Author's Note: Well my finished draft of this chapter ended up being over 10K, so I've decided to split it up into two parts. Just to make it a bit more digestible. The next part still needs some proofing and it'll probably be out in about a week.
After that, I'm planning on pressing pause on this story for a little while. My muse has currently got me stuck on a particular idea, and writing this took a lot more effort than useful. I'm planning on fully completing my other story 'If I Had A Heart' before I go further here. I've already got two chapters posted, and another two more or less finished. The whole thing is only 8 overall, so it shouldn't take more than until the end of the month to finish.
With that in mind, would you all prefer me to post the next chapter of this story as soon as I'm done proofing it (1-5 days) or wait a while so that you've not got as huge a gap between chapters? If I post it as soon as it's done, it's looking like a month tops before the next posting, or I could wait 2 weeks, then post it. Then there'd be another 2 weeks before the next one. It's up to you. Let me know in the comments.
Chapter 14
"We've gotta talk."
Oliver didn't know why it still surprised him. Ever since he had started dating Kara, and her circle had fully decided to adopt him as one of their own, all semblance of him having a private life had more or less vanished. After the tenth time it happened, Oliver stopped keeping track of how often Kara's – his too, he had to keep reminding himself – friends dropped in at his office for seemingly no reason at all. Usefully it was Kara, showing up to drag him away when she had decided he had spent too long at the office, and more than a few occasions Lena had dropped by, curious to learn about his reality.
Maggie was the most common culprit outside of Kara herself. The first few times she just pulled out her badge and flashed her dimples at the desk clerk at City Hall and was let in without question. On the third occasion she showed up, Oliver relented and told the desk clerk to add her to his list of approved visitors. It had raised a curious eyebrow from the young woman, and Oliver had briefly worried that maybe she thought Maggie was a call girl. That fear had been dissuaded when Maggie had very loudly and publicly announced that she was, in fact, a lesbian, and just an old friend of Oliver's from college who liked to drop in and annoy him from time to time. Which was an accurate description of most of the times Maggie showed up at his office. Almost every occasion she had simply been bored with a slow day at work and had decided to irritate Oliver since Alex was unavailable. Despite his protests, Oliver didn't much mind the company. Maggie wasn't a wholly destructive force when she turned up and had actually given up a few helpful insights on some of the issues he had been working on. On top of that Maggie was an endless stream of witticisms and dark humour that broke up the monotony of Oliver's work day.
From the look in her eyes as she shoved through the opaque doors into his office, it wasn't going to be one of those sort of days. Just a glance over her told Oliver everything he needed to know. For a moment, he worried that something might have happened to Kara but if that had been the case Maggie would probably have breached straight into his office without a care.
Maggie flopped down into one of the two chairs that sat opposite his desk and lapsed into silence. Oliver stayed quiet for a few moments, waiting for her to gather her thoughts.
"I need some advice."
That phrase alone made him nervous. Maggie had asked for his input on a handful of cases she had worked with the NCPD, when the threat level hadn't been enough for the D.E.O. to step in but too much for the standard police response. Then though, Maggie had never asked for advice as such. She had shown him the case file and baited his curiosity to get him to help, or on one occasion Oliver had just happened to have been getting lunch with her when a call came over the wires. The way Maggie nervously rubbed her hands together, the outright admission she needed help, it was personal. With her wedding little over two months away, Oliver could guess what it was about: Alex.
"Alex wants kids," Maggie continued after another few seconds of silence. "Like she really wants kids. And me…I mean I can't. My dad was a Class-A piece of shit, and my mom – she just sat back and let him be. All kids are doomed to become their parents right? I can't pass all that damage onto a kid."
So, not exactly about Alex.
Back on Lian Yu, after he had taken down Chase, Alex and Maggie had been left to keep an eye on William until Oliver had woken up. While he had never asked either woman what it was they had said to William, Oliver had no doubts that they had been brilliant with him. The fact that William had been so willing to accept him despite knowing that Oliver had lied to him and put his life at risk, told him for certain that Alex and Maggie must have talked with him. More than that, William had told him how much he had liked both of them when Oliver had spent time with him a few weeks later. Maybe it had only been because Alex was there too, jolting her into action, or maybe it was seeing William as distressed as he must have been at first. Whatever the reason, Maggie had been good with him.
