AN: Thank you for all the encouraging reviews, comments and emails. I was having a bit of trouble with this story… I wrote myself into a corner I didn't mean to. I think I've figured out how to correct that little 'oops' moment. I have 5 chapters beta'd and 2 more written. I wanted to make sure I was on a good roll so hopefully I can complete this story with regular updates. So if anyone is still reading I think I see the end in site.

Thank you Gategirl7 for beta-ing for me. She and I have worked together a long time on my SG1 stories. She is caught up on Arrow and diving in to help me.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays everyone. Hope all of you have a safe happy holiday however you happen to celebrate!

Pretzels

Steve watched Bruce and Roy chat. It was nothing earth shattering but they were getting along and that was good. The young man seemed to be relaxing a little as he finished carrying stock for the bar. Steve and Bruce helped with most of the boxes, leaving the last couple to Roy. Bruce settled at a table to work on his laptop between talking to Roy and Steve.

Steve waited until Roy had stocked all the pretzels along the bar before settling in to pick at the nearest bowl. He glanced up in time to see Roy look at the suddenly nearly empty bowl, roll his eyes and place another full bowl within Steve's reach. Suppressing a chuckle, Steve smiled his thanks and dug in on that bowl. If he kept this up, Roy was going to be kept busy just refilling the pretzels. Steve might need to think about finding food he realized, glancing at the young man's back as he continued his work.

Roy seemed more at ease with both Bruce and him than Steve had expected. That was progress. Lifting his water glass to drink absentmindedly, he realized his face actually might ache a little from smiling. He'd been smiling a lot since he'd come up the stairs. Felicity's reaction to him 'helping' her do the salmon ladder had been fun. She made him see through new eyes. With her he didn't feel nearly 100 years old with the weight of the world on his shoulders. With Felicity he felt like a fellow with his best girl. He felt younger, lighter.

"You look deep in thought," Oliver announced as he came in and took up a place near Steve at the bar.

"How was your patrol?" Steve asked, turning to his friend.

"I felt like someone was watching me, but I couldn't find anyone." Oliver paused, considering. "It could have been Slade." Steve didn't question Oliver's assumption. The man had good instincts. If he thought he was being followed, then he probably was.

"We've got as many of our bases covered as we can," Steve pointed out. "We're tracking Wilson and it's just a matter of time until we find where he's hold up." He studied the other man's face. "You can't let him get in your head, Oliver," Steve pointed out.

"Hard not to," Oliver stood stiffly next to the bar. His stance really told Steve how strung tight the young vigilante was. He'd started out pretty stiff with Steve, but as they got to know each other, he'd been slowly loosening up. Right now Oliver was almost as stiff as the day Steve had met him.

"What do you say to a little sparring?" Steve asked. "You look like you could blow off a little steam. Nat and Felicity are sorting through the computer intel, Tony is doing Tony things, Bruce and Roy are busy. We've got some time before we have any new information to go on."

"That sounds like a good idea," Oliver agreed. Steve let things settle between them for a moment before he started the conversation he knew needed to happen.

"Before we head down, feel like telling me about the Mirakuru cure and why you decided not to save your friend once you had it?" Steve kept his body language open, making sure he was as nonthreatening as possible. This wasn't going to be a conversation Oliver wanted to have, but they didn't need anything else coming up to bite them. He'd been wrong not to question more when the subject had first come up. He'd let his own guilt about Bucky make him shy away from pushing into Oliver's guilt. Sara's outburst had shown him how much of the situation he didn't know.

Oliver went even more rigid, if that was possible. He paced away from Steve and looked up at the ceiling like he was trying to pull his thoughts together. Steve didn't interrupt. He'd wait. He wanted the truth.

"Why now," Oliver turned back, pinning Steve with his eyes. "You accepted my word for the cause of my fall out with Slade. Why question now?"

OK, delay tactics it is, Steve thought. He dealt with Tony Stark, the master of delay tactics. This wasn't going to fly.

"And then Sara lets slip that you could have saved the man that saved you," Steve still kept his seat. He didn't want to escalate Oliver further, but they need the truth. "I don't like surprises. Surprises get people hurt."

