I ended up staying in Starling for a year and a half. Over that time Oliver taught me to be an archer and I became known as the Silver Arrow. I'll spare you the details. There was a lot of blood, death, and I got shot several times.
Anyway. Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle are like my family now, and you're supposed to tell your family everything, right? To tell the truth, speaking of my experience in the war terrifies me. I've never even told-
"Hayley? Hayley!!"
"Yeah?" Oliver glares at me. " Focus" he whispers. Felicity nods encouragingly. Diggle just looks at me.
"Right. So before you ask, Oliver, I do trust you all. It's just that I don't even think about it and you can't just go from not telling anyone to telling everyone. I expect you at least to understand that. Okay. Here goes everything.
I was born in Australia. My father was an agent for ASIS and both my parents doted on my older brother. I was the pretty little accessory.
But eventually they bored of me, or maybe they wanted me to becomes an agent for ASIS, I don't know. When I was ten, my parents sent me to Ravenwood Institute for Girls, here in America. Turns out that Ravenwood was America's version of the Red Room in Russia. I was trained to be an assassin. Now that I look back I realise that I had it easy. Sure we were tortured and half-starved, but at the end of the day, all of us took care of one another. We were a family, sorta.
When I graduated, I moved to Brooklyn, then to New York. I had "majored" in forensic and technical sciences, and I think that is what led me to the New York Modern Marvels of Tomorrow Fair, where I met Howard Stark. After I lectured him on the safety problems with his flying car, I decided he needed my help and became his assistant. That was my first major mistake.
Because I was Howard's assistant, I went with him to the war front, and met Peggy. Howie and Peggy were my parents, best friends, and siblings all in one. I was not however included in the Captain America project. Howard was really very jealous and afraid that I would leave him to be friends with Rogers. It was the cause of the first major argument I had with Howie. For that reason, I left the lab when Rogers was to come to get his uniform and shield. My second major mistake, one that would end up costing me the world I knew and loved." Here I paused for water. I studied their faces carefully for any sign of reaction. Only Flicker showed any emotion. I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that I was going to have to finish.
"I went on a short walk, and accidentally crossed enemy lines. I was kidnapped by HYDRA.
HYDRA, somehow, had managed to get a vial of the super-soldier serum and had reproduced it, testing it out on God knows how many people. They all died, the effects similar to that of the Japanese Mirakuru.
Eventually some bright person came up with the idea of using the Tesseract to create the super soldiers. That also failed. I was lucky number thirty, and I was the one chosen to be first injected with the serum, then experimented on with the Tesseract. It worked.
I suppose Master Schmidt saw some irony in it all. SHIELD's lost lab assistant coming back as an assassin to kill them all. As proof of my loyalty, my first mission was to kill Howard and Peggy. But the Tesseract ensured that HYDRA's brainwashing didn't work. I did not kill them. I couldn't.
I did kill, yes. I became known as the Midnight Assassin, for I always struck at midnight. My final mission was to protect Master Schmidt at all costs, on that cursed plane. I decided I was worth more than that and let him die. However I failed to get off the plane before Rogers crashed it, and so was encased in ice as well. When I awoke, Director Fury thought it best that I live my own life and here I am.
To this day, I have not returned to Australia."
At the end of the tale, I looked up. Ollie groaned. "How could you imagine we would love you any less?" I grinned. "No idea, Ollie. No idea."
Three weeks later I moved to Central City, with promises to Flicker that I knew I could finally keep.