"You that you and Alex can't exactly…" Oliver gestured vaguely at Maggie with one hand and pumped his eyebrows.
"God of course. Here I am pouring my guts out and you're being an asshole." Maggie huffed.
Oliver held up a hand. "My point is this shit isn't genetic, Maggie. If we were all destined to become our parents, I'd be cheating on Kara with my secretary and blowing up the poor for kicks," That wasn't exactly true, but the lingering self-deprecation in Oliver's mind spat the words up to him anyway. "You were great with William, he said so, you really left an impression on him," Oliver didn't miss Maggie's nervous swallow at his words but he benched the thought. "You're clearly good with kids."
Maggie stared down at her hands for a moment. "How'd you know you were ready, with William?"
The laugh that skipped through Oliver's lips was one he couldn't stop. "Jesus I didn't. I was twenty and cheating on my girlfriend when I got Samantha pregnant, I was an idiot. When Samantha told me she'd lost the kid I was relieved, I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. Then the island happened and when I finally met William I…it was like even if everything I'd done as The Green Arrow was meaningless and dark, William was this pure thing. Maybe the one wholly good thing I'd ever done. And I knew I needed to be in his life, ready or not."
"Alex is so ready," Maggie said. "She's got all these maternal instincts and I'm just…numb about it."
"Then Alex is rare," Oliver offered. "Most people don't get that stuff built in, I definitely didn't. Look, Maggie, you and Alex need to talk about this, I mean really talk. All I can tell you for sure is that with me, all it took was seeing William for the first time and I knew I wanted to be his dad. I love Kara, more than just about anything else, but if it came to it I'd put a Kryptonite bullet in her heart to keep William safe," For the first time since she'd stepped into his office, Maggie cracked a smile. "If it helps, you'd probably be a helluva mom."
Maggie's smile grew a fraction. "God, you're such a sap."
Oliver chuckled fondly. Maggie wasn't built all that differently to himself. When things got too emotional, Oliver closed himself down to stop dealing with it, Maggie made a wisecrack to distract herself as much as anyone else.
The moment a thin silence returned between them, Maggie's phone started buzzing in her pocket. She pulled it out, read over whatever information was on the screen, then looked back up to Oliver with worry chiselled into her features.
"What is it?" Oliver asked.
"Trouble, it's…it's bad. Can you come with?"
Oliver looked down at the notepad that sat on the corner of his desk. He had managed to tick off most of his workload for the day. Despite Quentin always telling him to take his work slower, Oliver always aimed to have at least eighty-percent of it cleared by lunch, just in case something went wrong in the city that needed The Green Arrow. He hadn't quite managed that much, but there wasn't anything else on the list that couldn't either be delayed, or covered by Thea and Quentin.
"Yeah, gimme five and we'll go."
With that, Oliver dashed through into Quentin's office to give him a heads up, then fired off texts to the team to let them know he'd be offworld for a while. With that, he headed back to his office and the breach device kept in his desk drawer.
XXX
Of all Kara's circle of found family and adopted friends, Lena Luthor might have been the most reserved of them all, with the exception of Oliver.
Kara knew that Oliver kept things back, that he held the trauma of his past close to his chest, but once he got to know people he did them the courtesy of dropping the pretence. It had been with her at first, but over time he became more comfortable around Alex and Maggie too, then the rest of their group eventually. He stopped pretending that he was above his own demons and, on occasion, would open up to her. The mask of stoicism dropped away, even more so after they started dating.
Lena was different. Her life with the Luthor family had taught her to never show how she really felt, to never let the world see more than the perfect façade they had to maintain in public. The only things that even seemed to draw out Lena's inner demons were anger and alcohol. The former of which bubbled up with unbridled fury on the drive over to the Luthor Children's Hospital.
The idea that the lead dispersal weapon which had been so instrumental in ending the Daxamite invasion could have caused the poising cases worried Kara to no end. She refused to let it show. Lena was clearly shaken up by it worse than she was, so Kara drew on Oliver's influence on her and buried the worry so that she could take care of her friend.
