Chapter Text
Her. 1998.
Neither Connor nor Roy show up to the funeral. It’s getting even, in their minds, and Dinah understands that – the crowd here is a complete insult to the handful that had been present at Ollie’s wake, meaning Hal, even after all that he’d done, is being shown the respect that a dead hero deserves, the respect that Ollie had been denied despite never having wavered from his code.
But the boys don’t understand something, too. Not just that Hal and Ollie wouldn’t have appreciated being pitted against each other like that, but also that no one here – aside from maybe Carol and Tom and the human Lanterns and herself – is actually present to mourn Hal. Not really. Not Hal as he was, alive and flawed and human, hero and soldier and brother and son. Only Hal, the way they remember him. Damned and then martyred and then celebrated as something… not quite mortal.
This isn’t even the actual funeral – Jack had overseen a private levaya that none of them had been invited to. It’s only for the benefit of those he left behind. A memorial, really, a platitude.
Just the fact that Bruce is in attendance at all, to spit on Hal’s memory by staying apart from the rest of them up on the balcony with his kids – symbolically making it clear where they all stand – is proof enough of that.
Seated where she is just beneath them, she can hear echoes of Bruce’s muttering clearly. “I find it difficult to accept his actions no matter what steps he took to redeem himself. We’re here to honour his memory, and I will do so, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to excuse what he did.”
“Hope the poor guy finally found some peace,” Deadman says under his breath in response, something chiding in his voice.
John Stewart catches her eyes, his own mirroring the fury in them. Dinah knows that if this weren’t a funeral, if it wasn’t out of respect for everybody that’s actually grieving, John would have stormed up there and decked Bruce himself.
And she’d have applauded.
But he bides his time until it’s his turn to go up to the podium and pay his respects. Then he makes a speech that very pointedly refuses to call Hal’s sacrifice a redemption, but rather Hal being true to himself. To emphasise – at Bruce and anyone else thinking along the same lines – that what Hal did as Parallax was a deviation from the norm, and not the other way around.
Dinah’s happy to applaud that, instead.
She hadn’t meant to go up really, but after hearing John she can’t help herself. He watches her walk down the aisle toward him and immediately cedes the mic, smiling in both sympathy and to express a kind of camaraderie between them, in this. “I’m not really the one who should be talking to you,” she tells the crowd. “The man who should be up here in front of you – the man who knew Hal Jordan better than any of us – is Oliver Queen.” She pauses, swallowing around the lump in her throat. “But Ollie’s not with us anymore. They were… quite the pair. The Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer of our crowd. Which I guess makes me Becky Thatcher. Just along for the ride.”
Strained smile. Now’s not the time for self-pity. “They were a rare breed, both of them. They were heroes. No matter what else they did, what other paths their lives took, they were heroes. I doubt we’ll see their kind again, and now they’re gone. Ollie and Hal are finally reunited, Huck and Tom watching this from somewhere and sharing a good laugh over all the fuss we’re making.” She laughs herself, low and bittersweet. “That’s how I’ll always think of them.”
Clark comes looking for her, as soon as the ceremony is over. Everybody else is going on to watch them unveil the statue built to honour Hal’s sacrifice, but even the idea of it is too bizarre for her. It’s why you don’t fall in love with heroes, she muses. You eventually have to watch them get turned into stone.
Clark says, “That was pretty clever of you. Paying tribute to Ollie at a gathering as large as this.”
She turns to him from where she’s leaning against a tree, watching the cars beneath her drive down the hill to the memorial site. She doesn’t tell him that hadn’t been her intention. He wouldn’t understand – no one who didn’t know Hal and Ollie the way she did would. She hadn’t gone out of her way to mention Ollie, she’d just done the most natural thing. The pair had been two halves of the same soul.
“He deserved every bit of this, too,” Clark continues, regardless. “You were right to remind us of that.”
Dinah sends him a strained smile. “Us? Generous as always. You know you’re blameless, there.”
“Well, we were friends, in our own way,” Clark explains, his own smile sympathetic. “If Bruce and Hal got along better, we probably could have been more so.”
“Serves the both of you right for being level heads that know better, yet still associating with actual human disasters.”
He laughs obligingly. “You overestimate the choice involved in friendship.”
“Yeah, maybe I do.” Dinah releases a rueful breath. “Clark? Can you… can you take me to him, please?”
“Of course.” His kind eyes are understanding and he holds a hand out for her to take. Quicker than she can blink, they’re up in the air, Clark supporting her by the small of her back in a kind of reverse-waltz. She leans against him gratefully, staying silent up until the pair of them are hovering above that familiar clump of trees.
There hadn’t been a body to bury, with Ollie. So they’d done what he would have wanted them to do with him – sent him off Robin Hood style. Shot an arrow as far as it would go, and then put up a gravestone where it landed.
