a/n: This started as a hiatus fic inspired by 'Heartbroke' by Wakey Wakey, and progressed into a little of where I think this is heading. As a warning, I do speculate about who died and was buried in the scene we've seen a couple of times now. I actually have a few theories and this is just one. All of them are probably wrong.

disclaimer: I don't own Arrow and no infringement is intended.

lost for a lost cause (dark as a heart gets)

At some point when he was younger, he resigned himself to the facts: all relationships were a little screwed up. All relationships took work and effort he wasn't necessarily willing to give, at least not all the time. When he was with Laurel, or any of the nameless girls he entertained whether he and Laurel were 'on' or 'off' at the time, he had brief moments where he wanted the picture she painted to eventually become real. In some abstract way, he wanted the house and the kids and the marriage that cleaned up so nicely for public viewing. He embraced the idea he was supposed to want it and so he wanted it for a future he couldn't quite make out yet because it was still so far away.

That all changed, of course. He did five years on Lian Yu and that future changed before it sharpened. It took time for it to become crystal clear, and when his focus locked, it was very different. It never fit quite right, never felt entirely right – but it wasn't his future anyway. It was his present and that was all he was living for because with the choices he made, he didn't trust his present not to suddenly run out.

At some point, he resigned himself to the facts: he'd lost the possibility he had squandered as a child. He was going to be alone, leading a violent and fast life until he just wasn't anymore. That's what the island had shaped, that was the man he'd become. Even as he openly cried about Sara's death and told Diggle he didn't want to die and end up alone on a metal table, he couldn't see any further in front of him than that solitary and inevitable conclusion.

That all changed, of course. He found a way to let someone in, let someone close. He let someone make plans and include him. It was mostly her fault, for being so bright and lovely and irresistible and real. She was so real there was no denying her and of course they started building a life together.

He's known for a long time that he's a complicated person. He's a realist, first and foremost. His experiences during the lost five years cemented a certain lack of naïveté into him. His time with Felicity didn't put a crack in it at all, but it did help him stop living like his life was on a timer. Still, his eyes have and will always be wide open and his thoughts and perceptions are always moving, always shifting, ever-changing. Just because he found one person who could keep up, because her mind somehow moves faster, doesn't mean he ever stopped.

That becomes crystal clear in the instant the door closes behind her because his thoughts explode.

Most people talk about vibrant explosions of color, new appreciation for the world around them, or the world fading to gray in an oppositional sort of force. Every momentous change brings about some kind of mental explosion until they can assimilate whatever has happened, for better or worse. He doesn't have that, an adjustment period. His thoughts go dark. He wasn't exaggerating or romanticizing anything when he said she was his light.

In the moments after she's gone and he feels it, really feels it but can't dismiss it yet, he can admit he's afraid of one question.

What will become of him now?

The fight with Darhk is getting more unmanageable by the second.

He needs to do something that isn't dealing with Cupid's brush with irrationality instead. He let himself get caught up in that and with pitch-perfect clarity, as he's standing in the lair beneath what would have been his office with a ring in his hand that he doesn't want and his heart in his throat against all biological logic, he knows that more than he knows anything at all.

Slade Wilson and Ra's al-Ghul tried their damndest to make sure he received messages about loss, that he would know how it felt to lose everything. One thing they never managed to do was force hope to flee.

(He managed that one all by himself.)

He doesn't know how to let go of her without letting go of all the progress he's made being an actual person with actual feelings, with communicating and letting people close to him. When he first returned home, he tried. He tried to talk to Laurel, tried to talk to Tommy with the help of a lot of alcohol, wanted to talk to Thea but couldn't make himself destroy her innocence quite like that. Once he realized he couldn't give Digg the slip like he'd done with so many others, he managed to say just enough. The last time he faced this kind of choice, he shut them all out and almost lost them. She thinks he'll be forced into those choices again.

Why can't she see she's the one forcing it now? She's not leaving him a lot of options. Neither is Damian Darhk. Deep down, he's always suspected he'd have to beat him and conquer the weird things he saw on the island at the same time because it's all so similar.

He doesn't want to be that man again, but it might be the only way he can win. Or he can die trying.

Only to himself, he wonders what difference it would make anyway. He's clearly never going to get past the choices he's made. The only person he wants to try for doesn't want to let him past them anyway.

At some point, this was inevitable. He told her he couldn't do this or have this with her because the lifestyle was risky. He just didn't think at the time that he was talking about it squandering potential. Love isn't fragile, but trust is and he didn't fully trust himself not to screw it all up. It turns out, she's just as afraid as he is and maybe he shouldn't have trusted her so readily. Between the two of them, they have enough baggage to travel the world. The way she sets her shoulders just makes it seem lighter somehow and he was willing to learn her art.

