So here it is. Finn's article on Chloe and Oliver for Savoy Magazine. There is an awesome article that I made with help from Tehzo with pictures and a fake cover and everything. The link is: issuu. com / bella8876 / docs / savoyjuly2011. When you type it in, take away the spaces. This is the only way for some reason I could post the link here, every time I try another way they take it out. Also at my LJ bella8876 . livejournal . com there is even more bonus content from the story. Hope you enjoy.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 p.m. Seven days later in an interview with Life magazine, Jacqueline Kennedy coined a term that would come to define a moment in our nation's history with, of all things, a line from a musical. "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."

Camelot means different things to different people. It no longer simply stands for a mythical land of knights and round tables, of justice and honor, of kings and queens. It persists today as more of an idea, an imagined utopia where everything is brighter, everything is better. It's a shiny new world where bravery and honor mean something, where chivalry is not dead, where anything is possible.

The early 60's were ripe for the taking. Change was in the air, paradigms were shifting, and possibilities that were never before imagined were suddenly just in reach. We were going to send a man to the moon, schools were being integrated, and Rock and Roll was here to stay. People wanted something new, they were craving something new and the person to give it to them was John Kennedy.

He was handsome, charismatic, and ready for the task ahead of him. His wife was the epitome of grace, style, and compassion. Together they made what was likely the first power couple. They were young, they were energetic, were going to be the leaders of the revolution, they could have changed the world. Their story ended on that fateful Friday, but their spirit, their legacy lived on.

Skeptics claim there was never a Camelot. That we merely idealized things after the tragedy. Sanded away the rough edges in our memories and forced this supposed Utopia over everything to cover the cracks. Maybe they were right, maybe we never did reach that place, but we never stopped looking. For some of us the Kennedy's showed us something amazing, even if it was only a glimpse, just a snapshot of what could have been and we wanted more, we want more.

Many have tried since then to recapture that spirit, to recreate that Camelot, and all have failed. Some have sought it out and others have had it thrust upon them but none have been successful. Personally I've always thought it was a nice dream, but a dream none the less. I definitely never believed I'd live to see the day, that it would happen in my lifetime, not until I met Chloe and Oliver.

It wasn't like the second I set eyes on them I just knew. It was a gradual thing, the realization sort of snuck up on me actually. I remember the moment vividly though. It's one of those rare memories that I believe will always stick with me, down to the last detail. It was a day that I will probably be describing to my grandkids at some point with a fond smile on my face.

It was a lazy Sunday. Chloe had called me two hours before hand, said she was organizing a last minute barbeque because the rain that had been plaguing Northern California for two weeks finally broke and she wanted, she needed, to be outside. She never asked me if I wanted to come, never considered that I wouldn't want to come, she simply told me that I'd been elected to pick up the potato salad. (It is a sacred side dish at the Queen house and only ever came from one place, a small home run rib joint that was twenty minutes out of my way, but definitely worth the gas).

When I got there, Chloe traded my potato salad for a platter of perfectly butchered steaks and told me to deliver them to Oliver outside and asked if I could please make sure that they hadn't set the yard on fire. As I passed the kitchen, I saw her cousin Lois sitting at the counter mixing up a pitcher of iced tea. Lois lived in Metropolis and I realized that Chloe had probably sent the jet to bring her town just for the day, just for the barbeque and then I realized that something like that didn't even shock me anymore. I'd been hanging out around the rich and famous for far too long.

When I got outside, Oliver traded my platter of steaks for a glass filled to the brim with Guinness, something that had recently been put on tap at the Queen bar, specifically for me if you wanted to believe Oliver, which I learned from Chloe to do so only very rarely. I looked around him to see a massive fire pit out in the middle of the yard, flames taller than me by half licking the sky, a couple of guys walking around it cautious and I raised my eyebrows, now understanding Chloe's request. "I've got it under control." Oliver assured me with a clap on the back.

I opted to stay far away from the flames and walked over to the deck instead where Lois' husband Clark was watching the Sharks game while secretly keeping an eye on the flames behind him. "Oliver says they've got it under control." I offered, checking the score, 14 to 3.

"Oliver's said that before." Clark smiled at me. "Strangely enough, every time he says it, I spend half my night in the ER getting lectured by the on call intern about the correct way to light fireworks, or that there was a reason they stopped making and selling lawn darts." He snorted.

No one had to go to the ER and the steaks were only slightly burnt, "Blackened," Oliver protested. The sun was slowly dripping towards the horizon and I was drinking my third pint of Guinness while Lois and Clark argued over a Sharks game from five years ago. Chloe and Oliver were pretending to play croquet in the yard. They didn't know what they were doing and the ground was so wet the wickets kept falling over and the balls kept getting stuck in the mud. I'd given her the set a few weeks ago when she mentioned she'd always wanted to learn how to play.

"Finn, I'm supposed to hit his ball aren't I? Like shuffleboard right?" Chloe demanded.

"Not exactly." I'd tried several times since giving it to her to explain how to play, but for some reason croquet was too hard a concept to grasp, even for a woman who once spent over three hours discussing the intricacies of a single line of programming in the new Windows operating system.

"You know what?" Chloe shook her head. "I'm just gonna make up my own game." And she did, pulling us all out into the yard thirty minutes later when she'd finished rearranging the wickets to her liking. "Everyone grab a mallet." She said with a smile on her face and then proceeded to explain to us the rules to her new game, a new game she was calling Hocquetball. It was a cross between Hockey, Croquet, and Baseball and once the kinks were worked out it was actually quite fun.

Clark pulled me to my feet two hours later after I narrowly beat the ball into the home wicket (basically home base, only instead of a base, it was a wicket), with a spectacularly muddy slide earning us the winning goal when it happened. With a whoop of joy, Chloe threw her mallet into the air and jumped on Oliver's back in celebration. She caught him by surprise and he tumbled to the ground, taking Chloe with him, sinking into a large mud puddle and drenching the both of them, head to foot.

