AN: I was extremely pissed off at what the show did to Laurel. The treatment of her character, and indeed, all the female characters on the show infuriate me to no end. Afteer Laurel died, I knew I was officially done with the show, so this fic - as a way of my venting - is not going to follow the events after 4x18. If there are Olicity fans wanting to engage in a flame war, forget it. Stick to your fics, let me at least have this chance to vent. Anyway, this is a rushed and unbeta'd fic. So do forgive the clunkiness of it.

Disclaimers: I don't own Arrow, THANK GOD. But I do borrow DC characters from time to time.

Things are not the same after the funeral.

Each member of the team retreats to their corner to deal with the grief now blanketing them. Time crawls slowly – too slowly, even when the alarms continue to sound and they fight to keep the city safe.

Rage is the first emotion that seizes all of them – most especially Diggle. His guilt is multiplied by the fact that trusting Andy had cost them a valuable member of the team. He almost kills Ruve Adams, but Oliver stops him just in time.

John Diggle has always been a man Oliver held in high esteem but in that moment, he is broken and lost. The haunted look in his eyes will be etched forever in Oliver's memory and though he tries to deny it, the inevitable truth hangs over them.

The team is falling apart.

Sara does not stay long after the funeral.

Strong, beautiful, vibrant Sara Lance – whose eyes had once shone with love for him – now regards him with contempt.

"I will never forgive you," she says, her eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears. "She was never supposed to die."

Yes, he mournfully agrees. Laurel was never supposed to die. If there was anybody whom he'd expected to die in this crusade, it had to be him. He, who had started all of this.

He silently accepts Sara's hate, knowing that this is where the similarities between her and Laurel end. Where Laurel's forgiving nature had transcended death and painful loss and helped him, Sara would not give him the same gift.

Thea stops talking for a week, and the most emotion she shows is in the heat of battle when she's taking out her grief on every armed thug they take down. She barely acknowledges her own brother, so consumed by anger over losing the woman who gave her a second chance at a decent life.

The obligation to restrain her falls on Diggle and it isn't until much later, in the apartment she shared with Laurel, that Thea cries.

The tears don't stop even when Malcolm comes to spirit her out of Star City to recover. His daughter doesn't put up a fight like she usually does.

"I know I'm not the love of your life, but you will always be the love of mine."

"You're wrong. It's always been you."

Yet even as he says this and Laurel smiles at him, a red stain blooms on her hospital gown until the material is dull crimson. Her heart monitor flatlines and she is still smiling at him as he screams in horror.

In his hands is the arrow that had pierced through her.

He wakes up, gasping for air with the sheets coiled around his waist. By his bed is the battered photo she gave him years ago. His trembling fingers trace her lips, following the way they curve into a smile.

Laurel is in every corner of the city – in its waking hours and in its darkest nights. Even when they weren't together, she was a part of this town and dedicated her life to protecting it. The times when he despaired of even being able to make a difference, she was always there to tell him exactly what he needed to hear. Despite having her fair share of inner demons, she believed in him and the fight he had taken upon himself to finish.

He hasn't felt so broken in years. The heartache he felt over breaking up with Felicity is nothing compared to the bone-deep sadness over losing Laurel. She had been his first real love, his first kiss, and had taught him in many ways to be the best version of himself.

On nights when he goes out to patrol alone, Oliver catches the barest whiff of a familiar perfume in the wind. He could be going insane from the grief, but if he closes his eyes and concentrates hard enough, it's almost as if she's right beside him.

"You should let it out," Lila Diggle urges him one evening. "You need to properly grieve."

Oliver refuses to because he knows that just like Thea, he will not be able to stop crying once he gives in.

The team is splintering right before his eyes and even Diggle, for all his wisdom, does not know what else to do to keep it together.

Felicity is hell-bent on finding another way to bring Laurel back. There are piles of books on her desk and they grow every single day. She copes best when she's trying to find answers and she goes about her new research with singleminded determination. Her fingers are blistered from writing tirelessly and her notebooks are filled with scribblings on every subject she understands and even those she can't grasp – everything from time travel, the occult, reincarnation.

