A few days passed by. Oliver put Sara's words out of his mind and carried on as he had. He knew that his friend was coming at him from a place of concern, but Oliver honestly couldn't bring himself to take her advice to heart. His problems were his problems, and it was far easier to sink back into his vices and forget they were there than go to some shrink and talk about it and remember. So what if he had gotten kicked out of some clubs? He was Oliver Queen, they'd let him back in soon enough.

Tommy's house party was going to be legendary, his best friend had promised. Oliver's brother in everything but blood had perfected throwing an awesome shinding and had made it into a complete artform. The Queen heir might be skilled at setting up a pretty awesome party himself, but it was nothing compared to Tommy's abilities. He had taken full advantage of how little his father paid attention to him to contact some of the best chefs in the city to provide the catering and outsourced some pretty sweet alcohol, all good enough to pass the notoriously scrupulous Merlyn palate. Not to mention several of the best upcoming acts on the music scene and lots and lots of expensive decorations.

It was beautifully wasteful and just the right amount of wildly gauche, and everything Oliver needed to forget the past several weeks. His father, his mother, Thea, Laurel, Sara… he didn't have to think about any of them at all, and that was just the way he liked it. So what if he wasn't willing to face his problems? With the kind of money he had, he didn't have to.

None of it needed to matter. And if it didn't matter, it couldn't hurt him. And that was the most important thing of all.

The moment Oliver arrived to Merlyn Mansion, fashionably late as always, the party was in full swing. A rock band was playing some song he didn't recognize, but it was loud and had a rhythm, so who cared? People were dancing in every corner of the house, several of the decorations had already been wrecked (including many of Mr. Merlyn's prized paintings, and Oliver was glad he wasn't going to be around for the vicious argument Tommy was sure to have with his dad in the morning), and the alcohol was flowing freely. It was perfect.

Tommy sauntered up to him, both of his arms wrapped around two beautiful twins, already on the way to being sloshed and with a familiar grin on his face. "Ollie! Glad you could make it!"

"I wouldn't miss this party for the world," Oliver declared, taking a shot glass from the tray of a passing waiter and taking a swig. Already that wonderful warm buzz was beginning to overtake his mind, and Oliver welcomed it like it were an old friend.

After exchanging pleasantries with Tommy, Oliver hit up the bar and had a few more drinks, before going over to the kitchen to grab a few bites. Once his appetite was suitably sated, he headed over to the nearby stage where that loud rock band was playing, climbed up to the top and threw himself into the mosh pit. He let himself be carried by the wave, allowing the music to drown out all his thoughts. This was the life, for certain.

After riding the wave for a while, Oliver felt his buzz begin to lighten, which meant it was time to hit up the bar again. He allowed the crowd to carry him to the side where he landed on his feet. After stretching for a bit, he head in the direction of where the alcohol was, ignoring the growing stench of vomit around the area. The staff would clean it up soon enough.

Just as he was about to make it to the drink bar, some shortie carrying a glass of the (probably spiked) punch ran into him. The drink splashed all over his clothes, to Oliver's annoyance. "Hey, watch where you're—"

The shortie looked up. It was Thea.

Oliver immediately felt himself go stone cold sober. "Speedy? What are you doing here?"

His sister, his young, twelve year old, baby sister, looked like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar as she looked up at him with horror. Then, she adopted a shaky smile, quickly throwing the cup of punch she was carrying to the side and ignoring how it splashed against the walls. "Ollie, hey! Pretty sick party, huh?"

"Thea," Oliver said demandingly, crossing his arms.

Realizing that he wasn't going to give her a pass, Thea's shoulders slumped as she looked down. "I snuck out so I could join you at the party."

Oliver sighed. "Thea, this is an adult party. You're old enough to know exactly what goes on here, and why you weren't allowed to come."

"I know. It's just… I was feeling lonely." She began tapping her fingers together in a nervous gesture. "I was hoping that you'd let me stay and we could spend time together."

It was like having a bucket of ice cold water tossed onto him. Oliver closed his eyes and counted to ten before firmly taking his sister by the wrist and dragging her away to where Tommy was. His best friend, as the host, couldn't get completely drunk just yet, in case something happened and he needed to resolve it. This, unfortunately, was one such situation.

