A/N The next chapter will be the epilogue, so just one more to go after this. Thanks for the favs, alerts, and reviews!
Also, I know the general public on the show already know about Sara being alive, but this was pretty much planned out before that episode aired. So, yeah, there are even more discrepancies from the show here. Oh, well. Enjoy! :P
Tommy wasn't sure what woke him, but whatever it was, he was glad for it.
He sat up and looked around the hideout, making sure everyone was okay. He was about to lay back down when an empty blanket caught his eye.
He cursed as he shot to his feet.
His yell startled Sara awake and she also leaped to her feet, instinctively scanning the room for any threats before relaxing at finding none.
"What?" Diggle yelled, sitting up.
"He's gone," Tommy answered angrily, striding over to the table holding his weapons.
"Who?" Moira asked as the noise woke everyone else up.
"Oliver. He's gone!" Tommy said as he slipped on his quiver. "That idiot went to face Slade."
"We have to go after him," Diggle said.
Tommy started to head for the door, the others readily following behind him, but he stopped as he noticed one person who wasn't.
"You coming?" Tommy asked Malcolm who was sitting on the edge of the table watching them.
"Why should I? He's not my friend, and I don't owe him anything," Malcolm said with a disinterested shrug.
Tommy just shook his head in disgust and walked out the door without looking at Malcolm again.
)()()(
Malcolm wasn't sure why he was following after the others. When Tommy had asked if he was coming, he had meant what he said. Oliver Queen was no friend of his and he owed him nothing. He wasn't going up against Slade for Oliver. If Oliver was stupid enough to get himself killed by Slade, that was his own fault.
At the time, he had had no intention of leaving the hideout. But then Tommy had looked at him with such disgust and disappointment. Malcolm had tried to ignore it, but he just couldn't get it out of his head. Then it occurred to him that Tommy was going to help Oliver against Slade and Malcolm finally realized Tommy could be killed.
Malcolm may have had no love for Oliver, but he did care about Tommy. Despite everything he had done in his life, despite what he had become, he still loved his son. So, that was how Malcolm Merlyn found himself following the others to the location where Oliver was facing down Slade. He arrived there just minutes after the others had, and he was just in time to see Tommy and Sara fighting Slade while Oliver was sprawled on the ground, but then a gun was being leveled at Tommy and Malcolm's world seemed to slow to a crawl.
In that moment, he had a choice to make. His own life, or his son's. There were no other options, no tricks or smart ways out of it. He had to choose. Do nothing and watch his son get gunned down right in front of him and live the rest of his life in guilt and self-loathing, or finally do one good thing with his sorry life.
For the first time in a long time, Malcolm chose to do the right thing. He chose his son.
He was moving even before he had fully made the decision. He ran as fast as he could and threw himself in front of Tommy just as the gun went off. He felt the bullet slam into his chest and all the air was driven from his lungs. He stumbled and fell backwards but didn't hit the ground as strong arms caught him and lowered him to the pavement.
Tommy bent over him, struggling to stem the blood flow, fire shooting through Malcolm's chest as Tommy pressed on the wound. Malcolm knew it was no use. He had been stabbed through the chest with an arrow and survived. He knew what he was capable of surviving and this was something he knew couldn't. He was dying and yet, somehow, as he looked at Tommy, he was actually okay with that.
"Just hold on. Help is coming." Malcolm heard Tommy say.
"No, It's... It's t-too late," Malcolm managed to force from his lips, along with a mouthful of blood.
"No, we can save you," Tommy said, but they both knew it was a lie.
Malcolm knew he was fading fast and he needed to say something to Tommy. One last thing to his son. He wouldn't ask for forgiveness, he knew he was too far gone for that now, and he wouldn't ask Tommy to give something like that. He had demanded enough of his son. Now it was time for him to give Tommy something he should have a long time ago. The truth.
"Tommy... for everything else... I've done... just know that... I've always... loved you," Malcolm stuttered, choking on blood.
