#no emoji means joint writing process

[pink-of-hair]

An hourglass has been flipped over. It measures 4 hours, though there's one for 3 hours, and another for 1. You agreed to do a chore for your mistress, but she respects that your brain has some trouble getting going (shameful for a live-in maid, honestly!). So this meassure was born.

When the sand runs completely out the hourglass she'll approach quietly from behind. No matter what you're doing. And pull you down into trance with those magic words in barely a few seconds (the hourglass helps, you understand).

Then she'll send her drone to go do what you weren't able to do.

She'll let you come back to normal once you're done though.

It's quire a fair arrangement honestly.

[zmediaoutlet]

#i've been reduced down to a session a week#it's not great#but it's so so so much better than nothing

tell me why? genuine question. i'm curious what it feels like to write one week vs not? or maybe, what do you "get" out of it, if that can even be quantified, esp when you're writing separate short pieces.

is it like keeping a joint oiled? or is it valuable in and of itself?

you know, this question kinda baffled me on the face of it. Like. What do you mean, is it valuable in and of itself, lol.

But then I guess I've never gone in for the whole self care, rah rah, "hey even if you haven't written in a year you're still a writer :hug emoji: " thing. It's great if that works for other people! For me, though -- it's a hobby but not exactly a hobby, because embroidery is technically a 'hobby' I have even though I maybe finish one leaf on that piece every three weeks. I can put the embroidery in its box in the closet and come back three weeks later and be like, heck yeah, leaf time, and feel no different from that day to the next.

The act of doing the writing is important to me, over and above output (although output is of course also important, as is reception to that output, and the way we know this is true is that people publish writing with the expectation/hope of an audience & feedback). If I'm not doing the thing, I feel worse. Like, measurably. It's as bad as not exercising or not eating vegetables or not talking to loved ones. So what I "get" out of it is like... mental wellness and life satisfaction and... that sort of thing. idk, it's not quite to the same level as insulin but it's somewhere in the same venn diagram, haha.

The separate short pieces then, I guess, could be considered joint-oiling or something. They're the satisfaction of starting a thing and getting to the end of it and executing a concept and doing the thing that must be done so I'm still a z. (Long pieces are also satisfying, but the time delay on the execution makes it a more miserable thing. I guess for the exercise metaphor that's a difference between weight lifting and training for a marathon...?) (plus it feels like 9000 times shittier if you do all that marathon and the response is crickets, particularly from loved ones & buds, and so even if the work itself was the right thing from the 'still be a z' perspective, the crushing feeling at the end is Tough to deal with. unfortunately the process and the end of the process are inextricably linked and so we just have to suffer that.)

was that... an answer?

[lacunafiction]

From the emotional section "Being strong doesn't mean never asking for help or admitting you're in pain" With J 👀 (I went for the throat-)

Hi Anon,

First, thank you so much for the prompt!

If I was on mobile, I would add the knife emoji because you really did go for the throat, lol. >.> I like it.

Still in the crushing stage, but lbr most everyone ships it and are like: 'wyd???' at this point, so later crushing stage.

- - - Angst/Emotional. 35. J.

“Being strong doesn’t mean never asking for help or admitting you’re in pain.”

The sound of the ceramic mug shattering breaks the stifling silence of J's office in the worse possible way. It is an abrupt, echoing kind of disruption that redirects all the attention in the room, concentrating it to a point so the source can be stared at and possibly judged. You would never judge J.

"Sorry..."

The apology is breathed out alongside a heavy sigh, though you barely notice it compared to the loud squeak of the office chair as J dives behind their desk to start the clean up process.

S left, R left, and B left as the night has dragged on, but you remain in the upholstered chair you dragged from the lobby of the Fernweh police station, keeping a silent vigil, but more importantly keeping the town's overworked detective company. J is too hard on themself. Faint pops are felt in your joints when you rise from your seat, heading over to assist. J's shoulders stiffen when you round the desk as if your presence is making them more self-conscious about the mistake. "It happens," you reassure, voice taking on a soft tone to try and soothe.

J nods, a quick bobbing motion that is stiff, though they don't look up from the mess of the black coffee and shards of the comically bright yellow mug. Their sibling gave them the cup as a joke with how monochromatic their office is decorated; it was meant to be a bright spot, and J broke broke it. They messed it up...

You brows knit when you realize that J isn't picking up the pieces with as much care, now their fingers wrap around each jagged section to efficiently toss them in the trash bin rather than carefully grasp each piece. A cut or a gash is inevitable if this continues. Kneeling down next to them gets their hurried actions to stop. J's eyes remain trained on the dark puddle on the linoleum as if the coffee is acting as a black hole sucking in their focus, but you can see that they are upset from how tightly their jaw is locked.

The long hours, sleepless nights, close encounters, unanswered questions, and everything else is made worse by how hard J pushes themself.

They won't stop because they don't feel that they can.

“Being strong doesn’t mean never asking for help or admitting you’re in pain," you offer the advice gently, reaching for the hand that rests on J's knee to uncurl their bunched fingers. The tension to their hand flees at your touch; you don't care that coffee now stains your palm. "We're here for you. I'm here for you." Their intense green eyes jump to you and you can see that there is a wetness to them that causes your breath to catch. What is bothering them so much? "Ja-?"

You don't get to finish saying their name because they move forward to hug you, tucking you close in a ginger embrace as if holding you any tighter will cause you to break like that mug.

_ _ _

I'll likely do these when taking a break from editing/writing on the main story. Please be patient with me since I want them to be the best they can be. :D

Thanks!

[ 💚 The masterpost with the 81k word demo: HERE. Reblogs of the masterpost are greatly appreciated. <3 💚 ]

[successionsideblog]

you know what, if you want a taste of the tomgreg i’m writing here ya go. i’m not spellchecking this and it has no title. here is your taste 

The fallout unravels in a series of afters.  

Fifteen seconds after the press conference ends, Kendall rips up his approved statement and tosses it behind him to the ubiquitous uproar of the roomful of press. He has just killed his father on national television, a new wave patricide for the twenty-first century, and Greg, well, Greg gave him the gun.

Thirty seconds after the press conference ends, Greg follows Kendall down a stretch of hallway like a rescue dog abandoned by the train yard having attached itself to the first person who threw it a bone. His hands are clammy against the yellow manila folder, making sweaty fingerprints against the cheap, Office Depot paper. The skin of his thumb pulls away from the nail with his incessant fidgeting and it stings like hell. Kendall is walking too fast despite his much shorter stride. Jess and Karolina crowd his side, but Kendall barrels past them.

Colourful language is exchanged. Phone calls are made. Greg can barely hear what is being said with the blood rushing from one side of his head to the other. His ears sound like oversized conch shells that swell with the shutter of every flashing camera that follows them past the podium.

“Sorry.” Greg offers them an uncomfortable wave, or what was supposed to be a gesture of apology. “Sorry for the—uh—inconvenience.”

“Alright, Greg, my comrade in arms,” Kendall says, holding out his hand, making a grabby motion. He looks composed, not even a decimal place to the right as nervous or overwhelmed as Greg is. “Sauce me the docs.”

“Right,” Greg says and surrenders them without protest. It feels good to finally let them go after they had been eating away at the argyles in his sock drawer for weeks. “Sorry, um, about the sweat. It’s my flight-or-fight response. I guess my body thinks I might be dying.” 

Kendall ignores him, then passes the documents to an assistant so haphazardly that Greg almost wants to cry out, or at least make everyone in the room go through a strict vetting process before the manila folder can disappear from his sight. His worries are quickly quashed, however, when the folder is ripped open and the distribution of dozens of photocopies begins amongst the Kendall approved reporters waiting in the wings. 

One such reporter, who must have seen Greg hand over the folder, pounces on him, blonde and plasticky in that white-midwestern-Fox-News-anchor sort of way that immediately waives his interest. The foam headed microphone she poises in front of his face is uncomfortably phallic.

“Your name?” she asks.

“Uh, Gregory—”

“Roy?”

“No, Hirsch. I was, um, the one who fucked up—sorry—my testimony in front of Congress? You might have seen me on the front page of Reddit. Wait—are you broadcasting this?”

He gives a statement, then he and Kendall are ushered into another room, stale with the smell of dispensary coffee and complimentary pastries, then a second room where a legal team made up of people Greg has never met pulls Kendall aside. Their conversation is hushed, their faces pinched and wrinkled like globs of malformed Play-Doh. 

Greg stands in the corner, ignoring the urge to lean his forehead against the spackle wall and find his breath. He was privy to Phase 1 of the plan and only Phase 1: get in a helicopter, get on a private jet, transport the super-secret documents, attend the press conference, give Kendall the super-secret documents, watch Kendall hand over the super-secret documents, et cetera. By now, they must be at Phase 2: try not to poop your big boy pants in front of the Wallstreet Journal.

Afterwards, Kendall pats him on the back and tells him to “gear up for the clusterfuck,” so Greg does. They get into separate cars, pulled in separate directions by the tailing reporters. Greg watches the second black car shrink into a dot behind him: Phase 3, which Greg isn’t destined to be a part of, apparently.     

Greg holes up in his apartment with his phone readied and ATN on mute. He waits for the word from Kendall, but it never comes. He paces, showers the corporate stink off him, and changes into sweats. As he towel dries his 100 dollar haircut, his phone pings, then pings again, again, and again. It vibrates against the custom-made coffee table with such force Greg thinks the glass might shatter. 

He snatches it up. A text from Gerri, from Tom, from Shiv, Roman, Karl, Frank, all spouting a thesaurus worth of expletives and a row of question marks, as well as several emojis Greg has trouble deciphering in this context. At the top of his lock screen is a notification for the New York Times article Kendall warned him about yesterday, then the statement he gave to the tabloid in all caps, bold Helvetica font.

“Oh, okay, okay, okay, shit. Shit!”

He puts his phone on silent and goes to the balcony to smoke a joint, realizes reporters are swarming his building like worker ants in camera-ready makeup and drugstore hair gel, and hurries back inside. He flexes his fists, chews up his lips until they look like a crime scene. He knew what he was getting into when he handed over those two sad, crumpled pages he saved from certain Wambsgans branded death. But maybe not to the extent of being called out for it, or having to face the ridicule of a family he just settled into. He was supposed to be the backup, a co-conspirator behind the scenes, not the second fall guy. He texts Kendall “Hey man, I’m kind of freaking out right now” but gets no reply.

Kendall is persona non grata. As far as Greg knows, he could be holed up in a Soviet-era Siberian bunker somewhere, eating beans from a tin can and waiting out the aftermath.

Greg kicks himself. He should have thought of that.

*

Ten hours after the press conference ends and five hours after the media shitstorm hits peak shit, Greg hears a knock at his door. Half-asleep from a nap he was unaware he was taking, he instinctively reaches for his phone again. The sun is setting, shrinking behind the eyesore of an office building that blocks his view and decreases the property value of his apartment. He grumbles as his phone screen illuminates, stinging his dilated pupils. 

(15) Unread Voicemails from Tom Wambsgans.

“Shit.”

The knocking continues.

“Hey, Greg, open up,” Tom shouts, sing-song in a threatening sort of way. His voice is muffled by the door, the knob twisting back and forth. Greg half-expects an ax to come flying through the wood and plaster. “Greg, I swear to God, open this door or else you are dead to me.”

Greg stumbles over himself, nearly tripping over the edge of his Sherpa rug as he turns on a light. He unlocks the door and yanks it open. The smell of tropical suntan lotion and Armani cologne immediately wafts into his nose, like a bowl of fruit salad left sitting on a department store perfume counter. 

Tom stands there, his fists balled up at his sides like a petulant child waiting for his mother in a long line at the supermarket check-out. His skin is tan and slightly sunburnt around his nose from their time spent in Greece, but his loose-fitting yacht clothes have been replaced by a stark white button-down and an Yves Saint Laurent suit jacket. Greg tries not to notice. 

“What the fuck did you do?” Tom asks. 

His eyes wide, his affectation intensified by his disbelief. He looks angry, jaw jutting out. For a second, Greg thinks Tom might hit him like he has other times Greg has told him something he doesn’t want to hear. But the scale is much bigger, with implications that extend far beyond extramarital activities and open business relationships.

“I, uh, well.” Greg finds his words then loses them, then finds some new ones. “I mean, is it bad?”

“Yeah, Greg, it is. It is very bad.”

Tom pushes past him into the apartment. Greg hesitantly shuts the door behind him, trying not to shrink in on himself. Meanwhile, Tom appears to be near hysteria, halfway between laughing and crying like he was when he first dragged Greg into the death pit. Tom glances out the window where a few straggling news crews remain, then turns to face him.

“Do you have anything to say to me?” Tom asks.

“What?” Greg avoids his eyes. “Like—like an apology?”

“Yeah, like an apology.” Tom lets out a humourless, near sociopathic chuckle. “You fucked me over, Greg! You fucked me!” Every consonant is especially harsh when Tom says his name. He pinches his thumb and forefinger together. “We were this close to all of this going away and poof! Fucking front-page news. I feel like I got caught with my pants down and everyone is laughing at my junk.”

Greg tries not to let the off-colour simile faze him. “Look, Tom, to be fair, I kind of fucked us both.” He takes a step forward to close the room width of space between them. “I mean, I implicated myself as much as I implicated you. But Ken said he would take care of it.”

“Oh, he did, did he? So, what, are you his bitch boy now? First comes corporate scheming then comes marriage?”

Greg makes a face at him, ignoring the jealousy uncomfortably sandwiched between every word. Sometimes he thinks Tom forgets that Shiv, Roman and Kendall are his cousins, like a baby who lacks object permanence for Fortune 500 surnames. 

“Uh, not sure I would use that term but okay.” Greg tries not to pace. “Come on, this is what you wanted in the first place. To come clean, get it all out in the open. Like, it was the right thing to do, right?”

Tom raises his eyebrows, mouth falling open. “You are unbelievable.”

“What?”

“Jesus, Greg. I know it was you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were the one who told Gerri I wanted to hold a press conference, you piece of shit.” The hurt that lines Tom’s face catches Greg off-guard. Tom tries to hide it with a self-satisfied grin, seemingly for having figured it all out, but Greg can see it in his eyes, festering. “So, now you want to claim the moral high ground? You lied to me through your fucking teeth.”

Greg had almost forgotten that had happened. It feels like it was years ago, not months. He was a fish out of water back then—he still is—but he thought it might allow him some wiggle room, help him avoid being caught in the clean-up net, gutted, then served on a platter if cruises ever came out. He supposes he could play the “I was oblivious” card—because he was—but that might not fly considering he just blew a big, shiny rape whistle on Waystar senior management.

“Look, Tom, I’m sorry, like really, I am, but you told me not to trust anyone, least of all you, and then you trusted me? It was your own advice!” Greg raises his hands as if to deny culpability. “So, you know, that, uh, that sounds like a you problem, dude.”

Something shifts in Tom’s expression, the hurt turning to resentment. “Is this unassuming nature of yours, this fresh-scrubbed sincerity, all an act?” Tom asks, gesturing to Greg and all Brobdingnagian six feet and seven inches of him. “Have I been duped, bamboozled, hung out to fucking dry? Again?”

Greg knew Tom would be upset, but this is something else, something that runs deeper than possibly facing jail time. Tom has never been especially easy for Greg to read; he masks his sincerity with deceit and covers up his deceit with generosity, trying to play at the Roy game by Roy rules until his intentions pervert into some sick joke only he’s in on. 

Would you kiss me? What if I asked you to? What if I told you to?

At best, Tom is unpleasant to work for and borderline abusive to his employees. At worst, he’s strangely endearing. If Greg really wanted out from his clutches, he would have used the documents as leverage a long time ago. But Greg feels oddly attached to him still, like a pair of Siamese Twins held together by their liver: an organ that could be severed in two if need be, but Greg would likely miss the feeling of working so close to Tom by virtue of needing to keep their heads above the water before cruises sank them completely. 

“Tom, come on—I just—I want you on my side.” Greg feels pathetic as he inches closet to pleading with Tom, but for what? Forgiveness? Understanding? A second chance? He’s not so sure.

Tom scoffs. “Why? Because I present a tactical advantage? Did Kendall ask you to recruit me?”

Greg would be lying if he said he hadn’t considered nudging Tom over to the Kenstar Gregco team, but Kendall had never given him the rundown on how this was going play out, or which factions the family might divide into. Truthfully, Greg didn’t think that far ahead when Kendall laid out the initial plan. There had been no time for that. 

“Kendall has nothing to do with this,” Greg says, motioning between them. “The documents were a favour. I was just doing Kendall a favour.”

“Yeah, sure.” Tom grits his teeth. “You used me, Greg. You were a featherless chick, trying to fly from the nest, and I took you under my wing! Now you want to significantly alter the pecking order?” He shakes his head. “All you Roys are the same. Like a piss of leeches in cashmere turtlenecks and cable-knit sweaters.”

Greg feels the urge to tell Tom he’s technically not a Roy, but it would be fallacious. Tom isn’t one either, not really. They’re both nameless actors on the outskirts of the freak show, one of them a clown that married into the circus, and the other a clown that has trace amounts of circus in his blood. This was their choice.

“I’m indebted to you, Tom, I really am.” Greg reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder. Even though they’re barely touching, he can feel his body heat radiating from beneath his primly ironed Oxford. “Look, what can I do?”

Tom goes quiet, glancing at where Greg has made contact. For a moment, Greg naively thinks they have reached some sort of understanding. His hopes are quickly dashed.

“Alright, Greg,” Tom says, his performative smugness returning. “You can tell me where Kendall is for starters.”

“Kendall?”

“Yes, Kendall. Come on, where is our quasi-Dmitri Karamazov? Has he gone AWOL or is he out roaming the streets covered in blood with three thousand rubles clutched in his tiny fist?”

Greg narrows his eyes at Tom, dropping his hand from his shoulder. “Okay—um—no? And I don’t know where he is. He kind of went dark on me.” 

“Oh, so you two are in cahoots but not really in cahoots?”

Greg ignores how pleased Tom sounds. “Is everyone back yet?”

“We flew in a couple of hours ago.”

“And?”

“Oh, they’re beyond pissed. Your balls will be in a little brass box on Logan’s desk come morning.” 

“Makes sense, I guess,” Greg says but he doesn’t really believe it. Tom is just playing the game again, trying to intimidate him with lowbrow banter fit for any fraternity hazing ritual. It only signifies that Greg has passed the threshold of what is expected of him again because, in actuality, Logan is in a worse spot than anyone. Except maybe Kendall who has to deal with the consequences of putting him there. “So, where do you stand? In all of this.”

Tom snorts, but he looks unsure. “Oh, please. Stop with this which-side-are-you-on bullcrap. You sound like a fifth-grader picking teams for kickball.”

“Hey, I’m being serious. Like, what do you owe Logan? What do I owe him? I mean, I owe you more than anything,” Greg says and the compliment makes his back teeth ache. “I want you there—here—like, I want you to play on my team. Or you could, maybe, play both sides. You know, do a little undercover. It could be like a James Bond, Q type situation.”

“Greg, you’re being ridiculous.” 

“How? How is that ridiculous?”

Tom just shakes his head. The sadness Greg had taken note of before returns to his face. Greg knows Tom has a responsibility to Shiv, and whichever way Shiv goes he has to follow. Greg was just hoping their alliances had yet to be decided, but it sounds like she has made up her mind, so Tom has too. No game plan, no strategizing, no conspiratorial comradery. Greg feels stopped in his tracks, pushed to the outskirts by someone who has always tried to bring him in.

Tom heads towards the door, removing his phone from his back pocket. “Keep in touch.”

It sounds like a threat and a promise rolled into one.

[primehorded]

Biomechanical Horde

I came into watching She-Ra as someone pure and untainted by the old series. Everything I learned about the characters and the universe, I learned from this show, and I wanted to write a breakdown of all the is-he-a-robot-is-he-an-alien evidence we see from Hordak, his brothers, and Big Brother himself, Horde Prime. (IDK if it was in the original but - Big Brother is watching, big brother sees all...inch resting and not at all political. Insert eye emoji)

FIRST we meet Hordak. Hordak appears to be a humanoid of no specified race, sharing some attributes with other races depicted in the show, but having some characteristics reminiscent of a robot. He has hair, he has ears that move and reflect his moods, similar to Double Trouble and Catra in that regard.

