What do you want from me? Really.
She wants to ask him that but doesn't because it would sound like a screech of pain and Felicity can't handle that. She doesn't but she wants to, because she hasn't spoken a single word in almost one hour and yet he didn't go away. Even silent, his presence is heavy to bear (maybe more so because he is silent). He's sitting right next to her and she has her hands balled so tightly that they're shaking just a little bit, as if she wants to have at him with every ounce of strength she possesses. (or maybe just to keep from touching him because she has no idea what to do next and its terrifying)
But then Oliver Queen looks up, his eyes rimmed red with sleeplessness and pain, and so, so blue, almost unnatural. He looks at her and that look passes straight through her, as painful as a bullet. She has nothing left to put up anymore. She's so tired.
(She asks him. The fallout is as bad as she thought it would be.)
"I don't… I don't want anything from you, Felicity." He admits with painful earnestness, so much that it hurts to look back into those wide eyes.
But beneath that there is so much more, some of it he lets her see now: the hurt, the anger… the frustration that at his own helplessness that is the bases for everything he is feeling.
"I want to help you, but I don't know how." He admits with a self-disparaging smile that is more a wince than anything else. "I don't know what to do to make this better."
She nods, but her eyes are sightless – they stare right through him. And more than anything in that moment, Oliver wants to reach out to her when two quiet tears slip down her face. Felicity doesn't even seem to notice.
"What if there is no making this better. What then?" the way she asks this is almost a challenge (or it would be, if she didn't look like her ability to breathe depended on the answer) For a moment, Oliver doesn't understand. And when he does, he is stunned; honestly rendered speechless by the implications. (he understands finally, how far exactly her dread went, and why, and how similar in truth their feelings were)
"That's not… Felicity, this was never about your memories. That wasn't what… I don't want to fix you, there is nothing wrong with you!" He's surprised by the vehemence of the words, but doesn't take them back. He means them. "And what you said, me looking at you, that's not… it's not about replacing you with anything. That's just…"
He hesitates for a moment, not knowing how far to take this, not knowing if it's right to tell her, before he decides for the truth. That was the unspoken agreement. Between them, wasn't it. 'You can trust me' means only truth.
"I just miss you."
She shakes her head. "I'm not the same person you miss. I don't…"
"You don't know that." Oliver says calmly. He does know however: she is still Felicity, just more than she used to be, because more happened to her and she absorbed that and her heart changed. But he's not about to tell her who she is or is not. In order to believe it, she'll have to get there on her own. "Memories are important but they're not all you are. You're so much more than that."
I love you for more than the things we went through together.
But those are words she wouldn't like hearing right now. He does though. And she is. So much that Oliver doesn't really have the right words to tell her and he hates it, because now that she needs him, Oliver can't do what she did for him over and over again. She's taken his hand and walked him off the edge so many times, but Oliver doesn't know how she knew, how she did it, how to do the same. All he can do is try.
"And it doesn't matter what you remember, or if you never do. That's not the point, it never was. I just…" He takes a deep breath, exhales it slowly. "I just want you to be ok, Felicity."
A strangled sound leaves her, like a laugh but thick and wet with tears. Her eyes shine with tears and dry humor when she looks at him
"It's funny isn't it? How 'ok' seems so bland, but fall far enough and it starts to sound like a pretty freaking good place to be."
He makes that breathy noise that passes for a chuckle these days - a bit helpless, a bit shy - and for a few moments, the quiet between them feels like silence and nothing more than that. No words piling up behind their teeth. Felicity keeps looking at him, careful not to stare. He knows she is – that's why he keeps his eyes away. (and it loosens her ribcage a bit, knowing that; makes her breathing a easier)
"Are you ok, Oliver?" Felicity asks him, not without trepidation.
The soft tilt of her tone doesn't at all warrant the way he startles at them. Oliver looks at her for a long beat with wide, almost frantic eyes. When he answers, his voice low and so soft it makes her think of words like 'kindness' and 'gentleness'.
"I don't think you really want to know that."
