Oliver couldn't remember what he was like before he met her. It's not that he'd forgotten his memories. Hell, he couldn't forget those five years he was gone if he wanted to. He'd tried. He'd tried so many times with so many different options and herbal concoctions, but the nightmares haunted him regardless. But sometimes, his life felt like a movie that he'd seen so often that his brain just assumed those things happened to him. He was someone else, someone he no longer recognized, and most days, he was grateful for that.
But now, as he sat bundled in tiny blankets in some cave at the base of a mountain, he wished he could find that person again. The person that didn't care about anyone but himself. He'd been stabbed and pushed off a mountain, and still, he was worried about Felicity. She'd asked him one thing. She'd wanted him to win, and he hadn't. But he was still alive. Not that he had any way of telling her that.
"Drink." The old man pushed a mug of liquid in his face. He groaned. He didn't know what day it was anymore. He'd been lost in this weird state of assuming that nothing he saw was real anymore.
"I need Felicity." He said, not for the first time, but the bearded man just grunted and shoved the steaming cup at him again. His chest clenched. He had too many demons to drink anything that would induce hallucinations, but he couldn't deny that the medicine was working. His wounds were healing. He was alive. Against all odds, he was breathing. So, he took the mug, and washed away the cotton-dryness in his mouth only to lay back down.
"Lover!" Her voice wasn't quite right, a little too high-pitched, but it was still Felicity. His Felicity. The last time he'd heard her say the word, she'd been less excited about it. Called it creepy, even, and he hadn't been able to stop himself from laughing. From telling her how perfect he thought she was. How much he loved her, even if he hadn't said the words.
What he wouldn't give for her to call him that. He didn't mind nicknames, really, and he would let her call him anything that she wanted, but he would never use a nickname for her. He loved her name too much. It meant too much. Fe-li-ci-ty. Just thinking of it made him smile.
"Fe—" He tried to say her name, but she wasn't looking at him, and his stomach knotted because these were the worst hallucinations. The ones where you no longer exist, where your worst nightmares play out in front of you, and there's not a single thing you can do to stop them. No matter how much you beg and scream, no one can hear you beg for mercy.
He didn't want to, but he couldn't resist turning his head just enough to watch as an older Felicity, one with short brown hair cut above her shoulders, straightened of any curls run into the arms of another man. Ray Palmer. God, his mind was cruel to him. It wasn't until he watched helplessly as Ray's arms fit around her that he noticed something else. The large round bulge of her stomach, followed by the glow of her skin. He was certain he was going to throw up at the realization that Felicity was pregnant with another man's child. That another man was getting his dream life, the one he'd seen so clearly the day that Sara was born, and he was nothing but a distant memory to her.
"Hello, my beautiful 'Liss Palmer." Ray was beaming down at her, peppering her face with kisses before leaning down further to kiss her stomach. "Hello there, Jonas."
Another cut straight into his chest. They'd named their child Jonas. His middle name. Which probably meant she'd named him. And Ray was a smarter man than he, so he'd known that Felicity should get everything she wants.
"I'm sorry I'm not there, Felicity. I'm so sorry." He closed his eyes, and the image disappeared as well. That was more than enough.
"Sleep." The man said, but he didn't need to be told. But it was already too late. It didn't matter whether his eyes were opened or closed, Tommy was back, and everything hurt.
"No." He whispered, covering his head with a ragged blanket that only covered half of his body at best. "You're dead. You died. Please stop." The ghost of Tommy did not listen to him, much like Tommy when he was alive.
"Stop with the whining, Ollie. It's not like you died or anything." Ghost Tommy bit into an apple, and Oliver's stomach squeezed until it hurt. He was starving. He needed food. "So, I hear we are brothers now? Gee, good thing I never went after Thea, eh?"
Oliver groaned. "That's disgusting." He pulled down the blanket from his face when he accepted that he wasn't going to disappear. "We were always brothers." This was the first time he'd let himself look at Tommy since he'd appeared. He hadn't wanted to endure that kind of pain when he was on the brink of death. But now, he realized that his memory of Tommy was fading. His face was a little fuzzy around the edges, and he was pretty sure that was the hair cut Tommy had in high school, not when he died, but he was still Tommy. He still had that smile that'd gotten them out of trouble more times than anyone could ever dream of counting, and the eyes that'd cried with him through every heartache they'd ever shared. Every thing was shared between them, and now his life was just a little too hollow to bare.
"I have to say, Ollie. Felicity Smoak could rule the world one day. I'm not entirely sure how you managed to make her fall in love with you. Minus your abs. Which really, just isn't fair considering you had to fall off the face of the earth for five years to get them." Oliver groaned again. "Five years on an island, my ass, b-t-w. Don't think I don't know about that stunt in Hong Kong."
"Felicity isn't in love with me, Tommy." He frowned. He'd done everything in his power to ensure that. "I was trying to save you. They were going to kill you."
"Yeah, and I'm not dead." Oliver winced. He'd watched Tommy die. He'd thought he'd healed those wounds, but now, he could smell him, and it hurt too much to remember that he wasn't real anymore. Tommy was becoming more crisp now, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that this was a hallucination.
"You would have loved her if you'd gotten to know her." Oliver told him. "It's impossible not to love her. Believe me." If he stayed still long enough, he could almost hear the comforting sound of her typing away on her computers, just another day of her saving Starling City and saving him.
"Just what we'd need. To once again be in love with the same girl. Oh come on! Lighten up! Don't go all squinty on me. Laurel is going to be just fine without both of us."
