"Two years." Oliver muttered softly to himself.
Two years since everything changed. If Oliver had thought that The Undertaking would have changed things for him, he couldn't have imagined what would have happened just 18 months later.
Slade Wilson, the friend that he had killed back on that hellhole of an island, had returned. Not only had he returned but he had returned with a blood lust.
One that only the friends and family of Oliver Queen could satisfy.
For weeks, Oliver warred with his former friend, always seemingly a step behind. For hours at a time, he bunkered down in the basement of Verdant, searching for any possible clue to where he could find Slade or what he was really planning.
Those weeks were the darkest in his life, eclipsing even those on the island as he watched his closest friend slip slowly into madness.
Finally, Slade made his move, going after the one that he determined would be the one the one person in his life he would miss most.
Surprisingly to Oliver, he didn't go after Laurel or Thea. He didn't go after Sara or Dig. He didn't touch his mother, either.
No, his target was Felicity Smoak.
To this day, the knowledge that Slade knew him that well and had watched him that closely frightened him. If Slade had seen how much Felicity meant to him, not Arrow but Oliver, who else knew that information?
While Oliver had managed to recover Felicity physically unharmed, nothing was ever the same between them.
She had left for Gotham the next day.
Every day, Oliver woke up, praying that she had called him in the night, letting him know that she was on her way back. Instead, he hadn't spoken to her in nearly ten months and when they had spoken, he hadn't been able to say what he was really wanted to say.
"I love you." Oliver muttered to no one in particular. "I'm sorry."
Instead, they traded small talk at an event that he had attended in Gotham, never even coming close to talking about what had happened that night with Slade Wilson.
"Oliver?"
The voice belonged to Sara Lance, officially code-named The Canary. Since their encounter with Nyssa al Ghul, Sara had remained in Starling City, ever by his side. Now, patrols through The Glades were done in tandem, both to cover more ground and to ensure safety.
When Felicity had left, Sara had done her best to fill her place, learning as much about computers as she could. She also tried to be his emotional replacement for Felicity, the one who he could talk to. Unfortunately, Sara lacked Felicity's real world charm because Sara was just as broken as Oliver was. There was no escape in a conversation with Sara, just depression.
She had seen that nothing was going to happen between the two of them and had backed off. Now, they kept things strictly professional between the two of them, even at work, where Sara had been named the Head of Internal Security at the Tech Branch of Queen Consolidated. Another way of keeping Sara close, much like he had with Felicity, although he did notice that he didn't keep Sara anywhere near as close.
"I'm here." Oliver growled, his voice cracking from misuse.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" Sara asked as she came to stand next to them.
"I prefer the dark." Oliver replied before grabbing the bar of the salmon ladder in front of him and starting his rigorous workout.
"It's been two years, O." Sara replied softly. "Let it go."
"What part of it?" Oliver roared as he hung from the bar, a lifeline that suspended him twenty feet off the floor.
"All of it. Her, Slade, the whole damn thing."
"I'll remember that the next time we talk about Nanda Parbat."
"We don't talk about that." Sara snapped, although her voice barely broke a whisper.
"Exactly."
"Well, I'm glad to see that you two are in a cheery mood."
Roy Harper now known as The Arsenal and the third part of their super team. After deciding that a bow and arrow wasn't his thing, Roy decided on knife training. Now, decked completely in red, he worked the downtown area of the city when he could. Taking classes at Starling Tech University by day made it difficult to be a vigilante by night.
"You know what day it is." Sara replied, rolling her eyes dramatically.
"Of course, I do. I just figured we wouldn't have a repeat of last year."
"We won't." Oliver said simply as he started making his way down the ladder.
"Sure." Roy muttered skeptically.
"Last year" had been a complete blow-up between Sara and Oliver when Sara tried to get Oliver to talk about why he had been so grumpy in the recent days. When it was discovered that everyone else in the lair had already forgotten the day, Oliver had exploded, yelling about everything from Felicity to Slade to the mission that had gone bad.
Needless to say, Oliver was quite aware that everyone had remembered to give him his space so far this year. All except for one man.
"Good luck getting him to cheer up. He wasn't particularly cheery before Slade came to town either."
John Diggle, his closest (living) friend, just couldn't seem to get away from bothering Oliver about Slade. Personally, Oliver thought it was because of the amount of grief Dig got at home. Only six months after Slade's attack on Oliver, Lyla and Dig had gotten remarried. Only a few months later, Andrew, Diggle child #1, had been born. Now, Dig made only rare appearances inside the lair, frequently working only as a driver in the streets or maintaining a vigil from his home.
