Against my promise, this wasn't exactly a quick update. Sorry about that! Real life got in the way with 16-hour days and no time for writing, unfortunately.

But finally, here we go, the final chapter. Thanks for all the follows, favorites and reviews, they make me very happy :)

The second half of the chapter is quite conversation-heavy. Not sure it works… Let me know if you think it's OOC. Still, I believe that almost losing Felicity would change Oliver's stance, so hopefully his character develops out of this in a way that you think believable.

Thanks for reading!

Fire – Chapter 4

What brought him back was the loss of her touch. He had completely abandoned himself in it, but the moment her fingers slipped through his and the bond was broken, it hit him, hard; and he was violently jerked back into reality.

He was sitting on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, leaned against a pillar – he couldn't even remember, really, how he got there. Everything was a blur but the violence and roaring devastation of the explosion. That was the last thing he could remember with any kind of clarity and he'd always remember it as the moment he understood how exactly it felt when your heart broke, when you lost all hope. It didn't last more than a second, still he could've written volumes about that feeling, that utter desolation. It was the kind of feeling that changed people.

Felicity was standing close by, looking down on him with an unreadable look. The only emotion he could detect with any degree of certainty was confusion. She was keeping her weight off her injured ankle and had her arms wrapped around her hurting ribs. All of a sudden he became aware of her physical pain and he was ashamed. Ashamed that he had indulged himself, allowed himself to give in to his vulnerability when he should've taken care of her. She had barely escaped with her life, and there he was, willingly handing himself over to his own, emotional pain. Ashamed, at the same time, to be relieved to see she was in physical pain; not that he would ever want that for her – he'd always do whatever he could to keep her safe from bodily harm. But in this particular situation, her pain made it real. He knew that this living, breathing Felicity was not a figment of his imagination, because his subconscious would've never created this image of her. If he had dreamed her up, she would've been physically unscathed.

His train of thought was interrupted by her moving closer, sliding down with her back to the pillar next to him. There was just about a hand's width between them, but it was too much to bear for Oliver. He would let himself be weak for just a while longer, until he had himself fully convinced that he wasn't going to lose her. At least not tonight. With this concession to his own fear, he lifted her legs across his and pulled her in closely. Upon noticing that she was shivering from shock and the cold night air, he opened his jacket and enveloped her in his arms, the weight on his chest getting a bit lighter with every breath she took.

He kept telling himself over and over that he was not going to lose her – he had just glimpsed down into that abyss and he had never been so scared in his life. He would need some time to get over that. But he'd never be able to forget (and maybe he shouldn't, he thought to himself).


When she woke up, she felt cold and her whole body hurt. It was still pitch black all around her, so she couldn't have slept for too long. Oliver was gone, only his leather jacket remained around her shoulders; it took her a while to get her bearings, her mind still hazy from a fitful and troubled sleep. Once her eyes had adjusted, she could detect his silhouette against the nearest broken window, where he looked out over the surrounding area. His body was tense and alert; he looked very much like the Arrow she knew. Wherever he was lost earlier, he had found himself again.

It was probably the sounds of her stirring that made him turn around and look at her, a doleful smile on his lips. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Instead, his body erupted in a coughing fit. Only now did she realize that the ringing in her ears had stopped and that her hearing was back. She cringed at having to hear how his lungs desperately fought for air. Once he had recovered, he sent a simple "Hey" her way. His voice was mostly gone – what was left sounded strange, raw and rough, barely more than a whisper. Still, it was laced with emotion, she just couldn't put a name to what exactly these emotions were.

"Hey," she replied, still a bit disoriented from waking up in the middle of the night on the floor of an abandoned warehouse. "How are you?" "Fine." There it was; the old Arrow mask was firmly back in place, all his walls rebuilt while she had slept. As usual, he would ignore whatever happened, refusing to talk about anything to do with his time on the island. Felicity grabbed onto the pillar and got up, slowly. Putting weight on her ankle didn't feel as bad as it had before, so she figured the sprain wasn't that bad. Still, her ribs made her face contort in pain. She began to cross the dark distance between them, making her way over to where he stood, leaned against the window. "We need to leave, it's getting light. I'll go upstairs and tell Diggle," Oliver informed her, his tone flat and in complete contradiction to the plethora of emotions flashing across his face.