It didn't deter either of them, however. They tried multiple times to pull themselves out of the mud, only to lose their footing and slid back to the ground, growing even muddier by the second, laughing the whole time. A maid handed me a towel with an amused and resigned expression on her face and I tried to clean off from my own mud bath. "Mrs. Queen, I'd like to remind you that I mopped the floors yesterday."

"Of course Rita." Chloe smiled as she finally found her feet and grabbed the towel from the woman. "We'll be sure to hose off out here before setting foot in the house."

"I'd also like to remind the both of you that your flight to London is scheduled for quite early tomorrow morning." Rita passed Oliver his towel before going back inside.

"Oh I talked to Audrey and she said she would not take no for an answer this time." Oliver groaned. "We've begged off the past seven times we were in London, so just deal with it." Oliver once again attempted to protest and Chloe cut him short. "Look, I'm sure a nice private dinner with the Prime Minister and his wife is not going to hurt when you're begging Parliament for use of their shipping lanes."

Oliver did the mature thing in retaliation and stuck his tongue out at her. Chloe responded in kind with a very well thrown ball of mud right to Oliver's face, dissolving the both of them once again into uncontrollable laughter as a mud fight broke out.

I connected Audrey to Audrey St. James, the wife of Harold St. James, Britain's Prime Minister. It was then for the first time in a long time I connected Oliver and Chloe Queen, the people I'd just minutes before won the inaugural game of Hocquetball with as the same type of people who had casual dinners with Prime Minister's and thought nothing of it.

That's when I saw it. Camelot. It was standing right in front of me. The last vestiges of the sun was setting behind them, bathing them in a strange pink light. They were covered in mud, brandishing blinding smiles, and promising me something, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. All I knew is that I wanted whatever is was more than I'd ever wanted anything before.

Two nights ago I was sitting outside of a bar called the Stout Goat. There was a party going on inside, Chloe and Oliver's anniversary party and I found myself having a moment, a moment that I've had with increased regularity ever since I agreed to take this assignment. I found myself wondering how I got here, to this place, to this place where invitations to private parties of the rich and famous were a normal occurrence.

My life today is much different from my life of eight months ago. Eight months ago a normal day for me was getting up, getting dressed, going to work were I had to deal with annoying editors and deadlines and the copy department harassing me and then I would go home, maybe get some Chinese take away, watch a movie and go to bed. If it wasn't about work I rarely went anywhere. And you thought the life of a reporter was exciting.

Then I met Chloe Queen and I knew my life would never be the same. It all started a little over eight months ago. I was sitting at my desk at work, on the phone. I was on hold actually, had been for going on half an hour trying desperately to get a quote for an article I was working on about a waste management company's misappropriation of hazardous material [December 2009]. Someone walked by and slid a folded note on my desk. To this day I don't know who it was, no one at the office remembers the note and I've called around to all the couriers in town with no luck. I opened it only half paying attention to it, assuming it was from my editor asking me to shave a few inches off my column.

All it said was, Starlight Lounge, 6:00 p.m. Someone came back on the line, I tossed the note aside and promptly forgot about it for the rest of the day. I closed up shop around 5:30, grabbed a cab and had every intention of heading home. Halfway there however I realized that we were headed in the wrong direction and was informed by the cab driver that all the lights were out down Grant Avenue so he was taking an alternative route. An attempt to head back uptown on Meyers was thwarted as they were setting up a roadblock because of an erupted gas mane which caused a rather significant sink hole. We were forced to turn down Range instead where we ran into the traffic jam from hell.

I sat in the back of the cab in the same spot for almost ten minutes before I looked out the window and noticed that we were idling two blocks away from The Starlight Lounge. I remembered the note and checked my watch, it was 5:58. Before I realized it I had my wallet out and was tossing a twenty to the cab driver. "I'll just get out here." I told him before getting out of the cab and walking up the street to the upscale glass fronted club.

It wasn't until I was at the very imposing doors that I realized, there was no way they were going to let me in. The Starlight Lounge was the most exclusive Club in the city, invitation only. To my surprise the doors were pulled open for me immediately. "Your party is running slightly late Mr. Macintosh. Please have a seat at the bar." The doorman smiled at me and led me into the building.

I was definitely intrigued now. The doorman knew my name, had been waiting for me and was more than willing to let me in. I walked up to the bar, already self conscious about my wrinkled suit. Everyone around me was smartly dressed, it was likely they'd just stopped in here for a quick drink before whisking away to some fabulous evening.

"What'll you have?" The guy behind the bar asked. I looked around, wondering exactly what one drank in a place like this and saw nothing but a sea of martini and wine glasses. I've never been a fan of vodka and red wine gives me heartburn. It had been a long day and I honestly didn't have the energy to pretend to drink something I hated just to impress someone who couldn't even be bothered to tell me who they were or why they wanted to meet.

"What do you have on tap?" I asked. For one brief horrifying moment when the man said nothing I had to wonder if places like this even served beer. Then he broke out into a grin and passed me a menu. I smiled back at him and ordered a Guinness.

"Excellent choice sir." He assured me, swiftly and professionally retrieving a glass and then affecting the perfect pour. Glass at a forty five degree angle, a slow smooth flow of beer out of the tap, finished off with a thick head of foam, a technique rarely seen outside of a genuine Irish Pub. I wouldn't have expected any less from a place like that though. He nodded at someone over my shoulder as he slid the drink to me and I closed my eyes to take that first rich sip of creamy dark beer and was so lost in the flavor that I missed the person sliding on the stool next to me.

"I'll have what he's having." A soft voice said from my right. I opened my eyes and turned to see, of all people, Chloe Queen perched on a stool next to me. "I wasn't sure you'd come." She leaned against the bar, relaxed and at home in this setting and smiled brightly at me.

"You sent the note?" I asked her and she just nodded and smiled as she sipped her own pint.

"This isn't really my normal scene." She looked around, crinkling her nose. "But it has the advantage of presenting one with a certain amount of privacy." She stood, thanking the bartender and turning toward the back corner. Without having to be told, I got up and followed.

"What can I do for you Mrs. Queen?"