This time Felicity doesn't take it personally (how could she? He looks so painfully uncertain and she is very well aware she is to blame for that). So she leans a little forward on both elbows and gives him a small smile.
"You shouldn't presume to tell me what I want or don't want to know. Didn't we just talk about this?" she reminds him gently. His uncertainty gets even more pronounced but he nods and looks away, shuffling a bit in his seat in an awkward way that is completely at odds with his usual grace, and that makes Felicity want to smile for some reason.
"I think I'm better now." Oliver murmurs.
This time she does smile. "Are you talking to me, or to the interesting spot on the table over there?"
A chuckle escapes him, breathy and surprised; he shakes his head and looks at her, dead in the eye. They pause like that, let it sink in, this moment of lightness… and as it does, the momentary weightlessness dissolves like sugar in too much water.
"I'm ok Felicity." He tells her, like he's sealing some bond between them. It feels a flighty truth to her, like he's covering up a lot more. A senseless, baseless need to know crawls up her throat and this time… this time Felicity is brave enough (reckless enough) not to fight it. (the pure, terrifying truth is that she's wanted to know since she set eyes on him, and before now she's never trusted that feeling enough to voice it. But she's past that. She feels brave enough for the scary questions now.)
"And before that?"
She'd make a quip about the uselessness of platitudes if his eyes weren't so sad while he said that. There seems to be no end to the feelings in his eyes and they draw her like gravity, pulling at a string knotted right beneath her left ribs, aching. It's fucking terrifying how he commands her feelings with just a look, but maybe… just maybe…
She knows what she's asking here and yes, she's scared but she's also pushing through it.
"You told me not to do that." Oliver reminds her. "Not to hold my feelings over you; and you were right."
"Yeah, because I don't like feeling like my hands is being forced." She explains shortly. She doesn't want to tell him yet how deeply his feelings resonate in her. Let him assume; there's a vague kind of safety in assumptions (because there is no doubt in her that to some extent, he knows) "But I'm asking you now. It's my choice, to know."
And that makes all the difference Felicity needs.
However, she hadn't counted on the fleeting grief that crosses his face as he considers how to answer her though. Hadn't calculated that she'd need to hold on tight to the porcelain mug in her hands because the urge to touch him was getting persistent in a very irritating way.
"I don't really remember the first couple of weeks, after. It's kind of a blur." Oliver Queen tells her, looking a little bit like he almost can't believe he's having this conversation. To be honest, Felicity is kinda stunned herself.
"We kept chasing Darhk down and missing him by seconds. I honestly thought I was going to go mad at some point. Kept seeing you everywhere."
Why did she ask for this again? Felicity doesn't remember. (She does though. The problem is she hadn't really expected him to answer with this kind of vulnerable honesty) He's looking at her like she might flicker out of existence at any moment and it makes Felicity's skin feel itchy, the way he zeroes in on her face. He's hardly blinked yet, it makes looking away from him impossible, like witnessing a car crash. It's astounding how a man who seems so stoic can make you want to break to pieces if you just take one real look into his eyes.
She shouldn't have asked. (Title of your autobiography, Smoak. …Somewhere, in some HIVE hole, Tommy Merlyn must be snickering right about now. The thought irritates her.)
"I remember everything about my first two weeks. It felt like they lasted forever. Why were you chasing him? Revenge?"
There is something unpleasant about the thought of baiting him like this, but can't help it. (it's an inherently hostile form of communication - this is a patter she learned to dread in a prison cell with white halls and no furniture; one that she perfected and that now can't seem to escape) the truth however remains that everyone so far has always answer her uncomfortable questions with other questions and Felicity hates it.
Oliver Queen gives her a pained smile. "I'd be lying if I said that shoving an arrow through Darhk's eye-socket doesn't give me a certain… satisfaction. But it wasn't about revenge. I wanted…" He looks away.
Felicity leans a bit forward. "What?" Then something occurs to her and leaves her confused. "I thought you said you didn't know I was…"
Oliver shakes his head. "I didn't." His next words feel almost like he's admitting to something that will get him in trouble. "I wanted to get your body back."
