A tennis ball was fired in the air and Oliver quickly drew and fired an arrow, pinning it to the wall. Laurel whistled, always impressed by her boyfriend's skill with a bow. "It's been a while since you've done that." Laurel commented as she walked in on his training.
"Takes my mind off of things, helps me think." Oliver exhaled as he lowered his bow. "Where are we with Prometheus?"
"Felicity and Curtis are using some kind of algorithm to cross reference people on the list with people in Star City whose names can be anagrams of your former targets. Hopefully, we can find some potential victims and shadow them in case Prometheus goes after them." She explained.
"Where are the recruits?" He asked.
"They left. Apparently their still in shock from finding out some certain things about your past. I've been there." She answered and Oliver nodded then fired another arrow at the tennis ball that was just shot in the air. "But that's not what's bothering you is it?"
"I expected them to be angry, fine. But Laurel the way they looked at me ... they seemed horrified." He admitted.
"I think you're being to hard on yourself. Which is usually the job you leave to me, John, or Felicity." She joked slightly at the end. "I also think that they were more surprised than angry, that it was you who did these things. I think it shows how far you've come, how much you've changed since then." She reassured him.
"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that." He replied.
"What do you mean?" She said worried slightly.
Firing one last arrow at a tennis ball, Oliver then turned off the machine and turned to her. "Laurel I don't think I've changed. I want to, I'm trying to. But lately I just feel stuck, like I can't move forward. And, everything Prometheus is doing ... dredging up my past ... I just proving to me that I can't change. That I'm still the same guy I was when I got home from Lian Yu." He explained clearly frustrated.
"Look, Ollie, I know I wasn't part of your crusade when you first started but I was there when you first started. And, I saw the kind of person you were when you were the Hood." She said no longer leaning against the table.
"You mean how you thought I was a remorseless killer ... a monster." He recalled sadly, making her feel guilty.
"Well, I my defense Ollie, I ... I didn't really know who you were under that hood; you were a stranger to me at first. And, I'm not going to lie, sometimes, sometimes you scared me as the Hood." She admitted reluctantly. "But obviously I came around. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Seeing you operate as a bystander and then working directly with you kinda gives me unique perspective, maybe a clearer one than most."
"Which is?" He asked.
"That you weren't a serial killer. But you were a killer back then Ollie." She answered as politely as possible. "The people on your father's list where as dirty and as corrupt as they come, and they deserved to be taken down without question. But I'm not sure that meant that they deserved a death sentence. Oliver, I know that you didn't kill everyone you went after but still I wonder if maybe you took things too far sometimes when you were the Hood. If maybe, you killed back then when you didn't really have to. It wasn't until Tommy died, that you really started to reconsider how you were doing things. And since then, for the most part you've been able to save people and save this city more than once without killing anyone." She finished her reasoning.
"And what about the people I have killed since Tommy died; the Count, Ra's, and Darhk." He pointed out.
"You killed the Count because he was going to kill Felicity and you killed Ra's and Darhk because they were obsessed with killing thousands just prove their own twisted point. Oliver the times you have killed, I truly believe that those were times were you didn't think you had any other options left. Beside, in case you've forgotten John, Roy, Sara, Thea, Felicity, we've all got blood on our hands; even me." She reminded him, thinking about that corrupt cop Daily that she killed to save Ollie himself.
"I just ... I'm just having a really hard time believing that I've actually changed." He admitted.
"You wanna know how I know you've changed?" She asked with that big beautiful smile of her's.
"How?" He asked.
"Because I know you. I have known you almost our entire lives, I can say with complete honestly that you are a very different man than that person you were almost 5 years ago or 10 years before that. Ollie, I am honestly in awe by how much you've changed over the years and the parts that I still recognize in you are parts that I love the most about you." She said clasping his face. "And since I know you, I'll give you another reason to believe that you've changed."
"What?" He asked.
"That the man that you were, I don't think he would have ever asked himself whether or not he was doing the right thing. Sometimes doubt is a good thing, Ollie, it's a sign that we're still human." She said giving him a kiss on his forehead and then left him to take in her words while she went to check on her own leads to find Prometheus.
Author's Notes: I wrote this story with Oliver and Laurel together and I'm not going into detail on how they got back together. Basically, I'm using Laurel to deliver my own perspective on Oliver's actions in Season 1, so her words are essentially my words. Season 1 Oliver was a real bad-ass, but I'm not going to pretend that he wasn't like the Punisher on some level. I acknowledge that Oliver didn't kill everyone that he went after, but I believe that in Season 1 that sometimes he went too far in actions but he was not a serial killer.
I've seen a lot of people get upset about the writers retcon Oliver as a serial killer in Season 5, their idiots for a lot reasons but I don't this is one of them.To me the argument that "Is the Green Arrow a serial killer" is the same as "Is Batman as insane as the criminals he fights". It is an interesting theory to think about but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is true. Furthermore, Prometheus was trying to force Oliver to believe his own opinions about him and his crusade.