It reads, Oliver Queen. Always made the right enemies.
That’s not entirely true, she muses with something like guilt filling her throat, but the sentiment stands.
“Here you go.” Clark brings her low enough to the ground that she can hop onto her feet gracefully. It’s just a little ways from the clearing where Ollie is. “Want me to wait?” he asks.
“Thanks… no, I can find my own way back.”
“Alright. You take care, Dinah.”
“You too.”
And then he goes, up-up-and-away. She pulls her leather jacket closer around herself, more for comfort than to ward against the twilight breeze. She doesn’t visit much, because truth told she never knows what to say to Ollie. For those last couple of years, when he’d still been alive, she’d forced her words down, after all. Promise me you love me as much as I love you.
Instead she had wallowed in anger because he couldn’t just pick up on it, until it all boiled over. And now it’s too late.
Today, at least, she can talk about Hal, she reasons, gathering up the courage to keep going. Remind them to look out for each other, up there. She passes the last thicket between herself and Ollie’s final resting place— and then she freezes.
Someone else is already there.
She’d been kneeling in front of the gravestone, but suddenly whips around as if she can sense Dinah behind her before she even sees her. One of her hands grabs the child at her side, pushing him back, shielding him from potential danger. A numbing feeling rolls down Dinah’s spine. She steps closer, two hands up in an “I come in peace” kind of gesture.
Shado’s eyes go wide. “Miss Lance,” she stammers, leaping to her feet.
“You,” Dinah acknowledges in a carefully neutral tone.
The colour is high in Shado’s unmasked face now as she gathers the bow and arrow she’d placed at her side so her hands could be free to burn the incense sticks she had brought with her. Her movements are scrambling, urgent. The little boy with her – couldn’t be older than one, two years old – gawks at Dinah, confused.
“I mean no disrespect. I’ll leave now.”
Dinah shakes her head, arms wrapping around herself again. “No, please, feel free.” And then, just to be cruel, “We shared him in life, I don’t see why the fuck I’d get to keep him to myself in death, either.”
“If you knew how badly I wish that were true, your hatred of me might be warranted,” Shado returns calmly. “But as it is, he was always yours. Please, one woman to another. Don’t do this in front of the child. He’s done nothing to you.”
Chastised, Dinah turns to look at him, really look at him. He’s hardly grown since the last time she’d seen him. Small, slight. Almost sickly. “What did you name him?” Dinah asks around a lump that clogs up her throat.
“In which language?” Shado asks. It’s rhetorical. “Robert, after his father’s father.”
“Ollie hated his dad.”
“I didn’t know. I never knew him as you did.”
Dinah ignores that. “And his other name?”
“Takami.” Now she softens. “Written with the characters for hawk and bow.”
“Takami,” Dinah repeats, bending to give him a tight smile. “Hello.”
“…Hello,” the boy obliges, shy.
Dinah turns to her again. She’s pried this much, she might as well go the whole mile. “Whose last name will he take?”
Shado seems almost amused by the question, in a bitter way. “I have none. Except for the name of the yakuza house I served. Oliver wouldn’t give him his own. Said he would never insult you in that way.”
At whatever she sees in Dinah’s face, then, she laughs under her breath. “Time and time again, I have explained our relationship to you. Yet you still seem surprised to learn you were truly the only woman in his heart.” She’s the one that sounds as if she’s suppressing anger, now. Fair, Dinah supposes.
“To borrow a cliché, it’s not you. It’s me.” Dinah shoves both her balled-up fists into her jacket pockets. “He was always looking for better because I couldn’t—” Choking on her words, Takami’s wide-eyed look in front of her, but she swallows down the emotion— “Give him what he wanted.”
There is silence, for a moment, as Shado takes her son by the hand and tugs him forward, making to leave. “You’re cruel, Miss Lance,” she says, before going. “If he could only love you if you had been able to give him children, then… why did he refuse to stay with me, when I did bear him a son? Why was he so adamant about returning to you?”
Dinah stills.
“If what you really mean… is that his love was not enough for you, then… say that, instead of mocking me so unkindly.”
And then there’s only the sound of retreating footsteps. Dinah stares through blurred vision at the name on the gravestone, for a long moment, eyes wet and burning. And then, almost without intention, she screams, the Canary Cry startling the leaves off the treetops.
Him. 2000.
He’d almost lost consciousness, but then it happens. The tug. For a second he thinks it’s Kyle pulling at his hand for whatever reason, then registers that Kyle is, in fact, passed out in a heap by his side. Yet the pulling sensation on his finger persists, so he lifts it. The ring flies straight off, like someone’s… calling it to them.
