A/N: I'm just gonna apologize now for the lack of Oliver and Laurel, but this is an exposition chapter from Tommy's perspective. This is a brief explanation of everything that happened in between Tommy and Laurel arriving on this Earth and Oliver coming home. It's very different than canon.
Some scenes will be done in more detail in flashbacks, but the majority of this will be left as is.
Oh yeah, in case it wasn't made clear, Tommy is also the Earth-1 Tommy like Laurel.
The reunion had been everything Tommy had hoped it would be. He only wished he could stay longer, but the last thing he needed was Malcolm's suspicions when Oliver wasn't showing he was alive.
I wonder when I started thinking of him as 'Malcolm'.
It had been a subtle process of slowly thinking of the man who had raised him as the monster he really was. The night of the original Undertaking had definitely expedited the process, but this time around, having woken up in a hospital bed one year after Oliver had disappeared after meeting with someone who just called himself the Messenger, he had hoped his father would be different.
Long story short, he wasn't. The stories of a man in a black hood executing prevalent businessmen with black arrows meant that his father in this world might actually be even worse.
Tommy stopped the car in the parking garage of his apartment and sighed. He turned off the ignition and simply sat there in silence, mulling over how crazy his life had become since Oliver had returned the first time.
First, he had had absolute joy. His best friend was back, and with his blessing he had pursued Laurel for the relationship he had always wanted.
Then, his father began to show his true colors by cutting him off with absolutely no warning. He still got embarrassed when he remembered how Laurel had to pay for his dinner that night. Although he understood the reasoning later and even slightly appreciated the 'kick in his lazy ass', it still was crazy at the time.
From there, his life only got better. He ran a club, moved in with Laurel, and got to truly understand the man Oliver had become.
Then his father was shot and Oliver revealed he was the vigilante.
From there it all went downhill. He couldn't put together the fact that his best friend, the one he used to spend all hours of the day partying and having fun together, was able to kill people. His jealousy had spread to his relationship with Laurel and eventually ended it.
Then the Undertaking happened, and he died. At least, he was supposed to. When he had been confronted by the Messenger, he had been confused at how vast the multiverse (still can't wrap my head around that one) truly was, with magic, time travel, and aliens.
However, when he realized he had the chance to start over and be the good man he knew he could be, he immediately accepted, choosing a Tommy that had already lost his Oliver to spare himself some of the pain.
He had hoped that he would be able to pick a world where his mother never died, but apparently that was the only constant across all the multiverse. If his mother's death hadn't made him sad before, that left him completely depressed.
Then he had spent a night at Laurel's house (they had agreed to remain platonic; it had taken him a while to get over it, but with Olivia around this time it was understandable). He had made some dumb remark about Twilight like he had with Oliver the first time. The only problem is that the saga hadn't become a saga yet, and Laurel knew it.
He had thought she would think him crazy when he explained the multiverse, but then she told him the last thing he had expected to hear; she was the Laurel from his Earth.
The hug they had afterwards lasted so long they fell asleep like that.
Then they had gotten serious the next day. With the Dark Archer running around with the face of his father, they knew that the Undertaking was inevitable. The only problem was a major one: they didn't know if Oliver was alive, or even where he was. Laurel knew that he hadn't spent the entire five years on the island, but she never learned more.
They had decided to let Oliver's time away take its proper course, since for the most part things had been the same before they had arrived. The only thing different was the poisoning attempt that had allowed Laurel to enter this Earth (Tommy had a sinking suspicion who was behind that; he only hoped he was wrong) and Oliver being faithful. Tommy had even opened Verdant in Oliver's memory to kickstart his original responsibilities.
This time around, though, they both were proactive. Against his wishes, she had contacted someone she claimed to be trustworthy named Cisco Ramon, a scientist based out of Central City. Apparently, even without an identity or a reason behind it, throwing in the word 'superhero' and the proper measurements made him jump at the chance to make a costume for Laurel to go out as the Black Canary.
He had tried to stop her. Both him and her father, who had realized who she was when she let her identity slip after he almost caught her, had tried to get her to stop this fools mission of hers, but she was dead set on protecting the people of the city she loved so much.
Naturally, he did the only two things he really could in that situation.
First, he had joined Laurel's mission in the only capacity he previously trusted himself as, behind the scenes, and took the name Oracle (he had jokingly suggested the name Overwatch, and Laurel explained the story behind it after she nearly gagged). He had met with Cisco, who actually was a pretty chill dude in hindsight, who had been teaching him how to properly hack and manage his vigilante operations.
It had been rough at first, but under the scientist's tutelage he got much better very quickly. It made him think of school and how he had done fairly well when he bothered to show up.
