Ultimate Arrow: Year End #3 - Night 2: The Hierophant Pt.2

Ultimate Arrow: Year End #2 Recap
The Hood is given no time to rest after bringing down the criminal Frank Bertinelli and an electrically charged masked man carrying a mysterious sigil that has both Oliver’s and Dig’s hackles up. It is the anniversary of his return from the dead and though his mother, Moira, intended for it to be a relaxing day of recreation, the responsibilities of Oliver Queen draw him to his father’s company where he runs into an old friend (Dinah Lance) that he hadn’t seen in some time. Meanwhile the Hood’s contact in the SCPD, Detective Quentin Lance, finds more questions than answers at the Bertinelli crime scene. As the Hood gets in some patrol time before the party, Oliver and Dig find that their comms have been compromised.

Characters
Oliver Queen/The Hood: A former playboy, Oliver Queen, his father, and the crew of the Queen’s Gambit six years ago. Somehow he survived and returned to his city with skills and a maturity that he had once lacked. Using those skills, Oliver saves his city by day utilizing his family’s legacy while at night he becomes Star City’s lethal protector The Hood.

John “Dig” Diggle: Diggle had been hired as Oliver’s personal bodyguard and driver but through a string of events that would be expected of two people in close proximity to each other discovered Oliver’s secret nightly activities. He decided to aid the man in his quest, most often acting as his conscience and his handler.

Detective Lance: The Hood’s not-so-cooperative contact within the SCPD and the father to a close friend from Oliver’s youth. Lance work within the system as best he could throughout his career but that all changed when his former partner was blackmailed into nearly shooting him in the back. Saved by the Hood and noticing that the man wasn’t quite the murderer he once was, he decided to work with the vigilante to save Star City.



The manor was full when Oliver arrived mere moments before the big clock in the foyer struck eight. He and Diggle very intentionally did not talk about their comm.-systems being compromised. There hadn’t been time to deal with it. The hood had come off and was hanging on its rack, now they another job to do. Normality. People surrounded them. Moira Queen was so pleased her son wasn’t late for once that she immediately stole him away from his bodyguard to canoodle with the Starling elite. Or so he thought.

“Oliver, this is Dr. Brown,” his mother introduced him to a rather rumpled looking woman with graying blond hair who had all the appearance of being the type that became razzled in his presence. “She runs our clinic out of the Glades.”

Dr. Brown nodded in greeting and did indeed have the dreamy look on her face that most women got when they first stared into his baby blue eyes. The clinic explained why she looked awkward among all the other nobby people his mother had invited. Her clothes weren’t quite as fancy. She wasn’t used this sort of excessiveness of food and drink a plenty.

He gripped her hand politely and gave her a smile with all his charm behind it. “You were friends with Mrs. King correct?”

“Y-yes,” she replied all flustered. “We went to school together. She started the clinic with me. How did you know?”

“I made it my job to learn of all my family’s holdings and the people overseeing them after I returned from my extended tropical vacation.”

The silence that followed was one Oliver had become accustomed to when making that joke. People never knew if he was being serious or not. They never knew if they should laugh. If they were going to celebrate the fact that today was the day he came back from the dead then he was going to do his mother proud and at least try to make it a joyous occasion… Even if he thought the party was absurd and unneeded.

“Tropical vacation…haha. Yes.” She giggled into her champagne.

Moira politely guided her son away from the good doctor who was now decidedly more uncomfortable looking. Her grip on his arm told him that perhaps he had misjudged the comedic timing in this particular circumstance. They didn’t look back as they moved through the crowd, joining new people, having new conversations. Learning from his mistake with Brown, he tried to improve his humor. He found that people really didn’t want to think about the fact he was stranded and forced to survive on his own for nearly half a decade. They only wanted to talk about what amazing work he was doing, how his father would be impressed and so on.

Their attitude was nearly enough to put Oliver in the brooding exterior he channeled every time he wore the hood. Hypocrites, all of them. His night was wasted on this. There were much more important things for them to worry about. There were much more important things for him to worry about. The comms were one such worry. Who the people who sent the electric man after him would send next and when was another.

