LOVE DARES: Drifting Apart
A/N: Hi! I thought I could go on an Arrow/Olicity fanfiction writing hiatus, but this idea kept nagging in my head for some time now. I thought it deserved to be written down before it's forgotten and before inspiration fades.
So, this one is a near future fic, diverging from canon at just before episode 4x15, with a slight twist in episode 4x10. I hope you find it interesting and engaging despite the unavoidable angst. Comments and reviews are welcome.
Oliver and Felicity never thought the day would ever come when they could settle down. But it did. Finally. They couldn't have been happier.
The League of Assassins had been disbanded by its last and most audacious leader, Nyssa al Guhl, who had managed to find a way to dissolve her marriage to Oliver without violating League rules. With the help of the equally valiant men and women of Team Flash and Rip Hunter's Legends (who are still trying very hard to live up to their name, where-ever and when-ever they are right now), Team Arrow had finally taken down the formidable and seemingly indestructible Damian Darkh together with HIVE – its few surviving leaders having been permanently locked up in the undisclosed, highly secure ARGUS prison facility in the island of Lian Yu with the still arrogant yet powerless magician, where together, they are spending the rest of their lives wondering what went wrong, imagining possible escape in vain, and plotting retaliation day and night only to ever see it fulfilled in their dreams. Entangled in the web of deceit that he had brought upon himself by offering his half-hearted loyalty to HIVE because of his selfish ambition and vengeful quest against the Green Arrow, Malcolm Merlyn finally met his tragic demise in the hands of Darkh's most fearsome ghosts when their final battle with our heroes went down. No one but Thea grieved over his loss, but not for very long.
A couple of months after all loose ends had been taken care of, Felicity at last walked down the aisle on her own towards her handsome groom. Yes, she walked down the aisle because Curtis Holt's bio-stimulator chip that had been implanted in her spine had worked, slowly but surely. She walked down the aisle on her own because her biological father was still been in prison (and she couldn't wait any longer to decide whether or not his attempts at apologies were sincere enough for her to even try to petition a judge to let him out for her wedding), and because she couldn't and wouldn't dare choose between John Diggle and Captain Lance who both mean a lot to her, to her fiancé, and to her mother. She walked down the aisle towards an ecstatic, smiling Oliver Queen, who had just been declared the new mayor of Star City after a landslide victory at the polls. She stood, a radiant and beautiful bride, hand in hand with him under a white canopy beautifully decorated with verdant ferns and her favorite flowers, set up in one of the gardens at the Queen Manor, which Felicity had repossessed through Palmer Tech as her wedding gift to him. In the presence of close family and friends and a few campaign supporters, they exchanged promises of forever with tear-filled eyes and sealed their marriage with the most ardent kiss ever, more searing than the heat of the summer sun early that morning.
To say that everyone, who meant anything to either or both of them, had felt very happy for them would be an understatement. In fact, the entire city was very happy for them. The wedding day of Mr. and Mrs. Queen had been a public milestone for Star City – a historical marker of hope for better days to come. It had also been a private milestone for Team Arrow, for it had marked the beginning of more uneventful nighttime patrols as the crime rate in the city went down under the able leadership of Oliver, with Captain Lance by his side as the duly appointed police commissioner. As expected, the city's economy began to bounce back soon after, and the once prosperous city started to regain its former glory once peace and order had been reestablished and lauded throughout the west coast.
It had been right about that time when Oliver and Felicity had decided that it was the perfect moment to start growing their family… despite the fact that their chances for her to get pregnant was only about 50%. It had been almost a year after the ambush where she had been critically injured, just minutes after his Christmas Eve proposal. They were well aware that it was going to be a challenge to have a baby with only one of her ovaries left – the other one having been removed by the surgeons that very night, as soon as her mother had signed the waiver, because one of the bullets that had hit her had badly damaged it, endangering her life due to profuse bleeding. And yet, try they did. They figured that if they had been able to survive the Island, the Undertaking, Slade Wilson and the siege of the city by his Mirakuru soldiers, the sword and fury of Ra's al Ghul, the threat of Vandal Savage, the mystical powers of Darkh, and the treachery of Malcolm Merlyn, then sure! Why on earth would they not even try having a child of their own? They believed there wasn't anything they couldn't do if they did it together.