When we settled in the booth she got right down to business. "You're going to write our story. An exclusive." She said it with such nonchalance it could have been mistaken for something as mundane as a comment about the weather to anyone else, but to me, and to any other reporter, it was more along the lines of a career defining moment.

I'm not embarrassed to say that I choked on my drink. She just smiled as I coughed and took another sip of her beer, waiting for me to calm down patiently. She knew what she'd done, knew what she'd just offered me and by the look on her face, I'd shown the proper amount of excitement at the prospect. Her smile widened and I realized my reaction to her offer was like passing a test I hadn't known I'd been taking, like ordering the beer instead of a Martini. ("I had to be sure you were genuine." She shrugged later when I called her on it, not bothering to hide it from me. "If you showed up in a place you were obviously not comfortable in and still had the courage to be yourself, I knew I could trust you to do the same with the article.")

For almost a year now every reporter from the online blog writers to New York Times headliners had been after this story. It was our holy grail, our lost city of gold, our Atlantis. Chloe and Oliver Queen had always been rather private people, rarely sitting for interviews or commenting for stories unless it was for a sanctioned event.

Chloe never turned down an opportunity to plug what she believed was her greatest accomplishment; Star City's annual hospital fundraiser. Oliver was more than happy to sit in a room filled with reporters and delight and amaze them with the latest breakthrough to come out of Star Labs or the news of a new merger with another company. But when it came to their personal life, they just never talked about it.

Strangely enough, as if through some unspoken agreement, the press respected this. They didn't bother them for stories about their relationship, they weren't hounded by paparazzi when they went out for the evening. Every now and then a photograph would pop up of the two of them strolling through the streets or heading into a restaurant for diner but it was never invasive, never assaulting.

Until last year that is. Everyone knows what happened, most people, myself included were glued to the television set, watching the events unfold from the moment the story was leaked until it ended with one dead body, the biggest organized crime boss on the west coast lead away in handcuffs, and a shaky video of Chloe holding Oliver's hand as he was wheeled into the emergency room. Time magazine would later call it one of the most significant five hours in America's pop culture history.

That was when the bubble burst. The world was hungry for their story, hungry for more than the official press release issued two days later by a man in a smart black suit. He thanked everyone on behalf of the Queens for their prayers in such a difficult time and asked the people to please respect their privacy as they tried to put their life back together.

Where before the press had been content with whatever scraps were thrown to them where Chloe and Oliver where involved, they weren't any longer. We needed to know more, we demanded to know more and instead we were cut off entirely. There were no public appearances, no press conferences or even official statements released. The couple stopped going out, set up permanent residence at the Queen Mansion on the outskirts of town and effectively cut off the outside world. They refused to tell their story, declining invites from everyone from Larry King to Oprah and no one refused Oprah. For all intents and purposes they went radio silent for a year and now she wanted me to tell their story.

When I managed to roll my tongue back in my mouth and resume the ability to speak again, she went into more detail. No holds barred, I could ask her anything about anything, even Clearwater Ridge, especially Clearwater Ridge. I would have complete and total access to every aspect of her life, nothing was off limits. Then she asked me, in all seriousness, if that was something I was interested in. She was basically handing me a Pulitzer on a silver platter and she knew it. All I could do was smile.

What followed still, as I look back on it, seemed like a dream. I spent my days researching the story, interviewing family and friends, co-workers and ex-school mates. I spent my evenings sitting quietly in a chair at the Queen Mansion, watching and taking furious notes as Chloe and Oliver went about their everyday lives, not bothered in the least that there was an interloper among them. I spent my nights pouring over ever single detail contained in the official police file of the incident at Clearwater Ridge. (The question of how a federally sealed file just appeared on my desk one morning is still the only one I believe I didn't get an honest answer about. "Try the lasagna." Chloe said instead, deftly maneuvering away from the subject. "Oliver makes the sauce from scratch.")

These days, I still get up, get dressed, and go to work. I still have to deal with annoying editors and deadlines and the copy department trying to get me to cut five inches off my column for ad space. Only now, at least five times during the day I'll get a phone call or a text message from Chloe. My closet which had once been home to one semi nice pair of slacks and a suit that was over ten years old now housed not one but two tuxedoes that I owned, not rented, and few custom tailored Gucci suits interspersed with my vintage t-shirts and ratty jeans. I could be more often than not found attending some high society charity function, generally dragged there against my will, instead of vegging out in front of the television. Saturdays, even now that the article's basically in the can, you can still find me at the Queen Mansion helping Oliver remodel an upstairs bathroom or just hanging out watching the game with Chloe. So yes my life has changed in ways that even I couldn't imagine when I decided to take this job and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I was brought back to reality with a text to my phone. Chloe was wondering where I was. It was immediately followed by a text from Oliver telling me that Chloe had someone she wanted me to meet and I should run far, far, away. I considered Oliver's advice for a while, Chloe'd been trying to set me up with someone for a while now and her matchmaking abilities leave a lot to be desired. In the end I closed the phone and walked into the bar.

The Stout Goat, for those of you who have never been, is not impressive in the least. If you can manage to find the place, you'll see that it's just a bar like any other. Its sign hangs precariously above an ordinary wooden door in downtown Star City. The spotlight positioned over it burnt out long ago probably never to be replaced. When you walk in you'll feel like an outsider, an intruder in some private club that you didn't know you had to join.

It was never intended to be the place where everyone knows your name. In fact, no one knew anyone's name until three years ago, on a seemingly ordinary Friday night, when Chloe Sullivan proposed to Oliver Queen bringing together a ragtag group of people who otherwise would have happily continued on nursing their beers and ignoring the other bar patrons.

In my first visit to the Goat, I felt the whole time that I was being weighed and measured and somehow was found wanting. It was strange and uncomfortable and I was contemplating finishing my beer and leaving until a few stern looks from Chloe and suddenly I was brought into the fold, completely and utterly brought into the fold, as if I'd always been there. At the time it amazed me how easy it was for the people to accept me, simply because I'd gotten Chloe's nod of approval, until I experienced it firsthand.