When he and his mother finally found a moment of peace, he had to ask her.

“Why’d you invite the Doctor?”

“The invitation went out to everyone in our extended family,” explained Moira with exasperated patience. “I didn’t exactly expect I’d ever have to personally interact with her after I took over the clinic. She doesn’t do these things. Most I ever heard from her is an email forwarded from Ned asking for more funding but it seems her daughter is a classmate of Thea’s and really, really wanted to meet you so she was talked into coming.”

“A teenaged friend of Thea’s wants to meet me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m thinking not in our best interests for me to meet her.”

“You’d be correct but it would be polite.” Moira patted her son’s cheek, frowning over the stubble she felt. “Just try not to break the poor girl’s heart too much when you turn her down.”

Oliver laughed and pulled her hand away from his face. He looked about the milling crowd, using his honed survival skills to try to find the girl. Unfortunately, Thea seemed to have brought a lot of friends to the party. A fair share of them was not exactly the sort he wanted in his home let alone around his sister. The sudden dropping of his heart made him realize that just as his father had felt he failed him, Oliver in turn had neglected his sister.

More time should have been spent with her since his return. He should have done something about her following in his destructive footsteps more than he had. Yet his priorities… his priorities… Queen Consolidated, the city… those he tried to save. What about the Queen Family?

“Ah. There she is!” exclaimed his mother excitedly and inclined her head in the proper direction. “She’s talking to… Oh my god, is that Dinah? When did she show back up? Why is she here?”

“I met her this morning after the board meeting. I invited her.”

“Oh goodie… That means Quentin is probably around here somewhere… What did she do to her hair…?” her voice trailed off and Oliver elected to not point out that she dyed her hair an unnatural color too.

Saying goodbye to his mother, he pushed his way to the pair of blonds. One he knew, the other was someone he had a hard time placing as a friend to his sister. She was short, about the same size as Dinah but more round around the middle. She wasn’t exactly upper class or trust-fund material. Oliver knew that type. They wanted the next high or they very openly to the point everyone else deluded themselves into not seeing it drank whatever sort of alcohol was present at these sorts of gatherings. Amazing what people could actively ignore because they didn’t want to see. This girl, however, was put together – more so than her mother too – and there was no other word for it, normal.

There was a third person present to this individual party. A man who had an arm that looked far too happy to be around Dinah’s shoulder. He was the same age as Oliver but the differences ended there. He was tanned and dark haired, his build was slimmer. And he had a cockiness about him that wasn’t for show.

“Hey!” Oliver shouted, annoyance in his tone. “I didn’t give you the night off.”

“The great thing about being the actual boss instead of a fairly absentee owner is that I can close shop whenever I want.”

The two men glared at one another before breaking into the same smirk simultaneously.

“The King and Queen together again,” sighed Dinah for show and looking incredible a shimmering gold dress with a slit up the thigh displaying an incredible amount of succulent leg.

“Don’t worry, Ollie.” Tommy King grinned. “It’s a weeknight. Wouldn’t make much more at the door than usual so I shut down Verdant that way we could ready a real celebration all weekend long.”

“Ah.”

“A celebration that you’re gonna make an appearance at… right?”

“Yep,” lied Oliver by rote.

Tommy King and Oliver had been friends since childhood and in that time had lost count of the number of jokes they had heard about being a “king and his queen.” The other man was the scion of King and Co Global and in nearly every way the opposite side of his coin. They went to same schools together, partied in the same circles. They made the same mistakes except for one key difference… Tommy could wake up in the morning and pass an AP exam with flying colors while Oliver hugged a toilet. Old Robert Queen had grumbled over that display often before his death. Luckily for Oliver and Queen Consolidated, though he had a more innate skill at business, Tommy had no interest in running his family’s company. His friend was perfectly content being the manager of a nightclub.

While the two men chatted and Dinah smiled at their antics, the girl vibrated with excitement yet possessed a surprising amount of manners in relation to the accidental rudeness the old friends were showing her. The words wanted to burst out of her mouth. Oliver could see it out of the corner of her eye.