And there’s only one person who can summon it like that.
The voice that follows doesn’t have the fury of a vengeful god, or the less-than-sane rage of a cold-blooded murderer with nothing more to lose, behind it. It’s just angry. It’s just human. “Get the hell away from them, Sinestro.”
Ollie figures the pain is making him hallucinate things. But when he closes his eyes, opens them, closes them and opens them again, that familiar blur of brown-green-black-brown is right there in front of him, solid and real.
Up until it, and Sinestro, shoot up into the sky.
“…Kyle,” Ollie rasps. “Kyle,” again, insistent, half-kicking at the limp body next to him. A cough and a gasp and then Kyle seems to startle into the land of the living again.
“Wh—? Where…?”
“Hal,” Ollie manages. It feels like there’s only breath enough in his chest for one more word, but he stubbornly clings to consciousness, doesn’t care if they’re the last thing he’ll ever say. “Go. I can’t. You go. He’ll need… backup. Take my…” One more word, goddamn it all— “…Arrows.”
“Hal…?” Kyle repeats, then his eyes flick to the empty casket metres away from them, and he seems to understand.
“Please,” Ollie grits out, wishing he could sound more desperate than angry, but Kyle’s his only hope and he’s still fucking standing there. “If Sinestro… again…”
He wants to continue along the lines, I will flay you with a sharpening knife, and damn what my son thinks, but his tone betrays him. I won’t survive it a second time. It must be only the latter that Kyle hears, because he nods, gathers some of Ollie’s arrows, and flies up in a beam of brilliant green.
Satisfied, Ollie gives his mind up to oblivion.
The next thing he registers is the warmth of flesh – human flesh warm with flowing blood, with the proof of life – against his cheek. It must have been the emotional toll of seeing Hal’s body in that damn open casket combined with exhaustion from the fight and, you know, passing out, but when Ollie forces his eyes open and sees himself reflected in those browns, his own eyes sting and a thick lump fills his throat. “…Don’t,” Ollie warns, throwing one arm across his eyes, hiding them. “Don’t… talk to me right now.” I’ll fucking cry.
“Fine.” Ollie can hear the smile in Hal’s voice. “No talking.”
And then Hal’s lips crash against his.
He’d never really considered what a miracle the human body could be. As Spectre— hell, even as Parallax— Hal had humoured him by shifting into this form, but it had always only been limited, only the aesthetics of it. Hal’s curls and kind eyes and dimpled smile, but never the shape of the calluses on his fingers, or the warmth of his skin, or the right rhythm for his heartbeat. So now that Hal’s in his actual body again, the both of them instantly – wordlessly – leap at the chance to finally make the most of it the way they’d never dared to as younger, self-conscious men.
It’s magical, and all that other sappy-romance-novel bullshit. Ollie wonders why he and Hal were ever afraid of this.
Hal’s like a man starved too, as if now that the dam’s been broken he has to make up for lost time all in one night. As the millionth kiss gets far too wet and sloppy to not lead anywhere… else, Ollie laughs against Hal’s mouth and nudges him back. “Okay, your body may have died at thirty-nine, but mine got stuck at forty-five, and it took a hell of a beating from Sinestro. Quit.”
Hal grumbles something unintelligible into his sweat-slick chest, eyebrows furrowing in that petulant way they tend to, but he relents, just lying there on Ollie as Ollie wraps his arms around him. “How old am I actually?” he wonders out loud, and Ollie doesn’t even need to consider it first.
“Forty-two.”
“That was quick.” Hal exhales, amused. “Thought you said you could never keep people’s birthdays straight.”
“Wasn’t your birthday I kept track of,” Ollie answers, honest and somewhat melancholy.
Hal absently kisses the spot where his throat meets his chest. “Forty-eight?”
“Forty-eight,” Ollie confirms, forcing his lips into a cheerful half-a-grin again. “With a grand tally so far of… five girlfriends, one ex-wife, four kids, one grandkid.”
“And one…?” Hal asks. Humming, Ollie takes his hand and interlocks their fingers.
“Partner. In every sense of the word.”
“Aw.” Hal’s smile is teasing, but in a weirdly obligatory way, something perceptive in his eyes that doesn’t correspond. “Where does that leave things with the bird-lady?” he asks, sure enough.
Ollie sighs. “I— jeez. I don’t know. When I got back, I started out just— giving her her space, you know, kind of like with Roy, and then… things progressed? And it doesn’t feel like getting back together is off the table anymore. We’re still separate, don’t get me wrong, but… I do think she’s warming up to the idea of trying again. I don’t wanna fuck that up, but— damn it, Hal, we just figured this thing out, though…”
“You don’t wanna choose, do you?” Hal says it like he only just realised this, which Ollie can’t wrap his head around. Of course he doesn’t wanna choose. Of course.
