Scars

CONTENT:

Rating: Teen

Flavor: Drama

Language: some

Violence: sparring

Nudity: Oliver takes his shirt off

Sex: none

Other: reference to self-harm

Author's Note:

Also contains sparring banter. Don't read too much into it.


Scars

===#===

Merlyn became a regular visitor to the club's basement. He hadn't moved in, exactly, but he came by every couple of days. Oliver had considered changing the keycode on the lock, but in the interest of building up this 'trust' between them, he hadn't.

Merlyn showed him some training techniques, like the hanging rings or split willow wands for archery targets, and how to throw darts at a spinning target. He'd told Oliver how much he liked the tennis ball exercises, and the younger man showed him the whole-basket-at-once trick. But Merlyn never brought his bow.

"How are your ribs?" he asked Oliver one day. He looked as if he were ready to go to the racquetball club, wearing a track suit instead of a business suit.

Oliver took a deep breath, expanding his chest, lifting his shoulder blades. Nothing twinged. "They're good. How's your shoulder?"

Merlyn winced as he rolled it experimentally. "Not bad. We should spar."

Oliver's stomach tightened in apprehension. So far, the two men hadn't really trained together. They'd competed for points at the throwing target to hone their motivation to excel. Oliver itched to try himself against Merlyn in a bit of archery, but he realized the wisdom in avoiding that. What does every archer want? To see who's the best. The competitiveness would have gone beyond 'fierce' and directly into 'dangerous.' Now Merlyn wanted to go head to head? "What kind of sparring?" he asked hesitantly.

"Oh, light contact? Just to warm up. No strikes to the head." He grinned wryly. "Some of us have to be seen in public and not look like we just got mugged."

"I don't know what good it will do," Oliver said morosely. "I already know I can't beat you, even going all out."

A half smile tugged at the side of Merlyn's mouth. To Oliver's surprise, he said, "You will." Oliver looked up to meet that frank gaze. It held no trickery, no malice, only a sort of worldly-wise detachment. "You have your youth, your strength and speed," Merlyn told him. "Like a young lion challenging an established male. The older one may be bigger; he'll have some experience on him. But eventually, he'll decline."

Oliver didn't know what to say. It almost sounded as if Merlyn expected Oliver to kill him, someday at least. But they were men, not animals. Oliver shook the strange feeling off.

"Anyway," Merlyn continued lightly; "you don't have to worry about winning or not." He started taking off his jacket, clearly not about to take 'no' for an answer. "We'll just work on building the reflexes back up."

Resigned, Oliver peeled his t-shirt off over his head and tossed it on the side table. Merlyn left on his white muscle shirt, but Oliver could see the tail end of a few scars across his shoulders. Oliver once thought he could pass his scars off as incidental injuries from the island, or flippantly as old dueling injuries, but no. His scars were a mess of melted-wax burns and thick, jagged pink ropes that spoke of heavy blades, thrust very deeply and drawn very slowly. Not like the thin white scars Merlyn bore. He turned, and Oliver could see more of them, ladder-like on the inside of his left forearm. The young archer frowned. They couldn't be defensive wounds, and they didn't seem regular enough to form a design.

Suddenly, he realized he was staring. He lifted his eyes, the same time Merlyn looked up from studying Oliver's scars. The two men locked gazes for several moments.

Merlyn spoke first. "They always talk about you being alone on that island for five years."

"Yeah...," Oliver deflected with morbid humor; "For a deserted island, it was rather crowded."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

Oliver shook his head. He didn't actually mind, this time. Truth be told, if anyone on this earth could understand what Oliver had to live through, it was probably Merlyn. Slowly, still reluctant, he followed the other man out to the center of the room.

Merlyn got into a ready stance. "Come on." He gestured for Oliver to attack him.

His confidence only increased Oliver's trepidation. He didn't want to try to hold his own, only to be beaten again. "I don't-"

Suddenly, a fist shot towards his face. He leaned back, blocked, and countered without thinking. And just like that, he was in the thick of it, exchanging a flurry of blows.

He jumped back to disengage, a little annoyed that Merlyn had once again tapped into his base instincts, yet rather proud that his reflexes were so well-honed. He put his guard up. "I thought you said no head shots."

Merlyn grinned as he circled. "I knew that wouldn't connect."

"Like this?" Oliver feinted at his head, then went low. This time, he retained more control over the flow of the exchange.

"Now you're catching on."

"In other words, you cheat." Instead of a strike, Oliver lunged to grab the other man.

Merlyn somehow deflected him, turned, and snaked his arm through Oliver's, which he wrapped up in a hammer-lock. He pulled the young man against the side of his hip, preventing him from kicking. He seized Oliver's other elbow in his free hand, before the latter could ram it into his ribs. "You cheat," Merlyn panted in his ear. "I like to call what I do 'Creative Problem Solving.'" He gave Oliver a light slap on the shoulder and released him.

