Disciple (1/?)
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Oliver: "I'm not worried about him. Mia, it's what he said. I think he's right. What if I can't outrun these dark places inside me?"
Mia: "That's why you need me. To keep you in check. There's a dark place inside everyone, Oliver. What we do with it depends not on who our teachers are but what we do with the lessons learned."
Summary: Oliver Queen needs Mia to keep him in check. Companion Piece to Erase- you should really read the two side by side.
Warnings: Violence and spoilers for season 9
Chapter One
Mia Dearden was studying in the library when her cell phone rang. It was Oliver. “Hey”, she greeted. She was surprised that he had called- she hadn’t heard from him in a while. She hoped that everything was okay.
“I need to talk to you about something. I think we need to meet.”
“Okay, where?”
“Do you remember where I usually start my patrol route?”
How could she forget? “Yeah, I do.”
“Meet me there.”
He hung up before she could reply. What was going on with him?
She was curious, but had work to do. She had an exam coming up, and she was trying to keep up with target practice every night. She knew that she had to make it all work, if she even hoped to go on patrol one day.
***
She changed into her uniform and made her way over to the roof. She saw Oliver in front of her, and observed the way that he was holding himself. She knew immediately that something had happened to him- where he had usually marveled at the view, he was staring down sadly.
He straightened up when she walked closer. “Thanks for meeting me”, he said before turning around. He flipped off his voice distorter and pulled back on her hood before taking off his sunglasses. She followed his lead.
“I hadn’t heard from you in awhile. I was worried”, she explained.
“I’ll be okay.” But somehow, she didn’t believe him. “The suit looks good”, he motioned to her gear.
She smiled to herself. Even though she had wanted to emulate him, she felt that the cape would be something different. It had been her first time wearing it, and she was glad that it looked okay. “Your guy did a good job.”
But she wasn’t about to let him change the topic. Time to be all about business. She gave him a serious look. “What’s been going on, Oliver?”
He turned his back to her, and looked down. “There are thousands of people down there every day, living their normal lives. We work so hard as heroes to try and save every one of them when they’re in trouble.”
She walked up to him, and looked down at the city too. That was one thing about being a hero that she was afraid of. Choosing. What made one person more important than another? They were all foreign to her.
“What if you have to choose between saving one person or another?” she asked
“I don’t know”, he said softly. “I just do what I can.”
He stepped back from the roof. She was curious- what was she doing here?
“There’s someone that I have to find”, he told her. “Someone who can do a lot of good. She’s lost right now, and I have to leave the country to find her.”
Mia knew that if this woman made Oliver want to leave the country in order to find her, then she was important. This woman was important to him, and if her disappearance was causing him pain, then she was going to help him.
“Let me help you find her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mia.”
Why the hell wasn’t it a good idea? “Why not?” She demanded. It couldn’t be because she wasn’t good enough- she practiced her archery for 3 hours every night. She modified her diet so that it had extra protein, and did yoga and kick boxing every morning. What was the problem? “I can shoot an arrow almost as well as you can. You trained me yourself.”
“I don’t doubt your skills in any way”, he assured her. “This is just something that I have to do myself.”
With her past, she knew what that was like. And she also knew that if Oliver had come into her life sooner and she accepted his help, it would have saved her a lot of pain. “Then trust me”, she insisted. “Let me help somehow.”
She watched as the gears turned in his brain. She felt like she was at some sort of office, awaiting a performance evaluation. And she hoped that she was good enough now for him to trust her.
“Her name is Chloe Sullivan”, he finally said. “Do you remember when we first met and I told you that I knew what it was like to be lost?”
She nodded. She also remembered him saying that he wouldn’t have made it out if it hadn’t been for his friends. She could see that Oliver was falling down some sort of hole again. And that worried her.
“She pulled me out of it”, he told her.
So this woman pulled him out of a hole. And he was falling into another hole, except this time Chloe wasn’t around.
“And now that she’s lost, you feel that it’s your role to pull her out of it?” she asked
“Something like that”, he answered.
And that’s when it hit her- Oliver was in love with this Chloe Sullivan. And he was probably completely blind to it. Idiot.
She adjusted a glove so that her epiphany didn’t show. “How have you been trying to find her?” she asked
“She left two good-bye videos. She meant to delete the second one. I’ve been trying to get clues from that, and from her belongings.”
He was going about this all the wrong way. She had a little experience in trying to disappear. If you want to find someone, you find the people they’re closest to. You don’t look for clues in their things. But she didn’t know this woman, maybe she was a private person.
“And how has that been working out for you, so far?” she asked
He shook his head. “Dead ends, all of them. I think that I need to start looking outside of the country- she mentioned Italy in the second video. That’s the first place I’m going to look. But I’m running out of ideas fast.”
“What about the people she’s closest to?”
“What about them?” he asked “She probably hasn’t spoken to them in years.”
“Probably doesn’t mean that she definitely hasn’t. She could have called in a favor.”
“It’s something to consider”, he said. “Thanks.”
He turned to leave, but she knew that she had to have been called over here for a reason. Oliver was a private person- he wouldn’t have just called her over here to chat. “Oliver”, she called after him. He turned around. “Did you call me here for a reason?”
“Yes. I’m going to be in and out of the country for a while. Do you mind taking over my patrol for a bit? Keeping an eye out?”
She was swamped with work, and was having difficulty balancing everything. But this was the opportunity that she had been waiting for- she wasn’t going to give Oliver the time to reconsider. “Sure.”
“I’ll send you the number for Dr. Hamilton in the morning in case something goes wrong and you need medical attention. If you need back-up on the field, call for the Blur.”
Did he work with the Blur? What was going on there? “The guy in all of the newspaper? Okay.”
He nodded. “That’s only on scene. I want you to check in with me every night after patrol.”
But she didn’t know his full patrol route, even if she didn’t want to admit it. “Okay, but I don’t know your patrol route”, she said.
He took out his crossbow, and shot out a zip-line. “Well, it’s time to learn, isn’t it?”
She took out her own crossbow, and focused on where he aimed his before pulling the trigger. “After you.”
She smiled. She had never gone on patrol with Oliver before. He never let her tag along before. It was time for her to prove to him how good she could be.