“Yeah, well. I grew up spoilt and all,” he jokes.
“You’ll have to, though. ’Cause it’s Dinah,” Hal warns, matter-of-factly, like knowing it doesn’t bother him at all. “She’s… troubled. Needs more reassuring from you than I do.”
“Why don’t you?” Ollie’s wanted to ask him for so long, and tonight is a night for all-or-nothing.
Hal smiles, tender. “Ollie— it’s so obvious, it’s criminal. You’re this fucking happy to see me even after— you know?”
“It wasn’t obvious to Dinah, though. It wasn’t obvious to Roy.” Ollie swallows. “I can’t figure you out. It’s like… everybody speaks this language that I don’t. And I gotta learn it, to be able to get them, and for them to get me. Which takes time, you know? Learning? Time nobody seems to be able to spare me. ’Cept you. You…” Rueful exhale. “You even bothered to learn mine.”
Hal’s staring at him with something open and innocent in his eyes, like wonder. “…You say shit like that and then don’t understand how I can take this for granted.”
Ollie shrugs, oddly feeling more naked than he had when he’d stripped and tumbled Hal down onto the bed. “It was really fucking lonely without you,” he admits, quiet.
The emotion in the air lingers like a weighted blanket for quite a while, till Hal apparently can’t take it anymore, and tries to lighten things. “Listen to us. The years are really showing now, huh.”
Ollie takes his cue in relief. “Oh, yeah. It’s the only reason Dinah’s even willing to give me a shot again. Says Mia mellowed me out, huh, made me all… cuddly.”
“Daughters tend to do that.”
“Good to see even death couldn’t cure you of that antiquated outlook on gender.”
“Oliver Jonas Queen—”
Despite the pleasant ache in their muscles, they grab at each other, like boys wrestling, and at least for one effortless moment, nothing more complicated interrupts.
Him. 2000.
It’s funny, it isn’t until that exact moment that he realises he’s never seen Ollie blow up at Bruce before.
Not really. There’d been snarking – oh, plenty of snarking – and obligatory loaded gossip behind one another’s backs, but at the end of the day Ollie had always seemed to get along marginally better with old Spooky than Hal ever had, or could. Maybe it’s to do with the changes in the nature of their relationship, now, maybe Ollie had been taking hits for Hal one too many times and it all reached critical levels today – whatever it is, Ollie actually leaps out of his seat like he has half a mind to strangle Bruce, and has to be held at bay by Arthur and J’onn and Zatanna.
“Why the fuck not!?” he demands, his voice so full of rage J’onn even seems to pick up on it empathically judging by how he takes a jerky step back. “His absolution was valid enough for literal fucking God, but not you!?”
“It isn’t personal. I simply wouldn’t trust someone on a team with me if he has proven he has the capacity to turn against his own side before!”
“You’re gonna hold it over Hal about turning against your own!? How about you, huh, how about how you treat your fucking family, your son still comes crying to mine whenever you—”
“Don’t you dare go there, Oliver—”
“Why don’t we all just calm down and take this to a vote—” Ray tries, bless him, but Ollie’s on the warpath now and turns on him as well.
“If any of you have the audacity to vote against reinstating Hal after everything he’s done for this team, I’ll quit too.”
“You say that as if it would be a major loss,” Bruce spits out, seething.
“Watch it, Bruce,” Hal breaks his silence, indignant, but Ollie storms out regardless, and Hal’s left to glare his way out of this argument. “You know, everyone is showing remarkable restraint on how you consistently try to undermine the democratic nature of this organisation—”
“What would you know about restraint?” Bruce bites back.
“…I use it all the time to keep from calling you a hypocritical man-child in official meetings, but I guess fuck that, too, now.”
And fuck this, while they’re at it, Hal decides. He’d rather be making sure Ollie’s alright. He ignores whatever response Bruce is throwing at him, and leaves the Hall as well, makes for where he knows he’ll find Ollie in a mood – the observation deck. Ollie has his back to him, brooding in the general direction of the lifeless stars on the other side of the glass pane, so Hal wordlessly goes up and wraps his arms around Ollie’s waist, chin on his stiffening shoulder.
“It’s like they don’t care, like they don’t give a flying fuck about you. About what you went through.”
“They don’t.” Hal shrugs, numb to it by this point. “And after what happened, you can’t really hold it against them.”
“I can and I fucking will,” Ollie stubbornly returns. “We’ve established that it wasn’t you. Why the hell can’t they just— accept it and move on already?”
“Mourning my city and wanting power enough to save it? To play God? That was me. The Impurity couldn’t take hold without leverage, Ollie. It only magnified what was already… always there.”