So could Tommy.

“Sorry, this is my mother’s goddaughter Ste – “

Oliver held up a hand to stop him. “You can say it.”

“You’reOliverQueen!” the words roared forth like a river breaking free of a dam, so loud and quick that one almost couldn’t understand it.

He smiled.

The smile had taken on a decidedly morose air nearly an hour later. The crowd had expected a speech so he gave them a speech. They expected him to drink so he drank (or at least appeared to). Everyone expected so much out of him and they weren’t even important, not really, yet why did he feel such a heavy weight on his shoulders? He’d accomplished so much in just a year. He’d nearly wiped the slate clean from the stained image of the playboy he once was.

It just wasn’t enough.

Oliver rested looking out the balcony not far from the party. His eyes were drawn to a single firefly flashing in the distance. It flashed on and off, a dance to itself. He never once moved his eyes from it. Not until he felt the tiny hand on the small of his back. He knew that hand and for just the once he didn’t tense.

“Why so sad big bro?” Thea came beside him, reclining with her back against the railing in a little black dress cut far too short for a girl her age to wear and a wineglass in her hand.

He snatched that wineglass and poured it over the edge.

“Hey! I was drinking that!”

“Not anymore.”

Thea heard something in his tone that told her not to push it. She leaned on him, her fragile head propped against his shoulder and said nothing for quite some time. It was truly remarkable. She went so quiet Oliver began to worry there was something wrong with her.

“I still miss him too,” there was a pinched sob in her tone. He could hear the tears even if he couldn’t see them just yet.

“Dad is always with us… Just try sleeping in the den.”

“I do. And his old office. And…”

The firefly went dark. Oliver wrapped an arm around his sister and turned her to stare out at their home. He didn’t bring up the running lines on her cheek. He didn’t say anything about how their father would be disappointed in them both. Him for failing his family… Her for being, well, a younger version of him. Instead he pointed to a sky that was lit up with stars this far away from actual city limits.

“You see that constellation?” he asked her softly, “The one near Hercules and Aquila.”

“Aquila?”

“The Great Eagle,” he drew a very poorly represented bird with his extended finger before moving it and her line of sight just a bit farther away. “It’s one of the smallest in the world. Sagitta. Looks like an arrow.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“It does.”

It really didn’t but if you wanted to get technical on constellations then you had a lot of arguing to do. “Now look at the bit that makes up the fletching…” he winced at using the proper term. Not exactly something Oliver Queen would know. “The, uh, feather. That star is Al-sahm, Arabic for arrow. It used to be the constellation’s formal name…”

Just out of the corner of his vision, he could see his sister looking at him and the star in open mouthed wonderment. He was showing off knowledge that surprised her. He was saying things, even if she didn’t know what, that were the truest, deepest things he’d ever told her. It was one of those moments that you could not ever, ever, find the words to describe.

“That star is my lucky star and to me it’s one of the brightest in the sky.” He gave his sister half a hug while still pointing. “If you ever miss me, look up at that star and know that I’m thinking about you and mom, that I’m thinking of home. That I love you both.”

“You’re so cheesy… Ollie!” she shouted his name after he pulled away abruptly and headed back to the party. “Ollie! What’s wrong?!”

He said nothing more and vanished into the crowd, two targets in mind. He found the first mingling with old faces that she hadn’t seen in years. He grabbed Dinah by the arm and whispered hurriedly in her ear. “My room, half an hour, it’s still in the same place.”

Dinah nodded in immediate understanding. Her eyes flickered only for a moment but he couldn’t let himself see it now. The candle was starting to burn deep inside his chest.

The second person was more difficult to find. Eventually, he discovered Diggle actually doing his job and hovering near the entrance as if he expected a hit squad to break in at any moment. The two men left the party to find a spot alone under one of the backstairs.

“Did you bring the second gun?”

“Yeah man but…”

“Give it here.”

By habit, Oliver checked out the gun, ejecting the magazine and growing accustomed to the weight. “Should have asked you to bring more ammo and a silencer.”

