Title: The In Between – The Bed is Cold
Author: Floss Aus
Rating: K+
Summary: Felicity still can't escape her grief and an unexpected phone call only drives it home
Spoilers: Follows Season 3's ep air dates.
Disclaimer: CW and DC are Arrow peeps. The excellent cast inhabit the characters
The bed is cold, which is ridiculous because he never slept here. Never lay beside her, his scarred body, restless in sleep, she would imagine.
It's late or very early depending on your point of view but lately these hours, these dead of night hours that used to keep her busy, they are now the worst. She remembers having purpose and drive and even at 3am, she'd had an energy coursing through her veins. Now though, she feels heavy, weighted down by the knowledge she can't shake. The truth she can't deny.
Her phone vibrates on her bedside table and for a split second, she thinks it him. The calls used to be common, frequent and reliable but it's not. It can't be.
"Hello?" she answers not recognising the number.
"Felicity?" Laurel's voice is slower that she remembers, softer.
"Oh hi, sorry, yes, it's me." She stammers. She hears the other woman a take breath, a moment to collect herself possibly.
"I'm sorry," Laurel finally murmurs; the words barely audible.
"What? Why?" She is confused, Laurel isn't one for apologies.
This firebrand of a woman, who throws herself into danger with an almost reckless drive to prove a point; she scares Felicity. Scares her with a tenacity that's borderline fatal, a gleam of determination that is marked in blood. She scares Felicity with who she once was, of how she destructed in the past. It echoes her mother's occasional spirals and those memories hurt.
"For what I asked you to do tonight, with my father," Laurel finally explains, referencing her begging Felicity to help Detective Lance believe the myth of Sara Lance's continued existence.
Felicity paused, not quite sure how to answer. She felt ashamed at her part in the charade. It was wrong, she knew this and a certain voice rang in her mind with disappointment as she processed the program to mask Laurel's voice. However, the voice wasn't there and the world she now lived in was slowly coming apart. If this small mercy could help a real hero continue to fight on, then maybe it was worth it.
"Laurel, I ..." and she couldn't find the words.
The silence continued on between them, rising in its uncomfortableness.
"Roy mentioned that you were close to Oliver," Laurel stated.
"Yes," Felicity was hesitant, knowing the history.
"I'm glad," she uttered and Felicity almost dropped the phone.
"It wasn't, we hadn't. It was just a date. That actually ended with a rocket launcher, which for Oliver was pretty subdued." She smiled despite herself.
"Even before the Island, he was always dramatic," Laurel chuckled in response. "Felicity, I understand and…I'm sorry."
"You mentioned that." Felicity replied with a new kindness in her voice.
"No, I'm sorry for your loss. For Oliver." Laurel immediately ended the call, leaving Felicity staring at the cell in her hand. The quiet compassion this woman had just shown her, completely disarming.
Sitting back down into her bed, she sighed. It was the darkness that clawed at her, the empty feeling that felt like a screaming echo. With every acknowledgement from people in her life that they recognised something between her and Oliver, her grief threatened to overwhelm her.
They knew, all of them seeing something she still hadn't been brave enough to say and now as she lay there, in a cold bed and her tears silently falling, she only had regrets as her companion.