Chapter 1: Awakening in Starling
Consciousness returned like surfacing from deep water—sudden, gasping, desperate. Ben's eyes snapped open to unfamiliar ceiling tiles, water-stained and cracked in patterns that made no sense. The fluorescent light above buzzed with the persistence of a dying insect, casting everything in sickly yellow.
His head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
Ben tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room spun, and bile rose in his throat. He gripped the edge of what he now realized was a narrow bed, knuckles white against cheap sheets that smelled of industrial detergent and desperation.
Where the hell am I?
The memories came in fragments, scattered puzzle pieces that didn't fit together. A building collapsing. Children screaming. His hands shoving a little girl with pigtails toward the exit just as the ceiling gave way. The crushing weight. The darkness. The—
"No." His voice cracked in the empty room. "That can't be right."
Because mixed in with those crystal-clear memories of his death were others that made no sense. Signing a lease for this apartment six weeks ago. Opening a bank account. Buying groceries at a corner store where the clerk called him by name. Living here. Breathing here. Being alive here.
Ben stumbled to his feet, legs unsteady, and caught sight of himself in a mirror hanging on the opposite wall. His reflection stopped him cold.
It was his face, but wrong. Younger. The lines around his eyes had vanished. The gray threading through his hair was gone, leaving it the dark brown of his twenties. His body felt different too—leaner, stronger, like someone had fine-tuned the engine and upgraded all the parts.
Papers were scattered across the small table by the window. With trembling hands, Ben gathered them up: a lease agreement for one Benjamin Hale, dated two months ago. A bank statement showing modest savings. A gym membership card. A driver's license with his face and an address that matched the apartment around him.
All in a place that shouldn't exist.
Through the grimy window, a skyline stretched toward gray skies. Not the familiar towers of Chicago, where he'd lived and died, but something from a half-remembered dream. The architecture was wrong, the layout impossible, but the name on the street signs visible below made his blood freeze.
Starling City.
"Jesus Christ." The words came out as a whisper. "This isn't real. This can't be real."
But the ache in his muscles was real. The stale air in his lungs was real. The sound of sirens in the distance and shouting from the street below was real.
The Arrowverse. The thought hit him like a physical blow. I'm in the goddamn Arrowverse.
Ben had watched the shows. Arrow, Flash, the whole interconnected mess of heroes and villains and world-ending catastrophes that somehow always got resolved in forty-two minutes plus commercials. But that was television. Fiction. Entertainment for lonely evenings when he had nothing else to do.
This was impossible.
"I remember everything that happened to me before, but I also remember living here for two months. How is that possible? Who set this up? And why me?"
The questions crowded his mind, each one spawning a dozen more. He needed answers, needed some kind of anchor in this sea of impossibility. But first, he needed to figure out when exactly he'd landed.
Ben fumbled for the television remote, hands still shaking. The ancient set took forever to warm up, static giving way to a local news channel. The date in the corner made his heart sink.
October 15th, 2012.
Three months before Oliver Queen would return from his five-year island vacation and start putting arrows through corrupt businessmen. Three months before the vigilante known as the Hood would begin his crusade to save Starling City from itself.
Which meant he had three months to figure out how to survive in a world where people regularly threw cars at each other and calling the police was more likely to get you shot than helped.
Unless...
A wild hope bloomed in his chest. If he was here, if this was real, then he could change things. He knew what was coming. The Undertaking. Malcolm Merlyn's plan to level the Glades with an artificial earthquake. Thousands would die unless someone stopped it.
Ben lunged for the phone on the nightstand and dialed 911.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"There's going to be an attack on the Glades," he said, words tumbling over each other. "Malcolm Merlyn is planning to—"
The words died in his throat. Not because he'd changed his mind, but because his mouth simply stopped working. He tried again, concentrating on each syllable.
"Malcolm Merlyn is going to banana hammock dancing the penguin tornado!"
Ben stared at the phone in horror. The dispatcher's voice crackled through the speaker. "Sir? I didn't understand that. Can you repeat your emergency?"
He tried once more, focusing with every ounce of willpower he possessed. "Malcolm Merlyn will destroy the Glades with a— with a rainbow unicorn disco ball!"
"Sir, if this is a prank call, I need to warn you that—"
Ben hung up.
His hands were shaking again, but this time from rage, not confusion. He grabbed a pen from the table and tried to write it down. Malcolm Merlyn earthquake machine came out as Malcolm Merlyn banana hammock. Text message. Email. Even crude drawings—every attempt to communicate direct knowledge of the future turned into gibberish.
"What kind of cosmic bullshit is this?" he snarled at the empty apartment.
"It's like the universe itself is preventing me from spoiling the plot. Some kind of temporal protection mechanism? Or maybe whoever brought me here built in safeguards. Either way, I can't just call up the police and dump everything I know. I'm stuck watching disasters unfold unless I can find another way to stop them."
The weight of it settled on his shoulders like a lead blanket. He had knowledge that could save thousands of lives, and he couldn't use it. Not directly.
