Disclaimer: I do not own the Arrowverse in any way, shape, or form. I'm just playing with the characters.

A/N: I know it's been a long time since I was on FFN. I needed time away to work on myself a bit, which I have done, so I'm coming back now.

For those who don't mind AO3, this whole series is up on AO3 in separate volumes.

Flames and/or harassment will be deleted upon arrival. The pairings for this story are *final*. As always, there will be no Olicity in this series.

Here's the full summary: Oliver Queen's soul has been sent back through time by the combined power of Mar-Novu/The Monitor and Jim Corrigan/The Spectre. Mar-Novu has tasked him with changing the timeline, for the current timeline will see the end of the multiverse, an outcome that Mar-Novu cannot countenance. Oliver is warned that making too many changes too quickly will see him robbed of his advantage, but Oliver soon learns that even the smallest of changes can have the greatest of ripple effects. Eventually, Oliver realizes that he cannot control the narrative, and that he must do what he does best: face the unknown with just his grit and his bow.

The Legend of the Green Arrow

By

ArlyssTolero & Nyame

Volume I of Forging A Better Future

Chapter One:

Reborn

The first thing that Oliver Queen became aware of as he came back to his senses was the hum of a fan, the feel of air dancing lightly across his exposed arms. The second thing that he became aware of was the heaviness of his eyelids. Oliver slowly focused all of his strength on simply opening his eyes so that he could assess his situation. The last thing he remembered was Dig, Mia, and Constantine finding him in Purgatory. He shuddered internally at the fact that he had been trapped, like Sara had been, in a permanent hell of his own making where his sense of self had been lost. Was that to be his final fate? To spend eternity not knowing who he was, to be forever separated from those he loved, be they living or dead? The thought of never seeing his family again or seeing those he loved who had passed on like Moira, Tommy, and Laurel, gave him enough rage, enough focus, to finally force his eyes open.

He was lying in a hospital bed, in what looked like a private room like the one he had been given when he first returned to then-Starling City all of those years ago. Turning his head, Oliver could make out the skyline of Star City out the window. He frowned; there was something off about the skyline, something different from when he had last had a glimpse of it. He turned his head in the other direction, seeing a waiting room outside of the room he was in. He was now growing certain that this was the very same room he had been given back in 2012, but why was he waking up here? Why not at the Bunker, S.T.A.R. Labs, or aboard the Waverider? Why had his team and his friends left him to recover, or whatever, in a hospital? What about the Crisis? Had it been defeated? Well, it had to have been. The sky wasn't red anymore.

Oliver slowly forced himself into a sitting position, grimacing as he felt the sluggishness of his body. He must've been here for weeks, at least, trapped in a coma while he recovered from whatever had been done to bring him back to life. Because he distinctly remembered dying in the Bunker after fighting those Shadow Demons on Earth-38, how he had fought to the last possible second, going hand-to-hand in the end when he had run out of arrows. He closed his eyes in remembrance of every tearing attack that he had suffered from the Shadow Demons. He was sure to have a few more scars after all that he had been through giving the citizens of Earth-38 a chance to flee the destruction of the anti-matter wave. Oliver swung his legs over the side of the bed, testing how much pressure he could put on his body. He slowly stood, expecting his legs to be shaky from lack of use, but they held firm, and he slowly rose into a standing position, taking one, slow step forward, then another, and then another, until he was at the window, looking out at his city.

No, not quite. It was his city, but… different. His eyes fixed on two buildings in particular: the black monolith with Merlyn Global Group blazed across it, and then a building that shouldn't even exist after the Ninth Circle had blown it to hell, much less have a stylized Q followed by Consolidated, signifying its status as the headquarters of his family's company, a company that hadn't existed since 2014, when Ray Palmer had purchased Queen Consolidated and rebranded it as a division of Palmer Technologies. This wasn't possible; Malcolm was dead. Tommy was dead. Thea refused to recognize herself as a Merlyn. His family had lost their prestige, had lost everything, and then Palmer Technologies' Star City location had been destroyed by the Ninth Circle. What was this? Was this just another branch of Purgatory, one where he kept his mind? Or was this the afterlife, his final reward? No, that couldn't be it. He sure as hell wouldn't consider a world where Merlyn's company existed to be heaven.

Oliver turned and headed for the bathroom, intent on splashing some water on his face and maybe waking up from this… dream world. He entered the bathroom… and stopped as he found himself on the very same platform, seemingly soaring through space, where he and Barry had first confronted Mar-Novu, or The Monitor as he called himself. The being himself was standing in the center of the platform, seemingly waiting for Oliver to arrive. "What is this?" Oliver asked. "What have you done?"