"Thanks for the pep talk, Dig." Oliver said gruffly as he fell to the floor. "I really appreciate it."
"No problem, man."
This had been their dynamic for two years now. While all of them did their best to keep things loose and informal, none of them could honestly say that their relationship felt like anything more than that of business associates. Ever since Felicity's departure from the team, the group had been fighting to try and keep the light atmosphere that she had managed to keep while working with the rest of them.
Unfortunately, that wasn't any of their personality. At some point, all four of them had been broken. While Diggle and Roy had done a good job of putting the pieces back together, the other two hadn't succeeded in the least bit. Laurel wouldn't sit in the same room with Sara and after Oliver had sworn off his mother, he had been left with only Thea as someone that he could even consider family.
Tommy was dead. Laurel hated him because he chose to associate with her sister. Moira had betrayed his family's trust too many times.
The crime rate in Starling City may have been down (and it was) but things hadn't been this bad for Oliver Queen since he had been on the island.
"What's on the agenda for this evening?" Roy asked softly, obviously not wanting to incur Oliver Queen's wrath.
Turning around, Oliver marched from the salmon ladder to the computer, pressing the ENTER key which started the presentation he had prepared prior to starting his dark workout. Instantly, a collection of maps, pictures and files popped up onto the screen, highlighting their target for the evening.
"We've finally found enough to move forward against Councilman Bolt." Oliver started, his voice radiating his business-like attitude. "Just as a refresher, Councilman Thomas Bolt is certainly on his way up to becoming Mayor within the next year. Unfortunately for Mr. Bolt, he is unaware that we know about his more illegal activities. Specifically, he's been facilitating the purchase of military grade firearms by various gangs around The Glades. He's been doing this in order to support gang violence as a way to gain an "anti-organized crime" platform for his Mayoral campaign."
"Class act there." Roy muttered.
"Not at all." Oliver replied humorlessly. "We know that a shipment of weapons from Cambodia landed here in Starling City. It's been marked as shipped to ZeusCorps. The only issues being..."
"There's no such thing as ZeusCorps." Sara said, filling in the end of Oliver's sentence.
"Exactly." Oliver replied. "It's a tough trace but we're certain that this is a shell paid for by Thomas Bolt as a cover to bring illegal weapons into the country. Now, Bolt doesn't have the capital to bring them in so he has to be the cover, the man in charge of bringing them in but not paying for them."
"So what's the plan?" Diggle asked softly.
"The plan for tonight is two fold. At any of the previous shipments, Bolt has never been present. However, his right hand man, a former hitman named Vincent Winnfield, has been there every time. Winnfield is known publicly as Bolt's bodyman. If we can connect Winnfield to the weapons, it will look publicly like Bolt is involved, even if we can't get him arrested."
"You said the plan is two fold." Sara replied. "I'm only hearing one."
"The second phase is a direct meet with Bolt. I'll handle that." Oliver answered firmly.
"What's the purpose of that?" Diggle asked curiously.
"To hang him out of a window until he confesses to doing it."
"Nice."
"Councilman, who's paying for those weapons?" Oliver asked calmly from behind his voice disruptor.
"I have no idea what you're talking about!" Bolt replied shortly.
"That's a shame."
Quickly, Oliver reached up and released the rope that had held Councilman Thomas Bolt from his 61st story window. Breaking into the Councilman's office had been all too easy and before Bolt even knew what was happening, he had a rope wrapped around his leg and was literally thrown from his window.
Judging from the smell that Oliver got, the abrupt stop at the end of the fall had caused the man to urinate himself.
It was a frequent occurrence when The Green Arrow was involved.
The scream that Bolt let out was blood-curdling as he freefell down the side of the building. Finally, Oliver pressed the button that would slow Bolt down just enough so that the rope would be able to jerk when he reached his stopping point, something that was always particularly terrifying.
Once Bolt reached the bottom, Oliver jumped up and pulled the rope back up the pulley until Bolt hung upside-down in front of him once again.
"I'll ask again, Mr. Bolt, who pays for the weapons?"
"I don't know!" Bolt shouted, crying profusely. "The payment doesn't come through me. I just provide the shipping containers and the cover."
"For what?"
"Huh?"
"What do you get in return?"
"Campaign contributions." Bolt cried out. "The beneficiary is funding almost my entire Mayoral campaign."
"For what reason?" Oliver barked, getting directly in front of Bolt's terrified face.
"I don't know."
"Fine." Oliver replied firmly before reaching out and punching Bolt in the face, knocking him unconscious. Instantly, Oliver removed Bolt from the line and threw him onto the floor of his office. Once that was done, Oliver reached into the storage space on his hip and pulled out the photos of Winnfield and Bolt together and threw them on top of the knocked out politician.
