Chapter 15
Author's Note: MINOR SPOLIERS FOR CRISIS
Well that was absolutely heart-breaking. I pretty much sobbed the entire way through the ends of Part 4 and Part 5. Stephen Amell, you are a champion of champions, there will always be seat at the superhero table for Oliver Queen. With that said, one of the other things that broke me was Diggle and Sara and how destroyed Diggle was over not being there for Oliver. For that reason, I'm writing some Diggle and Oliver being the brothers we know they are to help me grieve. This chapter didn't exist until I watched Crisis so it's kinda short just to fit with what I already had written.
It took John two weeks to decide he had to intervene. On return from Earth-38, Oliver had been off-centre, he had seen it immediately. Oliver's summary of events on the other world were too concise, even more him, and there had been a distinct lack of mention of anything that wasn't directly related to the mission he had been there to complete. John had tried to let it slide, to allow Oliver some time to process whatever he was going through and then come to him for advice. Oliver had a certain way of thinking, after working alongside him for little over five years John knew that, he took any problem he ran up against, broke it down into the smallest components possible, then found a clever way to blame himself for each and every one of them. Eventually, the self-loathing reached a peak and he turned to John for help. That didn't happen – John knew he was being optimistic. Still though, he left Oliver to his own devices because sometimes John knew that pushing him could make him retreat even more.
When even the Star City press started to notice that Mayor Queen seemed to be in dampened spirits that John knew he needed to do something.
It wasn't uncommon to find Oliver spending his downtime in The Bunker, even before his mission with Kara, after his return it seemed to be the only place he spent time other than City Hall, so John was wholly unsurprised to find Oliver brooding down there on a Thursday afternoon. The archer didn't even look up from where he had been gazing into the middle distance, which wasn't anything unheard of in and of itself, but then John's footfalls reached Oliver's ears he twitched. No one else would have noticed it, but John knew Oliver well enough to be able to tell when he was surprised.
He took a few more steps towards Oliver and moved around to lean against the edge of the table that Oliver was sat in front of. For a few moments they both sat there in silence, Oliver still staring off into the distance as John crossed his arms over his chest.
"Oliver," John began, and finally Oliver's attention turned to him. "I don't know what happened over there, man, but whatever it was it's getting to you." When Oliver remained silent, he pressed on. "You know you can't afford to be distracted out in the field, so you've gotta get this off your chest."
When Oliver stayed silent that time, John didn't push. There was a subtle difference, one that was easy to miss if you weren't someone who had spent hours upon hours around Oliver Queen. A small difference between self-loathing brooding and thoughtful brooding. A few seconds ticked by, and Oliver swallowed.
"While I was on Earth-38, Kara and I…" Oliver trailed off and John knew immediately what he was avoiding saying. He had suspected it the moment Oliver had returned in a state of misery John had last seen when Slade Wilson was Starling City's greatest threat. "Before I left, she told me how she felt, how vulnerable that made her feel, and I told her I couldn't be with her."
John fought down the urge to clip Oliver across the ear. It was almost painful for him to hear Oliver re-tread the same line over and over again. It had been the same story with Laurel, Felicity, even Susan Williams. Part of John had hoped that Oliver's experience with Adrian Chase might have helped him get over his self-deprecating streak, in his final battle with Chase he had come to accept that he couldn't hold himself responsible for his father's actions, that not everything that went wrong in Star City was his fault. That had been why John had pushed him to go to Earth-38 in the first place. As much as the concept of aliens and alternate universes weighed on him strangely, John had sensed something in Kara when she had visited them. There had been a moment, just before Kara had left, where she and Oliver had connected in a way John wasn't used to seeing Oliver connect. Despite the reservations Oliver had about Kara then, and the usual frustration that John knew bubbled up inside him whenever he was proved wrong, Oliver had looked at Kara almost longingly. He hadn't been able to place it at the time, still a little overwhelmed by the events of the invasion, but as John sat and looked at Oliver tear himself up over what had happened between him and Kara, it clicked. Even then, Oliver had seen in Kara what John had. Hope. Hope that Oliver could do better, could be more, could still become The Green Arrow without harnessing the darkness the forged him.
"I couldn't let her fall like everyone else, John," Oliver continued. "Laurel's gone, Sara's cursed with a bloodlust that she might never be rid of, I couldn't save Helena from her darkness, even Felicity…letting herself get involved with Helix and not even knowing how wrong it was."
John let out a heavy breath. "Oliver, man, none of that is your fault. You are, and have always been, one of the best men I've ever known." He paused for a moment, knowing that he needed to fully get through to Oliver. Kara, in John's mind, could just have been the best person that had ever crossed Oliver's path, he needed him to understand that. "And even if any of that self-deprecating bullshit was true, do you really think that little of Kara?" Oliver's gaze hardened and John knew that he had his full attention. "Everything that girl has been though, your worst nightmares couldn't put a dent in her."
"How do—"
"I might have asked Barry a few questions while you were gone." John smirked as he cut over Oliver, and for a moment Oliver matched it with a crooked smile of his own. "Look, I know that somewhere under all of this, there's a part of you that does actually believe that you deserve happiness. If there's anyone out there who stands a chance of making you let them in, it's Kara. You've just got to take the first step."