"I have given you a chance that very few are ever granted, Oliver Queen," Novu replied evenly, his odd 'double tones' as cool and professional as ever. Oliver vaguely recalled Novu sounding different when he lay dying, but his focus then had been on passing on final messages to Mia, to Sara, to Barry, on impressing on Barry and Kara that he knew they would be the ones who would save the world from the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and that that was why he had given it all up for them. "Surely you recognize when you are."

"Are you telling me that what I saw outside is real?" Oliver asked. "Not some dream world, not another Earth, nothing like that? Are you telling me that I'm back on the day that I returned to Starling City in 2012?"

"That is correct, Oliver," Novu replied. "I worked with a being known as The Spectre, Jim Corrigan, to give you this second chance." *1*

"Why?" Oliver demanded sharply. "Why me? Why send me back in time? Why not let them bring me back?"

"Because the battle was already lost," Novu replied. "The simple and harsh truth is that your allies would ultimately have failed to stop the Crisis, shattered and divided as they were by your death, and not even you being brought back at that time would have changed the end result. The Anti-Monitor would have succeeded in his goals. The multiverse would be destroyed. I could not countenance such a failure, and so I took action to change the course of history. I have sent you back to this point in time so that you can better prepare the heroes of the world, both those you knew and those who remained hidden even during the Crisis, to fight for the survival of the multiverse."

"I thought that the universe was a delicate piece of machinery, that one change required another," Oliver said. "So, tell me, what is the price of this second chance that you've given me? What price will me and those around me pay for this?"

"For the most part, the universe will take care of that by itself," Novu replied. "As Sara Lance and her team have learned in their work, time fights back against change, and the universe will seek to correct any imbalance you create. You will also face potential opposition from Eobard Thawne and perhaps even those that you have called your friends. If you change things too much, too quickly, than your advantage will be made obsolete and you will find yourself facing an unknown world. Perhaps that is inevitable, but when that moment comes depends a great deal on the choices that you make."

"Why me?" Oliver asked. "Why did you choose me? Why not Barry or Sara, someone experienced in time travel?"

"Because they have proven time and again that they will make selfish changes to the world around them," Novu replied. "Barry Allen created Flashpoint. Sara Lance and her team broke time. Barry Allen and Nora West-Allen chose to do as Eobard Thawne directed and that resulted in the Crisis being moved from April 2024 to December 2019. You, on the other hand, have sacrificed yourself and your happiness time and again for the sake of others, save for when you put being seen as a hero akin to The Flash above doing what you knew was right. You know the price of that choice, have regretted it. You will make changes; that isn't in question. But the choices you make, based on your past decisions, will be choices that benefit the most people, and not yourself."

"How do you know I won't use this chance to make things better for my family as well?" Oliver asked. "How do you know I won't just leave the hospital when we finish here, go to Merlyn Manor, and kill Malcolm in his sleep?"

"Because you are not an assassin, Oliver Queen," Novu replied. "You may claim to be so. You may claim to be a vigilante and not a hero. But you have sacrificed yourself, time and again, for those you care for, for the city you love, and finally to give the population of Earth-38 a chance to escape the destruction brought upon them by the Anti-Monitor. You have the heart of a hero, Oliver Queen, and while you hate Malcolm Merlyn, you cannot lower yourself to his level. You never have, even when you suffered the same thing that he did, the loss of the woman you loved."

Oliver was silent. He knew what Novu said was true. While he had come to love Felicity in his own way, it was never the same deep, abiding love that he had only held for one woman in his entire life, the woman that the Dominators had shown him a world where he could've been with her. When he lost Dinah Laurel Lance to the sadism of Damien Darhk, he could have descended into the same path that Malcolm had; he could have plotted the destruction of Star City in its entirety. His team had all abandoned him except Felicity, and he could have silenced her easily enough if that had been the mindset that he had been in. He could have avenged himself on the city, on the world that had seen the death of the woman he loved. But he hadn't. Yes, he had lost his hope for a better tomorrow and his tactics had shifted back to being more brutal as a result, but he hadn't become Malcolm. Finally, Oliver asked, "And my destiny? Is it still the same? Will I die in the Crisis?" The answer to this would dictate his actions for years to come, after all.

"Your destiny is once again your own, Oliver Queen," Novu replied. "You may chart your course as you see fit, but heed my warnings: changing too much, too soon will make your knowledge obsolete and result in a world where you could die even earlier. It is up to you to see that that does not happen. It is up to you to prepare the heroes of the world for the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It is up to you to change your fate and the fate of all those you care for. The choices, and their consequences, are yours and yours alone."

