I rose up from the dead (I do it all the time)
Oliver escapes Lain Yu a second time. He watches the island explode, while floating on the same waters his father committed murder and then suicide, and wryly thinks he will not need to escape again.
He turns William's face into his chest, and allows the feel of his son safely in his arms to ground him enough to take what little action he can.
First; with a hand over his heart to activate the comms, 'Felicity?' he pleads, 'Dig? Thea?..'
^
Almost a week later Oliver returns to Star City. This time without a mission, and without a family to return to.
William falls asleep on the plane with his head on Oliver's shoulder. It pushes him through another day.
Oliver doesn't live so much as exist between visits with William, who has moved in with his maternal grandparents.
For a long time he continues to reside in the bunker with the ghosts of his team. He imagines he can hear the clicking of Felicity's heels or the rhythm of her typing. John, Dina, Curtis, and Rene laugh, spar, argue, and tease with ironically more life then Oliver currently possesses. Some days he imagines Laurel, Sarah, and Roy among them. He reminds himself that Sarah and Roy aren't dead – but then again, they may as well be.
Six months after Oliver's world quite literally exploded, William asks to spend the weekend with him. He reluctantly goes apartment hunting.
The ghosts are quieter after that, mostly.
He hears Felicity in his head the way he used to hear her in his ear; guiding, encouraging, worrying.
Call Lyla, she'll instruct, go for a drive to Central City
Live she asks and he is struck by the parallel of his father, gun to his head, commanding him to survive.
No, she corrects, Live
When the bills begin to pile up, and the grief ebbs just enough for the boredom to set his teeth on edge, Oliver decides he needs a job.
You could be a personal trainer, Felicity suggests, if you can teach Roy discipline, you can teach anyone.
^
Oliver's first client is an elderly lady wanting to regain strength after a fall. He moves on to help a young man with aspirations of joining the army loose weight, and then teaches self defence to a middle aged woman who has survived an abusive relationship only to discover that you can't outrun fear.
He leads a taekwondo class on Friday nights for troubled teens, and sees Roy in every face.
Tuesday mornings are for new mums aiming to loose baby weight. They are his least disciplined group as they mostly share stories of sleepless nights, and make increasingly less subtle comments about his physique. He suffers through as he senses that the payoff for this class isn't really a number on a scale.
At some point he acknowledges that being a personal trainer is no longer a means to an end.
Oliver Queen, you couldn't stop saving this city if you tried.
The classes offered by Oliver Queen are vast and unique but archery is not among them.
Until the day William shyly asks to learn his fathers trade and so, for the first time in over a year, the familiar weight of a bow is in Oliver's hand. As he notches his first arrow he finds he isn't surprised that the action feels like a piece of himself has slotted back into place.
He closes his eyes before the arrow finds its target.
Bullseye
^
He meets Ellie at a bakery on the harbour that she later informs him she owns.
On their first date she makes a joke about causing obesity in Star City for him to cure it before lifting her glass with a playful, "you're welcome"
They make small talk, and he politely asks how she got into baking.
"I was career orientated," she stage whispers with her nose scrunched in distaste, "I had a ten year plan. I was on the fast track, until I wasn't. The economy took a turn, I was made redundant, and I lost everything."
"I understand that."
"It's quieter, without everything, I had a lot of time to think about who I am and what I love."
"yeah," he replies thickly and is immediately jarred by the emotion in his voice. She pauses and cautiously studies him with eyes that are sympathetic if not understanding. He clears his throat and encourages her to continue, "what is it that you love?"
"Cupcakes."
He laughs and receives a pleased smile in return.
He assumes this is how a normal relationship begins; without flat lining, kidnapping, or a fake – but not really that fake – I love you.
It's nice.
Third date, you know what that means… awkward, sorry! Not exactly the comment you want to hear from your dead ex-fiancé on date night, not that you ever hear me say anything really…So, not the comment you want to think on date night?
Felicity.
Sorry!I'll wait
The Felicity in his head counts backwards from three. Oliver breathes in time; exhaling nervous energy.
I just want you to be happy.
That's my line
Well, obviously. This is your head Oliver.
^
"I'd like to name her Alba," he tells a heavily pregnant Ellie.
"Alba?"
"It means dawn," he explains.
What he doesn't say is that one day, on the island, he woke up first and made his way to the shore just prior to sunrise. It was a rare moment of peace that left him breathless in the same way feeling his daughter kick for the first time left him.
Shado had come up behind him as the sun began to rise and quietly insisted, 'It doesn't stop, not ever, so neither can you.'
Ellie smiles sweetly and reaches for his hand, "I love it".
The nightmares come and go, with no real rhyme or reason. Sara's hand slips from his own as he looses her to the ocean. He drifts on those same waters with his eyes pressed tightly closed, it only heightens the smell of his fathers decaying corpse. His mother has Slade's sword through her chest. Thea is laying on broken glass, bleeding out. The feel of Felicity's lips is on his, featherlight, with the words "just in case" ringing in his ears for hours after he wakes.
He still scans for exits every time he enters a room, and some days he can barley focus on a thought or a feeling beyond the itch for a bow in his hand.
As Ellie enters her third trimester he begins to retreat. He gravitates to the lair in search of something he can't entirely comprehend. Perhaps guidance, maybe forgiveness. He does maintenance on a lair they are never going to use but it gives the illusion of power; power to hold them close.
When the lair is up to code he stands on the dais and repeats his words from so long ago, "I don't want to let you go"
He sees Felicity, just like that night, and the whole team is around her – both living and dead.
She smiles, a little sadly, but he thinks maybe he finds what he came looking for in the gentle upturn of her mouth. Guidance. Forgiveness. Hope.
Felicity repeats her words too, and they echo in the empty space with heavy significance,
"I don't want to let you go, but I'm already gone."
Oliver goes home.
They have more good days – Ellie, Alba, William, and him – then he ever imagined possible.
Christmas mornings, birthday dinners, dance recitals, and science fairs.
He is increasingly reminded of his vigilante years in aching bones, but finds that there is no lingering pain from old injury that a kiss from his daughter can't cure.
I don't want to die down here, he had told Diggle with little belief that he would live out the year let alone see old age. They are proud of him he thinks – his team.
Ellie dies at sixty-two. Afterall, it's not only heroes that succumb to death, forever is promised to no one.
He sits next to his granddaughter, Sammy, who stoically holds his hand along with her father's on her other side. Oliver looks over at Sammy's tearless face, and not for the first time sees a young William.
Alba delivers the eulogy. His dawn; who is the spitting image of her mother, but inside every bit Oliver.
For a moment he is taken back to the day he lost every friend he had, the woman he loved, and the last of his family. Before that day he had thought himself an expert in grief but now he knows better. As they bury his wife he is certain that no man can master grief. What he has mastered is rebuilding his life; around the gapping holes of loved ones lost.
Ellie dies at sixty-two.
Oliver Queen does what he always does; he starts again.