Curtis doesn't dare question her after he gets an earful for supposedly making light of her research.

"Stop this, Felicity. She's not coming back," Oliver says as he lets himself into the lab.

Felicity doesn't look up from her laptop, pausing only to reach for another coffee. Oliver goes to stand beside her and it is a long wait before she tells him to get the fuck out.

"Sara came back. Thea came back. Why can't she?"

Those words are the knife to his heart. The sharp stab of pain blossoms and his grip on the door handle tightens. He wants to answer but opening his mouth to reply takes effort and he fears that he will only choke on empty words.

"I refuse to believe she can't come back."

He doesn't see Felicity for a month after that.

He swore he would never kill again, but he finds it too easy to break his oath once he has Damien Darhk in his sights. It's all too easy to end his life with one arrow to the heart, but Oliver Queen is a broken, grieving shell of a man. He will not give his enemy the satisfaction of a quick death, not after killing the woman he had loved more than his own life.

He returns to Laurel's grave that night, his fists and suit bloodied. He tells her that he has killed for her, and no matter what she may think of him now, he doesn't care. He did it for them, for what they had and lost.

Somewhere in his heart, he wishes there was something he could do to bring her back.

The most inconsolable of them is Captain Lance. Oliver wishes that he would berate him just like the old days when Sara had died twice.

But it isn't like that.

He finds the Lance patriarch staring at Laurel's grave, as if in a trance. Oliver has taken to leaving a single rose on her grave every day. Captain Lance doesn't even acknowledge his presence, always gazing past him. The bleakness in his eyes mirrors Oliver's, and soon Oliver gives up on even trying to get him to speak.

The dead roses are replaced with fresh ones. Each time Oliver goes back to the cemetery and Quentin Lance is there, he takes the withered roses, places a new one on Laurel's headstone, then steps away to watch a father mourn his child's passing.

Oliver can think of no better way to punish himself.

Time passes, seemingly cruel in its intent to erase her memory.

Oliver and Felicity try to make it work again. But even as they fall asleep in bed together, it feels wrong.

She is the first to break it off and he doesn't even fight it because he knows. He knows it's futile. It was futile the moment Laurel breathed her last. Staying together because of a promise made to the dying feels wrong to both of them. It ceased to be something borne out of love, and Felicity says that this is not how she wants to honor her friend.

She says goodbye. Oliver can only whisper for her to be well, wherever she chooses to go.

If it were true that the dead wish for the living to be happy, Oliver Queen cannot accept it. If he does, it means that Laurel is wholly and truly gone.

He wants to hate the people who still get up and live their lives, unaware of Laurel's sacrifice. Their lives remain unchanged in the face of his anguish, and all she got in return for everything she did was a funeral, one published eulogy in Star City News, and a 3-minute tribute video from their local news station.

It is a year since her death and Oliver throws himself into fighting crime as the Green Arrow if only to dull the pain.

Felicity has moved to Germany, Diggle and Lila relocated to Metropolis, and each day is harder to get through than the last.

Quentin Lance is retired now, moving as far away from Star City as possible after a drinking binge landed him in the hospital.

Oliver still brings roses to Laurel's grave, but he is the only one who visits now. All their friends have left. Thea never came back, and though she still sends him letters, they are brief and tell him absolutely nothing about her new life.

There have been other Black Canaries. He has met them time and again whether they came to his world or he ended up in theirs.

Always they look at him with pity in their eyes, because he is not their Oliver; and even for the ones who have lost their world's Green Arrow, they have no desire to taint a memory.

He wonders how many years will it take before it stops hurting. How many years will it take before he no longer remembers what it felt like to kiss her?

As the sun rises and casts a soft light on her headstone, his eyes trace the letters of her name. He is aware that replacing the flowers on her grave is the only thing he can do now, but that knowledge does not come without anger and regret over what he could have done differently.

Next time, he promises to himself, he will enter the grave beside her.

- END -