TV Series: Arrow

Pairing: Oliver and Felicity

Genre: Romance/Drama

How he came to realize how much she meant to him

How she realized that he needed more than she could be

Summary: For anyone seeking a happy Olicity-story, I'm telling you right now, you won't get it here. I feel the need to write something tragic, and the story I am writing is tearing me up from inside, trying to burrow its way out, and leading me to an inevitable, necessary, sort-of-therapeutic, sob-inducing end. If this piques your interest, you might need it as much as I do. Also, this is the only way I can excuse Oliver ending up with a Black Canary, whether it's Sara or Laurel, in the TV-verse where Felicity exists and doesn't die.

I own NOTHING, except for this take on their relationship. Plus, if this chapter falls short of expectations, please just read further. The more I wrote, the more inspired I was as I continued writing.

Part I:

Oliver's perspective:

He knew she was playing him. Or at least, she thought she was. But it was evident from the way she spoke that no matter how much of it was manipulation, the recounting of her past scratched at and rubbed salt on a wound that, despite the years that had passed, had not healed. But that wasn't what decided it for him. He knew that there could come little or no positive result from what she was initiating, but what decided it for him was that he also knew that he had time on hand, and a reckless part of him wanted the pure physical release without any kind of emotional effects that would come from it.

"I think you can let her off for the night, don't you?"

He could understand her baiting him by implying some sort of involvement between him and Felicity, but was the statement she nonchalantly tossed over her shoulder meant to irk or hurt Felicity, or simply her attempt to stay in character, or maybe even some sort of evidence of an underlying need to show lack of emotion.

"What happens in Russia stays in Russia"

Is it too much to hope that that is the end of it?

"We're still in Russia"

Apparently it had been too much to hope for.

Oliver knows that Felicity is attracted to him, and maybe even nurses a small interest in him. She has definitely ogled him often enough on occasion that it has made every hair on his body seem to stand at attention and insist that he ask that she cease and desist or be prepared to deal with the consequences. He is damnably attracted to her innocence, intelligence, goodness and, it goes without saying, body enough without imagining her fantasizing about things he would quite thoroughly enjoy making a reality. Is her reaction to what happened with Isabel simply her as a friend expecting better behavior from him than he was inclined to before the island, or is it rooted in a desire to have been in Isabel's stead? He'll think about this later, when he doesn't have saving his best friend on his to-do-list.

"It didn't mean anything"

He wants it to be enough, but even he knows it isn't. It's the sort of hollow excuse he'd have given to any woman he'd cheated on. But a) Felicity and he weren't even together, and b) this was Felicity. She was the one woman who didn't perceive him as a shallow, superficial man who slept with anything with the appropriate genitalia. She not only sees but also knows the real him. She knows that he's capable of murder and yet believes that he's more than that. She believes that he's not a murderer by nature, and yet stood by him through his killing spree and even after it ended. She is not a woman from whom he takes what he wants and then runs away from. She is his friend, one of his partners in their bizarre crusade against crime in Starling City. She is more. He wants her to know how he feels. He wants to tell her the truth.

"Hey, because of the life I lead, I just think it's better if I don't get involved with someone I could really care about"

Admitting it and admitting that he sees little or no possibility of any long-term relationship in his future, given the cause to which he has dedicated his life, is painful to say the least. But it also feels like a weight off of his shoulders. It's ironic. Before the island, while it was perfectly possible for him to be in a relationship of such a nature, he was incapable of it, and possibly even terrified by it. But now, when he craves it and knows that he is capable of it, the life that he leads leaves no space for it.

"I just, I think you deserve better than her"

The weight he felt lift off his shoulders in the wake of his admission of how impossible a relationship is for him seems to have sunk to the pit of his stomach. Despite him being a murderer, despite the darkness that he knows she has been witness to a significant number of times, and despite his having resorted to behavior that would have been nothing but "business-as-usual" for him before the island, Felicity still believes the best of him. She still believes that he is capable of more.