You and I walk a fragile line
I have known it all this time
but I never thought I'd live to see it break
Felicity couldn't remember, exactly, the moment she'd fallen in love with him. She could remember a time when she wasn't, like when he came back from the island and made her his Girl Friday, and she could remember a time that she definitely was already in love with him, when she'd been shot and he told her she would always be his girl, but she couldn't pinpoint when it changed from having a profound respect and adoration of him, and knowing that she'd let it go too far.
He was with Sara then, and they were happy together. Adorable, even. And Felicity loved Sara. Sara was the closest thing Felicity had to a best girl friend, and she wasn't going to let something like being stupidly in love with her boyfriend ruin that. Back then, it never even occurred to her that she would ever have a chance at being with Oliver. Not because he was better than her, or she didn't deserve him, but because they were so vastly different people who, while fighting crime in Starling City, were fighting very different and opposing inner demons. Inner demons that would forever be at war because Felicity's biggest fear was abandonment, and even in the short time she'd known Oliver, he'd abandoned her to knock on Death's door too many times. It didn't matter that he always promised he would come back, because he still left.
She spent a lot of time trying to figure this out now. Now that he's left to fight Ra's Al Ghul. Now that he's been gone for two weeks, and she hasn't heard anything. Anything at all. His words echo in her ear, and the easy smile on his face as he said them. I'll come back, he'd told her, which echoed all the times before when he'd assured her, promised, her that she wouldn't lose him. If she focused long enough, if she sat still enough in her Foundry chair, she could almost feel the weight of his hand on her shoulder, or she conned herself into believing that the sound of footsteps on the steps were his, even when she knew they weren't. When she knew that the sound of his descent hadn't changed, but she'd just hoped so badly that maybe it had. But every time she turned her chair around, it was always Dig or Roy. She would force a smile at them, like she hadn't hoped to see someone else, and they'd pretend not to notice her transparent disappointment. It wasn't that she wasn't happy they were safe, but she had their voices in her ear. She didn't need to see them.
She needed to see Oliver.
And it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake
"Felicity." Dig was the first person to come back inside the Foundry after Oliver left. Felicity was sitting in her chair, staring the blank screens of her computer. "Hey." He kneeled down on the floor in front of her, grabbing onto her joined hands. "Wanna talk about it?"
It took a minute, but Felicity finally looked at him. "You let him go." The hurt was sketched into the red of her eyes, and Dig hated to see her like that. He hated that there was never anything he could really do for Felicity. She never got upset over things he could fix. All he could do was listen and not leave her. At least one person should keep that promise.
"He didn't ask my opinion." Oliver is a grown man, he wanted to say. I already tried to fix you two, he wanted to add. I'm going to miss him, too. But Dig understood. Dig knows how much Thea means to Oliver. Dig also knows that he would have done the same thing for anyone else that he loved. Including Felicity.
"You could have stopped him. We stopped him when he was going to turn himself over to Slade. You could have, and you didn't." Her words stung because like so many other times, Felicity was right. He could have stopped him. He could have knocked him out and tried to reason with him, but it wouldn't have mattered. They would have ended up coming up with the same conclusion. Ra's has to be stopped.
"He was going to let Slade kill him." Dig spoke, but he looked away because even he knew it was a weak response. It didn't matter that Oliver had something to fight for now. It didn't matter that Oliver was in love. While it was absolutely better to have something to fight for, it didn't guarantee a win. Especially against Ra's.
"HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT, JOHN?" She was crying now, and she didn't bother to wipe the tears away. "He's going to fight the leader to the League of Assassins. How do you think that's going to end? Even if he wins, this isn't going to end. Nyssa won't just let him kill her father. And it's not like she's going to have a hard time finding us here."
"Maybe you should take the night off. Get some rest, read a book. Take over the world, you know, your usual spare time activities."
She didn't want to, but she smiled. "If you're not leaving, I'm not leaving." Another punch in the gut, Dig thought. He hadn't liked it the first time she'd said that, and he only liked it marginally better now.
"Maybe some training then? In case that Palmer guy tries to get fresh?" Dig knew the reaction this would get him, and she did not disappoint. She pushes his shoulder then, and he pretends it's hard enough to make him fall backwards. "Ray is a good man. A brilliant hard-working man."
"So what's the problem, then?" He asks, because he's tired of watching her wait for Oliver to get it together. He's tired of watching the two of them pine for each other even as they cling to each other the only way they know how. Dig is just tired. The smile, that'd softened her features into the Felicity he recognized, disappeared.
"Oliver told me he loved me again. Right before he left."
Dig sighed then, shaking his head. "He's making a bad habit of that."
"It's not fair." She pressed down the space bar until her screen came back to life, as if she needed a reminder of why she was still here. As if she needed to be grounded to the moment because suddenly she couldn't remember why without Oliver there to remind her.
