Thea wasn't at Star labs when Barry arrived. Coming to a dead halt, his feet stuttered over themselves as his entire being stopped. Felicity let out a small gasp at the impact, but recovered quicker than most humans did. Kara landed beside him a second later, in time to see Felicity jump out of Barry's arms.

Huddled in a small despondent circle were the survivors of the Dominator's capture. When they heard him, they all turned and Barry's heart skipped a beat when he saw Oliver staring at him with eyes that had seen the rise and fall of men… And perhaps had fallen a bit too hard himself. Barry felt concern flow through him. Oliver hadn't had that look in his eyes for a long time, and he had prayed he might never see it again.

"Thank goodness you're ok!" Felicity cried, throwing herself at Oliver first. He wrapped his arms around her tenderly, as if afraid he might break her. They held on for a beat longer than Barry would have assumed, silently conveying some message without words before Felicity released him to hug Diggle. Barry approached Oliver cautiously.

"Ollie?" He asked, uncertainly. Oliver's eyes flickered over to him, far away and dejected. Kara walked over, looking around.

"Where's Speedy?" She wondered worriedly.

"Nate took her home." Barry's blood froze as he gripped Oliver's arm so tightly he actually made Oliver tense with surprise. Which was odd. Oliver didn't get startled unless his focus was way off, and his focus was only ever way off if someone he loved was in danger.

"Is she alright?" He demanded.

"She's fine," Sarah stepped up, her own eyes expressionless but her body language was clear. She was protecting Oliver, placing herself in front of him as if to guard his body from bullets.

Protecting him from Barry. He was so floored he flinched. "We have another problem. The Dominators kidnapped us to collect data on Metahumans. We aren't sure how much information they got," Barry dared not ask how this interrogation had taken place. He shook his head. Now wasn't the time to worry about their well-being.

"And there are about two hundred ships on their way to Earth. Like right now," Diggle added. They all looked to him with their despondent eyes.

"Uh… Yeah. Right. Ok, so we have to do something," Smooth, Barry.

"I'll see if I can pinpoint exactly where the Dominator's ships are," Felicity determined, taking charge as readily as Barry could not. She gave the others pointed looks. "You guys get some rest."

Sarah tensed as if she had been personally affronted. "We're not kids, Felicity," she pointed out coldly.

"No," Felicity agreed evenly. "You are humans who have just been kidnapped by aliens. Forgive me if I think you'd need some time to recuperate before going out to fight them all over again. I'll have Barry come get you when I know something," Barry couldn't help but smile a little. Only Felicity would speak to five people who could quite quickly kill her like that.

"She's right," Kara piped in, sympathetically. "You guys have done enough. We'll take it from here," her voice was nothing if not earnest, but the survivors did not budge.

Ray sighed. "I know you're trying to help, Kara, but…"

"But we didn't endure what we just went through to come back and let others take care of it for us," Oliver finished, tightly. He stepped out from behind Sarah, and his eyes were ablaze with his signature 'I will put an arrow in anyone who opposes me,' look. "This is still our fight- more our fight than anyone else's at this point. And we will rest when it is over," his voice brooked no room for argument. "So," Oliver looked at him. "Fill us in. Then we're getting to work. Training, researching, whatever. Now isn't the time to be human," and so he had become something more. He had become the Arrow again, and the Arrow was not to be disobeyed.

Felicity's mouth puckered in worry but she remained silent. Barry and Kara exchanged a glance. There was little else to do now. They had run out of leverage, and Earth was running out of time.

It was nearly the end.

Hours later, Barry had not meant to eavesdrop. He really hadn't. He hadn't even meant to stumble across Diggle trying to destroy the punching bag. He didn't know what problem Dig had with bags and far be it from him to find out and put an end to it. The world wasn't low on punching bags after all, and Barry wasn't that stupid.

Or so he had believed.

Until he stumbled across John Diggle in one of the hidden storage compartments in Star Lab's basement. Barry had come down here for a moment of quiet but it looked as if Dig had gotten there first. The other man was shirtless, his hands balled into tight fists as he drove punch after forceful punch into the hard leather. "Um, Dig?" And Barry had to open his stupid mouth.

Diggle stopped, surprised, and the next thing Barry knew, he was desperately ducking in order to avoid the fist suddenly flying at his face. "Wow, just me! Just me!" And that did not necessarily mean that Dig didn't have the right to hit him anyway.

"Barry?!" Diggle cried, disarming. He stared at Barry irritably. "Are you crazy, man? I could have killed you there."

"So I've deduced," Barry agreed breathlessly.

"What are you doing here?" Now Barry blushed.

"I came here for a bit of quiet, you know? Then I found you…"

"And almost died."

