"You don't understand," he whispered, painfully. A single tear ran down his left cheek. He closed his eyes and held his breath, trying to keep his composure. He took one hard swallow to shove down his feelings.
She was looking up into his eyes with pain of her own, and his heart broke at the sight. He never wanted to hurt her. But he was hurting her now. Another tear followed the first.
"Help me understand," she cried softly, her eyes glistening.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. How could he possibly make her understand that he was in an impossible place? He felt trapped by the decisions around him, unable to take a step in any direction, because every decision was dangerous. To his sanity.
He couldn't lose her. Any of her. He couldn't lose her faith in him. He couldn't lose the way she looked at him, believing in the good in him. He feared losing her strength, the way she always picked him back up, every single time. He was terrified of the idea that she might ever see him as the monster that he is. If he moved toward her, the veil would be broken. She would really get to know him, and that would kill him. He was terrified of losing her respect, her love, because of the monstrous decisions he's made, lives he could have saved but didn't, people he killed not because they deserved it, but because he wanted to. Killings that had nothing to do with justice, but revenge. So he had to keep her away.
But keeping away was just as impossible. He no longer had any control over the magnetic pull he had toward her. He felt like he was caught in a web, unable to pull away, inexorably drawn to her. He couldn't keep his hands off her, and had to touch her every single day. Her shoulder, her arm, her hands, her hair, her cheek, her sometimes bare back. Her skin was like a drug, and he was thoroughly addicted. He could never pull his gaze away from her blue-grey eyes. He paid attention to the size of her pupils, feeling heat whenever they dilated. He paid attention to her lips, always perfectly painted and somehow never smudged, dressed in various shades of pink and red. He paid attention to her hair. He loved that she could pull off any style, just by changing her hair. She could roll in Arrow mode with her practical ponytail, which was secretly his favorite look on her. She could glam out with a perfectly curly coiffe, like at the Jewelry Auction, when she had worn that gold dress. That was the first time he had noticed her as a woman, and his heart had beat a little faster. He loved seeing her hair down and straightened out, the look he had dubbed his Girl Wednesday look. It was her professional look, and he loved watching her strut with confidence in the office, bossing him and Diggle around, wrangling with people who tried to call him.
Thinking about her skin, her eyes, her lips, her face, her hair, brought a different kind of pressure in his gut than fear. He felt like he was losing his mind with the mood swings. From anger at her being away to guilt for mistreating her; from relief that she was safe to fear of losing her; from optimistically asking her to dinner to now pushing her away, again. And that thought brought him back to darker places. He knew he had a problem. He wasn't unaware of what his nightmares and sleepless nights indicated. He had experienced some serious flashbacks during his ordeal with Slade. He wasn't stupid.
He couldn't do that to her, put that burden on her shoulders. It could ruin them. And then he'd lose her forever. And that just wasn't an option. Ever.
So he had to keep her away. But he couldn't stay away. But if he didn't stay away, he'd lose her forever. Which he would not live through. But he was addicted to her. He was drawn to the thing that would ultimately kill him.
"I can't lose you, Felicity," he let out in a soft sigh.
