A/N: Expanded Oliver POV from "City of Blood" (2.21). I do realize he's thinking inconsistent/contradictory things because he's not the most reliable narrator at the moment. Please forgive him.

Diabolical and Dumb – Part Two

Like so many other things, I never meant for it to be a secret. But that's what happens when everything is a half-truth or an almost-lie or flat-out false. Things end up becoming unintentional secrets. Each day it gets harder and harder to admit until enough time passes and you suddenly realize you can't say anything now even though you want to. The truth becomes impossible. You bear that secret, the one you never meant to have in the first place, along with all the rest.

Felicity once told me that it took five years to become the Oliver who was found by those fishermen on Lian Yun, the Oliver who returned to Starling City. She gently suggested I give myself the same amount of time to become whoever it is I am now. Or will be.

I should have told her right then about the back-up lair. She and Digg had just traveled halfway around the world to bring me back, and even though I thought of her every day I was gone, I didn't realize just how much I missed her until I saw her on the island.

I was following them in the trees, shocked that I hadn't realized they knew me well enough to know right where I'd be, that I couldn't hide from them. I wanted to drop down and join them. Reveal myself. But I didn't know what to say. And then she stepped on that landmine, and I didn't have the luxury of waiting until I felt ready to face them.

She never asked me why I'd left. Never accused me of running away and abandoning her and Digg after the Undertaking. And that day, the day she told me I had time to figure out who I was supposed to be, and so many countless other days, the other lair waited on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to tell her.

The first time we sat in my new office. The CEO's office. She was bleary-eyed from jetlag and twisted her hair up off her neck and held it in place with my favorite Mont Blanc she'd grabbed from my desk. That was the moment when I realized I needed her close to me always. Close enough for her to absentmindedly steal pens. Close enough to tuck her into my chest and shield her from danger. Close enough to whisper all my secrets into her ear.

I should have asked her to quit the IT Department and be my assistant instead of leaving her no choice. I should have told her about the other lair. I should have told her so many things.

How I cried alone in the lifeboat after my father shot himself, but I was too dehydrated for tears. The way the Milky Way swirled out in the night sky, spilling more stars than I imagined were possible to ever see, reminding me just how insignificant I was. I wanted to recite the bits of the Odyssey I'd remembered that saved me and Slade, tell her how I read the poem over and over since I've been back. I wanted to tell her about the sticky wet blood Shado washed from my hands after I beat a man to death with a rock to defend her. How for many nights afterward I stayed awake, wondering if he had a wife, a child, who his mother was and how would she ever know what had happened to him here and how he'd died at my hands.

I don't mean to be so quiet. Closed off. I don't mean to stand so still, breathing shallowly, conserving energy for when I need to spring into motion. I have enough food. I am safe until I choose not to be. I am not alone. But it's become who I am. I've forgotten how else to be.

Slade is right. I am a coward. She thinks she sees me. Knows me better than I know myself. But for once, Felicity is wrong. She believes I am better than I am. She believes in an Oliver Queen who only exists in her mind. I am not that Oliver. Her Oliver. I am only me. A coward too afraid to tell the one person who's never turned her back on me the truth. Too embarrassed to let her see the real me.

The other lair? The one I hid in and should have known she'd find? That's the real me. Dirty. Empty. Waiting to be filled. With supplies. With equipment. With people. With purpose. The things she added to our lair. Without those things, it's a dank basement room bought with untraceable money that is not connected to me or my family or the company. It is the sound of the rats and the cockroaches scurrying back into the cover of darkness. It is dust and mold thick in my nose when I breathe. That is the real me. Not the sleek, beautiful control center she made for us. For me. She did what I had a year to accomplish and didn't. Couldn't. How could I ask her to do the same for the other one? The place I bought in case she and Digg turned on me?

I ran away after Tommy died, and not only did she come and find me, but she led me back home. She gave me a home. A place I love. I place I couldn't give up even when Tockman crashed us. Even when Slade defiled it with his bullets. I kept the other lair, justifying its presence with a "just in case we're compromised." Only we were compromised, twice, and still, I couldn't move. I couldn't give it up.

She did that. She created our Arrow Cave out of a dank, dirty basement. And what did I do to repay her? I lied by omission. I hurt her. I hid in the dark alone. And still she found me.

I've come to believe that Felicity will always find me.

