Chapter 4

"Kara Zor-El, I love you."

Oliver and Kara both froze at the strange arrival, the two manging to share a completely stunned look for a brief moment before their, clearly alien, visitor drew their attention again. Rubbing his hands together to create the same blue light, Mxyzptlk started looking around the room, seemingly judging his environment.

"First, let's set the mood! Candles." With a snap of his fingers a blue light burst into the room and candles appeared throughout the room.

Oliver was, somehow, even more stunned. He'd seen magic before but the tricks Constantine and Darhk used paled in comparison to whatever force the stranger was harnessing. He was however particularly glad to see that Kara was in as much of a state of shock as he was, at least he could put this particular experience down to 'freak of the week' as opposed to the other insane things that Earth-38 considered normal.

"Who are you?" Kara managed while Mxyzptlk continued to do…whatever it was he was doing.

Oliver was, thankfully, unsurprised when the visitor didn't give an answer, instead continuing to bounce around the room. It was clear enough that the visitor had stated his intentions, and there seemed to be nothing that would distract him from them. The situation couldn't help but to remind Oliver of what he had been like when he'd proposed to Felicity, except that this visitor was doing all of that planning in a few short seconds.

Mxyzptlk kept moving around the room, with a word he brought things to existence in a flash of blue light. Suddenly, the room was filled with scented candles, a string quartet and, with a dramatic twirl from the visitor, several bundles of flowers.

"And for the piece de resistance," Mxyzptlk continued, sliding to one knee in front of Kara. "The ring."

Kara glanced down at the, or should have been had it been bought, expensive ring, seemingly even more confused than she was before.

"Kara, sweetie, it's like I said. I'm your one true love, your soulmate, your one true pairing as the kids say. My name is Mxyzptlk and I love you, Kara Zor-El."

"Uh…uh…" Kara stammered, looking across to Oliver in her stupor as if he would be able to provide some kind of answer.

"Tell me… Will you marry me?" Mxyzptlk finished with a quirk of his eyebrow.

Kara's eyes went wide as she let out a nervous laugh.

"I can show you the world!"

Wasn't that…Aladdin? A small part of Oliver's brain decided he'd have to thank Thea for making him watch all those Disney movies when they were kids, his recognition of the song forcing a re-boot of the vast majority of his brain function. The part of Oliver's mind that handled his decades of compartmentalisation clicked back into action and he took a step in front of Kara, placing himself between her and the visitor.

"Hey!" Oliver snapped, taking the man by the lapels of his jacket and pulling him to his feet. "Slow down, from the top. Who are you?"

Oliver took a step back, realising the anger he'd just displayed. Maybe he was a little more uncomfortable about the whole situation than he thought, though, never one to admit that, Oliver put it down to pent up anger from his argument with Kara.

"Ah, Oliver Queen of another reality. I must say I didn't expect you, but no matter, you're no romantic rival." Mxyzptlk answered, throwing an arrogant grin at the archer.

Oliver gave Kara a sideways glance at that, the blonde simply shrugging in confusion. Before either of them could say another word, Mxyzptlk vanished in a flash of blue light and reappeared behind Oliver, stood at Kara's side as Oliver himself had been moments ago. Frustration grew over Oliver's features as he spun on his heel to face the trickster, and from the reaction he got, both Mxyzptlk and Kara noticed.

"I must say, while you are nothing more than white noise, I want to be alone with my love."

As Oliver opened his mouth to retort, Mxyzptlk snapped his fingers and a blue light consumed Oliver's vision. A moment later, the light faded and Oliver quickly realised that he was no longer in Kara's apartment. Thankfully, he still knew his surroundings, he'd been sent back to the D.E.O.

"Mr. Queen?" A voice came, and Oliver glanced across to see J'onn staring at him with a puzzled look.

"I'm gonna kill him." Oliver mutter to himself before quickly walking towards the other man. "It's Kara," Oliver announced. "I think she might be in trouble."