Felicity blinks several times, a hundred different reasons why brushing by her brain at once; from the respect of a proper funeral, to the most horrific one yet that has nothing to do with resting in peace. She meets Oliver Queen's eyes and within that one look, she knows. She simply does, and the knowledge makes her want to stand up and pace around.
"You wanted to use the Pit didn't you." disbelief and a vague sense of (growing) horror tinges her words. Oliver Queen doesn't deny it.
Felicity feels color drain from her face.
"I can't believe you would…" She turns to him with wide eyes and a sharp anger that is mostly there to mask the fear beneath. "You know what the Pit does and you would have put me in there? That's… that's beyond… I can't even…"
She stops, looks away as she tries to control her flying heart and rapid-fire thoughts.
"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." Felicity says slowly, almost methodically. "The thought of the Pit freaks me out a little. …Ok a lot. Don't get me wrong, I like being alive, big fan of breathing; but I've seen what the Pit does to people. It scares me."
Felicity finds (to her surprise) that the same fear pervading her is mirrored on his face.
"Yeah it scares me too." Oliver admits haltingly.
And it's right then that Felicity really understands all the reasons why someone would do such an extreme thing. They're right there, stamped on his face. The desperation in his eyes is for one fleeting moment naked and sharp and she can hardly stand to look at him. It honestly feels like looking at the sun.
"How is Thea, by the way?" Felicity asks out of the blue and the whiplash of that subject-change couldn't be more welcome.
"She's doing better too."
Felicity just looks at him for a while, tilting her head to the side. It's impossible not to feel like an insect under a microscope when she looks at him like that but Oliver tries to stamp down on the unwelcome feeling crawling up his spine. Just don't think about it.
"Is she hearing voice yet?" Felicity asks him softly, and watches his eyes widen.
Oliver is staring at her like she just hit him in the face, pale as bone and still as stone.
"No, she…" His voice breaks, so he clears his throat trying to swallow back down his heart. "She never did. It was more like, impulse control for her. She couldn't…"
"It's different for everybody." Felicity hurries to explain.
He almost interrupts her in his hurry to know. "So it's not an escalation?"
Felicity shakes her head.
"I don't know. Tommy said…" she stops when she notices that he stops breathing at the mention of Tommy's name. "He said in the begging it was like madness must be like. And that it got quieter… after a while."
"Did he…" But he stops and hangs his head, biting his lips to keep the questions in.
"You want to know what happened to him." It's not a question. She knows he wants to know. "I don't know all the story, and what parts of it I do know are not mine to tell. You'll have to ask him yourself."
He looks at her from beneath his lashes and there is something that is both tentative and incredibly unyielding about that look.
"You're afraid of him." He's not asking. It's his conclusion and it sounds like he doesn't doubt it. Felicity blinks against that self-assurance, her jaw tightening and lips thinning at the intrusive truth. She really doesn't like it when he does that, but in Oliver Queen's defense, he doesn't do it very often.
"I am." She leans back in her chair. "You should be too. He almost killed you a couple of months ago."
Oliver rolls his shoulder, the still-healing muscles of his clavicle aching. He thinks back to that moment, to those two inches to the left that had made the difference between severe injury and a lethal one. Knowing now that there had been Tommy Merlyn behind the Dark Archer's mask chills him. (he refuses to think back to those moments when he'd been so close to killing the Dark Archer and refrained. He can't even go there, because every time he does, his heart seems to forget its function)
"Yes, he did. But you still say we can trust him." Because that too, is among the things he doesn't understand.
"I never said that." Felicity corrects immediately. The notions of 'trust' and 'Tommy' taken together are so thorny, so layered and complicated that she couldn't possibly open them without cutting herself – her Oliver for that matter. "I don't trust him. I do trust his rage[1] however."
That was a bit too vague for Oliver's tastes though. He has no idea what she means, but he doesn't necessarily need to, to get answers.
"And how safe are my friends and my sister, and you, from his rage?"
Felicity sighs exasperatedly.