He also seems to have some proponents that are distinctly unnatural-looking. There isn’t enough detailing to be quite sure - no metallic glint on his skull-shaped face, for instance. Yet his eyes very distinctly to glow with light, even in darkness, and he has markings on his face and neck that could be where plates of metal/whatever unnatural material might meet, seams between the different parts and pieces he is made up of. However, these neater lines that look like plate seams also flow neatly into curved lines indicative of more natural-looking facial features. 

He has very sharply defined cheek-hollows the same darker grey as his neck - but also going into his ears, which  do not seem mechanical. 

Then we later start to get a better idea of what Hordak is, when Entrapta walks in on him changing (tee-hee). Here his unnaturally white skin seems to be changing color, affected by his declining health, the dark blue spreading like tissue damage. He also is physically frail and dependent on clothing engineered to hold him together and allow him to function. Also, he’s in a halter top here. You’re welcome.

After Entrapta nurses him back to consciousness, he admits to her that he is a clone, and reveals a series of pods where more clones seem to be growing. He says he was created with a defect, and cast out because of it. It is unclear if the clones are still growing or if they were failed experiments, but I’m leaning towards failed experiments. It is also not specified if Hordak was intending to clone himself in order to add to his army, or if he was trying to create a new body to somehow transfer his own consciousness into later. Horde Prime is shown to have gone through many vessels himself, and also states his brothers “lend their life force to him” so that he can live indefinitely. Considering how expendable Horde Prime’s “little brothers” are to him, it seems doubtful that he would even bother allowing them their own indefinite lives through some sort of life-force taking or vessel changing. There is a possibility that Hordak might know a little bit about how Horde Prime’s process of doing so works, seeing as he seemed to be a clone closer to Horde-Prime before his defect was discovered. We are not given any clear answers on this. (I tried to find a cap of Hordak’s attempted clones but typing in anything like “Hordak’s Clones” into the search engine didn’t work cuz, ya know)

The only creation he seems to have successfully cultivated is the imp, pictured above in the lower right-hand corner. The imp also seems to have some biological properties - ears, hair, even eyebrows, as well as a distinct nose shape and seemingly natural wings. Flesh wings. Not metal wings or whatever. I don’t like referring to stuff as “flesh” though, my overlord says it really blows my cover. The imp definitely has mechanical properties as well though - glowing eyes similar to Hordak’s and, most notably, the ability to kind of tape-record things he can hear. When he catches Catra sharing some secrets and brings them back to Hordak, he doesn’t repeat them as if remembered or even imitate them, but just opens his mouth for the duration, like to allow access to a speaker in the back of his throat, and a tinny voice-recording of Catra’s voice can be heard. He also uses this ability to mock Hordak, because he’s a little asshole. Otherwise, the Imp doesn’t speak, other than a few vague noises like hissing. Do we ever find out what happens to the imp? I feel like we don’t. Rip

Entrapta creates a new kind of suit for Hordak, this time built like an exoskeleton to allow him to move and function beyond the ability and energy his original body can give anymore. It functions like part of his body, but isn’t surgically connected to him or anything. At least, that we see. Entrapta do be a freak like that tho. 

When we finally meet Horde Prime, he too seems to share a mix of biological and mechanical aspects. He has the same snow-white skin, with markings that could resemble creases between plates/materials. He also has glowing eyes, as do his other clones, but he has white pupils that show in any body he inhabits when he moves his control/consciousness, as he seems to be able to fluidly among his clones and anyone chipped.

He has a few attributes that his clones do NOT share. He has extra eyes on his right side, with pupils of their own that are often looking other directions. This is the only part of him that is not symmetrical, and all of his clones are created and dressed in symmetrical clothing and features. He also has metal finger attachments on his index-fingers, which is very sexy but seems to cover a finger rather than replace them. 

The other attribute he has that none of his other clones bear is them GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS LOCS. I mean I’ve heard of cyber locks, but this is ridiculous. Bad joke. At the crown of his head, his hair appears white, the same as his skin and the hair on the heads of all of his clones. There appears to be two beads or sections, one on each side at the parts of his hair that frame his perfect evil face. Further down though, the pseudo-dreads turn a medium grey, and then are capped off with sharp tips that DO reflect light the same way metal drawn in the show does. So do the metal creases under the tops of his shoulders - cheeky off-the shoulder armor, or metal joint? 

He also has the ability to travel in the hive-mind network of every chipped being (including his clones), and access information like a file. Entrapta later “hacks” it like a software. Can you uninstall Horde Prime? Does he have ad-blocker?

We also see him utilize an unspecified green liquid, a pool of which he uses to make Hordak “pure”. Hordak alights in sparks when he enters it, like a toaster in a bathtub. This obviously effects him though in a very natural physical way, crying out in pain, and Horde Prime remarks that his suffering is necessary for his purity. If he was just throwing some water on him to short out his mechanical processors for a HARD hard reboot, he wouldn’t have any reason to have this lime green pool of...whatever. And whatever this substance is, it’s important enough to be the only color in or on Prime Horde or any of his clones. I’m gunna call it Horde Juice. It’s not the quenchiest.

Back to the hair. His “hair” is kept back and tied out of the way for most of the time, except for in the finale, when we see it being used to kind of funnel the Horde Juice straight into his brainicals. Horde Prime’s hair tubes connect into his back, with a few pieces left down cuz he’s a stylish ho. Now you can see very clearly some of the locs are actually CLEAR TUBES that only appeared light grey against his dark grey (skin?) and now they are pulsing with Horde Juice. However, we can ALSO very clearly see that not every tendril of his hair is alight with The Juices, indicating that some part of his hair are just that - hair, like his clones. It also has lit up a technical looking pattern along some creases in his body. His arms, his neck. His boobs.

There isn’t really a good point I can end this on, other than to say I thought it was a really creative and interesting design that was incredibly effective. It’s not easy to make a universe make sense with advanced futuristic weaponry and also medieval fantasy magic. The amazing design of the characters, weapons, architecture, and fighting styles made it look seamless, and Hordak’s design in particular really lead well up to introducing an insanely high-tech spaceship full of mind-controlled clones, dropped into a world filled with and dependent on magic. This was a spotlight specifically on Hordak/Horde Prime’s...race? Race.

I’m really curious for more information about the universe, even though from what I’ve heard the new She-Ra has changed a lot and the old She-Ra didn’t much prioritize world-building specifics. If I learn some more looking some stuff up on this series as well as the old one, and anyone is interested, I’ll add a part two and link it below!

[chloemill]

On threesomes, tacos and The Office

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? (-me, every single goddamn blog I write) I’m not going to wax poetic on my lack of motivation because, well, I do that every single post and also every single day in the prison of my own mind BUT! Here I am. Let’s just get on with it.

As most of you know, I am single. [thunderous applause from the crowd] please… please, thank you so much, please let me finish. After a solid consecutive five-ish years spent in back-to-back relationships, before which I’d been a crippingly insecure college student content to desperately make out with whatever pasty and emotionally stunted upperclassman would squeeze my boob, I’d never really dipped my toes into the dating app world until the last seven months or so. And I have to say: I am… well? I’m disgusted. It’s no secret that women on the apps match with exponentially more men than the other way around, and given what I’ve seen of men’s profiles, it’s not hard to see why. Men are out here in the virtual streets acting like goddamn buffoons and still expecting sex to be bestowed upon them. It’s a travesty, and nevertheless, it persists. It’s often said you need to be the change you wish to see in the world. So I’ve decided to take matter into my own hands. I present to you: my definitive list of dating app pet peeves.

- The Office quotes. I have to get it out of the way first, or it’ll gnaw at my soul. We all love The Office. It’s one of the greatest comedies of all time. So great that every fucking idiot this side of the Mississippi lists it as one of their top three TV shows. Cut it the fuck out. No mention of it! No “assistant to the regional manager”, no “looking for the Pam to my Jim”, no “Employed at: Dunder Mifflin”, please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up. At this point I’d honestly rather see a blurry, unhygienic and unsolicited dick pic than read “Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica” in some mediocre looking Brayden’s profile. Oh, and if you think you’re off the hook because you quoted Parks and Rec instead? You’re fucking not, Tanner. Watch another show.

- “Kid not mine!!!!!!” Yes, my instinct was that a 24-year-old named Brett on a dating app created for the primary purpose of fucking strangers was going to upload a picture of his infant child as his main photo for which to attract female mates. I’m glad you clarified

- Grown, of age, adult, matured, human men using Snapchat filters and/or boomerangs. This might be the biggest one of all, and that’s saying something. A photo of a man with an artificially round cherub face and giant virtual sparkly anime eyes or, even worse, a squinty boomerang trying desperately to accentuate his weak jawline… sends a chill down the spine. I hate to perpetuate gender roles, but I feel I’m justified in saying straight men aren’t allowed to use Snapchat filters. And boomerangs are only for hot girls making kissy faces and clinking their drinks together - at this point, it’s basically cultural appropriation to use them if you don’t fit that profile. Please, I beg of you, summon a shred of goddamn dignity from the depths of your broken soul and delete the boomerang.

- Jumping off of that last one: emoji use. Again, I mean, I hate to impose the confines of traditional masculinity on anyone, but the monkey-covering-his-eyes emoji has never helped anyone seal the deal. I mean that.

- “Not looking for anything serious” Chad, you have the Macklemore haircut and are wearing American flag swim trunks. I promise you, no one assumed you were looking for something serious

- Mentioning tacos/pizza/[insert delicious and popular food item here]. Look, I am a feminist, and in the spirit of equality I must point out that women pioneered this trend and still perpetuate it heavily - a pattern sociologists have termed the “touch my butt and feed me tacos phenomenon”. However, men have latched onto it in what I can only assume is an eleventh-hour attempt to draw in this demo. Please cease and desist. Everyone likes tacos, Caleb

- The other day I saw a guy on Hinge say his ideal dinner guest was Peter Kavinsky and I’ve never seen anyone else say that but honestly fuck you dude. Fuck you

- When guys are trying to stay anonymous and post a low-quality shirtless torso pic without showing their face…? Has anyone ever actually swiped right on that? I kind of respect the blind confidence, but still.

- ”[insert height here]… because I’ve been told it matters” stop with the qualifier, just tell us how tall you are and go, you coward. Honestly, I think the ideal male dating app profile for me is just 3 grainy vaguely attractive pictures and “6’3” as a bio.

- “In town for the weekend… show me around?” Firstly, that sounds absolutely harrowing. Secondly, I’d respect you more if you just said “in NYC for 24 hours and trying to get it in” than pretend like you’re searching for Sacajawea to show you the new world. It’s NYC. Google it

- Any of the following descriptors: easygoing, laid-back, outgoing, “loves travel/fine dining/yoga/hiking/Netflix/some other generic hobby white people like to talk about”, intelligent, chill, fun, low-key, “up for whatever”, hard-working, humble, etc. These are not bad qualities per se, but anyone who describes themselves as such is 110% guaranteed to be deeply boring.

- I was just swiping to find some more overused descriptive phrases and someone’s bio was “the Earth is cylindrical”… you have my attention, sir

- Guys with accents specifying in their profile that they have an accent. I cannot tell you what an enormous boner killer this is. Do you know what’s a huge turn ON? Being into a guy and then meeting him for the first time and realizing he has a sexy ass accent. You know what’s not a huge turn on? A random English dude you didn’t match with leaving you a 45-second Instagram voice DM (this is a thing somehow) in which he hits on you and then goes “oh… and yeah… I have an accent. Crazy, isn’t it?” Yes, this really happened. Still accepting thoughts and prayers.

- Couples looking for threesomes. This is a delicate process and making a joint profile with “she’s bicurious. He’s straight. We both like kissing girls. Looking for someone to explore with :)” is not only cringeworthy as all motherfuck, but completely ineffective. Listen, I get it. I get that after four years, Tommy and Kayleigh are trying to spice things up. Order a pair of fuzzy handcuffs on Amazon and leave me the hell out of it. Also - every single one of these couples has a very… wide male/female attractiveness margin. Kayleigh can hit me up on her own.

I’m going to stop here because I’m just making myself depressed at this point. It’s really a jungle out there. The truth of it is we’re all braver than the goddamn troops every time we swipe, and I salute each of you out there in the trenches with me. May your monkey emojis be infrequent and your threesome requests be infrequent-er! If worse comes to worse, there’s always arranged marriage.

[smoakmonster]

The Queen Identity

A/N: Well, at long last, my Olicity / Bourne Identity AU is finally complete! This is the longest and definitely most researched story I’ve written to date. That being said, there are still a few instances where I brushed over accuracy for the sake of maintaining the flow of the story. (I also drew inspiration from Knight and Day and Blindspot.) Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in this fic since the summer movie AU challenge from two years ago, and then after my recent fic announcement. I hope the wait has been worth it. This has been a privilege to write, so I hope you enjoy the journey, too! Special Thanks To: The darling @mel-loves-all for all of her kind words and cookies in gif form! *kiss emoji* Rated: Teen and Up Word Count: 25,959 (That’s right! Better strap yourself in, cause this is 25K words of pure, intense Oliver POV.) Read below or on AO3.

I’ve broken free from those memories I’ve let it go, I’ve let it go And two goodbyes led to this new life Don’t let me go, don’t let me go ~Let Me Go, Avril Lavigne

xxx

His first conscious thought is more of a feeling.

Cold. Searing cold.

The kind of cold that bites so potently it burns his skin raw.

His whole body throbs with aches--needles prickling at the ends of his fingers and toes; ice scraping along the inner walls of his lungs; razor wire wrapping around his joints and squeezing, splintering out along his back, startling his muscles awake.

He’s just barely cognizant enough to recognize the strange, wet sensation running down his spine. The slight yet acute paralysis in his hands and feet means he’s on the brink of frostbite. Slowly, perhaps too slowly, he realizes...he should be dead. He can feel his heart having trouble keeping areas beyond the chest cavity warm. Even as his body remains lethargic, even as his head grows heavy with a cloud of nausea, his mind begins to rise and stay alert. Gradually, his ability to inhale the rough air becomes more bearable. Gradually, the shock of waking up wears off.

Sharp movement catches him off guard. His insides shiver against a new, foreign chill, one that’s keenly different than before. This chill penetrates deep into his flesh. But some internal force--whether sheer exhaustion or intense self-control--keeps him from stirring, even as metal prongs slice through his upper back, tearing his flesh apart. It’s only when the prongs begin to retract that he starts--not from the pain, but from the distinct awareness of someone pulling something out of his body.

The relief of having a toxin removed is instant and overwhelming, and he can feel himself already deflating when...

A small metallic object clangs loudly against a tin tray.

And he comes unhinged. He doesn’t think. He just acts, the numbing cold forgotten. His mind is now fully caught up.

He’s off the table with untapped fervor and pushing the large, would-be surgeon up against the nearest wall in two seconds, the stranger’s throat already smashed against his forearm. He can see the man’s terror in the whites of his eyes. Good. He should be afraid. He doesn’t know what he wants to do to this man first--a litany of death blows rolls through his head like a rolodex. Strangling. Stabbing. Neck snapping. And as the brief moments fly by, he’s already crossing unfeasible options off his list.

The ground beneath his feet suddenly sways, and he quickly adjusts his weight to maintain his footing. Even with a series of equipment laid out on a table before him, stabbing isn’t a safe bet in these conditions. Not that it matters. He doesn't need tools. He is the weapon.

“Please,” the man gasps, struggling for air. “I am a friend.”

Friend? The word sounds alien to him, so it gives him pause, his grip against the man’s throat loosening ever so slightly. He doesn’t know much about himself, but he knows he doesn’t have friends. The longer he stares into the man’s terrified yet sincere eyes, the more he begins to wonder...why exactly is he so angry? Why does he feel threatened by someone not fighting back? Other than, he’s very particular about what it is he puts into his body and whose hands he allows to touch him. He doesn’t trust this stranger, but he also doesn't trust himself.

“Who are you?” the man barely gets out, now that he’s able to speak.

He hesitates again, his grip loosening even more. He tips his head, expecting the answer to be right there at the forefront of his mind and yet...there’s nothing but a blank, dark canvas. He spends the next eight seconds digging, scouring into the recesses of his head for the last thing he can recall. And the last thing he can recall is waking up on that table. No matter how hard he tries, everything else--everything before this moment--comes up empty.

He swallows, an iron weight sinking into his gut. “I don’t know,” he answers honestly, unsure about the sound of his own voice.

The man gives him an odd look, before glancing briefly to his chest. “You are from Moscow, my friend?”

He frowns as he realizes the man has changed languages. He opens his mouth to answer, but for a moment all he manages is a heavy sigh. “I don't...I don't...” he tries to explain, matching the stranger’s speech, replying in the tone he knows he’s supposed to. Somehow, he distinguishes the seamless transition from Russian to English, and yet he can’t even recall his own name.

Alarmed, he releases the man, his arm dropping to his side as he takes a step back, trying to process what is happening to him. He scrapes a hand through his hair, attempting (and failing) to ignore the way his heart kicks into a higher gear. He feels himself heaving. He thinks he might be going into a panic, but just like with everything else, his body already seems to know how to combat the terror.

As though trapped in a trance, his legs robotically propel him forward. He finds a chair and plops down into it, finally taking a moment to survey the small, grimy, windowless room for the first time. Instinctively he spots the only exit, a small ladder maybe twenty feet away. He notes the small dips in gravity below his feet, the way the entire room tilts and rocks. He’s on a boat, and for some reason that thought causes his stomach to flip, sending another unexpected wave of nausea through him.

He hates boats. He doesn’t understand why that is, either, but he just does.

A keen shiver rakes through him--whether it’s from the knowledge of where he is or the fading adrenaline or just the fact that he’s still so cold, he doesn’t know. He picks up movement in his periphery and instantly stills. When he sees the man he attacked holding out a gray hoodie to him, like a kind of peace offering, he feels himself slowly calming down again.

Cautiously, he takes the hoodie, nodding once with gratitude. “Thank you,” he says in English. He winces through the entire process of putting the hoodie on, his back muscles stretching with agony. If the two bullets nestled in the tray on the makeshift operating table are any indication, he was clearly shot at some point. But that’s not his biggest concern at the moment. There are too many other important questions nagging at him, so he asks one he knows this stranger can answer. “Where am I?”

The man hesitates, assessing him with a concerned eye, as though expecting him to snap again at any moment. To be honest, he’s not entirely sure what might set him off again either. So he tries to relax his posture, to silently assure the man he has no intention of hurting him again. At least for right now he has no intention.

“We are roughly eight hundred kilometers west of Japan. In the North China Sea,” he tells him through his thick Russian accent.

He does the math in his head, easily converting to miles. Again, he doesn’t understand why he needs to know the distance in miles, but he feels more comfortable that way. Like knowing miles is his default.

“What happened to me?” It takes everything in him to sound as casual as possible, as though his entire past, present, and possible future doesn’t depend on the stranger’s response.

The older man huffs once in what he assumes is meant to be a chuckle. “I was hoping that you would tell me.” The man then moves across the room to a small table housing a world map. Stiffly, he rises from the chair and follows him. “My crew and I found you yesterday, floating in the waters here.” He points to a patch of blue along the southeast coast of Japan.

After introducing himself as Viktor, the man spends the next half hour reiterating all that he can, telling how he and his crew pulled him out of the stormy waters, how they found him because he had a flashing red beacon light strapped to his chest. He listens in rapt attention to all the details Viktor so graciously supplies, hoping, waiting for some sliver of recollection to return to him, but his mind remains a blank slate. The list of things he knows about himself is only as long a Viktor’s exposition. There are no papers, no forms of identification, nothing among his few recovered effects that could lead to figuring out who he is. It’s like he never existed before today. With every lack of fact, he feels his worry grow.

That is until Viktor shows him one last piece of evidence.

Viktor drops a small metallic capsule into his open palm. He raises one questioning eyebrow, to which Viktor calmly replies with, “I found that in your hip.”

