Target on His Back

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Arrow/Assassin's Creed
Summary: Ollie suspects a conspiracy...
Word Count: 1780
Rating: Teen

          “I swear you’re all ganging up on me these days,” Ollie complains.
          “Mr. Queen, you’re paranoid,” is all Digg says, but Thea knows, absolutely knows at this point that the man is definitely laughing and amused by all of this.  On the inside.
          He doesn’t fully get that it’s true, because especially when he’s being oblivious and kinda mentally absent, he’s not paying attention, but.
          He has noticed, at some point, that Thea noticed that he doesn’t…really eat.  Raisa had confirmed that one.  Even when the dinner isn’t quite as awkward as the first one when he got back, he still just picks at his food.  It’s not like he doesn’t get hungry, anymore.  She’s been told that yes, he has, in fact, fainted a few times because of his eating issues.
          There are multiple problems there, as far as Thea can tell: sometimes he doesn’t even notice, sometimes it’s the artificial ingredients, sometimes he doesn’t want to, and sometimes it makes him feel sick.
          It had taken her a while to realize that there were problems about the island that he doesn’t talk about.  At first, she’d just been self-absorbed, because, she realized, she’d gotten spoiled.  Remaining Daughter of the Queens, therefore everything was spent on her.  So she just sat there and complained to Oliver and didn’t think about how awful it would have been to be on a desert island on his own.  Even if he had been all on his own, which turned out to not be the case.
          And then she thought about it, a little after she’d seen the scars, but then she blamed Oliver for not talking about it even though that was a dumb complaint because yeah, of course, he wouldn’t, because he didn’t want to hurt them by making them think about how awful it was, and also this is Ollie and he can’t talk about feelings seriously if his life depended on it.  And honestly, if he had to return, she could’ve been nicer instead of actually just being a dick and hurting him.
          But then, yeah, eventually she realizes that he just doesn’t talk about the island, or he makes jokes, but there’s a hurt in his eyes when he thinks no one’s looking, and she might be the little sister but she just wants to grab her big brother in a nice big hug and give him all the candy and wrap him in blankets and protect him and make sure he’ll never not be safe again.  Make sure he’s always safe and protected.
          And there’s a time-honored tradition of how she’d want people to deal with her own problems, so she implements it.  She’ll just leave snacks on his desks, or, well, really anywhere.  Sometimes it’ll be nuts, because those are nutritious, she’s checked, and sometimes it’ll be a handful of m&ms or a bag of chips or an energy bar.  She feels the most satisfaction through energy bars, because calorie-wise those are the best for a brother who’s too broken to eat.
          She can’t help the proud smile once, when he’s started eating one without noticing and they’re talking, and he pauses midsentence and stares at her, dawning suspicion, and she distracts with a terrible story about trying to test for the best energy bar because she’s curious, and even if Ollie sees right through it he doesn’t call her on it.  And soon enough they’re watching Top Gear (the good one, the British One, because it’s strangely relaxing, and then it goes into Trading Spaces reruns and soon they’re critiquing the designs and Thea’s so harsh Ollie’s laughing and tells her that if she thinks she can do better maybe she should become an interior designer, and she sticks out her tongue and tells him that maybe she will, and it’s only after the fact that she realizes that’s the first time she’s heard him laugh since he got back, and that feeling in her chest is cold like a stab in the heart).  And they’re trying all the different energy bar brands that she managed to find, and when Moira finds them in her room the next morning with wrappers and half-eaten product all over the floor, she can’t even bring herself to feel sorry.  Moira just shakes her head and looks slightly worried and tells them that they’re going to clean that up, and for the first time in ages Ollie’s beaming smile as he promises that they’d never had any other intentions doesn’t look fake, and then, then Thea’s heart swells with pride and love because I did this, I got him to smile and it for the moment it feels like the world’s all right again, because suddenly she’s a kid again and she’s tagging along with her big brother.  (It’s later that she realizes that she hasn’t seen him so relaxed, so open, so happy, laughing since he got back and she just aches with the pain of it, and what, in the end, makes it so much worse is that no matter how much it hurts her, it must be worse for him.)
          She knows she’s converted Felicity when the woman insists that all Queen Consolidated meetings occur in the presence of food, and sometimes she’ll show up and there’s just food on Ollie’s desk that she didn’t put there.