"If he wanted to kill me he would have done it a thousand times by now. Same for your friends. And though I wouldn't put my hand on the fire for a lot of things about Tommy Merlyn, I do know he loves his sister as much as you do, because he never made that a secret, and what Malcolm Merlyn did to Thea is probably the primary reason Tommy wants to slice that head off those shoulders himself." She takes a deep breath, takes in Oliver Queen's stunned face and cannot help a small smile that is not lacking in shades of unkindness (and she doesn't regret in the slightest) "As for you… well, I'm not sure if he wants to hug you, fuck you or kill you – and I'm not sure he knows either, by the way - but I do think it's no coincidence you're still breathing."
Oliver Queen's face is frozen in the most honest expression of shock Felicity has ever seen, and she might laugh at it, but that the same time she feels like she might also cry at it. It's such a mess really and she's in too deep.
"I have seen Tommy Merlyn shoot the wings off of on inch-long butterfly, at a hundred yards, Queen. He doesn't miss."
It takes him a while to pick up his breathing, so long that Felicity thinks he might just go blue in the face and fall off his chair. When he does, he tries to be inconspicuous about it (he fails; she is not surprised. What surprises her is that she feels bad about him. He is starving for truth but he has no idea how to handle it, not really). Felicity doesn't interrupt his spiral, nor does she push when she sees him trying to crawl his thoughts into some semblance of order. She might be a tease and a little mean, but she's not heartless.
"I'm not sure what your point was," Oliver Queen tells her when he finds his voice again. "But if that was your version of a reassurance, please spear me next time."
Felicity can't help a small chuckle. Deflecting are we. Fine.
"It wasn't meant to be reassuring. …I never said he'd be the same friend you lost." She reminds him gently.
The little headshake he gives back feels almost practiced at this point. Like he's used to it. Maybe if Oliver Queen were more jaded he might have rolled his eyes, because that little headshake, the deep breath after it, were the silent version of a surrendered 'of course not'. Felicity just looks at him for long moments. He's lost so many people, hasn't he. Some have come back, others never will and it strikes her then, how terribly exhausting it must be, to know grief so intimately that you can mourn someone even when they're breathing right next to you.
A sharp shiver rips up her spine and she stands a little straighter. No she doesn't want to think about it anymore.
They talk a long time. He lets her ask all the questions and answers all of them. It surprises her, how willingly he gives even when she just keeps on taking. Felicity he can't help wondering how long it will last, as she cant help thinking perhaps this is who they are; or perhaps he is manipulating her into believing precisely that… (or perhaps she just needs to break out of this ugly struggle and just give in. bite the bullet, so to speak.
What do you have to lose anyway?)
Until it happens.
"Do you have nightmares?"
"Yes."
"How often?"
He hesitates – just a short moment - then gives in. "Almost every night. Sometimes I luck out. Are you ever going to tell me if there is a point to this?"
Inside, she cowers and crowns in victory at the same time. Finally! Finally, his breaking point! (He had to have one… even as the smarter part of her brain sneers at her. 'you know this is a charade; a parody. You knew it all along, who do you think you're fooling?')
"Yeah actually." Felicity says, a little too chirpily for anyone's taste, ever. Oliver merely raises both eyebrows, expectant.
"I'm trying to figure out how much are you willing to give me." She admits, curling her shoulders inwards a bit as she leans forward (heart beating against her breastbone like a hummingbird's wings). His only response his a slow blink and then a smile that feels a bit sad, a lot knowing. So do his eyes… and faced with that look, Felicity's stomach drops like a stone.
"Anything." He tells her. Calm. Sure. "Everything."
It's almost a dare. The truth behind it actually 'How much do you really want to take?' And Felicity is the one who ends up shaking on the inside in trepidation – as much for herself as for his misplaced confidence.
"You shouldn't." She warns him. "That's a rookie mistake. You don't know me."
His smile widens, but his eyes are still so sad it makes her own water just a little bit. "It's the other way around actually. You don't know me. I do know you."
"You knew me."