"Hey, Ollie, what's with the sou—Speedy?" Tommy's jaw dropped as he spotted Oliver's younger sister behind his best friend. "What are you doing here? Why the hell did security let you in?"

Thea shrugged. "They didn't. I snuck inside while they weren't looking."

That only caused Tommy to groan, and Oliver to palm his face. "Needless to say, I'm leaving," he told the other man.

"It's fine, man, I've just about lost my party spirit too. Want me to call you guys a cab?"

"Yes, please." Oliver glanced at Thea, mouth set in a grim line. "Don't even think of trying to get out of this."

Thea pouted.

When they arrived back home at the Queen Mansion, the entire place was abuzz with activity, and Oliver had a feeling he knew why. What remaining staff there was, they were fritting about, searching for something (or more likely, someone) while their mother paced back and forth in the living room. When Oliver went to see her, Thea in tow, her head snapped up. "Oliver! Thea's disappeared—do you have any idea where she could've gone?"

Instead of answering, Oliver gently tugged on his sister's arm, causing her to glumly march into view from where she had been hiding behind his back. Moira blinked in confusion and relief. "Thea! Thank God you're alright. Where did you find her?" she asked her son as she gathered her daughter into her arms.

Oliver frowned and crossed his arms. "At Tommy's house party, trying the spiked punch."

"What?" Moira looked down at her wincing daughter, instantly going from worried to furious. "Thea Dearden Queen! How could be so reckless and irresponsible like that? Sneaking out to attend a house party? What if something had happened?"

"Mom—"

"And underage drinking of all things? You should know better than that!"

"Mom!"

"Do you have any idea how worried I was? The entire staff has been searching the grounds for hours—"

"MOM!"

The room fell silent as every eye fell upon the upset preteen. Thea, for her part, clenched her hands into fists as her eyes began to water. She glared up with Moira with all the anger and sadness she could muster.

"I just wanted to spend time with my brother," she confessed. "Since you won't spend time with me either. I wouldn't have gone to the party otherwise."

Both of the other Queens were stunned by that answer. "Thea…" Moira said again, this time much more softly.

She didn't get out much more than that. Thea wrenched away from her embrace and began marching to the stairs. "Forget it. Just forget it! Neither of you care anyway!"

"Speedy, where are you going?" Oliver asked, still a bit thrown off by his sister's confession. It was the same thing she had said at the party, but he had brushed it off as an empty excuse. Yet it seemed she really had gone just to be with him. Was he really neglecting her so much that she was willing to go to that kind of extreme to spend time with him?

"To my room. Where else?" Thea yelled back, not even bothering to turn around.

"Thea Dearden Queen, get back here!" Moira shouted, hands on her hips. "We are not finished talking!"

Instead of answering, Thea turned around and gave her the finger. Oliver's jaw dropped as Moira gasped. "You're grounded!" the Queen Matriarch declared as soon as she got her wits about her.

"Whatever!" With that, the youngest Queen ran up the stairs and disappeared from view. Oliver could hear the faint sounds of sobbing, and sighed, before turning back to his mother.

Moira looked like the last few minutes had aged her a hundred years. With her own sigh, she went to the couch and sat down, burying her face in her hands. After a moment of thought, Oliver went to join her, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her into a hug.

"Don't take it personally," Oliver softly told his mother, rubbing her arm in a comforting gesture. "She's just having a hard time, like the rest of us."

"I know, honey," Moira assured him. "But that doesn't make it any easier."

Oliver swallowed and nodded. They stayed like that for a little while, and then Moira suddenly pulled away to look at him. She seemed to be nervous, but there was a resolve in her eyes that refused to go away. "You do realize the reason she's acting out like this is because you are too, right?"

"Mom?" Oliver said, shocked.

"She looks up to you more than anyone else, Oliver," his mother gently reminded him.

At that statement, he could only look down at his lap. She was right, of course. Beneath all her anger and occasional brattiness, Thea idolized him, probably far more than she should. God knows why, he was hardly a model for good behavior, but she did. She always wanted to spend time with him, regardless of whatever the hell he was doing at the time. Laurel had found it sweet; Oliver didn't know how many times she had scolded him for complaining about how clingy Thea could be.