Whatever look he shoots Viktor has the man shaking his head. “I know. I do not understand it, either. This technology is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is too small for bullet yet perhaps too large for tracker.”

“How did you know it was there?”

“I recognized the surgical scar,” says Viktor. “I’ve seen similar stitching during the war.”

He wants to pester him about which war, but his mind makes a different and seemingly more important connection altogether. “You think I’m some sort of spy?”

Viktor shrugs. “I said nothing.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The grim silence that follows is pressing, more tension-filled than relieving. Finally, Viktor speaks again. “All I am saying is that a man who has been through as much as you have and survived clearly has something to live for.”

He wants to argue, because he seriously doubts that. But he’s become far too enraptured by the curious little object in his hand. He runs the thin object between his fingers for a while, until he catches a slight lift in the texture along the surface. Somehow he knows to tap the near-invisible button. As soon as his thumb rests over the button, a laser shoots across the room, displaying a first real, tangible truth along the wall. The laser emits a bank name and a routing number. And it’s based in Hong Kong.

Finally.

One answer. One clue. One starting point.

He’ll take it.

As much as he wishes that visualizing a proper location on a map or seeing a series of numbers would trigger something meaningful inside him, he’s still feeling rather uncertain. After a while, the panic faintly subsides, but the mental emptiness lingers, as vast and restless as the nighttime sea.

xxx

Languages roll off his tongue.

Every evening he speaks to the wanderer in the mirror in a new vernacular. French. Greek. German. He tries to marvel more than tremble at the way his mind easily makes the jump from one language to the next. The act feels as natural as breathing to him. And yet, this face with tired eyes staring back at him is one he does not recognize. He doesn’t know how long he’s been growing this scruff or why those blue eyes seem so hollow.

He spends the next two and a half weeks assisting the crew with catching fish, practicing his Russian, though he really doesn’t need the practice. When he’s not sorting fish or reading all the books he can get his hands on or playing cards with the fellow crew--he’s a good poker player, he’s discovering, and the men don’t seem to appreciate his affinity for reading other people’s bluffs--he spends the majority of his time working out. He uses whatever equipment he can, slanted beams for pull-ups or lifting crates as makeshift weights; he usually exerts himself into exhaustion every evening just before sundown. He even offers to take on extra labor, because the exercise relaxes his mind. He’s starting to convince himself that this also aids with sleep. The constant activity is the only thing keeping him from going crazy in this confined space.

When he’s alone, he examines his body like a map, running his hands over each and every scar he has no recollection of receiving. He knows the long, diagonal stripe across his chest is from a knife wound. He knows the smaller dots on his shoulder came from a small caliber bullet. The spiraling red chain around his left hip clearly resembles teeth marks, from a shark, he guesses; and he wonders how he survived that. If the rough, pinkish blemishing is any indication, it happened long before his recent sea recovery. Maybe this has something to do with why he detests boats so much.

Three of the men on the crew recognize the star tattooed on his chest as symbol of the Russian mob, an organization based out of Moscow, which explains why Viktor initially thought he was from there. He may still be and perhaps only learned to disguise his dialect to sound more foreign than he actually is.

But these are mere guesses. Questions only lead to more nagging questions, and he still doesn’t have a solid answer to any of them. He has no idea when or where he got any of his markings. He has no memory of the agony that must have been inflicted upon receiving them either. Maybe that’s one benefit to losing your mind. You forget the pain.

Mostly, he feels callous and cut off, as though he’s a ghost of a man merely existing, someone with no past and no future. While the other men aboard often speak of home, his heart feels nothing at the mention of the word, other than disappointment. He can’t help but wonder what he’s missing. Is there anyone out there who misses him?

He doesn’t belong with these men. But he suspects he doesn’t really belong anywhere else either.

Since he has no name, Viktor takes to affectionately calling him “friend.” But the rest of the crew don’t seem to care for that fonder title, referring to him instead as “the strange one” or “the hood guy,” since he’s always wearing the gray hoodie. What the others say in jest he considers complimentary. After all, the hoodie Viktor lets him keep is the first official gift he’s ever been given, so of course he wears it all the time. He treasures it, because the item remains his only connection to human life outside the wasteland that is his mind.

One day he’s studying the four Chinese symbols stacked along his abdomen when Viktor enters the room. He can feel his presence behind him, and for a moment he has to remind his reflexes not to react. This is a friend. He doesn’t have to fight.

He runs a calloused hand over his stomach, fingers rubbing each symbol in circles, trying to pull memories out of the black ink.

煉

獄

善

行

“Your tattoo. What does it say?” Viktor asks.

“It’s Mandarin,” he answers automatically. He touches the top two symbols, meaning Purgatory, followed by the bottom two, meaning good deeds. A phrase suddenly comes to mind, a connection he hadn’t made before. He hears himself saying, “One's good deeds are only known at home. One's bad deeds far away.” He chants it like a prayer, like he’s said this proverb before, like it’s a code for something.

“What does that mean?”

He just sighs, shaking his head. “I have no idea.”

The constant not knowing is becoming almost familiar territory for him.

xxx

The morning they make port in Hong Kong is a dreary one, with dense fog settling in. But he’s grateful to finally have solid ground beneath his feet. For the first time, really. He feels more sure of himself on land.  

Saying goodbye to Viktor proves to be more difficult than he anticipates, with Viktor calling him friend to the very end, shaking his hand and wishing him luck. Viktor insists on “loaning” him some money. While it’s not much, it’s enough to get him a train to the part of city housing his supposed bank account. He still has no idea who he is or where he came from or why he survived, but it’s nice knowing he does have one friend in the world.

With the fishing vessel behind him, the entire world in front of him feels all the more numbing and bleak and foreign. And yet, what other choice does he have? He can’t stay hidden aboard a boat the rest of his life, nameless and anonymous, always wondering what the routing number that came out of his hip means. He needs answers. He needs to try.

Opting to save his small stack of cash, he decides to walk the long route to the bank, and it barely takes him two hours to reach the lofty skyscraper. It's only as he's passing through the main glass doors that his mind drafts a plan. As soon as he's inside the sleek, modern lobby, he immediately makes note of each and every camera in the room, the ones placed well within anyone's line-of-sight and those more discreetly disguised, tucked away in corners or camouflaged as art. He counts no less than five security guards as he casually makes his way toward the nearest open teller.

When the middle-aged woman behind the counter asks him a question in Chinese, it only takes a moment for his brain to click through the right gears. He slips naturally into the appropriate dialect. He really shouldn’t be surprised by that ability at this point.

“Welcome to the Hong Kong Banking Firm. How may I help you?” the teller asks him sweetly in formal Chinese, almost robotically, though he can already spot the wheels of speculation churning behind an otherwise calm persona. And truth be told, she’s probably right to be a little wary of him. One brief glance around a grand but mostly deserted lobby informs him that he’s not a part of the usual demographic. He knows his clothes are conspicuously casual and carry a lingering spoiled fish aroma with them.

What kind of life did he lead that sent him to this place?

Doubt starts to creep in. Maybe it was a mistake to come. Of course, even he does belong here, like everything else, he just doesn’t remember.

Feigning more confidence than he feels, he approaches the counter swiftly but quietly. “I would like to view my account,” he answers the teller.

“May I have your account number and name on the account?”

He can’t give her both, because he doesn't know both. So he gives her what he does know, effortlessly writing down the 15-digit number he memorized two weeks ago. He hopes it will be enough. It has to be enough.

When she asks him to verify his identity, he doesn’t even falter. “The last time I was here, I was not required to give my name up front,” he lies smoothly, finding himself easily slipping into a cool, authoritative role. When he senses that she maybe doesn't quite believe him yet, he decides to flash her an easy and--what he hopes appears to be--a natural smile. The task is up to him to convince her that he does belong here.

And it works.

After a moment, she takes the bait, nodding once before proceeding to enter his number into the small computer. A strangely warm sensation rushes through him at his success. He feels...powerful, like he can persuade anyone to do anything, like he’s done this sort of easy manipulation before many times. Whoever he is...he knows how to charm people, so that’s something.

His secret elation only lasts a second, however, because whatever the teller reads there on the screen suddenly has her eyes widening, though she quickly tries to recover and maintain a casual expression. Quietly, the teller excuses herself, escaping to the back room, leaving him alone. Except he’s not alone. He can feel those cameras burning into his back now, and it takes every muscle of self-control that he possesses not to turn and look. If he’s busted, then he can’t afford to give away his face. Not now.

He’s considering leaning over the counter to see what she saw, to prepare to make a run for it.

Except the teller’s coming back, this time walking around the counter, followed by an older gentleman dressed in an expensive business suit, possibly the manager himself.

What could possibly have been on that screen? Is he that much of a threat? He swallows deeply but otherwise doesn’t let his concern show. If this doesn’t work...he has nothing. He’s already plotting a swift escape, when the man stops and bows once, out of respect. Instinctively, he bows back.

“Forgive me for not coming to meet you directly. We did not expect to see you again so soon, sir.”

“Yes, my trip took an unexpected turn,” he plays along, not missing a beat.

The manager accepts his flat excuse without demanding further explanation. So clearly he has been here before, and this man seems to recognize him. Whether he’s truly an intimidating person or the local culture demands a solemn timidity towards clients, he doesn't know. But he suspects it’s a bit of both.

Still, they maintain a rigidly amiable interaction, as the manager escorts him to a private elevator near the back of the bank, decidedly out of the camera’s eye. With every step, he can feel his heart beating a little bit faster, a little more anxious to finally learn the truth. It’s the longest elevator ride of his life. It’s also the first elevator ride of his life.

When the elevator finally stills and the ornate, reflective doors slide open, he comes to yet another test. A large, black screen on a pedestal waits near the entrance. He stares at it skeptically, while keeping his facial expressions in check.

“Place your hand on the reader, sir. To verify your identity. Strictly routine.”

He complies, splaying his calloused, worn fingers across the cool, onyx glass. His hand looks severely out of place there, too rough, too marred. He tries to relax as he waits for the scanner to finish. Lying is one thing. Knowing a random account number could be considered lucky. But having to prove his identity--even though he doesn’t know it yet--is something else entirely. Everything rides on this fingerprint analysis...his name and his future.

The machine finally stops scanning, giving off a slight ding, and the box turns a bright neon green in affirmation.

He releases a heavy breath. He’s passed all the checkpoints. He’s not a ghost after all.

Anyone can look like anyone. But a machine knows him. He has a permanent record.

If nothing else, this certainly confirms that. For some reason, a verified digital record of his existence strikes him as solid evidence, more so than a bank manager recalling his face.

And so he waits in a designated alcove, behind the curtain, like a sinner in a confessional. All his tightly wound nervous energy finally comes pouring out, as he fidgets and paces and bounces his knee and cracks his knuckles. All this waiting and finally his gnawing speculations will be answered. It seems to take an eternity for the man to bring in his safe deposit box.

When the box finally does arrive, everything in him stills...not with serenity but with a sense of foreboding. He gulps as he stares at that sleek, silver box. His Pandora’s box, he thinks. While he still doesn’t know much, oddly enough pieces of Greek mythology keep coming back to him, like broken shards of glass forming a mosaic. He just has no idea how to put the pieces of his life together.

This box could be his only key to freedom.

Or maybe it’s a curse, a trap designed to ensnare him further.

What if he’s lost his mind for a reason? What if he doesn’t want to know what kind of man he really is? As evidenced by his interactions with the bank staff and their reactions to him, he’s clearly a person of wealth and power. Does he have a prominent family out there looking for him? Or worse...what if no one’s looking? What if no one cares enough to find him? What if he’s come all this way only to hate himself when he walks out? What if…?

On and on, the nagging flood of demands beat down his self-esteem.

Until he can’t take the uncertainty any longer. The contents of one narrow metal box have to be better than the suspended hell of never knowing. He needs to know who he is.

Slowly, carefully he opens up his time capsule. He pulls back the lid and stares and studies and tries to make sense of an entire history of an outlander. Except that outlander is him.

Everything in the box seems to serve a purpose, but nothing is personal. An expensive, cumbersome watch that ticks off the wrong time by an hour. An assortment of tools and technological gadgets. Credit cards and two small stacks of money--one is United States currency and the other he assumes is the local Chinese currency. Renminbi. His mind pulls that word out of the abyss.

Finally, his eyes settle on the navy blue passport resting in the middle of the box. It reads in English.

Surname / Nom / Apellidos QUEEN Given Name / Prénoms / Nombres OLIVER Nationality / Nationalité / Nacionalidad UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Date of birth / Date de naissance / Fecha de nacimento 16 MAY 1985 Place of birth / Lieu de naissance / Lugar de nacimento STARLING CITY, USA

He studies the passport for a long moment, letting the words in ink slowly wash over him.

He takes a deep breath, and then begins, “My name...is Oliver Queen.”

He tests the words out, waiting for the name to ring true in his ears. While four syllables do not exactly settle in his chest with the same certainty that gravity settles his feet to the earth, this name is a start. He allows himself a small smile, because he’s not completely lost after all. This picture is proof.

While the face in the faded photograph is his own, he looks significantly younger than he is now. Lighter, slicked-back hair. A clean-shaven face. Eyes that seem too dark to be happy and too hollow to be genuine. He looks...kind of like a serial killer.

As soon as he thinks it, a knot settles in his chest, like a key locking into place. The thought of him being a serial killer feels...not as impossible as it probably should. His body doesn’t rebel against the idea the same way his mind does. Instead, when he steals another glance at the gun, an eerily familiar sensation comes over him.

He thinks about Viktor. His very first reaction--his instinct--to human contact after waking up had been to kill. And he had almost succeeded in ending a friend’s life--

He shuts his eyes and shakes his head, attempting to shake away the rising panic.

After what feels like several minutes, maybe hours...when he finally opens his eyes again, he catches his right thumb twitching, circling and circling around his index finger, almost desperately, with a will of its own. The hand seems to taunt him. He has to concentrate, to will himself to stop moving, and as soon as he thinks it, he does; yet he hadn’t even realized his hand had been moving in the first place.

It’s another sign that his distress goes so much deeper than a simple memory wipe. While his mind may be a wasteland, his body remains on edge, brimming with uncharted habits he has trouble keeping up with, like this body belongs to someone else, someone who doesn’t exist anymore.

As though to taunt him further, his body rebels against him, and his hand starts to shake uncontrollably, causing the passport to slip from his grasp. He tries to take a moment to just breathe, to identify what the trigger was amidst the pulsing panic within his veins. But, as usual, he has no idea where to begin.

Needing a clean distraction, with a trembling hand, he reaches back into the box, aimlessly brushing the smaller items around, until his fingertips hit a latch he hadn’t seen before.

As he lifts the latch and carefully removes the top tray, his heart races...and plummets just as quickly at the contents of the hidden chamber beneath the top tray.

Stacks and stacks of other foreign bills, totaling thousands. Possibly millions. A dozen or so passports from various countries. Blueprints to a large yacht. And there, tucked in the corner, the outline of a small revolver, concealed in a bag.

He stills upon seeing it, like the weapon calls to him.

While he may not remember much, a chill runs down his spine at the site of so many passports. This safe deposit box is… not normal, is it?

On a whim--because that’s really all he has to base his decisions on anyway--he picks up the top passport from the pile. Thomas Merlyn. CANADIAN. He reaches for the next book in the pile. And the next. And the next. Andreas Diggle. GERMAN. Alexi Leonov. RUSSIAN. Name after name stamped next to the same hard and hollow face he’s slowly learning to call his own.

So which one of these names belongs to him really? Who is he? What is he?

He had come here in search of answers, and instead he feels...so much more helpless and unsure.

The longer he lingers here, the more unsettled he grows. In a panic, he reaches for the empty bucket bag sitting innocently in the corner and begins shoving the entire contents of the box into it.

He tries to maintain a calm demeanor as he exits the bank, but he can practically feel the bank security personnel watching him keenly, can hear the minute shrills of them whispering to one another. As he leaves, he can feel the cameras inside and outside burning holes into his back. As he turns the corner, he knows he’s being followed.

He doesn’t know where he’s going now, but he senses he can’t stop moving.

Is this how the world was supposed to work? Or does everyone appear this strange only to him?

The longer he walks, the more his whole body tightens. His pace quickens. On edge, he taps into some unknown athletic training, channeling all of his fear into a single act. He does what he somehow instinctively knows he does best.

As soon as he hears the police sirens, he runs.

xxx

He weaves through a local park a couple of blocks later. Sending a silent apology to Viktor, he ditches his reliable gray hoodie on a nearby park bench--hopeful that maybe the item can be as useful to someone else as it has been to him--which leaves him in a thinner blue shirt. The bitter cold nearly knocks the wind out of him, but he presses on. He's used to being cold.

He realizes very quickly that as much as he wishes to lose himself within the crowds of Hong Kong, demographically he does stand out. He cannot run forever.

Which means he needs to hide in plain sight.  

He turns a random corner, ducking his head again to avoid the litter of cameras along the street. As he allows himself to get swallowed up in a throng of pedestrians, he quickly glances around, searching, plotting his best escape strategy.

And then his eyes land on a stale concrete building on the other side of the road bearing in big letters the words CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Something stirs inside him at seeing those words. Despite the fact that the building resembles a prison more than a sanctuary, surrounded by tall white fences and containing barred and small windows, he knows he needs to go in there. If he’s truly an American, he should be safe on what is legally considered American ground.

Whether he’s truly an American or not, he whips out his U.S. passport and confidently shows it to the security guard, who waves him through without question. Once he’s inside the sharply quiet lobby, he lets out a breath of relief he didn’t realize he’d been holding, as he attempts to blend in like a mindless drone.

He's so intent on blending in that for once he lowers his guard just enough to be taken by surprise.

It's dangerous how little he sees her coming.

He blinks, and a flash of red suddenly crosses his path, almost running into him, her rapid heels punctuating the silence with an aggressive tap-tap-tap.

She doesn't even notice him.

In her flurry, a few pieces of paper slip from her grasp and flutter to the ground. He's already kneeling to pick up the documents--filled with equations and computer language he doesn't understand--before she turns around. When he looks up, his gaze locks with bright blue eyes behind sleek, elegant frames. Eyes that are both startled and somehow inviting.

He slowly extends his arm to give her back her papers, and she starts before taking them from his grasp.

“Thank you.”

He nods, as he slowly rises to his feet, with her watching him the whole time. He makes quick note of her black, decidedly feminine heels, her black-and-white polka top, and her vibrant red coat. She stands out like a rose in a desert.

She looks like she maybe wants to say more, but then she scurries away, her golden ponytail bouncing as she goes and takes her spot in front of the only open teller.

He lingers back in the crowd, but shifts his body just a little to follow her conversation. Even in the mass of people, her clear voice stands out, easy to recognize.

“Mr. Li, I know you have an important job to do here, but so do I. I mean, not here here--but I am the Vice President of applied sciences for a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, who are basically responsible for self-charging smartwatches. You wouldn't be able to tell time without me.”

“That may be, Miss Smoak, but I cannot allow you to travel without proper identification.”

“But I just told you who I am. All of my papers were lost. It’s my not fault my passport was stolen.”

“Then you need to speak to speak to Department of Transportation.”

The woman in red makes a noise he can only characterize as a pained whine. “I already spoke with the Department of Transportation, and they told me to talk to you--well, not you specifically, more like a general you.”

“Well, you will have to fill out the proper paperwork, and it will take thirty days to process--”

“Thirty days?! No no no no. I do not have thirty days. I need to be back in Starling City, United States, tomorrow afternoon.”

His heart beats wildly at the mention of Starling City. His supposed place of birth.

“This is the 21st century. And you’re telling me that I have to travel all the way to Beijing to sort this out?”

He follows her lively, though troublesome conversation with the teller for some time, watching with rapt attention as she talks with her hands in an animated way, so different than the calm manner of everyone else here, so effortlessly charming.

There's just something about her that leaves him feeling different. Intrigued. She's neither a threat nor a target nor a drone like the rest of the world. She's something else.

He stays fixed on her, until he senses a shift in power in the room. Just in time, his peripheral vision catches a guard coming towards him.