“Ollie, what’s –“

“No time.” Satisfied, Oliver holstered the glock within his coat. “Library, northwest corner, bottom floor. There’s an invisible switch behind Bows against the Barons. I have a spare bow and quiver stored there. Meet me out on the grounds, possibly in the woods, be careful.”

Oliver left a third person in his wake and unable to keep up with his speed. That was the key. You never gave people time to refuse an order, to stop you. You kept going. You kept going until you reached your goal. He would reach that goal even if it meant sending his closest companion on a fool’s errand to keep him safe.

He would reach it even if… Oliver hesitated as he passed what should have been an ill-used hallway in the east wing. He caught sight of his sister’s retreating form, no doubt to use a hidden passage to find somewhere secluded with her friends. Fury filled him, the wax on the candle melted. There was a second figure walking towards him. One he knew from the streets. A drug dealer… One foolish enough push his product in Oliver’s own home. Oh, he didn’t look like one. This was the kind of man that sold to high society. And he’d already been banned from Oliver’s club.

“Hey Ollie, nice part-aaaaaargh,” making the man scream was probably a bad idea.

Thoughts went to the likelihood of his death in the next twenty minutes. It wasn’t exactly the time for regrets or care for the future. Oliver snapped the man’s wrist very cleanly and with so much precision that a doctor would be impressed when they set the breakage. Oliver’s voice was the Hood’s…

“Get the hell out of my house.”

The dealer took off running down the hall, too terrified to more than mutter that he was a psycho bastard. Oliver paused to glance at the wall in that moment. Swords, shield with the Queen Family crest… So his mother hadn’t gotten rid of everything of his father’s and grandfather’s. It could be useful.

He tested the blade after he pulled it down.

Well, at least it wasn’t blunt.

“Who does the Demon’s Head send that dares threaten my family!?” Oliver roared into an empty forest, his grip tight on the poor excuse for a sword.

A firefly flickered in the distance before quickly vanishing behind some trees.

Oliver did not head towards it. He had followed the message from the balcony. This was where he’d been told to meet, right here where the grass met the woods. It would be suicidal to go farther even if there hadn’t been hints that the code of conduct had been violated.

“Where is Al-sahm?” a voice echoed from the shadows. “What do I see but a boy.”

“Brave Bow…” a part of Oliver threatened to relax. He called upon the focus of the candle to keep him vigilant. The fact that he personally knew now his assassin wouldn’t kill his family did not mean he was exempt from dying this night.

“Al-nasl to you, boy,” the leaves whispered. “Who showed you how to clip a butterfly’s wings with an arrow point? Who carved your best bow? What was I except proud when your skill threatened to surpass my own?”

“And who am I to come before you armed only with a sword?” Oliver finished wryly.

Tree limbs laughed in the empty night.

“You made me murder an initiate.”

“The Shadows make you do nothing, boy. The Demon’s Head makes you do nothing. Once upon a time you were that initiate. Once upon a time so was your father. This day would come. You knew this.”

“Not at your hands,” Oliver retorted. “I don’t want to kill you, Al-nasl. You were my teacher… You trained me.”

“I did, I did,” twigs grumbled upon the ground. Probably over the fact that this would not be a test of his bow against the Brave’s. “And because I taught you, I know you to be aware you face a choice.”

Oliver inclined his head. His mind filled with thoughts of all the work he had not yet done, of all the things that he had failed to do this past year. The image of his sister was more prominent than most. Not the city. Not her people. His sister and that damn drug dealer. It would be so much easier to make the right choice, to spare himself from risking death and the deaths of those closest to him.

It would be easy to be told to kill, to join heart and soul with the the Shadow.

He thought of Thea, of his mother… of Diggle the soldier. It was so much easier to kill when you aimed like an arrow. The difficulty always arose when it became your choice. When you decided to be more than just a weapon used by your superiors or to fight for survival. He understood that the more than ever since his return.

“I shall not return to the Shadows. I shall not answer the Demon’s call.”