It was just a random Friday night. I'd somehow gotten roped into a dart's tournament with Lois, Jake and Victor when the doors opened and the whole bar went deadly quiet. A young couple was standing in the doorway. They'd just wandered in off the street, likely looking for a quick drink before getting on with the rest of their evening. I was instantly annoyed, the Goat was our place and it felt as if some stranger had just wondered in off the street into my living room. From the looks of everyone around me, they seemed to feel the same way.

Just as the couple started to sense that they were in fact unwanted, Chloe emerged from the crowd, two beers in her hand and a smile on her face as she steered them away from the door and toward the bar. Oliver joined her and they talked to the couple for a good hour, pulling from them their life stories with an ease, that as a reporter, I envied.

The woman's name was Emma, the man's David. They'd just moved to Star City the month before so Emma, a third year medical student, could start her first year of residency at Star City General. David transferred to Star City University where he was working toward his PhD in Ancient European History. After more conversation, it was discovered that David and Emma were currently occupying the very apartment that Chloe and Oliver lived in during The Lost Year. Chloe traded Emma the secret of to getting the most out of the hot water (only do dishes after eleven p.m.) as Oliver picked David's brain on the idea that Robin Hood had actually been a real person.

Eventually someone else came up and pulled the two away into a game of pool. Chloe and Oliver had basically said they were ok and we trusted Chloe and Oliver. Even me, who had a few hours earlier looked upon them as intruders found myself laughing and joking with them as the night wore on and more drinks were consumed, their earlier plans forgotten as they somehow found themselves becoming a part of our family.

"It's what they [Chloe and Oliver] do." Lois Lane-Kent, explained the phenomenon to me. "It happens all

the time when you're around them. They could ride on a city bus full of strangers for three blocks and two years later those people would still be sending each other Christmas cards."

"They like family." Clark shrugged. "Neither of them grew up with much of one. It's almost like they've been going through life collecting their own, the bigger the better."

I understood what he meant. When I started this project I didn't know any of these people, but last month I spent a very entertaining evening at Jake's daughter's dance recital and on Wednesday I am expected at David and Emma's for a dinner party where, Chloe has warned me, they are going to attempt to set me up with a friend of David's from the History Department.

The night of the party the usual crowd is there. Jake and his wife, Emma and David, Mary's behind the bar, a smile on her face as she passes out the drinks and all the others that have somehow inexplicably become a part of our strange little family. As has become the tradition with Chloe and Oliver, this is party number two. Earlier in the evening was the big extravagant party with all their high society friends on the roof top of the Hudson Building. That was the public party, the one with the reporters and the photographers, the one with the artisan crafted dinner plates and $400 dollar a once Scotch, the one they say they only have because frankly everyone expects them to have it.

The real party comes after, always at the Stout Goat, the menu generally nothing more extravagant except for hot dogs courtesy of Milo the Hot Dog Guy and whatever Mary happens to have on tap. Sometimes Chloe and Oliver go home and change but more often than not you can find them still in their high class finery, thousand dollar gowns and handmade tuxes which inexplicably don't seem out of place in the dingy bar surrounding. Chloe says it's a tradition and I don't press the matter.

Tonight is no exception. Chloe's dressed to the nines, her hair a makeup immaculate while a lone photographer, my photographer, the only photographer ever allowed in the Stout Goat trails after her taking shot after shot. It's making a few of the others slightly uncomfortable but Chloe has got ignoring the camera flashes down to an art. All week long the photographer has been following Chloe and Oliver around, getting shots to go with the article. After being teased about it for a few minutes, Chloe admits it's a little weird.

"There are pictures somewhere in that camera of me knitting, she insisted on taking them." Chloe wrinkled her nose and everyone laughed. "It's just strange because that is so not who I am."

"So very not who she is." Someone else said and anyone who knew anything about Chloe agreed whole

heartedly. That was definitely not who she was. Out of the two of them, it took less than a week to realize that surprisingly Oliver was the more domestic one, constantly cooking, everything from scratch, obsessing over the garden, the remodels.

"You won't use them will you?" Chloe turned to give me a hug, welcoming me to the party.

"I don't know, maybe." I shrugged, just to tease her and she flushed red before turning away to enjoy the party.

People might come into this article thinking that it's going to be about Clearwater Ridge, about mobsters and kidnappings, about ransoms and police raids. I went into this article thinking that's what it was going to be about and I was wrong. It occurred to me that while the incident was a part of their story, in all honestly it was a small part of their story. Their story, like many other great stories in history is at its heart a love story, a fairytale. That's the story I'm here to tell you.

You see, the fairytales got it wrong. The thing about most epic love stories is that they don't start out very epic. Most of them don't start with, "Once upon a time, in a land far far away". Most of them don't have evil witches and singing birds, most don't start out with a powerful spell or horrible tragedy. Most of them are extraordinarily ordinary in conception, starting the way that any other story would start.

Of course they all start out with a boy and a girl, or a boy and a boy, or a girl and a girl, or really any variation thereof…so let's just say they start out with two people. Two ordinary people, going about their ordinary lives, doing ordinary things with no understanding that one day their story will be the stuff of legends. Sure along the way battles will be fought, evil vanquished, and there might even be a talking animal or two, but that's perfectly normal.

I've interviewed over a hundred people in the course of writing this article and all have different ideas on where this story began. Some say it started on blanket in the park, watching Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn fall in love on the big screen. Some say it started with an argument, one of many to come but like all the others would end with a kiss. Her cousin and best friend Lois says their story started at a Karaoke bar, somewhere between 'California Dreaming' and 'California Love'. Lois' husband, Clark, insists it started with a game of pool. Not even a proper game, just one shot, winner takes all. The couple themselves can't even settle on a specific time and place.

I've known about Chloe and Oliver Queen for a while now. Quite a lot of people have been following this story since the beginning. Back when Chloe was still Chloe Sullivan. Back when Oliver Queen, playboy extraordinaire, suddenly stopped showing up in the daily tabloids with a different nameless woman on his arms, stumbling out of clubs at one in the morning. Back when those nameless women were replace by one, just one feisty little blonde, when the clubs were replaced with Opera houses and street fairs.