"Same difference, Felicity."
"So you think."
Oliver opens his mouth to reiterate but then stops, looks at her as if reevaluating her, and then nods.
"Ok."
"Ok what?"
"Ok, I'll see you the way you want me to."
She gives him a blank look, raising both eyebrows in a stunning display of skepticism. "Really?"
He seems amused with her now. "Yes, really."
"Just because I want you to?" Felicity adds a tiny sprinkle of mocking now to the previous disbelief, as if she's making fun of herself for even suggesting it, and him suggesting she believe it. But instead of reacting with defensiveness (or anything else that would have made more sense than his actual reaction!), Oliver Queen's whole face just… softens. From his eyes, to his mouth, to the way it curves up around his words and really, it's hard enough to look at him without him doing that!
"Yeah, just because you want me to." And he shrugs her doubt away as if it were nothing. "I want you to be comfortable around me."
Oliver can't help the small smile because her eyes are studying him like he's a baffling problem she can't quite decipher. It's a nice spot to be in, in his opinion: Felicity never leaves anything alone until she has it all figured out. There is a certain kind of reassurance in that. And he has a feeling that the more open and honest and vulnerable he's willing to be with her, the more she will be thrown off.
(there is the sad reality that she is not used to either of those things in people, but he leaves that alone for now)
"I'm never comfortable around you." Felicity says abruptly, jarring him from his thoughts. "You set me on edge just by being in the room."
Oliver ducks his head, lightness slipping through his fingers like smoke.
"Yes, I know."
"It's not your fault." Felicity hurries to add, because she can tell it's guilt that crowds his eyes and darkens his face the moment he looks away from her and she really doesn't want him to feel that way. "I don't know what it is…"
That's a lie too. she knows exactly what it is. (Coward!) She's lying to him and it makes the bridge of her nose burn.
"It's going to be ok Felicity." Oliver tells her. "You'll figure it out, eventually."
Felicity holds back a scoff. "Considering how much this scares me, it might come as a surprise to know that it's not me I'm worried about right now."
It takes a moment, but then he reaches for her, his hand engulfing her shoulder and making her feel it's shape, weight and heat as he squeezes just a little bit (a promise she's forgotten the meaning of) and slides his palm down her arm gently. (his eyes, his smile, they're downright kind and when his hand comes back to her shoulder, thumb tracing her collarbone shortly because apparently that's the way it is with him, she has the unfathomable urge to rub her cheek against the back of his fingers and palm like a cat)
"Don't worry about me Felicity. I'll be fine." He probably reads the disbelief in her eyes, because his smile widens. He speaks so softly she almost has the urge to lean forward to hear him. "I'll be whatever you need me to be."
Felicity takes a deep breath, closes her eyes against all that his eyes keep screaming at her. (for all his gentleness, she'd never felt anything more violent than the naked way he looks at her)
"Right. And you mean that, too. Of course you do, which is probably why it feels like you're breaking my heart."
And she'll never know if she actually meant to say that out loud, (never even knew those kinds of words would ever be able to escape the bite of her teeth, but she has said more ridiculous things in the past so she doesn't hound herself too much); nor will she ever know how far her train of thought really went, because she's so a bit on the wrong side of overwhelmed.
It's right about then that Felicity feels his touch, barely there, at the back of her head. She doesn't have the chance to really wonder about it because the next moment, his lips are on her forehead and everything jars into a whiplashing stop. Felicity's breath hitches, her eyes snap open. She's staring at his throat one moment, blinking fast at his Adam's apple, and gulping for air the next (where did all the air in the room go?!), but all she manages to get in her lungs are the burning scent of him, because suddenly he's everywhere and she feels so small, (how did she get so small? Why does her skin feel like it's too tight to contain her at the same time?) Felicity feels her head spin, heartbeat thrumming on every inch of her skin, pulling at memories she doesn't have - and doesn't need, because even without them, she knows that this… this is the warmest, gentlest form of affection she's ever felt. (she knows it in her soul because it wakes up something in her; something huge and hungry, full of longing and a different kind of fearlessness; but why are you crying?)