A firefly flickered to the south. The arrow grazed his cheek from the east. Oliver did not evade, not yet. It was a nick. Had Brave Bow wanted to kill him with the first shot then he would have. This was Oliver’s – Al-sahm’s – test. There would be a trick to it. There was some sort of trick to winning… to killing his teacher. He thought back to his training, body as still as a flame in a calm wind. For all his prowess, the Brave was not a master of the Shadow. He relied on other things, physical things, towards misdirection and traps. Oliver was always superior there.

He waited for a firefly flicker and as he expected the arrow flashed towards him from another direction. Oliver stepped aside, unwilling to enter the tree line just yet, and spun to slash a third arrow in half. Al-nasl was a tracker by nature. A trapper. He did not hunt so much as lure… The fireflies blossomed. He threw himself against the trunk of a tree, half a dozen arrow points missing him or thudding into the bark behind him.

Would the Brave have brought more Initiates with him? Doubtful. His tone and its disappointment sincerely suggested that he had wished match Oliver’s bow against his, The Arrow verses The Arrow-Point. There was only one man in the woods then and he was every bit as good as Oliver could remember.

As if to drive that point home, he thought he saw a tree move and in that moment the arrow flew for him. His instinct was to dive down but that would be wrong. He dove instead into the forest against every ounce of logic. Just in time. Arrows fell from above in the spot Oliver would have been laying. He kept running once inside the trees. No light from the stars or moon shone here. He was alone in the dark. Almost as bad as that trick pulled on him in the community center. One still needed light to cast a shadow otherwise it was simply an absence.

Honed reflexes sent him sliding to his legs as a tree trunk swung over his head. He was back on his feet before it was a breath away. The Brave had spent his day planning with every bit as care as Moira it seemed. These were Oliver’s lands but his mentor had taken them for just one evening.

Tiny beacons in the night. Arrows. Oliver felt one thud into his shoulder and in the darkness he saw the bush move. He charged, sword swinging, the assassin threw the bow in his way to be cleaved in two. The blade touched nothing. The forest moved around him… Ah, that explained it. He’d only heard the rumors of such a garment of living camouflage. To think they were true…

His ears heard the whistle of feathers in the night and his body reacted instantly. The sword spun in defense, fast enough to divert them just the fraction of inches Oliver needed. Even in the absence of light, he still had his candle, his focus. It had been easy to guess the Brave would have set up extra quivers and bows placed all about the forest. It also was too much to hope for Oliver to conveniently discover one of them. Through the haze of his spinning shield he saw light at the end. Almost exactly like the light of the fireflies. If Al-nasl had one artifact then it was likely he –

Oliver became aware in only the dimmest recesses of his mind the pain blossoming in his hand. It flew to the front a breath after a repeated volley of arrows all striking one after another threw the sword from his hand. He scrambled quickly around the base of a tree to put it between him and his attacker. He could count enough to know that his hunter would need to find another quiver soon after that onslaught.

The candle blew in the wind of his heart as he broke off the arrow head and yanked the shaft out of his palm. It had been a remarkable shot. Even now he could be impressed with such skill.

The gun burned against his chest, calling to him. He hadn’t wanted to waste ammo, hadn’t wanted to potentially alert the house. This wasn’t the city. This was private property in the dead of night. Even with a party in full swing there was still a chance a shot could be heard.

He bit his lip to keep from crying out.

Something else burned against his skin in reminder and it drew a smile to his blistering lips.

His Q-Phone.

Now to wait… Fireflies flickered as the hunter circled the prey. Oliver still waited, a bloody smear coating the screen of his phone. The arrows flew. He activated the app and threw the cell high in an arc towards the new wave. Brilliant strobe light flashed in the empty forest air. Oliver moved between the arrows as if they were easier to pass than drops of rain, from shadow to shadow, relying on his own talent to close the distance where he could finish things at close range.

He wasn’t even surprised when the spike pit opened beneath him. He was already flipping through the air to catch the final arrow and launch it back towards its shooter with shocking accuracy just as another smashed against the phone.

