Hello, everyone! I am a HUGE Olicity shipper and Arrow nerd and have had this story trapped in my mind for a while. It has taken me a long time to write this one-shot because I am such a perfectionist. I would like to provide a fair warning that this established-Olicity fic deals with a heavy subject. I hope you enjoy. xoxo M
It only took seconds after Diggle appeared from the other side of the glass walls before Oliver shot to his feet with unintentional violence causing the suits around the conference table to jolt to attention.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," he mumbled as he mindlessly buttoned his jacket and swiftly escaped the room.
It was not Diggle's presence that elicited Oliver's unprofessional and sudden reaction – it was the look on his friend's face that triggered such alarm. His friend, John Diggle, who had the unbreakable ability of keeping any and all emotions under a veil of neutrality. The unthinkable amount of panic in John's eyes caused Oliver's entire body to go numb.
"What? Diggle, what?" Oliver questioned, his hands beginning to tremble. Both were completely negligent to the puzzled audience that continued to inspect them from the adjacent conference room.
Though he asked the question, he somehow already knew the answer. After everything that their friendship had endured over the years, Oliver had the ability to recognize that this specific type of emotion and panic in Diggle could only be sparked by one thing – one person.
Oliver's knees weakened. Please. No.
In the quietest, yet loudest voice Oliver Queen had ever heard, John finally spoke, "It's Felicity."
It took several attempts before Diggle was able to sustain Oliver in the passenger's seat. "She's alive, Oliver," he kept repeating. "She's alive." It took every ounce of energy within John to keep himself from added the word, "but…"
Though Diggle did not have a complete diagnosis for Felicity's condition, he was wise enough to know that there was no other silver lining to this situation.
As Diggle sped away from Queen Consolidated at unforgivable speeds, Oliver was utterly oblivious. His body was completely immobilized - he felt as if his soul burned every second that he sat still in his seat.
Felicity. His heart clenched just at the thought of her name.
After the indescribable tragedies of the island and the catastrophe of loss that followed his return, there was very little that Oliver truly had left. From a monetary standpoint, there was no car, house, vacation, technology, or physical item that was out of reach for Oliver, but then again, there was nothing that could fulfill the absence of his mother, his father, and his sister, Thea, who had been missing for years after Slade Wilson's attack on Starling City.
There were only two things that Oliver was truly blessed with; his best friend, Diggle, and her.
To think, let alone know, that the presence of Felicity in his life was in the slightest bit at stake, made him physically sick to his stomach.
From the moment he had laid eyes on Felicity three years ago, Oliver undeniably felt something different within him; and though it took him longer than it should have, there was a moment somewhere in between in which all his worries, his pain, and his darkness had vanished and all he saw was her.
"Mr. Queen, can I-" a man in a white lab coat hastily attempts to obstruct his path as Oliver escaped the car and storms through a private entrance to the ER.
"Where is she…" Oliver mumbled – he barely registered the man's presence, let alone the movement of his own two feet beneath him. "Where is she…" he repeats several times before Diggle grabs his forearm and guides him in the right direction.
All his senses were a sliver away from going completely dull. In addition to a few figures popping their curious heads from doors and corners, Oliver was only able to pick up bits and pieces of what the doctor was trying to communicate with him as the trio weaved through the halls.
"...We have not found the exact cause..." The older man said, "Can occur in the early stages of..." Oliver was incapable of processing any information at that moment, "She will heal, but…" All he needed and wanted was to see her.
After what felt like an eternal maze, Diggle turned the corner to reveal a secluded door with a security guard standing watch next to the frame. A shred of energy suddenly escaped Oliver as he impatiently strode forward with his eye on the handle before he was suddenly was jerked backwards by an unexpected force.
Oliver's mind ached at the thought of reaching the other side of that door to see her face and pulled his arm free of the hand that grasped it, but a second later, his wrist was enclosed again, delaying him from stepping forward. "Ollie," a shaken voice accompanied the gesture. He turned his head with an impatient, almost angry nature, towards the familiar and sorrowful expression of Laurel Lance.
"Ollie!" he vaguely had the ability, let alone the concern, to be attentive to her words at that moment. She continued, "I don't know what happened… She just collapsed and…"
"Not now, Laurel," Oliver muttered as he broke away from her grasp and closed the gap between himself and the door.