Almost anything, that is.
After all the life-and-death situations and seemingly insurmountable ordeals they had both faced and gone through as individuals and as a couple, Oliver and Felicity also never thought that the day would come when they would drift apart because they believed that they had "found themselves in each other." But drift apart, they did. Gradually.
They had not noticed it at the onset. It began when disappointment and pain stealthily crept into their marriage as time and again the pregnancy tests turned up negative. Month after month. Petty quarrels became big deals, and they unconsciously trained their hearts to harbor ill feelings and grudges that eventually turned into bitterness against each other. These and the mounting frustration eventually mingled with other pent up emotions they'd been keeping inside, especially since Felicity began convincing (and then nagging) Oliver that they go for the medical and lab tests and fertility treatments that her OB-Gyne had been suggesting for the longest time – to no avail. She had gone on her own and learned that the rest of her reproductive system was perfectly fine, and her doctor encouraged her to keep waiting and not lose heart. That's why she couldn't understand why he wouldn't, for the life of her, agree to undergo the tests like she had, always saying that it wasn't really necessary and that she would eventually get pregnant if they keep trying. She had even raised the possibility of adoption when all else fails, but all she got from him was a shrug of his stately, broad shoulders.
There had been one time when she had yelled at him in sheer frustration, "I don't understand, Oliver! Don't you really want to have kids? With me?" To which, his laconic response was, "I do... But I'd rather wait… and keep trying." She had replied, "I am trying… everything possible. You're not!" He wouldn't talk about his reasons for all these, and she interpreted this as indifference, which angered her even more. The pressure she exerted on him angered him in return, so she eventually gave up trying to convince him to do anything.
Communication gradually broke down. Transparency slowly suffered. Physical intimacy waned until it came to a halt. Only pain and disillusionment thrived. They both couldn't handle this failure. No, not by the Green Arrow or the genius Overwatch! For the first time in their life together – unofficially for the first three years and then officially thereafter – their partnership had failed.
Oliver and Felicity buried themselves in their daytime and nighttime jobs. Their schedules were so full they hardly had any time to spend with each other. As Palmer Technologies scaled greater heights, their marriage sank to even greater depths. As Star City attracted new investors, residents, and tourists, their relationship magnetized only increased tension and discontentment. Through time, their family and friends began to take notice and later resorted to offering unsolicited advice and, for the brazenly bold few like Donna and Thea, even to unwelcome meddling and scheming that only accelerated the downward spiral of their relationship. Even Diggle and Lyla's ship ceased from sailing. To say that everyone, who meant anything to either or both of them, had felt very sad for them would be another understatement.
Oliver only realized how dismal the state of their relationship had become the day Felicity moved her things into the guest room at the bottom floor of the loft. He tried to convince her for a week to come back to their bedroom, but she thought it served him right for her to be the one doing the spurning this time. She figured he needed to know how it felt too, because it hadn't been fair for her to be the only one agonizing over rejection. Oliver did try to woo her back with flowers every day, weekend invitations to dinners or dates that had been subtly turned down, and even tub after tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream that he'd bought intending lure her into movie marathons in the evenings he had kept open, only to give every tub away to friends whenever their freezer couldn't hold any more. Oh, they still talked civilly somehow… about their day and sometimes about work stuff, when both of them inadvertently found themselves at home early, but those talks were superficial and infrequent. After some months, he just gave up trying.
The final blow that cut them off from each other was the day Felicity found out about Oliver's biggest lie.
Samantha's death in a vehicular accident in Central City had at last forced Oliver to confess to her that he had a son, whom he had been keeping secretly from her several months prior to their wedding, a few months even before he had proposed at the tree-lighting event. Samantha had remarried sometime when Oliver had become mayor, and her husband had already legally adopted William. However, it was in her will that upon her death, she wanted her son to know who his real father was and for Oliver to publicly acknowledge him and grant him his legal rights as a Queen heir. That left Oliver without a choice but to reveal this hidden part of his life to his wife.
Felicity had taken off as soon as he confessed everything to her and begged for her forgiveness. She couldn't bear to be with him, let alone look into his ocean blue eyes that used to captivate her every time. She couldn't take another lie.