The Monitor raised a hand, in a flash of white light and black smoke, Oliver was standing in the bathroom of the private hospital room. He moved to stand in front of the sink and almost blinked at how young he looked. He hadn't realized just how much his experiences had aged him, had changed his features. Oliver turned the tap on, splashed some water on his face, then dried it off with a towel and returned to the bed, sitting on the edge and looking out at the skyline of Starling City. So, he was back where it all began. Back in a world before the Undertaking, before the Siege, before everything that had broken him. He was in a world where his mother, Tommy, Quentin, and Laurel were all alive, where his sister still had an innocence to her since she was seventeen and still in high school, where the world had yet to face a global threat like Damien Darhk's plans to reshape the world in his image. There was so much to do, so much to plan for, and yet right now, all Oliver wanted to do was curl up. He didn't know if he could face all of the losses he had suffered again, yet if he changed things, then who knew what other dangers would come.

Perhaps The Monitor believed he was giving Oliver a great gift as payment for the services he had rendered leading up to and during the Crisis. But as far as Oliver was concerned, this was a punishment. *2*

*DC*

"You don't look like you slept well, Oliver," Moira Dearden Queen said as one of the Bentleys in the small fleet of vehicles that the Queen family owned pulled away from the hospital. "Though I suppose hospital beds aren't really made for comfort to begin with, even in private rooms."

"No, no, the bed was fine, I guess," Oliver said. "I just had to deal with a lot of nightmares, like waking up to find out all of this was a dream. Plus, I'm used to sleeping on hard-packed dirt or rock, not a somewhat soft mattress." Oliver was telling the truth in this case. That had been the reason he didn't sleep well the last time around, and his body was still the same it had been in 2012 when he returned, which meant he would need to work on getting back into the peak physical condition he had been in since putting himself through his paces following the defeat of Damien Darhk, when he had immersed himself in the training passed on from Ra's al Ghul. He needed that edge for when he eventually did confront Merlyn. He was also being truthful about the nightmares; despite his uneasiness at the supposed gift that The Monitor had given him, he was also afraid he would wake up back in Purgatory, trapped for eternity on an ethereal Lian Yu, never aware of himself, of his memories, of everything that was important, everything that made him a person instead of an animal. Speaking of things that were important, there was something he had to do. "Mom, before we go to the mansion, there's someone I need to see."

Moira knew instantly who her son was talking about. "Oliver, I doubt that she'll be happy to see you."

"I don't expect her to be, not after what I did," Oliver said, meeting his mother's gaze evenly. "But I need to tell her about Sara, about what happened, before the vultures have their say. I owe her that much if nothing else. Even if she hates me forever, slaps the hell out of me, I need to do this. Please, Mom."

Moira studied her son for a moment before nodding slowly, seeing he was determined. "Take us to C.N.R.I., 52 Wells Street in the Glades," Moira called to the driver.

"Yes, ma'am," the driver replied.

"C.N.R.I.?" Oliver asked, playing dumb since he wasn't supposed to know what any of his loved ones had been up to in the past five years.

"The City Necessary Resources Initiative," Moira replied. "It's a non-profit legal aid office that offers legal services to the poor and disenfranchised. From what Tommy has told Thea and I over the years, Laurel is well-suited to that kind of work. She even turned down a very lucrative contract with Wolfram & Hart in San Francisco to take this job."

"That sounds like Laurel, always trying to save the world on her own," Oliver said softly, musing over how the destruction of C.N.R.I. and Tommy's death had shattered that side of Laurel for over a year. She had begun to look at the world that way again when she lost Sara and began taking steps on her journey towards becoming the Black Canary. Oliver would do his best to make sure that this time around Laurel didn't lose that part of herself the way she had in the last timeline. It was one of those things that made her uniquely Laurel, a fierce, passionate defender of the poor and the downtrodden, a legacy that should have been what Black Canary was all about. It saddened Oliver that the woman who created the title wasn't even remembered that much by those who carried her mantle after her death.

"Yes, she is so very much like Rebecca," Moira said softly, a sad smile gracing her features as she recalled her dearly-departed friend, whose legacy was on the verge of being destroyed by the man who had, in turn, been destroyed by Rebecca's death. The Malcolm that Moira knew now was so unlike the Malcolm that had been married to Rebecca, the man that she and Robert had been proud to call a friend and proclaim as Oliver's godfather, as he and Rebecca had declared Moira and Robert as Tommy's godparents. C.N.R.I. was likely slated to be closed somehow in Malcolm's plans, though how, Moira wasn't sure. Malcolm had influence everywhere, it seemed, which was why she didn't make waves and why she played the dutiful soldier.

