Author's Note: After seeing Wednesday night's winter finale, I couldn't bear to wait till next year to see Oliver and Felicity's reunion (especially after their heart-wrenching scene together), so I went ahead and wrote one. Enjoy!
Felicity had known it was a bad idea. Even as her mouse hovered over the article link with his name typed in bold-faced letters, her instinct warned her to ignore it. It was trash, pure and simple. The same speculative garbage that had been circulating since the ruined billionaire's disappearance two months ago. Two months in which nothing, not one single verified bit of information, had been heard of Oliver Queen. Two months of endless agony, having no idea whether the man she loved was alive or dead.
Without thinking through the consequences, her heart overrode her logical mind, the heart that longed for any word of Oliver, even if it was just in a ridiculous tabloid like the one on her screen. Mindlessly, she clicked the link, and, instantly, pages of typed rumors began scrolling by her eyes.
The words didn't affect her. It was just mindless speculation about Oliver's supposed gallivanting around the world with a different woman in his bed every night, too caught up in his free-wheeling lifestyle to return to the city that had ruined him.
No, seeing the words hadn't been her mistake. It was the picture of his face hovering at the top of the article that caused a shot of agony to grip her heart in a painful vise. The picture wouldn't have been painful in itself. She had seen a countless supply of images decorated with Oliver's handsome face. The reason this photograph caused her such acute misery was that it contained something not found in its predecessors. In the center of the shot was Oliver, standing in a crowd near the police station with his arms splayed causally at his side and a smile of contentment in place of his usual gloomy expression. It was such a rare look to catch on his face, his mouth normally so grim and somber as he battled to solve his city's problems, that it caught Felicity off guard.
The moment that grin flashed on her screen, she felt the grief hit her fresh and new. It was suddenly as if she hadn't spent the last eight weeks trying to adjust to a world without Oliver in it. It was as if she had been hit with the mind numbing truth again for the first time, the unwelcome realization that she might never see that precious smile again.
Unwittingly, she closed her eyes, blocking out the digital image in favor of a memory. Beneath her closed lids, she saw Oliver's gentle smile, so confident in his belief of his feelings for her. She watched as his softened mouth formed the words that had been equal parts comfort and torture since his disappearance to fight Ra's Al Ghul.
"I love you."
Looking back on the moment now, she wished she could have returned the words, could have sent him to his fate with the knowledge that her love ran as deep as his. But she had been so stunned, so moved by his easy admission of the feelings he had fought so hard to ignore, that she hadn't been able to form a response. Her only answer, a tearful look of surprise as he left her that day.
As the memory continued to wash over her, she felt the unwelcome burn of tears leak from beneath her closed lids, the drops running down her cheek in little rivulets before splashing silently on the console at her fingertips. If not for the warm hand that reached out at that moment to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze, she would have been content to sit there for quite some time, lost in her own grief.
Lifting her heavy lids, she found John observing her intently, the same grief swimming in his dark eyes. "Still nothing?" he asked gently, waiting a moment for her to gather her rioting emotions.
Felicity shook her head, sniffing loudly as she used the back of her hand to scrub away the rapidly drying tears. Every day Oliver had been gone, she had devoted a portion of her time to hacking any security camera in the area they had suspected served as the grounds for his duel with the leader of the League of Assassins. She'd lost count by now of the number of facial recognition scans she had run, all the while hoping and praying for just one glimpse of his face. Those prayers had gone unanswered.
"No," she shook her head in dejected defeat. "There's nothing."
John squeezed her shoulder gently again before releasing it. "You need to go home, Felicity. Spending all night here won't do either of us any good. Go home and get some rest."
"It's all right," Felicity was already disagreeing with his suggestion before he was finished saying it. "I haven't even started on everything– "
"Felicity," John stopped her. "Working yourself to death won't bring him back."
From the look on his face, she could tell he was trying hard to conceal his frustration. Every morning he and Roy came to the foundry to continue with Oliver's work, they found Felicity already there, busy at her computers while tracking down leads both criminal and Queen related. Even with her continuing work with Ray Palmer, she managed to spend most of her time at the foundry. Planted behind her computers, she stayed in the place where she knew she could help best. The long hours were starting to take their toll, but she ignored the pain caused by a lack of sleep and long hours of work. It was nothing compared to the pain caused by Oliver's absence.
