Note: A small one shot, throwing around a few emotions and considerations... I've written this after a prompt from Evenstar a while ago... and then realised while writing a complete confusion in the initial Arrow plot which then made me not want to finish it. But now I did so there. There is a completely illogical jump in reasoning: why would Oliver go after Ra's, accepting the possibility to die and then leave Thea under Malcom's complete influence? That would only make sense if he was actually playing Malcom together with Ra's to draw him out... Anyhow... we will soon know. Please review and tell me what you think. Love!
Nothing moved in the darkness. No sound crossed either the snow laden plains nor the stony walls that drew themselves further up as he move onwards. Darkness had swallowed him and apart for a dim shimmer from a crescent moon that reflected in a million crystals of frozen water, no light was there to guide him.
He had come badly prepared. The thought crossed his mind. Trying to climb a horizontal wall without crevice or chimney where he could have taken support, was more than he had bargained for and he idly wondered if this was the first in a line of overconfident bad choices.
His movements were small and measured, every step, every stretch of an arm or a leg were weighed, every climb a reflection. He hoped to conserve as much energy as he could by moving slower as he would have in normal conditions or in any other situation.
He would need every ounce of strength for the fight ahead. The one fight everything told him to run away from, but the one fight he was inevitably drawn towards.
A fight he had no mind of winning, despite his assurances to everyone around him.
Lying to the one person he loved just as much as his sister had broken his heart. But staying would have killed him. Malcom Merlyn had set him up. And he had walked into his trap. If it meant protecting Thea, if it meant preserving her from this part of his life, this part of a world that she had no knowledge of, he would have died twenty times over.
His foot slipped on an icy foothold and for a second all his hopes and fears dropped with him to the bottom of the valley where he had ascended from. His hand slipped, ice cold fingers that had lost their flexibility gripping on snow and ice until at the very edge they managed to grab stone. He remained suspended in mid-air for a second before drawing a deep breath swinging himself level to the ledge he had managed to hold onto. With another breath, he swung himself higher and planting his feet against the mountain, drew himself up on the small crevice, giving himself a moment to catch his breath.
For a split second he felt guilty. A knot somewhere deep in his stomach that told him that he wasn't nearly ready to die. And yet… he had to be, if he would stand any chance against the Demon's Head. Guilt. It was an odd emotion. One he was familiar with, but one that he had never felt like this. He wondered what it would do to Felicity, to Diggle, Thea, to the people he loved and that were still alive to see him die. He had never been afraid of his own mortality.
Before the island he simple had no sense to worry about it and after the ship wreck dying had become a daily reality that he had gotten used to it. Particularly since he had become the Hood and then the Arrow. What he did was dangerous to him and the people around him. But for the first time, he felt like he was actually regretting the life that he would leave behind. The life that he would never get to live if he didn't make it off this mountain in one piece…