But indirectly...
Ben dressed quickly in clothes he didn't remember buying but that fit perfectly. If he couldn't warn people about what was coming, maybe he could prepare them. Get stronger. Get smarter. Find ways to intervene that didn't require spoiling future events.
The Glades stretched out below his window—a sprawling cancer of poverty and desperation that the rest of Starling City preferred to ignore. According to the shows, this place would become ground zero for Malcolm's revenge. These people would be the first to die when the earthquake machines activated.
Ben had failed to save those children in Chicago. He'd died trying, but failure was still failure.
He wouldn't fail again.
The streets of the Glades hit him like a physical assault. The smell came first—garbage, unwashed bodies, desperation given form. Then the sounds: car horns, shouting, the distant wail of sirens that everyone ignored because they'd learned the police only came here to clean up bodies. Finally, the sights: boarded windows, graffiti tags marking territory, people hunched into themselves as they hurried past each other without making eye contact.
This wasn't the sanitized version of urban decay he'd seen on television. This was raw, immediate, and utterly real.
Ben had made it maybe three blocks when the kid struck.
She was good—he'd give her that. Maybe sixteen, dressed in layers despite the autumn warmth, moving through the crowd like smoke. Ben didn't even feel her hand in his pocket until she was already pulling back with his wallet.
Their eyes met for a split second. Hers were dark, suspicious, calculating. His must have shown recognition, because she froze.
Sin. He knew her from the show. Sara Lance's protégé, a street kid who'd learned to survive through skill and stubbornness and carefully cultivated connections. In a few years, she'd be part of Team Arrow's extended family.
Right now, she was a desperate teenager trying to survive in hell.
"Keep it," Ben said quietly.
She blinked. "What?"
"The wallet. Keep it." He pulled a twenty from his remaining cash and held it out. "You need it more than I do."
Sin stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "You some kind of cop?"
"Do I look like a cop to you?"
She studied him with eyes too old for her face. In the shows, Sin was fierce, loyal, protective of the weak. Here, she was just scared. A kid trying to make it through another day in a place that ate people alive.
"Why?" she asked.
Because I know you're going to be important someday. Because I know you're going to help save this city. Because I failed to save kids before and maybe this is my chance to get it right.
"Because everyone deserves a break sometimes," he said instead.
Sin snatched the twenty from his fingers, but she didn't run. "You're new."
"Yeah."
"Looking for work?"
Ben nodded.
"Try Marcus's gym. Two blocks north, then left on forty-second. He needs someone to teach the moms how to fight." She paused, studying him again. "You know how to fight?"
I died protecting children from a building collapse. I spent years learning every martial art I could get my hands on because I was terrified of being helpless again. I've got muscle memory from a dozen different fighting styles and the desperate need to never, ever let anyone else die on my watch.
"I know how to fight," he said.
Sin nodded and melted back into the crowd, but not before he caught a glimpse of something that might have been respect in her expression.
Ben made his way through the Glades' twisted streets, cataloguing everything. Gang tags that would matter later. Businesses that would be destroyed in the earthquake. People who would die if he couldn't find a way to stop what was coming.
The weight of future knowledge pressed down on him with every step. He knew which corners would become drug markets. Which buildings would collapse. Which families would lose everything when Malcolm Merlyn's grand plan finally came to fruition.
And he couldn't tell anyone.
"The cosmic gag order means I have to be smart about this. Subtle. I can't warn people directly, but I can prepare them. Train them. Make them stronger. Maybe if enough people survive the initial attack, the ripple effects will change everything else."
The thought of ripple effects made him pause. If he changed too much, would Oliver Queen still become the Arrow? Would Barry Allen still become the Flash? He'd read enough time travel stories to know that even small changes could have massive consequences.
But what was the alternative? Let thousands die because he was afraid of disrupting a television show's timeline?
No. He'd figure out the consequences later. Right now, he had work to do.
The lead on the gym job felt like the first step on a very long, very dangerous road. Teaching people to defend themselves wouldn't stop an artificial earthquake, but it was something. A place to start building whatever network he'd need to survive in this impossible world.
Ben turned onto Forty-second Street, the gym's neon sign flickering in the gathering dusk. Through the windows, he could see people working out with the desperate intensity of those who knew violence was always just around the corner.
This is insane. I'm dead. I should be dead. Instead, I'm in a world where people dress up in leather and shoot arrows at crime bosses, and apparently my job is to somehow save everyone without being able to tell them what they need to be saved from.
But insane or not, it was real. The ache in his muscles was real. The twenty-dollar bill Sin had taken was real. The knowledge burning in his skull like acid was real.
And if this was his second chance—his chance to be the hero he'd failed to be in Chicago—then he was going to take it.
Even if the universe itself seemed determined to make him do it the hard way.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
Can't wait for the next chapter of [ Arrowverse: The Survivor's ]?
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them (20+ chapters ahead!). No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1