“Well, if we’re going to stretch culpability that thin, I wish Bruce fucking chokes on a batarang, so I’m a murderer now.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“That’s the thing, Hal, I do.” Ollie turns around, and his expression is wretched. “I did. Every single time I had to swallow it down when he talked about you like some kind of— of rogue. When I looked like the idiot for even suggesting that you— that I know you, you wouldn’t—” He pauses, averts his eyes, like even looking at Hal hurts. “And now that I’m justified, I can’t— I won’t hold my tongue anymore, they can’t just keep saying whatever the fuck they want, they clearly don’t know or care enough about you to have earned that right.”
Hal fiddles with his ring. He’d known this moment had to come at some point, of course, but some naïve part of him had been hoping the bliss of the honeymoon period could have lasted a little while longer than this. “I guess we can’t avoid talking about it forever.”
“About what?”
“The part of you that resents me for putting you in that position in the first place,” Hal tells the ground.
“…Hal.”
“No, if I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t need to be defending me—”
Ollie storms right up to his face and shoves a hand against his mouth, almost making Hal teeter backward. “Look. At me,” he demands, and Hal looks, and there’s raging, green fire in his eyes. “Do you honestly— honestly— think. That there’s a single thing. I wouldn’t forgive you for?”
Hal’s own eyes go wide as saucers, and maybe sting a little, too.
“Yeah. You did. You fucking killed a whole bunch of people and made me look you in the eyes while I shot an arrow through your heart just to stop you before somebody less attached could be roped in to do worse. Then you fucked off while I spiralled till I couldn’t stand the guilt a second longer, and chose to flush my own life down the same damn toilet, too, for a chance to see you again. Then you force me back as some kind of fucked-up atonement, and the first thing they make me see is some kid wearing your threads and they expect me to take to him like he isn’t a constant reminder of you losing everything, your home, your reputation, your life, and one of those things by my—” and his voice cracks. “By my hand,” he continues, in a hiss. “Hal, you can’t even hope to be sorry for any of it, so you better quit trying, ’cause for every part of me that resents you there will be another that despises myself.”
Dear God. Dear God. Ollie can’t say I love you, but he can say that. Hal’s heart swells with something too big for words, but he settles on pushing Ollie’s hand away and kissing him. Ollie kisses back the way he does everything else – aggressively and with all of his soul. “Pick Dinah,” Hal gasps out, the second they part.
Ollie stills. “…What?”
“Pick Dinah,” Hal repeats with renewed conviction. “I know where I stand with you. After tonight, there isn’t even a shadow of a doubt. She— she doesn’t. Pick Dinah, Ollie. I wish— goddamn, I wish you didn’t have to, but ’cause you do – pick her. She needs it more than I do.”
“I— but—”
“I should get in touch with Carol again.” He’s not sure he even means it, but if it’s the push Ollie needs, then…
He indulges in one last, tender kiss. “…Thank you.”
“You’re the actual worst, Hal Jordan, the things you do to my—” Ollie swallows the rest of the words away, jerking his head back to the dead horizon again. “Don’t fucking thank me. Ever. You, of all people, are supposed to be able to count on me being in your corner, understand?”
I love you, Hal wishes he could say instead, then, but he’s not sure that that would help Dinah, so he only hopes Ollie hears it as unmistakably as Hal hears him.
Them. 2003.
They’re on one of their aimless walks that Ollie has taken to calling “rambles,” ever since he vacationed in Nottingham, up the piece of hilly woodland that forms a half-circle around their corner of the city. The afternoon sun is bright and could have been unbearable if it wasn’t for the cover of the trees. Dinah can close her eyes to listen to the birds singing without a worry, Ollie’s hand around her waist leading her onward safely. “I’m happy,” she whispers, unprompted. “Probably the closest to completely happy I have ever been.”
“Closest?” Ollie repeats wryly. “What am I still doing wrong?”
Dinah opens her eyes, cocks her head up to look at her husband, at the streaks of grey along the side of his head tucked behind his ear, and what a fortune aging can be, she muses. “’Course you focus on that part. Cynic.”
“Realist,” Ollie corrects, with a laugh into the top of her head that turns into a sweet kiss. “Hungry yet, milady?”
“Mm,” Dinah agrees. It’s just past lunch-time. Mia probably cooked.
So they start downward in the direction of home. Home. Dinah exhales, amused, thinking of how taken aback her younger self would have been at the idea of calling this little bubble of middle-class suburbia home, city girl that she’d been. But then, Ollie’s shitty old apartment down at the Core had been home too, then Sherwood Florist’s. And now their sell-out, single family detached with the literal white picket fence. So maybe it wasn’t where or what the house was like, maybe home was just… them.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“Nothing.” Dinah smiles up at him. “It’s the weather. It’s languid. Makes me all… nostalgic and introspective.”