"And almost died. But Dig, you're injured remember? Don't you think pulling at that wound is a bad idea?" Diggle's face morphed from irritation to something like… Guilt? Ah, Barry cocked his brows. "Oliver doesn't know you're down here, does he?" he asked.

Diggle waved a dismissive hand. "Nate healed me up mostly on the Wave Rider. I'm perfectly fine. Besides," he turned and whacked the punching bag. "Oliver isn't my keeper. I'm fighting fit and I handled myself pretty well there, didn't I?" It seemed to be a rhetorical question so Barry just nodded dumbly. He had no clue what had happened besides that the others had been used for information about them. Metahumans.

Him.

"Hey Diggle?" Barry asked cautiously, because he had too. Dig stopped punching a moment to regard him stonily, as if he already knew what Barry was going to ask and was preparing himself for it. "What did happen? How did the Dominators get info from you guys?" Diggle sighed, his broad shoulders slouching as his entire body seemed to shrink in on itself. Barry gulped, suddenly unsure if he wanted to know.

But knowing that he had too.

"They put us in some kind of hypnotic state while they dug around in our heads," Diggle explained. "In an imaginary world. It was… Amazing and terrifying at once. All of our wildest dreams and fantasies. Laurel was alive," Diggle rammed another fist into the bag at that one. "Oliver never got on the Gambit so he never went to that island. His parents were alive. Ray owned his company again and was engaged to Felicity. Andy was alive and well and my brother again. And I… I was the Green Arrow," Diggle grinned a little as he hit his target a second time. "I kicked Oliver's ass," he informed Barry with no small amount of pride.

Barry huffed a surprised laugh. "Sounds nice," he said, admittedly shocked. He had expected torture, agony, or at least some worse mind games. Not… A paradise.

"Yeah," Diggle agreed softly, his eyes far-away and glassy. The, as if something had occurred to him, he added: "We were in a dream state, Barry. Had no idea what was happening to us, or that our minds were being ransacked. You know that none of us would have willingly given the dominators info on the metahumans if we'd had a choice," he paused. "Don't you?" Barry's eyes widened.

"Yeah! No. I mean of course I know that, Dig. That isn't what I was asking at all. I just…" He trailed off helplessly, sighing, Diggle gave him a long, hard stare before nodding empathetically. Then, as if something in him had popped, he wound back his arms and delivered several hard jabs to the bag.

"But. None. Of. It. Was. Real," he accentuated with every hit. "It was a dream. A lie. That's not how things happened Barry. We don't get to have everything," Barry cringed as the problem occurred to him. It was like being introduced to heaven…

And then being told that you were destined for Hell instead.

"It's not fair, you know?" Diggle reflected softly, not looking at him but straight ahead, as if speaking to some unknown specter. "I've never seen Oliver so happy. And then to have it all taken away, to know that it never truly happened… It was a low blow for me. But I still have a wife and son to go home too. I still have friends and a brother. I still have a chance to be normal," he eyed Barry pointedly. "Or as normal as life will ever get for us, anyway. But for the others? It was a sock in the face. They don't deserve it, Barry," now Diggle turned away, and the fire in his eyes was not rage for his own sake.

"You should go see him. Oliver will put on his Arrow mask until someone pushes him to face what happened." Barry blinked, taken aback. How was he going to help with that? Oliver was ten times more stubborn than anyone Barry had ever met, and besides it was his fault. He had been too slow. He hadn't been able to save them.

He rubbed his eyes with a sigh. He was so… Exhausted. Beyond exhausted. "Dig, I don't think that's…"

"You look up to him, Barry," Diggle interrupted curtly. "And he knows it. He won't risk losing your… Awe by lying. That's something he's never had to worry about with the rest of us; we have never been really in awe about him but you've managed to hold onto your innocence." Diggle finally stared hard at him, and there was a spark of something… resentment? Respect? In his dark eyes.

"And Oliver would never risk destroying that innocence in you by hurting you. He'll try to protect you, but he won't lie to you. So talk to him, make sure he doesn't do something stupid," and then, this clearly being a dismissal, Diggle went back to boxing with an imaginary enemy. Barry bit his bottom lip and left to find his old friend.

It didn't take long to find him. Oliver was exactly where Barry would never have looked. In fact, it was only because he was passing by the room that he found him. Cisco and Well's scrap room was commonly used for Cisco's metahuman contraptions, and indeed the pure messiness of the place proved it. It was full of bits of machinery and technology that was years ahead of their time, and also very dangerous. So it was a mystery why anyone would be in here or even how anyone could find it; Barry sometimes got lost trying to find the place.

Should have known Oliver would stumble across it.

