She had bruises under her eyes.
They weren't new though. They had simply formed sometime over the cold endless night Oliver had left, and decided they were staying. To be honest, it wasn't even like she cared, she hadn't even noticed them until Diggle had pointed them out on one of the slower nights in the foundry.
John had called them a 'token' of tear-stained nights.
Felicity simply hadn't had the heart to point out that she had stopped crying weeks ago. She didn't cry anymore. She couldn't. She'd cried herself dry the day Maseo had come to inform them, in his hatefully calm voice, that 'Oliver Queen' was dead.
She didn't think she'd ever be able to forget that moment.
It had been a long day for the team.
It had been over twenty-four hours since they had last heard from him.
Lance had been calling, as had been his daughter, both in search of the very man the team had been holding silent vigils for, not that they could say that. To be honest they couldn't say much at all.
To anyone.
Not that they would know what to say even if they could. How did you explain where he was and why he was there much less what he was doing there?
How did you explain any of this?
Another twelve hours later, John and Roy had begun talking in hushed undertones, about why Oliver still hadn't gotten in touch. Roy ever the pessimist had pointed out the obvious.
Felicity Meghan Smoak, in turn, pretended not to hear.
Instead she had simply begun stringing a string of mini silver bells around the fern she'd gotten for Oliver that Summer. She's picked up the bell's a few days before Christmas, from a pet shop when she'd gone in to window shop for the adorable balls of fluff that would one-day-would-be-her's.
It wasn't that she wasn't aware of what was being discussed. It was simply that she knew better. Oliver was not dead.
She would have known.
She would have felt it.
Or so she had thought.
She had nearly dropped the fern, when Maseo's silent entrance to the foundry had John swiftly draw his weapon and fire a warning shot before she and Roy had even had time to react.
But even as the casing from Diggle's stray bullet rolled inconspicuously towards her the understanding of exactly who this man was failed to settle in. He was League, that much was evident, but he was different from the other League of Assassin members she had come across, he was more human almost.
Like Sarah.
"One of these day's it's going to be me."
The resigned intonation rung clearly in her mind.
And that was the moment she knew.
For the briefest of moments however, she had allowed herself the luxury of ignorance.
She could hear him talking, but it all seemed far off, as if it was from a distance, or like rolled cotton had been stuffed in her ears, in order to better block him out.
In all honestly, he didn't even have to say the words for her to know why he was here.
He said them anyway.
And just like that it shattered. The reasoned calm she had lulled herself into as she decked mini-ferns and reorganized the Foundry's storage space suddenly broke.
Her eyes drifted down to the bullet casing at her feet and then over to the now silver-belled fern before her.
Oliver Queen was dead.