He’s been spotted.

Immediately, his body stills, every muscle tightening like a strained rubberband, preparing for the inevitable. He waits, frozen like a caught prey. The rest of the world fades into the background. Time slows as a guard whips out his handcuffs and calmly approaches him.

Slowly, he shifts his body away from the guard as he obediently raises his hands.

He’s drawn the attention of some of the crowd now, and there’s nowhere to run. He doesn’t have to look to feel additional guards coming at him from all sides.

At the last second he thinks, he could surrender. Tactically, maybe he should avoid causing a scene. He could let them take him...take him where, though? He has no idea, but something inside him also knows he can’t relinquish his control, even if what’s about to happen could get very ugly.

His mind wrestles with strategies for the span of about three seconds.

He’s seriously considering taking the easy way out...

But then the first guard lays a hand on his shoulder.

And his decision is made.

For once, he stops fighting the beast raging inside him, and gives himself over to instinct.

It’s like a switch goes off inside him. He doesn’t think. He just reacts, his body responding before he even has time to plot. His mind can barely keep up. He feels both out-of-control and yet perfectly in control at the same time.

He twists the guard’s arm and elbows him hard, just as another guard makes his approach from the front. He kicks him down.

Two more men come after him--armed--but the first security guard falls before he even has time to grab his weapon. He wrestles with the second guard in a suit, but he uses a trick he knows to easily snap the revolver out of his hands, throw him to the ground as well, and turn the weapon on both fallen men.

Now that the gun’s in his hands, the crowd goes wild, diving under tables, ducking behind counters, and racing out the doors.

But he doesn’t care about the crowd.

He turns around at the sound of calm, paced, well-tuned steps, only to find two more guards. He keeps the gun set before him.

Thankfully, the gun gives him power. The guards back away. The people stay on the floor, avoiding eye contact, trembling in fear. Already, he’s paying the price for unleashing the monster. And yet, something inside him likes it.

The people in the building part for him like ants in a rainstorm, and he makes a break for the nearest stairwell, dumping the gun into a trashcan on his way up. A loud alarm goes off, flooding the building with a different level of panic.

He races to meet the first guard who appears at the top of the stairs, throwing the man aside and down the stairs with ease. At the last second, he turns around and head back to where the man now lies on the stairs unconscious. He snags his radio.

With new access to radio intel on which route the reinforcements are taking, he presses on, leaving the eastern stairwell and moving to the western one down the hallway, all the while exerting an appearance of calmness to any passersby.

He keeps going until he reaches the top floor, casually kicking down the door that says DO NOT ENTER.

He makes it out onto a fire escape...with no ladder. His initial reaction is fear, but his reflexes quickly suppress that in favor of tactical scheming. With nowhere else to go, he hops on top of the railing and quietly scales the side of the building, all the while carrying a strange feeling that he's done this sort of thing before.

xxx

He stows himself away in the backseat of her car to avoid the police. And it's only as she’s opening the driver's door that he considers perhaps hiding here was not the best idea. Too late now, he thinks as she spins around, her blonde ponytail flipping over her shoulder.

“AHH!” she cries, twitching with surprise, her eyes going wide with terror. Her whole body stiffens, shifting as far back into the steering wheel--as far away from him--as she can go.

Fair enough.

Desperately, he holds up one hand in peace, trying to calm her fears, even though he realizes everything about this situation must be terrifying for her. “I'm not going to hurt you, Miss Smoak.”

She frowns, confused certainly, but he notices some of the tension leaves her shoulders. “How do you know my name?” she breathes. “And how did you get into my car anyway?”

He doesn't really want to respond to either of her questions, because he expects his answers will upset her more than appease her.

He just tilts his head a bit, studying her features intently, trying to figure out the best way to start this conversation, and then--like a flicker of lightning--he sees the moment of clarity spark behind her eyes, the moment she recognizes him. Even more startling is the way the rhythm of his heart changes at that, at the quiet ease of being recognized by someone at all.

Instinctively, like he's being pulled by some invisible thread, he shifts ever so slightly nearer to her.

And immediately she freezes. “Hey! Don't come any closer or I’ll...” She stops to quickly fiddle around in her purse, pulling out a small tub that she grips so tightly her knuckles start to turn white. “I will have to pepper-spray you,” she declares casually, tipping her head as she does, almost playfully, almost flirtatiously.

His lips twitch at that.

“What? I will,” she repeats a little louder, noticing his reaction.

He smiles briefly. “I believe you.”

Like a lion trying to befriend a lamb, he gentles his own breathing, giving her a minute to further adjust to his presence. When she realizes he's not going to attack her, she slowly lowers the pepper-spray.

“I need your help, Miss Smoak. We can help each other.”

“How?” She watches him skeptically, like he’s truly a puzzle that she wants to solve, those big eyes of hers filling with concern...but also curiosity. Following his training, he preys upon her curiosity.

“We both want the same thing--to get out of Hong Kong and fast.”

“Okay...” She narrows her eyes, clearly waiting for him to elaborate.

“I can pay you 30,000 yuan, if you buy me the next train ticket out of Beijing.”

She frowns, an adorable little crinkle forming between her eyebrows. “You do realize Hong Kong is not the same thing as a Beijing, right?”

He sighs, a little exasperated that the details she’s concerning herself with are not the priority. “What about 50,000 yuan?” he asks, sweetening the pot. “I can pay you 25,000 in cash. Right now.”

He opens his bag to show her, and watches her jaw drop with shock. “You’ll get another 25,000 after you buy me a ticket. And bring me to the train station,” he throws in at the end.

Something in his chest--something new and odd and wonderful--secretly delights in watching her eyebrows unclamp themselves and rise to meet her hairline. “Oh, now you want a lift? Do you know how much gas it's going to take to get to Beijing? Granted, this is a company rental, but I am about as eco-aware as the next person and--”

“And you’re already going there,” he finishes for her, startling her into silence once more. He suspects that doesn't happen a lot for her.

She looks him over again, those bright eyes silently demanding a question of him.

“I have ears.” He shrugs--shrugs. Where did that reaction come from? He may have lost his memories, but he knows enough about human behavior already to understand that a shrug is meant to exude casualty and friendliness--neither of which he has ever felt up until this point. Does he truly feel casual right now? Is that what this soothing, easy feeling like honey flowing through his chest means?

After some time, her posture softens, and she studies him with more sympathy than before. “Look,” she says gently. “Even if I were willing to help you--which, I'm not...I’m not saying that I am--all the money in the world is not going to fix this issue I have of needing appropriate documentation to travel--”

“I can get you the documents you need.”

“How?” Here comes that crinkle again.

“Trust me.”

“Can I trust you?” she asks, so faintly, he almost doesn’t catch it. And he starts, surprised and a little impressed by her ability to turn everything he does back around on him. She shouldn’t trust him, he knows. No reasonable person would. And yet, in spite of everything, as they watch each other in the silence, he can sense that she’s not entirely afraid of him, and he feels a very different kind of warmth come over him, realizing that his initial instincts about her are right. He can trust her.

He swallows, waiting until he has her full attention again. “Yes, you can trust me.”

Whatever she sees in his face, whatever minute trace of goodness he has in him, she must recognize it, because then she nods. “Okay so, you want to pay me to buy you a train ticket, bring you to the train station, and you’re going help me get home?”

“Yes.” He releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, feeling as though he’s passed some sort of test.

“Why? Why me? And why can’t you just buy it yourself?”

He’s genuinely unsure if she truly wants him to answer her first two questions. And he doesn’t know how to answer them either. So he settles for answering the one he definitively can.

“Because I can’t let anyone know that I’m here.”

“And you can’t take a plane because...?”

“Because they’ll be watching the planes.”

“Right. Of course.” She smacks her lips, making a slight pop. “Is this drug-related?”

“What?” He honestly had not seen that one coming.

She rolls her eyes, like this sort of thing happens to her every day. Does it happen to her? Is this what normal life is like? “Who am I kidding, it’s always drug-related.”

“This is not about drugs. This is about safety,” he replies.

“Said every addict ever...” she mutters, mostly to herself, he thinks. “Look, everything is online now, so technically you don’t need me to buy you a train ticket.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But either way, I do need access to your laptop.”

“How do you know I…? Do you have x-ray vision, too? Because you don’t exactly look like Superman.”

He frowns, not sure what she means by that.

“Oh, please tell me you know who Superman is.”

He grimaces. “Look, we really don’t have a lot of time here. Do you want to get home or not?”

She groans. “I am so going to regret this... Fine. It’s approximately a seventeen hour drive to Beijing, and that’s an optimistic estimate, so make yourself comfortable. But you stay back there. If you so much as move, I am stopping this car and throwing you out of it.”

He smiles, buckling his seatbelt like a good passenger. “Fair enough.”

“And make it 70,000 yuan,” she says while straightening the rearview mirror. “If I’m risking going to prison, it better be worth closer to 10,000 U.S. dollars.”

He frowns, intrigued and a little amazed by her quick math capabilities.

“What? I may be blonde, but I’m not that blonde.”

“Fine,” he agrees.

“Also, promise me you won't do to me what you did to those guards in there.” When he doesn’t immediately answer, she just fills in the silence for him. “I have ears, too, you know.” And this time she shrugs.

As they leave the parking garage and disappear into the herd of cars, he smiles briefly despite himself, regarding her in a new light. Felicity Smoak is tougher than she looks.

xxx

“So where are you headed?” she asks three hours into their drive, after one bathroom stop for her and a quick shift to the front passenger seat for him, because apparently she did not want to “feel like a chauffeur” the entire trip. And in truth, as much he knows it’d be best if he kept himself hidden, lying down on the back row, he prefers being closer to her, beside her, talking with her. Or at least, listening to her.

He quickly flips through his small stack of passports, choosing the one with the closest residential address. “Moscow,” he says curtly.

“So you’re from Russia?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.

She frowns, and he secretly relishes seeing that sweet, predictable little crinkle making an appearance on her forehead once more. “What do you mean you don’t know? Oh, are you an orphan or something?”

“Or something.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the long lost heir to the Romanov line, and I’m your Dimitri.”

“What?” He can tell by her tone that she’s teasing, but he honestly has no idea what she’s talking about.

“You’ve never seen...?” She stops herself, refocusing on the road with unusual zeal, as though she has to physically restrain herself from continuing to talk. “Never mind. It’s not...important.”

And yet, he can’t help but disagree. While everything she’s sharing may not be important in terms of life-and-death and espionage and...everything else he’s had to deal with these past few weeks, somehow everything she says feels important, feels better.

He clears his throat, realizing he needs be the one to break the silence this time. “So...” he starts casually. “You need to be back in the United States tomorrow?” he asks, wondering how he might nonchalantly bring Starling City into the conversation.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t take the bait that easily this time. Instead, he watches, intrigued, as her shoulders scrunch up with tension and obvious discomfort and her cheeks flame with a slight shade of red. “Um, well, actually I don’t have a conference with the board until next week.”

She pauses, gauging his reaction, as though she just confessed to mass murder. Suddenly, she starts talking very rapidly that there are times he has trouble keeping up with her.

“But I mean, I do still need to be back home asap”--his heart also does a strange flip when he realizes she referred to Starling City as home--“because I have so much research I still need to do. I have a powerpoint presentation to finish, and I need at least a couple of days to get settled back in my environment before you know...waltzing into a conference room and basically begging the shareholders to let us try to earn a decent profit overseas without firing people.”

She huffs, effectively ending her rant.

“So you lied,” he surmises.

She laughs, giving him a strange look. “Really? Out of all of that, all you can say is...” She shakes her head. “Yeah. Yeah, I lied.”

“Well, you certainly fooled me.”

“Really? Cause I could barely convince myself to go through with it. I felt like I was gonna throw up the whole time. I’m not...I don’t want you to think that I’m someone who just does this on a regular basis.”

He frowns. “This?”

“You know, illegal activities.” She whispers it, like someone else besides him might hear her. He can’t help but smirk at little at her concerned tone. Of all the people he had to choose, it had to be someone like her, someone so...pure. “I mean, there was this one really stupid thing I did in college with my boyfriend--oh, not like that,” she finishes hastily.

He’s not really sure what that means, but judging by the way the pink in her face darkens and starts to spread down her neck, clearly whatever she’s inadvertently implying makes her...uneasy. Somehow though, her carefree, flustered nature makes her all the more endearing.

As though he needed the reminder, she says, “I’m not really sure why I feel the need to tell all of this to a complete stranger. I mean, it’s not every day that I get accosted by men to do odd favors for them for money.”

He swallows. Oh, he understands that comment, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing.

Her eyes go wide, even as she blatantly avoids looking at him. “Just ignore that last part. My brain thinks of the worst way to say things. And I'm babbling. I'm sorry. Please stop me anytime. Honestly. I'm just going to shut up now.” And then she sucks on her lower lip, as though to prove it.

But the enduring silence the comes is not peaceful, not for him. He likes the sound of her voice too much. He likes her talking. He hasn't talked to anyone in...well, maybe his whole life. Certainly no one like her. Listening to her is relaxing. That constant pounding inside his head begins to lessen the longer he dwells in her company. Is it too much trouble to ask her to keep going?

And miraculously, as though she can hear his twisted thoughts, she does go on. “What kind of music do you like?” she asks, turning up the radio.

“I don't know,” he says quietly, like always. I don’t know. It’s the current catchphrase of his life. He knows next to nothing about himself, nothing personal. Meanwhile, everything that he can recall hits him in instinctive tidal waves--washing away anything remotely emotional, wiping the slate clean, leaving him empty every time.

She stumbles through a dozen or so channels, before settling on a more upbeat song. Everything is in Chinese, and even though she clearly doesn't know the words, her fingers drum against the steering wheel, following the beat.

He can follow most of the lines, though there are still a few nuanced phrases that he has trouble deciphering. Not that it matters. He's far more interested in watching her and watching their progress down the road.

There’s a part of him--a bigger part than he would like to admit--that doesn't actually want this roadtrip to come to an end. As much as becoming friends with Viktor was a relief, this woman is...something else. And even though she’s made it abundantly clear that she is at least somewhat aware of his capabilities, she has yet to look at him like she’s afraid of him. She looks at him like he’s a person, too. And that alone satisfies a nameless craving in his heart, filling him to the brim with a warm, bizarre comfort that is utterly unfamiliar to him.

There is just something about her. Something good. Something he knows he doesn’t deserves but desires anyway.

Maybe he’s been deprived of real human contact for so long, that at the first taste of it, he’s instantly addicted for more.

Or maybe this is just how Felicity Smoak behaves around total strangers, and he’s nothing special.

Either way, the world she lives in seems so much brighter and hopeful compared the world he awoke to.

He wants to be a part of her world.

xxx

As soon as they park at the train station, he senses trouble. Every hair along his skin seems to stand up straight, every nerve ending in his fingertips tingles with anticipation.

They beat him here. They’re already waiting for him. Whoever they are.

Calmly, without turning his head too much, he studies the crowd and notes at least five agents in business suits scattered around the train station entrance. He doesn't understand how he knows these people are agents, but he spots their stiff, false aloof behavior--some pretending to be on the phone, some pretending to read a magazine, some even playing the tourist.

How did they find him? He’s been so careful. He’s searched his body a dozen times over for any sort of tracking device and found nothing. How did they know which direction he would head towards?

Felicity, he realizes with a jolt. Even if they didn’t see him get into her car back in Hong Kong, they must have spotted him on some unknown camera when he’d foolishly decided to move to the front of the vehicle. Or maybe they spotted either of them during one of those few pit stops. He was always so cautious, on the lookout for cameras, but it's possible even he missed something.

It would be enough. One mistake. One shot at her license plate. That’s all they would need.

A chill he hasn’t felt since waking up that first day runs down his spine.

How could he have been so reckless? He’s risked her life just by waltzing into it. He needs to get away from her and fast. It won’t be long before someone recognizes this car.

When she starts to open her door, his hand shoots out and locks around her wrist. “Don’t get out of the car.”

She gasps, “What?”

“They’re here,” he says without tearing his focus away from the main entrance, ensuring that the men after him haven’t moved in the past twelve seconds.

“Who’s here? Who’s after you?” she whispers, following his gaze.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect it’s the government.”

“As in, the U.S. government?”

He swallows, finally daring to turn to look her in the eyes. Oh, those eyes. He’s going to miss them--which is odd, because up until this point he didn't think it was possible for him to miss anything. His heart sinks a little at the thought.

“Felicity, listen to me very carefully. When I get out of this car, you’re going to wait thirty seconds--exactly thirty seconds, do you understand?--and then you’re going to get away from this car as quickly as possible. Take a bus to the airport. Keep your head down. And forget you ever met me.”

She stares at him, stunned speechless for only the second time since he met her. “But...what about you?” she asks in a quiet, unsure voice that pains him in a way he can’t explain.

“I’ll be fine,” he quickly assures her, as he pulls out the stack of cash he promised her. “Take this. You’ve earned it.”

“But--”

“I have a contact here in Beijing. His name is Yao Fei Gulong. He can get you the help you need to get home. Papers, a passport--whatever you need. Just tell him Snapdragon sent you.”

He has no idea where this fountain of information is suddenly coming from, but his gut tells him it’s accurate. And if he can’t trust his own mind, then he has to trust something, right? And yet, something else deep in his core stirs at the idea of sending this woman out there with nothing but the word of a stranger to keep her safe. Can he entrust her with his hazy memories? He barely trusts himself with them.

He tells her the address anyway, waits until she nods her consent before pulling back. He didn’t realize how close he’d gotten to her. “I’m sorry, Felicity. I wish we had more time.”

He indulges a few seconds to study her face one last time, and he notices that his hand is still an iron clasp around her wrist. Slowly, he loosens his grip, but not before doing something very, very foolish. He lingers--just for a moment--just enough to run his thumb once across the back of her hand, to feel the soft ridges of her veins, to memorize the shape of her hand, to imagine what it would be like to hold and revere her warm skin for hours on end.

Reluctantly, he finally drops her hand and forces himself to leave the car without so much as a backward glance, before he can stop himself from doing something even more crazy--like begging her to come with him. Leaving her stings more than he expected, like he’s abandoning something important before it even has the chance to start.

He disappears into the fog, armed with the ticket she printed out for him in his hand and his gun stuffed into the back of his jeans. Slipping onto the train with a gun is complicated, but not impossible. He easily evades his hunters and in the process avoids saying a real goodbye to Felicity the way she deserves. It’s better this way, he thinks.

At least she didn’t grow too attached to him.

At least he didn’t grow too fond of her.

The non-stop Trans-Siberian Express from Beijing to Moscow takes approximately six days, which leaves him plenty of time to construct a plan for infiltrating Alexi Leonov’s supposed place of residence undetected. He buys a small tablet at the train gift shop, but after two hours stumbling his way through a few lines of code, he comes to realize that while physical warfare and exit strategies come very naturally to him, he is far less comfortable wading through search engines and traffic camera videos.

He does manage to do some digging on one Felicity Smoak, however. He learns what he can through the Palmer Technologies public website and through a few MIT announcements. By all accounts, Felicity Smoak appears to be...a genius. Perhaps she would have been able to help him. Perhaps letting her go was a missed opportunity.

But if he’s truly being honest with himself, he misses her more than he misses whatever skills she could have offered him.

After spending a couple of hours in the dining car, he makes his way back to his private, two-person car in first class. Somehow, Felicity managed to get him a first-class car at the last-minute. That fact alone should have let him know how brilliant she is.

As he pulls open the sliding glass door, he swears he almost sees that familiar golden ponytail. Has she made that much of an impression on him that his mind is already conjuring up her existence, just to prevent his own loneliness?

He blinks, shaking his head, slowly pulling the door panel...

Her head shoots up, those eyes staring, boring into his expectantly.

His heart starts to race in his chest, as though it understands what is happening before his mind can make the connection. It takes him a moment to realize...she's real. She's here. A sudden, irrational flare of anger shoots through him.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, more gruffly than he means to be.

“Tracking you,” she answers brightly--too brightly for his liking. “That makes me sound like a stalker--which, for the record, I am not.”