          Laurel apparently had always been converted, because there will just be ice cream in every fridge.  Even the company one, even when Laurel hadn’t even been seen in the area.  Later on, she’ll start wondering if, in fact, Laurel was the Hood, or the Arrow.  Later still, she’ll wonder if Laurel was actually an Assassin.  It’s definitely not Ollie buying them, though, because he’ll take out the container from the fridge, every time, start eating it, sometimes right out of the carton, and suddenly look at it, confused like he’s wondering how it got there.  Every single time.
          Tommy, meanwhile, only allows Ollie to spend money on him if it’s a special occasion or if it’s food.  Which Oliver finds frustrating, but he also cooks and eats if it’s a romantic meal.  This obviously confirms that Tommy is the best of people and better than any of them and they need to be happy.
          Raisa, meanwhile, helps with the artificial bit.  It’s not every night, and it’s not like it’s predictable, and it’s definitely difficult to do the precise shopping involved, but she’ll get natural ingredients and cook those sometimes.  (Later, Thea will wonder if the problem is that Ollie got used to food that he could gather or hunt himself.  That when there’s something artificial, his taste buds warn him that it doesn’t belong, that maybe it’s poison, but it doesn’t even occur to her then.)
          When he doesn’t want to eat, she forces him to share stuff with her or let her get in trouble.  “Mom said I should diet, but I saw this cake, and I need to dispose of the evidence.”  Later on, she adds food ‘from secret admirers’, even if it makes her feel a little guilty, and she knows he only eats a little to make sure it’s not poisoned but it's better than nothing.
          She does tell him that she’s going to force-feed him the vitamins if he doesn’t eat them, though, because really, he’s going to be healthy if she has anything to say about it.  He whines, but really, it’s for his own good, and he tries her once and finds she isn’t the pushover he left.
          As for feeling sick, well.  There’s not a lot she can do about that one.  She’s certainly not going to force-feed him an entire meal.  The more he eats, and the more regularly he eats it, the less it happens, so she resolves not to worry about it.
          Felicity distracts him with work.  Not bow-and-arrow work, actual work.  It turns out that Ollie Queen is not so stupid as he or his many professors would believe.  He’s really smart (not, like, Stephen Hawkings intelligent, but still, smart all the same) assuming he’s motivated and not being oblivious or stubborn.  He actually enjoys some of the statistics and math stuff and even some of the business stuff, when he’s not being ADHD (he’d never been tested and probably never will, given the fact that they practically have to tie him down if they want him to visit a doctor never mind psychologist without running away—then again, he probably knows how to slip the knots).
          She also finds a bunch of literature about fictional archers which amuses him and stuff about less fictional Assassins, which is somewhat less amusing but still allows him to use his brain, and then, after he gets kidnapped, stuff they put out about the Medici and the Crusades and Leonardo da Vinci and draws him into extended conversations about the truth and fiction.
          It might be less for Ollie than for the Arrow, but Digg serves as a sparring partner, which does relax Ollie, and he serves as a comrade-in-arms, which is reassuring to an Assassin.  He’s also the easiest for Ollie to talk with, Thea suspects, because he talks and thinks in the same way, fairly quiet and laid-back, but not willing to let things go, either.
          And there’s Tommy.  There’s obvious things—Tommy’s re-teaching (or is it teaching?) Ollie how to date.  (Of course, Tommy doesn’t fully know how to do it himself, she realizes, having only ever tried for Laurel before, but he’s a gentleman.  According to Ollie’s brief words on the subject, in every sense of the word.  He makes her brother feel like the man behind the mask is worth something, too.)  He distracts Oliver Queen with gentle, devastating touches and does things that occasionally creep into her head even if she’s only torturing herself with things that will never be and her brother having sex.  He gives Oliver normalcy, which Oliver both appreciates and is completely weirded out by. 
          And together, they expose Ollie to pop culture, Thea and Tommy.  They don’t force him to sit down and watch it, most of the time, but when he’s around they’ll set up with a laptop or play games and most of the time he’ll be silent.  On occasion, he’ll actually say something, or stop what he’s doing and come to watch, and that’s a definite victory.  But sometimes he’ll just smile, small and secret, and that’s a victory, too.
          “Yeah, seriously Ollie, you’re paranoid.”  Thea pats him on the back and doesn’t care at all that agreeing with Digg on this is just going to prove his point, because honestly, that’s half the fun.