Mother and son sat in silence as the Bentley drove through the city towards the Glades and C.N.R.I.

*DC*

C.N.R.I. was more or less how Oliver remembered it, lawyers and interns dashing to and fro with folders in hand or talking on the phone. Oliver noticed more than a few people take note of him, eyes widening, but he ignored them and focused on finding the one attorney that he had come here to see. He found her sitting at her desk, one hand up, fingers playing with a lock of hair as she frowned, reading over the file in front of her. It was a little jarring for a moment, seeing her with the long brown hair instead of her natural honey-blonde, which she had started to go back to following her joining the District Attorney's office, but it took only a moment for Oliver to absorb that and it helped to remind him that this Laurel was still pissed as hell at him for doing what he had with Sara, and he would be lucky if he got out of here without being slapped. He expected it would happen simply because Laurel would need some way to vent and words might not be enough for her in this case.

Oliver moved to stand just off to the side of her desk, swallowed once as a lump formed in his throat at Laurel, the Laurel he had known, grown up with, loved, and avenged sitting in front of him, alive and as passionate in her defense of the poor and downtrodden as ever. "Hello, Laurel," he managed, his voice breaking slightly, because he had never expected to say her name again and mean her instead of her doppelganger from Earth-2, who he had last seen on Lian Yu. Laurel froze in place, the lock of hair that she had been playing with while focusing on her work falling from her suddenly limp fingers and dropping down onto her left shoulder. Slowly, Laurel turned in place, looking up. Her green eyes, always so expressive, flashed with different emotions: shock, anger, dismay, hope, grief… Her eyes took on a shiny quality, but she was clearly refusing to let the gathering tears fall.

"Oliver," Laurel finally whispered, her voice catching. The office around them had quieted and was watching them with interest.

"Is there somewhere private we can talk?" Oliver asked quietly.

"Whatever you have to say to me, Ollie, you can say it here," Laurel said, standing slowly and facing her ex-boyfriend with an expression that was slowly tilting towards anger. "It's not like I don't know why you're here. You're here to tell me that she's dead."

"Actually, I don't know if she is," Oliver confessed. Laurel blinked, drawing in her chin in consternation, and Oliver noticed a flash of renewed grief and hope flash through those expressive, shining green eyes of hers. "I did think she was dead for a while. I spent a year believing she was dead. Then a ship came to the island where I washed up, and she was onboard."

"Then why isn't she with you?" Laurel asked tightly, unable to help a tear that trickled down her cheek. She wiped at it angrily.

"Because things happened that led to that ship being destroyed, and during that, I saw Sara get sucked out into the ocean," Oliver said. "But Laurel, that same thing happened during a Category-2 storm, and Sara survived that. The second time, it was in calm waters off of the shores of the island. Sara could have survived, drifted to another island or something on debris from the Amazo. I'm not going to give up on her, and neither should you."

"And I suppose you expect me to accept you back into my life?" Laurel asked tightly.

"No," Oliver said. "I know that I don't have the right to be a part of your life again, Laurel. I know I broke your trust, your heart, your very soul when I did what I did with Sara. So, whatever you need to do, do it. Hit me if you need to. I promise I won't stop you, and I won't allow anyone to charge you for anything. I deserve what I get. So, go ahead. Do what you need to, Laurel."

Laurel closed the distance between them in a couple of steps. She studied him for a moment, than she reared back and slapped him hard enough to turn his head. His cheek stung, but it was nothing compared to the emotional pain that he had lived with since this woman's death almost four years ago in his mind. He could handle her grief-fueled rage, because he knew that in the end, she would be letting him back into her life. It could take a while longer than it did originally, since he had no intentions of having to ask her to defend him because he got caught on purpose to throw suspicions off of himself, but he knew it would happen in the end, because at the end of the day, this was Laurel, a woman whose depth of compassion and forgiveness knew no bounds. "You should've rotted in hell for a lot longer than five years," Laurel finally said, turning back to her desk. "Thank you for telling me what you think, Ollie, but that doesn't change what you did. Get out." Oliver nodded and turned to go. He stopped a moment later. He turned to face Laurel, who glared at him. "What?" she asked tightly.