He's pretty sure he growls, because she flinches a little as he shuts the door behind him. Still, she doesn't relent, and that makes him even more terrified. He hasn't felt this shaken since waking up.

She starts talking with her hands, ignoring the way his own clench into fists. “Well, I was just thinking Moscow might be a great place to set up another international subsidiary. So I decided to cash in that two-week vacation I’m always threatening my boss with.”

When he doesn't respond, other than to maintain the glare he's sending her, her smile fades.

This time, he finches, because it hurts to be the one to snuff her light. But if he can't make her see reason, can't talk her into leaving him, then he has to drive her away. He has to show her why she should be afraid of him, why she should never wish to be near him.

“And don’t worry,” she continues. Oh, he's already so far beyond worried. “I may have hacked into the train station cameras and erased any trace of you getting on board--even from underneath. Also, strange coincidence, the cameras on this train suddenly went out--accidentally--and won’t be fixable until we reach Moscow. Oops.” She shrugs, and then tries to wink at him, though it's more of a delayed blink.

He starts when her words finally hit him. Hacked? She's committing major crimes for him now?

As though she can hear his thoughts again, Felicity spins around the laptop resting on her legs to show off her handiwork. And if he wasn't so livid that she's here, he might be able to act more impressed.

She tips her head in that carefree way of hers, a little too pleased with herself, especially for someone who supposedly has never committed anything so much as an illegal parking job in her life. He swallows heavily, as he intently studies the computer screen and then her; and he begins to wonder if she hasn’t been playing him all along. What other instincts does she have stashed beneath a deceptively innocent exterior?

Perhaps they have more in common than he thought.

And it's this notion that somehow causes him to relax. As much as her surprise appearance should keep him on edge, he begins to draw some comfort from knowing he’s not the only one in the world that is not what he appears. Or maybe he’s even more lost than he cares to admit, and this innate trust he has for Felicity Smoak is just part of her charm.

“So what do you think?”

He can't risk trusting her. He can't risk her. “You need to leave,” he finally says.

“What? Nooo. I already bought myself a train ticket and everything. You’re officially stuck with me.”

“I’ll reimburse you.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t just ask me--”

“I’m not asking,” he interrupts roughly. Hearing the gruffness in his voice, he takes a moment to soften his tone. “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You’ve gotten me this far. I can take it from here.”

Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Can you?” She gives him a contentious look he can’t decipher. “What I mean is...I single-handedly am the reason the cops are not all over your tail right now--or, drug lords or spies or whoever exactly is after you, which you are going to need to explain at some point by the way.”

He just takes a deep breath, prolonging the silence.

“Please, I want to help. I’m not abandoning you.”

“Felicity…” he breathes, suddenly feeling all the fight drain out of him. He sinks down onto the bench across from her.

He wants to say that she's not abandoning him, that he doesn't need her. And maybe twelve hours ago that might have been true. But somewhere along the way between Hong Kong and here, he...he has grown attached to her.

He doesn't need anyone or anything. He shouldn't need her. He can't want her.

“Thank you, but this is personal. And dangerous. And I need you to be safe.”

“Well, what if I don’t want to be safe? I’m not afraid.”

He shakes his head gently. “You should be. These people, whoever they are...they aren’t like me. They won’t hesitate to hurt you. And I can’t let that happen.”

She sets her laptop aside and leans forward, calmly invading his space, invading his heart. “Well, it’s not up to you. It’s my life. It’s my choice. You can’t make me go.”

He shoots her a look.

She just rolls her eyes, flippantly ignoring whatever threats he's capable of making. “Fine. Maybe you can. But what are you going to do? Toss me out the window at the next stop?”

“I am considering it,” he mutters. Ultimately, it would be better for her in the end, to be thousands of miles away from him.

Felicity just smiles, her eyes sparkling with a false admonishment, picking up on whatever teasing she hears in his voice. Already, she reads him better than he knows himself.

“The way I see it, you can either tell me who's after you. Or I can find out through other means, using the powers of the internet”--she waves towards her computer--“and basically lead the bad guys right to you.”

His lips twitch. Is she threatening him?

“And what makes you think I'm not one of them?” he asks.

She narrows her eyes as she reaches into her business purse, and then holds out the stack of bills he just gave her. “Here.”

His whole body snaps back, like she's burnt him. “What? No, Felicity, that’s for you…”

“Lot of good it’s gonna do me. I can’t even deposit it once we cross the Mongolian border. Consider it a down payment. We can split it, once we figure out what happened to you.”

He stills. How much does she know? Is she really that smart or is he just not as good of a pretender as he hopes? “We?” he asks quietly.

“You can't honestly expect to do this all by yourself. Let me at least do some digging before we get to Moscow, give you some ammunition to fight back...you know, digitally speaking.”

He sighs, folding his hands together. “Why do you want to help me?”

She pushes up her glasses, suddenly a little uncomfortable, like this the first time she’s really stopped to consider the implications of what she’s doing. “I don’t know. Because despite your efforts to convince people to the contrary, you’re actually a pretty guy? I mean, pretty nice guy.”

He’s neither, but he can’t help but appreciate the way she blushes in the meantime.

“Because you're a good person,” she finishes, her words determined. Final.

“How can you be so sure?”

She shrugs. “You just seem...a little lost. Besides, I hate mysteries. They bug me. They need to be solved. And you, my friend, are the biggest mystery I’ve ever met.” She purses her lips contemplatively. “So...that is my offer.”

It is dangerous, realizing he how much he wants her to stay with him. Still, he hesitates. “Are you just going to keep hawking me about this until I say yes?” he asks, his tone conveying more tease than he originally intended.

She nods happily. “I am a hawker.”

Seconds tick by, minutes, hours seem to pass...in the blink of an eye. And then, somehow, he’s holding out his hand to shake hers. Her touch is so soft and inviting, and he soaks in the contours of her skin; it takes him far too long to release her. “Okay. But we do this my way.”

If only it were that simple.

It takes him another twelve hours to fully open up to her about everything that he knows--very little, but he tells her anyway. In the safety of a secluded train car, he tells her. He shows her the passports, sharing his fortnight lifespan with her, still grasping at names that don’t make any sense.

And through it all, she listens. She doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy. She asks for detail. She babbles and makes him feel normal. At times, he feels like a sinner in a confessional, bearing his soul to a perfect stranger, a stranger whose eyes never turn to condemnation, never tell him hateful things he's sure he deserves.

Felicity studies the pile of passports splayed across the small table between them, with a few booklets tucked in her hands like a deck of cards. She’s biting her lower lip in a way that he should not find so alluring. “So, who are you really?”

He takes a final sip of the bitter black coffee from their late breakfast, staring aimlessly at endless Mongolian forests flying by their window. “I don’t know. Pick one.”

She starts. “What, me?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He shrugs.

“I don’t know. Doesn’t one of these names...speak to you more than the others?”

He frowns grimly. “Not really.”

She nods very seriously, as though he's given her some truly life-altering information to consider. And in a way, he supposes he has. “Well, personally, I don’t think you look like an Alexi.”

He smiles a little, strangely pleased to hear her say that. “Yeah? So what do I look like then?”

“Hmm.” Her eyebrows pull together again in their endearing way as she flips through the passports, before finally settling on one. Her entire face changes when she finds the one--finds him--her gaze lighting up like a soft, easy sunrise.

Slowly, he takes the little booklet from her outstretched hand, his fingertips brushing against hers. When he opens it, he huffs a short laugh, feeling oddly relieved. Oliver Queen.

“Maybe I’m just partial to it, because it’s the only name I can pronounce, but...I don’t know, there’s just something about it. I think Oliver suits you.”

They stay quiet for a long moment, studying each other in the easy silence. And it's strange how quickly this sort of thing is starting to feel normal to him now--letting someone watch him so openly, letting her see all the worry and confusion gnawing at him below the surface, letting her goodness wash over him. This act should terrify him, but instead this feels right and safe. She makes him feel safe.

Ever since she walked into his hazy life...or he showed up in hers, she's changed everything. He doesn’t tell her that Oliver Queen was the name at the top of the safety deposit box in Hong Kong. But out of a stack of strangers, she chose the name anyway. She chose him.

Oliver it is then. Chances are, it’s the closest he is going to get to a true identity, to his true self, whoever that man may be.

“Are you really from Starling City?” she finally asks.

“I don't know,” he answers honestly, his voice hoarse with some unknown emotion. “Do I look familiar?”

She frowns a little dismally, as she shakes her head no. “Sorry. But I only just moved there recently. Why not start there? Why go to Moscow?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“Well, do you want to be this...Alexi guy? Is that the kind of person that you are?”

He sighs. “I don't know what kind of person I am.”

As soon as he says it, his mind jumps to another time, another place; and he sits in quiet, quivering fear as Felicity’s bright features begin to fade into black, swallowed up in the slow onslaught of darkness flooding his vision. In an instant, their warm, soft cabin transforms into a cold, hard basement.

A scream rings in his ears--but it’s not his voice; he’s not the one afraid or in pain.

He watches in frozen horror as a man crouched in the shadows twists the knife deeper into his victim's leg, a man beaten and bloody and bound to the chair. Something in him instinctively wants to tell the man to break his own thumb so he can escape from those zip ties.

“Please...I'll tell you everything you want to know,” the man begs in Russian.

But the torturer doesn't relent. “I know you will. This is just me practicing.”

His hand twitches when he recognizes his voice, and his whole body turns ice cold as he trembles with newfound horror...and newfound acceptance.

He shuts his eyes, wishing he could make the grotesque scene that lives inside his head disappear.

He remembers.

He finally remembers something...something horrible and real. This is the kind of man that Alexi is...the kind of man that he is. His worst fears about himself are true.

He grows even more quiet for the the rest of the day, retreating further into himself, watching his hand twitch as he cowers against the demons that now roar inside him.

He lingers on his side of the car, unable to eat, barely able to even think, wondering if he could--if he should--find another way to push Felicity away from him. She fills the oppressive silence with her usual chatter, and he nods and tries to smile at the appropriate times. But everything she says is muffled within the thick fog of his mind. And yet, her voice, her gentle babbling, is the only thing keeping him from be swallowed up by memories he wishes would stay away. She is a beacon in the night, calling to him in the silence.

He doesn't sleep. He can't sleep. So he watches her lying on the bench-turned-bed, watches the calm rise and fall of her chest, the way she so easily surrenders to the night; he likes studying the little ways her face has changed without her glasses on, how much younger and even more innocent she appears.

And he knows it's wrong to want her goodness, to seek shelter in her sweetness. As much as he convinces himself that he watches over her to keep her safe, the truth is watching her is what keeps him sane.

xxx

On day 5 of their excursion to Moscow, Felicity has migrated to his side of the cabin and remains splayed out across the entire bench, her panda-socked feet casually crossed on top of his lap. She frowns in concentration at his tablet that she insisted on “borrowing,” while sucking on a stick of red licorice.

He sits stiff, though content, relishing the warmth of her feet seeping through his clothes. He gave up trying to move either of them nearly half an hour ago.

“Ugh,” Felicity finally groans, dropping the tablet onto the bench in frustration. “Well, there's nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“It's like you don't exist. The FBI has never heard of you, and you have no birth certificate. Outside of that passport, Oliver Queen doesn't exist.”

“What does that mean?” he asks.

“It means that whatever you're in, you're in deep,” she states, as though he’s supposed to know what it is. “Oh, and you were in prison. Once. And not like in prison, prison. Just...you visited a prison in Russia recently. See?” She turns the tablet screen towards him, and--sure enough--though the camera quality is poor, he can barely make out himself through the grainy video, walking quickly and calmly out of a less prominent, almost invisible exit, and vanishing into a black sedan.

He replays the video a few times, trying to trigger something--anything--but his memories currently remain as coarse and blurry as the video feed. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

“How did you get this?” he asks.

Felicity shrugs. “If it’s on the internet, I can find it. According to the timestamp, you were only in there about half an hour. Do you remember what you were doing there?”

“No idea.” He shakes his head...and then something else strikes him. “Did...did just hack into a Russian prison system network?”

She just gives him one of her classic are-you-really-questioning-me? looks. “Is that judgment I'm hearing?”

And whether it’s the sassy way she utters the word ‘judgment’ or the fact that in less than a week he's already categorizing her expressions, he feels himself smiling--a real, easy smile, one he hasn’t used in a long time, perhaps never. “Pride,” he tells her plainly.

As expected, her cheeks turn a slight shade of pink under his honest gaze; and then she shyly pushes her glasses further up the ridge of her perfect little nose.

He likes complimenting her, putting her at ease. He likes telling her the truth about herself. Once again, he wonders how he managed to get so lucky, finding someone who appears as much a natural at this unnatural game as he is.

xxx

“Is this it?” Felicity asks him, bouncing on her toes as she shivers against the crisp Moscow air. She's wrapped up in a red scarf and wearing a dark purple hat with a little felt flower attached on one side. Despite the chill and her pale skin, she looks ever as vibrant in her bright array of colors and with her long blonde hair flowing down her back and over her shoulders.

They're standing in front of a pristine, white building with hints of Romanesque architecture along the trim and doors, mixed with a more classic contemporary windows and railings. It's an odd building from his perspective, but it also seems to blend into the surrounding buildings just fine.

He nods to Felicity when he spots the name ALEXI LEONOV on the middle buzzer.

“Do you want me to hack the security?” she whispers.

Before he can reply, an older tenant suddenly emerges through the entrance, brushing past and leaving the gate open for them.

His lips twitch as he says, “I don't think that'll be necessary.”

His apartment is on the third floor, and he can't help but think that he chose the location intentionally--some place that's hidden in plain sight and inaccessible from the outside to the average person, while still a safe distance that he could easily scale down the outside of the building should the worst happen. Whatever the worst may be.

The loft feels more like an abandoned museum than a place to live. Everything is white, and it’s overwhelming--white painted walls, thin white curtains, white wood furniture. The mostly empty room that he supposes is meant to serve as the living room is anything but living. And with its floor-to-ceiling glass pane doors that let in far too much light, the spacious, echoing room seems all the more hollow. It is a haunting mixture of shabby vintage and contemporary minimalism, decorated with only the barest essentials. A desk and a chair. Ten books stacks on high bookshelves, unopened, untouched, a mere façade of a life that doesn’t belong to him. No rugs. No carpet. No signs of actual dwelling.

As he surveys the room, all he can think is cover. Everything about this room screams cover. Just what kind of life does he lead?

The bedroom is just as minimal, no decorations on the wall--why does he feel like he should be expecting that, some evidence of personality, of choice, of anything other than a mundane, robotic existence? There is some workout equipment in the corner of the bedroom, and of course he knows exactly how to use it.

Is there anything he doesn’t know? How to be human, apparently.

The industrial kitchen is equally as disappointing. While the wide counters and high shelves contain the finest stainless kitchenware, this place is starting to feel more like a prison than a home.

He must somehow make his way back to the living room, because the next thing he knows is the sound of Felicity’s gentle tap-tap-tap heels on the wooden floor. He almost starts, almost forgetting that she was even here, so absorbed in putting together the pieces of a barren life.

“Ummm, where is your bathroom? Because I've had to pee for the last hour.”

He slowly sets down the book he’s perusing to turn around and look at her, as if to make sure she’s really real and not some voice in his head he’s been dreaming up this entire time. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he says.

She nods, smiling a little, but it fades from her face soon enough. Too soon. He misses that smile already, wanting to make it stay. Is it possible to be wistful for something you’ve never had before? “Anything coming back?” she asks quietly.

He sighs, glancing down at the book again. “I think I like archery.”

“Never really understood the appeal. Looks utterly ridiculous, if you ask me. Which you didn't. I'm just...gonna go that way...” She doesn’t give him a chance to respond before disappearing into the hallway.

In the uncertain silence that she leaves behind, he finds himself staring at the phone on the desk. He stares at the taunting device for ages before finally, rashly picking it up. He has no idea what he’s doing until he does it--he hits the redial button.

The voice that answers is female and polite, surprising him by speaking in Turkish. “Hello and thank you for calling the Çırağan Palace. How may I help you today?”

“Hello?” he asks right back.

“Yes sir, this is the Çırağan Palace. How may I direct your call?”

“And where are you located?” He hopes he doesn’t sound too desperate. And if his Turkish comes out a little rough, well then, perhaps that’s just how he speaks.

“In Istanbul, sir.”

Istanbul? What was he doing there? His heart begins to race as he plays the only card that’s dealt him. “I’m looking for someone...a guest there. Alexi Leonov.”

“One moment, please,” the hotel receptionist answers calmly, like he hasn’t just given her a deadly secret.

He waits, pacing in front of the desk--his desk--for several, long moments, until she finally comes back with, “I’m so sorry, sir, but I currently have no one here registered under that name.”

He halts. What? He was so sure. Could his instincts have been wrong? But just as he’s thinking of hanging up...another idea strikes him. “Can you check another name for me, please?” he asks as coolly as possible, meanwhile he reaches into his bag to yank out the stack of passports and sifts through them hurriedly. Which one...which one would go to Istanbul? Something inside him urges him not to say the name Oliver Queen. Finally, he settles on the only other non-European in the mix. “Thomas Merlyn.”

He waits again, shuffling on his feet, as he listens to the endless, grating classic music over the line.

When the voice comes back, it’s changed somehow...softer, slower, a little unsteady. “Sir, are you a friend of Thomas Merlyn?”

“Uh, yes,” he answers.

“I have some very bad news for you, sir. I’m sorry to tell you this, but Mr. Merlyn passed away almost three weeks ago. There was an accident.… I do not know all the details myself. When they came for his things, people made note for us--”

“Who?” he interrupts, growing uneasy. “Who came?”

“His brother.”

“Did his brother leave a way to get in touch with him?”

“No, sir.”

As soon as he hangs up, the atmosphere in the apartment changes. He can feel something is off. Someone is here. The mystery of Thomas Merlyn is forgotten as his mind shifts into defensive mode. Slowly, he makes his way back towards Felicity, trying to maintain a normal demeanor--whatever normal is for him. He tiptoes closer, hearing the running water coming from the bathroom.

Whether it’s impeccable timing or Felicity just has miraculously good hearing, she calls out to him as he reaches the bathroom door. “Hey, Oliver? The water in here is freezing! Which, I know that cold water is supposed to kill more germs, but I don’t think frostbite is the price I should have to pay to not get an infection, you know?”

He might smile if he wasn’t so on edge. He glances to his left, relieved to find the side hallway empty. “Oh...okay. Can you just...stay in the bathroom? And I’ll go check the water in the kitchen.”

He’s already moving, walking with the finesse of a panther, pressing his back against the long hallway walls. He turns the water on in the kitchen, letting the white noise muffle the sound of his own movements on the wood floor. He grabs the first thing he can--a chef’s knife, longer but manageable. He spins in kitchen, looking for any signs of unwanted activity, any indication that someone else has been in this room. And then he carefully makes his way back toward Felicity. Except she’s not in the bathroom.

His heart kicks into higher gear, until he turns and--there she is, standing in the middle of the living room, a sweet, welcoming smile on her face. “Hey,” she says, moving closer to him.

“Hey,” he answers, forcing a smile. He shuffles, leaning against the side of the doorframe, quickly stowing the knife behind his back and out of sight. And for a moment, he feels utterly foolish, that he’s so paranoid he can never shake away the feeling that someone is always chasing him. And yet, his instincts are what have kept him alive. Have they been wrong this entire time? Seeing her standing there like that, so at ease in an empty loft, his instincts feel wrong.

“You okay?” she asks, coming to stand directly in front of him.

He starts but manages to keep his expression calm. “Fine,” he says, striving for casual but knowing he’s failing.

“Really?” She tips her head, reading him far too easily. “Because you seem...tense. God forbid you just relax.” She tugs on his shirt playfully.

He laughs once, though it still sounds forced. He swallows when she leans in closer, their noses almost brushing, and his heart plummets for a different reason. The knife behind his back loosens a little.

“Water still cold?” he whispers.

“Mm-hmm.” She nods, licking her lips, and his eyes latch onto the movement.

In that second, he realizes...the water in the kitchen has stopped.

