A/N: Hey, remember when I said "Diamonds Aren't Forever" was my longest oneshot? I lied, this is. I considered splitting it, but... nah. I think it would break the flow if I did that, huh? And it's already pretty divided. You'll see what I mean.
IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind that this particular story contains really heavy subject matter, and unfortunately, a lot of it probably is not accurate in terms of what real people go through. I tried my best, but I'm far from perfect. So if at any point, I wrote something that is offensive or insensitive in any way at all, please don't hesitate to call me out on it. I will honestly change it in a heartbeat.
That being said - I hope I wrote a good read. Let me know what you think.
But I try my best, and all that I can to
Hold tightly onto what's left in my hand.
But no matter how, how tightly I will strain
The sand will slow me down, and the water will drain.
- Addict With a Pen, Twenty One Pilots
When Diggle snaps your right arm – your dominant one, the one he's got pinned behind your back – the first thing you do is scream. And you don't even hear yourself. You just feel your throat split and your voice grow hoarse, and you're sure that if you could hear yourself, if you were anyone else standing in the same room, you'd be unnerved and chilled to the bone. Because you're giving it your all, here. You're yelling and cursing and straight-up screaming, not only because it hurts – and it does hurt, like nothing else, because no matter how many scars and wounds you got from those miserable five years, you've never once had your bones snapped clean in two by your friend's bare hands – but also because here you are.
You're in the foundry, with Laurel and Thea and Felicity and Roy standing round and staring at Dig, who probably looked out at them and waited for a nod, waited for some show of permission, before breaking your bones. He's still got you restrained, and you can't remember how it happened. You're bent at the waist, dripping sweat, panting like a goddamn dog, and you can feel all those eyes on you. You feel their pity and judgment just radiating out, and you feel nothing but hatred for it. If you could die in this single moment, fade away molecule by fucking molecule, you would. In a heartbeat. But you can't. So what can you do? You can scream. So that's what you do. You scream.
Somewhere above you, the rafters must be shaking uncontrollably under the weight of everything they've held up for so long, threatening to turn to dust, just like you are. Maybe the horrifying gasps and guttural cries are coming not from you, but from them. Perhaps it's just the building, crumbling.
But you know better.
They tell all the doctors and nurses in the ER who ask that you intentionally did it to yourself. You broke your own arm. What a bunch of fucking liars, you think; and you want to tell anyone who will listen that they're lying through their teeth, but you keep your mouth shut. With that manic look in your eyes and the exhausted slouch of your back that you can't help, even when sitting in a waiting room chair with someone's hands on your shoulders keeping you steady, you're not exactly the most reliable voice in the room. You say a word of the truth and you'll go from self-destructive and crazy to self-destructive, crazy, and delusional to boot.
So out of those two options, you pick the first. Any other sane, sound-of-mind person would.
And you start plotting your escape as the nurses whisk you away, handing you hospital scrubs to change into as you walk down the blinding white hallways, swimming in artificial, unnatural light.
They don't allow you visitors in the psych ward, not for the first twenty four hours.
You consider this a good thing. You don't want to see them anyway; your plastered arm still pulses painfully with every vague movement, but your apparent fall from grace hurts far more. All you'll see when they eventually win clearance to the visiting room is that pity in their eyes, and that's the very last thing you want. You can take just about anything – just not their pity.
You don't belong here. You're sure. You belong under your hood, out in your city, protecting it. Not in a corner room in an over-staffed psych ward, disallowed your own clothes, with your shoelaces stripped from your boots.
It's almost funny – you never in your life thought you'd miss something so small as your shoelaces.
But here you are.
An orderly brings you some sleeping pills once you're settled, and it takes a serious amount of self-restraint not to laugh right in his face.
As if you haven't already tried pills.
But you down them anyway, throwing them back with one hand and swallowing them with a shot of water, because you're not about to give them any reason to keep you here longer than they should.
Once the orderly leaves, you lay down on top of your bed and stay there until the first rays of sunlight shine in through the window and cast an orange glow through the tiny, off-white room.
The group sessions they hold twice a day are optional, so you skip the first one. It's not like you need it, and if there's any fault in not going, it's hardly yours. They gave you a choice, after all.