“Only about good things, I hope.” Ollie reaches down and brushes the hair away from her face.
“The best,” Dinah confirms, content.
Roy’s rust-coloured truck is parked in the driveway when the house is finally within sight. He’d moved in across from them, but had been visiting his friends on the East Coast for the past week or so, which means this is a nice surprise. “Oh, he’s back,” Ollie remarks as well, something pleased in his voice. But they go round to the back regardless, entering the house that way. Dinah’s mind is firmly on lunch, by this point, so she’s about to call for Mia and ask if she’d started something or if Dinah should push Ollie into whipping up the quickest meal he can, but she barely has the chance to open her mouth before Ollie shushes her.
“Listen.” He jabs a thumb in the direction of the kitchen, the door to which is a few metres away from them in the small shoe-room-slash-laundry-room they’re standing in, propped open by an errant piece of clothing that must have fallen off of somebody’s washing basket.
“—It’s true,” Roy’s voice wafts toward them, sounding determined. “He never holds anything against you, you’re his favourite.”
Dinah thinks for a fearful second that he and Connor are having a rare argument, but registers that there’s no accusation in Roy’s tone, just statement.
“I’m not his favourite! Dad doesn’t play favourites.”
“Mi, am I right or am I right?”
“He’s right, you know,” Mia’s voice agrees sagely. “You’re, like, the only person in the world who can tell him what to do and get away with it.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Seriously, Connor.” Roy again. “If you tell him first, he’s not gonna get mad at you, and then I can sort of… segue in.”
“First off, you’re both nuts, he doesn’t play favourites, and second, why should I, when your news is way more unexpected than mine? …He’s probably guessed I was gonna… you know… for a while now.”
“Probably,” Roy repeats, snorting.
“…Okay, so maybe it’s a little nerve-wracking for me, too…”
“You boys are so in trouble,” Mia sing-songs, delighted.
“That doesn’t bode well,” Ollie observes flatly, under his breath.
Dinah sighs in agreement. “Shall we?”
They push the door fully open at the same time. Roy and Connor both whip around with identical deer-in-the-headlights expressions on their faces, while Mia revels in her Cheshire-Cat grin.
“Dad!”
“Ollie!”
“…Boys,” Ollie greets, half-sarcastic, one questioning eyebrow arched.
“Connor’s moving in with Kyle. Like, he’s moving to San Francisco,” Roy blurts out.
“Wh—!” Connor splutters with a helpless, comically betrayed look of shock. “Well, that’s a city away! Roy’s moving in with Dick, all the way to New York!”
“Et tu, Hawke…”
Ollie stares at them both, processing. His silence makes Dinah wince, and even Mia looks like she doesn’t find this quite as funny anymore. The boys, for their part, are all guilt.
“Dad, I swear, it’s just San Francisco, I can visit every weekend—”
“—Nothing to do with not appreciating how well we all managed to reconnect, Ollie, it’s been amazing, only… Dick needs me—”
Ollie holds a hand up to stop them both. “It’s fine, I’m fine, it’s just— I wasn’t expecting it.” He sighs, making a look-at-you kind of hand-wave in Connor’s direction. “I mean, Connor, it— it was a matter of time, you’re twenty-three, you’re clearly very much in love— who am I to contest that?”
“…Not that you haven’t. Often. And loudly,” Connor points out with a playful, if wry, smile.
“Come on, when have I ever not let you – any of you – do what you want, at the end of the day?”
“It’s not that, dad. I know how much you liked having me in the house. I loved it, too. And Roy being across the road, after everything…”
“Man, you’re determined to pin more of this on me, aren’t you,” Roy grumbles half-heartedly, but his eyebrows are furrowed in concern, too. “Ollie…”
“You know how I feel about Dick,” Ollie says, more warning than admonition. “He will hurt you again, Roy.”
“Well, this time, there’s context you’re missing.” Roy’s smile is suddenly self-conscious, fighting against itself to not be obvious. “…You might be a grandfather again.”
They all turn to stare, incredulous. Dinah can see her own joy mirrored in Mia’s and Connor’s faces, but Ollie looks shocked.
“Hold on – that can’t happen accidentally, with Dick, can it…? I, uh, don’t really get how it works…”
Roy shakes his head in confirmation. “It doesn’t, usually. And there’s the catch – Dick asked. ’Cept it was more like… he wanted a kid from me, but didn’t feel like he had the right to want me.”
“So in his head… he was just gonna raise your kid on his own?” Connor frowns.
Roy nods, somewhat bittersweet.
“Tragic and fucked up,” Mia remarks, scrunching up her nose.