Oliver's influence on her was more prevalent than she expected on the drive over to the hospital. Almost against her better nature, she picked apart the situation like Oliver would. They had their backs to the wall completely during the invasion, the lead dispersal device had been the last resort of last resorts. It had been a risk, but a calculated one. She and Oliver had talked about it in the aftermath of the invasion and the flourishing beginnings of their relationship. He had told her that he had worried about potential unintended consequences from the device that might have affected humans with allergies or breathing problems. A little over five months since the invasion and nothing had turned up, until that morning.
At the time, Lena had assured Supergirl that the device was safe, that humans wouldn't be affected by it at all. Kara had no doubt in her mind that Lena had been telling the truth, at least to the best of her own knowledge. If there was a fault in the device, Kara was firm that Lena hadn't known about it.
The timing of the poisonings seemed off too. If people were going to be affected by the excess lead in the atmosphere, it would have started happening a lot sooner than five months after detonation. Even if it was the gradual build-up of lead in the children that was poising them, five months seemed too long for it to have taken.
Something about the whole situation struck Kara as being wrong, but she couldn't quite pin it down.
"Sam?" Kara spotted her friend lingering in the hallway ahead of them. "What are you doing here?"
In the admittedly short amount of time Kara had spent around Samantha Arias, Kara had decided that she was a good person. Not only was she a genuinely selfless human, she had chosen to be friends with Lena, with a Luthor, without any ulterior motive. That spoke volumes about her character, so much so that Kara was already contending with the idea of telling Sam the truth about her, were they to fully adopt Sam into their ragtag group.
On top of that Alex had obviously adored Sam's daughter Ruby from the few interactions they'd had, and Kara had sensed the vague wave of tension between her sister and Maggie after those. With everything that they had all been dealing with over the last few weeks, Kara was wary to ask her sister outright about it. Kara knew Alex all too well, if she wanted to talk to her, then she would. Until then, Kara knew from experience that pushing her sister into a conversation she wasn't ready for would only lead to both of them shouting things that they didn't mean.
"Hey," Sam strode over to join her and Lena. "Luke, one of Ruby's friends, collapsed this morning. Lead poisoning. I came with the paramedics, his mom just got here. I saw Edge's stunt too. This whole thing is awful."
Maybe it was the part of her mind that had been influenced by Oliver's scepticism in the face of any figure of power, but something about Sam's words churned a thought loose. Edge had leapt on the poisonings quickly, maybe a little too quickly. Before the cases were even mainstream news Edge was front and centre announcing the issue and pinning the blame squarely on Lena. The man had already made a play to destroy the waterfront – potentially killing all those who had been at the statue unveiling, including Lena – in the name of urban development, then swore vengeance against Lena for her purchase of CatCo. from under him.
Poisoning children though, that seemed…Kara stopped herself from finishing that thought. Edge's attack on the waterfront would have most certainly killed children if it had gone ahead without her and her team intervening. He had intentionally attacked the unveiling of the Supergirl statue because of the crowd it would draw, and he must have known that a decent number of the attendees would have been children. To think that he would be above poisoning children, for whatever agenda, was a fallacy. Edge was absolutely capable.
Kara winced at the line of thought she was going down. To think that someone was willing to poison children was too much, she always wanted to see the best in humanity. Intentionally going down that path seemed too much.
She wanted Oliver with her. He would be better at it. Not only that, he would, somehow, make her feel better.
"Alright, where do I sign?" Edge's voice wafted down the corridor.
Kara felt Lena began to move in his direction before Lena even consciously realised what she was doing. With enough of a hint at superspeed that it wasn't obvious to Sam, but fast enough that she could stop Lena short, Kara's hand shot out and grabbed Lena's arm. The fury that she had been directing at Edge switched focus to Kara as Lena wheeled around on her with a furious glare.
"What do you think you're doing?" Lena hissed.
Kara held up her free hand in an apologetic gesture, and whispered. "What if this is Edge?"
"What?" Lena and Sam asked in almost perfect sync.
Tentatively, Kara lessened her grip on Lena's arm. When the Luthor heiress made no move to charge towards Edge again, Kara answered, voice hushed. "After you bought CatCo. you told me that Edge said he was coming after you, right?"
