Disclaimer: I don't own them

Pairing: Chloe/Oliver

Authors Note: This sort of follows the timeline of the show up to the end of Season 7. I wonder off on my own after that, pretending that Season 8 never happened so no Jimmy, no Davis, no freaky Kryptonian brain thing. Also the Italics are memories.

Chloe pulled the key out of her mailbox absentmindedly as she sorted through a week's worth of bills, adds, and the occasional "You May Already Be A Winner" flyers. A door opened to her left as she tossed envelopes in the trash can. "Good afternoon Ms. Anderson." Chloe looked up and smiled.

"Jessica." She nodded at Chloe walking to her own mailbox. Chloe still wasn't used to the name Jessica yet but she smiled anyway.

"Did Mr. Randall get someone in to fix my water heater?" Chloe stuffed the bills she needed in her bag and threw the rest of the mail away.

"How should I know?" Ms. Anderson scoffed at Chloe and Chloe turned to her and put her hands on her hips.

"You wake up, put on one of your many Elvis Presley records, then sit at that window and watch every person that comes and goes in this building from eight in the morning to ten at night. You know everything." Chloe smiled at her.

Ms. Anderson turned around and grabbed her mail out of her box, ignoring Chloe's statement. "Mrs. Williams from 4D left at nine thirty but Mr. Williams didn't leave until noon, I don't think he's found a new job yet. Peter in 2B had four food deliveries today alone, I think he's up there getting high on the marijuana, it gives you the munchies you know." Chloe smiled at her. "And your cousin got here at three this afternoon but no water heater repair man."

Chloe frowned as Ms. Anderson walked to her room. "My cousin?" She said slowly.

"Yeah, from Alabama, he's in town for some college weekend. He brought some friends with him. Are they all staying with you because Mr. Randall doesn't like that." Ms. Anderson said.

"Uh, no, my aunt got him a hotel room, he's just coming over for dinner." Chloe smiled. "He probably won't even stay long."

"Good. Your cousin seemed nice enough but the other two, they looked like trouble makers." Ms. Anderson shut her door and Chloe knew that she was going back to her perch in front of the window.

Chloe waited until she heard the first strands of Love Me Tender before reaching in her bag and feeling around until she found what she was looking for, the gun that Oliver forced her to carry. Normally she hated it, walking around all day knowing it was in her bag, the extra weight it literally and figuratively put on her constantly, but right now she was glad she logged in all those hours at the shooting range. As she made her slow climb up the stairs she could hear Peter blasting Pink Floyd Dark Side of The Moon, she had a fleeting thought that Ms. Anderson was right, Peter probably was stoned.

"Hey." Peter's door flew open and he frowned. "Oh Jessica, it's just you. Thought you were the pizza guy."

"Just me." Chloe shrugged as she relaxed her grip on the gun.

"Bummer." Peter said walking back to his apartment and closing the door. Chloe shook her head and continued her climb. She listened carefully as she approached and paused, checking the hall before taking the gun out. She dropped the bag on the ground and reached for the knob, but the door was open. She nudged it with the toe of her boot and it opened further. She could hear faint whispers from the living room but nothing distinguishable. As she passed into the hallway she saw something out of the corner of her eye and turned on the spot, gun raised and cocked. She let out a sigh of relief as she realized she was aiming the gun at her own reflection in the hall mirror. She sighed, she still wasn't used to the red hair. She continued down the hall slowly until she got to the end and then turned into the room with the gun raised.

"Holy shit Chloe, watch where you're pointing that thing." Bart jumped off the couch as quickly as only Bart could and Chloe lowered the gun with a groan.

"What the hell are you guys doing here?" She put the safety back on her gun and slid it in the back of her waistband. "You guys aren't supposed to come here." She said moving further into the room, noticing that Victor wouldn't even turn away from the window and AC was avoiding her gaze.

"We had to." Victor said, his back still to her, his gaze fixed on an arbitrary point somewhere across the bay. "We've got a problem."

Chloe's knees suddenly felt weak as she sunk down on the corner of the coffee table. "Oliver?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Victor suddenly turned around, his expression falling as he shook his head. "He's fine…well he's not dead."

"Hurt?" Chloe asked.

"No." AC spoke for the first time. "But something's wrong."

Chloe looked carefully between the three men and frowned. "What's going on?"

"He fired us." Victor stood up and started pacing around the room.

"He…what?" Chloe looked up in confusion. "He fired you?"

"Yeah." Bart nodded. "Yesterday, called us all into his office, told us our services were no longer needed and thanked us for our help."

"But that doesn't make any sense." Chloe shook her head. "He can't fire you, he can't…I don't understand."

