Chapter Text
From the moment Nora and Henry welcomed newborn Bartholomew Henry Allen into the world, they knew their son was special. He might not have his Words yet, but he was born with bright hazel eyes wide open, gaze darting all around the sterile hospital room, much more observant than a baby ought to be. Barry’s arrival was a joyous affair, bringing together both sides of the family and their close family friends, the Wests. And for a short time, much too brief, all was right with the world.
“Mommy, how come you let Daddy scribble all over your arm? His handwriting’s so messy!”
Nora smiled at her seven-year old son. “Barry, honey, Daddy didn’t write these,” she said, extending her bicep. “These are my Words. They appeared when I was twelve. Everyone gets them as they grow up—you’ll get yours soon too, sweetie, you’ll see.”
Barry stared at the letters on her arm.
“But what do they mean?”
“They’re the first thing your dad, my soulmate, ever said to me. Your Words will be different, sweetheart—they’ll be the first thing your soulmate says to you when you meet them for the first time. Doesn’t that sound special?”
The little boy’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But why do we get them?”
Nora paused. “Because sometimes people can be stubborn. Sometimes we don’t see good things that are right in front of us… sometimes we all just need a little help.”
Oliver Jonas Queen’s birth was a proper spectacle. Not because the Queens wanted it to be (far from it), but as a well-established family in Starling City, there was no way to avoid the media frenzy. And so it was that Ollie was born into a world of flashing cameras and “no comments” and life under the microscope of the public eye.
(“Don’t let anyone see your Words when they come in,” Robert Queen told his six-year old son one day. “If you’re lucky, they’ll be in a place you can hide easily.”
Puzzled but eager to please his father, young Ollie had nodded, taking the advice to heart. But it was years later when he finally understood why, as he buried his dad’s rotting corpse on a godforsaken island—his parents hadn’t been soulmates after all.)
By age seven he’d mastered the art of the charmingly earnest fake smile, by fifteen he’d figured out how to charm the pants off anything on two legs. And when at seventeen his Words suddenly came in, curling around his right hipbone in a tight possessive spiral (his soulmate must have turned twelve then), Ollie barely even looked at them.
But it wasn’t until he was boarding a boat at twenty-two years old and running away from too-much-too-fast commitment with a girlfriend he thought he loved that he realized the real problem. He’d gone so long wearing a mask in front of everyone else that he didn’t even know how to be the man underneath anymore.
Then Lian Yu happened and he learned the best way to hide (survive) was to wear a mask in plain sight.
And five years later, when Oliver came back (Ollie was long dead and gone, buried under the sun-bleached bones of his father), armed with a book of reckoning and filled with dark purpose, he knew what he had to do.
By some amazing stroke of luck he’d never met his soulmate during his five years in hell. But knowing the person he was now, who he’d made himself to be, who he had to be for this vigilante business to work, Oliver knew there was no room in his life for another person.
Or at least, so he told himself as he began to make a name for himself in Starling City as the Hood. It had nothing to do with the quiet fear he kept buried deep down. The fear that one day he’d wake up and find he’d traded away all the tattered shreds of humanity left in his soul, until there was nothing left of the person that was once Oliver Queen. Nothing left but an empty shell, a soulless monster whose sins were spelled out in black ink on someone else’s body, binding them to his doom more surely than chains.
Barry cried the morning his Words came in on his twelfth birthday. Not because he couldn’t stand the Words themselves (though “Easy. Well, you’re not dead” wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for), but because he couldn’t share them with the ones he most wanted to share them with. It was his first birthday without his mom to kiss his cheek as she served up his favorite cinnamon-spiced waffles, his first birthday without his dad to tickle him into wakefulness with a cheery “up and at em, Slugger”. It was his first birthday without his parents, without his family.
It wasn’t until five weeks later, when Iris broke down not-so-silently in her room next door that Barry realized things could be worse. Gripping her hand tightly, slippery with dripping tears, he stared at the faded gray script circling her delicate ankle as they sat together on her bed.