At least once a month, Cisco and Tommy had met to increase his skills and maintain the lair that they had established under Verdant like before. Every time, Cisco had gone into what he liked to call 'fanboy' mode and gushed over every single piece of equipment the two of them could acquire, especially her staff and sonic device. Laurel had even finally revealed her identity to him at one point, which only made him go even crazier.
She had also been going to a gym with someone named Ted Grant. Apparently, that was who trained her the first time (minus someone named Nyssa that he was told not to question). It hadn't taken long for Ted to realize that Laurel was the Black Canary, but he had surprised Tommy by revealing that he had used to be a vigilante.
Now, after some coaxing on Laurel's part, she had a field partner in Wildcat, a tech aide in Cisco and Oracle, and a police informant in the Detective all in the span of five months. All of them were not only dealing with street crime on a nightly basis, but trying to find any evidence or method to take down Malcolm Merlyn and stop the dreaded Undertaking.
On the plus side, this mission of hers had led them to learn that Thea was a great babysitter.
The five person vigilante team had criminals starting to run in fear within the year. The fact that it was Laurel Lance, Tommy Merlyn, Quentin Lance, Ted Grant, and Cisco Ramon that was making this large difference made him want to scoff every time he thought about it. The people of the city were almost completely on their side, but the police department had yet to accept them.
Unfortunately, without Oliver's original List, they had no way to truly combat the Undertaking. They had been able to go after the ones that Laurel remembered trying to take down at CNRI, like Adam Hunt, but the ones they couldn't remember they had to figure out on their own. Against Laurel's wishes, he had done the only other thing he truly could at the time.
He had joined Tempest.
Over the course of about three months, he had subtly hinted to his father that he wished to destroy the Glades as well, viewing it as a stain on the map that couldn't be healed. His father had become an entirely different person when he realized that, and suddenly Tommy went from being the man's distant colleague to being his son again.
He hated every second of it. If it took a mission to kill thousands of innocents and destroy a large chunk of the city, he never wanted Malcolm to view him as a son.
Joining the group had inevitably meant that he had joined Merlyn Global as well in the same position as before. His job was to protect Tempest's interests while claiming to work closely with his father (it wasn't technically wrong), periodically vetting their members and informing him whenever someone acted out of line.
He would spend almost every night watching the news for any black arrows.
At that point, he had thought his life couldn't get any weirder. His best friend was somewhere in the world doing God knows what and his other best friend was a vigilante that he aided at night to help protect the city from crime.
The only other people he knew were Laurel's father (the two of them were getting surprisingly close; Laurel almost couldn't believe it), Thea (he still had no idea what to do about the whole half-sibling thing), Oliver's mom (he was starting to understand why she would lie like she did), an old gym trainer, and Cisco, a Central City scientist.
Then his life got weirder the one time he decided to take a vacation.
Him and Laurel had gone to Central City to visit and surprise Cisco, but when he turned out to be busy, they visited her mother instead. Tensions were high the whole time, but they made it out unscathed.
They didn't make it much further than that.
They got pulled into an alleyway on the way there. Laurel had tried to fight back, but with Tommy in the mix and the need to protect her secret identity, there wasn't much she could do. The seven or eight thugs had made it clear what they wanted was from her and her alone and started beating him up.
Then there was an explosion in the distance and a wave of something threw them all back.
Laurel had been screaming when the wave of whatever the hell that was hit them both and got sent flying back into a wall. She had been knocked out immediately. Tommy had been filled with a rage he had never felt before and fought back against the attackers with a precision that he hadn't had before.
Whereas before he had been blindly hitting anything he could just to get out, this time the world seemed to slow. He was able to see everything they were gonna do, seemingly before they could do it. He could sense exactly where to strike to take down these drunken thugs before they could even get a hit in.
To him the fight lasted several minutes, but in reality the fight was over in 30 seconds.
Thankfully, Laurel managed to recover in the hospital, but when she woke up she accidentally unleashed a scream almost exactly like the one she used as Black Canary. She almost took down the entire building before he and her father were able to calm her down.
Eventually, Cisco came to visit her and revealed what happened (he was on orders from a Dr. Wells to keep it secret, but evidently said 'screw it'): the Particle Accelerator STAR labs had been building had been rushed recently in a desire to turn it on in secret. Unfortunately, something had gone wrong and it had exploded, sending dark matter throughout Central City and beyond.
By this point, Tommy knew Laurel like he knew his own name, and he immediately knew that this was something that had happened the first time. Whatever this was, though, had clearly happened much earlier than before if he didn't know anything about it.
