A/N: Just a quick little fluffy one-shot inspired by the photo of SA and his little girl. I need a moment of fluff after the heartbreak of 4x15.
Summary: . It took work for them to get here. Work and pain and fear and heartbreak. But it was their love and their friendship and their overwhelming desire for one another that brought them back together.
Not So Distant Future
She watches the way that he carries their daughter. She takes in his easy smile and the careful way in which he keeps her perched on his shoulders. The early morning sun glints off of Evie's blonde curls as it baths them in its warmth. Evie is laughing as Oliver tickles the backs of her knees where they are hung on either side of his head and her little hands move animatedly as she squirms.
The sight of them always affects her in the same way. Warmth surrounds her heart, calming her, filling her with love and joy and peace. Because this is the life that she has dreamed of. A life with this man. It took work for them to get here. Work and pain and fear and heartbreak. But it was their love and their friendship and their overwhelming desire for one another that brought them back together. Because even after struggling to get past the lying, after fighting to make him understand that what she wanted most from him was to be his partner in all things – for him to not only love her, but trust her and include her – they had made it back. They had found their way back to each other and Felicity knew that it had been inevitable.
She had never truly believed in soulmates. Not really. The truth was that – prior to meeting Oliver – she hadn't even been sure that love was real. She hadn't allowed herself to think that there was someone out there who would love her unconditionally. Who would accept all parts of her, her flaws and her insecurities, her baggage. She hadn't believed that someone like him existed. Someone who was equally – if not more so – flawed and damaged. Someone who needed her acceptance as much as she needed theirs. And, she knew, it wasn't only about acceptance. It was about healing. About finding the person who fit her so perfectly that those things that she carried with her for so long, they fell away and became inconsequential.
Because he helped to make her whole again. He helped her realize that her past didn't define her. Her father's disappearance, the hate she had felt for herself thinking that she hadn't been good enough, that her father had abandoned them because she wasn't good enough. Those things were a part of her but they didn't make her who she was. And it had taken him walking into her life to make her realize that that was true. Because she had seen the hate that he carried, the disgust, and as it became evident that he hated the man that he had become, she understood. She wanted to make him see that he wasn't a monster, that the things that he had done in his past – things that he had done in order to survive – didn't define him. He could grow and he could heal and she wanted so desperately to help him see that. She had wanted him to see himself as she saw him.
In turn, he had done the same for her. She could look in the mirror now and the woman that she saw was the woman that Oliver loved. That her friends loved. She was a wife and a mother and a daughter and a fighter and a friend. She saw that woman now because of him.
"Momma!"
Evie's squeal makes her smile, makes her heart burst in her chest, as she jogs after them. She slips her hand into his as he reaches for her.
"You okay?" he asks softly, his expression filled with warm concern for her, with familiar gentleness.
She nods.
"I'm good."
His fingers flex against hers and she returns the gesture letting him know with her heart and her actions that she is perfect. That she is exactly where she belongs.