"That makes four of us." AC chimed in. "We were working on a big project. He said he'd found out something huge, something to do with Lex and when he knew more, we'd be in for the biggest mission of our lives. He wouldn't tell us anything, had us on all these random recon missions and then he started acting strange."

"It was that Green Arrow imposter." Bart piped up and looked at Chloe questioningly; she nodded to let him know that she knew what he was talking about. "He hasn't been the same since that and then he just fired us."

Chloe sighed and looked at the stack of papers on her dining room table. The Green Arrow imposter was a guy who decided the best way to mask his criminal activities was to pretend that he was the Green Arrow, had his very own suit and everything. It was a minor annoyance to start with, he would break into places, steal things, but the press always thought of Green Arrow as a thief anyway, then things changed. He'd killed someone, in plain view of a witness, in full Green Arrow regalia and the few people of Star City who were still on the Green Arrow's side turned against him, branded him a monster, a killer.

"Has he talked to you?" Victor asked. "Has he…fired you?"

"Of course he didn't fire her." AC scoffed. "He's not gonna fire his girlfriend."

"I'm not his…" Chloe shook her head. "No not yet, look I don't know what's going on, and I promise you I will figure this out, I will fix things but you guys really can't be here ok? Not when Lex is still looking for me."

Victor nodded. "We're leaving." He said. "You know we wouldn't have come unless it was really important."

"I know, I'll figure it out, I swear, just lay low somewhere for a while, I'll be in touch." Chloe smiled.

"Thanks." Bart smiled and the three of them left the apartment, leaving Chloe alone, confused, and not really sure what to do except the one thing Oliver told her never to do. She went back into the hall, grabbed her bag and pulled out her phone to buy a ticket on the next flight to Star City.

Oliver walked into his living room and threw his towel on the chair a little more forcefully than he really needed to. He'd hoped his workout would have calmed him down a little but it didn't work. "That chair do something to do?" Chloe asked from her perch on his couch.

Oliver looked over at her and then turned away. "I like the red." He said absentmindedly then he turned back to her. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Yeah, well you're not supposed to go around firing people randomly so I guess we're all acting out of character." Chloe stood up and Oliver scoffed.

"I didn't fire people randomly." Oliver said. "I fired Bart, AC, and Victor. I'm closing JL Industries."

Chloe looked at him quizzically JL Industries was the company Chloe had set up for Oliver to fund their extracurricular activities. "Really? Well if that's the case why didn't you fire me?"

Oliver turned to her. "You want me to fire you?"

"I don't want you to fire anyone, I want to know what the hell is going on here." Chloe walked over to him. "What do you mean you're closing down JL Industries."

"It's not a complicated concept to grasp Chloe, I'm shutting it down, all of it, the Green Arrow, the stupid team, the costumes and the crime fighting, I'm done, I'm out." Oliver walked into his bedroom and Chloe followed him.

"You're out?" She called after him. "Just like that?"

"Just like that." Oliver nodded, his voice showing annoyance.

"So never mind the countless people that are relying on you, all the people left in Lex's 33.1 labs. Never mind AC, Victor, and Bart, what are they supposed to do now?"

Oliver laughed humorlessly. "Why is that my problem?" He snapped at her, slapping the counter in his bathroom and turning to her. "Why am I the one that has to deal with Lex, that has to pick up the pieces when he decides to play God? I don't want to be the hero Chloe, I don't want to spend my nights roaming the streets alone, saving people who are ungrateful, or not saving them at all. I'm tired of being one step behind Lex. For every 33.1 that we tear down, he builds four. For every person we rescue from him, he takes two more. I bust my ass for this city and what do I get for my trouble?" He grabbed a newspaper from the day before and threw it at her.

The headline read "Citizen's Call for Green Arrow's Arrest." She sighed and dropped it on the bed. "They'll catch the guy, everything will come out, and in three months no one will even remember it and you know that, just like the time three years ago when Metropolis turned against Superman when they thought he was secretly leading the mob. But when Lois finally broke the Bizzaro Superman story the city forgave him. They'll forgive you."

"I don't need to be forgiven." Oliver laughed. "I haven't done anything wrong and why am I the one that has to lead the pack? When did I become personally responsible for every freaking sad sap on the face of this earth?"

"When you put on that costume." Chloe walked up to him. "When you formed a team, recruited people to your cause, got them to believe in you."

"Jokes on them then huh." He smiled angrily at her.

"No. Jokes on me." Chloe shook her head. "Cause I bought into it, the whole thing, truth, justice and the American way and possibly a dental plan. I gave up everything to follow you, my whole life Oliver. So what am I supposed to do now?"

