Arrow: Honeytraps
Title: Honeytraps
Author: Desiree
Rating: PG 13
Spoilers: first season, particularly eps 13 to 15
Characters: Slade Wilson, Oliver Queen
Disclaimer: Neither of the characters is mine. Unfortunately.
Summary: A look inside Slade's head after Oliver returns from Yao Fei's cave.
A/N: So, guess what? New fandom - new OTP...
“You're not gonna last an hour out there!"
“Well, I guess you better hope I'll get back in forty five minutes then!”
Arrow, season 1, “The Dodger”
Oliver Queen has a smart mouth. You've known that practically since the beginning.
But that night, the kid is quiet.
He still tends to you, abysmal patient that you are, fetches you water and one of your few leftover MREs that goes down easier now that you're not burning up from the fever anymore, but he looks as if his mind is miles away from the wreck of your plane.
Usually you prefer the silence, but you've learnt enough about him during these past two weeks that you know 'quiet' - this brooding quiet - isn't a natural state for him to be in.
You can only guess that it's about this trouble he 'didn't' run into, but you have no idea what to do about it, don't know if you even should. You don't actually know him. It's not your place. And you're honestly better at pulling things apart than you are at fixing them, in all the ways those words imply, so you decide to leave it be.
And while you know he lied about something, you also know that, if he had betrayed you or if he had been followed, Fyers' men would be here by now. He's been back for almost an hour, heating up water and grinding the herbs for your medicine.
If nothing else, you owe him the benefit of the doubt. He did just save your life.
You still watch him while drinking Yao Fei's panacea. They really do taste like dust, but the kid wasn't wrong when he called them 'super-herbs'. Within an hour your fever's gone down and the hot, stinging pain in your arm has dulled to an unpleasant but manageable throb.
It makes you wonder exactly which herbs are in this concoction and whether you can harvest more of them. In a place like this they can mean the difference between life and death, as you've just so unwillingly proven.
You doze off every now and then after that, for half an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less; the residual fever makes you achy and uncomfortable in your own skin, and it won't let you catch any real sleep. Oliver is there every time you wake up.
Eventually, when nightfall is hours past and the kid shows no sign of settling down for the night you send him off to bed yourself. He doesn't even give a token protest to the treatment, and that's another glaring sign that something's wrong. You can hear him toss and turn, and you wager he isn't getting any more sleep tonight than you will.
Still.
It gives you time to think, and although you're not usually one for introspection, these last few days have given you some things to chew on.
Truth is, the kid surprised you.
Keeps surprising you, if you're going to be honest.
Not that you'll ever tell him that.
The very first time you saw Oliver Queen, you honestly thought he was one of Fyers' men who has stumbled onto your hide-out either by sheer dumb luck or because Yao Fei has sold you out. It would hardly set a precedent.
He was making a racket, to be sure, too loud for any kind of subtlety, but then you wagered he was trying to catch you off-guard with his story, trying to determine whether you knew anything worth knowing before bringing you in, or doing you in, whichever his orders.
Catching more flies with honey and all that.
You learnt pretty darn quickly that the kid isn't any kind of soldier.
In fact, you remember wondering what the hell Yao Fei has been smoking, sending that kid your way, that useless, undisciplined, mouthy brat of an overgrown child, and you almost killed him anyway. Getting slowed down by a joker who doesn't know which end of a sword to hold is a sure way of getting yourself killed here.
Lian Yu. Purgatory. An apt name if ever you heard one. Killing the kid would have been a mercy compared to what this island will do to him.
He surprised you though.
You watched him struggle, fighting his way out of the restraints you put him in, and you let him, glaringly obvious though the attempt was, because you were curious to find out how far he was willing to go, how much pain he was willing to endure for his freedom, his life, which route he was going to take if he succeeded. That's been the whole point of waiting for him to wake up after you punched him out. You weren't lying when you told him you could make death painless for him, but if you didn't want to test him, you wouldn't have let him wake up in the first place.
Oliver dislocated his own wrist and came up swinging, futile though he knew, had to know, the effort would be.
You let him have that punch, too. Because while you may have seen it coming a mile away, he still managed to surprise you; you didn't have him pegged as this much of a fighter that first day.
And you took a chance on him after that.
