Title: To See the Light
Author: Floss Aus
Rating: K+.
Summary: After driving into the sunset, Oliver still struggles with memories of his past, while attempting to move on with Felicity.
Spoilers: Up to and including I Am Oliver Queen, S3 finale.
Disclaimer: CW and DC are Arrow peeps and Stephen Amell continues to be AMAZING as Oliver Queen and Emily Bett Rickards, is my spirit animal
Feedback: Yes please!
In the darkness, his panting is more furious. I sit next to him, waiting for the right moment. To break the cycle, to cut into the nightmare. If I pick it wrong, he'll spend the rest of the night agitated, unable to control the trembling in his hands, unable to reign to back in and find the center he is so desperately seeking. It's that moment between reality and the dream state. I have to pick the moment and help him back, help him find a way out of the darkness and back to this world.
The first night, it scared me more than I care to admit, even to him. I'd crept from the bed, where we had just spent past several hours worshipping each other's bodies, to clean the mess. An impatient and more hungry lover, I've never known. The wake we leave is pretty chaotic and I sometimes can't sleep knowing that clothes are strewn from one end to another. Still, as I was folding and straightening, it was when I heard him, whimpering.
I didn't believe the sound to be him, it was so foreign, so wounded, so vulnerable. But the volume increased and the only place it was coming from was the bed I just left. Then I strangely thought he was joking, begging for more and in my mind, at that moment it made sense – the man was after all insatiable.
How wrong I was. I found him in the foetal position, clawing at the sheets, clawing at the air, gasping for breath – yet asleep. For more time than I want to remember, I was frozen. How could this man, who'd been so indestructible, so immortal be crashing down before me? I moved and immediately surrounded his body with mine, attempting to offer comfort but he thrashed to the surface and kicked out, breaking a lamp with such force that it splintered the wall. His eyes clouded over, wracked with guilt, the shame of bringing darkness to our time so clearly written across his face.
For weeks he wouldn't discuss it, but the pattern continued irregularly. I tried to raise it, various ways, various times but he was a master at evasion, and he knew my weakness. Then shortly after the first anniversary of Sara's death, after I heard a sound from him that no human would ever make, a pain that almost physically radiated from his body – he told me.
He spoke of the years spent on island that no person should. He spoke of the people who changed him, the blood across his face, the scars on his back, the pain in his heart. He spoke of a darkness that he feared would never leave him. Spoke of a place that while in Nanda Parbat, he went mentally that terrified him. Saw inside something that still frightens him when he thinks about it. And I did what only I knew how, I kissed him. I held him. I loved him.
So each night the darkness comes knocking, I am prepared. To offer a refuge, to help him find the way back home. To help him see the light.