Disciple: Chapter Two (2/?)
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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 Two
Mia: “I don’t bruise that easily.”
Oliver: "Well, maybe not on the outside."
Mia was on a nearby roof when she saw a woman walking in a dark alleyway. She kept an eye on the woman from above. It was dangerous to be walking around Metropolis in the middle of the night alone, especially in the alleyways. Whoever this woman was, she was asking for trouble.
And just like clockwork, a man crept out from the shadows and approached her. Mia couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she recognized the signs. The staring, the whistling, she had seen it all before. But she couldn’t do anything yet. Mia had to just wait here and wait for the woman to be in trouble. That was the only crappy part about this job.
This wasn’t her first night on patrol- she had stopped countless burglaries and muggings. But she had never needed to stop a rape before.
When she saw the man over-powering the woman and knocking her down, it was almost as if she was watching herself. The helplessness before she started fighting, having to give in to powerful men who found her on the streets again and again.
And she wasn’t going to let it happen to this woman. She jumped down, and rolled onto the floor before grabbing an arrow and shooting a taser arrow at the man.
She watched as the man released the woman, and fell to the floor. He was convulsing, but he was trying to get up. He was fighting it. Mia didn’t even register the woman running away from the scene. She folded the bow, and put it away.
She kicked him down. “You see, I’ve been taught that everybody can be reformed. To give everyone a second chance”, she said, circling around the man, before pulling out the taser arrow. “But is there really hope for you?”
The man stopped convulsing, and got up. “What are you doing?” he asked
“You were so willing to overpower that woman. I’m the same size as her. Why don’t you try and overpower me?”
“You’re asking for it, girl.” The man told her before reaching a hand to her throat, and pushing her against the brick wall.
He held her up until her feet were dangling from the ground. She smirked. “Having fun yet?”
She slammed her head against his, and did a back flip behind him. She kicked him into the wall, and watched as he hit the ground.
“Well, are you?” she demanded before kicking him again
He gasped for breath as she pulled him up before punching him in the nose, watching as he fell down.
She shook her hand before staring at it. Her knuckles were covered in his blood.
She remembered when Oliver first found her. What he said to her. I know what I’m talking about Mia, because I used to fight for the same reasons that you do. It never mattered who was standing across from me because the real battle was with myself.
She thought that she had already overcome her fears. That the hatred that was inside of her had disappeared. She had gone through so much training, and she almost lost her sense of everything in one night. She was never going to be as good of a hero as Oliver was. But she was still going to try.
She reached for her crossbow, and shot the grappling arrow at a nearby flagpole. She pressed a button, and felt herself get pulled up in the air.
***
She didn’t want to call Oliver, in case he decided to change his mind about her taking over his patrol. She really didn’t want to disappoint him. But she did want to know if this was normal- he always seemed to be in control of what was right and wrong, enough to make her question her own actions, anyway.
She was going to have to call him to check in after patrol at the very least, so she waited until after she reached her apartment and got changed.
He didn’t pick up his phone. That was when she knew that something was slightly off. Okay, no big deal. She tried again. No success.
She kept calling and calling, but there was no response. It wasn’t like Oliver at all, and Mia was beginning to get worried quickly. She reached for her keys and darted out of the apartment.
Oliver called her Speedy the day she first met him. The title kind of stuck, but the meaning remained the same whenever she got inside of a car. Driving usually calmed her down, but not this time. This time, it was only a means to find out what was going on. And she couldn’t get to the penthouse fast enough, even if she was traveling at 100 miles per hour.
But when she got to the penthouse, he wasn’t there. Mia examined the state of the place carefully. It didn’t look like he had been kidnapped. There were boxes everywhere, and she looked at the closest one. There were a couple of college textbooks on journalism. Oliver didn’t read this stuff- it must have belonged to Chloe.
Boxes aside, the penthouse didn’t seem to be in a state of disarray. And Oliver hadn’t called to say that he was out chasing another lead, so he was probably still in Metropolis. But where could he be?
Patrol- the start of Oliver’s patrol always started at this huge tower in the middle of the city. She always saw it on her walk to school. She always smiled to herself whenever she saw it, knowing that nobody else in the city was aware that the Green Arrow started his patrol there. Nobody knew that she had taken over.
Maybe he was there- there had to be a reason for him to start his patrol route there every night- why not the Clock Tower? It was certainly high enough.
Mia had to try something- Oliver was missing, and she didn’t know where else to look. She left the penthouse, and sped towards that tower.
She picked the lock of the front door, and walked inside. The only thing that she saw was an elevator with only one direction- up. She pressed the up button, and stepped in when the doors opened.
The elevator would only move if she inserted her fingerprint, so she shrugged. Why the hell not? The worst that could happen was that the elevator wouldn’t move. She would just press the open button, and jet the hell out of there before anybody found her. No problem.
But for some reason, the elevator registered her fingerprint, and the elevator started moving up. Okay, this was creepy. If Oliver wasn’t in here, then she was being set up somehow. And she didn’t have her bow with her.
The elevator opened, and she was on the lookout for anything and everything. She looked around, and opened the double doors in front of her.