Laurel. It always came back to her in the end, didn't it? Her and Dad. Oliver ran away from everything that reminded him both of them, because it was easier than confronting the reality that both of them were gone and he had taken both of their presences for granted. That he had been left with so many regrets and no ways to resolve them.

But this hadn't really been a solution either, had it? You keep going down this road, you're not just going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt the people who love you too. Sara's words reverberated in his mind, and it was here and now, in the face of his younger sister's grief, that he had to admit that she was right.

"You're right," he said, watching his mother's expression grow shocked. "This is only happening because of me. Because she's watching me go out every night, getting drunk off my ass, and thinks it's an appropriate way to process her grief."

"Oliver…"

Oliver swallowed. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry about how I've been acting for these past few months. It's just… losing Dad, losing Laurel — it's been hard. And I didn't know any other way to deal with it all."

"Oh, honey, you don't need to apologize for that," Moira told him, taking his hand. "I know how you feel. Dealing with the loss of a loved one is never easy, and you lost two. If anything, it's my fault too — I've been too caught up in my own grief to be there for either you or your sister."

The younger Queen nodded. "…I talked to Sara the other day. Her and her parents have been getting family therapy for the last couple of weeks. It's been doing them a lot of good. And Sara told me that I should consider getting therapy too."

Moira frowned. "Are you comfortable with that? You don't have to do it if you don't want to, Oliver."

But Oliver shook his head. "I do. You were all right. Dad, Laurel, neither of them wouldn't want me to be like this. And I don't want to be like this either, if it means Thea ends up becoming like me. But I can't do it by myself — I don't know how." He shrugged helplessly. "I need help, Mom."

His mother smiled sadly and gently cupped his face into her hands. "Then we'll get help. We'll all get help."

Oliver smiled, and pulled his mother into another hug.

Lian Yu

"NO!"

But it was no use. Laurel watched helplessly as Yao Fei fell back with a bullet hole in his skull, undeniably dead. The unmistakable, familiar feeling of grief and guilt was nearly overwhelming as she struggled against her bonds so she could go to the body. Next to her, Shado was crying as she called out to her father in Mandarin, while on the other side she could feel Slade's growing rage.

And standing above them all, satisfied like a cat that caught the canary, was Edward Fyers. The man was nonchalant as he re-holstered his gun and turned back to his men to start the launch. In just a few minutes, a missile was about to be shot into the sky, striking a commercial airliner for the sole purpose of devastating the Chinese economy. Hundreds of innocent people were going to die, not to mention the countless millions that would suffer from the incoming recession, and the man didn't care beyond making sure the check from his employer cleared afterwards.

It was in that moment Laurel knew she had never seen true evil until now. All the low-life perps her father had arrested, they were nothing compared to this man. A man that was willing to ruin over a billion lives for the sake of profit and ego, and all Laurel knew was that if she could make sure Fyers died today, then she didn't care what happened to her afterwards. She'd be able to die happy, knowing that she at least managed to rid the world of this one evil.

As the countdown drew closer to an end, Laurel felt her bonds begin to loosen as the knife Yao Fei passed to her cut through the ropes. She exchanged looks with Shado and then with Slade, and on a silent count of three, they attacked. After cutting her friends free, Laurel headed directly for Fyers and gave him several blows to the face and a kick in the nuts, before going to the man operating the main console for the missile launcher and stabbing him in the side.

Shado was covering her back from the rest of Fyers's men, while Slade stole a machine gun from another mercenary and was firing indiscriminately at their enemies. "Go!" he shouted at them. "I'll cover you!"

Laurel, knowing what he meant, followed Shado as they headed directly for the missile launcher. "Keep them off me!" her friend shouted. "I'll redirect the missile!"

"How?"

"I can reprogram it to fire somewhere else!"

Really? Her new friend and mentor was full of surprises. But Laurel wasn't in any position to complain, and simply nodded. The sound of the missile firing stopped them for a brief moment, but only just — Laurel continued following Shado, climbing up onto the missile launcher and attacking the men trying to guard it while her companion opened up one of the hatches on the weapon. As Shado worked, Laurel disarmed one of the mercenaries, taking his gun and shooting him in the stomach with it. She shot another and another, and then—

"TAKE COVER!"

