Disciple: Chapter Three (3/?)
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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 Three
Mia was about to go up in Watchtower’s elevator when she heard a couple of foreign voices. She immediately jumped back into a corner, and waited for them to go up.
She curled her hands up into a fist. If they were trying to break into the Watchtower, she was ready to stop them. She would wait until they failed the fingerprint scanner before attacking.
But when the elevator doors opened, Oliver stepped out. It looked like he was expecting them, but what was with the couch? Did something happen to the old one?
“We have a package for a Chloe Sullivan.”
Her eyes widened. Chloe? She looked at Oliver.
“Yeah, she’s upstairs. She told me to sign off, and bring it up.” Oliver confirmed
Mia got excited- Chloe was all Oliver talked about over dinner way back when. She was incredibly important to him, and it sounded like she would be easy to get along with. Mia was looking forward to the day she met her, she just didn’t expect that it would be so soon.
She watched as he signed off and told the men that he didn’t need help in bringing the couch upstairs. Mia stepped out, and put her arms around the couch as he pressed the up button on the elevator.
“So you finally found her? Does that mean that I can meet her?” she asked him
He turned around. “I couldn’t exactly tell them that Oliver Queen was ordering a couch and having it delivered somewhere other than my penthouse.”
She watched as she wheeled the couch inside of the elevator. She followed him inside.
Why did he use Chloe’s name? He had aliases that he pulled out when needed. “That’s understandable, but you could have used another name. Made up an alias, even. I know you have a couple that you use.”
“Mia, it’s really nothing to look into.”
She stared at the doors closing. He could say that as much as he wanted, but that wasn’t going to stop her from worrying.
“Let me be the judge of that”, she told him. “Why did you buy another couch, anyway?” she asked
The doors opened. “Just thought that a little bit of change would be nice.”
She stepped out of the elevator and opened the double doors for him as he wheeled the couch inside.
She walked into the Watchtower and took a look around. The computers were newer, there was a top of the line espresso machine instead of the regular coffee pot, even the mini-fridge was upgraded to a full stainless steel one.
These weren’t general upgrades. These were tailored specifically for Chloe. She had a coffee addiction, which would explain the espresso machine. She spent long hours at Watchtower, so that would be the reason for the fridge and couch. And her role of being Watchtower explained the new computers. Oliver was trying to give her a pre-mature welcome back.
“Looks like you’ve been changing a lot of things around here”, she told him.
“I’ve just been moving things around a little. Nothing huge.”
But it was huge. Oliver refused to move things around the penthouse. He had a specific order of keeping his gear when it came to the Arrow room, and unintentionally got her into being more organized with her gear too.
It was like he was nervously preparing for a baby to be brought home.
“For someone who refuses to move things around his own penthouse, it’s kind of weird. It’s like you’re a pregnant woman nesting.”
He let out a laugh. “A pregnant woman nesting?” he echoed
It was a strange term, but it was true. Maybe Oliver was chasing down a definite lead. It would explain the sudden celebration.
“No other way to describe it”, she shrugged. “Are you chasing down a good lead, at least? I haven’t spoken to you since you left.”
She hoped that his impromptu trip to China was at least efficient. He left with almost no phone call, and she was nervous during patrol the entire time he was gone.
“China was a dead end. But don’t worry, I haven’t run out of ideas”, he answered confidently.
Cocky. That’s what he was being. He was so sure that he would find Chloe in time, and while that was a positive change from the man who strapping himself to the computers, she wasn’t sure if she liked that change.
He wasn’t even concerned with the possibility of finding a memory-erased Chloe. And that was because he was still completely blind to his feelings for her.
Even though his feelings were none of her business, she knew that if he failed to find her in time, it would destroy him. And here he was, completely relaxed about the whole thing.
“What if you don’t find her?” she asked him
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re getting over-confident”, she told him. “It’s like you’re trying to give her some sort of welcome home present, and you haven’t found her yet.”
“It’s not a matter of if I find her. It’s a matter of when.”
“Well, considering she’s erasing her memory of you, when’s a pretty important factor, isn’t it?”
Oh god, he was going to become the work-obsessed Oliver again. Quick, backtrack. “Now, I’m not telling you to be completely one-track minded. I’m glad you’re doing something other than looking for her”, she clarified.
“There’s a but, isn’t there?” he asked
“But I think that you need to mentally prepare yourself of what you’re going to do if you don’t find her in time.”
Please don’t be offended, please don’t be offended.
“I’ll find her.”
Great, he wasn’t even paying attention to her. “You so need a hobby”, she said, frustrated.
He rolled his eyes at her. “Yeah, with all that spare time I have.”
Alright, time to be incredibly blunt with him. “No, listen to me. You’re putting way too much of yourself into this. You spend every hour of every day looking for her. You take out your jet randomly, and fly to some random place in China, chasing whatever lead you can get your hands on. And during your spare time, you redecorate the place. Whatever you do, it all leads back to her.”
Not to mention the wall. God, that wall terrified her, because he had done that only once before, and it scared the crap out of her then too.
She remembered her words to him back then. “You want to tell me what you’re doing? Because this looks serial killer scary.”
She remembered him not answering her right away either. And his silence back then only scared her even more. So she kept talking. “Okay…this is where you tell me you hate the taste of flesh to make me feel better?”
The joke didn’t work then, and she didn’t want to address that wall now. She couldn’t afford him to throw her out again.
Oliver only responded with one word. “So?”
“I’m worried.” She couldn’t believe that she had to spell that out for him. “I don’t want you to fall apart if you find her and she has no idea who you are. I understand why you’re doing all of this, I do.” She wasn’t going to spell out his feelings for him too. That was his job. “But I don’t want you to feel lost in case everything goes south.”
“Thanks for your concern, but I’ll be fine. I won’t be lost.”
She was starting to hate that word. Fine.
“Really, Oliver?” she asked “When was the last time you did some target practice? When was the last time you zip-lined from rooftop to rooftop?”
When was the last time he felt the true freedom of flying up in the air across the city? When was the last time he released an arrow and felt all of his stress disappearing from his body the instant he let go of that bowstring?
“I still work out and do yoga every morning.”
That’s not the same.
“Good, but it’s not your physique that I’m worried about. I’m worried about your identity. What we do out there every night is a huge part of who we are. You taught me that. And I’m worried that you’re mixing up her identity with your own.”
“Meaning…?”
“Meaning that you’re Watchtower now. And that’s fine as a temporary deal. But from what you’ve been telling me, Chloe was one of the strongest people that you’ve ever met. And she left. What’s to say that you’re not going to leave too?” she asked
He was silent for a moment. Maybe she finally got through to him. Good. “Is that what you’re worried about? That I’m just going to go off on my jet one day and never come back?”
It’s one. “It’s on my list, yes.”
“There’s a list?” he asked “What’s on the top of it?”
She took a deep breath. She almost didn’t want to say it, for fear that it would come true one of these days. “That you’re going to get yourself killed, and I won’t know about it until it’s too late”, she said quickly.
She looked at him for a moment, hoping that he heard the first time. She really didn’t want to repeat it.
He must have heard her though, since he took her in his arms next. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
She pulled apart from him. “You’ve been more of a father to me than anything else. I don’t want to lose that.”
She didn’t trust easily, and he was the first person that he trusted in a long time.
“You won’t.”
Mia wasn’t sure if she believed him.