"I love you too," Tommy whispered as a single tear rolled down his face to mingled with the rain.
And to Malcolm's surprise, Tommy's expression was sincere. A small, truly happy smile lifted Malcolm's blood stained lips as he took one last breath. His last thought was that his death meant something, and it was truly worth it.
)()()(
Tommy kept his head bowed over his father's body for a long moment, until he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Laurel kneeling next to him.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Then she gently wrapped her arms around him. He returned the hug before pulling away and climbing to his feet.
"He wasn't a good guy," Tommy said.
"But in the end, he did do something good," Moira said. "He saved you."
Tommy nodded and let a small, sad smile lift the corners of his lips, but then turned serious as he scanned the area.
"Where did Oliver go?"
"He led Slade away from us," Quentin said. "He was trying to get us out of harms way."
"Which direction did he go?" Tommy asked, having every intention of following him.
"We weren't helping him. We were just more targets for Oliver to have to protect," Quentin said.
"I'm not going to leave him to fight Slade alone," Tommy said.
"Tommy, my dad is right," Laurel said. "Oliver got hurt because he was protecting me from Slade. Us being here is just putting him in more danger."
Tommy was seconds away from heading off to search the area himself when Slade appeared from around the side of a nearby building and headed straight for them.
The men quickly stepped forward, pushing the women behind them, Sara protesting as her father included her with the other women.
Slade raised his gun at the group and Tommy, bow in hand, started to reach for an arrow when a shot echoed through the rain. A second later, Slade collapsed to the ground, revealing Oliver laying on his stomach, smoking gun in hand, several feet behind Slade's now dead body. Oliver looked at all of them for a moment before the gun slipped from his fingers and his head fell to the pavement.
Tommy sprinted forward, the others following seconds behind him. He shot past Slade without slowing down and crashed to his knees next to the unconscious Oliver. He was actually kind of afraid to touch him as everywhere Tommy looked there was blood. He settled for pressing his fingers to Oliver's neck, checking for a pulse and finding one, but it was weak and erratic.
As the others finally reached him, Diggle knelt down on Oliver's other side and together they gently rolled him over. Blood was everywhere, his torso, his leg, and even running from his mouth. It was mixing with the rain and soaking into his clothes, and it almost completely covered the front of his hoodie. Tommy found the knife wound in Oliver's stomach, which seemed to be the worst one, and pressed his hands over it, while Diggle put pressure on the gunshot wound in Oliver's leg. Sara crouched down by Oliver's head and monitored his pulse, managing to also get her hand over the kinfe would in the back of Oliver's shoulder and apply pressure to it.
"He's bleeding bad," she said to Tommy, giving him a look that said she didn't think Oliver was going to make it.
"It doesn't matter. He's going to make it. No one else is dying today, especially not the man who just saved this entire city," Tommy said.
Unlike with his father, Tommy actually believed it this time. Oliver had to live. After everything he had managed to survive and overcome, he just could not die after having won the fight. Tommy was bound and determined that that was not how this was going to play out.
Tommy and the others leaped back as the ambulance arrived and paramedics rushed forward. They took one look at Oliver and shifted into overdrive as they quickly got him ready to move. In the process, Oliver's heart stopped and everyone watched in fear and panic, tears streaming down Moira's, Thea's, and Felicity's faces, as the paramedics shocked him twice to get him back. After that, Oliver was loaded into the ambulance and it quickly disappeared through the rain and was swallowed by the night.
The ambulance had arrived too late to save Malcolm Merlyn, but perhaps it had made it in time to save Oliver Queen.
)()()(
It was nine soaking wet people, looking very much worse for wear, that came shuffling into the hospital and up to the desk to asked about Oliver Queen.
The entire ER and, by now, most of the hospital was buzzing about The Arrow being brought in, and not only that, but it was none other than Oliver Queen who had been the city's secret protector all along.