We were riveted as we followed this story, bad boy turns good, womanizer turns boyfriend. They wanted to know how she did it, how this little slip of a blonde with a no nonsense attitude and warm smile managed to wrangle the most philandering bachelor on the planet. "I have no idea," She said with a laugh, leaning in conspiratorially, "I didn't even know we were actually dating until it had been going on for a few months."

It's true. It's a story that's told frequently, "Ad-nausea," if you ask Chloe. It's mostly seen as cute among their friends and only rarely used as a tool to mock. There are two sides to the story they insist. Oliver's version paints him as sweet and endearing, the whole thing reminiscent of a romantic comedy that Hollywood wasn't creative enough to come up with on its own. Chloe's version paints him as egotistical and manipulative, but in a good way obviously since he still got the girl in the end.

When asked why he didn't just ask her out he shrugged. "I didn't want her to say no," he blushed, "So I didn't give her the chance. I was hoping by the time she realized what was going on, she'd be to hopelessly in love with me to care." That innocent self deprecating blush, the slight tilt to his head and the way he told the whole thing looking up through his eyelashes like he was slightly embarrassed, and the fact that Oliver Queen of all people, a man voted sexiest man alive by People magazine three times, beating out George Clooney and Brad Pitt, was scared of rejection, put me firmly on the side of sweet and endearing.

Chloe was not swayed however, "That's not fair." She practically pouted. "Everyone picks his side. He practices that face you know. He can blush on command." She raised her eyebrows at him and he simply continued to smile before pressing a kiss to her forehead, not denying the claim.

"But you love me anyway," he insisted flashing that brilliant smile of his. A half hearted "jerk" was muttered under her breath before she smiled back.

Where do I think the whole thing started? I think it started long before the tabloids got in on the story, long before Chloe or even Oliver realized it was happening. I think it started in a Barn in Smallville Kansas, five years before the first pictures surfaced of the two of them together.

It was a chance meeting that lasted all of a minute and a half, unknowingly putting into motion one of the greatest love stories of our time. He was on his way out, she was on her way in, they probably didn't exchange more than five words to each other. Funnily enough both Chloe and Oliver are fuzzy on the details of that first meeting. "He was still dating Lois at the time," Chloe squinted, trying to pull something, anything about that day from her memory.

Clark, the one who's Barn this auspicious meeting took place in smirked at her. "I believe her exact words were 'wow'." He teased her good naturedly, causing a very un-practiced heat to rise to Chloe's cheeks.

"You thought I was 'wow'?" Oliver smirked.

"You can't tell him stuff like that," Chloe nudged Clark's shoulders. "It just inflates his already too large ego."

However it started, the most important thing was that it started. Their relationship followed the normal course, they dated, they moved in together which for Chloe meant a move across the country. She had a hard time settling in at first. The Isis Foundation, a not for profit organization which offers things like counseling and job and housing placement for troubled young adults, set up by Chloe and a friend back in Metropolis was having trouble getting off the ground in Star City, (a lot of red tape with the city council was holding up her permit).

Oliver ended up suggesting what would turn out to be probably the best thing that ever happened to Star City. He suggested she join the Junior League. They are a philanthropic community organization that is responsible for all of the city's charity fundraisers and deal very closely with the City Council on community issues.

So she did. A notoriously tight knit group they were all unsure of Chloe at first. As an initiation of sorts they gave her what was then considered the worst assignment you could get, the city wide hospital fundraiser. "It used to be an embarrassment on our books." Jenna Lawson, President of the League explained. "It was a stale diner with rubbery chicken and absolutely no redeeming value. The last few years before Chloe took over, we spent more money than we raised, we just couldn't get people interested." It was a running joke that if you got assigned to the hospital you'd done something to piss someone off.

"I still don't know if they were trying to test me or run me off." Chloe joked about it a few years later. Never one to shy away from a challenge, she threw herself head first into the mix and with great results. She saw one problem right off the bat. "Fundraising is tricky. First you have to find a cause that people are passionate about. Then you have to get them invested enough to write you checks that contain a large amount of zero's." She explained. "You'd think hospitals would be easy. Everyone needs them at some point and doctors heal people."

The problem was it wasn't that easy. "Hospital is a broad term." Chloe said. "The money could be going anywhere from medical research to providing care for the elderly but you don't know that. Surprisingly people like to know where the money's going." So she made her first change, she narrowed the scope. She visited with all the hospitals in the city and made a list of things they needed the most.

"The first year was cancer." Jenna remembered. When Chloe did her research she realized that between the six hospitals in Star City not one of them had dedicated Cancer facility. She latched onto that and ran with it. It was no longer just a hospital fundraiser; it was the Cancer Fundraiser. It stirred up a renewed interest but it wasn't until her second change that people started to fall over themselves for tickets and the way that fundraising was conducted would forever change in Star City.

Chloe remembered thinking that knowing where their money was going was all good and proper but when shelling out big bucks, people liked to get something in return, something a little better than a meal consisting of boiled chicken and lame elevator music. "As altruistic as people are, no one likes giving money away, they need to feel like they bought something." She complained to Oliver one night after looking at the dismally low number of tickets sales.

"So sell them something." He shrugged.

"I wish I could sell them you." She glared tossing a pillow at his head.

"Do it." He smirked back. "I dare you." And the auction was born. It still wasn't perfect. Sure she had no reservations that Oliver and all the other rich and deliciously handsome men she got on board would fetch a pretty penny, it seemed tawdry to the Junior League.

"It got their panties all in a twist." Lois smirked. "They said it sounded like prostitution."

"If I could promise something like that, the prices would double." Chloe joked. So it was back to the drawing board. "I stole the idea from Oklahoma, you know the musical." Chloe admitted of her award winning idea. "The scene where the girls are auctioning off baskets. The guy buys the basket and gets to eat the contents with the girl who made it."

