a/n: I don't own any of this. And also I'm sorry.
The worst part is how quickly things go back to normal. Felicity dies, but the bad guys don't go away and there's no time for him to stop. It's only been a few days and he's back to beating the hell out of Darhk's men. When he imagined this (more like when he had nightmares about it) he thought he would die too. In whatever moment she died is when Oliver would stop functioning. Although, there are some who would argue that you couldn't exactly call him functional.
Laurel and Diggle stop talking every time he walks in a room. He knows they have just stopped discussing him. Thea studies him worriedly when she thinks he's not looking. Everyone in his life goes around almost saying things, but they falter when they see his face.
In another life, all of that might have annoyed him to no end. In this life, the one without Felicity, he can't really feel much of anything. So, none of it bothers him. He pretends he doesn't notice.
The world without Felicity keeps spinning and so Oliver keeps moving. It's the only thing he can think to do. He's got her voice in his head telling him to keep going. "Keep fighting, Oliver. Don't let them win."
In his head she sounds angrier than she did when she was here. He knows from experience that death can do that to a person. The week after she dies, he considers going to the pit. The idea occurs to him after half a bottle of whiskey on his one night off. He takes off at three am on the coldest night in February with a mission and doesn't bother to take his phone. He's pretty sure the others have a sixth sense about when he's going to do something stupid.
When he gets to the cemetery Oliver stands by her grave with a shovel and stares blankly at it for an hour. He replays her funeral over in his head. The sounds of people crying as the coffin was lowered down are all around him. He placed the first clump of earth down and he can still feel the coldness of it in his hand.
Diggle shows up as the sun rises and places his hand on Oliver's shoulder. The whole night makes him almost feel something. It's still not enough to break down the wall he's been building between himself and the rest of the world.
"She wouldn't want it," Diggle says.
"I know. I keep hearing her in my head, yelling at me for even standing here…"
"It's not fair," Diggle says, his voice breaking. He sounds like he wants to say more, but is holding back. Instead, they are silent for a while and then Dig passes him an old bottle of vodka and says, "Don't tell Laurel."
Two months pass and he hears her less often, Oliver isn't sure if it's good or bad. He's not sure if it hurt more when he heard her all the time. All he knows is that it still does.
He hasn't been back to the apartment since she died. It's been hard enough being in the lair looking at her empty chair. In the end, Thea makes him face it. She and Laurel flank him as he unlocks the door.
The tree is still up, wilted and brown, with the Hanukkah ornaments weighing down the branches. He can still smell her in the air like she's just in the bedroom waiting for him to come flop down beside her.
Oliver drops to his knees in the doorway and sobs because she's gone and the reminder of that is everywhere. Thea and Laurel have to carry him inside.
"This was a bad idea," Thea says.
"Yeah," Laurel sighs. "But I think he might have needed a bad idea."
Diggle shows up an hour later and kicks them both out, "You brought him over here and you didn't even clean up first? I've got this. You two go make sure the city doesn't fall apart."
It's the last thing he hears before he passes out from exhaustion.
When he wakes up the house is clean and smells like pine scented cleaning spray. It doesn't make him cry, but it hurts just as badly. Diggle is doing something in the kitchen and he hears the familiar sounds of Sara's toys in the background.
"You brought the baby to my breakdown?" Oliver asks.
Diggle turns around with a raised eyebrow, "Lyla's on a mission. If you'd warned me you would be losing your shit, then I would have called the sitter."
He brings over a burger. It doesn't look quite as good as a Big Belly burger, but he smiles at the effort.
"For the record, I'm not a chef and this is the one thing I can make that's actually edible."
"Thanks, Diggle. Really."
Diggle has set up a playpen in one corner of the room and he checks on her while Oliver eats. Sara giggles as he talks to her and Oliver's heart for one second feels a little better.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"What do you think?"
Diggle sighs, "Alright, I know you don't, but I need to talk about her. Felicity was…she was my best friend. The three of us, we were family, and I miss her so much. It's not fair because you two got so little time together. It makes me so angry. She was so much better than us, you know?"
For a second he doesn't know what to say and then, more clearly than he has in weeks, he hears her voice, "Damn right I am."
He can't help laughing and he can't help that his heart feels a little lighter. It feels, just for a second, the way it did when Felicity was in the room. It's the same kind of happiness.
"God, she would have loved hearing you say that."
Then Diggle is laughing too. It's say something about Felicity Smoak that she makes them laugh like this long after she's gone. He doesn't feel better and he probably never will, but it's starting to feel bearable. Oliver is starting, just in the last few moments, to feel again. He thinks that's got to count for some thing.
Years go by and the pain doesn't go away, but like with the aching in his bones, he learns to live with it. He thinks about her everyday and when he's really lucky he hears her voice. Usually saying something snarky. It's almost enough to get by.