Felicity moved her gaze from John to the green fern sitting by her right hand, reaching out to softly caress the leaves. "I can't go home, John," she admitted in a barely audible whisper, keeping her eyes focused on the plant at her side. "I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes I dream he's here…" her voice broke momentarily, and she took a moment, taking a deep, steadying breath to finish her thought.
"Every time I close my eyes, I see his face, and it feels so real. Like he's there with me, and we finally have our second chance. But then I open my eyes and realize that none of it's real. He's still gone."
She couldn't bring herself to say that he was dead. None of them could. No matter how much evidence seemed to indicate that Oliver had lost his life at the hands of Ra's Al Ghul, none of his team could admit to that defeat. It was too final, admitting that Oliver was never coming back. So they continued to search, continued to hope. Though the chances of finding Oliver alive continued to grow smaller with each passing day.
John thought about what she had said, his expression seeming to indicate he felt the same, but he didn't say the words out loud. She knew he would never consciously add to her grief by exposing his. "Just know that when you do wake up, Felicity," he finally answered, moving to pull her to her feet and envelop her in a warm hug. "When you do wake up, we'll be here. Your friends will be here for you."
With those words, Felicity let go of the emotions she had been holding so tightly. With a deep sigh, she cried long and loud, allowing her grief to flow out with her tears. Like the good friend he was, John held her tightly without saying a word. He simply allowed her to grieve for the love she had lost.
When Felicity finally left the foundry and headed home, she felt both physically and emotionally drained. Moving mechanically through the motions that would bring her home through the night, she barely registered anything around her aside from the glare of her headlights on the dark pavement ahead. John had offered to take her home, but she had waved the offer aside. He needed to be home with his wife and child while she needed time to be alone.
Somehow she managed to find her way home, parking her car along the street of identical townhomes lining the darkened road. Slamming her car door shut with a metallic thud, Felicity fished for her house key on the chain and began walking up the steps to her front door. The routine was one she had done so many times, she could recall the steps blindfolded. Nothing ever changed.
Except tonight.
The odd sensation of unfamiliarity tingled up Felicity's spine as she turned the key in her lock and closed the front door behind her. In the dark with no stream of light to illuminate the cozy space, Felicity froze in place. She wasn't alone.
A frisson of fear broke through her body's fatigue, immediately perking up her senses.
There was no visual proof of another presence in her home, but she didn't need any. After working with the Arrow for so long, she could sense when there was someone else in the room. The way the atmosphere changed just the slightest bit or the sensation of a hidden pair of eyes silently observing always kicked up her senses to full alert, as they were now.
Careful not to make any movement that would alert her uninvited guest of her awareness, Felicity deposited her keys back in her purse. Before withdrawing her hand, she walked her fingers softly through the contents of the bag until she encountered what she was after. Gripping the discreetly sized taser Diggle had insisted she buy after working such late hours in the Glades, Felicity started to remove the weapon when a nearby silhouette appeared next to her without warning.
Emitting a muffled shout, Felicity jumped in surprise, losing contact with her only means of self-defense. Panicked, she turned and prepared to run out the door she had just entered when the figure at her side lunged and two strong hands clasped her arms in a tight grip. Still fighting off a wave of panic, Felicity struggled against her unseen assailant, kicking out at his legs with her heeled feet.
The point of her toe managed to land a sound kick against his legs, and the contact was swiftly accompanied by the sound of a soft grunt. Any satisfaction Felicity might have felt at managing a shot at her captor was cut short by the familiar sound of that grunt. Shocked into stillness, Felicity squinted through the darkness at the shadowed figure holding her tight in the darkness.
Either she was truly beginning to lose her tenuous grip on her sanity, or the man she had feared to be gone forever was standing in her house in the dead of night. "Oliver?" she breathed the word, his name a question on her lips.
"Felicity."
The sound of his voice was her undoing. With a sob of relief, she lunged toward him, though she was impeded by the darkness of the room and the fact that her glasses had fallen to the floor moments ago in her struggle to leave. Despite the inconvenience of poor vision, she managed to find the broad shoulders belonging to Oliver Queen before wrapping herself around him, holding so tightly she feared she might cut off his air supply with her grip.
