A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in a while! I wrote a bunch on Tumblr and I'm uploading it today. Get ready for a slew of fics from me.

There have been times in Felicity's life, times of high stress, where sleep did not come easily. The time after her father left; the time she flew three thousand miles away from her mother; that awful winter after everything with Cooper. Every single time, she didn't expect it. It was understandable, since she had other things on her mind. But she would find herself in the middle of a severe bout of insomnia before she realized what was happening.

This time was no different. In the weeks since learning of Oliver's…in the past several weeks, she had focused on doing her part to keep the city safe, maintaining her systems and manning the comms with hyper focused intensity. She threw herself into her work in Applied Sciences with a drive that rivaled even Ray Palmer's. She often went back to work after leaving the Foundry, staying up until the wee hours of the morning.

She only went to her apartment to pass out from exhaustion and to bathe and change her clothes.

When she did sleep, it was never for very long, and it was always accompanied with nightmares. Visions of Oliver and that goddamn sword haunted her dreams, waking her with fright and a compulsion to move, to put one foot in front of the other and run from her thoughts. She would go through her day all over again until the next time she collapsed, which was sometimes an entire day and a half later.

People began asking if she was okay, and she always brushed them off. Ray, for all his obsession with work, actually noticed her exhausted state and asked about it. Diggle and Roy tried to get her to open up with no success. Even Laurel tried reaching out.

Tonight, it was Lyla's turn. She had invited her to dinner, refusing to take no for an answer. It was a pretty ingenious plan on her part. Fill her up with food (or as much food as Felicity could manage with her decreased appetite), infuse the air with soft music and candlelight, and then pass the baby off to her as she drifted to sleep.

Her plan worked. Felicity's exhaustion finally caught up to her, and she felt her eyes getting heavy as she cuddled with Sara on the couch.

She was lost in the mountains again, wandering around the jagged rocks with a desperation for something she couldn't identify. As the daylight faded into dusk, the wind grew cold and bitter, biting at the skin on her face and hands. She was searching, always searching, for what, she didn't know. Her feet tangled on something and she fell, holding her hands in front of her to protect her face, cutting her palms on the sharp rocks below. She began to cry, the pain in her heart doubling as she began to doubt the success of her mission. She looked beneath her hands and found much more blood than she anticipated. Her eyes followed the trail of blood that led to…

Her heart stopped, and she stared with dread at the pair of boots before her. She screamed at her mind to wake up, she didn't want to see this again, but her eyes moved without her permission. Attached to the boots was a pair of legs, clothed in cargo pants, and the dread in her heart exploded into anguish.

"No," she whispered, "please…"

Further up was a muscled torso, covered with familiar scars and tattoos, and a sword jutting through the heart.

"No!" she wailed. "Please!"

Wake up, wake up, please I don't want to see this again, WAKE UP

Her eyes inevitably crawled up further and fell on his face, seeing his open and blank eyes.

"NO!"

She bolted up with a scream frozen in her throat, her heart thundering in her chest as the images from her nightmare shook her entire body. She sobbed silently into her hands, rocking back and forth as the grief that she had been avoiding flooded her emotions. She didn't let herself grieve for long; when the worst of it passed, she swallowed down her feelings and steeled herself, shaking the horrifying images from her mind.

She blinked as she took in her surroundings, recognizing Diggle and Lyla's apartment. Those sneaky bastards, she thought affectionately. This had been their plan all along, and she recognized an intervention when she saw one. She scrubbed her face and stood, and she folded the blanket they had covered her with while she slept. She left a quick note of thanks, and then gathered her things and left.

She got herself situated in her car and noticed the time. It was just past five o'clock in the morning. She could head home for a quick shower and then get to the office early. There were some reports she needed to work on for the next board meeting, and she could get a jump on them.

With a deep sigh, she started her car and headed home, starting the cycle all over again.