Chapter Text
Rain falls heavily on a man who was once known as Oliver Queen as he looks to the streets of Star City, holding his bow and hiding his face behind his hood and his mask. He lets the rain hit his back, dampening his costume made of the very same cloth his master and mentor, Yao Fei, used to wear before he died back on Lian-Yu, an island in the North China Sea. He doesn’t care if he gets soaked through; he doesn’t care if he catches a cold. He is nothing but a ghost of a sinner, a ghost of a foolish boy who only hurt the people he loved before his shipwreck did the world a favour and stranded him on that island for five long years. What kind of man cheats on his girlfriend with her sister?
That’s who Oliver Queen was—nothing but a weak, pathetic boy who floundered his wealth and cheated on those he loved because he was too drunk out of his mind to care. He deserved his fate on that island; he deserved the misery and torment he experienced for 5 years. Every day of starvation, every day of almost shivering to death as the winter months came and went, he deserved. He took it, he accepted it, and he almost craved the struggle of living on Lian-Yu as the years went by. It was his own personal hell, and he stayed alive to make sure he suffered every second of it.
Yao Fei, his master, who found him on that island and taught him how to survive and how to fight until he himself died of old age, with the only person to bury him being Oliver himself, is the reason he lives on. Yao Fei demanded he go home one day and continue to pay penance for his sins by giving his body and soul to fighting the criminals of Star City and to protecting innocent good people from the bad ones in his home city.
He’s been home for a year now, and he’s saved countless lives and killed countless criminals with his bow and arrows. But his penance will never end; there is no finish line. This is his life until, inevitably, one day somebody gets lucky and kills him.
But it won’t matter when that day comes to his family; he is dead already. To Laurel, the woman he loved but treated like dirt by drunkenly sleeping with her sister, which resulted in Sara’s death as their boat was shipwrecked, he is nothing but a bad memory. To Tommy, his best friend, he is also nothing but a memory, but in that case, a memory of a friend. He is the only person outside his family who may potentially miss him.
Oliver Queen died on that island. The man who now looks down through the rain, watching the nightlife of the city perched on a rooftop, is nothing but a ghost. A ghost who is nothing but a vessel, a vessel of justice against those who would hurt the innocent.
He is simply known to the world now as The Hood, a merciless weapon who spreads fear and death on those who deserve it. Oliver Queen is dead; only The Hood remains.
Being a ghost and being The Hood is easy; he uses his skills and dismantles anyone who gets in his way with ease. What’s hard is having to keep a steady job and a fake name to support himself. He'd much rather be fighting crime every hour of every day, but that, even for him, isn't physically possible.
But despite having a steady income, he doesn’t allow himself any great luxuries like delicious food or warm water; he only works at a steelworks factory to finance his weaponry and his nutrition to stay in peak physical condition. Weapons and sinners like him don’t get luxuries; they don’t deserve such things.
Some people call The Hood a hero. The man behind the hood, who looks down on the streets as cars drive through the rain, scoffs at this idea. He is no hero; he is a weapon, an instrument, and anyone who views him as a hero is a fool. Heroes don’t do what he does—ruthlessly killing criminals. No heroes are figures like Superman, a beaming light of hope to the world. The Hood is the furthest thing from a true hero like that. He is darkness; he is death; and he is nothing but a ghost who wishes one day to meet his end. With this thought in his mind, Oliver, or The Hood, as he refers to himself now, fires his bow to connect to the opposite building and swiftly moves off the rooftop to begin another night of serving out justice.