You continue to take a chance on him even after he cost you your chance to get off this godforsaken rock, but that's one thing you won't hold against him.
Coming back for him even knowing the consequences has been your choice, just like it has been Oliver's to go get Yao Fei after you made it clear you would leave his sorry arse behind if he didn't make it back in time. And he fully expected you to do just that. He wasn't counting on help when he was caught, standing in the middle of Fyers and his men while you were watching from the shadows, biding your time as the kid faced down your old partner, hopelessly - hilariously - outmatched.
Even days later you can't explain why you didn't just leave him.
Something about that kid draws you in against your will; his determination when he finds it, the sincerity underneath that smart mouth, even his backtalk, infuriating though it is. He keeps challenging you. There's something - unspoiled to him, loath as you are to use the word; the kind of innocence, maybe even naivety that you don't get to see too often in your world, and although you scoff at it, only hold derision for something that has absolutely no place here, a part of you almost wishes you could let him keep it.
In any case.
You couldn't bring yourself to leave him to Fyers and his mercy. You can't even say you regret your decision. It's given you the opportunity to skewer that bastard you called friend on his own blade. Even the bullet in your arm and the resultant septicemia are worth it.
(It's still a raw wound, one you won't touch anytime soon.)
You walked away from that battle a little worse for wear and your reflexes slow enough that you didn't notice the soldier sneaking up on you until Oliver slipped out from underneath your shoulder where you used him as a crutch.
And the kid surprised you again.
Pumped up on adrenaline and fear, he goes and disarms a merc who's probably had years of training on him with a move you showed him exactly once before giving it up as a lost cause, opting instead to show him how to not kill himself with a gun in his hand.
He hesitated and didn't follow through, but you didn't really expect him to. Just like you didn't honestly expect him to be able to kill the tower guard back at the airstrip, despite all the grief you've given him for it. Firing shots in the heat of battle or accidentally killing a man while trying to stay alive yourself is quite different from pulling the trigger on someone who's already kneeling in the dust, but you'll take it. You can work with that. On that.
He's still quiet in the morning, and exhaustion or sickness must have pulled you under after all, because when you wake up he's already made another cup of that godawful tea, and you don't remember hearing him puttering about. Where he was eerily still yesterday, however, there's something fidgety to his silence now.
Dutifully, you swallow your medicine when he brings it to you, and you watch him again. He sits down on the ground, leaning against the cache he was sitting on yesterday, and he keeps studiously avoiding your gaze, picking at the cuffs of his sleeves. His mouth opens several times, but the words seem to get stuck in his throat.
After a while, it sets your teeth on edge and you growl, “Just spit it out, kid.”
That gets you a look. But the silence stretches on, and he's back to the eerie stillness of yesterday. The frown on his face makes you wonder if he's looking for something specific in you, and whether he finds it. After maybe half a minute, the kid's gaze skitters away from you again, settling on a wide crack in the plane's hull and the dense woods beyond. Wisps of fog are curling in the cold morning air out there.
When the question finally makes it out of his mouth, it catches you off guard.
“Why didn't you kill me?”
You drag your eyes back to his face from where they have followed his gaze into the open forest, your eyebrows climbing towards your hairline. “What?”
Oliver's still not looking at you, but he obligingly elaborates. “For all you knew, I could have been one of Fyers' men, sent to bring you in.”
The image those words conjure in your mind makes you snort - the kid of all people trying to haul you back to that bastard Fyers when he barely even knows how to handle a gun, let alone match you in hand-to-hand...
“But you weren't.”
Oliver, however, is stubbornly insistent. “But I could have been! I could have pretended to be helpless, to get you to trust me, to get you to tell me - I don't know. Why didn't you kill me?”
Ludicrous as the idea is to you now... Oliver only echoes your own thoughts - from last night, from that first day; it is exactly what you had been thinking.
“Where does this suddenly come from?”
There are a hundred things that could have happened yesterday. You have an idea, but you would rather he tell you. And after another minute's hesitation, he does.
You recognize the look in his eyes now. Some of that innocence is slipping away, and a part of you is almost sad to watch it go. Most of you knows if he doesn't learn the way of this world, and learn quickly, he won't live to see home again. God help you, you're actually proud that he had the strength to make the right decision.
