A/N: Once again hit by those damn plot bunnies. This one's a little darker. The next chapter of Secrets will be up today or tomorrow depending on how well the characters behave.
Oliver trudged his way into the foundry, or The Arrow Cave as Felicity had affectionately named it. It seemed ironic to him that the place that he would go to forget everything that had happened between him and Felicity was the one place that reminded him of her the most.
Maybe he was just a masochist.
Out of instinct he scanned the room. Identifying all the exit points and all the blind spots, ensuring that no one was in the room with him and that he wouldn't be caught unaware. He had already let his guard down once this week and it had almost cost him Felicity.
He scrunched his eyes shut, willing the image of her covered in blood and rubble lying helpless in the Italian restaurant. He had seen many people die. In fact, he had seen his fair share of people he cared about die, but nothing compared to that moment when he thought that she had died and the guilt that washed over him as a result of it.
He steeled his head and his heart to focus on his mission. He scanned the foundry to decide which apparatus he wanted to use first in his attempt to wipe the any notion of a particular blonde as more than his partner or friend.
He spotted a manila folder on Felicity's desk and he furrowed his brow in confusion.
When Felicity first started helping The Arrow, she persistently told him that he could do good. Whenever he killed someone, Felicity would leave him a folder that contained all the information that the IT genius could find about the man that he killed. Particularly, she would find any information that would make the dead man more than a man that failed the city, but also a man with a family or she would manage to find the one good thing that he deceased had done in their life.
In the beginning, Oliver would throw the folder out, definitely not wanting to do what Felicity had intended: to humanise the victim. He was determined to ignore it, justifying the casualties of his crusade and the absence of his soul. However, there was one time, when he had killed a security guard, that he had looked through the dossier. It was a death that he couldn't justify, so he had spent that night pouring through the file. And the next time that he slept he saw the faces of every person that he had murdered.
But tonight he hadn't killed anyone.
In fact, he had gone to great lengths to find different ways to subdue his opponent without ending their life. And although he would never admit it to anyone, Oliver had had a lot of fun designing his trick arrows.
After Tommy died and he had made a vow to not to kill, he finally saw the value in what the babbling blonde had been doing for him. He began to treasure the material that she would leave him because it kept him grounded, it helped him see people as people. It helped him value human life.
There was one time that it didn't help.
It was after he killed The Count.
He felt no guilt when he killed him. He thought that he would. After he fired the last arrow into his chest, he waited for the guilt and the self-loathing to come, but it never did. Instead he was filled with relief that he had succeeded and Felicity had come out unscathed.
He spent the night absorbing every detail of Count Vertigo's life, trying to find any aspect of his life that would expose him as a human to Oliver. But no matter how hard he tried, he could only see him as a monster who had kidnapped someone so close to his heart. It also didn't help that he actually was a monster and didn't have very many redeeming qualities.
He was sitting on the cold hard ground leaning against the wall when Felicity found him. She had wanted to do a system update or something before heading into work. She found him sleeves rolled up and eyes bloodshot.
He begged her to stay.
She was his light.
She sat beside him, taking the files from him and placing them out of his sight. She looped her arm through his and pulled him toward her. He welcomed it, leaning his head on her shoulder.
He was too weary to fight. He was too tired to resist.
She whispered that everything was okay and assured him that the fact he wanted to humanise The Count was enough. Eventually, he fell asleep to her whispered assurances.
From then on, they always went through the information together. She would always turn up with a badly formed excuse and he would accept the excuse eagerly, not wanting to do it without her.
Tonight, however, she was nowhere to be found.
He picked up the file and occupied his usual posture against the cold wall.
He opened it up and was shocked to find an image of himself. He quickly canvased through the details of his life, surprised (but not really surprised) that Felicity had such intricate details about his life, especially from before the island.
When he made it through all the facts, he found pages and pages of photos of him.
There were photos of him with his family. Most of them were of him and Thea at different ages in their life. Thea always lit up the picture with her beaming smile. Thea always made him smile. For the longest time she was the only one who could bring him out of one of his brooding moods. Most of the pictures of him with his parents were stiff and posed.
Then the photos were of him in high school and college. Images of him falling down drunk with his arm slung over the shoulders of some random girl that he couldn't remember the names of. Visions of him with Tommy and with Laurel brought him back as well to a time that had seemed much simpler.
Finally there were pictures of him with 'Team Arrow'. There were very few pictures. There wouldn't be any, except on his birthday, Felicity had insisted that they commemorate the occasion. After all, he hadn't celebrated his birthday in five years. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he had celebrated with Anatoly when he was in Russia.
He flipped through the photos again and again.
He was so lost in them he missed the opening of the door. He felt more than saw Felicity transverse the room and take her usual spot beside him.
"He's human too," she gestured to the photos he was looking at. "You can't let him die."
He tossed her words around in his head. The darkness had taken his humanity years ago, but Felicity had always refused to believe that truth. What he did know was that the preservation of his life had led to the deaths of many others.
She pulled out another file that he hadn't realised she was holding. "There's one more person," she told him, handing it over to him.
He opened it up, this time struck with an image of his beautiful blonde counterpart.
He turned back to her confused.
She offered him a soft smile. "You can't let her die, either."
"I will never let anything happen to you," he promised immediately, holding her with his stare.
"Not physically," she said. She reached a hand over and caressed his cheek. "Being human is more than just surviving, Oliver."
"Felicity," Oliver warned her, not wanting to rehash the discussion of their relationship again. He was afraid that if she pleaded him again, he wouldn't have the strength to refuse her.
"Look at my file, Oliver," she instructed him. He obeyed her. He read through the many things about her life that he didn't know. He looked through photos of her with people that he had never met. She looked so happy, so content with all those people that it reaffirmed to him that she was better off without him.
"I see a human," Oliver said, "and you're right, I can't let her die." His fingers trailed over the pictures of her.
Felicity turned his face to look at her. "She won't die," she promised him, "but you might."
"Felicity," he sighed, "I can't be selfish with you. You're innocent and colourful and I can't be the one to darken you."
This is what she dreaded that he would say. That he would consider himself to broken for her.
"You told me that when you came back you couldn't see people as people," she started, "I think that you do now." She held both of his hands in hers along with his gaze. "Except for one person."
She paused and he stared at her questioningly.
"You," she declared. "You need to see yourself as a person, as a human. You need to look at how killing people affects you as a human being. You need to stop thinking about how being with me will hurt me, and start thinking about how not being with me will hurt you."
"I…I can't do that to you."
Felicity wiped the tears from his cheeks that he didn't know he had shed.
"Be selfish," she instructed, "tell me what you want, not what you think is best for me."
He knew what he wanted. He wanted her, but he couldn't do that to her. She didn't know what she was asking for. He opened his mouth to tell her just that, but the look in her eyes demanded that he answer honestly and he couldn't break another promise to her.
"Nothing would make me happier than to be with you," he confessed to her softly.
She smiled.
"But I can't do that to you," he backtracked, "I can't taint you."
Her smile didn't waiver. She picked up his file and opened it, showing it to Oliver. "It's alright," she told him, "we'll look at this until he becomes human to you."
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