XXX

"You've just been visited by a 5th Dimensional being." J'onn explained as if that answer would mean anything.

Okay, so maybe Oliver was at a bit of a disadvantage on that field, he didn't have close to a third of the knowledge that any other person on Earth-38 had of aliens. J'onn's explanation might have had a little more impact if Oliver had known any more of aliens than the two he'd had conversations with. The conversation around him was only half in his attention, Oliver was just glad they'd got Kara back and that trickster hadn't whisked her away to some other planet for a wedding against her will.

Oliver had been changed into his Green Arrow suit by the time Kara had made it to the D.E.O. a few minutes prior. Not that he thought arrows would do him much good against someone with the ability to bring and remove things from existence at will but it made him feel a little more in control. J'onn had to call off the strike team he'd assembled too, the two men had shared a sigh of relief on seeing the Kryptonian return.

"Wait, you've seen one of these before?" Kara questioned J'onn, pulling him back to the conversation.

"Not here on Earth, on Mars." J'onn spoke as the trio reached the central desk in the computer space. "One of them moved the Xan'Xie mountains halfway across the planet during the Zook Uprising."

Oliver had to assume that at least some of those words had actual meanings attached to them, he really would have to get Kara to give him an abridged history of Earth-38's contact with aliens so he could tell which information was new to everyone, and what was just new to him.

"Fifth Dimensional lifeforms possess the ability to warp our reality to their own whims. Abilities that would appear, to all intents and purposes, to be magic."

Mxyzptlk's powers weren't actually magical in nature, Oliver wasn't sure whether he sound find that information reassuring or unnerving. If they had been, he might have just been able to chalk them up to an extension of everything he'd seen with Darhk, and there was a good chance he could have dealt with that. Hearing that those powers were really the bending of reality to the whims of one man, that was far from being okay with him.

Just the idea that one person could possess that amount of power was a little horrifying. Sure, Kara was essentially an all-powerful being but she had weaknesses, but placing her next to Mxyzptlk really put that 'all-powerful' thing into perspective. Oliver had also been forced to just gloss over the whole 5th Dimension thing, he really was going to have to take a look at some of the D.E.O.'s records at some stage.

"What looks like magic?" A new voice sounded, Oliver wheeling around to face the source. Before he even had a chance to question the arrival, the new man realised Oliver's presence. "And who's he?"

"Mon-El, this is Oliver Queen, from Earth-1." Kara smiled. "Oliver, meet Mon-El of Daxam."

It didn't escape Oliver's notice that Mon-El wasn't particularly receptive to him, the other man giving him an untrusting and scrutinizing stare. Never one to back down, Oliver gave as good as he got, studying the Daxamite intently, trying to pick up on any of the tiny details about him. It took hardly a moment for Kara to pick up on the obvious tension between the two and so, after a pointed look from the blonde Kryptonian, the two stubbornly shook hands.

Oliver did his best to ignore the almost painfully firm grip Mon-El had, clearly super strength was one of his abilities, and he had no doubt that the alien could have broken every bone in his hand if he had wanted to.

"As for the magic," Kara sighed. "I got visited by someone from the 5th Dimension."

"On Daxam we had a zero-tolerance policy for those creatures." Mon-El spoke, clearly having some kind of history with the beings that Oliver filed away to investigate later.

"You had them on Daxam?" Kara asked quickly.

"Yeah. And those guys knew how to party," He answered. "But they're dangerous. Very dangerous."

Oliver eyed Mon-El even more curiously at that. There was something about the man that didn't quite agree with him, something he couldn't quite place. The obvious reason was that he reminded Oliver of himself, or the man that he had been over a decade past. It had been the way he spoke, immediately bringing up the way that 5th Dimensional beings were party-animals after saying his planet had a zero-tolerance policy for them. Oliver couldn't deny he had experience with that; the status and money of the Queen family meant nothing had been off-limits to him.