The ragged looking group got plenty of surprised and curious looks as Moira and Thea were easily recognized, and even more so when several people recognized both Tommy and Sara from old news reports of their deaths and word of them being alive spread with the story of The Arrow's true identity.
The gape mouthed nurse at the desk stared at the group for a long moment before she informed them that Oliver had been rushed into emergency surgery and told them which floor they could wait on. The news wasn't unexpected and the nine of them turned and squeezed onto an elevator, riding up to their floor where they shuffled off and into a waiting room, finding places to sit amid more stares at their identities as well as their soaking wet clothing.
Moira had managed to mostly compose herself while Thea was still crying silently in Roy's arms, holding onto him with one hand while she kept a death grip on Moira's hand with the other. Across from the three of them, Laurel, her father, and Sara sat. Quentin had his arm around Laurel's shoulders while she had a hold of one of Sara's hands. Along the wall to Sara's left, and facing both groups, sat Tommy, Diggle, and Felicity.
Whoever saw the nine of them, stared at them with mixtures of curiosity, surprise, and even awe. At first they all thought it was because of Moira and Thea, and even Sara and Tommy. But as they settled themselves into the room to wait, Tommy glanced at the TV and snapped to attention.
"Look," he said pointing at the screen.
The volume was turned down too low to hear the reporter on the screen but written at the bottom of the screen were the simple words Oliver Queen is The Arrow.
Tommy all but ran over to the TV and turned up the volume.
"Once again, we are going to show you the amazing footage we obtained tonight of the fight between the man behind Sebastian Blood and the law enforcement bombings, and Starling City's vigilante known as The Arrow. Be advised this footage may not be suitable for younger viewers."
From there, the group watched news footage of the entire fight between Oliver and Slade from the moment Oliver stepped into the street and pushed back his hood, to when the ambulance arrived. They watched as Oliver fought like they had never seen before. They watched as Tommy and Sara joined the fight, holding their own and giving Slade some good hits before being knocked to the ground. They watched Malcolm Merlyn's one act of valor was play out on the screen as he leaped in front of a bullet to save Tommy's life before finally and truly dying. They even watched part of the fight they hadn't seen as the camera moved to still catch the two men as they moved around the corner of the building. They watched as Oliver went down and then they watched in awe as he crawled across the ground, through the pelting rain, groaning, crying out, and bleeding all the way. And they watched him shoot Slade, saving all of their lives.
Once the footage was finished, they all sat back in stunned silence after having relived the events again and this time in full. Not a one of them could remember noticing the news crew but from the angle of the footage, Tommy was pretty sure they had been across the street from where Tommy and the others had been, and they had likely been hiding in the shadows with their camera so as to get the footage but remain unseen by the two fighting men. The group stopped paying attention to the TV as the reporters and commentators went on to talk about Malcolm being alive and now truly dead and about Tommy and Sara both miraculously being alive and of Oliver's true identity, replaying the footage several times throughout.
Now they were beginning to understand the looks they were getting from staff and visitors alike.
The group was understandably tired and more than a little overwhelmed from everything that had happened, and they were surprised again, but this time pleasantly, as the staff saw to their every need, bringing dry scrubs for them to change into, food and coffee whenever they needed it, and any information they had on Oliver's condition as soon as they received it.
The group even had several other people in the waiting room come up to them to tell them how grateful they were to Oliver for protecting the city and for bringing down the man who had bombed the police as many of the people in the waiting room were family members of cops injured in the attacks. And there were even people thanking Tommy and Sara for helping Oliver to bring Slade down.
The nine of them were amazed by the response and support from the people in the hospital. Any worry they may have had about people's reactions to Oliver's identity were wiped away. Because if those in the hospital were any indication, the people of Starling City loved The Arrow and wanted him to be okay as much as the nine of them did.
Unknown to any of them, while Starling City hoped and prayed for their protector's survival, Oliver Queen was fighting tooth and nail once again, this time for his life, in an operating room, as doctors were forced to shock him back for a third time.
Let me know! Last chapter will be up sometime next week. :)