She has faced death and it scared her less.

(Which is not to say she wasn't scared with a needle of vertigo at her neck or Slade's sword pressed to her skin or the countless other times she'd been in life threatening danger, but it is this that terrifies her so much the air catches in her throat and her hands go numb as she watches him pack for the hardest battle he'll ever face.)

Because that was like skydiving (sometimes literally) and this, this is drowning. Both could kill you, but one you expected to get out of alive. One, she could control, more or less (at least in facing death, he'd always been there to keep her from falling), and now she is lost in the waves, drifting and helpless and alone. Now, he is leaving her to face death himself and she feels vulnerable and small, a speck of sand in an endless, raging ocean. To ask him to stay would be selfish, so she lets go of the rope and allows the water drag her under.

(Her thumb begins to worry over her fingertips and she doesn't know when she picked up that habit of his, but it ties her to him in a way nothing else can, so she holds onto it, even though it's the last thing that could possibly save her now.)

"But there is one thing I need to ask you to do."

The look in his eyes is her salvation. It has always been her salvation, and she doesn't know what she'll do without it. (She's afraid he might kiss her goodbye again, and knows if he does she won't be able to walk away this time. She needs him near, but not that near. Not here. Not now.)

"Felicity, I honestly don't know if I'm a killer anymore. But I do know two things."

When he presses his kiss to her forehead, the waters swirl and swell, engulfing her; she finds that his lips are close enough and too far away all at once. This is his goodbye, and it feels too permanent, too much like forever.

She almost asks him then, though she promised not to. Stay with me, don't go. (I love you.) The worlds catch in her throat and dry on her tongue.

Her fingers tug the edge of his shirt, clutching at the only thread of hope she has left. When he pulls back, she feels branded, his kiss burning into her skin, a last ditch effort to anchor her in the wild storm.

(Loving him is a reckless path, but she'd rather love him and get swept away than always going with the flow. She would drown in his love if he would let her, but that is quicksand and this is a hurricane.)

"What's the second thing?" she almost doesn't ask because she knows what he'll say (she recognizes that he's paralleling her words in the clock tower all those lifetimes ago: her belief is her love, and they both know it), but she needs him to say the words anyway. (It's selfish; she knows she won't say it back, can't say it back, but wants to hear it anyway. Wants to know if he will really say it this time, if he'll finally stop slipping the words in backwards and sideways.)

"I love you."

He says it as if the words are brand new, yet as if he tells her every moment of every day (because maybe, without either of them realizing it, he does). Her heart threatens either to swell and burst from her chest or to shrivel up and quit altogether (she isn't sure which), but it doesn't matter because he turns and goes without waiting for a response she can't give, and she struggles to stay afloat. His declaration was a lifeboat but she didn't get in. (The timing is all wrong, anyway, so she lets him go. To say it and give him her heart now would be worse than asking him to stay. She isn't sure if she is being selfish or selfless when she doesn't say it back.)

Instead, she drowns in the sea of pain, her only anchor is the heat from his lips on her skin, tingling long after he has left, but still fading faster than the appearance of a summer storm and she finds she has given him her heart, a long time ago, and is afraid that he'll shatter it (unintentionally) in a way that her own death never could.

It's a treacherous path, this broken, failing love, and she's drowning in the aftermath, wondering if it was worth the fight.

(She knows that she'll always believe it was.)

Her only regret is that he might have left thinking she didn't fight as hard as he did