"Arrow to Arsenal: come in." Oliver said firmly into his radio.
"Arsenal here. What's the deal?"
"No information here. Nothing we can really use anyway. Give those camera crews their story and then get the hell out of there." Oliver replied before addressing the other person on the line. "Dig, call Detective Lance. Tell him what's going on and that's he going to need to get an arresting unit over to Bolt's office."
"Will do."
"Good. Arrow: Out."
With that conversation, Oliver quickly tied Bolt to his desk before racing to the roof. Once he was there, he was able to zipline to another building three blocks away, getting himself out of harm's way.
"Arrow to Canary: Come in."
"Canary to Arrow: What is it?" Sara replied, sounding quite bothered about Oliver's call.
"Catch you at a bad time?"
"Just got done taking down three potential rapists or muggers. Not sure whether they were more interested in her or her purse. Either way, there was a patrol running through the area as I got done."
"So you had to bolt."
"Exactly."
"Well that's probably a good idea." Oliver mused. "Anyway, finish your patrol and then back to base. We're done for the night."
Back at the ArrowCave, the four members of Team Arrow sat quietly, watching the news as Councilman Thomas Bolt was arrested for assisting in the transportation of illegal weapons. Knowing that this was simply a symptom of some larger problem made things worse than he should feel, knowing that they had effectively blocked any further weapons from coming in via the docks for quite some time.
However, the bigger problem was that there was still a mysterious benefactor out there, one with enough cash to pay for a Mayoral candidate while simultaneously shipping massive quantities of untraceable weapons into the city.
"Smile, Oliver." Sara said simply as she sat next to him. "We won."
"A battle, maybe." Oliver replied, a cold tone to his voice. "But there's something not right about this. I looked into Bolt's eyes and he told me the truth. Somehow, whoever is actually bringing the weapons into the city is doing it completely anonymously."
"That's a fight for another day." Diggle countered. "Today, we did what we can."
"Sure." Oliver replied, obviously not convinced. "Go home, guys. We'll start again tomorrow night."
With a few deep sighs, the other made to stand. After gathering their things, Roy and Diggle left but Sara stood, watching as Oliver continued to watch the news and pour over other files.
"Are you coming?"
"No." was Oliver's simple reply.
"Fine." Sara whispered softly before placing a small kiss on his left temple. "Don't kill yourself down here."
"Turn the lights off on your way out." Oliver whispered back.
Seeing that there was no getting through to the young CEO, Sara turned in place and marched out of the room, following his instructions and shutting the lights off before climbing the stairs into the nightclub above.
Finally, darkness ruled his world again. Since Slade, his world had felt like nothing but darkness. Darkness at the realization of how alone he was, at how close to death Felicity had come and how he had finally pushed her over the edge, pushed her away.
With that, darkness became his only friend.
For who knows how long, Oliver sat in the darkness, watching the news and waiting for the sun to rise. The CEO of Queen Consolidated rarely slept and when he did, he had destroying nightmares of the night that Slade Wilson destroyed everything he had worked so hard to build in his return from the island.
A report on the news suggested that The Green Arrow had again been responsible for bringing down the corrupt councilman, much like he had with Alderman Blood just two years earlier. Either way, the foolish Police Commissioner once again pledged to bring down The Green Arrow or The Vigilante, as the Commissioner still preferred to call him.
Suddenly, just as Oliver nearly nodded off to sleep, the lights of the ArrowCave came to life. Whether it was Dig, Roy or Sara, Oliver had no interest in turning around. He had intentionally stayed behind after the others had left, relishing the darkness and isolation of an empty ArrowCave. Whoever it was could just deal with his poor company.
"I see you've been living in the dark too."
That voice. That voice. Quickly, Oliver calmed himself down, knowing that he was either hallucinating or dreaming. She was gone. He had pushed her away.
"Polite as ever, I see."
This time, there was no question. Somehow, someway, she was here. Slowly, Oliver rotated in her chair, his favorite spot in the Cave. As he turned, she came into sight. In an instant, Oliver was transported back to two months and one day ago, the last time he had seen her here.
Standing in the center of the ArrowCave was Felicity Smoak, the person that among all others Oliver Queen trusted. The one he had pushed away. She looked almost exactly as she had when she had left. Her hair had a slight curl to it just as it hit her shoulders, her glasses framed the serious and pensive look on her face and the dress she wore matched her heels perfectly, as they always had.
Felicity Smoak had come home.
"We need to talk."