strongerthanyouknow | { we're starting fires 'til our lives are burning gold

"And you've already made it clear that I can't stay."

Can't go inland, hiding in a cave near the ocean as he hovered near death, it doesn't take much to jump to the conclusion. Oliver lets out a breath, sags with it as he drags a hand through his hair. "Sara," his voice drops to a whisper.

"Stay here. Stay in your paradise. The world I return to? I don't want you tainted by it."

Her heart throbs at the sound of his voice saying her name. Her given name. Her other name. First. Deepest. The tone, the tenor, the weight. The sound of it, wrapped in his voice. After so long. It feels like it lands so much deeper than any arrowhead could. Like it's hit something deeper and denser than bone. Sheering through her like she's smoke.

Which is almost nothing to the words that he says next.

To the explosion of that. Stay. Stay; like she'd somehow planned not to stay. Like she'd had some other plan. Like there was some other place. She'd been so consumed with the desperate need for him to just be alive. Just not die on her again. Not die behind his eyelids, in the night, again, the same way he'd suddenly been gone when the ocean came rushing into the Gambit and swallowed her down and down and down into that ravage dark.

"Stay." The word isn't even a choice. It just sort of falls out of her mouth. Almost like she's never said it before.
As if every thought isn't suddenly a collision of too much. The long time she'd tried, dreamed, yearned, raged.

Her parent's faces. Laurel's. The place she's earned at the side of her princess above others.
The world suddenly exploding in awareness bigger than island edges and ocean views again.

On Oliver Queen. (The irony, freeing and damning, is not lost on her. Even years later.)

"Monsters don't belong in paradise." And that's what he is at his core. Violence and death from the shadows. "You belong here. I don't."

Even if he were to walk away from the League, what would he do? He can't go home. He's not the Oliver Queen that he used to be, isn't sure he could even pretend as much.

"I'll watch over them," he swears quietly, almost as if he could read her thoughts circling back to her family. To Laurel. "They won't know I'm there, but I can do that much."

Laurel.
Tommy.
Thea.

"Get me back on the water."

It's almost too much. That second quieter thing he says, when Sara is still trying to catch the first and not laugh at the irony, the assumption, the arrogance. But the second steals that wind entirely. Put her family into a real light, breathing even more life into them in her mind. Telling her mother she had to go, because she was in love.

(In love. Was she ever that young?
In love. With Oliver. Engaged to Laurel.

How is Oliver standing in front of her still real?)

And Laurel. Laurel, who never knew. Laurel, who was so betrayed. Laurel, who lost them both...and Sara couldn't even dream in her hundred imaginings how that all played out. Wanted her family to be okay, and yet grieved at the idea of them being absolutely fine without her. Even if they must be half a decade later, right? The feelings gnawing at her heart in a crescendoed ache.

Until he says the last thing, and it just bursts out, "No," with a shake of her head.

And, "No," Again. "I just got you back." Maybe that's too raw, too real. Sara's arm's come up to cross, mouth pressing, even as she continued to shake her head, though she can't make herself look at his face. A child, again, with another lot of impossible options. "You were almost dead still only a day ago."

He dares to step closer, reaching out even as she folds her arms across herself, refusing the thing he's asked for. Bright and shining Sara, made even brighter by this place, casting light everywhere when he's spent the last five years in shadows.
Forcing him to examine things he thought long dead.

"Sara I can't stay here. The fact that we're hiding in a cave is proof of that."

He is on his feet. Moving. The pain will be cataloged and dealt with later but not now. "I won't put your life at risk, not for me." She has no idea the life he's lived, the blood on his hands, the violence.

Then, softer. "You have to let me go."

He steps closer, reaching, and it's like everything inside her assails an ache in that single direction. She's been taught not to retreat until retreat is the only promise of survival for the greatest part of an army, but that's not what answers and she knows it. She's touched him more than a dozen times in the last few days, but methodical all of it. To keep him alive. To change wounds, and check fevers. To dribble water and stave off dehydration. Not for herself. Not as the answer of a request.

He's closer and her heart, already in rebellion against his words, only thunders all the louder. His name. Over, and over, and over, again. It and only it. Threatening to empty himself from that spavce, her life, her, again.

She shouldn't. She shouldn't. She knows. Like every time she did, so many years ago. But she can't stop herself, doesn't want to, even though he's repeating exactly what she told him. He can't stay. He has to go. Paradise will not welcome him, man or...