There was no distance now. The two men rolled across the dirt. Backs slammed into trees. Contrary to expectations, close grappling did often come down to dirty fighting. Heads were smashed against the ground. Teeth were used. They weren’t silent now. Roars of rage and pain, agony and anger, filled the night. The Brave fought with ferocity of a man on the edge of death. He yanked out the arrow still buried in Oliver’s shoulder from what seemed like hours ago. His fingers found purchase in the younger man’s palm, digging into the hole there.

Oliver screamed. He couldn’t help it and suddenly he found only a cloak that seemed to melt into its environment in his uninjured hand. There was no sign of Al-nasl or his bow. This was not over yet… Oliver shouldered the mantle and listened. The grass, the trees, the wind spoke to him as he concentrated on the candle. The Brave had clambered over tuft and turf. He was heading towards… towards the manor.

Oliver was off, running faster than his legs wanted to carry him.

Silhouetted against the stars and the moon was his first teacher. A bow was in his hand, runes glimmering on its wood. The arrow was the very same that he had pulled from Oliver.

Two gunshots rang in the night. One from Oliver, the other from Diggle just behind Al-nasl… hidden behind the ground’s shrubbery. His mentor fell backwards then collapsed forward onto his knees as the shots threw him in opposing directions. He never had a chance to release his last arrow.

Oliver and Diggle stood over the dying man. Eyes that knew the shadows and the darkness of man stared up at them in the mirth of death. He held out a hand for Oliver to hold, blood burbling out of his mouth. Just barely words could be made out, spoken on the wind.

“One arrow… That’s… all you needed…”

The hand fell to the ground, inches away from the broken shaft of the arrow Oliver had thrown into the man’s stomach. It would have killed him in the long run eventually. That was the sort of wound it was.

In a hood that was not his, Oliver found the strength to speak the necessarily callous words. “I need you to dispose of the body…” both could hear the sound from the manor suddenly quieter than it had been in the distance. “He deserves the proper rites but I can’t give them to him… not now.”

Diggle nodded.

“Ollie… You okay?”

Oliver stepped away into the night, away from his friend. The blood on the grass answered for him. “No.”

Dinah was there to catch him when he fell through his open window. Surprise was very stoically kept from her face when she felt the barrel of the glock pressed against her stomach. She held him in that moment, aware that he might just squeeze the trigger anyways. She kept on holding him as the gun shook.

“Not tonight, Ollie,” she stroked his hair, “you’re safe tonight… safe with me.”

She felt him shift against her. Mentally she pictured the room, pictured where his eyes were looking.

“Nor tomorrow.”

It was a very long time before he said, “They’re going to make me kill you too.”

Looking at him there, so much bigger than her yet fitting perfectly together, she too took a very long time before answering. “Yes.”

The gun didn’t drop. Safety or not, that would have been dangerous. Oliver was the one who dropped. He slid exhausted, mentally and physically, to his knees, refusing to let go of her as he hugged her hips. Calmly, she kicked the gun away from him and under the nearest chair. It had been a long year apart and he wasn’t beholden to same rules as she.

“Al-nasl is dead,” his voice was empty.

“And Al-sahm?” she asked, still stroking his hair.

“Dying.”

It wasn’t to be taken literally yet still the way he said it troubled Dinah. As if leading a small child to the wash, she stripped him of his clothes very carefully. His body, already heavily scarred, was littered in fresh cuts and bruises. None looked too severe though the blood soaked piece of shirt he had tied around his hand was worrying. She cleaned and dressed his wounds to the best of her ability. Others could have done it better but she was all he had right this moment. Her eyes flickered to that injured hand.

She hated the way the hole in his palm made her feel. She despised the relief it gave her. She despised the strategies that entered her –

The kiss was unexpected. Dinah didn’t pull away, not immediately. A part of her wanted to melt into his arms, into his lips… To go back to a time before all… all this. But she did and he let her.

“One last time…” Oliver pleaded. “I want to be with you one last time…” he noticed the way she flinched away from the bloody hand that had started brush a tear from her cheek. “One last time no matter which one of us lives.”

“One last time,” she agreed.

Dinah led the way to his bed, the two of them vanishing into the comfort of each other.