The one-on-one therapy sessions, on the other hand, are mandatory. So when a nurse raps softly on your closed door, you get up and open it with a smile that promises you're fine. All upturned lips and a cheerful disposition you don't quite have the energy for, you follow her until you're suddenly sitting opposite a kind-eyed man behind a desk who's smiling at you and extending a hand. You shake it as firmly as your fingers will allow.
"Good morning, Mr. Queen," he says, almost happily. You wonder how anyone could be happy in this place. It's oppressive. But whatever, you suppose. The man goes on. "I'm Dr. Hill. I'll be overseeing your treatment while you're here with us. How's your arm?"
You look down at the cast that runs from your elbow to just past your palm. Your fingers stick out from where the plaster ends, and it strikes you that you can't even use a goddamn pen like this. Forget a bow. But in that moment, you keep a firm lid on your indignation, keep from cursing John Diggle's name as loudly as you can, and you answer.
"Fine."
It's not true, but the doctor doesn't need to know that.
But perhaps, you think, he already does know, because he nods his head softly and lets you get away with your bullshit answer and says, "That's good to hear. There's still a prescription going through for pain medication, though, should you need it. It should be processed by tonight, but you don't have to take it if you don't want to."
You nod and let the man fall silent. But he doesn't stay silent for very long. You should have guessed.
"So how did you break your arm?"
You sigh. You don't have the energy nor the creativity to think of a lie, so you settle on the truth. You think, Hill seems like a pretty reasonable guy. Maybe he'd believe you. You doubt it, though.
"I didn't break my own arm," you finally admit, and the doctor just looks at you with his unreadable expression and waits for you to elaborate. "My friend broke it."
He glances down at a file on his desk and simply says, "Your friend broke your arm? That's not what your file tells me."
"Then why did you ask the question?"
A few minutes in, and he may or may not believe you.
"Why would your friend break your arm on purpose?" his voice is soft and gentle and horribly placating, and you almost don't want to answer. But you do.
"Honestly? I think it was just to get me through the doors of a hospital."
Which is stupid, you might add. You've said it before and you'll keep on saying it until they discharge you: you don't belong here. You don't need a hospital. You're fine, A-Okay, the picture of emotional health, and if they could just let you prove it, you'd be well on your way home, in your own clothes, with your shoelaces secured on your boots.
"Okay, I can believe it," the doctor says, but you don't really think he can. "But tell me… why do you think your friends would go this far to get you admitted? Can you think of anything that would give them reason to think you need help?"
Now there's a question. A loaded one, if anyone asks you. But they won't.
You have to think. And if you're going to be objective about it, you think the answer might be maybe. If the occasional nightmare was cause for concern, then yeah. A couple sleepless nights, a few extra hours under the hood, a missed target or two in training, a skipped meal here and there, accidentally snapping at someone now and again – if those were red flags, then sure. But that's hardly reason to break someone's arm. You think about it. But you're not exactly sure, so you say as much.
"Mr. Queen, about how much do you weigh? Just off the top of your head," the doctor asks, completely out of nowhere. You think it odd and wonder what he's playing at, but you say nothing about it. You just blink at him and answer.
"180?" you guess, but you're almost positive. "182? Somewhere around there."
And the man on the other side of the desk frowns, bites his bottom lip carefully, and nods.
"Alright. But again, Oliver, that's not what it says in your file."
You think he must be out of his mind, because even if you're a few pounds off in your estimate, it's not such a big deal. You look at his frowning face and muster the appropriate amount of energy to look confused until you catch the slight movement of his wrist. He tilts the pen in his hand to point at a few lines of text towards the top of the page; you read through it, perhaps going a bit farther down the page than he wanted you to, and you think you might understand.
Patient: Oliver Queen (Male)
Age: 29
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 166 lbs.
Reason for Admission: Broken arm, suspected self-inflicted damage. Possible self-destructive tendencies.
Send to East Wing, admit overnight. Diagnose and treat as needed.
Visit is indefinite.
