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

He is weak, but he is not yet dead. Pain sings along his nerves, but he can breathe through it. Ignore it. It is not the first or the last time he has felt pain.

Oliver can hear her quiet reactions as they strip him free from his waterlogged and ragged clothes. Tattoos and scars that had come long after Lian Yu littered his skin, evidence of brutal struggle after struggle for survival. The League needed their members strong and the strong ones were the ones who did not die in training.

Paradise.
And he had landed in hell, taken in by the Demon himself.

"Good." His eyes drift closed. "You deserve paradise."

She didn't know what to do with those words. Everything she'd come to love and everything she'd once lost seemed to have thrown itself into a complete disarray, made of Oliver's voice in her ears and Oliver's blood on her hands. Too real. Too here. Too alive. Ripping up ghosts and graves she thought she'd made peace with when she took her name and chose the only future available.

"You should save your strength," she says,

like the only thing she's thinking isn't 'you're supposed to be dead.'

A weak sound that was almost a chuckle before tapering off into a wet sounding cough. "I will not die this day." Nor will he die the next. A mantra that had carried him both through Lian Yu and later through Nada Parbat. The simple determination to not die, to not succumb to injury or weakness or even exposure. Al Sahm Al Akhdar set his will against the world and he would continue to do so.

His eyes drift closed. There is water in his belly and his limbs are finally warming.

"I will not die this day. I will have my revenge. I will kill them all."

The first time he says it the corner of Sara's mouth almost flutters, at the almost familiarity in the way that is put, the way her sisters would, but the second repetition of the words, harder, colder, firmer, like cementing bricks, makes a shiver run down her spine. The words after those chasing it with something sharper, that has her sitting back and looking back up toward Oliver's face, where his eyes are closed.

"Kill all who?" Which starts what can't be stopped. "Who did this to you?"

Edited 2017-12-05 00:52 (UTC)

The words are hard and cold because he means for them to be. Oliver takes a long, slow breath. He registers the shift in her voice but his awareness is drifting, tugging him down into sleep as his body demands rest.

"The League of Assassins. The Demon thinks he can sacrifice his heir." A chilly smile. "But I will have my revenge. The Lazarus pit will not save him this time."

Sara's brow furrowed looking down at him. His voice thick, slightly slurred, like he might be about to finally pass out or fall asleep, one, the other, or both. His body probably needed them both. But it doesn't stop him from smiling that strange slash of s smile that reminds her too much of metal. Sharp and cold. Hard under her breastbone. Confusing in her chest.

"The League of--" She cannot have heard that right. Or demons. Or revenge. Or sacrifices.

Oliver Queen was a spoiled rich boy who drowned in a surprise accident.

Oliver Queen was a very different man.
While he can hear the hesitation in her voice, the confusion, he can no longer fight his body's demand for sleep. Rest. In time he would heal and in time he would return to the League and have his revenge.

They will all die.

He sleeps, dreaming of golden hair and laughter and small, warm hands on his skin.

Oliver wakes and the sun has shifted in the sky. Hours perhaps, or even days had passed. He can hear the crash of surf as he remains still, assessing his injuries. Aching and in pain, but nothing that he couldn't stomach.

He starts to move, to sit up and take in where he was with a far clearer head.

"Peace, Ollie." It's soft, calmer than it was before, and more familiar, but it still bounces around the cavern, as her hand finds his shoulder. That, too, is gentle, and it's not entirely warding so much as a warning. There, not to hinder, but to keep him from hurting himself, or to help him if she has to. "You've had a rough few days."

The ocean and the sand, and whoever these League of Assassins were, they'd none of them done his wounds any good. Given that was likely the point. That, or simply his death. It hadn't been surprising to find they didn't heal easy, but it'd been a little rough. All around. It'd been a relief when his fever broke, and she was finally more certain than less he was actually not going to die on her shortly.

Ollie.
It was a name he had all but forgotten until finding her again. His brow furrows as it starts to come back. Thrashing in a feverish nightmare, but always with Sara there, always talking to him, soothing him.

"How long?" His voice rough and hoarse.

How long has he been unconscious? How long? Did the League believe him dead? Or does he have pursuers to worry about?

"Three and half days."

Enough time to get used to sitting next to him, to the look and shape of the scars lining all of his skin near the bandages she changes, and to talking to him occasionally. Even if he was too out of it to respond, or even hear her likely. Time enough and time too much to wrestle with the demons of the idea Oliver could have washed up on the shore of Paradise Island long enough for her to know he was alive, he'd lived through all these years, just to die as she sat in silent vigil by him.

"Here." Sara kept the one hand on his shoulder still, settled into support,
but her other hand held up a waterskin. "Drink some water."

Three and a half days.
Not counting how long he might have drifted in the water.

No, if the League was still tracking him they would have found him by now. Good. Let their arrogance be their undoing. He nods at the knowledge, raising his hand to bring the skin to his lips. The water is cool and sweet. Refreshing. His throat no longer feels coated with sand and salt.

"Thank you."
The hand no longer holding the skin reaches up, touching a tendril of her hair. "I was so certain I'd lost you."

It's down now. Her hair. The hours of her day, the excuses and even lies she's told at this point, don't really leave time for light amusements, not without people who would try to find out why she's suddenly gone, suddenly apart, suddenly quiet again. While she works only at finding a way to be here. Up or down it doesn't matter. The only matter of these three and half days has been the tenacious refusal to let him die.

