Call

The worst day of Oliver Queen's life began with a phone call.

He had been sleeping with Sara on their cot in the Foundry when the her cellphone suddenly began ringing on the table near them. With a sigh, the two of them got up from their peaceful slumber, Sara reaching out take the call. "Who is it?" Oliver asked with a groan.

"Dad," Sara replied, frowning. "Probably to apologize about the dinner last night."

Oliver scowled at the reminder. Quentin shouldn't be the one calling. Laurel should be the one calling. It was her fault the dinner had gone to hell, and she needed to own up to that. But the way she was right now, it was unlikely she was going to take responsibility for anything. Not even with his words from last night giving her a desperately needed wake up call.

He just didn't understand his ex-girlfriend anymore. There was a time where Laurel was warm, kind, and caring. Where she put her family before everything else, including herself. But now, with her recent drug-addled behavior and blow up at Sara, it seemed like all she could think about was herself. There had to be something wrong with her — or maybe she had always been this entitled, self-centered woman, and Oliver was too blinded by love to see it.

Oliver desperately hoped that wasn't the case, if for the sakes of Sara and the sisters' parents more than anything else. As far as he went, he had already given Laurel too many chances. It was as he told her last night — he needed to accept that he was never going to live up to her impossible standards and stop chasing after her. Especially when she was never going to return the favor and try to live up to those standards herself.

His current girlfriend picked up the call, placing the phone next to her ear. "Hey, Dad. What's—" She was cut off, her mouth parted.

As Sara's body began tense, Oliver was starting to realize something was wrong. He sat up, getting into a more upright position. "Sara? What's wrong?"

The call ended. Sara lowered the cell phone, visibly haunted. "Laurel's dead."

"…What?" Oliver gasped.

Mistake

Suicide. Laurel had committed suicide.

It was inconceivable. Oliver knew Laurel had been struggling lately, but suicide of all things? She had always been so confident, so sure of herself. It was why her recent issues were so frustrating. Couldn't she see what she was doing to everyone by acting the way she was? By doing drugs and drinking alcohol to deal with her problems, she was just making them worse.

But did she really think things were so bad in her life that killing herself was the only out? She had her sister back! Surely that should've been a sign that things were going to get better. God knows how grateful he would've been if it was him and his father somehow returned from the dead. But apparently, Laurel hadn't seen Sara's miraculous return the same way.

And he didn't know why. How had Oliver not seen what had been going on in her head? Was he really that blind?

Sara had already left to join her family in seeing Laurel's body at the morgue. Oliver had stayed behind in the Foundry, unable to move at all when the news broke. Completely numb. All he could think about was Laurel, how he had just seen her last night, pale and angry but alive, and woke up the next day to learn that she was dead. Was there anything he could've done to stop it?

John and Felicity arrived not long after Sara left, both of them giving him hugs. "I'm sorry, Oliver," John told him sadly.

"You didn't go with Sara?" Felicity asked, solemnly.

Oliver sighed. "Her dad said family only." Which he couldn't blame them for, considering the messy history between Laurel and himself.

They waited for the next couple of hours for Sara to come back. Unable to keep still, Oliver had gone off to train, practicing on a nearby dummy while John started cleaning some of the weapons they had racked up. Felicity was on the computer, workshopping her programs.

The first sign something was wrong was when some kind of alarm emitted from Felicity's computer. "Huh," the hacker muttered.

"What is it, Felicity?" John asked, looking up from the gun in his hand. Oliver also briefly stopped his workout to glance at her.

"Something triggered one of the monitoring programs I set up," she explained. "It's the one that I have watching all the major online news websites in Starling. Let me see what it picked up."

Felicity typed in a few more commands, and pulled up one of the articles. What she saw caused her mouth to fall open. "Oh my God," their computer specialist uttered in horror.

Now Oliver was really starting to get worried. "Felicity, what's in the article?"

"It's Laurel's suicide note."