"What did you say?"
She looked back at him then. "He was already walking away."
Come on, come on, don't leave me like this
I thought I had you figured out
Something's gone terribly wrong
You're all I wanted
Felicity knew she was being cruel when she walked out of the foundry proclaiming she was done with everything they'd done, everything they'd accomplished. But it hurt too much to listen to comms and not his voice, and it hurt even worse to think of another night of worrying that someone else wouldn't make it back to the foundry. Digg and Roy were the only people she had left, and she couldn't be the reason that she ever lost them. She hadn't been able to protect Oliver, she had no possible way of protecting him from Ra's, but she damn well didn't have to listen to her family die.
So she walked away, and she promised herself that was for the best. She'd told Oliver she didn't want to waste her life away in the foundry, and it was time for her to start acting like it. She wasn't waiting on him anymore. There was no one left to wait for.
Oliver was dead. It was time for her to admit it already. To accept it. To stop being the only person who needed him to be alive. She would not spend the rest of her life waiting for someone who was never coming back. Not again. Not ever. And she was sorry, because he deserved to have someone believe in him enough to wait, but she couldn't do it anymore. Not while sitting in that foundry with memories of him everywhere she turned. Burying herself in her work seemed like a great alternative, she was the VP after all, but that didn't really help either, because every conversation she had with Ray just reminded her of Oliver.
Ray wasn't Oliver, he didn't brood, he didn't have years and years of torture over his head like a rain cloud that was magnetized to his coordinates. He was good, and he wanted to help people, and he was willing to sacrifice everything he had to do it. But God was Felicity sick of being around martyrs. She was tired of being the one left behind. So, she was nice, and she did her job, and she smiled at him when he complimented her, but she would absolutely not become his own Girl Friday. She. Would. Not.
While the list of people she expected to be at her door on a Friday night at eight PM was quite small, Thea Queen had never been on that list. And yet, there she was, freezing Felicity in her car at the sight of her. A million different scenarios flashed through Felicity's mind for reasons why she was there. How did she even know where Felicity lived? It's not like there are exactly phone books distributed anymore.
It wasn't that Thea's presence was unwelcomed exactly. In many ways, although they'd barely spent any real time together, Felicity often felt like she knew Thea as well as she knew anyone else in the Foundry. Two of her three partners were willing to die for her, which ranked her quite high on the list of people Felicity cared about.
But still, this was unprecedented. She'd had the radio playing during her drive home, but she hadn't really been listening. But she was sure she would have noticed if Roy or Oliver's name had been mentioned. That was automatic now. She listened for their names as much as she listened for her own.
"Thea?" Felicity was too afraid to ask her why she was here. Too afraid that she was going to tell her that Roy hadn't shown up for work in a few days, or that Dig hadn't dropped by to check in on her, or, maybe what she was really terrified of, was that someone had found his body. But she shook her head, because Thea would not have come to her house to tell her that. She didn't think.
"Hi. I'm really sorry to bother you. Roy told me where you lived." Felicity's chest loosened a little at that. If Roy told Thea where she lived, he was probably safe. "I haven't seen you at Verdant lately."
"Are you okay?" Felicity wasn't even sure she was the person to go to if she wasn't safe, but she didn't let herself keep talking. It was one thing to let herself ramble in the foundry, they expected it, but there were far too many secrets that Thea didn't know about for Felicity to let herself ramble.
"Have you spoken to my brother? I know you guys are close, but I'm really worried about him."
Felicity wished they'd talked about this at some point. They should have. What to do if the mission ever goes wrong. Who to tell. What to tell. When to tell. Felicity didn't have any of those answers. "No, I'm sorry. I haven't. I'm sure he'll come back. He always does." Felicity was desperate to believe those words. He had always comeback. He'd been so certain of his return, but the weeks were flying by now, and she was losing hope. But Thea reminded her of all of the reasons he had to return. Thea needed him. She wasn't out of the woods yet, and Felicity needed to believe he wouldn't have left without a contingency plan for her.
Right?
"Do you want to come inside? I can make you some... well, I can get you a glass of water." Felicity had no idea what was actually in her fridge. While she'd spent more time at home lately, it'd mostly consisted of take out. While she was breaking habits, she couldn't break all of them.
Felicity wanted to ask her so many questions. She'd spent so much of the past two years with Oliver, but the woman in front of her knew a completely different Oliver than she did. Of course the island had changed him, but the curiousity to know the man before the Gambit went down was too great. And the girl he loved most in the world was standing right in front of her.
"Are you sure? Roy actually told me not to come. He said that you and Ollie had some sort of falling out."
"I wouldn't offer if I didn't mean it."
"Okay. Yeah, I'd love to."
