My name is Oliver Queen.

On the night before my twenty-first birthday, my yacht was shipwrecked in a storm, and I was lost at sea. Five years later I returned home with only one goal: to save my city. At first, I was driven by vengeance, but over the years I learned to fight for justice, and become the hero that Star City deserved. To do that, I had to become someone else. I had to become something else.

The world believes that I spent those missing five years stranded on a deserted island.

I lied.


* * *


The wind breathed through the branches, a few orange and amber leaves dislodged from the trees to tumble towards the fall ground. It was a cold wind, the kind that carved through fabric and flesh, chilling to the bone. It was the only sound, the only interruption to the stillness and silence that surrounded two solitary figures.

One figure was tall, stoic, his graying hair and close-trimmed beard not quite as kempt as they were supposed to be. The neglect was not voluntary, the sling that cradled one arm making that clear, the clean black fabric carefully chosen to compliment the charcoal gray of his suit. The other was shorter, but catching up, a lithe and youthful frame wrapped in a suit that seemed too big for him despite having been specially tailored. Or, perhaps it simply looked as if it did not belong on his shoulders, the attire and the situation too adult for someone so young.

With reverent wordlessness, the two stood sentry over an elegantly simple gravestone. It was still new, still fresh, the polished granite and engraved lettering not yet diminished by the onslaught of time and weather. The ground before it was pristine and undisturbed, the lack of something to bury preserving the integrity of the east lawn. This memorial for Robert and Moira Queen was exactly that: a memorial, a monument, a designated location for mourning, out of view of the prying eyes of the press.

Yet, Oliver was to be torn away. Barely a few weeks had passed, and this sanctuary of loss was already about to be pried from his reach, Oliver himself uprooted and cast across the country. He had heard the excuses, the reasonings, the rationalisations. The change would do him good. Brentwood Academy would offer him some much-needed structure. With Uncle Bill's new-found obligations to the family business, it was better that they were both in Gotham, separated by a few minutes in a car, than find themselves on opposite sides of the country, a private jet flight apart. It was smart. Sensible. Responsible. Adult. All things that Oliver was not yet supposed to be.

"Their bodies are practically still warm."

They were words meant to wound, supposed to be delivered with a side of ice, but Oliver's voice was too raw and shaken to achieve the effect.

"Aye, because the lions responsible only just shat them out on the savannah."

Glenmorgan's words sounded heartless, but perhaps the opposite was true. That two of America's rich and famous could die tragically on safari, a fate fifty years past its expiration date, was bad enough. That the responsibility fell upon the shoulders of family, that the blame of the media, and the business, and a suddenly orphaned thirteen-year-old nephew should be so understandably aimed at the man who was supposed to keep his brother-in-law and baby sister alive? Glenmorgan didn't need petulant reminders of the guilt he was supposed to feel: the mirror offered reminders of its own with every glance.

"Your parents are dead, boy. No amount of your tears or mine is going to change that."

There were theories of course. Doubts. Accusations. A freak accident was the official story, an unforeseeable confluence of events that led to a fateful end that no one could have predicted. A fence broken by a stampede, a pride's hunting patterns pushed off course by an abnormally dry summer, a supposedly safe nature preserve unprepared to defend itself and its visitors. There were other accusations, too. Why were the Queens even there? One newspaper singled out Moira Queen and her fondness for wildlife causes as the true source of blame, the slump in Queen Industries stock prices the result of a selfish obsession that had murdered one of America's greatest innovators.

That was the problem with grief, with loss. So much anger, so much pain, and blame often felt like the only release. It was a coping mechanism; and a cruel one, if the blame landed on the shoulders of someone suffering from the same loss.

"I will never forgive you."

On that sentence, young Oliver succeeded in his efforts towards icy cruelty. His uncle's shoulders slumped in response, as much in resignation as at the extra burden of guilt that the words added to those already weighing on him. It was, as much as anything else, the reason for Oliver's transfer to a new school: the provision of structure, and support, of people to care for his wellbeing, out of sight of the constant presence of the man responsible for his mother's demise.

"Aye."

A hand was placed gently on Oliver's shoulders.

"I can't blame you for that."