“Oliver?” she called out nervously as she walked around
Finding him right now was the only thing on her mind. She just wanted to make sure that he was okay.
“Are you here?” she asked
She rounded a corner when she saw him. He didn’t even seem to register that she was in the same room. She tapped his shoulder. He turned around, but didn’t even look at her. He reached over for another piece of tape. She started feeling guilty- did he know what happened at patrol tonight?
Okay, don’t run to conclusions. She just started telling him why she was there. “Oliver, I’ve been worried sick. I called an hour ago to check in, and you weren’t picking up your phone. So I kept calling. After the eighth call, I figured I’d try to find you.”
He turned around again. Okay, so he did know that she was in the room. That was a good sign. He grabbed another piece of tape. “I’m fine”, he told her.
That was highly doubtful. But he was too focused to even talk to her. She stood in front of the wall, so he couldn’t tape up the picture in his hand, and took the picture. “What’s this?” she asked as she flipped it around. “Who is this?” she asked
“Meta-human. Person born with supernatural abilities.”
This picture was of some random man. And that wasn’t all. There were pictures all over the wall, circled around the picture of a blonde woman. This must be Chloe.
“Okay…” she answered “What does this person have to do with your friend?” she asked
He took the picture from her hand. “I’m trying to find a connection to her. Trying to see if their known associates.” He moved to another part of the wall, and posted it up.
This didn’t seem right- Oliver didn’t seem right. “Oliver, what’s going on with you? The last time you were like this, you said that you were being followed. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine”, he said. Fine wasn’t great. Fine wasn’t even good. Fine meant that there was something wrong.
He walked out of the room, and she followed him. “It doesn’t look fine.” He looked awful, dead on his feet. He probably hadn’t slept in a while. Hell, he probably hadn’t even eaten today. But he kept walking.
She ran in front of him, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “When was the last time you slept?” she asked him
“Last night”, he answered immediately.
She shook her head. “I mean, when was the last time you really slept?”
She remembered being out on the streets, tossing and turning. She never really slept in those days. She just closed her eyes and waited for time to pass. She knew what he was going through.
“No tossing or turning, no weird dreams, no nightmares, and no late nights”, she clarified. His silence only confirmed her suspicions. “See? You have to start taking care of yourself.”
“I’ll start taking care of myself once I find her, Mia. This is what we do. Why are you fighting me on this?”
Okay, it was one thing to screw up patrol. It was another to see the very person who taught her how to draw the line fall so quickly like this. Why was she fighting him on this? Was he serious? “Because you’re no good to the world if you destroy yourself!” She exclaimed
“I’m on a time crunch. I’ve already wasted more than a month”, he said. He shoved past her, and started typing on a computer.
Oh, so the rules didn’t apply when there was a time crunch? Good to know. She rolled her eyes, when she caught a glimpse of some of the computers upstairs.
There were computers everywhere. They were running searches, and printing out documents. There were small computers, large computers; the entire place was covered with monitors. What was this place doing here, and what was it used for?
“Oliver, where are we? What is this place?”
She watched as his lips curved into a smile. He was obviously very proud of this establishment. “This is the Watchtower. It has unlimited access to knowledge all over the world. And with it, we’re able to save countless lives.”
We. Plural. Chloe was part of all of this. It would make sense. “We? You and Chloe, you mean?”
He stopped typing and turned to face her. “You know that I’m the Green Arrow. Chloe is Watchtower- she guides a team of us during missions around the world in order to save people.”
She nodded. “So basically, she made some kind of a GPS system?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s much more than that. It’s kind of hard to explain.”
She wanted him to just let her in. That’s all. “Then help me understand.”
“There was a time last year when our team split up. We all went our separate ways, and tried to do everything alone. She brought us all back together- gave us a sense of purpose.”
The way he was talking about her, it was almost…poetic. After everything that she had been through, love was always the last thing on her mind. The partnership that he had was Chloe must have been nice.
“What?” he asked
Okay, it was time for him to get a clue now. “You like her, don’t you?”
He was silent for a moment. That was a definite yes.
“I just…have to find her.” He said before resuming his typing
She nodded her head. It felt nice, knowing something that he didn’t. Oliver was always the person with the answers. It was always her role to listen, and she was going to continue to play that role.
“I know. Come on, let’s grab some dinner.”
“Mia, what part of time crunch do you not understand?” he asked
“Look”, she started. “You told me before that you don’t want me to help you look for her. Just to keep an eye on the city. I finished patrol an hour and a half ago.”
Okay, so she was playing the guilt card to get him out of there. It looked like he needed to get away. Desperately. “Everything’s fine, thank you for asking”, she continued. “So the least you could do is let me get a full meal in you. Maybe we’ll negotiate a proper sleeping pattern later. If not, you can come back here, and type to your heart’s content.”
As if on cue, his stomach started rumbling.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She walked over to the desk and grabbed his jacket. She held it out for him. “Come on, I’ll even let you drive. And you can tell me all about Chloe Sullivan.” She wanted to know everything about her.
He let out a sigh, and grabbed the jacket. “One hour.”
“Two hours.”
“Hour and a half.”
She smiled. “Done.” She agreed as she opened the double doors. “Now, come on. I’m starving.”