Felicity smiled then, leading Thea into her apartment. She had to bite her tongue to keep from immediately asking her a million questions all at once.
"Wow." Thea blew out a huff of hair as she walked into Felicity's apartment. "You really have a thing for Robin Hood."
Felicity's cheeks burned, but she didn't turn around to see Thea's face. "Something like that."
Stood there and watched you walk away
From everything we had
But I still mean every word I said to you
He will try to take away my pain
And he just might make me smile
But the whole time I'm wishing he was you instead
In hindsight, Dig, baby Sara, and Roy showing up at Felicity's door wasn't entirely unexpected. It'd been weeks since she'd stepped foot in the foundry. She'd picked up her phone a thousand times to call them, to text, to do anything to let them know that just because she'd left the foundry didn't mean she didn't still love them. But for every time she'd picked it up, she'd sat it down again. She wasn't ready. She didn't know what to say, and she didn't want to be told that it was time to move on, or that it was time to get back to what mattered. She wasn't ready for anything at all.
She couldn't call them Team Arrow anymore. It hurt too much, but she'd already drank a half a bottle of wine, and she was close- so close- to admitting that maybe it would never be called Team Arrow again. Because maybe the Arrow is gone. Maybe Oliver really isn't coming back. And seeing them in street clothes at her door step just hurt so much.
Felicity doesn't' say anything, doesn't even acknowledge the adorable baby who has somehow grown so much in the few weeks away.
Time was passing by without him, and it wasn't fair. How was time still going without him there? Why wasn't the entire world mourning his absence along with her? None of it made any sense. All she could think about was how she'd watched as Oliver and Dig had dug up Sara's empty grave only to fill it with her body. How much it'd hurt, how it'd torn parts of herself she hadn't known were optional. But this, the not knowing, the never knowing where he was, or never having any closure or celebration for all the good he did, none of it felt right.
He deserved so much more.
She looked around her living room for the first time in what felt like ages, and she realized how sad it must look to them. She had a pile of paper plates on the side table, waiting to be used, and an array of food spread out on the coffee table, more than she could ever eat alone.
She hadn't been able to decide anything, lately, so she'd given up trying. When she couldn't decide if she wanted Chinese or Mexican food, she ordered both. When she couldn't stand to wear her hair in a ponytail, but didn't want to wear it down either, she'd started to throw it up in a messy bun, and glared at whoever give her looks for it. She'd removed all red clothing from her closet, and shoved them into a suitcase that was now under the bed in her guest room. She hadn't been able to decide what show to finally catch up on Netflix either, so she'd cancelled her account entirely.
Felicity didn't know anything anymore, and she was so tired of trying to pretend like she did. The only reason she went to work at all was because she knew that Ray would come to her place, and she had no desire to try to explain to him how much pain she was in. How she didn't lose a fiancé like he had, she'd lost her entire world, and whatever was left of him just felt like rubble after an earthquake that eventually needed to be cleaned up and disposed of.
But looking at the now occupants of her couch, she didn't think she was strong enough for the clean-up either, which left her with no choices at all except to keep trying to breathe.
In.
Out.
And in again.
"I, do you, It's just…" Felicity tried to think of something, anything to explain how completely frozen she felt, but no words sufficed, which only made her more angry. She couldn't remember a time in her life she'd ever been at a loss for words. She was always saying too much, too soon, too often, too wrong.
"We missed you." Roy smiled at her, and she watched as he picked up a container of shrimp lo mein, and ate a huge bite before taking a chip and dipping it into the queso. As if the mixture didn't seem weird at all. As if this was exactly what he'd hoped he'd find when she opened the door.
"I'll get forks." Dig said when Roy passed him a plate. Felicity knew she should chime in then, offer to help, but she's still rooted in place, wondering not for the first time how her life had become so deeply intertwined with Oliver Queen. It wasn't just that she was in love with him, or that he was her partner in saving the city, or how many times he'd saved her or how many times he'd watched in awe and pride as she saved them all. There were so many reasons how she ended up here, but she couldn't pinpoint the one that was the most true, but when Dig stopped by her and kissed her forehead, it all became so much clearer.
It wasn't just that Oliver was like the tree of life in her own garden, it was that every other tree that she loved and needed was tied and in connection with his, and without him there to keep them connected, her entire garden was in peril of wilting to nothing. She was wilting away to nothing.
"You guys know that I love you, right?" She finally managed to walk towards them, and she smiled as they parted themselves on the couch, easily fitting her between them like they could be her cocoons, and if they gave her enough time, she would emerge better than ever before. She certainly wanted to believe it.
"Duh." Roy nudged her with his shoulder, and she couldn't stop from smiling at him. She'd been so worried about him when he'd joined. She'd been terrified that he wouldn't be able to handle the kind of power that the mirakiru had given him, but she was so proud of everything he'd accomplished. How hard he trained. How much he loved Thea. He was so young, sometimes she forgot how young he actually was, but sitting next to him then made her realize that he'd become one of her best friends, and she couldn't imagine a life that didn't involve him. Foundry or not.