He was sitting at a worktable, fidgeting with a small device in his hands, brow knitted with concentration. His hands worked methodically, as if he had done this a thousand times before, and upon closer inspection Barry realized that he had tied a wire around one of his arrows and connected it to a small box.

"Oliver?" He asked, a bit worried about how engrossed Oliver seemed with his task.

"Hi, Barry," true to form, Oliver didn't seem surprised to hear him approach. He went on before Barry could ask what the hell he was doing. "I heard that you helped my new team with a metahuman," he gave Barry a tired but grateful smile. "Thanks for the assist," Barry felt a warmth spread through him, and he couldn't help but grin. Nevertheless, he couldn't accept the thanks.

"I did no less than what you've done for me a hundred times," he pointed out affectionately. "You've got a wide range of characters running around with you now," he observed, remembering Rory's reserved nature, Curtis's Felicity-like persona and Rene's ready anger. Not exactly like the first Arrow team he had. Oliver shrugged.

"They all have a different kind of potential. I can see it. Once they learn to work together as a team, they'll be nearly unstoppable. There won't be much reason to keep me around anymore," though he phrased it like a joke, Barry heard some dry regret in his tone. He tried to counter it with a joke of his own.

"Why, Oliver, are you actually…. Believing in the goodness in people?"

Oliver's glare could have cooked a turkey, but for some reason it only made Barry grin and shrug unrepentantly. He did like teasing Oliver. "No, I'm believing in the potential of people," Oliver grumbled. "It worked with you, didn't it?" Opinions may have varied on that idea, but Barry wasn't there to talk about him.

"Yeah, listen Ollie… Ok, what are you doing?" Barry asked, studying the small device.

"Assembling a bomb," he answered with utmost serenity.

"You're what? Why? How do you even know how to do that?" He fired off, taking a few hurried steps backwards. Gosh, he had known Oliver was a little… depressed, but what the heck? Who just assembled bombs for fun? Ollie snorted as if he had asked a silly question.

"Well, there's not much else for me to do right now. I've already assembled a few," he jerked his head to the pile of devices resembling the one he was working on now. Already he had made a neat line with them, all of them sitting there patient and innocent-looking. "I'm keeping my hands busy."

Barry sputtered. "Are they functional?" He squeaked.

"Why would I make unfunctional bombs, Barry? They might come in handy later." Barry stared a minute more, wondering if he should ask once more how Ollie knew how to make bombs, but finally decided against it. There were a lot of things he would never know about Oliver Queen and he was content to let it stay that way. "Did you need something? Has Felicity found anything yet?"

"Not yet, no. Listen, I came to ask…"

"I'm fine."

Barry scoffed a laugh. "You also said that you nearly had that vigilante character too, but from where I stood he was about to scar face you. The truth, please," now Oliver's face shut down, transforming from the man he knew into his other persona. The Arrow stared back at him, emotionless. As it was, Barry just crossed his arms and stared back.

"Barry, do you really think hours before an alien invasion is the greatest time to talk about my feelings?" He drawled sarcastically.

"If it were up to you, we'd never talk about them so yeah. Now is the perfect time," Barry softened. "C'mon Oliver. Dig told me what happened, what the Dominator's did to you guys. I know it can't have been easy, and the more you have to keep it all locked away the less you're going to be focused," he tried to reason. His logic apparently amused Oliver. He snorted.

"I've focused on a mission with a lot more than just this sitting on my chest," he informed Barry, using tweezers to cross two wires with an engineer's precision. Barry watched, entranced. He had disassembled and seen plenty of bombs in his lifetime, but never had he witnessed the creation of one. "Are you sure this isn't more about you, Barry?" Taken aback, Barry felt his bows knit together.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"I saw you try to run after me. Right before we were captured, and I know you," without turning, he jabbed Barry in the chest with a screwdriver. "I know that you probably blamed yourself every second we were away," talking to Oliver was creepy sometimes. Sometimes he was so fantastically screwed in his convictions and motives that it terrified Barry a little bit to understand just what it meant to go through the things Oliver had and come out the other side… Other times, he was so good at reading into other's motivations and convictions that Barry felt transparent around him, lesser than the Flash, lesser than himself. He felt so devastatingly human.

And humans could be selfish assholes sometimes.

Like now. Barry ran a hand through his hair anxiously. "You would have done the same thing," he grouched, pulling out the stool next to Oliver and taking a seat. Oliver continued building his bomb as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"That's not the point. What happened wasn't your fault. None of us saw it coming. Not the trained assassin, tech-obsessed boy-scout, Military veteran, daughter of R'as Al Ghul or me. So, no offense, but I don't understand how you think you were gonna save the day. Hand me the tweezers again, please," he was so calm while telling Barry he wasn't all-powerful. It would have been funny if it weren't so messed up. Barry did as he was told.