That all changed, of course. She's biting and sarcastic, awkwardly heartbroken and heavy around him now. John said she needs time, but Oliver hears her declare she's already gone, can't make himself watch her go and he isn't so sure. It feels heavier, more permanent. As sad as it is and as much as others would tell him not to, he trusts that feeling a hell of a lot more than he actually trusted the last and best eight months of his life.

He can't let her go, exactly. That's not his decision. He isn't entirely sure he's let her do anything in the entire time he's known her. Pushing against her, letting her well-crafted arguments shape his poorer decisions in to something rational, is probably the most alive he's felt. That feeling dies, and it's not a slow or painless death. So no, he doesn't let her go. Instead, she just sort of goes and takes all the light, the best of him or the best he'll ever be, with her when she does.

The door isn't the only thing that closes when she leaves and he can tell Digg knows the next time they see each other because all Oliver can manage to do is shake his head. He's back to not being able to say words because what he has to say, what others have to say, it doesn't matter anyway.

If he's going to do this, he has to do it alone.

The little kid aching for approval of the most solid father he's known in a long time thinks maybe that father, Captain Lance, was right about him all along and he should be alone forever.

It all happens so fast.

The mercy he granted Malcolm in an effort to spare his sister was the wrong move. Malcolm is in bed with Damian Darhk and it's a problem.

The first person they go after, as a match made in hell, is Quentin Lance and despite their best efforts, the man is dead before anyone can blink. It's a swift and coordinated attack that leaves a huge hole. In some ways, it's probably good because it keeps Oliver from losing focus entirely. He's so good in these situations because he can shut off his feelings and act. There's something viscerally satisfying in planning how he'll finally kill Malcolm Merlyn because he knows he has the upper ground and he has no hope now that the man who fathered two of the best people the world has to offer has any good left. Apparently, he gave it all to his children and kept none for himself.

That all changes, of course because he's so scattered trying to deal with everything. Thea is still looking at him like he's made of glass and he's about to break. The only thing he's said to her is that he was broken to begin with. It isn't like his relationship status has changed anything, exactly. Laurel is a fucking wreck and John has his hands full with her, which is kind of nice because he's not paying much attention to what Oliver's doing as Oliver tries to figure out how in the hell to get in touch with Sara.

He wishes, for what won't be the first time, that he could see his little boy and have the reminder what they're all fighting for, why they want Star City or any other city to be better than it has been. He wishes he could ask Lance for advice on how to be a dad, how to be relentlessly present through ugly decisions and how to become a team with a little person who is half you and probably four times as stubborn. He wishes he'd been able to get words out, to tell Lance thank you for the assistance that cost the man his life. He wishes he'd been a better man so Laurel wouldn't be alone in this world.

It's impossible to sleep. He'd already thought he'd lost everything, but he was wrong. He can't shake the paranoid feeling they're all sitting ducks, unwittingly playing into everything Darhk has planned.

Thea tries to talk to him, but can't get words out of him. Digg tries to get him to drink whiskey, to relax and sleep, and he can't swallow more than an ounce before he's up and pacing, his stomach unsettled and nerves frayed. He can't go back to the apartment he shared with Felicity because it just makes him feel worse about everything, including himself –which has the potential to be deadly in terms of distraction. He can feel the difference between what his life has been and what it has become. Part of him wants to see her and part of him doesn't want her to see him like this. There's no pride in it, no dignity at all.

At some point, he resigns himself to the fact that he's going to have to start thinking like them and fighting like them if he wants to win. John Constantine marked him for protection, gave him the power to channel the kind of energy his enemies have been channeling. He just doesn't know how to do it, or rather, what kind of talisman he might need to make it possible. He doesn't want to think of how many people Reiter killed for access to badly-wielded power, and what that could mean in terms of what he'll have to do.

By the time he sees her, surprised to find her waiting in the limo John had used to retrieve him from the broken-down apartment he hid in following his mother's death, he's managed to whip his insides into a small storm. John has been less than subtle in his give her time, give it time, take care of yourself and be ready for life to fall back together. Oliver immediately suspects a matchmaking attempt, but can't decide whether to be pissed or relieved, given his current mental and emotional state.

('Barely held together with glue that can only be called dread of what he's got to do and how he's pretty sure she'll never forgive him for it because he isn't sure he'll be able to pull himself out of the hole it'll require him to sink into.' That's an emotional state, isn't it?)

There is no concept of time and space as he sits there in the same place as her for the first time in way too long. He wants to talk to her – he doesdespite what she wants and probably thinks. He just can't seem to make words while the words in his brain replay their last meeting. She always asks the impossible of him – to say he doesn't love her, to let her go. The only thing he hates about her is the underlying fears that keep her choosing not to be with him because he needs her so badly. He knows he fucked up and knows she had a point and he's absolutely willing to work on it, to try harder, to do better. She hasn't been receptive and he doesn't know if she would be now, so he just stares out the window.

"Are you okay?" She finally asks, quietly. He's heard eight or nine variations of that question today alone, and the answer is quite simple. It's the only word he can actually find.