You let the silence drag on for a long few minutes after his explanation, deliberating what to say. The sink or swim approach you take in his training isn't going to work here. This is a painful lesson to learn, and you unexpectedly find yourself not wanting to fuck it up. In the end, though, the only thing that's ever worked for you is blunt honesty.
“You're right,” you admit at long last. “You could have been trying to lull me into a false sense of security. I took a chance on you.”
He's fidgeting again, shaking his head in unconscious denial, trying to come to terms with his choices. When he speaks again, his voice is shaky, bewildered.
“So, why was it okay for you to take a chance on me, but I couldn't... I couldn't. I might just have left him to die!”
Your choice was easier than his, and not just because you have years of experience on him, but he honestly doesn't appear to understand that. It's like the right instincts are there already, while his head can't seem to make sense of them yet.
In your more charitable moments you know that, as hard as this exile is on you, it's worse on him, but the kid doesn't complain, doesn't whine.
That is.
He whines plenty. But it's all just noise to fill the silence. It's never anything meaningful.
It's: “I'd give my left arm for a hot shower!”
It's: “My blisters have blisters! Why do I even need to know how to disassemble a machine gun?”
Or even: “What now?”
It's never: “I don't deserve this! Why the fuck did this happen to me?”
It's never: “I just want to go home!”
It's not: “You're hurting me!”
Oliver never rages against his fate, or at least not since you've known him. You've never seen him beg or cry, not even in the face of death, be it his or someone else's. The most respect he's managed to garner from you stems from that willingness to roll with the punches and his stubborn determination to go down fighting. If your situation was any less dire, that might give you pause; you don't know that normal people should react to trauma like that. As it is, you're grateful, and you leave it at that; he needs to keep it together, if the two of you want to stand even half a chance at making it out of here alive.
These last few hours is the closest you've seen him to shell-shocked. From what you've managed to piece together, he's had more than enough reason to lose it by now, so you might as well hand him a straw to keep him from drowning.
“I didn't have anything to lose,” you explain grudgingly. Admitting to any kind of weakness doesn't exactly come easy to you. “I didn't have a wounded partner who was waiting for me to come back, potentially unable to defend himself if I called it wrong. I didn't endanger anyone but myself, and in case it escaped your notice, I don't go down easy.”
A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, a far cry from his usual grin, and he says, “So we're partners now?”
His leg, even pulled up to his chest, is just within reach from where you're propped up in your sickbed, so you strike out with your foot, catching his heel and making him grunt in surprise.
“Don't go getting ideas, kid!” you warn, but you breathe easier all of a sudden. If he's able to make quips, he's going to be all right.
That doesn't mean he's not still unhappy. It's a pathetic sight. But then, you're feeling plenty pathetic yourself at the moment, so you hold your tongue for once. The fever may be down, but it's still got a hold on you, and the feeling of exhaustion it causes annoys you to no end.
Letting your head fall back against the cache in your back, you close your eyes and let your mind wander, trying to sort out what you actually know about the kid.
You keep calling him child, for one, and it's not far off even though he's actually taller than you. It's not even about his age, because twenty two is young, sure, but not that young; you'd been with the army for over four years by that age. It's about experience.
He's never told you so outright, but it's a safe bet he was born into money. Lian Yu and its entire archipelago isn't exactly part of the usual cruising routes, so the only way he was shipwrecked here are private boats, yachts, and those don't come cheap, not even the leased ones. And then, of course, there are his words to Wintergreen when your old partner was making a spectacle out of Oliver's intended execution. In the few short seconds before your first charge went off, the camp was so quiet, you heard his offer even from where you were hiding.
“Whatever he's paying you, I'll triple it.”
You know enough men who would scoff at him and ridicule him for that kind of offer, the arrogance, who would take him for a coward, but the thing is, everyone has a price.
Billy made his known over a year ago, and when you're fighting for your life, you fight with every weapon in your arsenal. If that happens to be money, well, you won't rebuke him for trying to use it. After all, all his privilege didn't protect him from the disaster that landed him here. As long as he doesn't lord it over you, you won't hold it against him.
Not that any amount of money will help him get out of this mess, but then, he's already learnt that. In all honesty, he's been doing better than you would have ever expected from a spoiled rich kid like he no doubt used to be.
