Title: I Know Places We Can Go, Babe
Category: Arrow
Genre: Romance
Ship: Felicity/Oliver
Chapter Rating: pg-13
Overall Rating: mature
Chapter Word Count: 2,182
Summary: (au/no arrow) There is a certain quiet to the Starling Mental Institute. A monotony that envelops Oliver and leaves him to relive his past, away from anyone he could possibly hurt. Until a catatonic boy and a blonde girl with glasses disrupt his peace, something he's not sure is good or bad.
-short novel-
There was a gentleness to the Starling Mental Institute. The thing Oliver had discovered about the mentally disabled was that as erratic as they seemed to the rest of the world, there was a certain kind of order to the way they operated. Patterns were their best friends. A set schedule with set events that they could follow, and deviation from the pattern could mean disaster. But there was a peace in the air, the monotony of the institute a welcome change from the whirlwind that had been Lian Yu.
The other patients ignored Oliver for the most part, somehow understanding without really knowing why that his presence involved danger.
"Oliver, are you listening to me?" His eyes flashed over to those of his psychiatrist. Like every time he looked into his eyes, Oliver had the sense that he was seeing more than he was letting on. As quiet and undemanding as Dr. Diggle could be, he often thought that the man gained just as many answers from his silence as he did from his words. Lying of course hadn't worked. The first and only time Olive had tried lying to him he had been asked to leave and to come back the next day without the intention of lying to him. In retrospect he probably shouldn't have tried to rip off the plot of "Castaway". Maybe if he had payed more attention to movies during his time before the island, he might have had the plot of some more obscure stories to rip off.
"No," he answered honestly. It wasn't that he had intentionally been trying to ignore him, but Oliver often found that voices simply faded into the background, his mind simply more concerned with reliving the past five years than listening to whatever it was the person in front of him had to say. If he sensed no immediate physical danger, than it just wasn't worth his attention.
"You've been here for seven months now Oliver, and we've made little to no progress. I know that it's a lot to ask of you, and I know that telling someone else what you had to go through isn't something that you would ever want to do..." Dr. Diggle paused for a second, his dark eyes appraising him, watching for any indication that his words were registering with his patient. "But I'm here to help you Oliver."
He considered his options for a minute, his gaze leaving John Diggle's to once again look around the room. It was painted a light blue, the same color a pool in a gym might be, and impeccably organized. A large window took almost the entire east facing wall, giving Dr. Diggle and his patients a breathtaking view of the land before the institute. A long straight driveway that ran for as far as Oliver could see, framed on either side by tall trees of which the names Oliver neither remembered nor cared about. All he knew was that in the fall when he had first gotten here their leaves had clung to them, fighting the autumn chill even while they browned, obscuring his view and making him nervous.
This was not the case now. The trees had begun to grow their leaves anew, the green of life invigorating the gruesome looking limbs, sunlight finding it's way down to the small red car that had just parked. He'd seen it coming, the bright red paint a startling contrast to the otherwise peaceful landscape. It was parked in front the institute now, a short blonde woman rummaging around in the trunk.
"I had a friend named Wilson," he finally said. It wasn't exactly a lie. Slade's last name had been Wilson. He looked back over to Dr. Diggle, who had stopped talking and was silently appraising Oliver. Apparently a partial truth was better than nothing. The corners of his mouth turned upwards in a small smile, and his eyes danced with humor.
"Alright Oliver, I think that's enough for today."
Like the time before, Oliver wasn't exactly surprised that John Diggle could tell whether or not he was telling the truth. Perhaps, if they had met under different circumstances, they could have been close friends.
The majority of the other patients at the institute were a bit eccentric, each one with their little kinks and behaviors that were but small windows to the vast amount of damage that had been wrought on their psyche. Whether they had been born that way, or were changed by the events of their lives was completely dependent on the individual. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was wrong with Oliver, who suffered from severe PTSD and night terrors. Less than two days back from the island he had been deemed too dangerous to live with his family, much less being capable of reintegrating himself back into society.
Apparently you couldn't be dead to the world for five years and expect no one to raise an eyebrow when you tried going about your life as if nothing had happened. There were hours, entire days really, where he thought of what his life would be like had he been allowed to do so. Maybe he'd be out there, using the skills he had bought with so much suffering to try and better his city. Or maybe he would have died on the very first night, a corpse in a green leather suit that should have died that first time when his father's boat went down. He'd seen enough of those war movies, the kind where a soldier survived the entire war, did everything he possibly could to make it back, only to die almost as soon as he returned. Only Oliver hadn't been away at war, and the only thing that had kept him away the last two years had been his own reluctance to submit his family to the darkness that now permanently surrounded him.
Oliver Queen may not have been crazy, but there was something inside him that was irreparably broken. He belonged in this institute. Just like everybody else here.
He often found that quiet was the worst kind of company. Maybe it was exactly for that reason that he constantly sought out the boy who never spoke. He knew that there must have been some part of him that truly believed he didn't deserve to get better. Especially since the silence that didn't help him was the silence he always looked for.