Despite that, Oliver felt something deeper. For the sake of the conversation he was involved in, Oliver pushed that down.

"Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind? You got it." Winn's voice came from the computer bank as Oliver zoned back in.

"Oh, hey, J'onn." Winn continued. "We are ready to send your message to Mars as soon as you are."

"What message?" Kara asked, at the same time as Oliver asked. "To Mars?"

J'onn gave something of an amused look to Oliver for his disbelief before turning back to Kara.

"On Earth, it's customary to send messages on Valentine's Day. We had a similar custom on Mars."

"It's too bad you can't call her." Kara spoke, a hint of sadness in her voice.

"We Martian's are a psychic people. All our communication was through thought…"

Oliver zoned out again as J'onn continued to speak, two particular thoughts going through his mind.

J'onn was apparently psychic and could communicate telepathically. That raised two questions. What exactly did a Martian's super-powers include and, more importantly, could J'onn read minds? The first was a little inconsequential, from what Oliver understood J'onn was the last of his kind, so he wasn't expecting to go toe-to-toe with a Martian anytime soon, but it would be useful to know. The second was pretty damned important, because if he could, had he been reading Oliver's mind the whole time?

As J'onn walked away, leaving Oliver, Kara and Mon-El together, the archer decided to raise his concerns about J'onn later, when he was alone with Kara. There was a brief pause between the trio, before Kara flashed the two men one of her signature smiles and bounded away with a comment about finding her sister that neither Oliver nor Mon-El paid any real attention to.

"So, Oliver," Mon-El spoke as soon as Kara had left his sight, seeming to stand a little taller as he did. "You run out of bad guys to beat down on Earth-1 or something?"

At those words, the archer turned himself to face Mon-El, his body language changing from that of Oliver Queen to the way he carried himself as Green Arrow. Oliver was never one to back down, especially given the accusatory tone Mon-El was using. The accusation made Oliver realise something though, something he had subconsciously chosen to ignore when Mon-El had arrived; the Damaxite's eyes had gone straight to Kara when he had walked in. Between that and the instant hostility he had shown towards Oliver, the conclusion was pretty obvious.

Mon-El was attracted to Kara.

Oliver couldn't blame him, he knew Kara was an attractive woman, even if he hadn't known about her other life as Supergirl Oliver didn't doubt that he would be drawn to Kara Danvers anyway. The difference was, the looks Mon-El gave her were somehow deeper than that, there was an emotion in his eyes that Oliver couldn't quite place.

"Actually," Oliver began after a short pause, knowing exactly which buttons to push to rile the other man. "Kara invited me here, she asked for my help."

Mon-El actually scoffed at that. "You? What could some punk in green leather possibly have to offer her?"

The aggression in Mon-El's voice at that made some kind of connection in Oliver's brain, taking a pause from the conversation as he ran through the night's events. He had no idea why he had been so on edge. At the bank, a few hours earlier that night, he had gone a little overboard, Oliver knew that, but he was trying to make an impression. With Mxyzptlk he had been unnecessarily aggressive, and now with Mon-El he had become increasingly aggravated when he'd realised the other man was attracted to Kara.

Was he...?

No, that idea was ridiculous. Oliver was not getting defensive over Kara, he had barely been around the girl for two days the last time they met, and he'd been on her Earth less than 5 hours. There was something about her though, some sense of innocence and naivety, that she hadn't been scared by the traumas of her past like Oliver had, something that inspired two very different sensations within him.

Part of him wanted to wake Kara up to the real world, to help her see the shades of grey that became so obvious with the way that they lived their lives, but Kara had somehow manged to ignore. The other part of him wanted to protect her, to save Kara from becoming like him, but from what Barry had told him Kara was doing an excellent job of that herself. She had lost her entire civilisation, save her cousin, and yet she was still more hopeful than Oliver could ever remember himself being.