Oliver Queen leans back to look at her in the eye and Felicity finally manages a searing, broken breath that finally feels like it actually fills her lungs (he lingers in the air and having him there feels more like a comfort than an invasion this time around).
Oliver doesn't say anything and Felicity can't. It gets really quiet between them for a while after that, but Felicity doesn't feel it because inside, she is rattling like an unbuttered-down house caught in a storm.
"Remember how you asked me if I knew who you were?" she is looking at the table and not in his eyes, (that same spot he was probably studying earlier, a one-inch-long burn mark that someone made some other time in this kitchen that seems to have shrunk with them in it), because the anguish she knows she'll find there makes Felicity want to wail, even though she doesn't know why.
She feels him nod, lips never leaving her skin, fingers tightening momentarily around her wrist.
"I was telling the truth when I said I didn't. I don't."
Oliver closes his eyes and curves his shoulders in, as if she's hurt him too deeply for words. She doesn't realize what she's doing until she feels the scratch of his stubble against her palm and the rushing breath that leaves him, hot on the back of her wrist. Immediately, his hand comes up to circle hers, to keep hers against his cheek as if he is afraid she will move. And when she feels the softness of his lips on fall heavily on the center of her palm, Felicity shivers, presses closer instinctively. He opens his eyes, looks straight into hers (the force of it almost drives her backwards; it peels away every last defense, exposes her like a nerve, in a way that makes her shake on the inside.) Every heartbeat feels heavy, like a hit to the chest, as if her ribs are squeezing her heart and it wants to escape.
She doesn't realize the tears are falling until they tickle down her chin.
And if this is her last act of destruction, she'd rather take it and risk ruin, than wonder 'what if' a single night more, and look for him in every single person she meets. She's tired of it, of everything, but she's tired of the waiting most of all. 'Whatever this is, let it find me. Even if it kills me.'[2]
And with a sigh, she lets got of her last secret.
"But I dreamed about you almost every single night." Felicity tells him. "I still do."
She watches his face change, the meaning of her words sink in as his breath comes short and hope up his eyes and oh… oh it's so beautiful…
His lips fall open with the surprise of it. There is an edge of unspeakable desperation to the way he looks at her: as if she is holding his life in her hands, and Felicity feels herself cry harder, because no, she doesn't have any answers for him and it hurts, but there is nothing she can do to change that. She doesn't remember and the void inside her is all consuming and frightening, leaving only jumbled imprints of emotions behind, good only for hurting.
And god, do they hurt.
Tears fall relentlessly and finally she lets go of that pain, lets it show.
"I don't know what to do. I…" the words get stuck on the roof of her dry mouth. The confession comes in a harsh whisper, as if anything more than that would send the words on the wrong ears. "I'm so scared, Oliver. So scared…"
It's the first time she's said his name and where her words had before rooted him in the spot, those last words snap him into action. A thousand emotions cross his face and solidify into determination as he crosses the distance between them with fast long steps, as if it offends him. Felicity doesn't even think to be hesitate, even though he coves the space between them with two strides and on the third she is reaching for him as if it were normal, like she's done a thousand times even though she remember none of them. He has his arms around her, hauling her into his chest and holding on to tightly enough to make her feel it to her bones. Her arms around his neck, her face hidden at the crook of his neck and she is crying with mindless abandon now, while he holds her off her feet, hands making their way up and down her spine, at the back of her neck and back again, soothing.
Safe.
It feels that way as his lips pebble kisses on her hair, on her temples, on her cheeks, even though she can't stop shaking, all the grief and all the tiers she's swallowed down, now unleashed from the loosened seams of her skin… because it's safe…
"It's ok to be scared, Felicity. It's going to be ok. I won't let anything bad happen to you again. And I won't leave you, I promise. I promise."
Felicity sobs so hard she thinks she'll choke on it, holds on tighter, wraps herself completely around him when he lays them down somewhere, feels him do the same. And for the first time since she opened her eyes to blinding white light and the smell of sterilizing alcohol, Felicity feels warm, and surefooted enough to just let go and cry. That she finds that in his arms… that is the least surprising thing to ever happen to her all throughout these insipid nine months.
