Home. Heart. Hero.

A Heroes Alliance

"Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can."

-Philip G. Zimbardo

Oliver was being taunted by the incessant beeping of the monitor that was telling him that all hope wasn't lost. For the past couple of hours his eyes had been glued on the woman lying in the bed in front of him refusing to open her eyes and let him breathe again. His hand was clutched tightly around hers hoping that if she knew he was there, then she'd know that there was someone here waiting for her to open her eyes. Oliver let out a sigh that was filled with both exhaustion and fear as he rubbed his tired eyes. In that moment, the events that lead to this moment struck him and he couldn't stop it.

Oliver heard the gunshot along with the shattering of glass, and he probably should've had a lot questions as to what was going on, but he didn't. In those few hectic moments there was only one thing on his mind...one person rather. Oliver didn't care if more bullets were coming as he jumped from the floor. He spotted Katie lying on her back, a hand pressed to her chest.

"No." Oliver muttered quickly dropping to his knees beside her, a hand dropping on top of hers to put pressure on the wound. "Hey-" he placed a hand on her cheek and turned her eyes to his. "I need you to look at me."

"I'm...I'm sorry." she whispered.

"Sorry for what, this isn't-" Oliver dropped his forehead to rest against hers as he tried to ignore the fear that was pulling on his insides. "This isn't your fault." he lifted his head at the sound of movement and saw Bruce standing with a phone to his ear.

" I need doctor or EMT, someone's been shot." Bruce spoke as he looked down to Katie lying on the floor. "I don't give a shit, get someone to this room now!" he dropped the phone and grabbed a shirt and sweat pants from the bed and quickly put them on before rushing to her side. "Hey Robins, you're going to be ok." Katie's eyes drifted closed and Oliver shook her slightly.

"Open your eyes!" Oliver yelled...no pleaded, but it was useless. "No, c'mon." Bruce placed his fingers on her neck.

"She still has a pulse, she must have just passed out." he said looking over to the hooded man. "You should go." Three words cause an anger to course through Oliver's veins. "This place is about to crawling with cops and I doubt you want to be here when that happens." Oliver couldn't even imagine letting go of the hand that rested inside of his at the moment. With every passing second he felt her slipping away and he felt that if he kept her hand, if he could hold onto her then she couldn't slip away from him. "Go and then come back, less costume." Oliver suddenly remembered that he wasn't supposed to be Oliver in this moment. He wasn't supposed to be showing feelings only Oliver Queen had. He was the vigilante, and the vigilante left when he knew help was coming. Yet, he couldn't let her hand go. "I will take care of her."

"You better." Oliver said gruffly knowing that was a promise he was going to hold the man to. He heard the commotion outside the door and knew he didn't have the time to debate whether he would do this or not. There were no other options, and so as painful as it felt, Oliver let go of Katie's hand, stood to his feet, turned around and stalked out to the balcony before lifting his arrow and sending a zipline to the building across the street. He didn't look back. He knew if he did look back then secret identity be damned, he wouldn't leave her.

A knock at the door pulled Oliver from his head. He lifted his eyes to see his mother standing there with two paper cups in her hand.

"I thought you could use a little caffeine." Moira said walking around to hand one of the cups to Oliver. Oliver took the cup graciously with his free hand, not wanting to let go of her hand. Moira watched her son closely, and knew she probably was the only who noticed the clenching of his jaw when he looked over to Katie, or the nervousness in his eyes when there was an irregular beep in one of her monitors.