A soulmate is someone you sleep beside.
Oliver's chest rises … and falls, rises, and falls, until Felicity forgets what her own breathing is like independent from his. Head on his collarbone, she keeps a hand over his heart, wave-watcher, time-keeper. They had twenty minutes of air in the bunker; she wishes she knew how few they have now. The awareness of imminent doom is a peripheral ache, like a terminal diagnosis: somehow not real, and decidedly not happening to her. Or him.
Nothing bad can happen to him. The world has disagreed on too many occasions, but she will fight it for him. She will wrestle death to the ground if that's what it takes, prying him from the jaws of his would-be killers.
Exhaling, Felicity sits up and taps his cheek. "Oliver?" she tries, but he doesn't move. She cups his face in both hands, shaking his head lightly, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. "Oliver, wake up. Wake up." Pressing her forehead against his, she pleads, "Come back to me."
He doesn't respond, but his chest rises … and falls, steady-for-now. She lets go and slides back down his chest, hand splayed against his shirt. She can't leave him. Even if she could use her legs, Oliver's assessment – another dead-end – leaves her with two grim options: stay and suffocate down here, or climb to the next level and suffocate up there.
Either way, it's a slow and almost kind way to die, gradual numbness preceding total system failure. In the end, there will be no struggle. She will just lie down and die.
Thinking about it makes her hands cold.
They don't deserve it. Just shy of thirty-two, Oliver does not deserve to go gently into that good night. Despite being four years younger, Felicity knows she has accrued a fair amount of bad karma courtesy of her hacktivist lifestyle; maybe she deserves a certain comeuppance. But Oliver – who endured Lian Yu, Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, Ra's al Ghul, and Damien Darhk – deserves compensation. He deserves a better life than the one he has been forced to live.
She wants to make it happen, but she is tired, too, and he is warm and inviting underneath her.
With her eyes closed, she can almost pretend they're in bed together. They don't speak, but they don't fall asleep, either, savoring the shared space.
In those quiet pre-dawn moments, she thinks Plato is right: they are one person, sharing a split-soul. He challenges, annoys, exasperates, and excites; pushes her hard and embraces the push-back; contours to her whims and carves his own paths; lives his life with her in mind. They're intellectual equals, emotional counterparts, inescapably conscious of each other's presence regardless of where they are.
She knows she could walk away from him and live a full and happy life, but it would never be the same as one she could spend with him. Despite everything, she wants to know what that shared life could be like. She wants to know what else he can reveal about her, how far she can go, who she is. Like two poles, she is only conscious of her identity in the face of his opposition. She wants him to draw lines she won't cross and reach goals he can't meet to better understand herself.
She wants to live alongside him a little longer. Another hour, she bargains, stroking his shirt. Another day.
Another year, another life.
She sinks passively into the lilac dream, Oliver's laughter stirring the leaves, her arms dangling around his neck. He's carrying her, a joyful exertion laboring his breath and step. He seems happy, working hard, and she rests her cheek on his shoulder. The dirt trail wanders aimlessly before them; her mind wanders, too, supplying a story that makes his silver laughter stir, bubbly and warm. After a while, they stop near a tree and he sets her down gently. She steps forward to run her hand across the beaten-up marker nailed to the bark. Pacific Crest Trail.
He exhales near her, exultant, and she turns around, draping her arms around his neck, and dreams that their lives are here and only here.
In real time, Oliver inhales sharply and Felicity blinks, sitting up a little. "Oliver?" she asks.
Eyes open, he lurches upright in alarm and winces, prompting her to push-back. His back hits the wall with more force than she intends, but he stares at her without anger, regret, or fear.
Soft trust melts in those eyes. "Felicity," he replies, barely a breath and still everything he has.
Aching with relief, she says, "Thank God you're okay."
He's not, not by a long shot, but his eyes on hers are all she needs to know he'll be okay.
Stay in this dream with me, she silently commands.
Stay with me.
He does, to the very end.