They allow you visitors that night, and you should have foreseen that some orderly would be knocking at your door at six o'clock on the dot to bring you to the visiting room. You're halfway tempted to refuse and shut the door with a tight shake of your head, but you don't. You suppose you can behave.
So you follow him to a long room with tables and chairs and Thea, who runs over to hug you immediately, without hesitation, murmuring your nickname and pressing her head against your chest. Her arms are tight around your middle and you try to return the sentiment. And when she finally pulls away, you turn to Diggle and try not to squeeze too hard when you shake his hand. You sit down opposite them and say nothing at first.
When Diggle glances down and apologizes for your arm, when he says, "I'm sorry, man. But you didn't give us a choice," you just look at him and say it's fine. You answer with those two hard, quiet words that feel like gravel in your mouth and you look straight into his eyes to see that he doesn't believe you. And of course he doesn't.
Few people do these days.
The two of them fall silent, and so do you. You have nothing to say to them, after all, and you wonder why they even came. To stare at you? Sign your damn cast?
Across the room, there's just one other patient, sitting with her parents. She's got dark skin and short blue hair, a square jaw and a distant look in her eyes that you think must match yours perfectly. Her arms are crossed as her parents try to tell her that she's in here for her own good. It's what's best for you, they say.
"Is it what's best for me?" she asks, defiant. "Or what's best for you?"
"For you," they insist. And they're adamant about it. Over and over again, they tell her that she'll get better. That this is all just to help her.
You look back at Thea and Diggle and you're not sure what to think about that.
You attend the second group session, more out of boredom than anything else. You've grown tired of staring at the stupid walls in your room, so you drag your feet into a room you've never seen before and sit down on one of the plastic chairs that's part of an imperfect circle of patients. You make a conscious decision just then not to say a single word. You'd much rather listen, have some sort of noise around you, rather than the stagnant silence of your room.
The doctor who runs these sessions is a tall woman with medium skin and a neat bun by the base of her neck, who sits cross-legged with a clipboard resting in her lap. She's got a permanent smile etched on her face, and you can't tell whether it's real or not. You used to be so good at that – reading people. But hey, here you are. Sitting in a plastic chair with a broken arm and dulled, sluggish senses.
"Good evening, everyone," the doctor says, still smiling like this place isn't some scrubbed up excuse for a prison with meds. "I hope you're all doing well. Shall we pick up where we left off this morning?"
There are a few murmurs and nods around the circle, but for the most part, everyone is silent.
"Alright. Let's talk about stress. Do you guys feel like you experience a lot of stress in your daily lives? And where do you think it comes from? We'll go around the circle."
The unspoken rule of group therapy, as you quickly learn, is that you can easily pass on a question by shaking your head and gesturing down the line. So after three yeses, derived from one boy's schoolwork, another woman's overfilled schedule, the threat of one man's family being evicted from their home, even though he and his wife are each working two jobs apiece, the doctor's kind eyes rest on you and you start to shake off the question.
But then you discover that perhaps that unspoken rule does not apply to newcomers, and you begin to severely regret coming when she smiles and says, "Ah, looks like we have a new face. What's your name?"
You wonder how she doesn't know your name for a moment, before you figure that she must be playing you. Of course she knows your name; most, if not all, of Starling City knows your name, your face, your story. Regardless, you answer.
"I'm Oliver."
"Well hello, Oliver," she replies, and a few members of the circle echo her. "It's nice to meet you. Can you tell me, do you think you experience a lot of stress in your life?"
Well, you think, that depends on her definition of stress. If she counts losing nearly everyone in your life who you ever loved, struggling to protect the surviving few, and having an entire city full of people depending on you each night to protect them "stress," then you suppose the answer is yes. You suppose that fighting each night with the threat of losing your life and failing your city and letting down everyone who believes in you hanging over your head would make for one extremely stressed out person. However.
"No," you keep your features calm and blank as you tell her that there's no stress at all. You're completely fine.
And she just nods her head, says, "I see," in that grossly calm voice that all the doctors in this place seem to have, and when you gesture to your right, she moves on.
You take those stupid, ineffective sleeping pills once again, along with the painkillers that are similarly useless. And when the orderly leaves, you lay down like you did the night before and stare at the ceiling for hours on end until the sun comes up.