"I didn't fire you Chloe but I'm really close to reconsidering that decision." He smiled at her.

"Don't worry about that because I quit." She stormed out of the room, grabbed her bag and slammed the door. "That insufferable, infuriating…" She paced in the hallway for a few minutes and then turned back around and opened the door storming back into the apartment. She threw her bag on the kitchen bar and walked back into his bedroom. "And another thing…" She looked around the bedroom and frowned, Oliver wasn't in there. She was startled for a second until she heard the shower running. While the anger was still giving her momentum she walked into the bathroom and flung the shower curtain open.

Oliver turned around, soap in his eyes startled. "You're showering?" Chloe screamed.

"Obviously." Oliver spit water out of his mouth.

"We're arguing, we weren't finished, you can't just get in the shower in the middle of an argument." Chloe pointed out.

"You left." Oliver pointed out. "You quit and then you stormed out, slamming the door." Oliver motioned to the door. "Which you're more than welcome to do again, right now, although I'd appreciate it if you didn't slam the door this time."

"I'm not done yet." Chloe snapped at him.

Oliver groaned and turned off the water. "Towel?" Chloe grabbed the towel and then handed it to him. He wrapped it around his waist and then motioned for her to continue, she looked confused and he rolled his eyes. "You weren't finished." He reminded her.

"Right, so, another thing." Chloe started pacing back and forth. "You fire everyone and then you dismantle the company that I spent months setting up for you and then you get over your temper tantrum and decide you want to play the masked hero again, but by then we've moved on. So we're supposed to come crawling back to you? How is that fair, how are we supposed to know you're not just gonna get another wild hair in two months or three months or say you last a year even, then you decide to quit again, you just gonna string us along like a yo-yo?"

"This isn't a temper tantrum Chloe, it isn't a wild hair. It's not something that I just decided on a whim and I can guarantee you there will be no coming back." Oliver assured her.

"So what? You're just going to go back to your normal life? Your pre-Green Arrow life?" Chloe asked him.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact I am." Oliver said.

"So I guess I can expect great things from Oliver Queen then." Chloe snorted. "They'll be multiple women and tabloid stories of your drunken binges in hotel fountains. You'll be blowing off work to surf in Australia, or spending ridiculous amounts of money on cars you'll probably wreck in some stupid stunt to impress some airhead model."

"That's what you think of me?" Oliver laughed and shook his head. "Nice to know. Although after years of unappreciated service to this town, I think I deserve some fun don't you. I haven't been able to have a real date in seven years, one single night without a crisis, I can't keep a girlfriend because I keep too many secrets. You keep talking about what Green Arrow does for other people, did you ever think about what it does to me? I deserve to be happy too."

"No, I used to think you were the one good guy in this whole crazy privileged, too much money for your own good crowd. I thought you were the one guy who could actually use his power and position to have some sort of positive influence on the world. I guess I was wrong." She turned to go. "Have your fun Oliver, live your life, worry only about you. I hope it makes you happy. I'm done now." She walked out of the bathroom and Oliver leaned his head against the wall as the door slammed again.

Chloe walked for thirty blocks before she was calmed down enough to look at the situation rationally. She found a coffee stand and ordered a large cup. She found a bench and sat down going over the whole argument in her head. She'd gone into that apartment assuming everything was a misunderstanding and if she talked to Oliver she would sort the whole thing out. She didn't expect him to admit that he fired every one, she didn't expect him to say he was quitting and dismantling the whole organization and she just snapped. Now that she could sit back and look at the whole thing logically she realized something was wrong with Oliver. Something had pushed him off his path and Chloe had to fix this, had to stop this before, well before he did actually end up wrecking some overpriced car trying to impress some airhead model.

She pulled out her phone and dialed a number. "Hey Victor, yeah I just talked to him." Chloe sighed. "No, something's wrong but I think I can fix it. I know a guy." Chloe smiled at something and laughed. "Yeah, I'll give him a call. Get the guys and give me a few hours."

Oliver finished his shower, flipping the hot water to cold to try and clear his head. Chloe's words echoed in his ears. "When you got them to believe in you." He banged his fists against the tile of the wall and sighed, he'd made his choice, it was done now. He turned off the water and grabbed his towel climbing out of the shower. He didn't want to hurt anyone, he didn't want to hurt Chloe especially. He pulled on an undershirt and walked to his bedroom. He needed to stop thinking about this, he needed to get drunk. Maybe he'd start being Oliver Queen billionaire playboy again. He pulled out his phone and called up a few of his old friends. "Hey Mike, what's going on? Yeah I know it's been a while, works been…I just need to let off some steam. Margo and Sasha, perfect, I'll meet you in ten." He hung up the phone and got dressed.