"You know I would give anything for you to be alive, right?" "We have that in common." Tommy looked down to the ground, and Oliver's heart started racing when he realized that Tommy's body was starting to fade away, and blood was starting to leak out of his chest.
"No. Please stay. I'm sorry." Oliver's voice caught in his throat as he tried to grab onto Tommy. Of course, nothing was there to grab onto. Nothing to touch, and then, Oliver realized, nothing to see anymore either.
He was so tired of losing people over and over. It wasn't enough that he had to watch the people he loved most die, his brain had to play the scenes on repeat. The bullet that ended his father, the sword that ended his mother, and the boulder that ended Tommy. And it was all his fault. But right now, Tommy felt the most cruel. Tommy was better than all of them. He should have lived a long life. He should have had eight children, lived on some island off the coast of Jamaica, and he should have died a happy man who would occasionally think back on a childhood friend named Oliver that he'd loved once upon a time before he drowned in the China Sea.
But life hadn't cared about what Tommy deserved. Life hadn't cared about anyone. He didn't bother to wipe away the tears as he drifted off to sleep, begging and pleading his brain to remind him that there'd been a time when he was happy and careless and hadn't carried a single burden of the world on his shoulder. His dreams didn't listen, he only dreamed of watching Sara being shot to death by arrows. Sara was killed by Thea, two more to the list of people he couldn't save.
"Wake up, Oliver! Damnit, wake up!" He felt a shove against his chest, and he blinked his eyes open long enough to see Diggle standing over him. Shit, his hallucinations were getting worse if he could be pushed by them now. Maybe he was finally dying. Maybe the medicine hadn't been enough to save him. Maybe the man hadn't found him in time. Maybe he'd been abandoned.
"Not right now." He closed his eyes again. He'd finally had a good dream. Felicity was in it, and she'd been smiling at him. Smiling like whatever he'd just said had been the highlight of her entire life, and she was hugging him and he'd been able to smell her shampoo, and he'd felt the press of her glasses against his chest as she buried herself into him.
"Oliver?" He felt her hand press against his cheek before he heard her voice, and the tears started pouring again. The dream had been too good, and now karma was setting him in his place. He was never going to see her again. He was going to die in this cave haunted by his demons. And he would welcome death if it wasn't for her. His lighthouse in a sea of darkness and angry storms.
"You're alive." She whispered, and his chest tightened at the scent of her engulfed him again. It was almost cruel how well his brain had stored her memory. He couldn't even tell she wasn't real, and he refused to open his eyes to further prove that theory. He couldn't watch her fade away. He couldn't watch as his brain made up a way for her to die.
"We are running out of time, Oliver. Wake up!" He felt his body being lifted off the makeshift bed, and it was then that he realized maybe this wasn't a hallucination at all. "Dig?" His voice croaked, and he finally opened his eyes. And it was her. He was hanging upside down over Dig's shoulder, and all he could see was Felicity. She was crying and her eyes were fixed on him as if she barely saw him at all. There were so many things that he wanted to say to her. So many things he wanted her to know, but his throat was too dry for him to say much of anything.
"Felicity." He couldn't stop himself from smiling, even as his lips split from the bitter cold air, and he could feel blood well up from the cracks. His world went dark then, but for the first time in so long, he was greeted with only silence and blackness, and he thought it was the kindest thing life had ever done for him.
The next time he woke, he was lying on the table in the Foundry, and he felt the smallness of her hands in his left hand before he could move his head to look at her. "Felicity." He breathed her name again, and this time, he couldn't ignore the loud sobbing that came from her.
"I hate you so much." She cried, even as she pushed herself onto the table, and wrapped herself around the curve of him. It stung as she clasped to him, but it wasn't unbearable, so he said nothing. "I hate you for leaving me. I hate you for dying. I hate that I love you. I hate that perfect gentlemen who treat me well and want to be with me love me, and it doesn't matter because they aren't you." She kept crying, and all he could do was wrap his arm around her and pull her tighter.
"I'm not dead, Felicity. You kept me alive." He kissed her forehead. He was about to say more before the door to the foundry opened, and three sets of footsteps came rushing down.
He turned to look and smiled as Dig lead the line, followed by Roy, but his smile cut short as his eyes landed on Thea. Thea, who didn't know he was the Arrow. Thea, who didn't know she killed Sara, Thea, who he'd died trying to protect. And then, he realized as she looked back at him with a chill that went down his spine, that none of those statements were true anymore, and all he could do was cry for the loss of her innocence.
"I'm sorry." He rasped, but she just shook her head.
"I never asked you to die for me. I never asked for any of this!" She screamed, and everyone went on edge as they waited for her to become even more unhinged.
"I'm sorry, Oliver. She deserved to know where you went. She deserved to know how much you loved her. You deserved to be remembered as a hero." Felicity was mere inches from his face, and although he wanted to be angry that she'd once again taken his choice to protect his identity away from him, he couldn't muster the feelings that usually bubbled by now. He was alive, and Felicity was in his arms, and his sister was safe, even if she was angry.
"Okay." He said, and he could tell that even Felicity was expecting a fight."I love you, Felicity. I'm not going anywhere. Not ever again." She kissed him then, and they both ignored the multiple attempts at clearing throats from the others in the room. He didn't care. He'd watched her happily ever after with Ray Palmer one too many times, and he wanted to assure himself that it wasn't real. That he wasn't too late.
"Maybe we should give them another minute?" Dig said, louder than necessary.
When he heard the door shut again, he pulled away just far enough to cup her face in both of his hands. "Marry me, Felicity. Please, will you marry me?"