Forty years later:
"Oliver, stay with me. Stay awake, ok? Diggle and Rene are coming," Barry implored as he leaned over his old mentor, eyes darting around as he struggled to keep track of where the shots were coming from. An explosive landed a few feet away, and Barry gasped as he threw himself over Oliver, shielding him from the debris with his own body.
"Ugh!" He cried out as a piece of shrapnel stabbed him in the back, right over an old wound that he could still feel sometimes, when the rain pelted him too hard… Barry scoffed a half laugh half sob as he partially turned and yanked it out. His quiet exclamation made Oliver open his eyes, cloudy with agony and exhaustion.
"Barry…" he whispered and his voice was weak, quieter than the usual commanding, brusque tone that he had perfected over the years of his mayor ship.
"Hey," Barry admonished quickly, lying a gentle hand against Oliver's sternum. "Don't speak. Save your strength, alright? We're almost out of here," he gazed up at the sky anxiously. There were only clouds with streaks of blood red and black from the bombs. It continued for miles onward, over Central and Star City to beyond. "Where are you, Legends?" He whispered, desperate.
The sounds of snipers and fighting became noticeably dimmer. Barry could have wept in relief. That meant that Diggle and Rene were getting closer, along with medical help. No sooner had Barry thought it that Oliver suddenly coughed, blood bubbling at his lips. His body convulsed in pain as he weakly rolled unto his side. Barry cringed at the hoarse sounds of pain that resounded in his friend. He reached out, squeezing Oliver's shoulder in solidarity. There was little else he could do.
"Almost there, Ollie," he told him, gently lying his forehead on Oliver's shoulder. It was only half the size it had been last Barry had seen him nearly two months prior. All of the muscle had vanished beneath the biting pain of hunger. Barry could feel the outline of sturdy bone beneath his forehead, and not for the first time screamed at himself for this stupid plan. Using Oliver as bait… I had gone horribly wrong and he should have known, he should have been faster…
"I'm here," Barry choked out, feeling as if Oliver's agony was his own. "I'm here, and I'm not gonna leave you. Not until I get you home and you're better," he looked up into the murky sky as jets flew overhead and rearranged himself closer to Oliver, trying to pull them snugger against the truck they were using for cover in the broken street.
"Barry," he turned back to Oliver, and couldn't help but want to break someone's neck at what he saw. Several beatings had left Oliver Queen a battered man, his face marred by bruising and cuts, his cheeks hollow from malnutrition. Barry had tied a makeshift bandage around the stump that used to be his right arm, but it had been covered by blood now, so completely soaked that it probably weighed as much as Barry did by now.
He reached out and gently carded a hand through Oliver's mane of unshaven hair. He looked like he had when he first came back from the island, matted and shaggy. "Yeah, Oliver?" Barry replied. Despite their circumstances, when Barry had asked Oliver to help him in the war against… Well, it felt like everyone by now… Oliver had not hesitated. He had not balked. They were too old of friends for there to be any question.
Practically brothers. "They… They aren't going to… Be here in time," Barry couldn't watch a brother die.
"No," he said immediately, infusing his fear in the guise of anger. "No, don't say that. You can do this Oliver," said person cringed as another wave of pain hit him. Barry grabbed one of his hands, letting him squeeze the hell of him if only it helped. The other hand kept stroking Oliver's bangs away from his face. "You've survived worse things than this, and besides, the others have been worried sick. Diggle and Felicity, Laurel and Cisco, and Thea? She's worried herself into fits. You have to hold on for them, Ollie. Just a little longer," he tried to negotiate.
Oliver shook his head, eyes fluttering. "It's too late," he wheezed. His diaphragm stuttered, and his grip on Barry's arm got stronger. "Barry, please… My city…" Which was now in shambles since their plan had fallen apart. Along with most other major cities in the world.
"We'll save it, Ollie. Together."
"N-no. You will. I trust you," Barry pressed a thumb against the pulse in Oliver's wrist, and his entire body shook with terror when he felt it stuttering slowly.