They all turned around to see Sara marching back to the Foundry with a strange look in her eye. Oliver went to embrace her. "Sara, are you alrigh—"

He didn't see the punch coming. Sara slammed her fist right into his nose, causing an audible crunch! to echo throughout the entire room. The force of the blow sent Oliver reeling, stumbling back, while Sara loosened her knuckles. "One of the tabloids leaked it to the media," she calmly explained to the other two shocked members of their little team. "Saw it as another chance to smear the Queen name and get some juicy subscriptions in the process."

"Sara, what the hell?" Oliver demanded, bringing his hand to his nose. Did she break it?

His field partner, however, didn't apologize. She merely glared at him. "You bastard," the former assassin hissed. "How could you?"

"Sara, I don't know what you're talking about," the other vigilante insisted, confused and anxious. What was with the sudden turn to hostility?

"Holy shit." Every eye turned back to Felicity, who was reading the article on her computer. Her eyes were wide. "Dear God…"

Sara crossed her arms. "Send it to both their phones, Felicity. Let them read what's on it. It's not like the rest of Starling isn't," she noted resentfully.

The hacker complied, and Oliver's phone pinged, as did John's. Oliver, hesitant and a little afraid, went over to pick his up. He pulled up the article, skimming past the preamble to get to the actual letter itself.

It was horrible.

Laurel had started off the entire thing with stating this was from the 'daughter that lived', which was apparently what Quentin used to introduce her to people in bars. In then went in-depth on the constant emotional and verbal drunken abuse the Lance patriarch had put Laurel through the six years Sara was gone, including ostensibly blaming her for Sara's death, thanks to her relationship with Oliver.

It was followed by Dinah's abandonment, including the fact that she had let Sara go on the Gambit and betray Laurel. Then her frustrations with her job as a lawyer, including the constant corruption in the city's justice system, something that only became more important after she joined the DA's office and learned Kate Spencer had a tendency to throw out solid cases to please her various corporate 'friends'.

On and on it went. Sara's decision to betray Laurel by going on the Gambit, subsequent 'death', and return, where she refused to apologize for her betrayal and later showed up at the family reunion dinner with the ex-boyfriend she had betrayed Laurel with. Tommy's death, the aftermath (including Oliver's abandonment), and the realization that his death was her fault. The loss of the job she loved so much, and then the loss of her second job, the one she had come to despise. And then, finally, him.

Oliver Queen. Ollie. The love of my life. That's still true, even though it's clear now that I was never the one you really loved. It was always Sara, as tonight showed. I was always the pale imitation, the replacement for the sister you really wanted. I'm sorry it took me so long to realize that.

I'm sorry about that dinner. You were right. I owed them a chance to heal our family and I blew it for my own selfish whims, because I couldn't accept you had already made your choice. I should've just let go of my jealousy and let you two be happy.

And as for what you said in the hallway after — you're right about that too. I can't keep on blaming everyone else for my problems. Because when it comes to my problems, and the problems I cause for everyone else, there's only one uniting factor: me.

I'm the problem. I always have been. And in order for all this to stop, in order to make sure I don't ruin anything else, I need to remove it. Thank you for helping me realize that.

So this is goodbye. Don't be sad. This is for the best.

Love,

Laurel

By the time Oliver was done reading the letter, his body had gone so numb that he could barely breathe. There were tears pricking away at the back of his eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to shed them. Slowly, carefully, he lowered up his phone to face the judgmental stares of his team.

"By God, Oliver," John said, sounding horrified and disappointed all in one. Meanwhile, Felicity was openly glaring at him, which was unnerving. "What did you do?"

"I-I…" Oliver clenched his teeth and swallowed. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to…"

"To what, Ollie?" Sara demanded. She was the worst of them all — it was like she was trying to melt him with her eyes. "What were you trying to do?"

"Give her a reality check," he finally blurted out. "Tell her that she needed to stop blaming everyone for her choices. That she need to take responsibility for them, and the problems she was causing for herself and everyone else. I didn't mean for her to… to…"

Sara clearly wasn't impressed with his explanation, judging by the way her eyes grew narrower and narrower. Eventually, she shook her head and release a frustrated scream to the sky, one that made everyone else present flinch. When she was done, she glared at Oliver again, her teeth gnashing together. She was crying.