"Right." Lena's voice was low, and Kara could see her working through it in her mind, speeding towards the concern Kara had already found.
"If he really was behind the attack on the waterfront like we think, would you put him above doing this?" Kara asked. "I mean, he was the first person to take this to mainstream media. Edge Global doesn't even have any investments in the medical world, how did he get wind of this before L-Corp, before anyone?"
The other two women descended into stunned silence for a moment. Kara's gaze flickered between them both as they mulled it over. Sam looked far more apprehensive than Lena, but Kara wasn't surprised by that at all, she wasn't privy to all the information like Kara and Lena were.
"Even Edge…surely he wouldn't." Lena seemed to force the words out. Despite her hatred for Edge it seemed that even she struggled to reconcile the concept of someone choosing to target children.
"Look either way," Sam seemed to have found her feet again. "We should get out of here. If Edge starts throwing allegations at you now, with all this media around, it's just going to pour gasoline on the fire."
"Sam's right," Kara jumped on it. "Let's get back to CatCo. and regroup. I'll call Oliver and Alex, they can help."
Sam had met Alex before, but as far as she was aware, Alex was FBI. That would make enough sense to Sam, family could do favour for family, even if it meant stretching a few rules. Without the D.E.O. getting mentioned, Kara was certain she could sweep Alex's involvement away with the cover story they had already sold Sam.
Oliver would be a different story. During the two proper girl's nights they had all shared, Kara had mentioned Oliver to Sam, but never as anything more substantial than her boyfriend. When Sam had pressed her for a little more information about her "sexy mystery man" Kara had just offered up that he travelled a lot for work, which was why Sam hadn't seen him around. She would have to sneak a conversation with Oliver so they could invent a cover story.
Kara really hated lying to her friends.
XXX
The moment they had crossed through into the D.E.O. on Earth-38, Maggie had dashed off to help support the highly increased police presence around both L-Corp and the Luthor Children's Hospital. With his only burning desire being his worry for Kara, and Lena, Oliver headed off to find J'onn for a situation report.
Oliver could certainly understand the public outrage. From what he had heard, after The Undertaking the police presence around both Queen Consolidated and the Queen Estate had been almost constant. Thea had later told him that it had been one of the many reasons she had chosen to live mostly with Roy when Oliver had been away from Star City after The Undertaking.
While, mercifully, no one had yet died from the reported poisonings, the affected seemed to be only children, which undoubtedly meant even more outrage. There was little doubt in Oliver's mind that the situation would get significantly worse.
When Oliver reached mission control at the D.E.O. J'onn was nowhere to be found.
"Winn," Oliver called out as he strode across to the computer bank. "Where's J'onn?"
"Oh," Winn span around in his chair to face Oliver. "Papa Bear is on a personal errand to Mars, Alex is in charge."
Oliver sighed. He didn't have the time or inclination to deal with the idea that J'onn was off running personal errands while the city needed their help. "Then where's Alex?"
"I, uh, I have no idea."
Oliver resisted the urge to hit something with great effort. "Just give me the rundown of what's been going on, and tell me where I can find Kara and Lena."
Ten minutes and a rough briefing later, Oliver was astride his bike barrelling towards CatCo., where Winn assured him Kara and Lena were heading to.
Unbeknownst to him, Oliver had come to the exact same conclusion as Kara. As soon as Winn had finished playing him the initial news footage of Edge announcing the tragedy and directly connecting it to Lena, Oliver's suspicions had been raised. Once already he had turned down an opportunity to take Edge off the board for good, or at the least scare him into staying out of the way. If it turned out that Edge was responsible for the poisonings, Oliver resolved himself to not let Kara stop him from doing something about it.
He made it to CatCo. less than a minute behind Kara and Lena, catching a glimpse of Kara's golden blonde locks just as the elevator doors snapped shut. Quickly saddling into the next available one, Oliver rode it up to the bullpen, and dashed out onto the floor to catch up with the others.
"…every report they have on the outbreak," Lena's voice carried back to him as Oliver approached them. "I also need the victims medical reports and I wanna see every bit of data Morgan Edge has seen."