The Junior League loved it. At first the plan had been to create the basket's themselves and just assign one to each guy but Oliver put a stop to that. "I'm not selling a basket I didn't make." He bristled so Chloe let him make his own. Soon the other guys wanted to create their own baskets and that was that.

A basket could contain anything from a romantic dinner for two, to an evening at the Star City Arena to watch a Hawks game, to one very lucky girl who once got a flight to Paris to have a picnic on the Seine. Over the years the guys realized the more outrages the basket's contents the more money they raised.

Between the bachelor's and the basket's Chloe's hospital fundraisers have raised enough money to build a state of the art Cancer research and treatment facility at St. Luke's hospital which has become one of the top Cancer centers in the nation, two free clinics and the number one burn treatment center in America.

"This year is all about the kids, we need a dedicated Pediatric Hospital." Chloe said brainstorming ideas for her basket. Another new thing this year, the woman are the ones on the auction block.

"We got tired of doing all the work." Oliver huffed in between telling Chloe that her basket better be awesome or he was bidding on someone else's. Chloe reminded him that he wasn't going to know which one hers was and if he didn't get it right there was going to be hell to pay.

"The baskets are anonymous." Chloe explained. "You pay for the night, not the guy and hopefully you get lucky." Chloe's streak-in five years she'd chosen Oliver's basket four times.

"She picked the wrong basket the third year." Oliver said thoughtfully. "A trip up to Napa, dinner at the French Laundry, then a hot air balloon ride. It was a great basket and a great trip." He reminisced about taking Eleanor Rothschild, a 76 year old pillar of Star City's High Society. The Rothschild family once owned every acre from the harbor to the hot springs.

"I didn't pick wrong." Chloe insisted claiming that she gave the basket away. "Eleanor had always wanted to eat at the French Laundry but her husband wasn't that much of a foodie, a meat and Potatoes kind of guy. I let Eleanor have it."

"Don't listen to them, they're lying liars." Lois calls the both of them out. "She'd been trying to get Bruce [Wayne] to participate for years. He said he'd only do it if Chloe swore that she would bid on his basket. She conned Eleanor Rothschild into buying Oliver's."

Bruce's basket that year? "It was just a black card that said 'Adventure' on it." Oliver scoffed. "She won't even tell me what they did."

Chloe shrugged. "We spent an eye opening evening at the National Archives." She said innocently, with a tone that suggested there was definitely more to the story but she wasn't talking.

When asked to comment on that particular evening Bruce Wayne got a thoughtful, fond smile on his face then quickly schooled his features to show no more emotion and gave a very succinct "No comment."

Things went pretty well for a while until Chloe and Oliver disappeared into what the rest of the media has dubbed the Lost Year. His company, his money, his home was all taken from him by Carmine Luciano, a man who two years ago no one outside of a small select group had even heard of, was just last month Googled more times than Britney Spears (Britney came in at 37,200,00 and Luciano clocked a total of 43,240,00 searches). They dropped completely off the radar, lived a normal quiet life, alone and practically dirt poor for a little under an actual year but they were happy.

One night over Oliver's ridiculously delicious homemade tamales, strangely authentic for a rich white guy from Northern California, Chloe confided in me the plan that Oliver had come up with for that other life.

She'd spent the entire day watching Oliver attempt to repair a leaky faucet and after ten hours when he finally got the drip to stop they'd celebrated with the most disgustingly cheep bottle of wine from the corner store and Oliver laid it all out for her. They'd live in the apartment above the Stout Goat for a few more years while they saved up for a down payment on a small cottage out in the county. That's where they'd start a family, rebuild their lives and live out their twilight years possibly raising a few sheep or even pigs. All in all it sounded peaceful and nice and completely unlike the Chloe and Oliver I'd grown to know.

Chloe's made a few offhanded comments to me about how things seemed easier and simpler when there wasn't money or fame or notoriety in the way to screw things up, how every now and then she missed that life, that future but then she'd break ground on a new Cardiac Ward and know that she wouldn't change anything about her life now. "Except maybe the press."

That peaceful future out in the country would never come to be though. Because Oliver decided one day that he wasn't going to be a victim of Carmine Luciano and if he wasn't going to be a victim then he wasn't going to let anyone else become a victim either. So he did what most of us would never even imagine ourselves able to do, he did was most of us would never have the courage to do. He offered himself up, made the choice to allow the FBI to use him to get to Luciano. He spent every waking moment of the next year and half gathering as much evidence as he could. Evidence that eventually resulted in Luciano being charged with 17 counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, loan sharking, illegal gambling, tax evasion, obstruction of justice and the big one, 184 counts of human trafficking.

That was the one that was splashed all over Time Magazine, pictures of FBI agents opening up shipping containers and welcoming half starved, barely alive, men woman and children into the safety of the United States of America. It was undoubtedly the best press that the FBI had gotten since 9/11. That was what eventually led to 79 consecutive life sentences being handed down just last month.

I've been dancing around this issue for a few pages now, the story that you all bought this magazine to read, the incident at Clearwater Ridge. From the beginning, ever since I was offered this assignment it's the thing I most wanted to ask about, the story I most wanted to hear. Surprisingly however I wasn't the first one to broach the subject. I knew I couldn't just jump right in feet first, sit down with them on day one and ask about it. The subject was so personal, the questions would be so intrusive. I thought I would wait, allow us to get to know one another better, become more comfortable with each other first.

Time wore on and we got to know each other better, became increasingly more comfortable with each other and still I didn't ask. Chloe and Oliver had told me many stories that could be seen as even more personal, more intrusive. Chloe had told me stories about her mother, one of the only times I'd seen her cry. Oliver had spoken freely and openly about his own parents, what it was like to lose them so young, how he still missed them today, how much he'd wished his mother had lived to meet his wife and still I didn't ask.

We'd covered how they met, how they got together, all of the other milestones in their life, even that day, even the wedding it- self. But I never ventured past the reception, never pushed for anything that occurred after 10:00 that night. I just couldn't figure out where to start, what to ask first, should I hear the stories separately, get both of their versions to form one complete story or let them tell it together? I walked into their anniversary party, days before this article had to be turned in and still had yet to broach the subject with them. In the end I didn't have to ask anything.