If, however, Oliver had been thinking rationally, he would have been able to fully extend that reasoning to defend his actions against Mon-El and Mxyzptlk. Yet, he would never admit that.

XXX

Oliver had chosen to handle his argument with Mon-El the way he handled most disagreements he had, by ignoring the problem and punching things. The Daxamite had taken it as an admission of defeat when Oliver had slipped into thought without answering him, and had walked away with a scoff. When the archer snapped into reality again, and had been met with the back of the other man as he walked away, Oliver had asked Winn to point him in the direction of the nearest training room.

Given that he hadn't actually managed to sleep and midnight was quickly approaching, Oliver had purely intended to work his frustrations out until he was exhausted enough to sleep. As per his terrible karma though, he had no such luck. Oliver had manged to spend a little over two hours in the training room, switching between his usual, brutal work-out regimen and practicing with his bow, but by the end of it all he only seemed to find himself even more tightly wound than he had been before.

When he finally decided to leave the training room in search of a new distraction, Oliver was greeted with the skeleton crew that ran the D.E.O. during the graveyard shift. With the way that the building had been so busy on his arrival, Oliver had assumed that there would be a full crew running the facility 24/7. While it was a little strange to see the building so empty, Oliver supposed that The Bunker was no different, if anything it was somewhat worse, but with the amount of automaton Felicity had programmed into it, they didn't always need to have someone working the systems there.

As Oliver had mused on what to do next he was greeted by J'onn, who apparently must have lived at the D.E.O., or incredibly close by at the least to still be in the building at that ungodly an hour.

"Mr. Queen?" J'onn spoke, something of a puzzled look on his face. "I thought you'd left with Kara?"

So, Oliver began to think, maybe J'onn wasn't using his powers to read his mind. If he was, then he wouldn't need to ask that question, or perhaps he was just being polite.

"No, I needed to…" Oliver trailed off briefly, thinking about how to phrase it. "Work some stuff out."

J'onn offered him a small grin at that, his head nodding a little in understanding.

"Mon-El will warm up to you eventually." J'onn spoke carefully. "He's just a little mistrusting of people, especially if he thinks he's protecting Kara."

Oliver couldn't help the look of shock when J'onn spoke, and the Martian clearly noticed.

"I didn't read your mind, if that's what you're thinking." J'onn smiled, clearly used to the same look Oliver gave him from other people. "I just know Mon-El well enough to know that, and to notice that you didn't seem especially fond of him either."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Oliver threw his best disapproving glare at J'onn, something Diggle had helped him perfect over the years. He wasn't not fond of Mon-El, there was just something about the man that Oliver couldn't agree with, not that he actually knew what that something was. Mon-El reminded Oliver a little of himself when he had been in his earlier days on the island, when he had met Slade and Shado, being forced to become something greater than he had been. So maybe he shouldn't have been judging Mon-El so harshly, if he was anything like Oliver then he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

His comment about 5th Dimensional creatures being party animals still tugged at the back of Oliver's mind though.

"I don't dislike him." Oliver answered J'onn firmly. "I just don't trust him yet."

The look J'onn threw him at that wasn't easy to miss. For all accounts, Oliver didn't have a reason to trust any of them yet, with the exception of Kara. They seemed like good people though, Oliver supposed, Alex was clearly protective of Kara, something Oliver could respect, J'onn quite clearly had the respect of all his people, making Oliver think that he should too, and Winn reminded him weirdly of both Cisco and Felicity, which was good enough for him.

J'onn looked as though he was about to say something, but before he had the chance and alarm sounded, the same one they had heard earlier during the bank robbery. The two men shared a quick look of agreement before quickly heading to the centre of the operations room. Winn was already briefing them before they came to a stop, and Mon-El joined them at the same time.