When you open your eyes again, Oliver is back to staring at nothing, and you suddenly think, toss experience. He looks too damn young to be here.
“You know, you made the right call,” you relent at long last. His head jerks around and you catch his gaze. “Think about it. That cave is miles from where they set up main camp. Why would the mercs tie this guy up and then just leave him there? From what you've told me, you've experienced Fyers' hospitality first hand. That wanker doesn't like loose ends. Either he would have had him killed on the spot, or kept in one of his holding cells, close by so he could have kept an eye on him. He was most definitely trying to set a trap.”
The lost expression washes out of the kid's eyes, but Oliver furrows his brows in confusion instead. “Then why didn't anyone follow me?”
It's a good question, and the easiest conclusion to jump to is, “Because they're stretched too thin. We just wreaked havoc on their equipment. I wager catching us isn't high on their list of priorities right now. Hoping one of us would return to that cave was a long shot as it is.”
Oliver's head meets the metal crate in his back with a dull thunk, but the tension in his body is gradually fading, so you leave him to stew for a while. The tea in your cup has gone cold and it's even more disgusting like this, but you gulp the last dredges of it down anyway.
It's only a few minutes later that you become aware of a sound that makes you stiffen. When you give the boy a dirty look, however, the small huffed breaths turn out to be laughter, not tears, and your scowl turns leery.
“What now?”
The kid glances your way, bright eyes flashing through lowered lashes. “I just figured something out,” he says, and you warily notice some of the mischief creeping back into his voice. “You were actually trying to comfort me, weren't you?”
His smile is wan but honest, and your scowl deepens. Your fingers are clutching the cup in your hand.
“What the ever loving fuck gave you that idea?” you growl.
Oliver just snickers one last time, before he quiets down. Just as you're beginning to let yourself relax, he speaks up again.
“Thank you.”
It's quiet and sincere, and the expression on his face is serious.
You throw the tin cup at his head. Even as he's clumsily trying to ward off your projectile he's laughing like the fool he is.
Once you're healed up, you'll have to work on his reflexes.
Soon enough you will learn that, whatever havoc you wreaked, it wasn't nearly sufficient to stop any of Fyers' plans, but for now you count your blessings for what they are.
The End
Author: Desiree
Rating: PG 13
Spoilers: first season, particularly eps 13 to 15
Characters: Slade Wilson, Oliver Queen
Disclaimer: Neither of the characters is mine. Unfortunately.
Summary: A look inside Slade's head after Oliver returns from Yao Fei's cave.
A/N: So, guess what? New fandom - new OTP...
“You're not gonna last an hour out there!"
“Well, I guess you better hope I'll get back in forty five minutes then!”
Arrow, season 1, “The Dodger”
Oliver Queen has a smart mouth. You've known that practically since the beginning.
But that night, the kid is quiet.
He still tends to you, abysmal patient that you are, fetches you water and one of your few leftover MREs that goes down easier now that you're not burning up from the fever anymore, but he looks as if his mind is miles away from the wreck of your plane.
Usually you prefer the silence, but you've learnt enough about him during these past two weeks that you know 'quiet' - this brooding quiet - isn't a natural state for him to be in.
You can only guess that it's about this trouble he 'didn't' run into, but you have no idea what to do about it, don't know if you even should. You don't actually know him. It's not your place. And you're honestly better at pulling things apart than you are at fixing them, in all the ways those words imply, so you decide to leave it be.
And while you know he lied about something, you also know that, if he had betrayed you or if he had been followed, Fyers' men would be here by now. He's been back for almost an hour, heating up water and grinding the herbs for your medicine.
If nothing else, you owe him the benefit of the doubt. He did just save your life.
You still watch him while drinking Yao Fei's panacea. They really do taste like dust, but the kid wasn't wrong when he called them 'super-herbs'. Within an hour your fever's gone down and the hot, stinging pain in your arm has dulled to an unpleasant but manageable throb.
It makes you wonder exactly which herbs are in this concoction and whether you can harvest more of them. In a place like this they can mean the difference between life and death, as you've just so unwillingly proven.
You doze off every now and then after that, for half an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less; the residual fever makes you achy and uncomfortable in your own skin, and it won't let you catch any real sleep. Oliver is there every time you wake up.