After all other guests had left, Laurel explained that nine months the Particle Accelerator exploded, one of their allies, some forensic scientist named Barry Allen, woke up from a coma after getting struck by lightning and used his powers of super speed to become a superhero. Nothing was ever the same after that, as other 'metahumans' started making themselves known and causing chaos.
The only problem was that the Accelerator didn't explode until Oliver's second year back (the six months after you died part was mutually left unsaid), so the fact that it exploded early meant they had somehow caused a drastic change in the timeline. Cisco's comment that Dr. Wells wanted to rush it only made Laurel more nervous. Tommy didn't get it until she explained who Wells really was.
So now, their science friend was going to get roped into being on another superhero team that was working under said superhero's greatest enemy. The plus side, though, was that Cisco eventually became a superhero in his own right, so Tommy grudgingly stayed out of it.
When he eventually got back to Star City and had a meeting with his father, though, things got even weirder. It was a morning meeting, so he had brought a mug of coffee with him. When he went to leave, he knocked it over and sent it off the desk, but he managed to duck and catch it with reflexes that surprised him. They surprised Malcolm too, since he seemed to give him a calculating look as he left the room.
The next day, he got called into the office again, and Malcolm surprised him by throwing a punch at him. Tommy somehow managed to deflect the punch and instinctually went for another one, managing to get his father directly in the jaw.
He assumed that he had been found out and got in a defensive stance that he didn't know how he knew, but then he only got even more nervous when Malcolm started laughing. The thing that made it weird was that it was genuine, like the laugh he had before mom died when he would do magic tricks with him. He was actually happy.
Eventually, through a long roundabout discussion that was spoken mostly in riddles, Malcolm explained that the Accelerator matter he got hit with somehow gave him extremely effective combat reflexes that allowed him to identify target's weaknesses, at least with hand to hand, and that he was now going to be trained with methods similar to what he endured.
It would be the father-son experience he never expected or wanted. Becoming an assassin had never exactly been on his list of priorities.
Over the next three years, unknown to any other members of either Laurel's team or Flash's team (turned out that Barry Allen, Caitlin Snow, Joe West, Wally West, Ronnie Raymond, Martin Stein, Jefferson Jackson, and Eddie Thawne were basically the epitomes of heroism and worked great together, even if all their superpowers were kinda terrifying) he began training under the League of Assassins methods. He hated and loved every second of it.
On one hand, it was a lot of hard work and time spent with his father, which was torture in its own right, but he did learn to wield a bow and a sword, plus how to perfect his powers, which was basically tactical analysis to the logical extreme. In a single second, he could analyze all features and variables of a situation like weak points and plot a plan to execute. A perfect power for someone who needs hand to hand training but also works behind the scenes.
He had also taken the time to figure out a way to use his powers in his combat in a way that a bow simply couldn't do. Targets moved, no matter how good you were. He needed a projectile that could move with them and still hit his targets weak points or his powers would go crazy trying to correct his movements. Away from his father, he had started using throwing stars to correct that problem.
In essence, in four years, he went from a billionaire playboy to a vigilante that helps run an operation from underneath his own club. He worked with his best friend, an old trainer, and a police detective. Their only friends were superheroes from another city that called them for help every so often (usually because other speedsters apparently refused to leave Barry alone and Laurel's scream usually caught them off guard).
Aside from his father trying to destroy a good part of the city, his life was basically perfect.
He stepped out of his car and followed the monotonous path back to his modest (at least when compared to before) apartment. He stepped inside and went straight to the fridge to pull out a beer, taking a long swig while going straight to his bedroom. He opened the door and went to the closet, turning the light switch in a precisely timed combination.
At once, the fake wall in the back of the closet folded to the sides to reveal his crown jewel.
He had grown tired of his superpowers and training being wasted. Sure, he could use his tactics as Oracle, but he had grown thirsty for a little live combat ever since he had started training with Malcolm. So, he had built himself a suit.
The suit that looked like Death incarnate in front of him only emphasized the message he was trying to send. Even looking at it empty gave Tommy chills and he made the damn thing. The mask, the all black, the general fierceness of what he was looking at made him swell with pride and anxiousness.
Learning from watching Cisco hadn't been hard at all. In only two months of sporadic working, he had managed to make a suit that Malcolm would've been proud of. In the end, no matter how heroic an image Laurel was creating, he was hoping to be a force in the darkness, operating from the shadows and scaring criminals out of business like Oliver first was.
He'd even decided on a name for himself. After all, he was taking power from the criminal element that had held it for as long as he could remember.
What better name than Prometheus?
I'm sorry if this chapter seemed kinda rushed, but this was only about the timeline and differences between the original world and this one. And yes, the Team Flash list is weird, but it will be explained later.