After a minute, Oliver seemed to deflate. "I almost got Thea taken by not telling her what was going on. Is that what you're trying to remind me of?" It must be really bad in Oliver's eyes. If he was going this far trying to avoid giving Steve the answer, Oliver must consider it pretty damn unforgivable.

"I'm trying to understand the man that is coming after you, your family and everyone you care about," Steve pointed out calmly. "Seems there is a little more to it than you couldn't save the dame he loved." Steve finally stood up. He reached out and laid a comforting hand on Oliver's shoulder. The other man tensed, but didn't pull away.

"We all have a past. No fella gets through life without things that didn't go so well and things that keep us up at night. I'm not trying to judge you. I need to understand." Steve left his hand right where it was until he felt Oliver relax some. It was just a fraction, but it was there. "I need the truth. Might not be such a bad thing for you to have another set of eyes look at it either."

"Not here," Oliver said, turning to head upstairs to where the offices were. Steve followed and shut the door behind him as Oliver settled himself in front of the desk that took up much of the office. Steve lowered himself into a chair.

"Things were too far gone with Slade," Oliver began. He didn't meet Steve's eyes. "He was too angry. He was trying to kill us, me especially, and he was coming close to succeeding. It was only a matter of time. I didn't know if the cure even worked, but I did know we were only going to get one shot at him. We had a plan to take out Slade and get off the island. I couldn't chance using the cure and it not working. We wouldn't have gotten another opportunity and everyone on the island would be dead."

"Tell me about the woman that he holds you responsible for," Steve questioned.

Oliver didn't seem like he wanted to answer at first. Steve raised an eyebrow at him. Were they going to have to start over with the avoidance tactics? He looked at Steve like he was trying to figure something out, then Oliver surprised him and launched into the story. He told Steve how Sara, Shado and Oliver tried to save Slade from his injuries with the Mirakuru, but they'd believed he was dead and fled. The pain on his face was obvious even though he tried to hide it as he told Steve about Ivo and how the man had held a gun to Sara and Shado.

Oliver had been given an impossible choice. He'd watched two women he loved be pushed to their knees with a gun waving between them and told to choose. Steve's heart went out to him. He'd been completely unprepared for a choice like that. Talk about head game, the man, Ivo sounded like a master.

"When Ivo pointed his gun at Sara, I reacted," Oliver told him, anguish in his voice. "I got Shado killed." Steve didn't comment. He let Oliver regain some composure. He was as close to breaking as Steve had seen him. If he'd never dealt with any of this, just kept it bottled up… Steve had seen men break for less during the war. "When Slade found us, she was dead and he thought Ivo had done it. I didn't tell him differently." For the first time since the telling of the story, Oliver looked up and held his eyes. It was as if he was trying to will Steve to believe him.

"What are you leaving out?" There was something. Oliver's heart rate had sped up considerably when he'd talked about Slade finding them. He was sweating. He was covering something up.

"I thought about telling him," Oliver began. "I felt like I needed to, but I let my doubts get in the way. I didn't trust that Slade wouldn't snap. He was fighting the Mirakuru in his system and I didn't trust him. I keep wondering how different things would have been if I'd just told him about what really happened." He dropped his gaze again and studied his hands. "This is all my fault. I've been handling things with Slade wrong from the beginning. I set this all in motion." The guilt was plain on Oliver's face. It was eating him alive.

Steve leaned forward in the chair, letting his arms rest across his knees. "When this man Ivo put you in the situation with those two women, that was a no win situation. I can't see any way out of it for you at that moment. You suddenly found yourself facing a whole new threat without Slade, the man that had been leading you since you found him on the island. Does that about sum things up?" At Oliver's nod, Steve kept going.

"I agree with your assessment. Things might have been a whole lot different if you'd told Slade, but you let your fear get the better of you." Oliver narrowed his eyes. Steve wasn't sugar coating anything. It wasn't his way. "I'd guess you had some help with that decision. Sara didn't have any more experience with combat than you did." If Sara was right there with him, they would have fed off of each other.

Steve stood up and faced Oliver. He needed his words to have weight. "No one can say how Wilson would have reacted if you'd told him the truth. He might have understood. I don't know him, but as a combat veteran I have to think he'd have seen the situation as impossible and not held you responsible." Steve paused and let that sink in.