"No, no, no!" He looked up, eyes scouring the skies as his fingers pressed against the broken earpiece there. There was still nothing, no ripple, no sign of the Wave rider breaking through the fog to save them. "Felicity, Cisco, Curtis! Come in, someone. Dig? Speedy? Kid Flash? Canaries? Please answer me. Please," he pleaded. He couldn't just sit here and do nothing. He couldn't watch his friend bleed out because some idiot had chopped off his arm to torture them. And Oliver would most assuredly die if he tried to speed him away, the shock of its impact wrecking his already feeble body.
Barry had never felt so helpless.
He pressed a hand against Oliver's cheek, feeling crumbly stubble against his palm. "Stay with me, Ollie. You're our leader. We need the Arrow still, and so many people need you," including me. I don't know if I can do this without my hero.
"You can lead," Oliver informed him, glassy pupils staring vacantly into the sky, as if he were re-watching a scene from the past, perhaps seeing the dark clouds that had preceded the Gambit's going down.
"Not alone, I can't," his voice cracked. "Oliver, I would never forgive myself. Please… Hold on please." Oliver smiled a bit, his cracked lips leaking blood as he did so.
"Flash," he chuckled hoarsely. "You can. Do you remember… The Dominators, your promise? I made you promise. Remember it," now his gaze focused on Barry, and the affection there made his heart clench painfully. He couldn't do this. Please, oh please, he couldn't watch Oliver Queen die.
But he had too, because Oliver was right as usual. His journey was over.
Barry sobbed aloud, running his thumb over a cheekbone. "I promise," he vowed again. Oliver gave a nod, his body settling with relief as if that was all he had needed.
"Good," he decided. "Tell the others, my sister… That they made my life full. Worth it. Watch out for them?"
"You know I will," Barry sniffled. "Oliver, I…" What did he say? Thank you for everything? I'll miss you every day? You're one of my best friends in life? I won't let you down? "I couldn't have asked for a better big brother." Oliver's eyes crinkled with an emotion Barry had never seen on him before. Anger, determination, affection, peace he had seen, but he had never seen Oliver look fulfilled. As if for the first time since he had returned from the island, he saw the man Barry and Felicity and Diggle and Thea saw in him. He could finally see his own light.
One trembling hand reached up and gently cupped Barry's face. "Brother," he agreed with utmost affection before his body convulsed. Barry saw pain flash in vacant eyes before they stared past him into space, the light slowly draining. His sole arm dropped.
"Oliver?"
His blue eyes shut, and with a slow exhale Barry felt Oliver Queen's stuttering heart fail for the first time in forty years. His world-bearing shoulders sagged and for the first time in their relationship, he left Barry standing alone.
The Flash bowed his head, burying his face in Oliver's blood stained neck as tears built in his eyes. "Ollie," he whispered in absolute agony. "Oh Ollie," he gripped the back of his mentor's clothes tightly, like a child cradling their father and rocked slowly. And minutes later when the Wave Rider finally burst through the atmosphere and showered vengeance upon their enemies, when Diggle and Rene ran forward brandishing guns and ready for rescue, they found him just like that, crumbled but alive. And The Arrow drained of life.
Barry would not remember what happened later. He would not recall John skidding to his knees next to him, or how he gently pried Barry's arms away, calling Oliver's name repeatedly. Begging. He would not recall how Rene put a hand on their shoulders as John found no pulse and screamed into the sky with an anger and grief so intense it echoed in the caverns of Barry's heart. He would not remember how Sarah and Ray found them on the ground, John hugging Oliver's head to his chest as he wept. Sarah and Laurel would also scream. Ray would fall to his knees. And overall, Barry would try to blot out the sights and sounds of their collective worlds crumbling to dust alongside their first hero.
The world's greatest hero.
Never, ever would Barry Allen forget when they won the war however. It claimed so may lives. Mass graves covered the Earth. Abandoned towns and streets were in rubble, and he had been so strung out from leading he was not sure if he wanted to ever don his red suit again.
But he would. Oliver had made him promise.
He would also never forget the funeral that the world held for the Green Arrow. The heroes he had inspired stood around a fourth grave somewhere in the mountains of Lian Yu and watched as the green hood was lowered right next to a bow and a single arrow, the last one Oliver had ever made. To the left, Robert Queen stayed stoic and reverent. The Arrow had been born on this island, and it had been Thea's idea to put the vigilante to rest right there. Barry would remember his heart swelling in both anguish and pride when a prayer was said for him in languages he had rarely ever heard, much less known existed.