“What am I going to do, Bear?” she’d asked him in a whisper, as if afraid speaking aloud would make it more real. “If my soulmate’s gone…who’s gonna be there for me when I grow up?”
“I will,” Barry had said then without hesitation. “I’ll always be there for you, Iris.”
And if later he stroked the elegant letters across his collarbone with new reverence back in the privacy of his own room… well, Iris didn’t need to know.
Present Day:
Barry groaned as he stepped out into the pouring rain outside the train station. Pulling his jacket quickly over his head, the CSI squinted into the hazy downpour.
Jeez, where are all the taxis in Starling City?
Ducking back under an awning, Barry pulled out his phone.
Thank god for Uber, he thought as he opened the app. At least the nearest Uber car is only…85 minutes away?! What the hell?
Barry sighed. Captain Singh had sent him on an errand to check out evidence in Starling City for an ongoing homicide case (though Barry was sure it was mostly as punishment for having been tardy so many times last month). Of course, due to train delays (no surprise there with Barry’s luck), the CSI was already running late to his meeting with his contact at the Starling City Police Department.
Pulling up Google Maps, Barry checked the distance between the train station and the SCPD headquarters.
It’s less than three miles from here, he thought, biting his lip. If I hurry, I should be able to get there in time if I go on foot.
Resigning himself to a miserably wet journey, Barry set out glumly, wishing he had more protection against the downpour than a broken umbrella and a light cotton jacket.
Little did he know that his trip to the SCPD station would take him through the heart of the Glades and into dangerous territory…
Meanwhile:
Thunder rumbled ominously overhead as the Vigilante stealthily exited the Foundry through a concealed side door.
“Felicity,” Oliver spoke softly. “Where is Kincaid now?”
The vigilante and his team had been gathering evidence on the infamous garrotter that had somehow managed to evade the police for several days now. The serial killer’s MO was strangulation by steel wire, and he tended to target young men of similar height and build, all tall lanky brunettes, suggesting a link to his past. Kincaid had already dropped four bodies in the last three nights, but that was about to change. Because tonight the hunt was finally on.
“He’s on the move,” Felicity’s voice came through the comms, “I got him on traffic cams. He’s about a block away from Faith and Flower, heading in the direction of an abandoned laundromat from the looks of it.”
Oliver smiled darkly.
Kickstarting his bike, he roared out of the alleyway behind Verdant.
“You sure you don’t want Dig in on this?” Felicity asked for the third time that night.
The vigilante growled. “Felicity, we talked about this. I’m fine—no need to bother him tonight. I’ll call if I need help with clean-up, but otherwise let him take a night off.”
“Fine fine, I know,” came the reply. “Just wondering when my night off is then,” she added jokingly.
Oliver was silent for a moment.
Maybe it’s asking too much of her to jump right back into this again. I still can’t believe she and Dig flew all the way to Lian Yu to get me.
“If you need time to yourself…” he began.
“What? No, I was kidding!” she squeaked. “You know I’m happy to help you,” Felicity told him sincerely.
Another pause, then:
“Thank you.”
Felicity smiled at the subtle warmth in his tone.
“Of course.”
Barry felt like the biggest idiot on the planet. The biggest rain-drenched, freezing, at-risk-of-pneumonia idiot ever.
He shivered against the bitter wind chill as he pulled his thin coat around him more securely.
Okay, so maybe I should have just waited at the train station and called into SCPD to explain the situation. It’s not like they couldn’t have sent someone to get me.
With the world coming down in streaming sheets all around him, he never heard the purposeful footsteps shadowing his every move.
The only warning he had was a light pressure around his neck and suddenly he couldn’t breathe anymore.
“Oli—sorry, uh, Vigilante, hurry,” Felicity said worriedly, “I lost eyes on him but he followed a guy into the alleyway behind the Laundromat. By the way, we need to come up with a better name for you than 'the Hood'. It makes you sound like a cross between a cheap Robin Hood off-Broadway character and a dementor.”
