Ollie Queen Has An Arrow For That (acearcher) wrote in valarnet, @ 2013-07-16 05:42:00 |
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Current mood: | sad |
Current music: | mark hildreth-goodbye my boy |
Entry tags: | !trigger warning, audrey, oliver queen (green arrow) |
it's just that i can't live with this so well
I'd like to talk about Roy Harper for a while here:
I was almost sixteen years old when my best friend told me that he and his wife were expecting a baby and asked me if I would be willing to be their son or daughter's godfather. I wouldn't say I wasn't shocked by that. Bill Harper and I were pretty close since we met at the local soup kitchen volunteering one summer. He was a fair bit older than me and he helped me become something of the man I wanted to be by giving me an example, and a shoulder. When he asked me about being godfather, I was excited, yeah, and I hoped, kind of, that someday I'd be able to do for his son what he'd done for me along the way. So of course I said yes.
I remember meeting my godson for the first time the night that he was born. I'd gone in as moral support, kind of, and I was the first visitor they back after Bill's parents to meet a tiny little boy with a huge shock of red hair sticking up all in directions, and eyes that were already green instead of blue like most kids. I think I kind of fell in love when he first grasped my thumb and I promised I would protect him and look out for him the best I could.
The first set of gold medals in 96? I won them for the toddler sitting watching me shoot with his parents from their house, who I called up first thing when I won, and even through the crazy ups and downs of my life, the Harpers gave me a whole lot of stability when I needed it most, when my dad had his stroke, then died, leaving me CEO of a company I never wanted, but now had a chance to reform...
I was Uncle Ollie and I was pretty awesome if Roy said so himself and stuff went well for a long time, with our lives going on the way they had, until spring 2004 when I got the phone call that my best friends were dead and Roy was angry at the world. I was his godfather, and legally, if I wanted him, could bring Roy home to live with me. Of course I did it, since I wanted to give the kid something, anything, after the blow that life just gave him.
Roy was angry, pissy and confused and we had standoff after standoff as we figured stuff out. I mean, here I was 27 years old having to learn to be a dad to a pre-teen, who was hurting so much I couldn't exactly help him, until I put a bow in Roy's hand on a whim and watched as archery became his focus and his saving grace.
I'm not going to say that it was easy. I kicked Roy out, or he ran away, after a really awful fight when he was almost seventeen himself, and he spent the next few years out on the streets away from me, eventually, doing an outreach where he talked to kids in gangs, trying to get them out, negotiated a few times, got shot, but always came back every time, ready to try again.
When Clint Barton told me Roy was working with him and I came back to see if we could work things out, I didn't think that it was going to happen at first. I had fucked a lot of stuff up, thought we'd burnt all our bridges, but eventually got lucky when he decided I was worthy of his trust again. Along the way, Roy started teaching archery at Urdnot Ranch, a place we both learned just as much from as Roy's students, struggled with his awful dreams that told him he wasn't worthy of love or being cared for as the rest of us, lost his arm in the earthquake of last summer, bravely carried on without it, until a good doctor could grow it back, and endured so much pain with courage and determination that he'd see it through. Roy never was graceful about it, maybe, but he still endured, and pressed forward, encouraging me in everything, just as much, if not more, than I had ever encouraged him.
Our local chivalry, and those back in the bay, have stories of the years Roy and I spent shooting together, then against each other, and how humbled and proud I was the first event where he outshot me, proved that he was growing up, and that somehow when I wasn't looking, that little boy I'd loved had somehow become a man.
For the last year and a half that man and I have struggled, come together, fallen apart, come back together, learned to co-exist, though we had issues, but didn't we all? Roy saw me through so much, and I tried to do the same for him. I really did. I saw him become a hero in ways that were only eclipsed by the dreams, and in all the ways that mattered most. I saw him reach out to kids in need, to care for others, help a scared and confused girl adjust to being in a family, help the saddest and angriest kids to find a place of calm, and help a unreptantly immature manchild learn more about being an adult.
When I got the call not long ago that Roy had fallen while doing work to aid someone again, and I was needed to come see to him, of course I went there in a moment, convinced I could still save him, even though it was too late. I'm not surprised he fell while helping someone. If there was anything Roy managed to do and to do well it was making sure others were all right, no matter his personal sacrifices.
That he was forced to give his mind, and then his life to such things hurts, but I can't think he'd have it any other way.
Roy wanted to get a degree at last, worked hard to be accepted into Chapman for next fall and planned to study education in the community so that he could come back to Urdnot Ranch, or somewhere like it as a teacher of academic subjects, or maybe a counselor for kids like the ones he learned that he loved helping. He was courageous and determined, and while my boy had his moments, the bad weeks, and months of them, above all else, he was unselfish, determined, and dedicated to making sure that somewhere, everyone felt loved, and as if they belonged.
Those are all things that he got from his parents because I could spend my whole life trying, and never manage to do half as well, nor to fill the Roy shaped hole that's everywhere in the lives of everyone he loved and who loved him. Roy may be going back to his parents on Wednesday, when we say goodbye for the last time, and bury him and I give Bill back the man his little boy became, but there's so much of him that's going to linger here, with me, in all the lives and things he touched that is still tangible and raw and achy and I'm not sure how I'll manage to go on without him by my side, or screaming at me or...
Roy William Harper was a great man, more importantly, he was a good one and those things that he did in life will always be remembered.
I hope my son is sleeping now, in a peace he could never have, but earned ten times over in life, that he knows how much I loved him in the end, and that one day we'll meet again. There isn't much to say besides all that. But that I'll miss him and I don't where I'm going next, what I'm going to do, but that my world's a whole lot darker with his light extinguished from it. I will never forget at any rate, and just wanted to make that clear, a little if I've managed to make any sense at all here. One last thing to wrap this up and then I'm done, I swear. This is part of the service Wednsday, and it seems appropriate to post it here:
To an Athlete Dying Young
BY A. E. HOUSMAN
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
I love you my boy, I miss you, and I always will.