The cake had been served, the presents handed out and many many drinks had been consumed. Chloe was telling me a particularly amusing story about her and Lois when they were still teenagers sneaking off to a frat party only to have it raided by none other than General Sam Lane, Lois' father, and the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Special Forces Group of the United States Army then dragged back home, kicking and screaming in the back of a Blackhawk. As she described in excruciating detail the expression on the General's face along with the looks of pity they were receiving from the other soldiers, I realized I hadn't laughed that hard in years.

"You'll run the pictures won't you?" She asks me out of nowhere, suddenly sobering the moment up.

I don't ask what pictures she's talking about, I don't have to. If you walked up to a random person on the street and asked them, "Have you seen the pictures," they know exactly what you are referring to.

"Do you not want me to?" I ask knowing just because I'm asking her now doesn't make me any better than all the others who plastered the pictures all over the place the first few hours after they were leaked.

She stared at me for a while and smiled, "How can you not print them?" She sipped her drink and swallowed hard. "I promised you could tell our story. That's part of our story."

She's right of course, even though it's not the only part of their story, in some ways it defines their story and I know, my editors know, I can't tell the story properly without the pictures. "Still." I pressed on, not sure why. Maybe I wanted her to forbid me, to give me some excuse not to print them. I must have looked at them a dozen times since I started researching this article.

You've probably all seen them. Even through the grainy quality of the security camera you can feel the pain in her eyes, the deeply soul aching sorrow, and every time I look at them, I feel like I'm intruding on something personal. I tell Chloe this.

"You're in the wrong business then." She laughed good naturedly. "They were personal, and then they weren't," Chloe shrugged. "Print them. Anyone can see them if they want to anyway. You just have to Google me." She hesitated and still I pushed.

"You don't seem so sure." I offer with a smile.

"No, I'm sure, it's fine. It's just…that's who I am now, who I'll be from now on. The girl in the bloody wedding dress." I don't have to say anything, agree or disagree. We both know the truth. That's who she became the minute they were leaked to the press. Leaked by a still as of yet unknown source inside the police department, which believe me is a sore subject you don't want to bring up with them. As if sensing what Chloe was telling me, Oliver broke off from the conversation he'd been having and walked over to join his wife, offer his help and support.

Then without further provocation on my side the whole story seemed to tumble out of her, as if it had been building up and building up and she wanted nothing more, needed nothing more than to just spit the whole thing out and have it done with. I gladly allowed her that luxury and simply listened. I didn't even take notes, I didn't have to, it's a story I'll likely never forget as long as I live. Oliver was quick to jump in and fill in the blanks, the parts of the story that Chloe didn't know, the parts of the story that Chloe couldn't tell.

A lot of the charges leveled against Carmine Luciano haven't yet made it to trial and being that most of them are part of an ongoing investigation, there is only so much that I can reveal at this time. Most of the particulars you already know. Around 4:00 in the morning, after leaving their second reception, Chloe and Oliver were headed home for a quick shower, a change of clothes and then back out to the airport for two weeks of relaxation on a beach in Morocco. They never made it home, at 4:28 a.m. they were driven off the road by a few of Luciano's henchmen. Chloe was left for dead while Oliver was dragged from the car, shot in the knee, and given a broken arm before he was taken away.

Chloe somehow managed to extricate herself from the rubble, walk a little over ten miles back until she made it to the Star City Police Station at 8:00 a.m. Around 3:00 that afternoon the police logged a call to Chloe's cell phone from the man simply called 'Jack the Ripper', he was offering to exchange Oliver to Chloe for the tidy sum of one hundred million dollars. The offer was ruse, something to throw the police off the scent and it didn't take long to figure that out. Jack was simply trying to buy some time so that he could kill Oliver and get away. He never had the chance though as he would later be taken out of the cabin at Clearwater Ridge in a body bag, dead at the hands of Carmine Luciano himself for what Carmine saw as an attempt to betray him.

They knew the ransom demand was a farce, it wasn't about the money, it was about information. They needed to know what Oliver knew, more importantly, the needed to know what Oliver knew and what, if anything he'd told the FBI. In a risky move, Special Agent Conner Mason signed off on a dangerous and completely unconventional plan thought up by Chloe Queen herself. She offered to go in, see Luciano face to face, pretend to bargain with him long enough for the FBI to get into position and take him down. The operation went off without a hitch. The day ended with Oliver recovering in a nearby hospital, Chloe at his bedside, Carmine and 27 of his associates in jail awaiting trial and the FBI in possession of three container numbers, numbers that would eventually help save many lives and put away the most notorious gangster to come along since Al Capone.

Just because it all seemed to turn out alright in the end, didn't mean that everything was rainbows and unicorns, clear skies and sweet dreams. There are obviously outward, visible scars from that day; a thin white line on the left side of Oliver's temple, Chloe sometimes sports slight, almost imperceptible limp, in her right leg when she's really tired. These are the physical scars.

"Wanna see something cool?" Oliver's face lit up when I pointed that out. He pushed up his sleeves and then extended his elbow as far as it could go. His arm curves to the right at a strange and somewhat disgusting angle. "Awesome huh?" Oliver bent and straightened his arm a few more times until Chloe slapped him. "It didn't heal right." He pulled his sleeve down.

"And whose fault is that?" Chloe glared at him, but it looked almost perfunctory as if she'd done it so many times she didn't really mean it, it was simply expected. "He decided three weeks before he was due to get the cast off to take it off himself, at the kitchen sink with my bread knife."

"It was itching like crazy." Oliver defended himself.

There are also other scars, not so visible to the naked eye. The way at times Chloe's knuckles would turn white as she gripped Oliver's hand in hers, like if she didn't hold on tight, he might slip away. The way neither of them seemed to be able to go five minutes without seeking the other out in the crowd, just to reassure themselves that the other person was there, was safe.