Eventually, when nightfall is hours past and the kid shows no sign of settling down for the night you send him off to bed yourself. He doesn't even give a token protest to the treatment, and that's another glaring sign that something's wrong. You can hear him toss and turn, and you wager he isn't getting any more sleep tonight than you will.
Still.
It gives you time to think, and although you're not usually one for introspection, these last few days have given you some things to chew on.
Truth is, the kid surprised you.
Keeps surprising you, if you're going to be honest.
Not that you'll ever tell him that.
The very first time you saw Oliver Queen, you honestly thought he was one of Fyers' men who has stumbled onto your hide-out either by sheer dumb luck or because Yao Fei has sold you out. It would hardly set a precedent.
He was making a racket, to be sure, too loud for any kind of subtlety, but then you wagered he was trying to catch you off-guard with his story, trying to determine whether you knew anything worth knowing before bringing you in, or doing you in, whichever his orders.
Catching more flies with honey and all that.
You learnt pretty darn quickly that the kid isn't any kind of soldier.
In fact, you remember wondering what the hell Yao Fei has been smoking, sending that kid your way, that useless, undisciplined, mouthy brat of an overgrown child, and you almost killed him anyway. Getting slowed down by a joker who doesn't know which end of a sword to hold is a sure way of getting yourself killed here.
Lian Yu. Purgatory. An apt name if ever you heard one. Killing the kid would have been a mercy compared to what this island will do to him.
He surprised you though.
You watched him struggle, fighting his way out of the restraints you put him in, and you let him, glaringly obvious though the attempt was, because you were curious to find out how far he was willing to go, how much pain he was willing to endure for his freedom, his life, which route he was going to take if he succeeded. That's been the whole point of waiting for him to wake up after you punched him out. You weren't lying when you told him you could make death painless for him, but if you didn't want to test him, you wouldn't have let him wake up in the first place.
Oliver dislocated his own wrist and came up swinging, futile though he knew, had to know, the effort would be.
You let him have that punch, too. Because while you may have seen it coming a mile away, he still managed to surprise you; you didn't have him pegged as this much of a fighter that first day.
And you took a chance on him after that.
You continue to take a chance on him even after he cost you your chance to get off this godforsaken rock, but that's one thing you won't hold against him.
Coming back for him even knowing the consequences has been your choice, just like it has been Oliver's to go get Yao Fei after you made it clear you would leave his sorry arse behind if he didn't make it back in time. And he fully expected you to do just that. He wasn't counting on help when he was caught, standing in the middle of Fyers and his men while you were watching from the shadows, biding your time as the kid faced down your old partner, hopelessly - hilariously - outmatched.
Even days later you can't explain why you didn't just leave him.
Something about that kid draws you in against your will; his determination when he finds it, the sincerity underneath that smart mouth, even his backtalk, infuriating though it is. He keeps challenging you. There's something - unspoiled to him, loath as you are to use the word; the kind of innocence, maybe even naivety that you don't get to see too often in your world, and although you scoff at it, only hold derision for something that has absolutely no place here, a part of you almost wishes you could let him keep it.
In any case.
You couldn't bring yourself to leave him to Fyers and his mercy. You can't even say you regret your decision. It's given you the opportunity to skewer that bastard you called friend on his own blade. Even the bullet in your arm and the resultant septicemia are worth it.
(It's still a raw wound, one you won't touch anytime soon.)
You walked away from that battle a little worse for wear and your reflexes slow enough that you didn't notice the soldier sneaking up on you until Oliver slipped out from underneath your shoulder where you used him as a crutch.
And the kid surprised you again.
Pumped up on adrenaline and fear, he goes and disarms a merc who's probably had years of training on him with a move you showed him exactly once before giving it up as a lost cause, opting instead to show him how to not kill himself with a gun in his hand.
He hesitated and didn't follow through, but you didn't really expect him to. Just like you didn't honestly expect him to be able to kill the tower guard back at the airstrip, despite all the grief you've given him for it. Firing shots in the heat of battle or accidentally killing a man while trying to stay alive yourself is quite different from pulling the trigger on someone who's already kneeling in the dust, but you'll take it. You can work with that. On that.
He's still quiet in the morning, and exhaustion or sickness must have pulled you under after all, because when you wake up he's already made another cup of that godawful tea, and you don't remember hearing him puttering about. Where he was eerily still yesterday, however, there's something fidgety to his silence now.
