Disclaimer: So Yeah no.
Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning: I think there's a trigger warning needed here. I'm not completely sure how this system works though.
Quentin Lance was perfectly aware that all people had their own demons. He felt that most people were fully entitled to them. Demons, inner voices, conflicting sides, confusion over what to do, those were all perfectly normal parts of the human psychological makeup.
Lance had his own demons. You couldn't travel through a life that included divorce, alcoholism, rehab. relapses, and three daughterly deaths. Lance was still trying to work out in a darkly sarcastic part of his brain how that was even mathematically possible. After all, he had started with three daughters, mourned the death of a child three times, and still had one left alive.
He guessed that that was probably a question for another day.
Anyway, the point was Lance accepted that everyone past the approximate age of seven had demons. Anyone who said that they didn't was either lying or kidding themselves. Or both. Yeah, for most people it was pretty much a mix of both.
Still though, Lance had to be honest. He had never truly anticipated that a billionaire like Oliver Queen would have quite so many.
By all accounts Oliver Queen lived a very good life. He was incredibly wealthy and had all of the perks that went along with it. By outward appearance he had parents who loved him and cared for him. To be fair Lance knew that in their way they did. Basically he should be one of the very few people who had a minimum of inner conflict.
Lance knew that that wasn't true.
The first demon that Lance ever knew Oliver carried was the demon that all children of successful parents carried with them no matter what. Children with incredibly successful parents carried the expectation of sharing that success with them like shadows looming over them, dark, tall, and inescapable. Oliver carried those shadows.
With every passing year Lance felt as though he was siting and watching those shadows grow. Each time Oliver failed a test and had to report the grade, when Moira and Robert failed to come to parent teacher night, or a lacrosse game because of one important business function or another the shadows blackened and stretched.
Lance thought that that was probably why Oliver acted out, drank, peed on cop cars (yeah Lance hadn't forgotten about that one yet), and dropped out of colleges. Shadows were easier to not see when you lived in the dark anyway. Plus it was just so much harder to care about legacies and expectations when you were drunk.
A vice for alcohol was one particular demon Lance could admit to sharing with Oliver. Though, in this case it was a vice that Lance knew full well he grew to carry farther than Oliver ever did. Irresponsible Queen was, an alcoholic he was not.
Quentin Lance heard more than one small snippet of conversation as both Oliver and Tommy grew older in regards to their use of alcohol to attempt to drown out their little demons. Little really only in that their true demons hadn't yet come to stay.
The first was simply a crack from Tommy when the two boys discussed going out for drinks. "What do you think of getting some shots?" Tommy had asked.
"Well you know what they say," Oliver had replied. "Two or three a day keep the expectations and the disappointment away."
Lance knew that Oliver Queen had lived with demons anyway. Their was the demon of honoring parents, living up to parents that would never think you had, succeeding when success was impossible. And it and all of it's friends loomed large and obvious in Queen's head for years and years.
And Lance watched. The shadows soon grew voices, and as Oliver continued to act out more and more Lance had the feeling that those voices were growing louder. But at least those voices were fairly lonely.
Then of course Oliver was stranded on that freaking island in the North China Sea. If that wasn't enough to give you a whole host of psychological issues, or new demons, then nothing was. In fact, the level of normality that Queen pretended to have on his return was one of the first clues that Lance had that something was truly very, very wrong inside his mind.
The Oliver Queen that Quentin Lance had known when he was a child had always smiled like he wanted the entire world to know that he was pleased. Queen had had bright dimples, and a set of pearly teeth and used both of them to smile like nothing else. Most of Lance's memories of Oliver as a smaller boy involved laughing pouring in from his living room as Tommy Merlyn, Laurel, and Oliver all played together.
The old Oliver Queen didn't smile like it hurt. That boy didn't smile like the only thing funny about life was that everyone was buying that the smile was real. Oliver did now. The demons he carried now were blocking out his smile.
The old Oliver Queen also hadn't stood straight backed and alert, walked like a boxer, or held himself like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lance supposed that demons and pocket devils were plenty heavy enough to shift your posture.