When you get up from your bed, the room starts to tilt and blur like nothing around you is really real. You might be staring forward at a copy of the walls around you, or a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's what happens when you don't sleep for days; you're used to it by now. The only difference is that now your access to coffee is extremely limited.
You blink away the stiffness in your eyes and the dull ache in your head starts to disappear after a few minutes. And when a nurse knocks on your door again, you stand up, plaster on your fake smile, and say good morning.
"If you don't mind, Oliver," Hill says carefully, pursing his lips in between sentences. "I'd like to talk about the Queen's Gambit."
You look him straight in the eyes.
"I don't want to talk about that."
"Okay," he sort of obliges. "But talking is important. It gives me an idea of what might be wrong and how I can help you. And the sooner we can figure out how to treat you, the sooner you'll be discharged."
It might be the lack of sleep, but it sure sounds an awful lot like black mail, or bribery. Or perhaps you're just too used to those sorts of things to even consider the alternative – honest helpfulness. Whatever it is, though, you don't really feel like fighting with the guy.
You sigh. "Why the Gambit?"
"Well, if I'm correct in my assumption, the Gambit sinking was your first experience of major loss. Is that correct?"
Of course it's correct. You don't like admitting it, but it is. You nod your head.
"Tell me about your father."
The words, "I don't want to," are dangerously close to emerging again, because your father is the last thing you want to talk about now, but you restrain yourself. You don't like to even imagine in your mind's eye the look on your father's face as he shot himself in the head and sentenced you to five years alone in pure hell. You don't like to think of the stupid book he gave you or the insane mission he sent you on. But if telling this guy the bare minimum will get you out of here faster – you're willing to suck it up and talk. You're too tired to argue, anyway.
"My father said… that he wasn't the man I thought he was."
Hill nods at you and asks, "He was referring to the Undertaking, correct?"
You consider this and nod your head.
"Yeah," you say. "But… he was wrong, see. He was still a good man. Look, he – he got himself into some bad situations, but…. He died. He died… thinking he was saving me."
You glance away from the man behind the desk and think about how much you really don't want to say any more. But Hill presses, asks what you mean.
"What I mean is that…" you take a deep breath. "He and I both made it to a life raft. But then he decided that there wasn't enough food and fresh water for the both us. He told me he'd done terrible things. Asked me to right his wrongs. And before I could ask him what he meant… he took a pistol and shot himself in the head."
Hill nods but doesn't say a word. You're exhausted and suddenly can't will yourself to shut up.
"He left me alone out there. And I was just a kid. A stupid kid who drank too much and made stupid choices, but he laid all of that on me and shot himself and left me alone in the ocean. He left me alone."
The doctor says nothing to this; how could he just say nothing?
"But you know what the worst part was?" your chest feels tight all of a sudden, and there's a sudden wetness in the corners of your eyes, and your heart is pounding in your ears. You don't want to think about this, but here you are talking about it, because you have no choice. "The worst part… is that I made it to the island two days later, with water and food to spare. He would have made it. He could have lived. But instead he shot himself… and left me to bury him and fend for myself. A kid. I was a fucking kid…."
You discover that the perfect way to avoid unwanted visits from the people who put you in here is to feign sleep. You also discover that if you don't answer the door after a few seconds when the orderlies knock, they'll just come in anyway.
Not to worry – as long as you're turned away from them, breathing slowly and evenly, they'll just turn around and leave you be.
"So, Oliver – do you want to tell the group how you usually handle your stress?"
You could swear you told her yesterday that you didn't have any stress. It was a blatant lie, of course, but that's what you told her. Your answer is the same, regardless.
"I don't."
She smiles patiently, because all she ever does is smile and express a boundless supply of patience.
"You don't want to tell the group, or you don't handle your stress?"
Both.
"The first one."
Hill makes you talk about lots of things you don't want to think about, and you don't like it. Not a bit.
If talking in excruciating detail about watching your best friend die and being unable to do anything about it is supposed to help you, you think he's made some mistake. Talking about that, about how you got your very own mother murdered in front of you, about how Sara died again and it was probably still your fault, about how all you do is fuck up and get people hurt, if all of that is supposed to make you feel better, it's obviously not working.
