If there was one thing Felicity Smoak was used to, it was being ignored.
It was how she'd grown up; second best, second option. Being treated like a ghost, like her presence wasn't acknowledged.
At Queens Consolidated, the only person who paid the slightest bit of attention to her was Walter. He was the only person who would smile at her on the corridors, offer her a coffee during the longer hours. The only person who saw her.
But, Walter disappeared, and it was back to being a ghost.
She got on, obviously; worked, went home, ate, slept. worked, went home, ate, slept. A never ending routine she had fallen into and never expected to change.
She was just a nobody to everybody. And she was fine with that, kind of.
So when Oliver Queen quite literally dropped into her life, in the back of her car, in a green hood and bleeding, let's just say her 'routine' went out the window.
For the first time in her life, she had someone. To talk to, to work and laugh with and confide in. Diggle was the same - always there, always with a smile on his face and warmth in his heart.
Felicity had friends.
Of course, in the future, one of them became much more than a friend.
After 'the Hood' had retired, after John and Lyla remarried and moved to New York with a baby on the way to finally settle down without a war to worry about, Felicity and Oliver would just talk. About anything and everything and sometimes nothing at all. They could talk for hours, and Oliver would just listen. Listen to her opinions, her thoughts, about her childhood dreams, her favourite book or film, what her family were like. She could pour her heart out to him and he would always accept it. He had grown to love her the same way she loved him.
It wasn't easy at first, settling down. Oliver still had nightmares, sometimes, and there was something he felt he sorely needed. Something that Felicity was very sceptical about carrying for a good ten, fifteen years. But caving to her own broodiness at last, a son was born, seventeen years after the events that had caused Oliver, Felicity and John to retire. They named him Robert John Queen, and not long after a sister was born, Katrina Iris Queen.
It got easier, after that. Although, whenever the children were playing in an open green field or shopping with Roy and Thea, or even at school, a panic would grip Felicity, the same sort of panic she'd had when Oliver and John were out on missions and hadn't returned for several hours.
It seems the old IT-girl days in the basement underneath the nightclub had left a mark of constant anxiety and paranoia on her.
But Oliver - kind, caring Oliver - was always there to soothe her. His nightmares had stopped when their children were born, and the lights in his eyes had returned with the first pregnancy. Whenever she went into one of her panic attacks, he would silently come up to her and wrap his arms around her tightly, kissing the top of her head and whispering Mandarin words into her ear. And she would grip onto him tightly, like a lifeline, terrified that if she let go, she would surely lose herself.
He knew her strong points and her weak points. He knew that beyond anything, she needed him as much as he need her. And he also knew that although he could never forgive himself for the amount of times he had put her in danger during the old days, she would forgive him for his past, completely. And in return he loved her and their children with all his heart, soul and being.
And Felicity knew this. Knew he loved her as much as she loved him, loved their children to the ends of the earth and back. Knew he would do anything to protect all of them. And it always made Felicity feel something that she had never felt until she'd met John Diggle and Oliver Queen.
It made her feel wanted.