Felicity sees whatever change comes over him, her lips parting, her eyes asking him a question he doesn’t have an  answer to. “Did you hear that?” she breathes.

That finally makes itself known.

He blinks, and then a man with a machine gun comes crashing through the window behind him, sending a rain of bullets at them.

He doesn’t think. He just acts. He spins, ducking down as he pushes Felicity behind him and deeper into the room, just before throwing the knife at the invader. His aim is on point, but the man knows how to fight back, dodging the blade’s tip at the last second. In that brief window when the gunfire stops, he charges, throwing himself at his attacker, taking them both to the ground.

They wrestle, rolling back and forth against the floor, struggling to be the one in control. The assassin tries to shoot him three times, but every time he shoves the gun out of the way, sending a stream of bullets into the high ceiling.

He elbows his attacker in the jaw and knocks the gun out of his hand, sending it sliding down the hallway, out of reach of both of them.

The assassin wastes no time, lunging for his neck, squeezing, cutting off his air supply.

But he knows how to repress the panic that will make him lose air faster.

Instead, he locks his arms around his neck, using the man’s own weight against him, and manages to get him to loosen his grip just enough elbow him in the chest. He hits the man in the face. He dodges the next punch. He hits him again. And again. And again. But the enemy won’t back down.

He strikes again...and his enemy dodges that punch, grabbing his arm and tossing him backwards onto the floor.

On impact, he gasps as the wind nearly goes out of him.

Suddenly, Felicity is right there, standing in the doorway, looking at him with panic in her eyes and a piece of floorboard in her hands.

Run, his eyes scream to hers.

But she’s not listening. And now it’s too late.

The assassin approaches them. Time seems to slow down...and it becomes apparent that his enemy is moving towards her this time. NO! his heart cries. He hauls himself off the ground, putting himself in between them, blocking her from the attacker with his body. Something shifts inside him, something hot and fierce, as he lunges himself at the assassin once more.

This time, when he goes to strike, he doesn't aim merely to harm or to stop the fight. He aims to kill. He will kill this man for wanting to kill her.

Revived with a new sense of deadly purpose, he dodges every hit sent his way, and every hit he sends back sticks. He quickly overpowers his enemy, sending him tumbling into the living room. When the man rises back up, slowly, he catches the flicker of the small knife in his hand.

He easily makes the tactical switch to defense, dodging every thrust of the knife, all the while working to regain the upperhand.

As they shuffle around the living room, he finds himself near the desk. As the assassin regains his bearings, he reaches around the table for something he can use as a weapon. He almost smiles when his fingers wrap around the small arrowhead paperweight. On the next attack, he hits with the added weight in his hand, striking his opponent in the places he inherently knows will do the most damage and slowly weaken him. He stabs him in the hand. He smacks him in the nose. He goes for the spot just under his arm.

The knife falls to the ground with a clang.

He kicks his opponent, sending him tumbling backwards over the desk.

As expected, he gets back up soon enough. But this time when attacks, he’s even more ready.

He doesn't even bother trying to retrieve the knife. He doesn’t need it. He is the weapon.

He fights with his bare hands, kicking him where a bundle of nerves comes together in the leg, striking back by yanking his enemy’s arm taunt, twisting it in an unnatural way that will only prolong the pain.

And when the assassin finally hits the ground with a groan, he makes one last move to ensnare him, wrapping his arms tight around the man’s neck. And even as he squeezes, watching, feeling the man’s life slowly drain out of him, he also feels the weight of Felicity’s presence at his back.

“Close your eyes, Felicity,” he orders roughly, grunting through the strain of the chokehold.

“But--” she whimpers quietly.

“Dammit, just do it!” He turns his body, angling away from her. He curls himself tighter around his victim to shield her from what’s about to happen...from what he has to do.

He shuts his own eyes tight, suddenly dreading what he had before been willing to do in a heartbeat. Still, it has to be done. He’s doing this for them. In a twisted, unfathomable way, a part of him is doing this for her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “But no one can know my secret.”

He can almost feel her flinch when he snaps the man’s neck, letting his body slip out of his cold, bloody hands with a thud.

He lingers there on the floor next to a dead man for far too long, but it takes him several moments to bring himself to turn around and face her.

There she stands, her back pressed into the corner of the room, her eyes obediently clamped shut, tears and streaks of black mascara running down her face. She listened to him, but she also heard everything anyway. How much did he really protect her from in the end?

This is the moment that will haunt him forever--not the one just before it, not the one where he actually took a life--but this one right here. Where he took something precious, some sliver of innocence from Felicity Smoak.

She must hear him approaching, because she whimpers a little when he’s back in her personal space. He chooses the hand with the lesser amount of blood to touch on her cheek. She gasps at the contact but doesn’t pull away.

“Hey,” he breathes, waiting until she finally opens her eyes and looks at him again. He waits for the judgement to come, waits for the inevitable moment when she finally recognizes the monster inside him and runs away, waits for the inevitable goodbye.

But the judgement never comes.

And even though he’s unsuitable for the job, he tries his best to soothe her. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

Somehow, she whimpers again and leans into his palm against her cheek. “You…?” Her lips tremble; for once, she can’t even finish her thought. She doesn’t have to.

He just nods in quiet affirmation. “Please don’t...” he hesitates, unsure of what he could possibly say to make this situation better somehow. Please don't what? He doesn’t know how to ask her not to be afraid of him; she should be afraid of him.

Please don’t hate me, he swallows.

She stuns him by coming closer, by touching his shoulder. “You were shot.”

He follows her line of sight and is a little surprised to find that, yes, his upper arm is covered in blood, and there appears to be a gunshot wound near the center of the mess. He didn’t even realize it had happened. He’s completely numb to the pain. All he can focus on is her.

“Hey,” he says again, finally closing the thin gap, cupping her cheek more firmly, drawing her desperate eyes back up to his. “It’s nothing,” he gently assures her.

Her lips quip for a moment. She almost smiles, and then suddenly she throws her arms around his neck, hugging him close.  What else can he do but pull her in tight, as hard as he can, before he crosses the line into hurting her. Her nails dig into his shirt, scraping his back, and he mirrors the act by fisting the fabric of her shirt, pulling her closer still. Maybe he hurts her a little. He can’t tell. She doesn’t let go.

“Thank you,” she mumbles against his skin.

He sighs, nuzzling his chin into her neck, deepening the hold, clinging to her like the life raft that she is. He absorbs her compassion, breathing in her floral scent. He accidentally dips his head into her shoulder a little too deeply, scraping his scruff against her skin. He stills. Except she doesn't pull away. The little moan she lets out instead makes him realize she likes it. So he does it again. And again, brushing against her like he's a cat displaying affection. The quiet sounds she makes are enough to drown out her earlier screams of terror.

They linger in each other’s embrace for a while, too long really. Sirens alert him, waking him from this brief reprieve. They don't have time to dwell on what just happened. They have to keep moving--he has to keep moving--in order to survive.

She’s only in danger in the first place because of him. And it’s that one thought that drives him as they flee the apartment.

xxx

They rent a car under one of his other pseudonyms. This time, he does the driving, weaving them through Russia, ignoring her soft cries of fear as the car flies around cliffs or maneuvers backwards through crowded streets. He makes the drive with one hand, because both of her hands stay latched around his like a velvet but iron glove.

She is uncharacteristically quiet the whole way, even when they cross the border into Ukraine and enter Kiev. Still, she never releases his hand. The further away from Moscow they get, the tighter her grip seems to become.

“I've never seen anybody die before,” she finally says, avoiding his gaze.

He has another flash. Some voice in a thick accent is barking orders at him as he hurries through the heavy, damp forest carrying some kind of equipment on his back. The accent is Australian, he thinks. Maybe New Zealand. He's in the middle of the woods, sweltering and weary.

“We are the sin eaters, kid. We carry the sins of others. We bleed so the rest of the world can live.”

He frowns. Is that what he is? Does it excuse the darkness that lives inside him, consuming him?

He knows now that he is fighting a war. He just doesn't know which side he’s on or who the players are. And he’s brought her to the frontlines.

He parks the car outside a small hotel in Kiev and takes a long look at her, trying to gauge her mental state. Considering everything that’s happened, he’s impressed she’s not more startled.

Shifting towards her in the car, he says, “Last chance, Felicity.” He’s half-urging her to leave and half-hoping for her to stay. Last chance to get away from me. Last chance to say goodbye. Last chance to ever have a normal life.

She takes a long breath before she finally looks at him. And he reads the determination in her eyes before she even speaks. “If you're not stopping, I'm not stopping,” she declares boldly.

He’s proud to have her on his side. But if she becomes a casualty in his crusade...he’ll never forgive himself.

xxx

At the door to a small and somewhat seedy hotel room in Kiev, he knocks the allotted four times to signal to her that he has come back. Entering their tiny room, he deposits the bag of groceries--cheap clothing and even cheaper food that he purchased at a local store--on the cramped bathroom counter, gritting his teeth against the stretching of skin in his arm, reminding him of the bullet he recently extracted from his own flesh.

He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt, noting the spread of blood beneath the white bandage, which means he might have accidentally torn his stitches. Without thinking, he whips the bandage off. He works in the silence, patching himself back up again.

“Does it hurt?” Felicity asks around a mouthful of toothpaste.

He’s just finished restitching the last thread through the top layer of his skin. He doesn’t have to turn his head to feel her watching him, just outside his peripheral vision; he can almost picture her staring with pinched eyes and clenched fingers, wincing with him, wincing on his behalf, making little gasps and pained, reactive sounds that seemed to have been bred out of him. He wonders how much torture he’s had to endure in order to dull even the sharpest pain reflexes.

“Not as much as some things,” he answers simply, dully, as emotionless and dead as he feels.

Once he’s finished putting a fresh bandage on himself, he reaches for the grocery bag, pulling out his recent purchases: boxes of hair dye.

“Alright. Your turn. Black or brown?” He holds out the two choices in front of her, watching the way her eyes flicker back and forth between them.

She bites her lower lip contemplatively. “What, no purple?”

“Felicity, that’s not exactly low profile--”

“I know.” And then he sees--the tiny quiver of her lips, the faintest lightening behind her eyes. She’s teasing him. Even after everything that’s happened in the last few hours, she’s still making him laugh, still making this corner of the world a slightly brighter place.

Maybe he was wrong to think that this kind of life would make her tainted somehow. Maybe she’s untaintable. Maybe nothing can touch her--and all the while, she can’t help but touch everything in her path and make it better. Selfishly he knows...she’s already made him better.

Felicity finally settles on black and patiently stands before the mirror as he cuts her hair. He tries cutting in as straight a line as possible, but his hands start to tremble at the feel of silk slipping through his fingers. He can’t help but feel that he’s stealing something precious from her once more.

After losing several inches, her hair now stops just barely above her shoulders. Somehow, even through his haphazard cutting job, she still looks vibrant and captivating.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers against her head, as he gloves up and mixes the hair dye.

“It's okay,” she says, keeping his gaze in the mirror. “You know, I went through a goth phase when I was at MIT. And blonde isn’t even my natural hair color.”

He frowns, suddenly curious about what exactly is her natural hair color. Out of some odd desperation, he leans in close just to study the very ends of her roots one last time, which he’s realizing are a slight shade darker than the rest of her golden hair. It’s one secret about her that he’ll never get to learn.

He swallows deeply as he dyes her hair, watching her head of sunshine slowly transform into a moonless night, like experiencing a raw sunset up close. It’s a strangely intimate experience, feeling his hands press deep into her scalp, feeling her body relax into him, even as he feels his own being coil tighter and tighter.

Twenty minutes later, she's stepping out of the bathroom with a small smile and a towel around her shoulders, catching the drips of her wet, much shorter, much darker hair. Her cheeks are still slightly pink from her obviously recent shower. Without her glasses or makeup, she looks so...young and fresh and pure that it takes his breath away.

The black color seems harsh against her fair skin, and at the same incredibly suited to her clear blue eyes. Selfishly, perhaps, he was worried the changed my make her look...different, like not the Felicity he knows. But she still looks like his Felicity, because she’s still looking at him like she trusts him.

Ditching the towel, she strolls across the small room to him, and the closer she gets the faster his heart seems to beat. He notices for the first time her pajamas pants, decorated with colorful Russian dolls. He smiles briefly, because they are very much a Felicity choice.

“Night, Oliver. And thanks for letting me be here for you.”

“You’re welcome,” he murmurs solemnly, trying to focus on regulating his breathing, but she’s suddenly standing very close to him, and she smells like springtime and some kind of satisfying fruit he can’t name. “I didn’t have much of a choice though, did I?”

“No.” She shakes her head, teasing him again. And then she pats his shoulder, his uninjured one, like it’s a habit, like they do this sort of thing all the time. Except this feels anything but habitual. It's a plunge right into the deep end of a pool. There is no wading with him. It's all or nothing.

As her hand slides down his arm, he finds himself reaching out to grab it, to stop her, to keep her close just a little while longer. He doesn’t understand why he does it. He just doesn’t want her to leave him. He...he doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

He is firm, unyielding, his eyes trying to force her away with their hardness. Except she doesn't see what he's trying to say to her. She sees through the charade as always, right to his heart, to his soul if he has one, and the dangerous island living there. She studies him in that inquisitive way of hers, and it’s not until she steps even closer, her body just barely brushing against his chest, that he realizes he’s been holding his breath for a long time, waiting for her to come to him but too afraid to dare hope that she would. And so he decides to finally let her see him completely, to see the relentless haze he calls his mind, the nightmares that don’t make sense, the fears that won’t stay buried...and into the uncharted ocean of longing to feel human and whole again.

He waits for her to turn away, to babble and lighten the mood, to do something. Instead, her eyes drop to his lips, and he feels himself leaning down to her, the pull of her anchor too strong to overcome; even he’s not strong enough to stop this. He wants it too much. He needs her too much.

Her lips are warm and soft and gentle. Oh, so gentle.

He restrains himself enough not to touch her, even as her hands come up and stroke the veins of his arms, even as she kisses him back fiercely, throwing herself completely into his mercy. His ears start ringing, and his entire body feels like it’s being swallowed up into the sea again...only this sea feels different. And it frightens him even more.

He pulls back suddenly and pressing their foreheads together, their collective, mixing breaths ragged and loud in the dark, silent hotel room.

He swallows. “I shouldn’t...I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I trust you, Oliver,” she answers immediately.

He pulls back a little to look her in the eye, to study the way the dim lights from outside filter in through the blinds and highlight her features, somehow making her look all the more pale and fragile and angelic. All the more undeserving of someone like him.

“Why?” he hears himself say, unsure of what he’s even asking.

But Felicity seems to understand like always. “I don’t know. Same reason you got into the backseat of my car, I suppose. I mean, not that it was my car. It was a rental that...the company...paid for...”

She tips her head, her gaze dropping back to his lips, and it’s then that he knows he’s lost. The look she gives him is so reminiscent of their first encounter, a day that feels like a lifetime ago and yesterday at the same time. He swears he’ll never forget this look as long as he lives.

Deep down, he knows he shouldn’t, but he does. Because he needs her--not for her brains, not as a partner, not even for the screeching desire to hold another person and just be held in return. No, he needs her.

So he cups her face, pushing back a few loose strands of ebony hair. “Felicity,” he breathes, smiling a little, just before he kisses her, drawing her body close, so soft and yet a furnace to him.

Suddenly, she’s helping him pull his shirt up and over his head--he winces a little against the rush of pain in lifting his arms, but it comes and goes just as quickly. The eternal second of separation from her is more excruciating, and he kisses her again with renewed fury. And somewhere in that haze of bliss, he realizes he wants this more than he wants answers. For a few, peaceful hours, his name doesn’t matter, and the war outside is forgotten. He sees the truth here and now, in the way her eyes smile at him, in the way her hands caress wounds he’s afraid to know the stories behind.

She studies his scars without judgment, running her hands over the markings of his hidden past. He sees the way her eyebrows draw together. In response to her silent questions hanging between them, he quietly tells her, “They don't hurt.”

She nods once in return before wrapping her arms around him completely, making him feel safe.

Through it all, he just wants to protect her, this one person in all the world he doesn’t see as a threat or a target. The one he...he loves? Does he love her? Can he love her? Is there room in this hollow shell for a heart that screams wildly for life?

Everything is strange and wonderful at the same time. Because clearly his body remembers doing this before, and yet his mind still feels like this is the first time. And he’s so glad his first time is with her. They fit together like lost puzzle pieces. His larger body should swallow her whole, but he lets her decide where the boundaries lie. He takes his time. All the running they've been doing, he wants them to savor this. He wants her to feel secure with him. He wants to cherish her the way she deserves.

And as he loses himself in the art of loving this woman, he’s pretty sure he’s found himself. Hands that have been trained to kill are relearning to touch another’s skin with tenderness and not violence. Lips that have been trained to speak dozens of languages are learning simply to communicate with hers. His only friend in the world. His partner. His...something else.

She moans the word Oliver against his neck, and for the first time, that word doesn't sound as empty as before. Somehow, hearing her say that name like that makes it sound true. Real.

Oliver.

If that's what she’s going to call him, well then, that’s what he’s going to be called.

Oliver’s first conscious thought is more of a feeling.

Heat. Soothing heat. The kind of warmth that permeates his skin so deeply it relaxes his muscles and seems to seep into his very bones.

And when he wakes, it’s not a startled awakening; it’s more like a long exhale. All of his joints seem to whisper with ease.

He feels himself sinking deeper into the mattress as his whole body hums into a gentle awareness. Very early sunlight streams through the blinds directly into his face, but it’s not harsh like it was before; this sunlight feels gentler somehow. He feels like for the first time in...forever, he can take a full breath.

The beast inside him lies dormant as she presses her head against his shoulder.

The next time Oliver wakes it's more painful.

In his dreams, he screams. He doesn’t remember if he screams himself awake or not. All he knows is he’s sitting up in bed, sweating, heaving, feeling himself choke on his own fears.

He jumps when a cool hand presses to his skin. Realizing who it is, Oliver sighs, feeling his racing heartbeat instantly begin slowing down, feeling the nightmares receding into the outer darkness from which they came.

“Hey, where did you go?” she asks, running her palm in soothing circles over his bare chest.

“I don’t remember,” he lies. Because unlike so many nights before, he does remember this time. He remembers being in a sterile, white lab and being injected with clear medication. Over and over again. “Thank you for your service,” says a muffled voice. He remembers feeling isolated and numb, and yet...loyal to some cause he has no name for. Just what kind of duty has he given his life for?

After a few minutes, he finally falls back against the pillows, and Felicity falls with him, her hand still splayed over his heart. He likes her touch on him.

Now that they’re both wide awake, they spend a few minutes selfishly soaking in the silence, in the rest they can only seem to find together.

“It looks kind of like the star of David.”

“Hmm?” he asks, running his thumb over the back of her hand.

“Your tattoo.”

She’s talking about the Bratva mark. He still has no idea why he has it--could be something he did undercover, as a means to an end. No doubt someone else’s end, knowing his bizarre set of skills. This is one of those rare times he is grateful to not be able to remember.

“I think I've been to Israel once,” he says out of nowhere. “I don't really remember. I just...have a feeling about it.”

“My mom's Jewish. Well, I guess, technically I'm Jewish too. That's why I...” she hesitates.

“Why what?” he gently urges, wanting to know more about her, wanting to know everything.

“That’s why I was in Hong Kong,” she finally says.

He frowns. “I don't understand.”

She sighs. “I don't work during the Rosh Hashana. And my CEO insisted that I be the one to represent the company at the Hong Kong conference to make up for lost time”--she lifts her hand just enough to make appropriate little air quotes--“Whatever that means. He knows I work overtime on a regular basis.”

She wears an adorable pouting expression, puckering her lips just a little, as she goes on. “But if I didn't take that time off, then I wouldn't have been in Hong Kong. And we wouldn’t have met. So really I should be thanking him, I suppose.”

Oliver chuckles. “Sounds like be thanking your mom for raising you the way she did.”

Felicity smiles. “Oh, she would like you.”

“Yeah?” He’s so pleased by that notion that his hand unknowingly starts a thumb war with hers.