The first look that Lance got at Oliver's new demons after the island was during his interrogation when he first thought that the Queen kid was the Hood, which, oh yeah, he had been right about. All I-told-you-so-s aside, Quentin knew that he would never as long as he lived forget the way that Oliver had looked when Lance asked:
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
Oliver had never broken eye contact. He hadn't shifted or fidgeted. Until he had. Oliver had taken a deep breath and turned his head down, glancing at the wires on his hands and chest before looking back up. His face had been shut down and unreadable. "Yes," he said slowly. "When I asked your daughter to come on the yacht with me."
He had stopped and swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was almost painful in it's simplicity. "I killed your daughter." It was a statement of fact, one that Oliver seemed almost surprised to hear himself saying. He seemed almost horrified that the words had actually come out of his mouth.
Then Oliver had gotten up and left the room.
Later, when Lance had finished being furious about the whole affair Lance remembered a moment when Raisa had come to the Lance home to pick up Oliver. The Queen kid had been waiting because Robert was supposed to pick him up from there to take him to a baseball game. Oliver had bounced to Raisa, babbling with excitement and then fallen quiet as she explained something in a low tone.
Then Lance had heard Oliver say one sentence. "I know, Dad's not coming." He had stated it with the same surprised, open, admission of a fact that Oliver had known was true but maybe didn't think he would ever say.
Dad's not coming.
I killed your daughter.
Parents and death. Guilt and expectation. And above and worst of all, that most disappointing and surprising of all things held in the typical Pandora's Box. Hope.
Despite all his other demons and newly prepared gruff realism, Oliver was still in some tiny corner of his mind a tiny boy hoping that the world was good, and that he could be good along with it.
Once Lance had been in the Arrow Cave to see if the team had had any better luck in tracking down the latest street thug who had tried to step up to fill the shoes of Tobias Church. His new position as Deputy Mayor gave him his old access to the police force but many of the officers had gotten a bit more tight lipped around him. So, vigilante team up time it was.
Oliver had been outgunned in the verbal manor and backed in to a corner by Thea, Felicity, Diggle, and even Curtis in to taking a quick nap. That quick nap had, very fortunately in Lance's opinion, turned in to an extended two and a half hour rest. Frankly Lance still wasn't sure when else Oliver was finding any time to sleep.
Quentin was startled some out of the thoughts he had been idly contemplating when Oliver had begun to twitch and shake. Small mutterings in multiple languages some of which Lance didn't even recognize reached his ears. Lance was just contemplating what exactly the safest way would be to wake Oliver up (he could still remember how long it had taken the bruises to fade from his arm after the last time he had given this particular feat a try) when Diggle entered and did he job for him.
Diggle went about the task with great intelligence and delicacy. He dug his water bottle out of the gym bag he carried and up ended it over Oliver's head from the relatively safe distance of about two feet away. It had the desired effect.
Oliver busted upright gasping. He blinked rapidly and rubbed the water out of his eyes. "What the hell Dig?" he asked, looking about as happy to be awake as a poked bear. Lance was reminded of the motto from Hogwarts School that Sara had read to him out of one of the Harry Potter books Never tickle a sleeping dragon.
"Looked like you were having a pretty bad dream man," Diggle commented. He pulled up a new swivel chair so that he could sit next to Queen on the couch and plopped down with his elbows resting on his knees. "Wanna talk about it? Or is this going to be another one of those things you just bottle up until it gets unhealthy? 'Cause I have to be honest I think you might have enough of that."
Oliver dropped his own head back on to the back of the couch and then sat back up straight. "I know I already have enough that it's unhealthy. But no, this isn't anything new really. Just the same old ghosts."
Lance saw Diggle nod. "Tommy."
"Him," Oliver agreed. "And others- too many others Diggle." There was a long moment of silence before Oliver spoke again saying "Sometimes I wonder when I'm going to stop loosing people."
Diggle sat back a little. "We all have our own Ghosts man. Hell you know I've got them. So did Roy, Sara, Ray, Thea even shares some of the same ones as you. We all live a life that comes with ghosts and we all chose it for ourselves." He leaned a little closer again. "And that's not on you either man. We picked. Us. Not you. We all have ghosts."