Even if -- as she's frozen watching his fingers touch the curl of her hair -- she has no clue what do with him alive.
It takes a second to unfreeze her heart, her throat, and nod just barely. "I thought you went down. With the Gambit."

He still doesn't know where he is.
Paradise doesn't make sense. The only thing that has mattered in those fleeting moments when he would claw his way to awareness was Sara beside him. Her voice soothing him back down into sleep.

"I did," his hand falls away. "I washed up in Hell. An island called Lian Yu." His eyes close. "I was found almost two years later and brought to Nanda Parbat. To the League of Assassins." And there he surrendered his name and his very soul to R'as al-Ghul.

The names aren't familiar, but then she would doubt he's heard of where they are either.

The last one she's had too much time to turn over and over in her head. The slurred and panicked words that came in his sleep only every now against breaking the absolute silence, the absolute stillness of him in sleep. The one that had her checking him more than a few times to make sure that silence and that stillness weren't death. It was an uncanny, unnatural kind of both of them.

"And those are the people who did this to you?"
Sara gave a cursory sort of look that implied the whole of him.

"Yes." And he knows he owes her far more than a simple answer like that. Oliver levers himself up, ignoring the pain as he does so. "I was trained by them. Groomed by R'as al-Ghul to become his heir, the new Head when he chose to step down."

A thin smile. Hard and sharp. "There were those in the League that didn't want an outsider as heir. Including his daughters. They attempted to have me killed."

Sara doesn't like that smile. Something in her. She doesn't even know what to call it. Cold down her skin. A prickling at the back of her neck. Cold, and almost cruel, and so completely out of place on this face that had for so long now only been a memory. Of the boy with careless laughing eyes, who she fell in love with, the wrong way, and fell out of a boat, and a whole life, with. Because of.

It's only that he decides he's going to move, and she can't help staying close, trying to make sure he doesn't injure himself, that she doesn't pull back from it. It's gnawing at her center, following him. It confused, and uncertain, when the only question she can seem to form into coherence is so simple. "Why would you want that?"

"Because Oliver Queen died on Lian Yu. The only way to survive Nanda Parbat and the League was to become what R'as saw in me. An arrow in the darkness. His. I surrendered everything, including my soul to him."

He had bathed in blood. Oceans of it. He had fought for his position and he had earned the title of heir. They would not take that from him too.

The words he keeps using are cold and specific, and driven and there's ... she doesn't want to call it passion. But that, too. Just. Just so cold, too. And. Pride. It's so removed. And there's something like that. Something remorseless and unashamed. Earned. It's crazy. None of that makes any sense. Not for. Anything. Anything that was anything. Oliver Queen, an Assassin? Adopted son to some kind of, what, king of Assassins?

Not that she'd believe in the Amazons, or much even remember them as something more than hazily belonging to a history class in her childhood, before the Gambit, had she?

"And it all tried to kill you," καναρίνι couldn't stop herself from throwing back. "Wouldn't the be reason enough to leave it alone, and behind you? If they all, probably, think you're dead?"

"And do what? I can't go home again Sara. I'm an assassin. A killer. Not the Oliver Queen that they remember." No matter how much he might miss his sister. His mother. Tommy.

"If someone raises a hand to you, you cut it off." Simple. Cold. It's become easier over the years to just not think about the past or of home.
No. He will keep moving forward.
Take his revenge.

"They got lucky. It will not happen a second time."

It's not that Oliver Queen hadn't been stubborn. He had, but it had been a more youthful, childish, refusal to acknowledge anything that was not fun, stubbornness. Rebellion, not recklessness, and always with that devil-may-care wheedle of a smile. The one that promised it would be worth the risk, and it would be fun, and who would ever say no.

But it wasn't this. It'd never been reckless like this. Almost ... almost what? Brutal?

A tone to match the strange tale he told of assassins and kings and princesses and attempted assassinations by the people who saved him. Who were, right, even more assassins. Still, it couldn't stop her from saying with a little more force. "Well, you won't be cutting off any hands today. You likely won't even be moving from here, and you definitely will not be going inland."

Where there would be a large group of people who would not even stop at the idea of cutting off a hand before all her work of the last few days, just to keep whoever Oliver was now, alive. She wasn't inclined to let anyone -- assassin, or Amazon, or Oliver Queen, himself -- undo that so fast after just opening his eyes.

That young and carefree Oliver was dead and buried back on Lian Yu. Buried beneath hardships and scars and death and loss. He was hard and sharp now, only focused on his revenge and taking the mantle that was his due.

"Then get me a boat. Get me back on the water."

He isn't stupid. Sara is hiding him with good cause and he won't upset her paradise with his thoughts of blood and revenge.

"It's not that simple." It's an automatic response. "People don't leave Paradise Island."

Which is maybe a collision of different thoughts in her head -- because somehow καναρίνι logically does have to get rid of Oliver before someone finds him -- even though that though existing in her head is chilling, and already stubbornly unwelcome, the last thing she wants is him even out of her sight -- and at the same time, she can remember. How many times she asked.

Begged. Pleaded. Grateful to be alive. Grateful to be saved. But needing to get home.
It'd been years, but it felt suddenly so fresh in the back of her mind.
Waking up here. Wanting to go home. Her parents. Laurel.

"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."

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

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