As Lena's secretary scampered away to gather the information she had asked for, Kara must have sensed his presence. She turned her head to look behind her while he was still a few meters out and smiled with relief. Lena and the woman she was with disappeared into the office that had once belonged to Cat Grant while Kara lingered waiting for him. Oliver caught up to her, reflexively tangled one hand in one of her own and dipped down to press a kiss to her lips.
"I got Winn to brief me, but how are things looking?" He asked as he pulled away.
Kara grimaced a little. "Not good. Lena is completely convinced this is her fault, but I'm thinking it might be Edge, out for revenge."
Oliver felt a wave of uncalled for pride run through him at Kara and he having come to the same conclusion without so much as having spoken to each other.
"I was thinking the same thing." Oliver affirmed her.
"How'd you even know this was happening?" Kara asked him
"Alex got in touch with Maggie, we were having lunch," Oliver offered her a half truth. Alex had been the one to get in touch with Maggie, but her visit to Earth-1 had hardly been a social call. "We should…" He nodded towards the office Lena had gone into.
"Not yet," Kara shook her head. "She's with Sam."
Oliver recognised the name, Kara had mentioned her a few times to him. L-Corp's new CFO and apparently an old friend of Lena's. When Oliver had slipped a bug into the L-Corp system on his first ever meeting with Lena Luthor during the Cadmus hunt – much to Winn's reluctance because "Kara will not forget about this is she catches us" – Sam Arias had come up only as a Junior VP working out of the Metropolis branch. Oliver had doubled checked the data he and Winn had scooped from the L-Corp system when he had first heard the woman's name come up in a social aspect. By all accounts she seemed a perfectly decent person, but she was nowhere near their inner circle.
"How much does she know about me?" He asked.
"Other than that we're together" Kara shrugged, "Nothing."
Oliver sighed. Sam had no idea who Oliver Queen was beyond being Kara's boyfriend. He could walk into the office and claim to be a total stranger since it was likely she had never seen any photographs of him, but that would only present complications further down the line. In the short term, it would make it easier for him to help with the current crisis without worrying about Sam questioning his skills and his connection to Kara. Long term, it had more complications that it was worth dealing with.
"Alright, standard play," Oliver began. "Black ops, we met through Alex, right now I'm on shore leave."
Kara took the lie in her stride with remarkable grace for a woman as uncomfortable with lying as she was. Oliver wondered if the worry about the affected children was getting to her more than Kara was letting on. After all, even if it was Lena's device that was malfunctioning, Supergirl had been the one to press the button. Oliver had done his best to take that responsibility from her, knowing what it would do to her, and when he had failed he watched how each and every Daxamite life lost because of the device had weighed down on Kara. If the device was the culprit for the poisoning cases, Oliver knew that Kara would take that weight on too.
"Got it." Kara nodded her understanding of the lie and began to head towards the office.
Oliver made a conscious effort to shift himself into his Green Arrow posture, which – Diggle had told him on multiple occasions – gave him the same stance as a military man, if a little rougher. With only second hand information to work on, Oliver had to assume all of the stops would be necessary to convince Sam. Better to oversell than undersell when it came to his cover.
"What if it's true," Oliver could hear Lena's voice through the open doors of the office. He made a mental note to remind her to close the doors when she planned on discussing sensitive information in a newsroom, whether she owned the company or not. "I told Supergirl that the lead in the device was safe for humans. She wouldn't have used it if it wasn't safe."
As she finished, Kara crossed the threshold with Oliver a pace behind her.
"But using it saved all of us." Sam insisted, then looked up at the new arrivals.
Kara, with all the airs of a woman not internally freaking out like Oliver knew she was, dropped into the empty space beside Sam while Oliver pulled the double doors shut behind him. Trying to maintain some semblance of cover, Oliver stayed somewhat stiff, but offered a hand to Sam.
"Lieutenant Oliver Queen." He introduced himself, a little brashly.
Sam shook the offered hand. "Samantha Arias."
Unlike the rest of Kara's friends, she didn't stoop to the teasing at his being Kara's boyfriend. The crisis on their hands was more important. Even in that situation Oliver had no doubts that, were she with them, Maggie would have made some kind of wisecrack. As much as Oliver appreciated Maggie's relentless sarcasm, even in the face of imminent disaster, he admired Sam's cool, business-like edge.