"This? This thing between us?" The other vigilante gestured to the space between Oliver and herself. "It was a mistake. The worst mistake of my life. How I ever thought dating an asshole like you was worth throwing away my relationship with my sister is beyond me."

"Sara—"

"Don't you dare 'Sara' me!" She snapped at him. "I don't care about what you meant, Ollie! Because you couldn't help yourself from being a selfish jerk at the wrong moment, my sister is dead! The same sister who called you 'the love of her life', and God knows why considering all you've put her through over the years! There's nothing you can do to fix this, make up for it! Nothing!"

Oliver opened his mouth to defend himself, but whatever words he could say died in his throat in the face of Sara's fury and grief. She was right. Regardless of whatever he had originally intended, it had gone radically off course and spiraled into tragedy. And there was no taking any of it back.

"We're through," Sara told him, making a cross gesture with her arms for good measure. "For good this time." Then, she left, leaving a silent John and Felicity and a heartbroken Oliver behind.

Disappointment

Oliver couldn't stay in the Foundry after that confrontation with Sara. He dressed up and left, taking his car and driving home. There was a crowd growing outside the Verdant, one screaming obscenities and other things at the building. It suddenly occurred to him that most of Laurel's clients were from the Glades, many of whom would be grateful for all she'd done to get them justice and wouldn't have any fondness for the man who essentially drove her to suicide. Especially when he was the son of the woman who was one of the main backers of the Undertaking that destroyed half the neighborhood.

He headed home instead. There were even more protestors outside the gates to his family's property than usual, and they grew into a frenzy upon realizing it was him in the car. Many of them tried to charge him, and it took all of his skill in maneuvering to get inside without hurting anyone or letting them trespass. That was the last thing they needed right now.

After parking the car up the driveway he headed inside, not even waiting for one of the footmen to open the door. Oliver was about to go upstairs to his room and lock it behind him, hide away from the rest of the world while waiting for the backlash over his latest mistake to blow over, when he found himself face-to-face with Raisa.

There was nothing of the usual kindness, warmth, and even love in his family maid's expression. The woman he thought of as a second mother was gazing at him neutrally, almost coldly. "Mr. Queen," she greeted him, perfectly, detachedly polite.

"Raisa," Oliver replied, off-base and hurt.

"YOU!"

Before Oliver could react, he found himself tackled from behind. Mounting herself on his chest, Thea slammed a million punches into every spot of his body that she could reach, forcing him to do everything he could to block. At the same time, he found his face growing wet, and it took him a moment to realize it was from the tears falling from Thea's eyes.

"I wish you'd never come back from that island!" his baby sister screamed into his face. "We were all better off thinking you were dead!"

Oliver flinched at her words, but made only a token attempt to get her off of him. Try as he might, he couldn't deny her anger was justified. Despite all the bad history between Laurel and himself, Thea had remained close to his ex-girlfriend in spite of that. It only figured this latest fuck-up would incur her wrath.

"Thea."

The world froze. Both siblings turned to see Moira Queen standing off to the side, her arms crossed and her expression firm. "Please get off him," she asked calmly.

Furiously, her daughter did just that, climbing off her brother and stomping up the stairs to her room. Raisa followed her, while Oliver slowly got up to his feet, rubbing his face and chest. Between Sara and Thea, his entire body was sore.

"Oliver," Moira continued once he was vertical again, "please come with me. We need to speak."

Ominous words. Oliver didn't gulp. It was a near-thing, though.

They ended up in his mother's study. Her office, for all intents and purposes. The fact that they were here, instead of somewhere more intimate like the living room — well, Oliver wasn't looking forward to this. Moira Queen had a way with words that were sharper that any knife, and he imagined she had a lot to say about this.