Rolling his eyes, Oliver gritted his teeth as he pushed himself faster over the rooftops along Faith and Flower.
Hearing signs of a struggle, he looked down to see a young man flailing in the grip of the burly Kincaid in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to free himself.
“I see him,” he said as he shot a grappling wire down to the ground.
Quickly taking stock of his opponent, Oliver took careful aim as he shot an arrow into the garrotter’s exposed right forearm.
With an earsplitting shriek, Kincaid dropped his weapon and the person attached to it.
When the serial killer made to yank out the arrow, Oliver grinned sharply.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. That arrow is embedded in your median nerve—damage it any more and you won’t be able to move that hand again.”
Stalking forward lithely the green archer knocked out the garrotter with one well-placed punch to the temple before securing him tightly with zip ties and wire rope.
“We’re good, Felicity. I’ll deliver Kincaid to Lance and deal with…everything else,” he finished with a glance at the prone body of the garrotter’s would-be-victim.
“Copy that,” came the response. “See you back soon.”
Turning to the figure lying unmoving on the ground, the vigilante crouched as he gently felt for a pulse along the young man’s bruised neck.
Oliver let out a slight breath of relief as he found one.
Resting an emerald-gloved hand against the man’s bloodied face, he took a second to admire the delicate cheekbones and full lips before he was struck by a sudden desire to see if they were as soft as they looked.
What, no, he thought, alarmed.
Leaning back, Oliver pressed his fingers to the man’s spinal cord for a brief second, using the trick Yao Fei had inadvertently taught (used on) him on Lian Yu.
Barry sat up with a start. His piercing hazel eyes shot wide open, glancing frantically around before landing on the hooded figure before him.
The vigilante ducked his head to hide his face as lightning flashed overhead.
I need to figure out a better identity concealer, he thought. I hate greasepaint.
Opening his mouth to speak, Barry choked as he struggled to breathe properly.
“Easy,” the other man rumbled.
Oliver’s lips thinned in anger as the the harsh alleyway lighting illuminated the full extent of mottled bruising around the younger man’s neck.
“Well,” he ground out wryly, trying to keep his Hood voice gentle, “you’re not dead.”
Barry's eyes grew wider, if possible, at his words.
The CSI started to reply before being hit with a series of wracking coughs.
As he gasped for air, Barry thought he saw the hooded archer’s lips turn down slightly.
“Sorry, but this is for the best,” the vigilante said apologetically as he stepped back and knocked an arrow. “Don’t want you to make your injuries any worse.”
Wait what, was all Barry had time to think before he was hit with the sedative in the arrowhead.
Oliver quickly reached out to catch him as he began to slump to the ground, unconscious.
He really is beautiful, the archer admitted silently as he watched the raindrops slide off the younger man’s delicate eyelids, washing the blood off like a gentle caress.
Noticing the rain-drenched state of the other man’s clothes, Oliver straightened abruptly. He needed to get the kid to a hospital before hypothermia set in or a near-garroting would be the least of the man’s injuries.
“Felicity,” he said, touching his gloved hand to his ear device, “Tell him sorry, but have Dig pick up Kincaid and deliver him to Lance. I’m headed towards Starling General—his victim needs medical attention.”
“Um, whoa, hold up. What about keeping a low profile? Don’t think there’s any way to be super subtle about it if you barge through the doors of the ER as the Hood.”
“I don’t care,” Oliver snapped. Where did that come from?
He carefully positioned the younger man’s body on the bike in front of him as he swung his leg over the leather seat. “Not this time.”
His tone brooked no argument.
“All right, sending Dig over now, then,” Felicity returned cautiously.
“Good.”
Leaving the garrotter’s unconscious form securely bound in the alley behind him, the vigilante tightened his grip around Barry’s torso as he sped off into the stormy night.