When Oliver stepped into the dimly lit room, the entirety of the chaos that emanated up until that moment had vanished - he felt his muscles unwind in the slightest when he finally laid eyes on her blond locks across the room. The heaviness in the air was palpable.
Each of Oliver's senses once again gained life with each careful step he took towards the bed.
The strong, lively woman that he knew her to be, lay before him with her body curled inward while engulfed in bland hospital sheets. Felicity's back faced the door looking as if she were staring into the darkness of Starling City through the window on the opposite side of the room. The fragileness of her body frightened him and when he finally lay eyes on her exquisite face once he made his way around the bed, his heart stopped.
There were no words to describe the image of Felicity Smoak's almost-lifeless body.
Oliver fell to his knees.
She appeared so breakable before him that he felt as if he could not touch her. Gently, he cupped her cheek with a feather touch and within a second, her broken, desolate eyes drifted towards his.
Oliver did not need Diggle, Laurel, or a doctor to explain the situation at hand - he knew what was wrong the moment he caught a glimpse of her and it was then that his worst fear had been confirmed by the look in Felicity's eyes.
They stared at each other for what seemed like centuries before her gaze wandered away from his, again. No words. No movement.
His body shutdown.
After what seemed like an eternity, the pin-drop silence broke.
"I'm sorry," a breathless voice escaped from her pale lips. It took a few seconds for Oliver to even register that she had spoken.
"What?" he whispered hoarsely, unable to gain the strength to speak, yet still caressing her face.
Felicity swallowed painfully as she shut her eyes with agony. "I'm sorry," she repeated quietly.
His eyebrows pulled together as he stared down at her angelic face. "For what?" he breathed.
She opened her eyes again to meet his – this time glazed with tears.
"This is my fault."
Oliver stopped breathing. He shook his head.
"What do you mean this is your fault?" he straightened out, completely taken aback by the words muttered from her mouth.
By any means, this was not her fault. It was an act of nature. The odds working against them. What could she possibly mean?
She hesitated, her face contorting as if she were about to break. "I…" her voice shook, "I should've been more careful. I should have avoided the stress. I should have been at home. I should have listened to you, the doctor…" her familiar mumbling tone escalated as if it were going to hit the verge of hysteria before Oliver clutched her face in between his hands, his thumb stroking stopping her from speaking.
He was stunned.
He thought that after seven years, he knew all that there was to know about his fiancé: the scent of her hair, every line on her skin, each type of look in her eye, every tone of her voice. Her strength inspired him, her lightheartedness softened him, her loyalty kept him alive – Felicity Smoak was anything and everything to Oliver Queen, and he loved her more than she could ever know.
However, this statement, these words, had ultimately unveiled the hardest truth about Felicity; she was her own worst enemy.
The pressure that she placed upon her self in all situations, big or small, led her to blame herself for anything that went wrong, while praising others for what went right. It had nothing to do with that fact that she did not realize her strength, but instead that she refused to accept forgiveness upon herself.
Oliver drew a deep breath. "Felicity," his voice sincere and safe, his gaze intense and unbreakable, "this is not your fault."
She was the strongest person he had ever met, yet she was unable to recognize that power in herself. "Please," he whispered, "please, do not blame yourself."
Her blue eyes softened for a moment, processing his words slowly. It looked as if she finally understood, but as quickly as her realization lasted, her expression changed.
Felicity's body became dangerously still and suddenly, her face twisted, her lip quivered. A second later heavy sobs escaped her frail chest.
"I just want to hold my baby," she whimpered. Her body went limp, her face contorting as her devastating moans filling the room, "I just want my baby."
Oliver enclosed her into his arms viciously, his body muffling her haunting cries as she shook with each wail.
"I do too, 'Licity," he could not even draw the ability to pronounce her name properly while his voice shook as violently as she - his lungs tightened achingly, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he repeated.
And for the first time in almost five years, Oliver did something he had not done and never imagined he would do again since he witnessed his mother's life being taken right before his eyes – he wept.
Despite the years of chaos, death, tragedy, and failure that had fulfilled his life for years after the Gambit was destroyed, there was nothing that could prepare or compare to the loss that Oliver Queen felt at this moment; the loss of a child.
The pain that was evident through every inch of his body was indescribable, and along with Felicity's uncontrollable weeping, Oliver's breathless sobs escaped the hospital walls for any and all to hear.