All you want to do is walk out of this office and go back to your room, but they won't let you do that.
You imagine being able to flop down on your bed and sleep for ages, but it's your goddamn head that won't let you do that. You're probably doomed to live as a zombie forever, but you can't really bring yourself to care.
You forget to pretend to sleep that evening, and when someone knocks on the door at six o'clock, you make the mistake of opening it right away.
Laurel and Felicity are waiting for you in the visiting room, an orderly says. And rather impatiently, he might add. This is their third time here, and the first that you haven't been "asleep," so they should be very pleased to see you. You think, of course.
You briefly entertain the idea of simply refusing the visit, because you're pretty sure you can do that, but you don't. You get up and drag your feet to that stupid room, hug your friends, and sit down in awkward silence until they can work up the courage to say something.
Felicity tries to tell you that you look better. A little more color in your face, Laurel adds.
And you just turn your lips up ever so slightly, because they're horrible liars and you're not completely blind.
Hill asks you what you do for a living now that your father's company is gone. (You know, the company your father worked so hard to create, the one you let fall apart.)
You get out of being specific by saying it's classified. You say it's a government job and you're not authorized to tell anyone. He lets you get away with it. Sort of.
"Well, can you give me a general idea of what you do now?"
You consider this. "I try to protect people."
You try your best.
It isn't good enough, though.
By the sixth day, Hill thinks he knows why you're here.
You insist it's because your friend broke your arm with his bare hands.
But he calls it a stress-induced nervous breakdown. Some Oliver-Queen-specific cocktail of PTSD and major depression that won't let you sleep or eat or live without feeling irritable and dull and distant.
You don't like the way the words sound in his mouth, and you don't like the way they feel in yours.
But they're the words you're stuck with until you can dig yourself out and walk away from them.
They bring you three different medications that night: your ineffective sleeping pills, the useless painkillers, and a dose of antipsychotics that you are to take in the morning and that may or may not work. Wait and see, they said.
So that's what you do. You lay in bed, waiting for sleep, but see nothing but the ceiling and the eventual sunrise yet again. It's all some tired routine you're entirely bored with.
You get up and stumble through the blurry room until you find a fresh set of clothes to change into. Then you find the paper cup on your nightstand and throw back the pills they gave you, and you turn your head to glance at the mirror on the wall. You take a good, long look at yourself and think –
If Ra's al Ghul could see you now. Slade Wilson. Everyone you've ever shot an arrow at, put the fear of God into. If they could see the sunken look of your eyes and the air of defeat with which you hold yourself, you think they'd smile. Laugh and chide at what you've become. What you've become. You used to be a hero. Now?
Now you're a ghost.
You ask Hill for the umpteenth time if you can finally go home. Now that he knows what the problem is, you don't think there's any reason for you to stay here. You're no danger to anybody.
It's not like you're going to break your own arm or anything.
Strangely enough, he agrees with you. Once you sleep through the night, he says, he'll be more than happy to send you home with medication in hand and strict orders to come see him at least once each week. You feel oddly satisfied by that compromise.
The group question of the day is this: What do you love?
You sit at the very end of the rotation so that the therapist points in your direction last. After so much time to think about your answer, you surprise yourself with a decent list of names and places and stupid memories and old movies rattling around between your ears.
But when she finally gets to you and flashes her smile your way, you can hardly put into words your affection for the way the city sounds in the early evening, the steady thrum of bustling life. You don't think you could ever adequately describe your mother's distinctive smell, the one you miss so much, of rose petals and coffee and firewood and warm memories that you won't ever see again. The few pictures of your father you have left, propped up in all their lonesome, heartbreaking glory.
Thea. The privilege of having her near again, being able to watch her live and grow and be happy. Felicity, Laurel, Diggle, Roy, and the familial closeness that comes with them. The silent understanding you've got with each and every one, the way you can work in perfect harmony.
You love it. You love all of that and warm spring days and tiny rainstorms in purple evenings and long showers and idle mornings and all of the old Toby Maguire Spiderman films.