Resolving to push him to open up at least a little bit, she asked him gently, "Don't do that, Oliver. Don't shut down. Tell me how you are really feeling. Something happened last night. Did you have a flashback to Lian Yu?" She had read that post-traumatic stress frequently manifested in violent flashbacks – even years after the actual trauma. "I'm really fine." He tried to smile convincingly but failed miserably. She nodded sadly, accepting that no one would ever make Oliver talk about his feelings if he didn't want to (which he rarely (or ever) did). Turning around, she found her way back to the pillar in the dark to pick up her broken tablet lying on the floor. He spoke again and she almost missed his next words, as they were even quieter than before. "I'm alright now, but I wasn't earlier."

She didn't reply in fear of spooking him. "I told you that during those five years on the island, nothing good ever happened. It was hell." Felicity nodded, remembering that particular conversation. "Last night…. the fire," Oliver's voice got stuck in his throat; he was struggling to open up to her. She appreciated the effort all the more, knowing how rare those moments were. "This was the worst I've ever felt – including those five years I was on the island." Felicity looked at him quizzically. She didn't understand what he was saying, so she ignored the little voice inside that admonished her to not interrupt and risk him shutting down again. "So the flashback was even worse than the thing that it reminded you of?"


Oliver realized that she still hadn't got it. She hadn't understood yet that the worst thing that could ever happen to him was losing her. "It didn't remind me of something that actually happened; it reminded me of something that I see happening in my nightmares, something I've always been afraid of happening in the future. And last night I believed for a few moments that I… that we had almost lost you. And all because of the Arrow."


She was surprised – and not, all at the same time. Oliver's guilt had been her constant companion since she found out he was the vigilante all those months ago. She knew he felt an obligation to keep her safe and never would forgive himself if he didn't manage to do that. Yet, to hear him say that something happening to her was his worst nightmare caught her off guard. Her subconscious had picked up on the way he had corrected his words from "I" to "we" (presumably including John), but her conscious would not let her dwell on that, forcing her to protect her heart. Her walls were by no means as insurmountable as Oliver's, but they were there nevertheless.

"We can't do this anymore. Diggle had his doubts in the beginning, he said it would be too dangerous, but I was selfish, I promised him we'd be able to keep you safe." He had held her gaze, but now turned away, looking out of the window again. She thought she saw a tear running down his cheek. But it was too dark in the warehouse to be sure, so she suppressed this familiar feeling bubbling up in her gut, the one she had refused to label for months now. Instead she prepared to have the same old conversation again.

"Oliver, if you think long and hard I'm sure you'll find a way to blame yourself for global warming as well."

He still didn't turn to look at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" Exasperated that Oliver would have her spell it out (because – seriously – couldn't he see it?), she elaborated, "It means that people die. Every day. From lots of different things. Bad things happen. Those girls… the ones that the human traffickers we were after today sell like property… they got kidnapped on their way home from school or a friend's place, they haven't been involved with the Arrow. People get diagnosed with cancer in their twenties. My cousin was 16, just had her driver's license for three days when she was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver forced her off the road. My great-grandfather choked to death on a pea, for God's sake." Her voice was getting louder, willing him to understand.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It has everything to do with it! People die every day, Oliver. I could be run over by a bus tomorrow on my way to work. There are no guarantees, life is dangerous and it mostly hurts one way or another so would you please stop blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong in this world! I'm fine. We're all fine. Can't we just file this away like we did with other missions before, and keep moving on?"

Her nonchalance in the face of a near-death experience drove him up the walls and he also raised his voice, as much as his hoarse throat and hurting lungs would allow. "Move on? Just like that? Felicity, I thought YOU HAD DIED!" His raspy voice gave in halfway through the exclamation, and the words he meant to emphasize were barely a whisper. "There would be no moving on from that." The sheer emotion of this statement made shivers run up her spine; now she was sure that there were tears running down his cheeks, leaving light trails where they washed away the soot left by fire and smoke. Her heart went out to the man she loved, who looked so broken; she felt that this was her last chance to convince him to let go of the responsibility he felt for everyone's well-being – something that would ultimately crush him under its weight.

"One of us is going to die and the other one will have to deal with it. That's just the way it works. Unless we both die simultaneously in the same car accident. Or in another explosion…" Oliver's eyes grew wide and she brought her babbling to a screeching halt, "… which is highly unlikely and totally beside the point."

