The Starling Saviour

Chapter 69

'Hey, Aria, can I... Borrow you for a second?' Oliver requested from near the back of the club while I was polishing a few glasses.

'What is the matter, Ollie?' I smiled as I joined him down in the Arrowcave, only the two of us there.

'I'm worried about Felicity,' Oliver told me slowly, sounding much more timid than when he had been yelling at Felicity earlier.

'Why?' I tried to figure out what Oliver meant, but soon enough, I realised. 'You're worried that you recruited someone who can't get the job done when necessary.'

'Maybe,' Oliver nodded slightly. 'You could've just done what Felicity does instead, and I wouldn't have had to get another person involved in all... This.'

'Oh, Oliver,' I said sympathetically, warming to this new, very caring Oliver Queen. 'I could never do all the complicated hacking and decryption Felicity does, and she is way more quicker at typing than me. Today was just a mistake, and it wasn't her fault.'

'But what if she makes another mistake, and then another?' Oliver worried.

'I've made lots of mistakes,' I reminded him. 'And you and Diggle have too; a few weeks ago, I killed the Dodger, last month, Diggle joined Black Hawk, and just last week, you trusted Helena. This time, not being able to stop Joseph Falk was Felicity's blip, and trust me, I doubt she will let anything like this happen again.'

'I talked to her, just before I called you down here, actually,' Oliver told me. 'She said that she'd never seen anyone die before, until today. I feel like we just... Pushed her into the deep end before we gave her chance to learn how to swim.'

'That was very profound, Ollie, but maybe that's not a bad thing,' I supposed. 'Yes, she is the only one out of our team who hasn't been a soldier, or a fighter, or shipwrecked, but we were pushed into situations we had never experienced before on the island. And we survived, didn't we?'

'But what if she finds she can't cope with what we do?' Oliver worried some more. 'What if she finds it too... Dark?'

'Well, maybe we need her to be our light,' I theorised quickly. 'You, Diggle and I, we've all been through some pretty dark times, and I think it made us lose a part of us, inside. It dimmed the light in our souls, bit by bit, and once your soul is darkened, it can never shine completely. We need Felicity to help us make the right decisions, to put us on the right path. And, sometimes you get really serious, scary serious, and if we didn't have her here, I think you would just stay like that forever. And you are so boring when you're all angsty.'

Oliver just gave me a quizzical look to my last statement, but he had been listening to the rest of what I said.

'I guess you're right, Aria,' Oliver nodded, like he was enlightened or something. 'You always know the right thing to say. You're like... Yoda.'

'Excuse me, I am not green, wrinkly and I am much taller than like, two feet!' I exclaimed, pretending to be offended. 'But, if you're saying I'm wise, then, that's acceptable.'

Oliver just grinned, unusually refraining from smirking at me, and kept eye contact with me for longer than normal. I expected him to lose his gaze, but we were locked by our irises for an even longer period of time.

Why was he looking at me for so long? Or was my brain just exaggerating the time period? I was so confused, as per usual, but I didn't want to look away from him, losing myself in his deep blue eyes, their colour reminding me of the sea, of sailing under the summer sun, of the Gambit... Crashing in the storming and throwing me into the ocean. Quickly, I averted my gaze, and looked at my trembling hands, not knowing exactly what had come over me. I had accepted what had happened to me on the island all these years, but Vanch's trial had made me relive it again only a few weeks ago, and now, reminders of that awful year kept cropping up wherever I went, only this time, it was starting to get to me.