You're not sure if you love the Arrow or not. You think there's a fine line between love and obsession, dedication and hatred, and that green hood sits right on the wire. It's no matter.
You're not sure what happened, but when the woman looks at you and asks again, "What do you love, Oliver?" you can't bring yourself to say any of that.
Instead you smile right back at her and enjoy the sensation of it.
The follow-up question is this: What do you hate?
Although a better question may have been, what don't you hate? The therapist goes in reverse this time, starting with you, and it doesn't take you thirty seconds to think of everything in the world you can't stand.
Injustice, you think. Murder. The all-encompassing feeling of loss, the look of disappointment on someone's face when you've failed them. Lying, being lied to, sprays of bullets, shipwrecks, ulterior motives, you could go on and on and on.
But you restrain yourself.
"What do you hate?"
You take a deep breath.
"Swimming."
You don't lay down on your bed so much as you collapse on top of it, face down. Your door is closed, but that doesn't stop you from bringing your arms up to your head and shoving your face into the crook of your elbow just to block everything out, regardless.
You plan to stay just where you are until eight, when no one will be waiting for you in the visiting room and no one will knock on your door and everyone will just leave you be.
But you end up staying there until halfway through the next day, when you force your eyes open to find your room bright in the early afternoon sunlight.
Well, what do you know?
You'd honestly forgotten what sleep felt like.
Satisfied with this, but still entirely lacking in the willpower to drag yourself from your tangled covers, you pull the blanket over your head and go back to sleep.
The pain in your right arm has dulled considerably by the time you leave, six days from the night it was broken. It still twinges, of course, and throbs when you move it too fast, but who really cares? It's better than it was, and that's what matters.
You get your own clothes back when you leave, and you get to lace up your boots again – which takes a little longer than usual, with that cast limiting your fingers' movement. But you get it done, and once you do, you sign all the necessary documents with a sloppy, left-handed signature and leave with your new pill bottle rattling in your pocket.
Thea's there to take you home. Just her, tentatively smiling as though she may break you with any wrong word.
Regardless, it's not the worst homecoming. Plus, it even gets a little better when you flop down on the couch in the living room – you've grown tired of tiny bedrooms and off-white ceilings and solitude, if you're honest – and fall asleep like it's the most natural thing in the world to you by now. Of course, you're still exhausted, either way; but it's a nice change.
You wake up sometime in the early evening with an old blanket thrown over you. You almost kick it off by mistake, but you don't. Instead, you just sit up carefully and let it fall into your lap as you turn to the window and look out at the city that's so very much alive underneath a purple-grey sky. There's the gentle patter of drizzle on the window, and as you rub sleep out of your eyes, you think you might finally be calm for the first time in weeks. You'd forgotten the feeling.
You glance to your right. And along with the soft rhythm of the rain outside, you discover, is the quiet, even sound of Thea's breathing. Not five feet away on the opposite couch, she's spread out asleep with a blanket of her own wrapped around her shoulders.
You smile, lean against the back of the sofa, and look out at the open space that is well and truly your home. You think that one day you'll be happy here.
And with that thought, you push yourself up and walk into the kitchen. You flip the switch on the old tea kettle and take out two mugs, and while the water heats up, you take that pill case out of your pocket and set it on the counter. Then you find the nearest piece of paper and scribble out your next appointment time.
You're not sure how you got here. But you think you have an idea of how you'll get out of it. You think, you can follow instructions. You can listen. Maybe just this once.
Maybe tomorrow you'll duck into the foundry for just a few minutes. Give Diggle the thank you thatyou haven't given him yet. But then you'll tell him that if he ever breaks your arm again… well, he'll know the rest.
The water in the kettle is boiling, so you pour it right into the two little mugs and take care to keep the tags on the teabags from going into the cups.
You think you'll be alright eventually. Because that's what the Queens do – they survive. All in good time.
But for now, all you'll do is place two steeping cups of tea on the coffee table and wait for your sister to wake up and join you.
A/N: I just wrote the last few seconds now and didn't really bother to proofread. I'll get to it, haha. It's 1:30 am right now, so it will have to be later. In the meantime, I would really love some reviews!