His mom had him sit in the chair in front of her desk, while she sat in the one behind it. It felt less like a private talk with his mother and more like a summons to the principal's office, and that only added to the dread that he was feeling. Whatever was coming, he wasn't going to like it.

"About a year ago, you scolded me for allowing Thea to get away with skipping school," Moira noted, her hands folded on top of her desk as she stared at unflinchingly into his eyes. "You told me that you could've used a lot more parenting when you were younger. Never before has that claim been proven more true than today."

Oliver flinched. Moira ignored it, and continued on. "Tell me, Oliver. What exactly did you say to Laurel? What happened at that dinner she mentioned in the letter?"

It wasn't a suggestion. It was a demand. The young Queen scion swallowed and then spoke, explaining everything from the beginning. Sara asking him to come to the dinner as emotional support. The moment it all fell apart. Laurel leaving, and their confrontation in the hallway. The words he had said to her.

When he was done, his mother's expression, if possible, grew even flatter. "I can see why you were frustrated with how the dinner went," she said softly, but not comfortingly. Just matter-of-factly. "But didn't you consider the reason why it went so badly is because you were attending it?"

"I was there for Sara—"

"And you should have refused her offer. I feel for Sara, I truly do, but you should not have come. You are the reason why their family fell apart in the first place. Sara believed she loved you and you used that to blow up your relationship with Laurel because you were too much of a coward to tell her you were not ready to move in with her yet. Even without the Gambit sinking and causing the both of you to go missing for years, those actions would have destroyed their family."

"Fast forward a few years later, and you attend their first family dinner since Sara's return, and openly flaunt your new relationship in front of Laurel. Laurel, who loved you so much that she was willing to forgive you for what happened to Sara in the first place and give you another chance, only for you to abandon her right after. Who has been dealing with the guilt she felt over Tommy's death, being forced to prosecute me for my trial, and the recent loss of her job. And when she rightfully got angry at both of you for reminding her of your betrayal, you completely disregarded her feelings, telling her she was the person to blame for all the problems in her life, including the fact that you apparently did not love her anymore and were with Sara now, and that she needed to take responsibility for that."

Every single word was like a gunshot to the chest. Having his mother of all people lay out the entire situation like that, Oliver could only bow his head. In hindsight, it was a stupid, tactless decision. He hadn't been thinking at all that night, just the fact that Sara was back and if things went well, then he'd finally redeem himself for all his mistakes in regards to the Gambit. The Lance family would be whole, and everything would be right in the world again. He should have realized it was never going to be that simple.

"I love you, Oliver," Moira finally said, after letting him stew in silence for a few minutes. "I will always love you. You're my baby boy, and there is nothing in the world that you could do to change that. But right here, right now, I have never been more disappointed in you in my entire life."

She might as well have gutted him wide open with those words. Oliver was no stranger to disappointing his mother, but this time was different. This wasn't annoyance and irritation over his irresponsibility, this was genuine anger over his callousness. The guilt he was feeling right now was palpable.

"I suggest you leave the house right now, and not come back for a while," his mother suggested, once it was clear Oliver wasn't going to argue any further. "Neither myself nor Thea are in any mood to see you for the time being. I do not know when that will change."

Like before, it wasn't a suggestion. And Oliver was in no position to disobey. He got up from the chair, gave his mother a respectful nod, and turned around and left.

Inconsiderate

It wasn't just his own home that he was banned from. Isabel called to tell him not to come to the office for a few days. "It's not like you show up all that often anyway," she noted, and there was a sarcastic, disgusted tilt to her words. It seemed whatever rapport he had built with her was gone as well.

And then she told him something else. "By the way, your PA tendered her resignation today."

Oliver stilled. "Felicity did what?"

"Quit," Isabel bluntly answered, before hanging up.

When he got to the Foundry, Felicity and John were already there. The former was packing up the few personal things she kept on her computer desk, while the latter was trying to talk to her. "Felicity, please reconsider," John pleaded.

"No, John," Felicity firmly responded. "Forgive me if I don't want to work with a jerk who is so inconsiderate about the women in his life that he cheated on his long-time girlfriend with her sister and then drove her to suicide when she got angry about him flaunting that fact into her face."