It didn't help reading the apology letter that Samantha had personally written to her and attached to the will. No amount of explanation that keeping William from everyone including her was Samantha's idea, or of justification that Samantha had only done this to protect their son – nothing could comfort Felicity upon learning of such betrayal by the man she had vowed to spend the rest of her life with, the man she had thought trusted her for everything… like she did.
Moreover, it dawned on her that Oliver did have a perfectly logical reason for his lack of interest in fertility testing: he already knew he was capable of having children because he already has a son. Felicity loved him, and she had wanted nothing more than to be the mother of Oliver Queen's child (or children), but it hurt like hell that a woman he never even loved had beaten her to it. It hurt her even more upon realizing that he had kept Samantha's trust all this time instead of fighting to keep the trust of his fiancée who had already become his partner for life. All this time.
So, she moved out and stayed with her mother and Quentin for nearly three weeks. She went on leave from Palmer Tech, leaving some of her responsibilities with Curtis and instructing her assistant to cancel all meetings until she got back. Everyone at the lair missed her, but since they were aware that the emergence of Oliver's son and the lie that had accompanied it had been the culprit, no one had the nerve to probe him deeper about what went wrong in their relationship. It had been pretty much self-explanatory. She didn't take Oliver's calls and didn't answer his texts or emails. Oliver was terrified that she was going to leave him for good. He couldn't blame her; he knew he deserved it.
One day, she came back, her bright pink suitcase in tow. But her once bright pink lips were pale, and the glow in her pink cheeks was gone. She told him that she had decided – for the time being – to stay. When he asked her what she meant by "stay," she clarified that she was physically staying in her room at the loft in the meantime, that she would keep up appearances that their marriage was still intact for the sake of their professional and public lives, and that she would continue to help the team fight crime in the evenings because she still cared for the city like he did. However, she had made it clear that this was only a temporary arrangement… until she could figure out what she really wanted to do. She said that she still needed time and space to clear her head, but she couldn't stay away too long because people at her company and people in her city needed her to keep her head in the game.
Keeping up appearances. Time and space to clear her head. Those were the best excuses that she could come up with – quite lame, even for her own standards – instead of admitting to her husband that deep down inside she still loved him. After everything. Despite the hurts and the lies. She still loved him, and that's why it hurt even more. But Felicity Smoak Queen knew that she couldn't live with hurts and lies for very long and survive, perhaps not for the lifetime of marriage that they had vowed at the altar almost two years ago. That she was sure of. And it terrified her to realize that any remnant of genuine love for him, which remained buried alive in the recesses of her heart, just might die in time… forgotten there.
Oliver knew it, too. He had asked himself a hundred times, "How did this happen? How did we get here?" Never had he been this helpless and hopeless. He had never felt more desperate at the threat of any villain or peril. For Felicity, he would fight to the death. But bows and arrows were not the weapons to fight this battle. And he would only fight to the death to have her back if he were sure that she wanted it, too. He wouldn't force her to stay with him. He would let her go. He would, even if that meant the death of him deep inside. He loved her that much.
Nightmares of his past didn't deprive him of sleep anymore. Anxious thoughts of forever losing his beloved wife and partner in life did now. That fear had taken the place of the ghosts that had stopped haunting him ever since he shared his bed every night with her. And only with her. Ever.
Oliver wondered if his love for Felicity was strong enough to win her back. Strong enough to even dare…
A/N: If there is enough interest in finding out whether or not Oliver's love takes up the challenge, then I will push through with the plan of developing this into a multi-chapter story. This chapter will turn into a prologue titled "Drifting Apart," followed by 40 chapters, each one only half as long as this one (possibly even shorter), plus an epilogue. So please let me know what you think. Tell me if the story is worth developing. If not, it will stay as a one-shot.
Why 40, you might ask? Because my idea for this story takes off from the book "The Love Dare," from which the motion picture "Fireproof" was based. The story will basically revolve around a 40-day challenge that a husband or wife - in this case, it's Oliver - takes in order to win back his/her spouse by learning how to love the other unconditionally all over again. Angst will be unavoidable, but the romance and fluff will definitely not be lacking as the story unfolds, and valuable life lessons on love and relationships will be a bonus.
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