You almost didn’t recognize him at first.

Standing in the doorway of your apartment, framed by the dim glow of the streetlights outside, Roy Harper looked like a ghost—your ghost, back from the dead.

The last time you’d seen him… God, how long had it been? Five years? And even that wasn’t really him. It was him, but not.

The Roy Harper you had been seeing for the past eight years had been a clone, while the Roy Harper you met and loved was captured and stowed away once they got his DNA to make said clone. Forever hidden from the world. You didn't know any better. Neither did Ollie. The clone had all of the original's memories perfectly intact and was able to live his life with you and do the bidding he was originally created to do

Until he found out was a clone.

Then, would he grow obsessive to find his original self. He would end up leaving you, not really caring how it effected you. He just wanted to find his original self at all costs, sacrificing his health, his relationships. Just to find this clone. And he succeeded. But at what cost?

But this guy outside? This was the original Roy. The real one. The one who’d been stolen from you, replaced by a copy you hadn’t even realized wasn’t him until it was too late.

His red hair was longer, shaggier than you remembered. His face was harder, sharper, etched with the kind of exhaustion that came from years of anger and grief. And then there was his arm—or what was left of it. The sleek metal of his new prosthetic gleamed under the light, the weight of it shifting as he exhaled.

He just… stood there for a long moment, staring at you.

And you stared back, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

"You gonna let me in?" His voice was rough, quieter than you expected.