"No," he breathes out, afraid if he says much more, he'll start crying again. He doesn't want to start crying again. He doesn't cry a lot when he cries, mostly eyes filling up and blinking water away, but it still gives him a headache. "You?"

There's a gasp and, for as well as he used to know her, he isn't completely sure if its disbelief or if its an answer. "You know what this means, don't you?" That question turns his head and he looks at her and it doesn't hurt any less than it should. "You have to kill the son of a bitch."

Oliver lets in a deep breath that he's fooled himself into thinking will keep him steady, at least outwardly, and nods. His voice is rough and quiet. "I know. I should have already."

"This is not your fault," she says immediately.

He kind of wishes he could feel it, but with the disconnect between them, he thinks a lot of things are his fault and she doesn't get to alleviate guilt or redistribute blame. It used to be her job because she knows him better than anyone else, but now…

Now he's going to repeat what he said to Barry at Quentin's graveside.

"There was a time I would've thought I deserved this," he says quietly. He turns away from her. "Now I just think I need to end it. Killing Malcolm is going to change me." The air between them is so charged there's no way she thinks he's done speaking. "You're not going to like what I'll have to become, Felicity. It's going to change everything."

"It doesn't have to. You just have to remember what you're fighting for," she responds eventually and he has no idea what it is he can hear in her voice, especially while he's stubbornly looking away.

He thinks about her, even though she's not part of his daily life anymore. He's heard about the things Palmer Tech is doing under her leadership, with Curtis' genius. He's been paying attention, from a distance. She really doesn't need him, not the way he needs her. He thinks about William, who lives God knows where, with a mother who is a tireless advocate for his safety and childhood. He thinks about John, Lyla, and Sara and their family that stands strong in the middle of a constant storm. He thinks about Thea, who is still the best of the Queen family even if she's half Merlyn.

They all have things to look forward to, more to be, more to do.

Clearing out at much as possible for them to go forward and do their more is kind of all he has left to give. Once that's done… well.

For all his thinking, he stays silent way too long for her comfort.

"Oliver…." She says his name like a prayer, a breath, and a question all at once.

"What?" He asks, finally turning back toward her.

"Don't do anything crazy."'

Once upon a time, he doesn't know how long ago and only knows he feels it deep down in his bones like the ache of all the wrong he's done for so many years, she wanted him to open up to her. She wanted to be his partner in every conceivable way. It was halting, how he stopped protecting her enough to be honest. It was obviously never complete and that's how they ended up where they've ended up. She thinks his life will always promote lies, encourage secrecy. She spent a long time telling him he was wrong to think that, to think he would always be alone. Once he started to trust in it, to really trust her, she changed her mind because he made a mistake. Yeah, he made a huge mistake and he knows that, but she stepped away when he needed her and it hurts. She isn't the only one who faced a major letdown. In a lot of ways, he's still reeling from it and probably will always be. He almost doesn't even care what she thinks of his blatant honesty.

"I don't have anything left to fight for, Felicity." He shakes his head. He's not reckless or suicidal by any means, but he's realistic. At some point, he resigned himself to the cold, hard fact that something like this would be his end. "Slade Wilson was determined to take everything from me. Ra's was the same. They didn't leave much, but they never succeeded in taking everything. There was always some reason to fight." He swallows hard. "Now all I have left is the world I'll leave behind. I'm letting go – of everything and everyone. I have to if I'm going to kill him."

"I don't accept that."

With a calm breath and a reluctant smile, he looks at her while the limousine starts moving. He settles on feeling relief at being able to talk to her again, because he hasn't hidden anything from her. She may not know exactly what he plans to do, but neither does he. He goes into a fight without real plans anyway, and just rolls with whatever comes his way. When he's been truthful with her about what he's thinking and what he's feeling, everything changes. He feels settled.

"It isn't your choice," he says, still being completely truthful. She asked him to let go and he didn't want to – doesn't want to. He didn't get a choice then and she doesn't get one now because hers is already made. For all the times she's said those words to him, trying to get him to stop protecting her or to let her be a part of a team, he thinks she should recognize the truth in them coming from him. "The best thing I ever did was love you. I left the best of me with you. That was my choice and I don't regret it for a second, but it's done."

At some point, he resigned himself to the fact that he was a person in pieces. He fooled himself into thinking he was whole for a little while, but he never could put the pieces together in a way that would hold. He doesn't care about being a hero or dying a hero. He cares about leaving pieces of him with the right people so that whenever he dies, he isn't dying alone in whatever they're using as a headquarters. If he has enough trust and enough judgment to leave the pieces with the right people, he doesn't exactly die. Whatever happens to his body is just details. The scars and marks he've built up over the years are proof of his carelessness with himself and others' carelessness and callousness toward him. He doesn't feel them anymore. The pain is long gone and he's resigned himself to the way things have been and the way they will always be – until they aren't. That could very well be tomorrow.

No matter what he does, that won't ever change. Until it does.