Roy Harper was a twenty year old boy who had been admitted to the institute the same day that blonde woman with the obnoxiously bright car had first appeared. The first few weeks that he'd been here she had shown up every day, all smiles and bright clothes and chatting it up with the staff, sitting next to Roy and talking to him about every little inconsequential detail of her life. What food she'd had for breakfast and lunch. The cute guy in the corner cubical of her floor she thought might ask her out for dinner. The new purse she knew she shouldn't have bought but was just too damn awesome for her not get. It caught him off guard for a quick second, this woman who was just so open and honest. It might have been different, if she only spoke to Roy about everything when no one was around. After all who better to tell your secrets to than to somebody who was catatonic. She would run absolutely no risk there.
But this blonde lady never faltered in her constant chatter. Her voice was just loud enough for anyone who happened to be within hearing distance to hear without being too obnoxious. Occasionally one of the other patients would approach her, each one a little bolder than the last, and engage her in conversation. She never faltered, talking to them just as openly and honestly as if they weren't crazy and quite possibly dangerous.
He excepted her to stop coming all together. They all stopped coming eventually, the guilt that had originally driven them to appearing everyday eventually abating, letting them go about their lives just as easily as before.
And after a few weeks Oliver had thought she'd proven him right, and that maybe he could finally stop hovering nearby, forced to listen to every inconsequential detail she chose to share while he waited for her to leave so he could enjoy the silence he was promised when he was near Roy.
An entire week went by in which she didn't appear. The other patients took notice, some of them aware enough to make the connection with their own family members and silently shake their heads in disappointment for the poor boy. Even the staff, normally too busy with their own goings on and immersed in the health of their patients took notice. Some pursed their lips. Others simply went about as if nothing had changed. It was expected after all.
"I'm so sorry I haven't been here in a while."
There was a particular tree out in the grounds that Oliver was particularly fond of. It's roots were twisted and grown in such a way that they sprang up out of the ground in front of it, shaped so that he was able to sit there with as much comfort as could be expected from a chair shaped by nature. It would probably have made more sense for him to sit on the bench only feet in front of it, close enough that the trees leaves cast a shadow over it. But the silent boy was sitting there, eyes open and glassed over. One of the staff members was off to the side, quietly listening to whatever one of the other patients had to say to them, their expressions focused as they listened to every single word, as if by some miracle anything that was said could be the key towards recovery. This particular nurse was one of the more dedicated ones, never once betraying any hint of displeasure or loss of patience. She had short dark hair and wore heavy eyeliner, but there were lines around her eyes and the corners of her lips that gave away her gentler nature. The lines betraying the fact that she was more given to smiles and laughter than the dark makeup might suggest.
"Hi Felicity!" The patient speaking to the nurse said, the arrival of the blonde woman tearing her away from whatever story she'd been frantically telling her listener. Felicity looked over and smiled, fluttering her fingers in greeting before sitting down next to Roy, pulling out two brown paper lunch bags. She set one next to him - as she often did - as if she expected him to open it up and start looking through the contents inside, and not just sit there and ignore it just as effectively as he did everything else around him.
"The flu really sucks you know? And you know me, when I get sick I go down. Suffice it to say that this entire last week I became very well acquainted with my toilet bowl." She pulled an apple out, peeling the sticker off the side and sinking her teeth into it. Oliver watched her bright red lips - just a few shades lighter than the apple - as she chewed, the movement mesmerizing.
"Do you want some?" The sound of her voice snapped him out the strange trance he had begun to fall in. He looked up from her lips to her eyes, surprised that their gaze had been turned on him. Not once had she ever acknowledged him. He hovered near Roy constantly, to the point where the staff had taken notice and even Dr. Diggle had asked him about this new behavior. He never answered, and since he never came closer than four feet the boy, eventually they seemed to lose interest. Felicity ignored him every time he came over, and Oliver thought it was more for his benefit than hers. He liked to think that somehow, she'd gotten the message that he wasn't eager, or even willing really, to talk to anyone.
She held an apple out to him, a smile on her lips and an expression so open and honest Oliver wasn't really sure what to make of her.
He shook his head, but remains where he was. Declining her offer of food was one thing, getting up and leaving was entirely another.
Felicity Smoak became a bit of an enigma to him. She didn't come every day like she used to, sadly explaining to Roy that things at work were becoming a bit hectic and she wouldn't be able to make it up as often as she'd like. When Oliver heard her tell him this, he thought maybe she was letting him know as well. It didn't make sense, since she had no reason to, but liked that she felt the need to do so. He wasn't sure why.
Still, she made it to the institute more often than anyone else, and four times a week was very impressive.
A/N: Like many of the stories I'm churning out right now I have absolutely no idea where this came from. Like Col said, sometimes when an idea comes to you, you just have to run with it and keep yourself writing. I like this little story. I'm not one hundred percent sure where it's going (big surprise there eh?), but I'm eager to find out where it could go. I promise I haven't abandoned any of my other stories, I'm just taking a small break and trying to work my way through the writer's block I'm having right now.
Please leave reviews! They feed the muse! :D
-M