"I thought you were gone," she choked out on a sob, clinging to him with a desperation that indicated her fear he might disappear at any moment. Her mind was barely able to process the fact that he was here when, only a few short hours ago, she had been contemplating the reality that she might never see him again. Might never again hold him like this.
Oliver didn't make any movement at first, only passively accepting her embrace. Then something in him seemed to snap, like a chord finally breaking under too great of a strain. His arms that had been resting lightly on her back, reached around to crush her to him. "Felicity," he merely repeated her name, his breath hot and so real against the side of her face. There was a wealth of meaning in that one word. With one simple word Oliver told her how much he had missed her, how much it meant to hold her in his arms again. He told her how he loved her no less now than when they had last been together.
The rational part of Felicity longed for explanations. Where had he been all this time? Why had he let her go so long wondering if he were dead or alive? Her brain begged for answers, but her heart had no time for those things. In that moment, all she needed was to hold him like this, for him to remind her that the love between them had not been lost in that tragic duel.
Oliver seemed more than happy to agree. Moving his lips to hers, he covered her mouth with a soul-searching kiss that Felicity felt all the way to her toes. Briefly, the memory of their last kiss flickered through her mind, a chaste meeting of mouths filled with regret and sadness. This kiss was nothing like that. Oliver wasn't pushing her away this time. In fact, Felicity wasn't sure if it were humanly possible for him to hold her any closer.
He kissed her with a firm, exacting pressure, not even bothering to ask permission for entrance into her mouth, something she gave up to him more than willingly. The feel of his tongue, hot, alive, and real, licking the seam of her lips and beyond, sent her blood sizzling to a scorching level. Her skin where his fingers roamed on her back and at her waist felt as if it had caught fire. And what a glorious blaze it was.
She was so lost in the head-spinning dual sensations of Oliver's hands and lips on her skin that she nearly missed his subtle motion of slipping the hem of her shirt from the waist of her skirt, slowly inching the silky material upward. As the kiss of cool air hit her exposed abdomen, Felicity was tempted to just let him tear her clothes off, damn the consequences, but a fragment of a memory rushed past her closed eyes just then. She recalled the pained look on Oliver's face in the hospital that day months ago and again heard the words that had torn down her dreams of love as swiftly as they had been built up.
"I thought that I could be me and the Arrow, but I can't. Not Now. Maybe not ever."
The silent words ringing in her ears, Felicity stiffened in Oliver's arms and pushed away from him. Almost as soon as she put the few inches between them that separated her from his heat, she immediately missed the nearness. Ignoring the urge to throw herself back in his embrace, Felicity fumbled in the dark for the lamp switch at her side, flicking it on to bathe the room in its small, electric glow.
The light fell across Oliver's achingly familiar features, and Felicity drank in the sight that had she had been denied for so many lonely weeks. Despite the lengthy separation, Oliver looked very much the same as he had that day he left her in the foundry, though his hair had grown a shade longer and the stubble on his chin tended more to a full beard now. Her fingers itched to trace the familiar planes of his face, the lines around his mouth that softened only when he flashed his billionaire smile, but she squeezed the restless fingertips together, ignoring the urge. Before she lost herself in him again, there was one thing she had to be sure of.
Blinking at the glare of the lamp, Oliver pulled his eyebrows together in confusion. He reached out his hands for her again, but she fell back another step, denying him the embrace they both longed for. "Felicity?" he said her name for third time that night, and she felt yet again a tingle of pleasure as the word rolled off his tongue.
Trying to focus on the reasons she pulled away from his kiss, Felicity sucked in a lungful of air before explaining. "I don't want to be a regret."
She spoke the words so quietly that Oliver had to lean forward a fraction to catch the sound. When he did, his mouth curved slightly at the corner, giving her a glimpse of the smile she treasured so much. "How could I ever regret you?" Oliver asked, stepping forward to close the space between them again.
This time Felicity stayed in place, closing her eyes at the feel of his warm palm cupping the soft skin of her cheek. "I missed you so much," she spoke, her voice cracking at the intense emotion bubbling beneath the surface. "I dreamed so many times you were here. It's the only thing I've been able to think about since you've been gone, and now that you're here, I want you so much it almost hurts."