Dutifully, you swallow your medicine when he brings it to you, and you watch him again. He sits down on the ground, leaning against the cache he was sitting on yesterday, and he keeps studiously avoiding your gaze, picking at the cuffs of his sleeves. His mouth opens several times, but the words seem to get stuck in his throat.
After a while, it sets your teeth on edge and you growl, “Just spit it out, kid.”
That gets you a look. But the silence stretches on, and he's back to the eerie stillness of yesterday. The frown on his face makes you wonder if he's looking for something specific in you, and whether he finds it. After maybe half a minute, the kid's gaze skitters away from you again, settling on a wide crack in the plane's hull and the dense woods beyond. Wisps of fog are curling in the cold morning air out there.
When the question finally makes it out of his mouth, it catches you off guard.
“Why didn't you kill me?”
You drag your eyes back to his face from where they have followed his gaze into the open forest, your eyebrows climbing towards your hairline. “What?”
Oliver's still not looking at you, but he obligingly elaborates. “For all you knew, I could have been one of Fyers' men, sent to bring you in.”
The image those words conjure in your mind makes you snort - the kid of all people trying to haul you back to that bastard Fyers when he barely even knows how to handle a gun, let alone match you in hand-to-hand...
“But you weren't.”
Oliver, however, is stubbornly insistent. “But I could have been! I could have pretended to be helpless, to get you to trust me, to get you to tell me - I don't know. Why didn't you kill me?”
Ludicrous as the idea is to you now... Oliver only echoes your own thoughts - from last night, from that first day; it is exactly what you had been thinking.
“Where does this suddenly come from?”
There are a hundred things that could have happened yesterday. You have an idea, but you would rather he tell you. And after another minute's hesitation, he does.
You recognize the look in his eyes now. Some of that innocence is slipping away, and a part of you is almost sad to watch it go. Most of you knows if he doesn't learn the way of this world, and learn quickly, he won't live to see home again. God help you, you're actually proud that he had the strength to make the right decision.
You let the silence drag on for a long few minutes after his explanation, deliberating what to say. The sink or swim approach you take in his training isn't going to work here. This is a painful lesson to learn, and you unexpectedly find yourself not wanting to fuck it up. In the end, though, the only thing that's ever worked for you is blunt honesty.
“You're right,” you admit at long last. “You could have been trying to lull me into a false sense of security. I took a chance on you.”
He's fidgeting again, shaking his head in unconscious denial, trying to come to terms with his choices. When he speaks again, his voice is shaky, bewildered.
“So, why was it okay for you to take a chance on me, but I couldn't... I couldn't. I might just have left him to die!”
Your choice was easier than his, and not just because you have years of experience on him, but he honestly doesn't appear to understand that. It's like the right instincts are there already, while his head can't seem to make sense of them yet.
In your more charitable moments you know that, as hard as this exile is on you, it's worse on him, but the kid doesn't complain, doesn't whine.
That is.
He whines plenty. But it's all just noise to fill the silence. It's never anything meaningful.
It's: “I'd give my left arm for a hot shower!”
It's: “My blisters have blisters! Why do I even need to know how to disassemble a machine gun?”
Or even: “What now?”
It's never: “I don't deserve this! Why the fuck did this happen to me?”
It's never: “I just want to go home!”
It's not: “You're hurting me!”
Oliver never rages against his fate, or at least not since you've known him. You've never seen him beg or cry, not even in the face of death, be it his or someone else's. The most respect he's managed to garner from you stems from that willingness to roll with the punches and his stubborn determination to go down fighting. If your situation was any less dire, that might give you pause; you don't know that normal people should react to trauma like that. As it is, you're grateful, and you leave it at that; he needs to keep it together, if the two of you want to stand even half a chance at making it out of here alive.
These last few hours is the closest you've seen him to shell-shocked. From what you've managed to piece together, he's had more than enough reason to lose it by now, so you might as well hand him a straw to keep him from drowning.
“I didn't have anything to lose,” you explain grudgingly. Admitting to any kind of weakness doesn't exactly come easy to you. “I didn't have a wounded partner who was waiting for me to come back, potentially unable to defend himself if I called it wrong. I didn't endanger anyone but myself, and in case it escaped your notice, I don't go down easy.”