"We pray to the Earth," Nyssa recited in Arabic, her voice lilting and respectful.
"To the seas," Tatsu added in Japanese.
"To the winds," Anatoli said in brusque Russian.
"That when we commend this soul to your arms, you weigh all the good and evil, and find it worthy of mercy." Though the words had been taught to him, The Flash still found that he meant it with all his soul. The words vibrated through his being and sparked a blaze of lightning far off in the distance, towards the place where the Gambit had stumbled into the arms of an unprecedented storm. A storm of lightning.
"I don't think that lightning struck you Barry, I think it chose you. It will always choose you."
"It chose you first," Barry whispered, the speed force sparking fire in his veins. Arsenal and Speedy raised flaming arrows and fired them into the dark North China air. Black and White Canary bared their necks and sang into the night. And the others stood there, commending the Arrow into the arms of mercy.
Just as he had once done with them.
Now, Oliver Queen's funeral was not a small affair. People from every corner of a grateful world and city attended, now that they knew The Vigilante, Hood, Arrow and Green Arrow had been amongst them, had led them for years. The sheer number of green flowers placed at his memorial was enough to make Thea and Felicity cry with gratitude. And though Barry felt that Oliver would not have wanted it, Star City quickly became Queen's City, the Arrow memorial placed right at the city's border, a statue of a hooded king still watching over his kingdom like a guardian angel of marble.
Yet to Barry he had not been marble. He had been a brother.
And his brother was buried between Tommy Merlyn and Moira Queen.
"We are here to celebrate a life worth living, a life that had been lived to its fullest extent in secret," Barry Allen smiled as he stopped before Oliver's grave a few days later. Sticking pale and feeble fingers into his pockets, he gazed down at the name with affection. A light rain fell from the sky, making the arrow scars in his back tingle. He chuckled.
The world would go on, begin rebuilding itself just as Oliver had done for himself a thousand times. Humanity would rise out of its own ashes. They would live on, fully and worthily.
Central City now had Kid Flash action figures. Caitlin's daughter was in D.C. with Laurel, trying to help rebuild an international coalitional democracy from the ashes of their old world. Cisco was helping restock the police stations of the country. They were all so busy Barry didn't have words to describe how lucky he felt to have such amazing friends.
John Jr. led the new team Arrow with the same devotion that his uncle had, as the new Arrow. Felicity said that he preferred to be called Archer. Dig said it was because that was the nickname Oliver had given him when he was ten and had begged his uncle to teach him how to work a bow. The two original gangsta's still helped out. Felicity was helping rebuild the world's technological basis, while Diggle and Lyla relocated soldiers that had lost everything during the war.
William Queen, Oliver's only living child, stood as mayor of Queen's City. He was lucky enough (or cursed enough?) to have Archer's sister Sarah as his chief of staff, and she bossed him around while Quentin still shook his head, muttering with pure exasperation "What are you doing, Queen?" When William made an Oliver-like move. The Legends were somewhere in time, risking all for life, liberty and maybe some romance, if he knew Sarah Lance. It seemed things were falling into and out of place at the same time, and Barry had contemplated hanging up his suit.
He wouldn't do it. He had a Justice League to lead after all. He would never stop running, fighting, trying.
"I promised you," he reminded Oliver's grave with a sad smile. "You taught me well, Ollie. All of us. This is not an easy path but it is a worthy one, and I will be worthy of the lessons you taught me," Barry grinned. "And when it is my time, I want a rematch. We'll see who wins, you or me," he could almost hear Oliver's amused chuckle.
"Since we're sharing, you were wrong too… Right now. Because you think you can kick my ass. I can tell."
"Well, if you're gonna kick mine, you better move fast," he murmured aloud, trapped in the pleasant memory.
"I get it Barry. I get it. You're fast…Now get going."
Oliver did always know when it was time for him to leave. With a slight incline of the waist because that's what students did in ancient cultures, right? Bowed before their masters? Barry pivoted on a heel away from the grave of his older brother and sped away into the life he meant to finish living, towards the world which still needed his protecting.
And when he passed city limits, he could have sworn he saw the Arrow's statue wink at him in the light of day.