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Oliver Queen
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Oliver stood in his secret hideout in the North. His quiver was strapped to his back, and in one claw he held his bow. Beside him rested a bucket on a little tabletop, full of tennis balls. The griffin took a breath in and then swatted the bucket, so that the balls bounced free. He drew his first arrow, sighted and shot it. Then he drew it again, sighted, and fired. Draw, sight, fire. There was a one and two sixth’s second pause between each fired arrow, and all the balls thudded into the wall with the shaft and fletching sticking out of it. Another perfect round.
Oliver sighed and placed his bow on the end table and then went to retrieve the arrows and now-ruined tennis balls. The balls he threw away, but the arrows were fine, minus the fact that some were a little bent or dulled and needed to be resharpened. He turned and placed the bent and dulled ones next to his workbench, to be worked on later, and placed the perfectly good arrows back inside his quiver for future use. He then trotted over to a wall and pushed off to do a handstand against the wall. His back heels on his paws touched the cold stone, and a slight shiver went down his legs under his fur. He grunted, and then bent his claws to do his first handstand push-up of the day. He made a sharp exhaling noise whenever he pushed back up, mostly because it helped keep his breath even as he used his muscles. Once he’d done a set of ten, he slowly bent his foreclaws again, but kept it in that position as his beak almost touched the floor. He held that for another ten seconds as a bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face and his arms wobbled a little from the effort.
Finally, he let himself back down as he panted and went over to the flattest part of his hideout. There, he sat and started to meditate. He enjoyed days like this, when all he had to do was focus on his training. It was therapeutic, and reminded him of his father and what Oliver himself had come back to do. Not only did he hone his body here, but his mind as well. These were his two greatest assets, and weapons. Sure, he owned a bar, but he never drank over his limit, and never took any sort of drugs anymore. His body was his temple, and he kept it clean.
He briefly wondered what would’ve happened if Oliver hadn’t gone flying with his father. Maybe he’d still be partying hard with his friends, and experimenting a drug every now and then. He’d thought he had a good life back then, but since the island, Oliver came to realize that it wasn’t ‘good’ so much as it was ‘destructive’, or ‘wasteful’. His father died without seeing anything good that Oliver had accomplished.
And yet, maybe it was because his father died that Oliver decided to make something of his life. He’d promised his father that he’d do all he could to help others, although he’d made this promise after his death, once he’d escaped the island. Had his dad heard it from the stars, or wherever dead griffins go? He hoped so. As for the island itself, well, Oliver rarely thought of it. The torture he’d endured there, and what he had to do to survive as his flight feathers grew back in, was both painful to relive, and shameful for him. He’d hurt others, and that was a fact. He grew good with a bow and arrow, because those were more useful for keeping ten attackers at bay than going in claw-to-toe with his captors. He got deadly because he had to. He got brutal, and sinister, and cynical because he had to. And yet he still felt an overwhelming amount of guilt over it all.
That was why he made a promise to fight injustice wherever he found it. That was why he vowed to help those that he could. But it was also a penance for what he did on that island. If the others knew what he’d had to do… would they really still welcome him? Blindlove might’ve picked up on his darker past when he threatened her last attacker. Did she worry that maybe he’d do something wrong?
It wasn’t just within Westeros, although he felt pretty easy here since he didn’t have too much to worry about. But Cloverclan depended on him as a Sharpclaw. Who in their right mind would go between two clans, having responsibilities in both? What about the newest home he’d joined? His name there was Greenarrow, but would he actually help anyone? What if he was just lying to himself, and juggling three different groups were just hurting all of them?
To be fair, he tried to split his time evenly between all of them, though, and not too much happened all at once, which was nice. But what if something bad happened to one of the ones he cared about in his absence? Mintpaw, Spottedstar, Eveningsky, Coriolanus, Blindlove, Felicity… the list went on.
Stop, he couldn’t do this guilt thing while he was meditating, that didn’t work. Oliver shook the thoughts from his head and stood up with a sigh. Even though he cared for all of them, none of them had never been in his heart of hearts, when he was most vulnerable. He’d never been vulnerable with anyone. And that was to keep them safe. If he could keep them physically close, but emotionally distant, then they’d be safe from any harm. At least, he told himself that over and over again. Maybe he did that just to protect himself, because he never wanted to be as broken as he was when he watched his father die. He’d felt so helpless then.
Oliver exited out through the secret entrance and then blocked off the entrance, so no one would realize there was a hideout there, before he flew back towards King’s Landing. Or maybe he’d go to Cloverclan, or maybe even the EclipseTribe.
wc: 1034
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[size=8]When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide
{Demons by Imagine Dragons}
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