"Just… the phonetics for this place would come out as 'Canary'," he said softly. "It seems to me that your sister's been with you in your heart all of these years." He shrugged at Laurel's stupefied expression. "Just a thought I had when my mom told me what you were doing. And for what it's worth, I think the people who need your help couldn't have a better champion." Oliver turned and left, leaving a contemplative but still angry Laurel behind him. *3*

*DC*

As the Bentley pulled away from C.N.R.I., Moira studied her son. She could tell it had gone about as Oliver expected; there was a slender red handprint on his cheek, at least that she could see, and his mood was… well, she didn't know exactly what was going through her son's mind, which was very different from five years ago. Before, she could always tell what her son was thinking and feeling. Now, now he was a blank slate as he stared out the window at the city. "How did it go?"

"She's justifiably angry," Oliver said. "Like you suspected, she wasn't happy to see me. I just hope what I had to tell her brought her some comfort, at least, small though it might be."

"I'm sure that it did, Oliver, even if it was only a fraction of the comfort she could have had if Sara was discovered with you," Moira said softly. "Now, no more looking back. We should look forward, to the future that you can build now that you're back where you belong."

"I suppose that's true," Oliver said softly, thinking of the burden placed upon him by The Monitor. How did he reconcile that with the responsibilities that he would have as Oliver Queen, in a world where Oliver Queen and Green Arrow would be separate people once more?

The Bentley arrived at the stately old Queen Mansion, and Oliver couldn't help the tears that rose at the sight of his childhood home, whole and unburnt. Moira smiled softly at her son, sad that something as simple as the sight of the mansion could bring this kind of reaction and wondering if Oliver was really ready for something like taking a position at Queen Consolidated like she hoped to broach with him once he had settled back in. Oliver and Moira got out of the Bentley when the driver opened the door, and Oliver circled around to the trunk where one of the mansion's help staff was opening it. "I've got this," he told the man as he grabbed the crate containing his gear and other mementos of his five years away, including (among other things) the portion of Akio's ashes that Tatsu had imparted to him.

Oliver followed his mother into the mansion. "Your room is exactly as you left it, I didn't have the heart to change a thing," Moira said, and Oliver mused to himself that that wasn't quite true; he distinctly recalled from the last timeline that he had had a package of condoms that had gone missing. He had decided that either Tommy had claimed them for himself or Raisa or his mother had thrown them away before his sister got to the age where sex interested her, because Oliver did not want to think of some little teenaged twit using those condoms to have their way with his sister. In that direction laid a kind of madness and he was already going to struggle with madness knowing all of the things that he did about what was to come for Starling City and the world. How was he supposed to do what The Monitor had asked of him? How?

Oliver was pulled from his thoughts as he heard a door slam up above them. He moved to the bottom of the steps, vaguely recognizing that he had snubbed Walter for a second time and came to a stop at the bottom of the steps as his sister, her wild mane of brown hair hanging down past her shoulders, came to a stop. "Hey, Speedy," he said, eyes crinkling as he beamed at his sister, an expression Thea returned as she bounded down the steps.

"I knew it, I knew you were alive!" Thea said, throwing her arms around Oliver's neck and holding him close as his arms slipped around her and hugged her tight. "I missed you so much…"

"You were with me the whole time," Oliver told his sister softly, promising to himself that this time his sister wouldn't become the damaged woman she had been forced to become thanks to the machinations of Malcolm Merlyn, even if that meant he had to kill the bastard and send him straight to hell.

A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter.

Chapter Notes:

*1* The Spectre has almost unlimited power, among those being the ability to manipulate time and space. So, in this story, when Oliver went with Corrigan, he was sent back in time to this moment instead of being chosen as the new Spectre. I would also assume, based on my research, that The Spectre has power over souls. Combine that with the manipulation of Time and Space, and The Spectre could conceivably send Oliver back to the beginning after his death.

*2* In the original story, I had Oliver more or less accept the second chance at face value. But I've had a lot more experience putting myself into his headspace thanks to writing both the original "Rise" and "The Age of Heroes", and I'm bringing that to the table here, recognizing that an Oliver who has *just* died in the Crisis would look ahead of him, at all he has to do, and feel that this isn't so much a reward as a punishment.

*3* In the original "Rise", I had things between Oliver and Laurel go much smoother, but that was because I needed to write what was essentially a 'feel good' story with these two due to feeling very bitter about Oliver's fate in general. Now that I've all but excised that need with "Rise" and then "Age", I want to write both characters as authentically as possible, and Laurel would probably have had a bad reaction whether Oliver approached her before or after the news reported his survival and her sister's apparent death.