Oliver didn't have a clue what a 'Parasite' was. Well, he did, but not when it was a hulking, purple, 10-foot tall alien…thing. He did know that it was causing some considerable damage right outside Kara's apartment. Mon-El had set off immediately at that piece of information, not even giving the others in the room a word as he turned and ran out the same balcony Oliver had used earlier. Knowing that Kara's apartment was close enough for him to reach quickly, Oliver turned and began to head for the balcony, glad that he was still donning his Green Arrow suit.

"Mr. Queen, this creature is an exceptionally powerful, alien lifeform. You need to let Supergirl handle this." J'onn called after him.

Oliver didn't answer, simply pulling up his hood and leaping once more from the balcony.

XXX

The night air was cooling, something Oliver was thankful for as he rounded the last corner to Kara's apartment. He dropped onto the nearest rooftop just in time to see Mon-El getting thrown through a bus-stop by the creature. Noticing Kara on the ground, clearly having taken a hit or two, Oliver leapt from the roof, instinct kicking in.

Landing between Kara and the monster, Oliver drew back his bow, letting off two rapid shots, both with explosive payloads. The creature briefly disappeared in a ball of flame, but Oliver couldn't fight his concern at seeing it had only been knocked back a step or two when the explosion dissipated.

Loading another arrow, Oliver heard Kara and Mon-El exchange a few words behind him. Not taking his eyes of the creature, Oliver recognised the sound of footsteps until he caught sight of the two aliens in his peripheral, Kara on his right and Mon-El to his left. Ignoring the look Mon-El was giving him, Oliver tensed. With a vicious roar, the monster took a step forward and then…

"Up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

"It's…"

In a red and blue blur that Oliver would have sworn was Kara had she not been standing right next to him, the creature disappeared. A figure landing with his back to the trio a moment later, a red cape spilling from his shoulders. Oliver didn't lower his bow as the figure and Kara stepped forward and used their…super-breath?…to smother flames that were forming on the road.

"Superman?" Kara spoke when the flames were doused.

With a heavy flair and a swish of his cape, the man turned.

"Not quite."

XXX

Oliver had been forced to quickly become accustomed to a lot of things since his arrival on Earth-38, but the way Kara and Mon-El argued was beginning to test his patience.

When Mxyzptlk had revealed himself and his plans, Oliver had elected to step back and observe, he had been unnervingly out of his depth. Witnessing the ensuing verbal fight and Mon-El's admittance that he knew how to defeat these 5th Dimensional things had been…an experience, but the way the two were arguing since the trio returned to the D.E.O. was beyond irritating. Though, Oliver had realised himself, most of his irritation came from the fact that he was currently siding with Mon-El.

He made a reasonable point, how would it be possible to even begin to get Mxyzptlk to say his name backwards, Oliver didn't think he would be able to say it forward. He knew all too well that certain people only responded to violence, tricking a being with phenomenal cosmic powers might just be a ballpark they wouldn't be able to play in, but Kara's moral code meant that she would only accept the peaceful solution.

Maybe there was a way they could…

"…sometimes you're not a good judge of what you can handle."

Shit.

Kara span on her heel, turning to face Mon-El. Oliver had almost tuned out of their argument until that had caught his attention, and clearly it had fully caught Kara's too.

"So…There it is." Mon-El finished.

"Really?" Kara spoke, worrying Oliver a little with the complete lack of anger in her voice. "Is that why you didn't tell me the secret to getting Mxy off Earth was to get him to say his name backwards, because you didn't think I could handle it?"

"No. I didn't tell you that because it never works." Mon-El shot back. "Because…"

"Enough!" Oliver snapped at them, drawing the attention of a few of the surrounding agents as well as the two aliens. "Unless you've forgotten we've still got some all-powerful psychopath on the loose, and the two of you arguing like children is not going to get us any closer to finding him."

The small feeling of pride that went through Oliver at that was one he quickly suppressed, but he had just managed to make two incredibly powerful aliens look ashamed, that was worth a small win in his book. The almost embarrassed expressions the duo now wore was accompanied by a silence, and Oliver took his time to give them his most convincing look of disapproval (the one he had mastered for Thea's boyfriends).