"Kara said you'd be able to help us out." Sam continued as she let go of the handshake.
"Yes, ma'am. Ten years military experience, seven of those black ops," Oliver lied smoothly. It wasn't even that far from the truth. A little over seven years prior Amanda Waller had first dragged him into ARGUS employ, and he had begun his real journey into being The Green Arrow proper. "I've got enough contacts state side to get us help in places even Lena can't reach."
Sam offered him a faintly impressed nod in acknowledgment.
Oliver rounded the sofa that Kara and Sam were sat on in order to keep himself out of Sam's line of sight, then caught Lena's eye. With the hope that she would catch onto the lie, he offered her a conspiratorial wink. After her cool non-reaction to it, Oliver wondered why he had even expected her to struggle. Lena had been raised pretending to be something she wasn't, to show the rest of the world a version of herself that wasn't real. Of course she would be able to take on his façade with perfect elegance.
"Miss Luthor."
Instant recognition at the voice snapped Oliver's attention to the doors to the office. James Olsen lingered just inside of the door he had half pulled open.
"Mister Olsen." Lena's voice was a mixture of surprise and distaste.
James walked the rest of the way into the room and the door swung shut behind him.
"Come to tell Kara I told you so?" Lena scorned. James knew full well that Lena knew who Kara was, the animosity that Oliver sensed existed between James and himself seemed doubly so between James and Lena. "Another Luthor takes innocent lives, news at eleven?"
The way Kara's gaze snapped from Lena to James, from sympathetic to mistrustful, didn't escape Oliver's attention.
"Miss Luthor, despite our differences, I would hope by now that you would recognize that I see you as more than just an extension of your brother," James said. Despite the apparent sincerity at the words, Oliver felt his intuition pick up on the scent of deceit. It wasn't just some performance for Sam, the one person in the room who didn't know the secrets that the rest of them knew, Oliver could tell that much. There was something else about it, some deeper motive. He took the unoccupied space on the sofa besides Lena before continuing. "However, I do think that you should get ahead of this thing. Which, in my opinion...I think you should step down from CatCo, so whatever we report, good or bad, comes off as truthful."
And there it is, Oliver thought to himself. From what he had glimpsed from Kara, Lena and James hadn't had the best working relationship after she had taken over CatCo. James had been left in charge by Cat, and had taken it as a personal affront when Lena had bought the company and decided to take a more active role in it's operations. Why Cat Grant had ever left the company to James, a man who's entire journalistic career was built on his lucking out into being liked by Clark Kent, was beyond Oliver.
"No, that would look like an admission of guilt." Kara jumped in.
"No, Kara, he's right." Lena answered.
Oliver could tell that Lena was going to continue, and from the look of Kara and Sam, neither of them were going to stop her. Maybe they both trusted Lena's judgment, maybe neither of them really understood the magnitude of what would happen if Lena was responsible for the poisonings. Whatever it was, they had clearly never been there. Oliver had. He had watched The Undertaking destroy his mother's life, his city's faith in his family. He had watched his own sins bring Queen Consolidated to ruin under Isabel Rochev. He had watched his father become a murderer in the eyes of the entire country. He could tell that Lena's resignation was fuelled not just by concern for the public, not in full. It was her own self-loathing more than anything else. Part of Lena still felt mired by her family, wanted the public to crucify her.
"The hell he is," Oliver snapped, uncaring if it spoiled his character in front of Sam. "Lena, one way or another this is out there. Now, you may be responsible for this, you may not. My money is on not. Kara believes in you, and so do I. But if it is, you need to control the narrative," When both Lena and James threw him near disgusted expressions, Oliver pressed on. "Even if, if, your device is responsible for this, you are not. The Daxamite invasion had the whole planet backed into a corner, any rational person would have made the exact same decision as you, as Supergirl," Oliver hated putting pressure on Kara, but with Sam in the room he could hardly acknowledge the fact that he had been part of the decision making process himself. "The world doesn't know that, and they should. You refused to take credit at the time, now Edge is using that against you. Even if you step down, so what? You still own CatCo. so no matter what people are going to accuse the paper of bias. You'd be better off using it to get your story out there, instead of relying on whatever merge scarps of mercy Edge might let you have."
