Author's Note: Ok, so a lot of you have been asking me to pair up Oliver and Kara. However, narratively and logically, it's simply impossible for Oliver and Kara to get together at this point. They've just met, it's somewhat traumatising for Oliver to see her and she won't take too well to his cold attitude towards her. However, there is still going to be some Kariver in this story. I'm going to include some flashback sequences to Oliver and E1 Kara, and something else, which I won't mention just yet, but you'll see very soon.

(15 May 2013)

"Tommy?" said Oliver, slowly treading towards the hospital bed in Starling General.

"Oliver. Is Laurel okay? Thea? I was at CNRI…"

"Tommy, they're fine," replied Oliver reassuringly.

"And Kara?"

"She made it out too," lied Oliver with a forced smile. There was no reason to distress Tommy with the news of her death. He had just suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage and was only just stabilised by the doctors. Telling him now could be disastrous.

"I'm sorry, Oliver. I was angry… and jealous," said Tommy, alluding to how he had shunned and behaved callously towards Oliver for the past several weeks, "I am my father."

"No, no you're not!" replied Oliver adamantly.

"Did you kill him?"

"No…"

"Thank you."

Oliver smiled at Tommy, awaiting Laurel's arrival at any second. Tommy's lips started to twitch. At first, Oliver thought he was about to say something, but after no more than a second, he realised something was terribly wrong. Tommy's eyes were fully dilated, and he looked as if he was trying to say something but the words didn't want to come out of his mouth. His eyes shut, causing Oliver to lunge towards Tommy.

"Tommy?" said Oliver, as he put his hands on Tommy's shoulder. Suddenly, the heart rate monitor started to flatline, the monotonous beep ringing out into the ward. He was going into cardiac arrest. Oliver quickly jumped backwards, rushing towards the door. Just as he exited he bumped into Laurel, nearly knocking her over.

"Ollie, what's going on?" she asked.

"Tommy! He's going into cardiac arrest," he replied, "Help please! Get a doctor!" he screamed desperately. He rushed back with Laurel into the ward, who darted towards Tommy body and started to cradle his head in her hands.

"Tommy, Tommy, please wake up! Please!" she said as she caressed his cheeks while tears started to roll down her own. No more than a couple of seconds later burst Dr Schwartz into the room with several nurses.

"Mr Queen, please I'm going to need you to leave the room," she said. Oliver didn't want to leave Tommy's side, but it was necessary to allow the doctors to save his life. He put his arm on Laurel's shoulder, gently trying to pull her away.

"Laurel, we have to go," said Oliver.

"No. No! I'm not leaving him, I can't!" she screamed. Oliver had to use a little more force to pull her away from his body, something he so desperately didn't want to do but had to, "Tommy! No! No!"

She continued screaming, fighting to stay close to him. Her actions were quintessential of a person feeling tremendous guilt. Oliver had seen it before with Slade, who refused to leave Shado's body and stayed by it for hours after she'd been shot. Eventually, they managed to remove themselves from the ward, Oliver pulling Laurel into an embrace as soon as they were out. He cradled her in his arms, letting her weep into his chest as he let a few tears roll down his cheeks too.

"This can't be happening," she sobbed, "Not both of them in one night… not both of them…"

Those words echoed in Oliver's mind multiple times over as he watched the doctors use a defibrillator to attempt to restart Tommy's heart. One charge… then another… then another… Once the doctors stopped, he realised that the inevitable had occurred. He kissed Laurel on the forehead before bringing her even tighter into his embrace, weeping with her.

"Barry!"

Oliver was snapped out of his memories when he heard Jax call out Barry's name. It was nearly time for them to spar Kara. Mostly everyone had suited up, and were now just double-checking their equipment or stretching. He was standing with Barry, and got lost in his thoughts. Seeing Kara Danvers once again had triggered more than just the memories of her death. Her death was just the beginning of the worst. Later that night, Tommy died too, pushing Laurel towards alcoholism and spurring her hate for the Arrow, while Oliver confined himself to Lian Yu for several months as his family's company started to crumble.

Barry whipped around, hearing Jax call his name. "Before we start training, there's something you need to hear."

"A message that would be better if we could share with you in private," added Stein while glancing at Oliver.

"All right, I'll step away," said Oliver.

"No, no, it's fine. You can stay," quickly added Barry. Oliver trusted Barry with the leadership of this mission, so Barry felt that he could trust Oliver with whatever Stein and Jax had to say.

"All right, but no one else," said Dr Stein

"All right." Barry looked around at everybody else. Ray was just adjusting a gauntlet on his suit while Diggle was checking the sights on his handgun. They were almost ready, "Let's make it quick."

"A war is coming, Captain Hunter, and at some point you're going to be called back to Central City to fight it. So you need to know that while you and your team have been in the temporal zone, I made a choice that affected the timeline. As you know, whenever you alter the past, those changes affect the present and get compounded in the future. When you return, you will be in the new timeline I created, where everyone's past and everyone's future has been affected, including yours. When you come back, don't trust anything or anyone. Not even me."

"Where did you get that from?" asked Barry.

"We found it in a secret room inside the Waverider. It was sent by you, 40 years from now," said Jax.

"40 years from now? Barry, what the hell does this mean?" asked Oliver.

"It means I screwed things up when I changed the past."

"What did you do?" inquired Dr Stein.

"I went back in time, and I saved my mom. I created a timeline where she's alive. It's called Flashpoint. I lived in it for a few months, until I realized that I made a big mistake, and I tried to reset the timeline, put things back to how they were supposed to be, but…"

"But it didn't work," said Jax, finishing Barry's sentence for him.

"Wow. Barry, that's…" Oliver was completely lost for words. At first, he felt anger at Barry's irresponsibility and naivety, but he quickly placed himself in Barry's shoes and could only sympathise. He knew that if he had the chance, he'd save his parents, he'd save Laurel, he'd save his Kara. He couldn't fault Barry for doing what anybody would do in the same circumstance.

"So what's changed since you did this?" inquired Dr Stein

"Cisco's brother is dead. Caitlin has powers. Diggle has a son now instead of a daughter."

"What? John had a daughter?" asked Oliver. After seeing Dig with JJ, it was strange to picture him with a daughter of any sort.

"I didn't just screw up my life, man, I screwed up everybody's lives and apparently, everybody's lives in the future. It felt like, when these aliens got here, that finally something had happened I didn't cause, and maybe I could make up for everything I'd done to everybody but I…"

"I think we should be on the up and up with everybody. We got to tell 'em," said Jax.

"We're going up against a bunch of aliens, and you want to tell people that their lives might have been affected by time travel? One sci-fi problem at a time,," said Oliver, "You made a mistake, Barry. It's part of the job. But we can't deal with it today."

Everybody needed to keep their head in the game. Telling them this would only fracture the team and they couldn't afford that before they faced their greatest threat to date. Oliver had the grit to look past his emotions for the moment and not allow the fact that Supergirl is the doppelganger of the love of his life to blind him and corrupt his commitment to the mission. Everybody else? Not so much. Oliver stepped out of the caravan, immediately seeing Ray being flung onto the floor next to Dig, Thea, Sara and Mick.

"She really is a badass," said Thea as she got up, holding her ribs.

Oliver grimaced. Seeing what she did to the rest of them, maybe telling Kara to not hold back wasn't the smartest idea. Nonetheless, he still hadn't seen for himself how 'super' she was.

"Let's go again!"