"Yeah?" Oliver said with a faintly questioning tone. He stood and moved for the well worn salmon ladder. "Well mine are running out of room."
However, Lance didn't really have any kind of grasp of the effect that Oliver's demons might be taking on his mind until Prometheus showed up. Prometheus wasn't afraid to bring up the bodies, and that seemed to have the unbearable effect of setting free all of the demons that Oliver had spent so much time meticulously locking away. The worst, crudest, and most effective tool of psychological torture. Guilt.
Six months after Oliver had been tricked in to killing Billy Malone each and every one of those demons was dragged out to play.
God it had been a bad six months.
Billy's death had led to Felicity burying herself in work, the non-vigilante kind and Curtis had dove in with her after his split from Paul. Paul had yet to come back from his brother's house. This absence of the two brightest and most optimistic personality elements from the group had meant that there was nothing to stop Oliver from retreating a little way further in to doom central.
Susan Williams had perhaps predictably proven to be after a good story more than anything else. She had tried to dig in to Oliver's past in Russia, going so far as to try to manipulate Oliver in to giving her damning details. She had ended up publishing a piece that had been thin enough for Thea to poke holes in and get dismissed but it had still twisted something in Oliver a little bit farther to find out that yet another one of his girlfriends was more interested in what she could get out of the relationship than actually having something real with him.
Then Laurel had come back but it wasn't quite the right Laurel. And then she had had to leave forever, again, and Quentin's heart had actually broken a little bit with Oliver's. Thea had also gotten injured more than once after months and huge amounts of effort to evade a life of violence. Diggle had gotten the charges against him dropped but it had taken time and effort and energy that just wasn't really there to spend in the first place.
Later had come the probably inevitable moment of Evelyn's death caught in the crossfire of a war she should never have tried to enter. Oliver had tried to save her, had gone to her when she was bleeding out and tried to put pressure on the bleeding wound in her side and called for help. It hadn't worked.
Nothing would have.
Evelyn had been dead the moment that she signed on to try to help Prometheus. The arrow that had killed her had belonged to Prometheus not Oliver. No one was sure weather Prometheus had done it on purpose or simply missed. Either way the teenager had become collateral damage.
She had died in Oliver's arms. Her last words were heard over the comm. "I just wanted to make the city better. J-just wanted- wanted to fix things."
"I know shh," Oliver said desperately. "Shh shh I know I know. You're going to be okay you hear me? You're going to be fine. Hey! Keep your eyes open Evelyn!"
Evelyn had given a last raspy chuckle. "You... shouldn't tell lies... to dying girls."
She had been buried near her mother and father the way she had once told Rory she wanted.
The evening after the funeral was the evening that Oliver had gone missing. He had gotten a call just after the funeral and then vanished. Felicity hadn't been able to track his phone and he hadn't worn the shoes with the trackers in them that morning.
Felicity and Lance had been the ones to find Oliver eventually. When they did he was sitting on the dock that the Queen's Gambit had left from a full decade ago almost to the day. He was staring out at the water and sowed no acknowledgement at their approach but Lance knew that he must have realized that he was there. The last of the sun was just beginning to touch the water, turning it a bright, burning reddish-orange.
"Oliver?" Felicity called quietly.
Oliver didn't turn. "I left videos," he said. "Just in case. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen but I wanted to be sure. I guess it worked all right with William so why not right?"
He still hadn't turned and Lance was beginning to be seriously concerned. Felicity didn't seem to be doing much better. "Oliver," she said again. "What's going on?"
"Tell Thea that I want her to be well okay?" Oliver said turning to look at her finally. The light from the dying sun was reflected in his eyes as well as the water. A man who was burning alive. "Promise me that. I know that you don't owe me anything. God if anything I owe you so much. But i think this is the last one alright? Just promise me that you and Thea and Diggle and Curtis and Rory are going to live good lives. Get Roy back anyone should take my place it should be him."
"What are you talking about Oliver?" Felicity demanded, sheer terror leaking in to her voice. "No one is going anywhere! No one needs to take your place. We are all going to live good lives together."