...assassin.

Even with the chill of that word still there, every sign of those lingering wounds, and the darkness in his eyes, it doesn't stop it. The fact her fingers have to find the side of his arm, and it's like the warmth under them sheers away all the still-true facts -- down to the one she's not sure she can handle. Just as true as the rest. "I already did once." A bare second later, so quietly she can't be proud of it. "Don't make me do that again. Please."

Lian Yu did not break him.
Nanda Parbat did not break him.

Sara Lance will. Does. Every time. Turning his thoughts from blood and vengeance to protecting her family in Starling, to finding a way off the island in order for her to stay in Paradise where she belongs. So Oliver moves, reaching out to draw her into his arms. To kiss her forehead gently.

"Monsters don't belong in paradise, Sara. I can't stay, I can't bring what I am to a place like this."

Sara wasn't expecting it, entirely, and still, she folded against him like she belonged.

A wild feeling like she might start crying, sobbing, when he wraps his arms around her suddenly, drawing her. In his warmth, his solidness, the absolute physical realization of it, that was medical and methodical. Muscle and training. Except it all slips. It all slides. Oliver has his arms around her. Oliver presses his mouth to her forehead, setting loose a torrent in her chest she hasn't felt in ... five years?

Tears actually starting to swim in her eyes, at his voice this close, and she has to look up. She's already breaking every other rule and reason isn't she. It's not even that. It's not just looking. Her hands flatten for a second on his chest, and then she lifts them, to touch the sides of his face. Thumbs settling along cheekbones, and it feels like bones in her body, maybe even her soul, are finally refinding themselves.

He's still so beautiful. She might have thought that once or twice when he was sleeping, when he was dying.

But it's a truth that burns everything else. He is. Oliver Queen. Still beautiful.
Even ravaged with bruises and his eyes so dark compared to her last sight of them.

And she knows. She knows before she says it, what it means. "Then, you have to take me with you."

Sara still fits so perfectly in his arms.
Oliver has not touched with such care, such gentleness in what feels like a lifetime. But it feels right that it's Sara, that she's the one he can draw in close, tip his head into the way she cups his face.

Maybe there could be another way.
A way without having to go back to Nanda Parbat and exact his revenge.
Sara shines so brightly here.

A nod. A small smile for only her.
"Okay."

Oliver doesn't ask if she's certain, he doesn't ask if she wants to reconsider the decision. Sara wants to go with him and he wants her to. He's done with being alone, a shadow of steel and blood and death.

It catches itself in her chest, like someone inserted an arm or a boulder when he tilts his hand in against her hands. She's not under any lack of comprehension to what he's said, even if a bit of it seems still impossible, save all the signs that do lend themselves to what left him like he was.

And there's the want to believe him, thundering, in the rush of her heart when he gives that small smile, but she's not that girl, anymore, right? The girl who carried his truth's and his lies, both, in her hands, with her own, under the unflagging flap of her own smile. Right?

(But she's just said she's not staying, here, on Paradise, as καναρίνι either.)

She tries to lift her fingers gingerly. "This is going to be complicated."
Getting off Paradise. Getting away. A boat. Unnoticed. Everything about it.

There's a hint of a sound, almost a chuckle as his hand closes around her wrist. Needing the touch a beat longer. Just a moment.

"When has complicated ever stopped us?"
When complicated was Sara sneaking out. Parties at Tommy's. Raising trouble and chasing the next thing that was fun and careless and carefree. Not escaping an island, not escaping the League. Not when their problems are far more dangerous.

It's a flicker. A stutter stop, with a momentary blink.

At the fingers that close over her wrist, not letting her lift her hand from where his cheek had leaned into her hand. Her heart skittering. Fluttering. Like the small golden bird that maintained itself as the symbol of her childhood, and her name, her self, here. Remade. Renamed. Golden and in flight. Wings fluttering against the bars of a cage, fingers at her wrist, heart pounding against her ribs at something that felt absolutely nothing like being caged.

Eyes lingering on the curl of his fingers on her pale wrist, as she moved it slowly back flush to his cheek. Fingertips ginger against the stubble there. Heartbeat in her teeth, her ears, his fingertips, and almost no air in her lungs, when she has to let out a small sigh that feels like it might crack something in her. Something being remade under those fingers, as she looked back up at his face. This face. So long gone. So alive. Half of every reason she ever ended up here. "You always were trouble."

{ we're starting fires 'til our lives are burning gold

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