"Felicity—"

She had enough. "Stop it!" the hacker shouted at him. That was when she noticed Oliver, and Felicity shot him another glare before shifting her gaze between John and him.

"Look, I kept out of the whole Laurel debate because I didn't want to cause a fight between you two. I didn't want to take a side. But now I see that was a mistake. So let me be honest now: the way you talked about her, it was like she was some kind of needy pet that you were debating whether or not was worth keeping around. Newsflash: she wasn't! She was a human being who desperately needed support, support you couldn't give her because you were too obsessed with this oblique idea of 'saving the city' that you don't even have a vision for anymore!"

Felicity was hyperventilating when she was done. Once it was clear she had made her point, she picked up her stuff and left, not even bothering with a goodbye. Nobody tried to stop her. The shame was enough to keep them in place.

"John…" Oliver clenched his fists. "We really fucked up this time, didn't we?"

His best friend and bodyguard gave a tired sigh. "Yeah, Oliver. We did."

The title is the latin phrase for "horrible day". It's a play off annus horribilis, which is latin for "horrible year". This phrase was famously used by Queen Elizabeth II to describe the year of 1992, the worst year of her reign due to the endless number of scandals that rocked the royal family (up to and including then-Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana separating and eventually filing for divorce). A pretty effective way to describe the worst day of Oliver's life.

So, yeah, this is just three thousand words of people ripping into Oliver for his poor treatment of Laurel. It's obvious he didn't actually mean for any of this to happen, but the reality is that it doesn't matter what he meant to do. It's his fault in the end. He's the one who, intentionally or not, implanted the idea in Laurel's head and gave her the push to go through with it. So nobody has any real sympathy for him right now, especially when you account for all his previous bad treatment of her, including the betrayal that led to Laurel losing Sara in the first place.

What makes the situation worse is because Oliver said those words to Laurel operating under completely false assumptions and incorrect information, since he hasn't really been there for her or acting like confidant like she has for him. As a result, he completely failed to see things from her perspective and that's what caused him to say those things, under the assumption that she would stop thinking so "selfishly" and finally shape up. Instead, it just drove Laurel over the edge and made her believe that nobody cared about her and that she no longer mattered, which led to her making the decision she made.

And the reason Oliver did that is because John was giving Oliver bad advice and telling him to ignore Laurel since she's a "distraction" to his goal of saving the city. Going by that logic, that means everyone else in Oliver's life who isn't in on his secret/mission who might end up having a rough time in the future is also a distraction, including his sister Thea and his mother. As Felicity pointed out, John made Laurel (by extension anyone else who doesn't know Oliver's secret but still cares about) out to be an obstacle instead of a person. So Oliver treated her that way, and it led to all this.

That's also why his chances with all his other love interests are over, including Sara, who dumps him here, and Felicity, whose crush on him is dead and who ends up leaving the team (and actively chooses not to come back even after Laurel is revived). Even Isabel Rochev is legitimately sickened with his actions, even outside of her preexisting distaste for the Queen Family because of Robert ditching her. Women are not obstacles or pets, they're people, and they want to be treated as such. The very moment Oliver presented the possibility he wasn't going to treat them like people, they gave up on him, because each of them have already plenty enough sexism in their own respective fields and don't have patience for it in a romantic relationship.

The reality is that Oliver treating Laurel, the woman he once claimed he loved above all others and who helped him get through five years of hell, like this doesn't speak well of him at all. If he's going to treat her like this, what's going to stop him from treating from them like this in their (hypothetical) relationships with him if they start struggling like Laurel did? And as for Laurel herself, it leaves open two possibilities: either he never loved her and was just lying about still being in love with her when he got back to get back into her pants, or he was telling the truth and this is how he treats the people he loves. And if that's the case, then his love is toxic, poisonous, and not worth anything at all. No wonder Laurel decided it was time for him to get out of her life for good.

Next chapter: A continuation of Oliver's POV.