Oliver shook his head with a ridiculous laugh that sounded like it had been ripped out of him with a rusted knife. "Well, to be honest I'd say it's probably about a fifty fifty shot." He gestured at the ground and Lance followed the gesture to see a small silver gun lying on the planks of the dock.
"It's the same one that my father shot himself with. I think Prometheus must have looked up the records to see what kind it was because that gun is still lost somewhere on Lian Yu." Felicity moved to interrupt but Oliver simply kept going. "It's roulette Felicity," he said tiredly. "Russian Roulette. There's another gun that Prometheus must have. One is loaded the other isn't." He shrugged. "I guess we'll find out which in a minute."
"This is insane!" Felicity shouted. "You are not engaging in some sick suicide game! Get up and come home!"
"This shuts the loop Felicity," Oliver said. God he sounded exhausted to Lance. "If Prometheus dies then all of this is over. If I die then he gets what he wants and all of this stops. Either way it's just over. No other innocent kids are going to die, no city being used as a battleground, no more collateral damage. Maybe this is just... simpler"
"And nothing good can happen anymore either!" Felicity said pleadingly. "All of the good that you do stops. Innocent people, people like Evelyn, Billy, and Tommy loose the only protector they have. No body else is really going to try to save those people because your heart is so big that you let them all in. That's not weak it's strong and you can't let Prometheus take that from you. The bad guys don't stop being bad just because you stop fighting them off. You have to fight Oliver!"
Oliver shut his eyes and pulled his knees up to his chest. Slowly, after the longest pause Lance had ever experiences, Oliver nodded. Lance heaved a huge sigh of relief and dashed forward to pick up the gun. With practiced ease he checked the chamber. Empty.
"This one's empty," he confirmed quietly.
As though on cue, from far away across the water.
"I know," Oliver said quietly. Looking at Felicity and Lance he said in a voice that spoke of bone weary exhaustion. "TO be honest, I thought it felt light but... I wasn't sure. This was Prometheus's game. I just played to the end."
He heaved in a dry rattling breath and made full eye contact with Felicity. "I know you're going to tell me in a minute how insane all of this was. I know. But this had to end Felicity. One way or another it had to be done." Lance saw that his hands were shaking.
"I've been fighting for so long Felicity," he said tremulously. "Sometimes I just want to stop. I hear all of the voices of the people I've killed. I see their faces, remember their names," tears had started to overflow his eyes. "When I sleep I can hear them and most of the time I just want it to stop."
Oliver was shaking so hard now that Quentin could hear his teeth rattling. "I just want it to stop. Please let it stop. Just please... Please I want to be done." Felicity dropped to the planks next to Oliver and wrapped her arms around him. "Not-not forever," Oliver continued. "Just for a while. Just for a little while I need to be donee. Okay? Can that be okay? Please just.."
"Shh.." Lance heard Felicity murmur. "It's okay Oliver. Just- just close your eyes okay? We'll go home when you feel up to moving and then, then we'll pack up a few bags and we'll go somewhere."
"Where?" Oliver asked quietly. Lance was reminded of a small child. Always asking why.
He saw Felicity shake her head slightly. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Just you and me and Thea if she wants to come. We'll go somewhere else and for a while we're just going to be done. Then next time, we'll start new. No more of the past coming back to twist our future. It'll be an actual new start."
Lance took that moment to move forward. he sank down on to his knees and pulled both of them in to the best hug he could manage. "New will be good Kid," he managed, feeling like he was speaking around a knot in his throat. "I think maybe we could all use something new. Like you said, this closes a chapter. Start the new one as yourself, just let those demons you're carrying around go back to bed. Send them packing." At that he felt Oliver seem to release some weight back in to him. Lance swallowed again. "Have a good life Oliver. We all deserve that."
Oliver had demons and dear God could those demons be loud, but even the strongest demon could be destroyed. If there was one thing Lance knew Oliver deserved it was that.
A/N: So yeah that happened. This was I know substantially more angsty than I normally write. it's kind of my theory on how this season could go based on what's gone on so far and the interviews I've heard. I'm not completely sure about this so let me know what you thought. If you have any suggestions for future chapters let me know. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox