Challenge 34: Missing Moments

[kitty_fic]

Description Write a missing moment from canon!

Tell a story that you feel is missing from canon. Pick any moment from canon and expand from there to tell the missing piece of the story.

Points You can earn a total of 51 points.
+ 5 points per 50 words (up to 500 words/50 points)
+ 1 for sigtag when submitting
Due Date November 30, 2016 at

Comments

[theladymorgan]

Title: Giving In Only Makes Us Numb
Fandom: Arrow
Characters/Pairing(s): Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Rating: PG/K+
Warnings: None
Exact Word Count: 589
Where is canon does your story fit?: Post-3x16

[Giving In Only Makes Us Numb]There is a moment when he wants to give up.  He wants to be angry, to yell, to feel something.  But he does not.

The worst part is that her words ring in his ears.  I don’t want to be a woman that you love.  They do not leave him alone.

Oliver is used to being numb.  Five years in hell hardened his heart and gave him a killer instinct.  (Except he is lying to himself - the five years after the shipwreck were full of pain and loss and he has not forgiven himself for what happened to Shado or Slade or Sara or Maseo and Tatsu or Akio - every single person he came in contact with has ended up broken.)  He is used to it, but this is not the same.

He knows he is doing what is necessary.  Ra’s al Ghul will destroy Starling City if he does not find a way out of this.  Yet - yet if he is going to lose everyone he cares about, he almost wonders if being Ra’s al Ghul would be so bad.

He is already losing Felicity.  It feels like Thea and Roy and Laurel - and even Diggle - have been slowly slipping away from him since he came back, too.  He almost died and they had to carry on without him.  It was always his mission until suddenly it wasn’t.  Suddenly it is theirs more than it is his and Oliver does not know what to do.  They can and did protect the city without him.  They do not need him anymore.

He entertains the idea of becoming the next Ra’s al Ghul longer than he should.  He knows better.  He knows better, but he cannot help himself.  He considers it anyway.

It would be a new purpose - he can protect Starling City without being there.  He would never have to face losing one of his friends to a monster like Slade or Ra’s again.  (And then, he realizes, he would not have any friends because they would never forgive him for becoming one of the monsters they had spent three years trying to bring down.  He pushes the thought down.  He feels like he is losing them already.)

The thought is still in the back of his mind when he turns Maseo down.  He already knows that Maseo speaks the truth.  He knows that there is nothing he can do to stop Ra’s al Ghul like this.  He has a plan, but he is still so uncertain.  He does not know if it will work or that it will save Starling City - or his friends.  He knows that if Ra’s has anything to say about it, his friends will be among of the casualties.

Oliver tries not to let himself imagine what it would be like if he just let it happen and somehow he managed to save Starling City.  Oliver Queen would be no more and Al Sahim would remain.  He would be like Maseo - Ra’s would break him.

He has spent too many years trying to protect Starling City to walk away from it - yet, the people of Starling do not want to the Arrow to protect them.  It is a witchhunt that Quentin Lance is leading.  He wishes Lance had not turned his back on the Arrow.  They were a good team once.  They did good together - before Lance decided that the Arrow was a murderer all over again.  Then everything went to pieces again.

They do not want Oliver Queen either.  None of them do.