But she doesn't see all of me, just the parts she believes in. She always sees how I can be better. She always says there's another way. She says my death doesn't end this. But it does. That's what she can't understand. It does end it. Maybe Slade doesn't stop. But if he kills me, I do. I stop. Because I should have died a long time ago. I've bought these years with too many other lives. It's my turn to buy time for someone else.

I walk to the end of the pier slowly. Leisurely. With a sense of calm resignation, I take in the beauty of my city, the city I couldn't save. Someone else will save Starling. Make it safe for Felicity and Digg and Thea. The battle is not over, but I am, and I'm okay with that. I've been living on borrowed time. I did my best, and that wasn't enough, so it's my turn to die so others can live.

Is this how the condemned feel when they're being led to the chair or the injection table or the noose or the blade?

When we talked about the best way to end Slade, Sarah preferring a bullet to the brain, Digg favoring decapitation, Felicity, not even looking at us, her fingers flying over the keyboard, mentioned that they think the brain remains conscious for least thirteen seconds after being severed from the body.

"Don't you wander what he'd be thinking?" she'd asked no one in particular.

The three of us stopped talking and turned to her, silent, expectant. She didn't even notice until Digg cleared his throat. She blushed and babbled about insufficient research for obvious reasons but laboratory experiments with rats and neurotransmitters in the brain and how long it would take for enough blood and oxygen to spill out to make the mind stop working even though it wasn't attached to its body.

Later that night, when we were alone in bed, still sweating and panting, Sarah grinned and shook her head.

"She's something else," she'd said with pride and affection.

"My girl is one of kind," I'd agreed.

Sarah looked at me, her eyes sad and knowing, before she asked me what I would think about in my last thirteen seconds. She knew better than to expect me to answer, just as I knew better than to ask her the same. She and I, we're the same. Closed. Independent. Untouchable even to each other. She turned away from me in the dark, faking a yawn and muttering good night. But I laid awake and thought of her.

I like to think, if Felicity had asked that same question, I would have been brave enough to answer.

I would tell her I am not afraid. Not of pain or death or Slade. I will not fight him, not to save myself. I will let him come and take me. Like the boy he first met, the boy whose fate he held in his hands, I willingly give myself to him. Maybe killing me will heal his soul. Maybe it will bring him a sense of peace. Or maybe he's too far gone for any of that, the Slade I once knew lost to the madness of Mirakuru. It doesn't matter because I will be dead. And in those thirteen seconds, I like to think I'd feel relieved because I wouldn't hurt anyone else with my silence and my omissions. I like to think I'd find a way to forgive Slade for what he's done. Maybe even forgive myself for all the things I didn't, couldn't, do. Maybe, just maybe, hope she could forgive me for not being the Oliver she believes in.

Looking out over the harbor, where my own odyssey began all those years ago, I hear the telltale sound of footsteps. After all these games and feints, Slade isn't going to make me wait this time. He's come for me.

This is the end, then.

"Oliver, please don't do this."

"This is where it all started," I tell him, using my own voice to drawn out the sound of hers.

I can't do this if I'm listening to her tears. Anything but knowing that I failed her. That I hurt her. That I make her cry.

"I got on the Queen's Gambit right over there," I tell him because for all the time we spent together, I never told him that part of the story. I was too busy trying to bury the Oliver who got onto that boat with his girlfriend's sister.

"I should have died on that boat," I say. The footsteps stop. "If I had," I continue, my back still to him. "None of this would have happened. I never would have met you."

If I'd died in the accident like I should have, I would have died a fuck-up and a failure, but so many other people would still be alive because I was not. My father, perhaps. Shado. My mother. All the people I've killed.

So many people are dead because of me. So much blood on my hands.

"No one else is going to die because of me."

I turn to him. Man to man. See the ruined face that is my fault one last time before he ends this. Only out of the corner of my eye I see two bodies, not one. And a dark arm is raised, aiming. I feel the sting in my neck before I hear the sound.

I can't feel my legs and I'm dropping to the wooden pier.

Fuck. It's not supposed to be this way.

I'm supposed to die.

I see bare feet with toenails painted a familiar shade of dark green.

"Oliver."

She's on her knees. All I can see is her pale skin. All I can feel is her hand in my hair.

"I'm so sorry, Oliver."

Her voice sounds far away, like she's whispering through a tunnel. The world goes black and the last thing I know is her voice:

"I can't lose you again."