Felicity gathered her thoughts for a couple of seconds to ensure her next words were well chosen. The silence between them was pregnant with everything that had remained unsaid for so long. "Oliver, you better than anyone should know that life is full of hurt. We can only try to make as many good memories as possible, so that in the end they cancel out the heartbreak. And it always ends with someone dying. You, more than anyone, deserve happiness to cancel out what you've gone through in the past. Yet you somehow insist on being miserable, on not deserving anything good. Don't dwell on what awful things could've happened. Just be happy that they didn't."

That's what she had resolved quite some time ago, around the third or fourth time she had watched Oliver fight for his life. She had been sitting there, at his side, watching the heart monitor, listening to the beeping like it was the only thing left in this world that mattered, and she had resolved that she wouldn't let this make her afraid for the rest of her days. He would make it through this, and she would simply be happy that he had, not dwelling on the what-ifs.


Felicity's way of looking at the world still had Oliver in awe. It made complete sense to him, yet he had no idea how to get over all those worst-case scenarios that kept running through his mind, in every waking minute. They were a form of self-protection. If he let go of them, there would be hope for the future. Hope that something other than the worst case would come to pass. And if he knew one thing, it was that hope was the most painful of all emotions, because it was so easily crushed. He had kept Felicity at arm's length because she symbolized hope for him like nothing else. Hope that things might change for him one day.

"Everything I touch turns to dust. I could never taint you with that kind of darkness." "Listen to you, being all melodramatic," she mocked him and even managed to draw the tiniest of smiles from his lips. "It's not darkness, Oliver, it's just the past. And what's particular about the past is that it's, well… in the past! You can always, always, turn the leaf over and decide that things are going to be different from now on out. That darkness is something you have chosen, it's not something that belongs to you. It's not a fundamental part of who you are."

Oliver wanted nothing more than to believe Felicity. But years of always preparing for the worst could not be swept away in a heartbeat. Years of being afraid could not be alleviated even by the gentlest of touches. "I want to try, Felicity. But I don't know how." Oliver turned away from looking out of the window back towards her. He was surprised to see that she had approached without him noticing; she was just an arm's length away from him now. "Will you help me?" The lump in her throat prevented her from answering, but she nodded and even managed a small smile.

When he drew her into a hug, he relished the warm feeling that spread across his chest and reminded him that she was there with him, now. It would be a constant struggle to suppress the what-ifs, but Felicity had always had a knack for setting him straight. If anyone could manage, she could.


Surprise was not a strong enough word for the feeling spreading through Felicity when Oliver gently drew her into an embrace. He had never initiated a hug with her, and the handful of times that she had hugged him, she had always felt like he was just tolerating – rather than reciprocating – her physical and emotional closeness. But this time was different. He had both arms firmly wrapped around her, one completely encircling her small waist, with the hand resting on her hip, the other hand firmly placed between her shoulder blades. There was no hesitation, no uncertainty in this embrace. There was neither insecurity nor inhibition; it was everything he had to give, and she felt it all at once. It was overwhelming.

His head was buried in her neck and she had to actively remind her lungs to draw the next breath and the one after that when she felt his lips softly touch the skin at the spot where her shoulder curved upwards. At first it was almost impalpable, and she thought she had imagined it. But his lips connected with her skin again and this time there was no denying it. When she felt his lips starting to kiss a soft trail up the side of her neck to a spot just under her ear, she could virtually feel a raw need radiating off of him. It took everything she had to place her hands against his chest and push him softly away. She wanted Oliver's kiss more than anything, but she didn't want it to be born out of negative feelings.

Rarely had she been this confused; her eyes sought out his – but she could detect neither fear nor loss in them. He looked at her, his gaze unguarded. If she didn't know any better, she would've said it was hope. But Oliver Queen didn't do 'hope', that much she had learned over the last couple of months. Yet…

His eyes were dry now, but the light traces of where his tears had run down his dirt-stained cheeks were undeniable. Throwing all caution to the wind, she placed her hands at both sides of his face and ran her thumbs over the soft skin underneath his eyes, her gaze never breaking his. If this really was hope, she needed to take this spark and breathe life into it, turn it into a fire.

A blink of an eye later, she felt his lips, warm and sure against hers; one hand had wandered to her shoulder, the other to the back of her head, where his fingers got entangled with her hair. As she opened her lips for him, her eyes fluttered closed.

The End

AN: Thanks everyone for joining me on this angsty ride – pleasepleaseplease leave a review!