Oliver felt a wave of righteous fury wash over him, the wave that had fuelled the power of his retort, and it felt good.
"Mister Queen—" James had the good sense to opt for formalities with Sam in the room, but Lena cut him off.
"He's right, Mister Olsen," Lena seemed almost surprised that she was saying those words herself. "I'm a Luthor. No matter what happens the public is against me, I might as well use my influence to try and get my story across. Even if nobody listens."
Lena caught Oliver's eyes as she finished, and he offered her a nod of reassurance.
She had clearly realised the same thing that he had done, he was the only person in the room who fully understood what she had been going through. When Oliver had explained his history, at least the relevant parts, during the flight to Lian Yu he had raised Lena on the comms while he told it. Mostly down to the fact that had didn't want to have to repeat it, or have Lena hear a compressed version told by Kara, Alex, or Maggie. Part of the story he had told them had been about his mother, her involvement in Malcolm's Undertaking, and then about his father, about how the whole world had seen footage of him killing another man, albeit by accident, thanks to Adrian Chase. Oliver had been in the exact position Lena was in, in that moment, more times than he liked to think about.
"Where is she? Where's Lena Luthor?!"
Oliver was moving towards the door before any of the others were so much as thinking about getting to their feet. He saw the man storming across the bullpen and Lena's petite assistant crossing the room to try and stop him. with very little thought beyond shutting down what looked to be building to a violent altercation, Oliver wrenched open the office doors and made toward the man.
"I need to see her. She needs to answer for my son." The man raged as Oliver stepped up next to the assistant, Eve, if he remembered rightly.
Both Eve and the man seized up for a moment, and when Eve's focus turned back over her shoulder, Oliver knew why. The tactical part of his brain tried to tell him to bawl Kara out for letting Lena leave her office while there was a man who was clearly hostile towards her in the building. The rational part of him quickly told him that for one, Lena Luthor wasn't the type to do anything simply because she was told to, and two, Kara could move faster than most humans could think, so Lena wouldn't be at any substantial risk. When the man's attention shifted to Lena, Eve scuttered off towards the elevator, hopefully to call security. Then, the man tried to close in on Lena, but Oliver firmly put himself between the two before he could make so much as a step. Oliver had no doubt that he was the better fighter, no matter who the man was.
For a moment, the man seemed to size Oliver up, questioning if he could take him in a fight. Clearly he was, at the very least, sensible, because he backed down after a moment. Though his gaze was focused solely on Lena.
"You know he stopped breathing?" The man spat out. "They had to put a tube down his throat. My boy is twelve years old. He is supposed to be laughing, outside playing, not stuck in some hospital with the doctors telling me they don't know how to fix him,"
Oliver's mind turned to William then. Without much conscious thought, Oliver wondered what he would be like in the other man's position; if it were Willian lying in a hospital bed. Would he have been able to compartmentalise and look at the situation objectively? Or would he barrel straight after the person he thought was responsible without a second thought?
"You rich people, you think you can do whatever you want, that we don't matter," The man continued. "My son matters."
Oliver moved to usher Lena back into the office but she spoke before he could.
"I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" The man bellowed, and Oliver could sense the people behind him flinch. For a moment, Oliver readied himself to intervene and stop the man from physically attacking Lena but CatCo. security rushed from the elevator with Eve in tow. "You're gonna answer for what you did to my son," The man raged as the two guards grabbed hold of him. "For what you did to all of them!"
Everything in his demeanour screamed unbridled rage to Oliver. If it hadn't been for the timely arrival of the security guards, Oliver had no doubt that he would have been forced to defuse the situation himself. As the man was carried around the corner and into the elevator, Oliver finally turned around and refocused on the others.
"I want your best reporter on this. I'm not hiding anything," Lena addressed James without actually looking at him. The implication of her words being 'your best journalist who isn't Kara'. "Set a press conference for later today."