“We’re kinda fucked up,” Roy reasons with a shrug. “Anyway, the point is— I’m not letting him buy into what his mind is clearly convinced of. That he and I can’t ever… be. So I’m moving and I realise this is all happening the wrong way around but I love him and I want to and I’m moving.” All in one breath. “…Sorry. I liked this. I really did. We’ll visit. Obviously. …Okay?”
His eyes are on his father as he asks it, not her. Dinah sends Ollie a nervous sideways glance. Poor thing. He’d been so glad to have Roy close to them again.
Ollie sighs, ruffling the hair on the back of his head the way he does when he’s agitated and doesn’t want to show it. “Of course it’s okay. It’s your life, not mine. I’ll miss ya, is all. Like crazy.”
Roy steps closer and engulfs Ollie in a hug that he returns fiercely. “I know, dad. I’ll miss you too. All of you.”
With wetter eyes than Dinah had expected, Connor goes and disappears into the hug, too.
“…I’m very, very proud of you both,” Ollie tells them, voice gruff. “You have become— outstanding men, and— I hope the world out there is kind, and you get everything you deserve…”
“Shut up, I don’t wanna cry…”
“So, uh…” Mia interrupts, cheeks flushed. “This would be a pretty bad time to bring up college applications, huh?”
“Mia!”
It’s only when Roy’s gone home and Connor and Mia have made a tactical retreat by offering to finish the week’s grocery shopping that Ollie lets himself be visibly upset at all. “I thought empty nest syndrome was supposed to happen after they leave one at a time,” he grumbles. “Isn’t that the point of having three?”
“Poor baby.” Dinah gives him a sympathetic smile against his cheek as she kisses it, over and over again until she earns a grudging smile. “Look at it this way. It’s a clean cut. You don’t have to suffer three times over.”
“Ha-ha.”
“I’m serious. Anyway, we can just go back to our lavish DINK lifestyle – like it used to be back in Seattle.”
“Yeah! Let’s sell the house and buy back our apartment. Serves them right, when they want a family gathering, they’re gonna have to be crammed into it and question their choices.”
“You’d miss the outdoor barbeques too much,” Dinah counters, chuckling. “Face it, Oliver Queen. You’re a dad dad. No takebacks.”
Ollie sulks into the crook of her neck, so she kisses his exposed temple softly.
The door to the living room opens, then, and Hal’s face peers around it, almost sheepish. “…Greetings. Roy told me the story and said, uh, some cheering up might be needed, so… here I am?”
“Excuse you, I’ve been doing the cheering just fine,” Dinah returns, no actual bite in it.
“I’m old, Hal,” Ollie complains, holding both hands out melodramatically, which Hal takes and then squeezes as he steps closer.
“Hey, I’m glad you are. It’s better than the alternative.”
“We keep you young, don’t we, baby?” Dinah teases, grinning against his cheek, and Ollie rolls his eyes.
“Nobody takes my suffering seriously in this house.”
Dinah laughs. “I’ll make dinner tonight as penance. Hal, give him his snuggles, won’t you?”
She starts to get off the couch, and Ollie stops her by the wrist, his pouting definitely exaggerated, now. “’Nother kiss?”
“You’re not old, you’re a giant baby.” Dinah sighs, leans down and gives him a peck on the lips regardless. At least Ollie’s grinning into it, so he must feel better, she acknowledges.
“Me next,” Hal teases, a twinkle dancing in his eyes.
Dinah shakes her head like she’s playing along, but it puts her in a contemplative mood all the way into the kitchen as she goes through the motions of prepping their meal. Hal finds her spaced out, like that, when he enters about twenty minutes later for some water. “Earth to Dinah?” he tries.
“Oh— hey, Hal.” She laughs, blushing. “Sorry, I was just…”
“Yeah, I know, poor Ollie, huh?” Hal sends her an understanding smile. “It’s not fair how late in life he got to have a real family. Time’s absolutely relentless, I still can’t believe Lian’s eight.”
“It is,” Dinah agrees, absently chopping up what’s left of the carrots on her board.
“He’ll be alright, though. We’re here.”
“…We are,” Dinah repeats again, and this time Hal definitely hears the faraway quality of her voice.
“Everything okay?”
“Hal.” Dinah looks up, meeting his eyes, sombre. “You ever notice how… that works? I-I mean, us? Me and you. And him. Like a… unit.”
“I… guess?” Hal frowns, putting his glass of water down on the countertop next to her. “You’re his wife, I’m his best friend.”
Dinah sets the knife down and fully turns to him. “Are you?” She keeps her tone soft. “You and Ollie… it’s not platonic, is it? It’s never been. Right?”