"Mon-El, find Winn and see if he's manged to find anything that might be able to help." Oliver's tone left no room for discussion. "Kara, a word."

With that, Oliver stepped away, heading for the room where his equipment was being stored. Hearing nothing further from Kara or Mon-El, and with the faint sound of footfalls behind him, Oliver could only assume that his scolding had been taking seriously, and that the two were following his orders. Pushing through into the storage room, and leaving the door open, he moved straight for the duffle bag, removing his quiver and placing it on the table beside it.

Oliver's mask quickly joined it and he began unzipping his jacket, the sound of the door clicking shut making him turn. Shrugging the jacket off, Oliver tossed it to the table, his eyes not moving of Kara as he did. She almost looked a little timid, and it didn't escape Oliver attention that her eyes were drawn to his exposed chest for a moment. Pulling on a t-shirt and letting out a sigh, Oliver spoke.

"I know you don't like it, Kara, but Mon-El might just have a point." Before the Kryptonian could argue Oliver continued. "I'm not saying that there isn't another way, but if this guy keeps escalating then National City could be a crater by this time tomorrow. Tell me honestly, do you have another option?"

Almost immediately he knew those words were the wrong ones, Kara's face filled with anger in a second and her presence practically doubled. If Oliver hadn't known just how firm her moral compass was, he might have been in brief fear for his life.

"I cannot believe you!" Kara burst, taking a few steps towards Oliver. "Everything I said the other night about doing things differently and you still want me to kill Mxy? Did you listen to a word I said?"

"Are you listening to yourself? You've started calling him Mxy!" Oliver shot back, instinctively tensing. "This is someone who literally has the power to erase you from existence with a snap of his fingers and you've given him a nickname. This…this is your problem Kara, you're so above it all that the consequences go right by you."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Kara crossed her arms over her chest, almost trying to match Oliver for size.

"It means that you've never had to make a tough call, that you've never been stuck when the only option is to take a life."

"How do you do it, Oliver? What lie do you tell yourself so that you can sleep at night?"

"I tell myself the truth, that it's necessary." Oliver couldn't help the way his voice rose a little at that. "Sometimes you don't have another option, when you don't have super-speed or heat-vision to give you a way out. Sometimes you end up stuck, watching the life drain out of your best friend because you've just driven an arrow through his eye, because he didn't give you another choice. Just because you're so blindingly naive Kara doesn't mean that the rest of the world is."

It was only as he finished speaking that Oliver fully realised what he had just said. It wasn't something he usually did, having to defend himself so fully, most of the time it was aa simple 'I kill because I have to' and that was the ned of it. Kara had pushed him so much further, her unyielding worldview made it impossible for him to not get riled up. Not only that, but his breathing was heavy, his fists were clenched and Kara…Kara looked heartbroken, like he had just crushed her favourite puppy under his heel.

"You were right about one thing, Oliver." Kara finally spoke, her voice practically a whisper, picking up a little as she continued. "You aren't a hero"

There was no chance for defence, no room to argue, it had been resolute. Without anything else, not even meeting his eyes, Kara turned and walked from the room. There was no anger in her, just disappointment and sadness. As the door swung closed behind Kara, Oliver leaned back against the table, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a groan.

"Shit."

Author's Note: Hey! So…I've totally not been gone for like 6 months or anything…

All things considered, I'm impressed I even made it back to this story. I seriously struggled to write this chapter, just trying to reconnect with the characters and my plans for this story was a major hardship. Unsurprisingly this chapter is by far my least favourite so far, maybe it's because I'm trying to follow the plot from the show though, I'm better when I'm off the leash.

Other than that, please drop a review, positive or negative, right now I need you guys' feedback more than ever if I'm going to find the motivation to continue this story.