Home. Heart. Hero.

A Hero to A Stubborn Damsel

       

"A hero is a man who is afraid to run away."

-English Proverb

The average person needs about seven and a half hours of sleep to function properly throughout their day. Katie would be lucky if she could achieve half of that. Every time she closed her eyes she was blessed with another horrible dream. Memories, really. She thought of them as nightmares and so that's what they were. She would close her eyes and be assaulted by a tortuously familiar smell, or touch, and her eyes would snap open. Her body would be covered in a cold sweat and her heart would be ramming in her chest as the remnants of said nightmare replayed in her mind.

After the sixth attempt and failure at sleep, Katie glanced over to her clock that read four o clock in the morning and she just sighed. That's when she gave up trying to accomplish her seven and a half hours and accepted that she probably just wouldn't function normally today. And so she did what she always did when she was unable to sleep. She slid out of bed, slipped on a tank top and a pair of yoga pants before quietly sneaking from her room. She usually didn't have to act so covertly, but there was the issue of her uninvited guest who was now taking up residence in her guest room that she now had to worry about waking. Yes, Oliver Queen was now her roommate, and he had been for two weeks now despite her protests. It made her think. Well it all made her think. This new Oliver who puts on a green hood and shoots arrows at bad guys. This new Oliver who seems to becoming strangely attached to her. In the past, sure they were "friends" They hung out sometimes, talked, listened to music. But none of it actually seemed real since no one outside of the two them knew about it. Sometimes she thought of herself as a toy. Something he could play with when his real friends weren't around. Now, some of the things this new Oliver did and said, just didn't make any sense. It just made her question a lot of things she thought she knew about the man.

Each step she said a silent prayer that they would not creak and give away her actions. The last thing she could even imagine doing right now is explaining the secret room she keeps in the basement. When she finally reached the basement door, she typed in the security code before pulling it open and quickly heading inside, closing the door behind her.

She didn't realize that she wasn't moving as covertly as she thought. And she certainly must have forgotten that Oliver Queen was an early bird who always woke up at the same time every morning. This morning was no different. So as he stood in the kitchen after his first walk through the house, he stopped when he heard the movement coming from the other room. He quietly moved toward the door, barely pushing it open enough for him to see Katie walking down the stairs. He thought she was about to leave, and he in turn was going to stop her, but she didn't head for the front door. Instead she turned and walked out of sight down a hall. Oliver slid through the door, his footsteps as quiet and quick as hers. The moment he turned down the hall, he saw her disappear through the basement door, it closing behind her. Interests totally and completely piqued now, Oliver walked down the length of the hall, stopping in front of the door noticing the key pad right beside the door knob. When he reached to turned the knob, as expected it didn't budge.

Oliver was at an impasse, because there were various ways to deal with this situation. He could simply ask her, but he was almost certain she'd just lie. She was so guarded about everything lately and he didn't doubt this would be any different. Then he thought that maybe he could figure out how to unlock the lock, but then he realized technology really wasn't his forte, but he knew who did have a knack for it. And so Oliver went in search for his phone and hoped it wasn't too early to call his trusty computer tech.