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

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."

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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