XXX
Despite Oliver and Kara's best attempts to convince her otherwise, Lena went ahead with the press conference. It was a reckless idea, they all knew it. Oliver might have been able to convince her to not step down from CatCo. but it seemed as though Lena would not be dissuaded from putting her life on the line by holding a public press conference. The compromise Oliver suggested had been holding the event within L-Corp's reception area, there was more than enough room, but Lena had still refused. When she had done, Oliver couldn't help but to wonder if she was doing it on purpose. One person had already gotten into CatCo.'s bullpen trying to get at her, clearly the people who had been affected by the crisis were out for blood. Lena knew that as well as Oliver did. Which left him wondering if she was putting her life on the line on purpose in some self-sacrificing attempt to offer the people justice.
With very little hesitation, Oliver had offered that particular insight to Kara, and she had agreed with him. Oliver hadn't really been expecting it. Kara had a tenacity to always insist on seeing the very, very, best in her friends, and Oliver had doubted that she would be willing to accept the idea that Lena was readily throwing herself to the dogs. The reasons that Kara had so easily agreed with him hadn't had the time to fester in Oliver's mind as he ran through the logistics of trying to safeguard Lena's press conference. Briefly, he considered calling in the team from Star City, but he didn't want to have to put them under any extra pressure. While the city was mostly quiet, he didn't want to risk pulling them away, because his karma would have guaranteed that decision leading to a major screw up. Instead, they agreed that Kara would blend with the crowd, while Oliver watched from the outside, and James went onstage with Lena.
Things had seemed quiet when Lena first moved up on stage. The crowd's angered shouts had died down as she spoke, and Oliver couldn't pick up anything in the crowd as his gaze swept back and forth over them. Then, Kara turned to look at him. The middle and forefinger of her right hand pointed out, and she pulled her right thumb upright with her left hand. Oliver understood the signal instantly, she had heard a gun cocking. He gave her a nod to confirm he was following her, and snapped to attention, staring at the crowd with extra intensity. Kara turned left, so Oliver focused on those she wasn't looking at.
He spotted her fractionally too late.
Oliver leapt from his viewpoint on the slightly raised plant-bed and sprinted across the plaza towards what he had seen. A woman in a black hoodie, wrenching a gun from a deep pocket and bringing it up to a firing angle. Even as he pushed through the crowd, Oliver worried he wouldn't make it there in time. Kara's name was springing from his lips in a muted call for aid, but even then he knew she wouldn't register it fast enough without exposing herself.
Oliver's hand slammed into the woman's arm just as the gun reached the horizontal. His grip snatched around her wrist and jerked it upright as she squeezed the trigger. The first shot fired upward, fractions of a degree too high to hit anyone in the plaza. The sound of the shot caused the people there to start to scatter. On reflex, Oliver continued to push her firing arm upwards, and made no attempt to stop his momentum. He smashed into her at full sprint speed and the two of them went down. Oliver twisted with the fall, trying to keep her firing arm aimed toward the sky, and hoping that Kara would be quick enough to catch any stray bullets before they could do any damage
His back collided with the concrete with a thud that drove a lungful of air from his body. The way he had twisted to keep the gun from aiming at anyone had also put him half-under the gun-woman, and her head slammed into his shoulder as they hit the ground. Shoving the pain that raked through him down, Oliver rolled them both over. With practiced movements, Oliver pinned the wrist attached to her firing-hand down, hard into the concrete, and his other hand shot to her throat, holding her down.
Instinct had told Oliver to make sure she was down for certain. The only way to knock her out clean would have been to connect a fist with her face, and the kick back into the concrete would have more than likely caused serious damage. The parental part of him couldn't do it. Oliver was almost certain that the women he had just taken down had attempted to kill Lena because her child was in the hospital. He couldn't be certain that he wouldn't have done the same thing in her place.
That had drawn on an empathy that Oliver didn't even know that he possessed, and he hated what it felt like.
Author's Note: So, like I said at the start I need you guys to let me know about when you want the next chapter posted. Also, I'm wondering what your opinions are on Lena. A commenter mentioned a while back about setting up Lena and Sam as this story goes forward. That's definitely an option, and I can see myself working that into the plot without any real changes needed. Let me know what you guys think on that too. I am ruling out Lena/James though, I never liked that relationship, but then I'm not a big fan of James at all.
See you in the next one! And here's your reminder to follow me on Twitter JRW9699. I'll start using it again soon, promise.
