A Fraction of What Happened in Five Years
1.
She found the first one tucked into Verne's fronds when she went to water him a week after the ordeal with Cooper Seldon. A little fold of paper, with a drawing on it maybe, and she could see some of Oliver's tiny handwriting. She plucked it out, a little annoyed that it was wet (she still hated the part of dish doing where you pluck old lettuce out of the sink drain trap), and unrolled it.
Under the number 1, it read, "I killed a chicken with my bare hands on Lian Yu. I didn't catch it myself, Yao Fei did, and he kept telling me a Chinese word that I thought meant 'bird' but really meant 'survive'. Even when I was starving I was an ungrateful ass, grossed out and petulant and still not aware of what a loser I was."
There was a picture drawn under the words of his killed Chinese chicken: it was on its back with little stick-chicken legs sticking up and x's for eyes just to make sure you could tell it was dead. It was a little bit hilarious despite the subject, and she couldn't help but smile.
"Huh. So Oliver is…going crazy" she said, and, hearing herself say it out loud to the empty lair, added, "and…. You, Felicity, are talking to yourself and a fern, so maybe you shouldn't judge."
When her updates had finished cycling on all the computers, she gathered her pocketbook and keys and paused at the now-crisp-dry little paper she'd laid near them. With a little swallow she tucked into the paperback Whitman she was carrying (strengthening poetry, good for not-pining). A bubble of doubt hollowed out her stomach a little at this action, so she snapped her fingers loud a few times to banish it as she walked to her car. She listened to dumb pop music a little too loudly all the way home.
2.
"Really?" she said, pulling the little origami frog out of one of the "foundry flats" she kept under her desk in the lair for nights when she couldn't bear heels anymore. She unfolded it and read:
"2. I learned all my Mandarin swear words from a bratty 10-year-old whose house I was living in in Hong Kong. He was such a little jerk but swearing at each other the most filthy swears we could think of made me kind of love him eventually." This note had a little drawing of a tall stick figure and a short, very fat blob figure, both of them frowning with a thundercloud and lightning bolts over both their heads. The tall Oliver figure had his hand on the blob-boy's shoulder.
Felicity shook her head slowly. She looked again at the miserable man and boy in the picture, and said, "God damn it Oliver" . From the far back, Diggle answered, "No, he's with Thea tonight, remember?" Felicity blushed, and then blushed more realizing she was blushing, and murmured "Oh, yeah, never mind", as though she'd meant to ask Digg where Oliver was, as though her mind was on Arrow business, and not having weird little short circuits because, apparently, Oliver was embarking on some sort of sharing project with her.
3.
Late Fall brought bad colds to Felicity and Digg, the two who spent most time around children and crowded elevators. She found the third note sniffling and shuffling to the kettle she begrudgingly let Roy set up ("What? It's not for you to use… unless you want to make something hot. I like tea sometimes" he'd said, as though admitting he slept with a teddy bear). She almost poured hot water onto it, folded into an octagon as it was at the bottom of her Tardis mug. "When I was on Lian Yu the second time, I looked like Tom Hanks in Castaway and I did, in fact, have a thing I talked to sometimes – not a volleyball though. An albatross. I think it was an albatross. It looked pretty pissed off most of the time but it came by regularly enough to make me expect him and…name him Albert."
Felicity wasn't sure which part of this to take most note of – the "2nd time on Lian Yu" which she hadn't known about, or the truly hilarious picture he drew of his stick figure self with haystack beard and LOTS of hair, waving to a big bird he'd made to look annoyed by drawing a V shape over its two dots for eyes. He was getting kind of good at this, and she laugh-coughed despite herself. Oliver, clanking up his salmon ladder, stopped clanking at the sound of it. She turned up to him and said. "Albert?"
He looked down at her and nodded. "The albatross." And then he resumed his salmoning.
4.
The holidays came and went and with them the notes. She'd been Ray Palmer's regular date to Star City's many glittering affairs, which challenged Oliver in many, many ways, she knew, and she did her best to time her presence at the lair to when he was gone or about to be gone. Over comms, his voice was all Deep Arrow, all low brusqueness, and she limited her commentary to instructions and directions without much effort. She didn't feel much like babbling anyway. Because she was pissed off : first for feeling guilty for dating a really great, interesting guy, then at Oliver's general weirdness and inability to talk to her like a normal person, and seriously pissed off that he was angry at her.
5.