“Yeah. Still, being Jewish. I've never been to Israel.”

“Well, maybe I can take you sometime.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” He leans in closer.

“It's a date.” Her eyes widen in dread as soon as she utters the words, and he wants more than anything to wipe that fear from her eyes. “Or not. It's...whatever you want it to be, Oliver.”

His lips twitch. “It's a date.”

Since traveling across Asia seems to be their thing, he wonders what playing tourist with her would be like...as a normal couple. He’s starting to wonder a lot of things now that were incomprehensible before, things like traveling for fun, taking a vacation, the future. Is this what people think about when they’re not chasing the very thing that’s trying to kill them?

If it were only possible for them to just...stop, to disappear, to never have to be constantly looking over their shoulder, always wondering when the next attack is coming. But there’s no freedom in what they’re doing now. That’s no way to live. Felicity deserves so much more from life than he can currently offer her.

xxx

“This is hard for you, huh?” she asks him on the ferry ride across the Black Sea.

He looks down at where their hands are intertwined on the railing, the way her small, smooth fingers so obviously contrasts with his rough, calloused ones. In a dark hotel bedroom, it’s easy to pretend those differences don’t exist; but in the harsh light of day, all he can focus on is every minute detail that makes them unusual...makes him unusual.

“What, hypothetically dating someone?” Even now, he is unsure that's what they’re doing. The word sounds small and inaccurate to convey what they are to one another.

She chuckles, pressing her head deeper into his shoulder. He’s gotten so used to feeling her there that he dreads the day she’s not there. “I just mean...being like this. Being happy.”

Oliver sighs, staring out at the endless still waters. This boat ride is so very unlike the one that woke him up, the one where his memories truly come to a halt. Is this what happiness feels like, this fluttering on the edge of the unknown? He may be better than he was before, but he doesn’t deserve happiness; he knows that much.    

“This might sound strange, but I don’t think I’m capable of being happy,” he says.

“Oliver…hey, don’t shut me out. Not now.” Felicity reaches for his cheek, turning his head towards her, but he shuts his eyes tight. He just can’t...look at her right now.  The weight of his dark but limited past is too much. The weight of their unknown, out-of-reach future is too much. He just feels like he’s still stuck in the middle of an ocean, reacting helplessly to wave after wave, like he’s only half a person, half alive.

Somehow, in the peaceful stillness and on quiet waters, with just the two of them, he finally dares to linger in the darkest, most unsteady cavern of his mind and admits his deepest secret. “Felicity…” he whispers hoarsely. “I don’t know who I am.”

Of course, with no hesitancy, she meets him in that somber place. “I know who you are. No matter what happens, no matter what we find out, you’re a good man, Oliver. No one can take that away from you.”

He swallows. “I wasn’t always a good man. And I’m not so sure I am now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve...I’ve killed people, Felicity. I killed that man yesterday. I didn’t even think. It just...happened.”

“You were protecting me,” she pleads.

But he shakes his head, reluctant to accept that, cringing at the new memories he wants to push away but that will never leave him. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Maybe before, you didn’t have any choice. Besides, if you don’t remember doing it, then it’s not really you, is it?”

“I don’t know,” he huffs, wondering what it will take for her to finally see him as he truly is. Why doesn’t she hate him? Maybe she’s incapable of hate. Just like maybe he’s incapable of happiness. Except, sometimes, in rare, precious moments like this one, he thinks he could be happy, if he just tried hard enough. But if she is the exception for him, what does that mean for her? If she can still rely on strangers, maybe he can, too?

Finally, he turns to face her completely, to tell her at least something true and real. “But I do know two things, Felicity. Whoever I am...I am someone that will do whatever it takes to stop what’s coming.”

“Well then, we stop what’s coming.”

He smiles at how easily and naturally she’s adapting to this existence. Whatever this is exactly.

“And the second thing?” she asks, clearly not letting him get away with anything.

Despite the calm waters, the wind is fast and constant. Reflexively, he reaches up to push a few blowing strands of ebony hair out of her eyes, tucking the few short ones that will stay in place behind her ear. It’s silly, perhaps, but he’s already starting to miss that ponytail of hers.

“When this is all over, I want to be with you.”

It’s as much a promise as he is capable of making right now. He wishes it could be more. But Felicity doesn’t seem to mind, as she rises up on her tiptoes to kiss him sweetly. And what’s quickly becoming his favorite variation of kissing her is keeping his eyes open for as long as possible, as if to make sure this is really real, just until her lips touch his. He soaks up the scent of her like a sponge. Being with Felicity is...healing. She gives him something to fight for beyond himself. What is he giving her in return? A life on the run. A fragmented existence. There is no buoyancy with him. He doesn’t know how to keep himself afloat without drowning her...without drowning in her in the process.

xxx

When they arrive three blocks west of the entrance to the Çırağan Palace and Felicity pulls up images of the hotel, it becomes very apparent that is not the sort of place Alexi Leonov would venture into. Resting on the border of the wide Anatolia River, the Çırağan Palace is a lavishly large hotel, decorated in ostentatious Byzantine architecture with imported palm trees and dozens of ornately tiled pools filled with crystal clear blue water, the kind of water that satisfies you just by looking at it. This place is, in a word, a palace.

And it is so obviously designed to attract wealthy tourists, while paying false homage to the local culture. The palace holds too much flare for Alexi Leonov and maybe even for Oliver Queen, though evidently it's not too much pomp and circumstance for Thomas Merlyn.

They walk side-by-side, hand-in-hand down the crowded street, ducking down the hidden side alleyway used by staff to dodge the main regal entrance gate. Felicity is dressed in a bright red dress and heels, standing out just enough that she actually blends in here.

“Talk to me, Felicity. How many exits?” Oliver asks as they keep walking, his palm pressed at her back, whether to guide her or keep himself grounded, he doesn't know.

“Four,” she states automatically, and then she begins listing off verbatim the blueprint he had her memorize yesterday. “Two side exists, one on the southwest side, one on the northeast--which is right and left from the main lobby area. The front door--but only if the other two aren’t an option. And this one, obviously. Which is the best option...for us.”

He nods. “Good.”

She takes a breath, and he can almost see the wheels turning in that beautiful head of hers.

“Oh! And if I think I'm being followed, I put my purse over my right shoulder. Keep walking, don’t look back until we make contact.” Her voice drops to a low register, in what he assumes is meant to be a very poor impression of him. “Why do we say ‘make contact’--why not just...meet up? That way it doesn't sound like an alien abduction. Not that I believe in aliens--”

“Felicity--I need you to focus.”

“Sorry.” She pushes up her glasses nervously. “I still don’t understand why you won’t let me just hack the hotel security and records from the past month.”

He gives her what he hopes is his best no-nonsense look. He thinks he might be losing his ability to read others’ reactions to him, since nothing he does seems to ever shake Felicity. “We’ve been over this,” he reminds her. “I can’t risk that they aren’t monitoring this hotel. And even with your skills--”

“I mean, what kind of hacker would I be, if I couldn’t breach lame hotel security undetected?”

Her quirky attempts at humor are not enough to set him at ease. This time, it’s his turn to take a deep, unsteady breath, as he surveys her from head to toe, secretly hoping something, anything will be out of place so they can postpone the inevitable.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, just...you don't have to do this.”

A strange look of determination crosses her face. “Yeah, I do.”

“Okay. If anything happens, I'm right outside.”

“I know.”

His eyes drop to her lips. He wants to kiss her again, but they both don’t need that distraction right now. She needs a clear head, and he needs to be a soldier to keep her safe.

He keeps his gaze fixed on her retreating figure. At the door, she gives him a quick backward glance and small smile before disappearing.

The wait is agony.

He waits and paces and scrapes his fingers through his hair and checks his watch; but every time he does, mere seconds have gone by, not the hours that he feels. He knew he should have taken the time to invest in some comm units. What if something happens to her, and he’s too late? What if something goes wrong and--

A soft hand tap on his shoulder nearly has him falling over in shock. He’s never allowed himself to be snuck up on before, and here she is...a dove startling a lion. He’s so relieved to see her that he almost pulls her up into his arms, but he manages to restrain himself at the last second.

“You got it?” he breathes.

She nods, evidently pleased with herself.

He checks his watch again--it’s only be a fraction of the time he estimated for this endeavor to take. “What did you do?”

Suddenly, she’s talking very fast, and her voice carries a strange tone of underlying guilt that he doesn't understand right away. “Well, the guy at the counter was kind of smiling at me--not smiling like serial killer kind of smile, but it was more than simply being polite; kind of like ‘Hey, I think I could flirt with you”--honestly, it reminded me of this guy I met freshman year--

“Felicity--”

“Right. Well, anyway, I just thought, all this trouble...why not just ask for the papers?”

He blinks. “You just...asked for them?”

“I told him I was your Executive Assistant--not you you, obviously, but the other you. This you.”

She hands him a small stack of papers, revealing details about Thomas Merlyn that were unattainable before, filling in the gaps of his past lives one piece at a time. Apparently Thomas Merlyn works in international business for Merlyn Global, and he’s clearly in a lucrative field, as this is his third visit to this exact hotel. He’s beginning to understand why he hoards so many names. Names have power. Some names open doors that other names would not.

“Oh, and I got this.”

He looks up to see her playfully waving a green flash drive at him, practically beaming at him with glee. “Another mystery in the Oliver Queen saga. I cannot wait to plug this into my laptop.”

Whatever look he sends her has her pausing, doubting herself. “So, did I do a good job?” Felicity asks.

He laughs once, shaking his head, because she’s done more than that, so much more, in ways that go beyond that tangible. She sees the best in people. Even him. Whereas he trusts no one. Except her.

What a fine, messed up pair they make.

He can’t stop himself from running his thumb across her cheek, just once, relishing the freedom that he gets to do that sort of thing now. “Felicity, you’re remarkable.”

She blushes in that radiant way he’s come to expect and cherish. “Thank you for remarking on it.”

xxx

He stumbles on the stairwell up to their cheap hotel room on the third floor.

“Hey, are you okay?” Felicity helps him keep his balance on the landing, and he feels bad for any added bodyweight of his she has to support.

“I’m fine,” he groans.

“You are not fine. You’re having some kind of panic attack.”

He doesn’t panic, though. That’s not who he is. Which means something's wrong.

Oliver remains cognizant just long enough to collapse onto the small bed in the corner of the room. As soon as his head hits the mattress, seconds and hours and days begin to bleed together. He has no idea where he is. He’s back in the middle of the ocean, lost and helpless and cold. He stumbles inside the mazes of his mind, spreading like vines with thorns.

He dreams of being in the lab again, this time surrounded by masked, faceless surgeons in dark scrubs, all hovering over him like he’s some sort of lab experiment, poking and prodding him for hours. He screams against the pain, but the pain doesn’t stop. It never stops. It keeps biting him, consuming him, making his whole body tremble restlessly. He spins into the abyss, his mind nauseous and numb.

And then...out of the fog comes a beacon. A light. A voice. She sounds too good to be real. Through blurry eyes, he can just barely make her out, wiping his damp forehead, placing another cool cloth on his stomach. Somehow he feels better, just knowing she’s here.

Sleep the voice patiently urges.

And he does.

xxx

His fever breaks in the morning. His body quivers with the aftershocks as he slowly emerges from the fog. He spots Felicity sitting on the other end of the bed, taking up the only spare space he left, her gaze intensely focused on the computer in front of her.

In his struggle to sit up, Felicity’s head pops up. “Hey.”

He sighs in relief, at the way her voice is like a balm to his mind after the war he feels like he’s just fought inside his head.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m good,” he croaks out, his voice raspy from sleep and whatever else...that was.

“Not even close, but the fever seems to be gone at least.”

Oliver groans, stretching his arms to push himself into a sitting position. He heaves with relief again when his back is resting against the wall.

“What was that?”

“Well, I don’t know much, but I think you’re going through some kind withdrawal.”

“Withdrawal from what?”

She gives him a sympathetic grimace, hinting at something he doesn’t pick up on right away. “Told you it was the drugs,” she mutters, before handing him a glass of water which he downs instantly, grateful for the cool taste.

When the entire glass is empty, he asks, “Why hasn’t this happened before?”

She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. Medicine is not exactly my forte.”

He shifts, scooting down the bed to sit close to her and look at the screen on her lap. His hand comes up to run in slow circles along her back, a habit he’s picked up since Kiev. It’s then that he notices the green flash drive sticking into one of the USB ports. She’s already working on his behalf, already buried herself in research that he didn’t ask her to do. While he is proud to have her help in all of this, he’s also...worried. It’s one thing for him to sell his soul to this crusade, because he’s pretty sure he already forfeited his soul a long time ago. But it seems so much worse for her to lose herself in the process of trying to save him. Why should she be the one stop the demons that he helped create?

“What did you find?” he asks, ignoring his growing concern for her, gnawing in his gut.

“Not much,” she answers, resuming her typing and not bothering to look back at him. “There’s a file. It’s the only one I could get open, and that was after a significant amount of hacking.”

He frowns at that statement. Has she been up all night hacking? He can see the bangs starting to grow under her eyes, and his hand seems to press more deeply, more gently into her back on a will of its own.

“The whole document has been redacted,” Felicity continues, “except for this one word: MIRAKURU. I think it's the name of the black ops group that you're a part of. Have you ever seen this before?” She points to the screen.

“No,” he answers honestly, but knowing what the word means. Miracle. And yet, it’s more than that. It’s another code, the very tip of his iceberg of secrets.

“Oliver.” The new change in her tone has him on edge, especially when she twists to look at him. “Based on what I’m seeing, I think you were going to expose this...program. Don’t you see? This proves that you’re not a bad person.”

He grimaces. It hardly proves anything. He’s still killed. He’s still the monster in all of this. Whatever information she’s found, one good deed does not a lifetime of misery erase.

His mind suddenly fills with another scene...a memory, murky at first but slowly becoming clearer. He sees clearly for the first time--he sees himself with long hair, a wig, getting the Chinese tattoo painted on his abdomen. Somehow, he knows that getting this tattoo is essential for some infiltration purpose. He’s rehearsing his Mandarin inside the base of operations. Instinctively, his hand covers his stomach where the markings reside, as the words that didn’t make sense before finally click into place. And a new connection seems to fill his whole head with new energy, as the broken bits of his past self are gradually put back together.

One's good deeds are only known at home. One's bad deeds far away.

“There’s a base of operations in Greece,” he hears himself saying.

“H-how do you know?”

“I...I just do.” He doesn’t know yet how to tell her that he remembers. Because the more he remembers, the less he feels worthy of being in her company. His memories could change things between them. They could change everything. What if he remembers enough to...become the person that he was before?

Oliver groans into a standing position and stiffly trudges across the room to his backpack on the table, combing through it until his hand wraps around the pistol buried at the bottom.

Felicity hops off the bed and rushes to his side. “What are you doing? You can’t go out there in your condition.”

He swiftly loads the pistol and stuffs the weapon into the back of his pants. “I have to stop this. I need answers.”

The intel on the flash drive is still not enough. Why isn’t it enough? Just what exactly is he chasing? Answers? No, he knows it’s something much deeper than that. Freedom. But the only way to get that is to cut ties completely with whatever agency has him captive. He has to go into the lion’s den.

He hesitates, dreading what’s to come but knowing that it’s necessary. Keeping her safe is necessary. He finally turns to look at her, already memorizing the way her eyes flicker as she studies him right back. “And you need to stay here.”

“What? Why? You can’t just ask me--”

“I’m not asking.”

She shakes her head no.

He sighs. Despite knowing that she was going to be stubborn about this, it doesn’t make the task any easier. “Felicity--”

“No, not unless you tell me why.”

“Because I need you to be safe.”

“Well, in case that wasn't apparent already, I don't want to be safe, Oliver. I want to be with you.”

The way she whines you, prolonging the sound, and reaches for his arm sends his heart dropping.

He swallows, feeling the remnants of his soul already starting to crumble at the thought of sending her away from him. “If I'm not back in twelve hours, you lay low and then you take the first train out of here to Berlin. Do you understand?”

She licks her lips, and watches in agony as the silent tears flood those warm eyes. “Oliver, my dad left me and my first and only boyfriend in college left me. And just the thought of losing someone that important to me again…”

“Hey,” he soothes, unable to stop himself from cupping her face and giving her whatever shards of comfort he has left to offer. “You're not gonna lose me. This isn't goodbye. This is...a pause.”

“You can't know that for sure.”

“l’ll come back.”

“Can you promise me?” she breathes.

He can’t promise her that, and they both know it. Suddenly, he feels very heavy, weighted to the earth, as he feels her slipping away from him. Even as she stands before him, he can feel the distance separating them growing wider and deeper. He senses the walls she’s putting up between them, because he’s well practiced in this tact of survival, too. He’s just never been on the receiving end before. It hurts more than he thought it might.

Since he doesn't have an answer for her, he settles for kissing her forehead.

He pulls away far too soon and checks his supplies one last time. He decides to take only the barest amount of money, just enough for transportation to get to Greece and maybe some food, if he feels up to eating later. He leaves her the rest.  

Felicity’s voice is barely above a whisper but it strikes him harshly all the same. “I...I won’t be here when you get back.”

He spins. “What?”

Her lips are trembling, and she looks ten shades paler than before. “I'm sorry. And I know that there’s no way of avoiding this. And I wish I could change your mind...but I know I can’t. Just like I know leaving you is going to destroy me, but…I just...can’t wait around for you to die.”

Oliver moves to stand before her, to be in her orbit just a little longer, his ridiculous resolve instantly forgotten. “What are you saying?”

Her hands come up, her palms pressed gently into his arms, like she’s trying to memorize him one last time, too. “You know, Oliver, I wanted to come along on your awesome adventure, because I wanted to help you. But I realize...we have to let each other go. I hope you find the answers that you're looking for.”

“Please don't...” he begins gruffly. Don’t go. Stay with me. Yet he’s unable to go on. How can he ask her to stay, when he’s the one leaving? “You know, in the beginning of was just gonna do all of this by myself. But now...I rely on you.”

She smiles briefly, but it’s a haunting, hollow smile, nowhere near the same beaming smile that he’s grown used to. “Oliver, I’m just afraid that whoever these people are, they’re going to use your humanity against you. This could be trap.”

He shakes his head, not disagreeing with her. But what other choice does he have? “Felicity--”

“Oliver, I know you say you don't what kind of person you are, but...all of this--you--it's changed my life for the better. And I don't know...if I'll ever see you again, but...I do know two things. You are not alone, and I believe in you.”

Oliver feels in his heart the moment it’s decided. This moment. They’ve both made their choice. Now they have to live with them. He cups her face once more. “You know there's no going back to your old life,” he breathes.

“I know,” she says. “And for whatever it’s worth, I don’t regret a single moment.”

His lips twitch at that, hinting at a smile, reminiscent of a life they almost had. “Be careful. Avoid any major intersections. Don’t get on a plane, whatever you do. I'm sorry I can’t protect you and be with you at the same time.”

“I don’t accept that. And you shouldn’t either.” She sniffs. “You won’t forget me, will you?

How could he forget about her? She's the only person he knows. “I will come and get you when this is all over,” he assures her.

She nods sadly, staring at his lips.

“The only way that I’m gonna survive this is if I know that you’re out there, living your life. Happy.” His grip on her face tightens just a little, as if to make her feel his resolve through his fingertips, as if to demand that she be happy. Even without him. Especially without him.

With his thumb, he swipes away the streaks of tears on her face, before letting her kiss him one last time, letting himself indulge in the feel of her skin and strength just a few precious seconds more.

And then he does the unthinkable. He lets her go.

xxx

Either no one expects his coming or the European base of operations is too easy to infiltrate. The facility is dispersed throughout ten floors of a run-down apartment complex, by all appearances completely harmless, hidden in plain sight. He counts six guards stationed throughout the winding staircase, and he takes each of the men out easily, wasting no more than single round a piece.

Finally, in the very last room on the very top floor, at the very end of a dim, narrow hallway, he enters a room filled with screens and no analysts. The room is deserted except for one large figure standing directly in the center of the room, his back to the door, like he was waiting for him.

