The Queen Diaries

Chapter 2: A Quiver Full of Arrows

A/N:  So here is the second diary/journal entry in this collection. I don't think this qualifies as a drabble because of its length, but I don't think it qualifies as a one-shot either, so yeah... feel free to call it what you like. I just hope that you like it, especially those who have already read the multi-chapter fics from which the characters and the events alluded to take off.

In the first entry, we went backwards in the timeline and Felicity wrote about how she had fallen in love with the widower Oliver Queen in my Olicity AU. This one is a future fic written from Oliver's POV when he's already 51 years old.

I wrote this one a few weeks back for Father's Day, and this is especially dedicated to my husband, to my Papa, and to all you fathers out there. Belated Happy Father's Day!  

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Oliver's Journal

June 20, 2032

Can't believe the nest is empty now. How the years have flown quickly by... Felicity and I were just talking about it over dinner, the first one of many that we'll be having without any of our children from now on. We've been married for over twenty years, and still going strong. And while I can't be happier and more content in life with anyone else but the love of my life, we both know that the Queen mansion, our home, won't be the same without them. After we had lost Mara when Felicity suffered from an early miscarriage 16 years ago, my wife and I had tried to get pregnant again and hadn't used any form of birth control until today, but... I guess Carrie is indeed our last one.

We said goodbye to her at the airport this afternoon. She's off to Harvard Business School beginning this Fall, but she was far too excited to be with her sisters in Cambridge. She insisted on heading east two months early so that she could spend time bonding with Emily and Liv before her freshman year starts. She had passed all the entrance exams in the best colleges and universities here at the west coast, and I was hoping she'd pick any one of them, just like TJ did a few years ago, so that she'd be closer to home. But she still picked Harvard. Of course! She won't admit it up until she was about to board the plane, but I'm pretty sure there has been a conspiracy going on between my wife and our daughters that all the Queen girls would be "educated" on the other side of the country, far away from the watchful eyes of their brothers and their doting father.

Father. (Sigh) Who would have ever thought that a billionaire-playboy-brat like me would end up the proud father of five beautiful and brilliant young adults? Actually, it's six, counting Connor, even if I hadn't gotten the privilege of really raising him as a real father should. 

Well, I must say that it's more than just Felicity's genes and mine; I believe that the greater reason behind that success is the committed partnership in parenting that my wife and I have shared all these years. Felicity is a terrific mother. That's actually one of her most admirable qualities – one that drew me to her the very first time we met at the park when she and I were still single parenting. She wasn't just a pretty face with a winsome smile and a sense of humor. I saw how much she adored and cared for little Emily. And the more I got to know her, the more I became convinced that she was the perfect woman who would fill the void in my life and in my son Stephen's life that my first wife Laurel had left when she died of cancer. Felicity did more than fill that void; she breathed life and joy into our lives. She still does. She helped make me the man that I am today. I wouldn't be the kind of father that I am today if not for her.

Father. I didn't know how profound that word really is. Until today. The day the last of the Queen siblings left home. It's Father's Day, actually, and we had been in church this morning. We had plenty of time to attend the service and listen to the Father's Day sermon before heading to the airport in time for Carrie's check-in. Our beloved Reverend Olsen is finally retiring at 78, and he delivered his last sermon on a particularly interesting Psalm that talks about the family, which really got my undivided attention.