Oliver spun and dropped into a fighting crouch. Merlyn backed and waited for him to come in. Oliver steadied his breath and reminded himself to keep his cool. He closed, throwing his standard practice combo, and studied his opponent's reactions. He began to relax, suppressing his need to win, and his apprehension of losing. This was just a physical exercise, with no goal.

The easy strikes became a flurry of blows, the light contact graduated to medium.

"You fight hard style," Merlyn panted as they fought. "Chinese?"

"Very." Oliver performed a hard block, then jumped in and stomped (lightly) on his opponent's lead foot. "And a little Black Ops."

"American?"

"Australian."

"Ah."

Close in, there wasn't much room for techniques other than body blows, an elbow to the face, or a knee to the groin, so they tacitly agreed to move back.

"Now I studied...," Merlyn continued; "In India... and Tibet." He deflected and redirected Oliver's punches. "A more circular style." His hands snaked under or around Oliver's guard. "Like the wave... against the rock."

Oliver grinned wryly. Congratulations, Shado, you got the last laugh. I'm fighting water. "Is it better?"

"No. Different... Different strengths." He ducked under Oliver's right cross, thrust against his elbow to use his momentum to turn him, and tagged him in the kidney. It was a hell of a lot gentler than Slade ever hit him, just a tap really, to let him know how the technique exposed his weakness. "Water... is hard to block."

"And different weaknesses?"

"Yep."

"Such as?"

"You'll find out, I'm sure," Merlyn said with a grin.

Oliver growled, but it was a playful growl. Once he loosened up, he found he actually enjoyed sparring with Malcolm.

===#===

Finally, Merlyn was ready to call it quits. Both men were huffing for breath; sweat poured over their skin. Malcolm gripped Oliver's hand. "Good match." When he clasped Oliver on the arm, Oliver found his eyes drawn once more to the scars on his forearm. With his skin ruddy from exertion, they stood out more.

Oliver looked up questioningly, but Merlyn quickly turned away. He went to the side table and grabbed a towel. He threw one Oliver's way, without really looking. Oliver caught it and moved to grab a bottle of water as well.

"I know what you're thinking, about the scars," Merlyn said after wiping his face dry. "You're thinking, 'Well, that's a stupid way to try to kill yourself. Anyone who's serous about it knows to cut lengthwise, down between the muscles, to open the arteries. You bleed out faster.'"

Oliver was taken aback. Kill himself? "No, that's not-"

"It's all right." He patted more sweat from his face and neck. "I wasn't trying to kill myself. I was more... self-destructive than suicidal."

Oliver bit his lip. Merlyn still didn't look at him. He set the towel down, staring absently through it. "When Rebecca was killed...," he then said softly, "I hurt, so bad, inside." His face creased in remembered pain. "And yet, outside, there was nothing- not a mark, not a blemish." He shook his head. "Everything just went on, the way it was before. The world kept going, as if it didn't notice that the bright spark of her life had been extinguished. As if it didn't care." He slowly ran his thumb over the ridges of scar tissue. "When I cut myself, I could see it. I could focus, and control the pain."

He seemed lost in his own thoughts, and Oliver hardly dared to breathe.

"I met a man in Nanda Parbat. He taught me how I could transform my pain. Instead of being a weakness, I could turn it into a weapon." Now he looked over. Oliver could see the shadow of pain behind his eyes. "I know it can never bring Rebecca back. I can't even have vengeance, because they never found her killer. But I can make a difference. I know you understand what I mean, Oliver, when I say the pain I've been through has empowered me to do something about it."

Mutely, Oliver nodded.

Malcolm turned, looking out beyond the walls of the basement. "When I look out my office window at the city... Especially at night, when the lights glitter... And when the first rays of sun hit the skyscrapers, and they gleam all pink and golden and new... I can only see how beautiful it is. But I know that inside, it is hurting. There are elements poisoning this city. I want to take control. I want to excise the evil. I..." He stopped and rubbed his face. "God, I sound like an evangelist."

"No," Oliver said. "No, you're right. I know exactly what you mean."

Malcolm looked at him, his eyes moving over the scars that marked Oliver's body. "Because we have come through the pain, we've lost our fear. Others... their fears keep them chained. They can't make the hard decisions that men like you and I know have to be made." He looked Oliver in the eye. "Like Tommy, like your mother. They can't understand."

Oliver nodded again, slowly absorbing this. They couldn't condone murder, but he was not murdering people. He was a vigilante; he was dispensing justice, protecting the innocent. Doing the things that needed to be done, but that the police were constrained from doing.

Oliver looked at Malcolm with new understanding. My God, he's right, he realized. I am him.

===X===


"I like to call what I do 'Creative Problem Solving.'"

-He TOTALLY stole that from me! (tm) Bloodsong