to fulfill and he had nothing but choices when it came to how to proceed.
He chose death. Over and over again even when there had been other options available. It had become an acceptable norm for him until he included Diggle and Felicity in his mission. Their involvement had him slowly finding other ways. Not that death was unavoidable, but it stopped being his first response and instead became a last resort.
Though he fought coming back to city, to his mission to save it after the Undertaking and losing Tommy because he no longer wanted to be the murderer his friend died thinking him, Oliver had allowed himself to believe that he could find another way. No more killing. It was a vow he made for Tommy. One had every intention of keeping no matter the cost, even if it ended up being his own life.
Felicity's trembling form held against Count Vertigo, lethal dose of his drug hovering too close to her exposed neck changed that. He meant the vow he made to Tommy and had managed to uphold it even when facing a devil like Barton Mathis with Laurel's life on the line. Oliver did not think there would ever be an exception. He had said as much earlier when they were working to track the Count down after Dig had collapsed. "I made a choice not to put an arrow in this guy and it was the right choice. There's no more killing."
Except now the Count was threatening Felicity. He had already hurt her to gain his attention and he was poised to do worse to send him a message. It wasn't choice. Oliver was aware he had one; he could uphold his pledge to Tommy, take the non-lethal shot and risk a double plunger full of drugs being injected into Felicity's tiny frame. He could hope that the entire contents would not enter her system, that he could somehow manage to get her the medical attention she would need to survive the injection in time but there were too many ifs in that calculation with the fallout being unacceptable.
The only surety to Felicity's continued existence was ensuring the Count's demise. For Oliver it wasn't a choice, not really. He had a brilliant, blonde exception. Felicity Smoak would live; it was his own personal oath that superseded everything else and whatever he needed to do to guarantee it, he would.
He let loose three arrows in quick succession, all of them hitting their mark in the center of the Count's chest thrusting him back from his captive. He knew before the man crashed through the cracked window and landed atop a vehicle on the street below that the man was dead. He had broken his vow to Tommy and killed again, but Oliver could not regret his decision because it meant that Felicity lived.
His breath fell in sync with hers, calming the panic that crawled through him when he had answered her call only to hear the Count's voice. Feeling her cheek against his palm he knew he would not hesitate to make the same choice again. Saving Felicity's life was worth any burden he'd have to carry.
Not Diggle, he told himself while taking in the visage of his friend and the warm deep tones of his voice. It couldn't be Dig Oliver assured himself. John was gone from this nightmare, safe back in Starling watching over what was precious to them both. He was not seeing him dragged before him, a sacrificial lamb led to slaughter at altar of Ra's al Ghul.
The drugs, it had to be the drugs. Oliver knew he had to kill. He had known all along that it was an inevitability. He could hide the deed behind noble intentions but he would still be taking a life. Not Diggle's he reminded himself, forcing his mind not to believe his eyes. He could not hesitate or show weakness. Ra's had to believe that Oliver Queen was dead, only alive in the past. That death should have been easier, he had already killed Ollie, but Oliver was harder to put down. And not because of his training or his ability to absorb suffering as if he actually longed for pain. No, Oliver was tougher to snuff out because he understood what was precious and most valuable in this world in a way that the overindulged Ollie could never comprehend. Oliver was capable of pure, unselfish love. Love that allowed him to claw and preserve, which made him want to survive instead of hoping each dangerous mission would finally be the one to release him. He no longer sought out that ultimate ending willingly because there was something – someone – he wanted more than oblivion and the chance to forget all the blood that stained his hands.
He chanted over and over again in his mind: Don't flinch, it's not Diggle. It allowed him to drive the sword through the man on his knees before him. As he pulled the blade out and the wet sound of it sliding loose of his flesh echoed in Oliver's ears his mind repeated: Not Diggle. Not Diggle. Not Diggle.
When he could finally absorb the fact that the dead man on the ground at his feet was indeed not John Diggle, Oliver felt a rush of relief which he immediately choked on because the stranger had been a human being. Good or bad did not matter, he had sacrificed another piece of what little soul he had left to Ra's with his action. What made giving it a way worse now than ever before was that his soul was no longer his to offer in such a violent manner. Who he was, whatever he was, belonged to Felicity and he was meant to be giving what little he had left to offer to her, not sacrificing it at the shrine of Ra's al Ghul.
Ra's al Ghul was the last life he would take. It would weigh on his conscience, Oliver knew, because they all did. It did not matter how deserving a person was of death. Even the only other life he did not regret taking took a toll on him. The fact that he was responsible for ending a life always left a mark, an invisible scar to all but those closest to him on his soul.
It was finally over though. His hands, hands that had bloodied and broken others would never be awash in red again. The stain would always be there, but they would no longer be used to end things. His hands would no longer be weapons; instead they would be used as tools to craft a peaceful future with Felicity. They would build instead of rending asunder.
He had believed in that future driving away from Starling with Felicity at his side and in that moment he had been truly content for the first time in his life.
But death followed him. Or perhaps he invited it. No matter how often he previously longed for its cold grip death never claimed him, even when it should have. Oliver had promised himself that he was done being steeped in blood. Justice was not taking a life, but seeing to it that no more lives could be taken. He had managed to re-forge himself into an instrument of justice, a purpose beyond scratching names off a list. He had a true goal in mind that he was striving to achieve in both his nightly activities and in the light of day.
He had been so close.
One irrevocable moment changed all that. He thought he had paid the price of his sins. His body carried the physical reminders and though his heart had been full, it beat heavily in chest, the lives he had taken always there.
It had been settled it in his mind; he had been finished with death. He would mete out no more of it, there would be only life.
Standing over the fresh grave, Oliver realized how foolish he had been to think that it could that easy. That was not his life, had never been his life. He accepted what he was now and would no longer hide from it.
He was a study in red. A bringer of death. A killer.
And he was going to kill again.