"Trust was a big thing for a while there." Chloe admitted. "You have to understand, I knew nothing about this until after he'd been gone for five hours. He'd been lying to me for a year and as glad as I was that he was safe, as proud as I was for what he'd done, I was still really hurt that he didn't tell me. I knew he was doing what he thought was best, trying to protect me but we'd never had secrets before." She shrugged. "And now we'll never have secrets again."

It seems cheesy and naïve but they really don't, excepting of course the story of what exactly Chloe and Bruce did on their night of adventure, Chloe and Oliver tell each other everything, and strangely enough that works for them. Perhaps it's because they know what other's don't. They know the most severest of consequence, they know the worse case scenario of what can happen when secrets are kept and things with held and they'll do anything it takes not to have to go through that again.

I was slightly shell shocked when she finished and wondering how on earth the party could still be going on around me after everything I'd just learned. Chloe wore a strange look of relief and surprisingly it took a few years off of her face. I figured now was as good a time as any to breach the next big subject. "What's next?" I asked them both.

"Cake I believe." Chloe answered cheekily.

"I meant for you guys. What's next for Chloe and Oliver. There's been talk of you running for office, Mayor, Governor, maybe even one day President." I pointed out, as if maybe they themselves had not yet heard these rumors. That image of Camelot once again popped in my head and I waited with bated breath as they seemed to really consider the question.

"I know people are throwing around a lot of things." Chloe wrinkled her nose. "They're already calling us the "First Couple", saying we could be the new Camelot."

"What do you think about that?" I wanted to know, I needed to know.

"I think…" Chloe paused for a minute, gathering her thoughts. "I think that my dining room table is square and that I look horrible in pearls." She said lightly. "Besides that, it rained nonstop last week and we're in California. If the fog lifts before noon it's a good day." (Unbeknownst to her, and simply further fueling my belief in her Camelot, Chloe refers here to the very same musical Jackie did. The song, aptly named Camelot says; The rain my never fall till after sundown, by eight, the morning fog must disappear).

As for Oliver, he's not discounting anything but he's certainly not announcing his candidacy. "I do whatever Chloe wants me to do." He joked and she very lovingly elbowed him in the chest. "I don't know what the future holds. Hopefully someday we'll have kids, maybe I'll run for office, maybe I'll retire next year and open a surf shop on the beach. What I do know is that they're about to be playing my song." Oliver waggled his eyebrows and Chloe looked at him questioningly. "You just sit right there and enjoy."

He spun her bar stool around so that it was facing the middle of the room. He nodded to a man by the jukebox and the music stopped abruptly. "As all of you no doubt know, my long suffering wife has been forced to put up with quite a lot in the past few years." There were murmurs of agreement all around and one very derisive snort from Lois Lane-Kent. "It's a testament to her love and patience that she didn't get rid of me a long time ago, not that she could if she tried. When we got married, I promised her eighty years, I'm not sure she could put up with me for that long, so how about we shoot for thirty and take it from there?" He smirked and nodded at the man standing by the jukebox again.

Music started up and suddenly there was a microphone in Oliver's hands. I recognized the song immediately, the Beatles, "When I'm Sixty-Four". From the expression on her face, so did Chloe. The bar went crazy when Oliver started to sing.

"When I get older losing my hair, many years from now. Will you still be sending me a Valentine? Birthday Greeting? Bottle of wine? If I'd been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?"

Chloe's face turned an interesting shade of pink as Oliver continued to serenade her, mapping out their future with the help of Sir Paul McCartney. He did it with a soft humor that managed to cut the edge of seriousness behind the songs meaning. A cheeky smile was betrayed by pleading eyes, hints of the insecure bachelor peeking out from under the surface, a remnant of the man too scared of rejection to ask Chloe out. As if sensing this Chloe smiled brightly at him, reassuring, reaffirming. And when he sang the words, "Grandchildren on your knee. Vera, Chuck, and Dave." She laughed fully and openly and winked at him.

"That's so what we're naming our kids." She threatened him, half joking, half serious as he grabbed her from the barstool by the hand and spun her into his chest. "I don't care if we have three girls."

When the song drew to a close the laughter from the other patrons was cut short very quickly by the sincere and passionate kiss that Oliver bestowed upon his wife, dipping her almost to the ground and marking her very publically. "I wasn't kidding about the name thing." She said softly, her eyes slightly out of focus, her breath coming just a hair to fast.

It was Oliver's turn to laugh and shake his head. "I'll play you for it." He offered and suddenly she was alert again, accepting the challenge and the two made their way over to pool table in the corner. Their stick's were handed to them with reverence as the balls were racked up. I watched from my perch at the bar as they smiled and joked, barely paying attention to the table as they sunk ball after ball, the fate of the names of their future children at stake and I thought to myself that they'd make it. They'd make it to sixty-four, they'd probably make it to eighty-four.

When you think of fairytales you think of evil stepmother's and wicked witches, you think of magical curses and fairy godmothers. There's generally a handsome Prince and a damsel in distress. Usually there's a heroic quest and a last minute rescue. Theirs is not that type of fairy tale. No one would deny that Oliver makes a handsome Prince but one minute with Chloe and you'll soon find out, she's no damsel in distress. If you spend an hour or more with her it becomes patently obvious that she's the one who in fact does the bulk of the rescuing in their relationship.

The fairytales did get one thing right. Whether there are evil stepmothers and fire breathing dragons, or fairy godparents and wise old wizards, one thing never fails. Most epic love stories don't start out very epic and that's ok because the beginning isn't what's important. What's important is the ending, what's important is what's after, the Happily Ever After. And if you can make it to there, then, in the words of John Lennon; It's gonna be alright.

"In short, there's simply not, a more congenial spot, for happily-ever-altering than here in Camelot."

- Camelot, the Musical

So that's it. The story is finally done. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I might possibly do a coda to this for Bruce and Chloe's night at the National Archives if anyone's interested but I promised a Christmas Chlollie story for a challange so it wouldn't be out for a while. Thanks so much for the feedback. You guys rock!!!