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When Oliver Queen’s eighty-sixth birthday approaches, he doesn’t ask for a party, gifts, or even a quiet day left entirely to himself. What he does request, however, leaves his sister, many of the friends he’s made over the years in both of his businesses, and several members of the board at Wayne-Queen balking. He wants to take a trip. Six-hundred miles.
His health is brought up more than once, the distance, and of course just why, Oliver? Why now? He’s never liked explaining himself, and has grown implacable in avoiding it whenever possible in these late years.
Only Dig gives it his full blessing, would probably drive him himself if he still had a license. He thinks Felicity doesn’t disapprove, but when he announces his intention her eyes behind thick glasses well up with tears and she has to excuse herself, tottering from the room.
All Bruce calls to grumble is, “Take a plane. I’m not hosting your birthday dinner at the company on my own.”
The plane at least eases some of Thea’s worries, and he suspects her hand in it when there’s a limousine waiting for him when he touches down in Central City. The driver, standing with the door to the backseat held open, doesn’t speak much, only raises both eyebrows in the rearview mirror when he gives the destination.
They stop at the gates of the cemetery and his driver asks, “Which way, sir?”
“Here’s good,” Oliver replies shortly, reaching for the door handle. It’s unlocked—amateur—so he’s placing both his cane and one foot onto the pavement.
“Sir!”
“I’ll just be a few minutes. Wait here.” Though his tone is more gravelly from age than any true threat, he feels the command has been sufficient by the nervous nod that gets. Then he’s shutting the door and heading off at a steady pace. The cane is for his hunched posture, old injuries catching up and muscles worn from years of archery, but his footing is sure and he knows the way.
Oliver’s been here before, though not in a long time. He hadn’t meant to stay away. But in his life he’s often been just as good at running from things as the man he’s come to see today.
“Hello, Barry.”
He stands before the headstone that rests alone beside Nora Allen’s. Henry’s is an absence he should have expected, yet it still feels bitterly conspicuous.
Someone has been here far more often than Oliver. The grass is cut and flowers have been planted, though they’re not quite in bloom. Joe, he thinks, would have tended the grave till the day he died, and he wonders who its keeper is now. Iris, perhaps, or one of the younger Wests. It leaves him free to view the epitaph, not that he’s forgotten what it says.
Barry Allen, 1989-2024
Loving Son and Friend
A Hero to Many
And a Light in the Darkness
He doesn’t remember who picked the words, who wrote it, only that he’d thought then and still now that they’re so damn true. Barry had never had a light inside of him; he was a light, one that shone on and touched everyone he’d ever come into contact with.
And a rock was all they’d been able to give him in return. Not even a proper burial, because there’s one thing the engraving has wrong: Barry Allen didn’t die in 2024. He vanished. Him, his mortal enemy, and the red skies, gone in a flash. Of course.
Oliver closes his eyes against the memories. The crisis, hard fighting, helpless like the others to do much more than watch as the two speedsters faced off, around and around, blinding. Warning cries from Cisco and Caitlin of feedback from the suit, the Flash’s vitals were spiking, failing. Oliver shouting into the com to stop, you have to, Barry please, and an agonized, wrenching yell of pure pain and determination before it all just ended. Everything calm, peaceful, and so very, very wrong.
Now he still feels the moisture leaking out of his eyes, unable to reign it in like he might have in years past, and he raises a gnarled, wrinkled hand to wipe it away.
“You never had to worry about your body betraying you like this,” he remarks to the stone. “That’s one thing I’m glad you missed. They would’ve told you you couldn’t run anymore, that it wasn’t safe. Locked your suit away.” He knows from experience. Crushing, degrading experience.
Still a wry smirk comes to his face. “Maybe you would’ve phased through to grab it, go out on a quick trip around the world when no one was looking. Saved a cat from a tree and stopped for pizza.”
He remembers the Christmas he’d mentioned his and Thea’s tradition and hardly before he could blink Barry had plopped down five boxes of candy canes in his lap with a smug grin. From Cologne, Germany, the supposed origin of the sweet, the scientist had naturally known off the top of his head. Jokingly, he’d challenged the younger man to a contest he was destined to lose, as in the next second four of the boxes were gone and Barry had a red and white striped tongue.
Even now, he chuckles. “Too fast for us. You really were the fastest man alive, Barry. No matter what anyone else said.”
A frown finds its way easily to his features. He knows for a fact he has more frown lines than laugh lines. Barry would’ve teased him about it, and all the while had none. In Oliver’s mind, he’ll always stay young. Young and handsome and strong and good. An unbreakable joy.
“You know, he said to me, in that first fight, he told me eighty-six. I didn’t think much about it then. Hardly believed him, the kind of life I was living.” He passes a hand over thin, silver hair, rubs at his temple. “Now I really am just some billionaire CEO.” Most decisions these days are handled by the board, true, but in name at least he is the co-owner.
“He never told me about this,” Oliver continues, gesturing to the headstone. “You never told me about this.”
It hadn’t been hard to get the information out of the grieving, guilt-ridden pair from STAR labs. Barry had known his fate on that day. Had run toward it, unflinching, because he’d learned firsthand the consequences of changing time to save a life.
“You could’ve told me. I wanted you to be able to tell me anything. Maybe I wasn’t much good at it in return. Never have been.” There’s so much he never told the other man, or anyone else. “That hasn’t changed.”
And still he keeps his silence on those things, those secrets, those feelings he never said. Reaches into a pocket to retrieve what he’s brought with him. Not flowers or candles or other such tokens.
The fabric is old, faded green and worn. He grits his teeth as he bends aching knees to crouch and set the mask in amongst the stalks of flowers, unlikely to be spotted by any casual observer. But still in the only other place Oliver can think of that it belongs. While he’s there, he takes a moment to brush his hand over the name.
“Eighty-six. I think I’m ready, Barry.” He should’ve come here more often. As it is, he knows it’ll be the last time. “Goodbye.”
He braces his hand on the fallen hero’s headstone and uses it to push himself up, taking the support he needs as he once did from the younger man.
Without another glance back, Oliver makes a far more unsteady trek back to the limo, and in a tired voice requests the airport. He’ll have to take the first plane he can get if he wants to be on time for the company party, the fellow elites, the lavish gifts he’ll never use, the vacuous smiles and darkness he struggles on his own to hold a light against.
Not much longer now. Then it’ll be just the two of them again. Resting, weary, in the backseat, Oliver smiles.