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Bart paced back and forth in Oliver's living room looking uncomfortable.

"It's the only idea." Victor said and Chloe shot him a look. "But it's also a good idea."

"It'll work." Chloe said. The elevator dinged and AC jumped. "Relax, Oliver's still at Mirror, I got a call from that tabloid photographer friend of mine, said the way he was throwing them back, he'd probably be there for a while." Chloe nodded to the elevator. "That's my guy."

"Who is this guy anyway?" Victor asked.

The elevator grate opened up and a guy walked in looking around in astonishment. "Fancy digs Elizabeth." He nodded at Chloe in approval.

"Elizabeth?" Bart asked her.

"One of my many names." Chloe cringed. "It's Chloe remember."

"Right." He nodded.

"Mark, thanks for coming." Chloe smiled and shook his hand.

"Dude, you saved my life, how could I not come?" He pulled his bag off his shoulder and laid it on the table. "So how can I be of service? Need to relive your childhood? Want to see the future?"

"No, it's not for me." Chloe assured him. "It's for a friend, he'll be here in a little while, I just want to go over everything, how it's going to play out." Mark just nodded as he sat down.

Oliver stumbled into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse. It had taken him far longer than he thought it would to get rid of that girl, Rachel? Rhonda? Whatever her name was. He'd forgotten how tiring being the playboy was, staying up all night, drinking too much and then having to go into work the next day. It was almost enough to make him miss the Green Arrow, almost. He winced as he brought a hand up to touch his cheek. Apparently you can take the man out of the suit but you can't take the suit out of the man, it must have been instinct that took him into that alley. He couldn't just ignore the scream when he was walking home and when he saw the man trying to rob the woman in the alley he'd rushed in without a second thought. He grabbed his side wincing and knew he'd have to get out the first aid kid right away. The elevator door opened and he stumbled into the living room only stop when he saw Chloe standing there. "I really don't want to fight with you again."

"Good." Chloe stood up and nodded somewhere behind him. "Because I didn't come here to argue."

"Sorry about this." Bart said from the shadows. "But really, you didn't give us a choice." He shrugged as arms grabbed Oliver from either side and he turned to find Victor and AC holding his arms.

"Trust me dude, this won't hurt you a bit." A guy who he didn't know walked out of the shadows behind Bart and touched Oliver's forehead and he immediately went limp in Victor and AC's arms. "Bring him to the couch. He might as well be comfortable." Mark said. They carried Oliver to the couch and laid him down. Mark moved to the chair next to him and sat down, getting himself comfortable. "Once I go in, don't touch him, don't move him, don't do anything, it could have unwanted consequences."

"Like what?" Bart asked.

"I don't know." Mark looked over at him. "Because people always follow the rules." He said pointedly.

"Got it." Bart nodded and backed away.

"I'm going in." Mark said and closed his eyes.

Oliver's Head

Oliver spun around the apartment, it was completely empty, he wasn't that drunk right? He hadn't imagined the whole thing had he? Chloe, Bart, AC, Victor, and some guy he'd never met had been in his apartment when he got home, but now they were nowhere to be seen. "You aren't going crazy." Oliver spun around and looked behind him. That guy was not there two seconds ago. "You need to calm down for a second ok, just relax and I'll explain everything."

"Who the hell are you? Where am I?" Oliver asked cautiously. "What the hell is going on?"

"Well, that's what I meant when I said I'd explain everything. I'm a friend of Elizabeth's." Mark said and Oliver looked at him confused. "Sorry, Chloe. I'm a…what did she call us…Meta, I've got meteor powers."

"Ok." Oliver said, getting his breathing under control. "What kind of powers?"

"You every read a Christmas Carol?" Mark asked calmly.

"In like the tenth grade." Oliver shook his head.

"It's sort of like that." Mark shrugged. "Only I'm the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future all wrapped into one. I can show you your past, your present and your possible future, depending on the path you decide to take."

"The path I decide to take?" Oliver asked confused.

"That is what I said." Mark nodded.

"I'll tell you the path I want to take, whatever path leads me the hell out of here." Oliver yelled at him.

"No can do, sorry." Mark shrugged. "Once I start, I can't stop until you learn what you need to learn."

"This is just freaking great." Oliver sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "This is exactly what I need right now."

"You ready to get started?" Mark rubbed his hands together.

"Do I have a choice?" Oliver sighed.

"No, not really." Mark smiled. "Ok Oliver Queen, this is your life."