Shado's voice reverberated throughout the entire area, and Laurel reacted on instinct. She dropped the gun and dropped to the ground, hiding behind the missile launcher as the entire world exploded around them. Laurel closed her eyes as heat and force surrounded her, and blacked out.

When the sensations finally ended, Laurel felt sore all over, but alive. She didn't get the chance to enjoy it, however.

"Up! Get up!"

Fyers. Of course he would survive the explosion too.

Laurel grunted as she was turned onto her back. Fyers buried a knee in-between her shoulder blades as he tied her wrists together once again. Once they were properly knotted up, the young woman felt a gun buried into her side as she was slowly guided back up into a standing position.

Great. She was a hostage again.

"You stupid little strumpet," her captor hissed into her ear as she was forcibly pushed towards the direction of the burning camp. "You ruined everything! I can't wait to put a bullet in your skull, but not before I have you on your knees where you belong."

She didn't bother saying anything in return, just scowling heavily. They made it into the camp, and Fyers held her close as they confronted Shado and Slade. Laurel took in her friends' appearances as Fyers started his monologue. Shado looked fine for the most part, though she was carrying a bow in one hand, not unlike her father's, and an arrow in the other. Slade, however, clearly had not managed to escape the explosion unscathed. He was covered completely in soot and seemed barely able to stand at all.

"Amazing. A two-year operation ruined all because a random college student happened to wash up on the shore, and here you are, a killer," Fyers almost sounded amused at the notion, in a deranged sort of way. "I don't think I've ever hated anyone as much as I've hated you, Miss Lance. And now, I can't help but wonder — do your new friends like you well enough to give up their freedom for you?"

He looked directly at Slade and Shado as he spoke the next sentence. "I can call a rescue ship. You two can go home. All you need to do is let me have my way with her."

Slade snarled at the suggestion. The grip on Shado's bow tightened as she began aiming at Fyers. But it was Laurel who was the most incensed of all.

All you need to do is let me have my way with her. There was no question what he intended to do with her. And Laurel had only one response to that.

She reared her head forward before slamming it backwards, cracking the back of her skull with Fyers's nose. The man stumbled away, letting her go as he used his free hand to stem the bleeding of his now bloody nose. Laurel didn't let him have even that moment of reprieve, instead opting to kick the gun out of his hand before kicking him again in the dick. He fell to the ground with a groan as she continued to kick and kick and kick.

"Fuck—" Kick. "—You. I'm not some fucking toy for you to use to feel better about yourself!" She finished him off with a final kick to the side, leaving her foe in a groaning heap as she turned back to her friends in a huff.

They were both staring at her with pride and, in Slade's case, a bit of awe. Laurel allowed a smile to grace her lips as she began walking towards them, only to stop when she saw their expressions quickly turn into ones of horror. She turned around just in time to dodge a stab to the back of her head. Fyers chased after her with a snarl, his expression completely demented and feral.

"Laurel! Duck!"

Laurel did just that, and felt something sail above her. She looked up just in time to see Fyers collapse dead, an arrow in his heart.

For a moment, the castaway did nothing but stare at the corpse of the man who had tormented for these past several months. She didn't know how to feel. Elated? Relieved?

But then Shado walked up to her, Slade hanging off her shoulder, and smiled at her. Laurel smiled back, and closed her eyes as a weight was lifted off her shoulders. It was over.

It was finally, finally over.

And that's Year 1 finished. Four more years to go until Season 1, and next year is when the divergences really begin to start. I think you're going to enjoy it, considering what's coming next.

As for this chapter, Oliver finally decides to get help for his problems. To no one's surprise, it's because his behavior is negatively affecting Thea, and there's just about anything he would do for his baby sister. Thea, for her part, will still be having her own issues over the years, but with Oliver still here, she's going to grow up into someone more mature and put together than canon Thea.

I hope you enjoyed the final confrontation between Laurel and Fyers. When writing this story I knew how that's how I wanted things to end between them, but I never realized how great a dynamic they would have until I actually started writing it. Fyers is the first person that Laurel can admit she truly hates with all of her being, her first real arch-enemy. And I loved writing Fyers falling apart over his growing hatred of Laurel.

Next Chapter: The beginning of Year 2.