She opened her eyes again, connecting with his and, with that one look, sharing with him her fears. "But I'm afraid when the sun comes up, it will all be the same. You'll be the same Oliver who says he loves me but can't be with me. The same Oliver who says he can't be both Oliver Queen and the Arrow and has no room in his life for Felicity Smoak. I don't want you to regret this. I don't want to be a regret for you. I can't do that again Oliver. I can't. I love you too much."
Once the words stopped falling from her mouth, she searched his eyes, waiting for the veil to drop again as it had every time before, shutting out his emotions in order to keep her from getting too close to his heart. This time, however, it was different. If anything, the intensity shining in his eyes only increased at her confession.
"When I was on that mountain waiting to die," he answered, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers, "the last thing I saw was your face, and in that moment, I realized that the biggest regret of my life was you. Not because I regretted loving you, but because I never took the chance to be with you. Now that I have that chance back, I'm not throwing it away again. You told me to stop dangling maybes, and you were right. You don't deserve maybes, Felicity. You deserve the truth. And the truth is I love you. I've gone through hell to get back to Starling, but the first thing I had to do was see you. I had to tell you how I felt. I don't want to be alone anymore. I don't want to have any regrets."
"No regrets?" she whispered back, hope replacing her tears from before.
Tilting her chin up to angle her mouth to his, Oliver pressed a tender kiss there. "No regrets."
With a small laugh of relief, Felicity threw her arms around his neck, barely believing how full her heart was, threatening to burst with the overwhelming joy. Now her sorrow in the foundry seemed almost from another life, a life where she had to learn to live in a world without Oliver. That life and world had vanished, though, and the nearly unthinkable had come true. Oliver was standing here in her arms, returned from the grave and asking for a second chance.
She didn't need even a moment to think about her answer. "Love me, Oliver," she said to him, chasing the words with a kiss, and Oliver was only happy to do just as he was told.
A few hours later, between a mass of tangled sheets, Felicity rested her head on Oliver's chest and listened for several minutes to the reassuring beat of his heart beneath her ear. It had taken them a while to get to his explanation about what had happened on that mountaintop with Ra's Al Ghul, and when he spoke the words, Felicity felt the burn of unshed tears again thinking about how close she had come to losing him forever. Blinking the moisture away, she had simply rested her head against him, letting his warmth seep into her as he finished reciting his tale.
"It isn't over," Oliver told her, absently combing his fingers through the blonde strands of hair that covered his Bratva tattoo. "There's still the League to deal with. Merlyn won't let this rest, and, when he finds out I'm alive, Ra's won't either."
Felicity tightened her grip on him, pressing her lips to the skin covering his steady heartbeat. "But you have something with you this time that you didn't have on that mountain."
Oliver didn't even need to ask what she meant. Their team would figure out how to deal with the League. Maybe they wouldn't figure it out today, but they would find a solution. It would just take some time. Ideas were already running through Felicity's head on how to deal with the situation.
"Later," Oliver kissed her hair, already knowing that her mind was back at work. "Right now, I just want this."
Showing Felicity what he meant, Oliver rolled her underneath him, effectively replacing the analytical thoughts in her head with something else far more satisfying.
After that, Felicity was almost too tired to keep her eyes open any longer, but she managed to keep them open long enough to sneak an appreciative peek at the man in her bed. With a smile, she saw that Oliver hadn't followed her example in staying awake, almost immediately falling asleep. Making use of his naked chest, Felicity snuggled into the crook of his arm and turned his muscled body into her pillow for the night.
For the first time in weeks, she closed her eyes without any fear of opening them in the morning. Because when she opened her eyes, there would be no pain. He wasn't a phantom of her dreams anymore. He was flesh and blood, and he was there with her. He loved her.
With this welcome reminder, a smile of giddy happiness blossomed on her face, and Felicity closed her eyes before drifting to sleep. Oliver was back. They had their second chance, and she knew without a doubt it was one they would both make the most of. No regrets.
While I have a theory on how the writer's are going to explain Oliver's survival, I'm not positive, so I left that part deliberately vague. Also, it felt a bit weird writing a story without Felicity's humor and quips but it just didn't seem right here after the emotional events in "The Climb". I hope it was enjoyable to read anyway though! Thanks so much for checking out my story. Comments are always appreciated!