"Or he might have killed you on the spot," Steve concluded dryly. "Oliver, we all make judgement calls. Sometimes they're right, sometimes not. You questioned your decision. Hopefully you're a little wiser now." Oliver's eyes widened. Steve wasn't giving him a pass, but he wasn't condemning him either. He could only hope the younger man would take some comfort from their talk.

"I couldn't save Shado," Oliver's voice was low.

"I couldn't save Bucky either," Steve said. "Doesn't stop me from going over and over that moment in my head, reliving it a million times in my nightmares. I've been told that's normal, but you can't let it eat you alive. You have to try to move forward." A million scenarios and he'd never managed to save his best friend from the awful plunge.

Oliver's face was closed. Steve tried again. "You weren't trained for any of what you were experiencing. Wilson for all intents and purpose was your commanding officer. He was who you looked to for guidance, training and direction. He taught you to follow his orders." He hoped that was sinking in. Oliver looked like he was exploring that new line of thought, good.

"Your first time out alone, still mourning the loss of your commanding officer and friend, you were given a situation you were not prepared to handle. You were given an impossible choice with no clear solution. The situation escalated and you reacted. Would you have tried to stop Ivo if he'd held the gun to Shado's head first?" Steve asked.

Oliver's face was thoughtful. It lightened somewhat as he thought about what Steve had said and what he was asking. "I would have," Oliver said. "I didn't think. I just reacted. I'd have done the same no matter who it was, but…"

"You chose to save a woman with a gun to her head," Steve interrupted Oliver. "You didn't choose which one Ivo pointed the gun at or that he turned the gun on the other woman. You didn't control the situation, only your reaction. We do the best we can to save as many as we can. It doesn't always mean we can save everyone no matter how much we wish it was different."

Oliver went still and looked up at Steve. Steve gave him a moment before continuing. "Oliver, you weren't trained for anything that happened. You were barely trained to follow Wilson's lead. I can't say I agree with everything you did and I hope that this is the end of the secrets, but you need to stop blaming yourself for a situation you didn't create and were barely equipped to handle." Steve kept his voice strong and let a little of his 'Cap' voice come through.

"At the end of the day, you're lucky you're alive and that you got most of the people under your care off that island. I'd take that as a win, learn from it and let's deal with Wilson head on. Your guilt and the secrets are getting in your way." He didn't know how to be any more blunt than that.

"Diggle's been telling me to get my head out of my backside about Slade," Oliver admitted.

"Dig said 'backside'?" Steve questioned, knowing the man's blunt manner.

"Not that exact wording," Oliver hedged. Steve sighed internally. The 'Cap' voice comes out and everyone's a boyscout.

"You know I was an army captain in Nazi Germany, don't ya?" Steve pointed out tiredly. "I'm not that easy to offend."

"Stark told me you are offended by 'language'."

"Yeah, that sounds about right!" Steve grumbled. He headed for the door, turning back as he put his hand on the knob.

"I hope you think about what I've said," he told Oliver. "I'm going to go see what Roy and Bruce are talking about. They've been too quiet for too long. Meet you downstairs in 15?" Oliver nodded.

"I'll think about what you said," he assured Steve before he followed him out.

"Come back to empty more pretzel bowls for me to fill?" Roy asked when Steve stopped at the table the two men were at. Steve felt the corner of his mouth quirk up. He liked Roy.

"Yeah, thanks," Steve said, snagging a bowl from the corner of the bar and earning himself an exasperated sigh.

"Things going alright up there?" Bruce looked at Steve with concern in his eyes as he watched a very quiet Oliver come down the stairs from the offices and turn to go down to the basement without a word to anyone.

"It's fine," Steve assured him. It mostly was. Oliver was thinking through their talk. Hopefully it would help.

Bruce nodded and let the subject drop. "Roy and I thought we'd go find something to eat. I'm starving and he's got an hour before work."

"Sure, Doc," Steve answered. "You guys go." It would be good for them to have some time to talk alone. Bruce would be good for Roy.

"You want to come, man?" Roy asked. "Or are you all filled up from those pretzels?" Steve chuckled, but declined the invitation. He had promised Oliver some sparring. He also didn't think he should leave Nat and Felicity alone together too long. That combination worried him just a bit.