“You move and you die,” says Oliver, tightening his grip on the gun.

“That's fair, though I was hoping you'd hear my end of the story first before jumping to conclusions.”

Oliver stills. He knows that voice. The deep voice with the accent. It’s the voice from his nightmares.

“I thought we were on the same side,” the voice continues.

“And whose side is that?” barks Oliver.

The man abruptly turns around, and something inside Oliver starts to buzz, because he swears he almost recognizes this man, a little older than he is, with broad shoulders and a heavy beard. But what really draws Oliver’s attention is the ominous patch over the man’s right eye. Oliver wants to ask him how he got it, but curiosity is not a luxury he can afford right now. He cannot let his guard down.

“So it’s true,” the man says. “You don't remember. All the years we’ve spent together, training, as brothers. Gone in an instant.”

“Who are you? Why are you trying to kill me?”

“I’m not the one who’s trying to kill you, kid. It’s the people we work for. And it’s thanks to me that there haven’t been more misfired attempts on your life.”

Oliver hesitates. “Why should I believe you?”

“I haven’t attempted to harm you yet, have I?” The man spreads his arms wide, showing off his empty hands, glancing around the room, as if the walls hold the answers they’re both searching for.

But Oliver isn’t fooled by this act of armistice. And his instincts prove correct in the next moment.

“How’s the girl with the glasses? What’s her name? Fe-li-ci-ty?”

Every alarm inside Oliver goes off, and it is only thanks to the rigorous level of self-control he has obviously been programmed for that he maintains his composure and doesn’t just lunge to snap this man’s neck right now.

“She’s dead,” he declares.

The man just tips his head in false sympathy, and Oliver can’t tell if he believes him or not. This man is yet another exception to his rule--neither a target nor a threat, exactly, but someone he remains wary of.

“You want to tell me how this happened?” his supposed brother-in-arms asks. “What happened with Maseo Yamashiro?”

On the surface, he sounds like someone concerned for his friend. But Oliver easily reads this stranger's underlying tone--the man just wants intel. And for once, intel is something Oliver does have, which makes him want to cling to it even harder. Pieces have started coming back in the last few hours, so he thinks he knows the answer to this one.

“You sent me to kill him.”

“NO!” The man roars, suddenly invading his space, that for one Oliver flinches a little. “I sent you to be invisible! I sent you, because You. Don’t. Exist.”

Oliver shivers, not from the words but from what the words are triggering inside him. He shivers at the onslaught of...memories. So many memories. He remembers everything.

He remembers getting the tattoo so he could infiltrate the Yamashiro gang. He remembers spending almost a week on board the freighter, waiting for his opportunity. He remembers putting a gun to Yamashiro’s head, his finger just over the trigger... And then he sees the little boy running onto his target’s lap.

He knew Yamashiro had a son. Akio. He read the file. He studied Maseo Yamashiro for weeks.

And yet...seeing a child in the midst of a war... That sent him reeling. Oliver doesn’t recall exactly, but he somehow senses that he has a connection with this boy. He knows but doesn’t really remember watching his own father shoot himself in the head to save his life.

He remembers hesitating, lingering on the brink of a choice. How can he derive this child of his father right in front of him? Does he want to create more ghosts like himself? Why does he continue to work for these people who turned him into nothing more than a weapon? He’s never had a choice about being the loaded gun. But he does, for once, get to choose where he puts his aim.

Impulsively, Oliver lowers the gun he carries now, unloading it and tossing the useless weapon on the ground, listening to the projectiles clang against the wooden floor, rolling, their echoes filling in the loaded silence.  

“I’m done,” Oliver breathes.

This only serves to make the man before him all the more angry. “No, you’re done, when I say you’re done! I created you, kid. I can uncreate you.”

He senses the second the atmosphere between them shifts, the moment just before his enemy strikes. Oliver is faster. The man goes for his throat right away, but Oliver swiftly blocks him, before throwing his weight fully into the fight. They wrestle for some time, but eventually Oliver regains the upper hand, pushing his enemy to the ground and swiping his gun from his waist. He holds barrel right to his temple, letting the man feel the cool ring of the muzzle next to his brain, letting him feel how close he is to death.

“I swear to God, if you touch her or if I so much as feel another soldier at my back, I will come for you, and I will kill you. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t wait for the man to answer. He prolongs his grip on this man’s life just a little longer, letting him see that he could choose to kill him if he really wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. Not anymore. Not ever again.

He swallows and then unloads the gun, sending its parts scattered across the room.

Standing up, he declares, “Oliver Queen is dead. He died on that boat in the North China Sea.”

And then he does what he does best--he disappears into the night like the ghost that he is. He remembers running on the freighter deck and being shot at and...then a blank. The next thing he remembers is waking up with Viktor standing over him. Just like that night everything changed the first time, he vanishes. Only this time, he doesn’t run. He walks away, calm and cool and collected and...free.

He thinks about Viktor. His very first reaction--his instinct--to human contact after waking up had been to...to kill. He had almost succeeded. It was pure confusion that had stopped him from making himself a murder.

Perhaps this is his destiny after all.

Everything that has happened has led him right here, to this moment. And if that’s true, then what is it all for? He doesn’t know.

I do.

He can hear her voice inside his head, his one constant in the storm, the beacon calling him to the shore.

xxx

It takes him four months to clear his identity, to wipe the slate clean, to start over.

He grows anxious when it takes him nearly as long to find her. She is better at covering her tracks than he originally gave her credit for. Of all the people on the planet, it’s her he had to run into in Hong Kong. They have so much in common. And yet nothing in common.

He finally finds her in the last place anyone would think to look--right at the epicenter of her former life--a small, downtown computer store of a dying urban community called The Glades. It's quite brilliant, actually, the way she's buried herself within a new identity.

“Felicity Smoak?”

She spins, golden waves swishing around her shoulders. Her hair has grown a little since he last saw her, though it’s not nearly at the length when he first met her.

He feels like he’s meeting her all over again.

Her eyes widen as she plucks a red pen out of her brightly-painted lips.

“Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.” Off her shocked expression, he can’t stop the smile that easily spreads across his face, nor does he try to. Now that he seems to have rendered her speechless for the first time ever.

She recovers quickly, playing along. “Of course. I know who you are. What can I do for you, Mr. Queen?”

“I’m having some trouble with my computer, and they told me you were the person to come and see.” He produces the computer in question, placing it slowly on the desk.

“They?” she manages to squeak out, as her eyes drop  to the bullet-riddled laptop. She starts rubbing her lips together, and that adorable little crinkle is already starting to form between her eyebrows. Oh, she is breathtaking.

He’s so enamored seeing her again, he tells her the first lie that comes to his head. It’s a bad one, but he doesn’t care. “I was at my coffeeshop surfing the web, and I spilt a latte on it.”

“Really?” Her teasing look alone nearly breaks him. “What do you take me for, Mister…?”

“Queen,” he answers with a smile, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Right. Mr. Queen.”

They pause, taking a moment to regard one another. And he feels his soul come alive watching that easy smile grow, brightening her entire countenance.

“You know, for an ex-agent...whatever you are, you really suck at lying.”

“Well, I guess I’m a little out of practice.”

She’s darting around the counter and leaping into his arms before he can say anything else. His arms come up and around her back, pressing against the softness of her frame, pulling her body as close as he can. And he sighs. For the first time in forever, he can finally breathe. Sinking into her embrace, an overwhelming yet freeing sensation comes over him. It takes him a long time to realize that what he’s experiencing is peace--the feeling that he’s been craving. He belongs here, surrounded by her warmth, dwelling in her presence.

“You know, I think I want to go to Bali.”

She pulls back just enough to look up at him, thankfully staying within his embrace. His hands are already reacquainting themselves with the little dips in her lower back. “Bali?”

“Mm-hmm. Want to come with me?” He leans down to brush the tip of his nose against hers, watching her lips pinch together as she pretends to consider his offer.

Then she smiles. “Yeah. I'd go anywhere with you,” she answers brightly.

“Yeah?”

At last, he’s finally found the place he’s been secretly searching for all along. He nuzzles her neck, drinking in her springtime scent, letting himself accept this newfound freedom. And when he kisses her--softly, gently at first, but deepening as she kisses him back with a kind of ferocity that nearly takes his breath away--that’s when he knows for sure.

“Oliver?”

His name on her lips is both a dream and a beacon, waking him up, calling him home.

“Just one question.”

Anything, he thinks.

“Is there email in Bali?”

And he laughs, really laughs, before pulling her close to kiss her again. And he doesn't let go. For a very long time, he doesn't let her go. Thank you, he seems to say as he kisses her deeply. They were the first words she ever spoke to him, and they are the words pulsing inside him as he holds her in his arms again. They have become his quiet anthem to the universe since the day he ran into her...or she almost ran into him.

They end up taking a private boat to a private island in Bali. One boat ride may have rescued him from the brink of death, but this boat ride is the one that brings him back to life.

While he never really stops looking over his shoulder, eventually, he comes to accept that the ghosts of his past are always going to be his shadow. It's up to him whether he will constantly dwell in the past or keep moving forward.

xxx

His first conscious thought is more of a feeling.

Hope. Quiet, searing hope. The kind of hope that fills him to the brim that he nearly chokes from happiness.

And when he wakes in a beach house bedroom, drowning in a sea of golden curls, it’s not a startled awakening. It’s more like a long exhale. His grip on the person sleeping next to him tightens just a little, pulling her body just a fraction closer to his, whether to keep her warm or keep himself warm, he doesn’t know.

All he does know is that at last Oliver Queen has found himself. Because he found her.

Tag Team: I’m tagging my usual squad, plus anyone who expressed interest in being tagged after my recent fic announcement. If I missed anyone, I apologize! This is the most requests I’ve ever gotten. Thank you so much for reading!

@1106angel / @almondblossomme / @andjustforthismoment / @astoryreader / @bekaoperetta / @candykizzes24 / @dust2dust34 / @emmaamelia95 / @felicityollies / @geniewithwifi / @god-lock / @holysmoaksoliver / @hope-for-olicity / @it-was-a-red-heeler / @jedichick04 / @kmart1885 / @lovejesusarrowavengersblog / @mel-loves-all / @memcjo / @millennialfangirl / @minny28 / @mochababychristy / @mogirl97 / @nishtanight / @olicityotp-always / @redpensandgreenarrows / @scu11y22 / @sovvannight / @spaztronautwriter / @stellahellaviola / @the-silverforked-sky / @wherethereissmoak

[shaizstern]

Article from NYT: Talk Less. Listen More. Here’s How.

Lessons in the art of listening, from a C.I.A. agent, a focus group moderator and more.

Lily Padula

By Kate Murphy

Ms. Murphy is the author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.”

Jan. 9, 2020

When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened, without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone or jumping in to offer your opinion? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and whose response was so spot on that you felt truly understood?

We are encouraged to listen to our hearts, our inner voices and our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and purposefully to other people. Instead, we talk over one another at cocktail parties, work meetings and even family dinners. Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping the narrative and staying on message.

And yet, listening can be more valuable than speaking. Wars have been fought, fortunes lost and friendships wrecked for lack of listening. It is only by listening that we engage, understand, empathize, cooperate and develop as human beings. It is fundamental to any successful relationship — personal, professional and political.

In writing a book about listening, I asked people from Brooklyn to Beijing what it meant to be a good listener. The typical response was a blank stare. People had no trouble, however, telling me what it meant to be a bad listener, rattling off actions such as interrupting, looking at a phone, and responding in a narcissistic or confused way. The sad truth is that people have more experience being cut off, ignored and misunderstood than heard to their satisfaction.

Of course, technology plays a role. Social media provides a virtual megaphone, along with the means to filter out opposing views. People find phone calls intrusive and ignore voice mail, preferring text or wordless emoji. If people are listening to anything, it’s likely through headphones or earbuds, where they feel safe inside their own curated sound bubbles. This is all fueling what public health officials describe as an epidemic of loneliness in the United States.

But tech is not the only culprit. High schools and colleges have debate teams and courses in rhetoric and persuasion, but rarely, if ever, offer classes or extracurricular activities that teach careful listening. You can get a doctorate in speech communication and join clubs such as Toastmasters to perfect your public speaking, but who strives for excellence in listening? The image of success and power today is someone miked up and prowling around a stage or orating from behind a lectern. Giving a TED talk or delivering a commencement speech is living the dream.

The cacophony of modern life also stops us from listening. The acoustics in restaurants can make it difficult, if not impossible, for diners to clearly hear one another. Offices with an open design ensure every keyboard click, telephone call and after-lunch belch make for constant racket. Traffic noise on city streets, music playing in shops and the bean grinder at your favorite coffeehouse exceed the volume of normal conversation by as much as 30 decibels, and can even cause hearing loss.

So how can we reclaim the lost art of listening? After a couple of years studying the neuroscience, psychology and sociology of listening, as well as consulting some of the best professional listeners out there (including a C.I.A. agent, focus group moderator, radio producer, priest, bartender and furniture salesmen), I discovered that listening goes beyond simply hearing what people say. It also involves paying attention to how they say it and what they do while they are saying it, in what context, and how what they say resonates within you.

It’s not about merely holding your peace while someone else holds forth. Quite the opposite. A lot of listening has to do with how you respond — the degree to which you facilitate the clear expression of another person’s thoughts and, in the process, crystallize your own.

Good listeners ask good questions. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned as a journalist is that anyone can be interesting if you ask the right questions. That is, if you ask truly curious questions that don’t have the hidden agenda of fixing, saving, advising, convincing or correcting. Curious questions don’t begin with “Wouldn’t you agree…?” or “Don’t you think…?” and they definitely don’t end with “right?” The idea is to explore the other person’s point of view, not sway it.

For example, when trying to find out why people might go to the grocery store late at night, a focus group moderator told me, she didn’t ask leading questions like, “Do you shop late a night because you didn’t get around to it during the day?” or “Do you shop at night because that’s when they restock the shelves?” Instead, she turned her question into an invitation: “Tell me about the last time you went grocery shopping late at night.” This, she said, prompted a quiet, unassuming woman who had hardly spoken up to that point to raise her hand. “I had just smoked a joint and was looking for a ménage à trois — me, Ben and Jerry,” she said. Grocers, take note.

You also want to avoid asking people personal and appraising questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “What part of town do you live in?” or “What school did you go to?” or “Are you married?” This line of questioning is not an honest attempt to get to know who you’re talking to so much as rank them in the social hierarchy. It’s more like an interrogation and, as a former C.I.A. agent told me, interrogation will get you information, but it won’t be credible or reliable.

In social situations, peppering people with judgmental questions is likely to shift the conversation into a superficial, self-promoting elevator pitch. In other words, the kinds of conversations that make you want to leave the party early and rush home to your dog.

Instead, ask about people’s interests. Try to find out what excites or aggravates them — their daily pleasures or what keeps them up at night. Ask about the last movie they saw or for the story behind a piece of jewelry they’re wearing. Also good are expansive questions, such as, “If you could spend a month anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

Research indicates that when people who don’t know each other well ask each other these types of questions, they feel more connected than if they spent time together accomplishing a task. They are the same kinds of questions listed in the widely circulated article “36 Questions That Lead to Love” and are similar to the conversation starters suggested by the Family Dinner Project, which encourages device-free and listening-focused meals.

Because our brains can think a lot faster than people can talk, beware of the tendency to take mental side trips when you should be listening. Smart people are particularly apt to get distracted by their own galloping thoughts. They are also more likely to assume they already know what the other person is going to say.

People with higher I.Q.s also tend to be more neurotic and self-conscious, which means that worry and anxiety are more likely to hijack their attention. If you fall in this category, it could be helpful to consider listening a kind of meditation, where you make yourself aware of and acknowledge distractions, then return to focusing. Rather than concentrating on your breathing or a mantra, return your attention to the speaker.

The reward of good listening will almost certainly be more interesting conversations. Researchers have found that when talking to inattentive listeners, the speakers volunteered less information and conveyed information less articulately. Conversely, they found that attentive listeners received more information, relevant details and elaboration from speakers, even when the listeners didn’t ask any questions.

How you listen can work like a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you’re barely listening to someone because you think that person is boring or not worth your time, you could actually make it so. Moreover, listening to other people makes it more likely other people will listen to you. This is partly because it’s human nature to return courtesies, but also because good listening improves your chances of delivering a message that resonates.

Listening is a skill. And as with any skill, it degrades if you don’t do it enough. Some people may have stronger natural ability while others may have to work harder, but each of us can become a better listener with practice. The more people you listen to, the more aspects of humanity you will recognize, and the better your instincts will be. Listening well can help you understand other people’s attitudes and motivations, which is essential in building cooperative and productive relationships, as well as discerning which relationships you’d be better off avoiding.

We are, each of us, the sum of what we attend to in life. The soothing voice of a mother, the whisper of a lover, the guidance of a mentor, the admonishment of a supervisor, the rallying call of a leader and the taunts of a rival ultimately form and shape us. And to listen poorly, selectively or not at all limits your understanding of the world and prevents you from becoming the best you can be.

[lakhisoniual]

Uncreative Writing : conceptualising literature

After recapping the topics we went through via the favoured ‘I remember’ lines - which mainly focused on analysis of a work via the body or person who wrote/produced the work. This week, however, we moved on to analysis of the work via the object or the text itself. The meaning/context is developed via a cycle of analysis through BODY (PERSON), OBJECT (PLACE) and WORLD (THING).

We looked into Kenneth Goldsmith’s novel titled “Uncreative Writing”. In this book, Goldsmith propagates conceptualisation of literature, as done in the art world - all to create a new genre of solely objective and ‘uncreative’ writing. 

The genre aims to produce expressionless and data-based writing rather than imagined works with traditional and structured  plots, all while maintaining an aesthetic-orientated view. In short, writing needs to catch up with the art world. This may make the genre sound dry to those unfamiliar with it, but in fact it is not all the case. I’ve just started reading the book myself, and the opening quote in the book by  David Antin sums up the genre as a whole -

 i had always had mixed feelings about being considered a poet                          if robert lowell is a poet           i dont want to be a poet                                          if robert frost was a poet           i dont want to be a poet                                      if socrates was a poet          ill consider it

.

We also discussed Goldsmith’s motivation behind introducing uncreative writing as a new genre. Precursors to the genre include conceptual art, specifically Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain - one of the main propellants for readymade art. The whole idea of ‘Uncreative writing’ as a genre is to raise the question of quantification of the value of a written work. Goldsmith’s books are not all meant to read fully, but rather encourage independent thinkership about the concepts presented. 

We also discussed the types of material used in Goldsmith’s work. This was followed by a writing exercise where we used ready made text and reassembled specific sections to make a new text. I decided to use all the first messages I had received from my matches on Bumble (a dating app) to highlight the hilarity of introductions/digital courtships. 

Introductions - the Bumble Dance

Hey YN Hello YN (with each letter spaced out) x Heyy! How’s it going? Hi what’s up? Hey you . Hello x How are we? I was climbing over a fence and slipped Worst night out ever What’s your story . Where you from? Us migrants gotta stick together I think I will… thank you a lot for the recommendation And there they thought Brexit would keep us out Also, how you doing? . Glad to know you decided on Man crush Monday out of all days ahaha Im 6 ft 6 Aren’t you suspiciously tall You have some nice poses going on… FASHION! (gif) Thanks . Depends what library do you use? Why not? (dolphin emoji) Not anymore, but I do remember being very distracted by you in lcc library haha I think I’m cute too You’re also very cute Thanks x . I get that all the time (hand on face emoji) (sends picture with waffles) The process haha ^ It makes me want to have me a pre-prohibition era cocktail and a joint. I’m all about jazz, I’m also 420 friendly ;) Yeah, it tasted amazing too! Looks almost as good as you do ;) Ahahahah . Well that was fantastic

I arranged the text to make it look like a conversation between two people, solely using the messages I received. It can also be read in a way where the reader can come up with their own responses to the questions asked/statements made in the text.

We also had another writing/composition task involving collaging texts printed from selected pages from various books. One of the pages was from the Kama Sutra - it interested me as it only gave advice/dialogue about the female sex, and its target audience was only men. It inspired me to make the following collage/poem -