"Had anything happened to you guys, that wouldn't have mattered."

"Well, we're all alive, so it does matter."

"And what about next time?"

"You saying you believe I'm building bombs just for there to be a next time?"

"Ollie c'mon. You know how this game works. There could be a next time, and you heard future me's transmission. A 'war coming'? who else would it be?"

"You obviously have a short concept of what war can look like. Screwdriver."

"This new believing in people attitude you have now? I need you to knock it off. And would you stop building bombs?!"

This time Oliver turned in his seat to face him, so quickly that Barry flinched when he was glaring aggravatedly at Oliver's face and then he was met with a set of determined eyes, results from The Arrow and Oliver intertwined. "No, Barry! I will not stop. I will never stop. I won't stop fighting or living or trying until the job gets done. Do you think for a second that's what my family would have wanted? My family died telling me to go on. To keep fighting. And that's what I'm going to do, no matter what happens. Question is," he looked Barry up and down, a challenge tinged with disgust. "Are you going to do the same?"

Barry blinked, shocked. He had never heard Oliver speak so vehemently, and he also hadn't stopped to consider what he was asking. Was that what he was doing? Had his mistakes so weighed him down that now he had just stopped? Just stopped seeing the world going on around him while he lamented its changes? It seemed to Oliver that that was what he was requesting.

Barry held Oliver's gaze and gulped. "I don't know if I can," he admitted. "I'm getting to my breaking point, Ollie," it made his heart ring with agony to admit it, but it was true. He was getting to a point where he didn't want to breathe for fear it would screw something up, much less run. Fight. Struggle. Oliver didn't seem to care about that.

"So?" He demanded. "At least you're getting somewhere. And once you get there, Barry, keep going," now his voice softened. "I have seen men at their best and worst. I think you'll find that you are capable of stretching yourself much farther than you originally believed." Again, his whole believe in yourself because I believe in you thing? It was kinda freaking Barry out. And what was worse was that Oliver actually did believe. He actually did think Barry could keep going…

He really believed that they were all going to be alright.

Barry sighed and laid his forehead against the cool surface of the work desk, letting his tense shoulder's settle. He felt a strong hand grab one and massage it comfortingly. "How did you become so strong?" Barry inquired softly.

"Learned it from others," Oliver answered immediately. "John. Felicity. Laurel. Roy. You. We aren't traveling a well-worn or easy path, Barry, but we are traveling a worthwhile one. Believe me," Barry sighed.

"I do believe you," he promised in a whisper. And he found that he did. He believed Oliver because… Well… He was like an older brother to him and Barry couldn't not. He had to believe in something and the Arrow had been his first superhero. That fidelity did not die even during an alien invasion or in an alternate timeline. His head felt like lead when he raised it. "You know, if this had been a timeline where we never met, I don't know if I would still be the same person," he contemplated.

Flashpoint had not really changed him, just everyone around him. But had he never met Oliver Queen, it most certainly would have changed his entire being. His whole soul. "You would be," Oliver, idiot that he was, replied. "Like I told you a long time ago, I don't think that lightning struck you Barry, I think it chose you. It will always choose you. You'll perpetually be a hero, no matter who you meet or where you go."

Barry rolled his eyes. Oliver was so dense sometimes, especially when one took into account his own opinions about himself. "That's nice, Ollie," he smiled. "I really wouldn't be here if not for you though, especially these past couple of days. So…Thank you," even though Oliver just ducked his head calmly, Barry could still see the blush on his cheeks.

"Whatever, Flash," he tried to grouch, infinitely pleased. "Go on, now. Unless you want to learn how to make bombs, go find someone else to therapy session," Barry laughed and stood.

"Alright, alright, Russian mobster. I'll leave you to it. Just try not to blow us all up?" Oliver waved a dismissive hand that spoke volumes. Barry snickered and turned to go, but Oliver's quiet call halted him where he stood.

"Barry, if something ever does happen to me…"

His blood ran cold. "Don't. Please Oliver."

"I want you to know that I wouldn't here without you either. I never want you to forget that, alright? Never stop fighting, just like I taught you," The hot tear that flooded down his face felt like the future. It felt like his heart being burdened with an omen he had never wanted.

"Promise me that," Oliver demanded, and there was something eerily urgent in his tone. Barry felt his heart pang. He closed his eyes.

"I promise," he choked, even though it made his heart pound in terror and more tears flood down his face. They were both too knowing to think themselves invincible, or immortal.

"There's a war coming Captain Hunter…"