"Eat." Dig passed her a plate piled high of nachos with queso, shrimp, and black beans next to a taller pile of lo mein. She didn't tell them that she'd barely eaten in weeks, and she certainly wouldn't be able to eat everything on her plate, but she didn't bother, because they probably already knew.
"Anything I should know?" She asked before shoving a heap of noodles into her mouth.
"Just that we love you, too." Dig pulled her into a sideways hug then, and sat her plate down long enough to hug him back, being sure not to crush Sara on his chest. "Even Sara." He added when Felicity started to tug on Sara's feet through the blanket.
"Also, Dig broke your computer." Roy mumbled with a mouth full of food.
"WHAT?!" The only response she got was the sound of Dig popping Roy in the back of his head.
Oh, I'm holding my breath
Won't see you again
something keeps me holding on to nothing
I know, I know, I just know
You're not gone. You can't be gone. No.
You and I walk a fragile line
I have known it all this time
Never ever thought I'd see it break.
Felicity knew how ridiculous it was to say that walking down the steps of the Foundry, felt like coming home. But it did. She'd spent way more of the last three years in the basement of Verdant than she'd spent in her place, and that was never quite as evident as the moment she stepped off the stairwell and saw her computers waiting for her to return.
Her babies.
"Mama's home." She whispered to them, running a hand over the keyboard. "I'm sorry I left you." She powered up her computers, only glancing up once to the abandoned salmon ladder. She quickly averted her gaze back to the computer. If she looked around too much, she wasn't going to be able to do this. She wasn't ready yet to be faced with all the ghosts of Oliver Queen.
Dig and Roy weren't supposed to show up for another hour. She'd come early so she would be settled by the time they got in. She wanted it to feel normal. She wanted to feel like she hadn't spent the last month doing everything in her power not to end up exactly where she was sitting right then, which seemed crazy, because so much of herself, so much of the power and confidence she'd accumulated had been in part due to that chair. She loved that chair.
She buried herself into work. Updating the system, making sure the new security system Dig installed while she was gone was performing the way it was supposed to—well, better, really, and she'd started to run the scanner for any new activity for the night. Not that she was ready to help anyone in the field, but she felt comforted knowing that she would know. That she could help, if she wanted to.
She'd heard the footsteps long before he reached the bottom of the stairs, but she'd refused to look back, refused to be haunted by him just because she was in the foundry. The foundry was hers now as much as it was his, and she would not let her fear run her life. She would not. She'd faced worse things than the memory of Oliver Queen, although she was hesitant to think of anything that'd caused her so much pain.
"Felicity." His voice was rough and soft all at once, and it was finally enough to make her spin her around. He was wearing a jacket she'd never seen before, but it was him. She wasn't hallucinating. He wasn't a ghost. He was alive.
"Oliver." She was sprinting towards him before she could get his name out, and she did not hesitate as she sprung into his arms, wrapping herself as tightly as possible around him. "You came back." She whispered the words into his skin, and pushed back tears as he lifted her off the ground, refusing to set her back down. Not that was she trying to. If she was crazy, if this wasn't real, if she was dreaming, she no longer wanted to know. Because he was real, she could smell him, his sweat, his scent, the smell of leather from his jacket, and she could feel his heart beating in his chest, and his hand was so dangerously slow on her back that if she wasn't clinging onto him for dear life, she'd feel anxious about it.
But Felicity didn't care at all, because it was Oliver, and either she'd finally lost her mind, or he'd come back to her. "It's okay." He whispered into her ear, "I'm okay." She was crying then, and she couldn't stop.
"How?" She pressed a kiss to both of his cheeks, and whimpered as her feet landed back onto the ground. She grabbed onto his face to remind herself that he was really standing there. "It's been… I didn't think…" She hugged him again, this time wrapping her arms underneath his, and her breathing nearly stopped when he kissed her hair.
"I told you, if it was you asking, then I would do it. I had no choice."
She pulled back then. "You know I love you, right? Regardless of if we are together, or not together, or if we both end up marrying other people, and you have beautiful perfect children with someone else, you need to know that I love you. And that working- that being your partner has been the best experience of my life. So, if I didn't tell you or you didn't know, I love you. Whatever you want or need that to mean is up to you."
He smiled at her then, the same smile he'd given her when he'd walked into the restaurant for their date, and he looked like he could barely breathe because he looked so happy to be there. That was the look he was giving her right now, and she thought, hoped, that maybe he understood what she was trying to say.
"You're not just my happy story, Felicity Smoak. You're my happy ending."
Never thought I'd see it...