Hal stills. He averts his eyes, almost ashamed, which is not what Dinah was aiming for but isn’t sure how to fix, now. “…You knew that, though. I thought— we don’t say it.”
“We don’t,” Dinah agrees. “But… maybe we should. Maybe it’s time.”
“For what, Dinah?” And the way he says her name – like he means to say sweetheart, or something. She smiles tenderly.
“It just… doesn’t make sense to me that we have all this extra room, now, and you’re still driving or flying down here from miles away. I get rebuilding Coast City is important to you, but— you don’t really have to live there, do you? Isn’t it unhealthy, clinging to the past like that? You and Carol don’t seem to be considering getting back together anytime soon either, so…”
“So… what?” Musing, almost. “You think I should move in?”
Dinah shrugs. “You and Ollie are…”
“I would never disrespect you like that.”
“With my blessing,” Dinah clarifies. “He’d love it, Hal. And I daresay he needs it right now.”
Hal takes her hands in his, looking at them instead of meeting her eyes. “Just your blessing? Not your… participation?”
“Oh, Hal, you’ve always been more…”
“Still? I’m almost mad on his behalf you don’t see how important you are…”
“No, I know, but…”
“Can I ask you seriously?” Hal squeezes her hands once. “Did I miss my chance, if I ever had it?”
“…You had it.” Dinah squeezes back, smiling tightly. “Of course you did.”
Hal’s eyes finally flick upward, but they pause at her lips and she can tell. The pull is like gravity – impossible to fight. Before she’s even conscious of it, she’s leaning forward, and so is he, and then… they’re kissing.
“…What, is it my birthday?”
Startling, she and Hal practically leap apart, faces flushed, guilty. Ollie’s standing at the doorway, his expression unreadable. “O-Ollie, I know how this looks, but—” Hal starts, but before he can continue Ollie holds a hand up with a sigh and steps closer. Dinah’s heart is hammering in her chest, and she feels like she could cry.
“I don’t… need an explanation. Look, I know you two had history long before I came in, and—”
“What?” Hal sends him an almost upset look. “Ollie, I broke things off between us because I wanted you two to be together, like you should be—”
“You did that?” Dinah jerks her head up, eyes stinging. “What the hell, Hal, you’re both royal idiots, can’t you see how much like soulmates you have always been—”
And now Ollie’s upset, too. “Di, I have tried and I am trying to be better at showing this, so what is it gonna take for you to believe that there’s no one I’d rather be with—”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on, stop.” Hal pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “So— clearly, we all have the wrong idea about… this.”
Dinah averts her eyes. As if unable to bear it, Ollie comes up to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “…I have never wanted to choose, for the record,” he confesses. “I know it’s a lot to ask for, I know I’m being selfish, but it’s the truth – both of you. Both of you… are as inalienable to me as my hands and feet, and I couldn’t survive without either one, I couldn’t.”
“Me neither!” Dinah blurts out like an accusation, tears falling. “And I’ve had to. And it fucking hurt.”
“I thought I was doing what was best for you both.” Hal seems dumbfounded, staring from one to the other of them, his expression lost. “Taking myself out of the equation. Are you saying…?”
“I didn’t want you out of the equation,” says Dinah.
“You and me are in the same damn parentheses, idiot,” says Ollie.
“Okay… okay, okay, so… what does this mean, going forward?”
“…For a start,” Dinah tries again, “You could move in.”
Ollie smiles down at her, warmly amused. “You asked him to move in?”
Dinah colours. “You still have a family. In us.”
“I don’t know how the hell I managed to end up here after all the things I’ve done,” Hal cuts in, emotion thick in his voice, “But Dinah, I’ve kissed you already, and I haven’t kissed Ollie in years – so if you don’t object…”
Ollie answers for her, stepping forward and pulling Hal toward him by the back of his neck, rougher than he would have with her but the motion seems to hammer the point home. Even kissing, Hal looks wretched, half-disbelieving. But when they part, it’s like everything softens, and the look in their eyes as their foreheads touch is one Dinah knows very well, very dearly.
She smiles to herself, wiping her tears away with a sharp slide of one arm across her eyes, embarrassed to be this emotional about it all. “I’ll, um. Finish dinner. So. You two should… catch up, if you want.”
Hal turns to her and gently takes her hand. “Will you join in for… dessert?”
“Mercy on my stamina.” Ollie laughs. “Happy to watch, though. In fact, I’m sure I must’ve dreamt of something like this, at some point…”
“Oh, trust you to take the romance out of everything.” Dinah gives him an unimpressed swat on his backside and earns a yelp. “Go.”
“Love you, Di,” Hal throws over his shoulder with half a grin as he pulls Ollie along by the hand.
Dinah can’t stop smiling, either, and as she returns to her vegetables she thinks – love you too – at them both.