January rolled into a truly sucky February – sheeting ice-rain, the non-picturesque kind, seemed like it was stuck over Starling city (sorry, "Star City") for good. And it was getting to her. Ray had offered to take her somewhere sunny over Valentine's weekend, but she'd declined (too icky, Valentine's Day booty trip with her new …lover …shudder…somewhere honeymoony…just too much.) And in the awkwardness of her bad lie to him in refusing (friends from coming in from Central City), Felicity wanted nothing more than to be alone, hiding in the lair tracking communications from Verner Sytle, who'd poisoned the name Verne and so deserved her wrath.
She'd gotten soaked on the way over. And Roy –goddamn Roy-was already there with his goddamn tea sharpening his goddamned arrows. She grunted her hello and sat down to her array to run the decryption she'd thought of.
As her computers crunched and flipped through numbers, she sat at her station in boots she couldn't be bothered to take off, combing her fingers viciously through the perma-tangle at the back of her neck from constant scarf-wearing, glaring hate at her damp puffer coat, for how huge it was and how not helpful it was when cold weather turned wet. Stupid coat. Stupid weather. Stupid…February.
"It stopped." Roy said from the sharpening table, glancing at her computer. She raised her glare to him (more huge and unhelpful, she thought). She moved the information to the main screen and Count Vertigo 2.0's decrypted email: "Expect shipment 2/29 at 8pm".
"Are you fucking kidding me?" she said aloud.
"What?" asked Roy.
"This is a fucking LEAP YEAR?"
"Uh, I guess…"
"We have MORE of This. Fucking. Month. Than USUAL?" She wasn't proud of her tone but she couldn't help it.
Roy was up and retreating backwards to his kettle now with his hands up, and Felicity returned to her screens, muttering darkly. She heard the bump and clatter of Roy backing into something, and then the rumble of male voices hey woah-ing each other told her what it was: Digg and Oliver, coming back from some patrol. Of course. More low rumbling, her name in there somewhere, and "leap year" and look out. She counted back from ten with her eyes closed, and then did it again as they tiptoed in because she needed a full twenty seconds to compose herself to put on that goddamned coat and leave the lair with some semblance of dignity. "Vertigo shipment's on the 29th" she said as non-shriekily as possible as she shouldered past them, rewrapping her (cursed) scarf.
Wine, hot chocolate, full flannel pajamas restored some semblance of Felicity to herself when she got home. She woke up to a morning that was dimly lit with winter sun, but lit nonetheless instead of raining ice. It was the kind of morning that deserved coffee and slow reading of the dumb parts of the local paper, the police blotters and pets for sale. Except tucked into the paper's elastic band when she got it off her doormat was another note with Oliver's handwriting after the number 4 – so she read that instead.
4. I did want to die during the five years I was away. I asked more than once, to more than one person, to just kill me. I still don't know why I survived.
But. I do know that I'm glad I didn't die. There's been a lot of bad since I've come home, but none of it compares to the awful of the five years away, which I've been trying to give you some fractions of, and Felicity, none of it overshadows the good that's come into my life these last two years either.
I'm not waiting to die anymore. I realized that you might not know that yet, so I'm telling you. I want to live, and I'm trying to live…to put more into my life. I started with family, with Thea, and it's good! But it's because of you.
P.S. And I don't begrudge you living your life either, really, although I'm really jealous and a crap rotten person to be around when I'm jealous. (As you know)."
The picture on this one was just one image: a stick figure with a hood, a bow and arrow at his feet, and this time with a full circle-and-stick-rays sun shining over his head. The figure was waving.
6.
Oliver's phone binged its text message bing next to his bed in Thea's loft. He snagged it from the bedside table and turned over on his stomach to read it –tried not to be excited when he saw it was from Felicity. Opened it: pictures – two of them side by side. First, a pretty goth girl with long black hair and a nose ring in a student-directory style photo –(the kind his frat brothers and he had called a "pigbook" , assholes as they were). She looked so different but it was clearly her, and god help him, gorgeous, many piercings and all. Next to it, a selfie that showed the Felicity he was more used to – taken in –was that owl pajamas? No makeup, blonde hair down and tousled with sleep, a sight that pulled at his chest with how beautiful it made her, one side looped behind an ear with an arrow piercing .
The text read:
2008: Manic Panic Black Magic #3.
2014: Clairol Nice 'N Easy Born Blonde Vanilla Blonde. Tell no one.
Your turn again,
Felicity
Oliver bit his lip and buried his giant grin in his pillow.