A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, a far cry from his usual grin, and he says, “So we're partners now?”
His leg, even pulled up to his chest, is just within reach from where you're propped up in your sickbed, so you strike out with your foot, catching his heel and making him grunt in surprise.
“Don't go getting ideas, kid!” you warn, but you breathe easier all of a sudden. If he's able to make quips, he's going to be all right.
That doesn't mean he's not still unhappy. It's a pathetic sight. But then, you're feeling plenty pathetic yourself at the moment, so you hold your tongue for once. The fever may be down, but it's still got a hold on you, and the feeling of exhaustion it causes annoys you to no end.
Letting your head fall back against the cache in your back, you close your eyes and let your mind wander, trying to sort out what you actually know about the kid.
You keep calling him child, for one, and it's not far off even though he's actually taller than you. It's not even about his age, because twenty two is young, sure, but not that young; you'd been with the army for over four years by that age. It's about experience.
He's never told you so outright, but it's a safe bet he was born into money. Lian Yu and its entire archipelago isn't exactly part of the usual cruising routes, so the only way he was shipwrecked here are private boats, yachts, and those don't come cheap, not even the leased ones. And then, of course, there are his words to Wintergreen when your old partner was making a spectacle out of Oliver's intended execution. In the few short seconds before your first charge went off, the camp was so quiet, you heard his offer even from where you were hiding.
“Whatever he's paying you, I'll triple it.”
You know enough men who would scoff at him and ridicule him for that kind of offer, the arrogance, who would take him for a coward, but the thing is, everyone has a price.
Billy made his known over a year ago, and when you're fighting for your life, you fight with every weapon in your arsenal. If that happens to be money, well, you won't rebuke him for trying to use it. After all, all his privilege didn't protect him from the disaster that landed him here. As long as he doesn't lord it over you, you won't hold it against him.
Not that any amount of money will help him get out of this mess, but then, he's already learnt that. In all honesty, he's been doing better than you would have ever expected from a spoiled rich kid like he no doubt used to be.
When you open your eyes again, Oliver is back to staring at nothing, and you suddenly think, toss experience. He looks too damn young to be here.
“You know, you made the right call,” you relent at long last. His head jerks around and you catch his gaze. “Think about it. That cave is miles from where they set up main camp. Why would the mercs tie this guy up and then just leave him there? From what you've told me, you've experienced Fyers' hospitality first hand. That wanker doesn't like loose ends. Either he would have had him killed on the spot, or kept in one of his holding cells, close by so he could have kept an eye on him. He was most definitely trying to set a trap.”
The lost expression washes out of the kid's eyes, but Oliver furrows his brows in confusion instead. “Then why didn't anyone follow me?”
It's a good question, and the easiest conclusion to jump to is, “Because they're stretched too thin. We just wreaked havoc on their equipment. I wager catching us isn't high on their list of priorities right now. Hoping one of us would return to that cave was a long shot as it is.”
Oliver's head meets the metal crate in his back with a dull thunk, but the tension in his body is gradually fading, so you leave him to stew for a while. The tea in your cup has gone cold and it's even more disgusting like this, but you gulp the last dredges of it down anyway.
It's only a few minutes later that you become aware of a sound that makes you stiffen. When you give the boy a dirty look, however, the small huffed breaths turn out to be laughter, not tears, and your scowl turns leery.
“What now?”
The kid glances your way, bright eyes flashing through lowered lashes. “I just figured something out,” he says, and you warily notice some of the mischief creeping back into his voice. “You were actually trying to comfort me, weren't you?”
His smile is wan but honest, and your scowl deepens. Your fingers are clutching the cup in your hand.
“What the ever loving fuck gave you that idea?” you growl.
Oliver just snickers one last time, before he quiets down. Just as you're beginning to let yourself relax, he speaks up again.
“Thank you.”
It's quiet and sincere, and the expression on his face is serious.
You throw the tin cup at his head. Even as he's clumsily trying to ward off your projectile he's laughing like the fool he is.
Once you're healed up, you'll have to work on his reflexes.
Soon enough you will learn that, whatever havoc you wreaked, it wasn't nearly sufficient to stop any of Fyers' plans, but for now you count your blessings for what they are.
The End