She cries and if he were any other man but who he is, if he loved her any less than he does, the force of her grief would rock him backwards and he wouldn't have the strength to pick her back up again, because the way she cries… it breaks something in him.
Felicity feels herself being rocked gently, soothed even as each sob shakes her from deep within, feeling like a wench to the gut. she feels herself being held close, forehead anchored against his throat. Feels it when he tells her that it's ok to cry. That she should let it all out.
She does. And in the end, when there are no more tears and in their place there's only numbness and a bone-deep exhaustion, she feels weightless against him; no bone, no muscle. It all melted out with her tears.
"I think I'm in love with you." she confesses in a whisper and fresh tears pour out, silent this time, even through she'd thought she'd been cried out. (his heart picks up beneath her heart, she feels it, the rhythm fast and irregular now and she wants to kiss him) "And I don't know how. I don't know how to be in love with you."
At this point, knowing that she's hurt him hurts her more, and she feels like her heart might just burst right out of her, but Oliver doesn't say anything. The hand that is soothing lines up and down her back doesn't even pause. He takes it all in stride, holding her head closer to him, dropping a kiss on her forehead, lingering as his hand comes to hold the side of her face gently, thumb brushing right against the scars on her temple. (and Felicity knows that's no coincidence) Something tugs at the edges of her memory and it feels the same way sewing a gash shut does: how the string pulls at the edges of ruined flesh. That is how trying to remember hurts, but that Felicity is accustomed to now. She's always hurting around him, physically, emotionally. It's how she knows her feelings are real.
There is an avalanche inside her that is being held back, and it strains the barriers of her mind every time he so much as brushes her with the tips of his fingers. Sometimes all he has to do is look, and she's there…
She doesn't tell him that. Doesn't want him to know that. It would be useless: he can't do anything about it.
"I'm so tired." She whispers, forehead against his neck, breathing him in. She feels his fingers flex against her nape, the press of his forearm along her spine. "I'm exhausted…"
To the bone, with a weariness that is more than just tiredness.
His words vibrate in her ear, warm and gentle. He hasn't stopped touching her, hands roaming in safe places, never stopping and it feels wonderful. (she's been so starved for him, hungering for this with every waking moment without knowing what it was she was craving) Felicity on the other hand has filled her fists with his
"Then rest. Lets rest for a while."
They get up from the couch he'd sat them on. He tries to carry her but Felicity refuses, and when they're in front of the bifurcation of the corridor that will lead them into their separate rooms, she takes his hand and pulls him towards his.
She hates her room here. It feels bare and lifeless and too much like her old room in HIVE for her to find any kind of rest there. Maybe in his it will be different. Maybe she is tired of the grey walls she's bee staring at for days and hopes to find a different shade waiting.
"What do you dream about?"
They're face to face in the same bed and in the closeness of their bodies Felicity finds the kind of relief that feels like a drug. She doesn't fight it. Doesn't want to doubt it. It's exhausting and she promised herself she'd stop.
"Lots of things. Most of the time it's just your face. I never really remember what you say but it's almost always sunny. I like that. I was underground a lot, I assumed I just missed summer."
He smiles. The arm he has around her flexes, like he wants to pull her closer, but he doesn't.
"We spent last summer travelling together. It was nice."
She thinks about it for a moment before asking.
"I have other dreams too."
Oliver can tell just by her tone what she means, and just like that the warm drowsiness is chased from his eyes and he is looking at her stone cold sober. Yes she has other dreams, he thinks. Dreams that make her wake up in cold sweat; that made her believe it when she was told he was her killer.
His heart swoops from his throat and down to his stomach when Felicity opens her mouth.
"Dreams about needles and sword against my neck. About a red room and people dragging me away while you watch. About you putting me in a hole. There are other people there too, and you just leave us there to die." She can feel how his pulse quickens, how guilt shadows his face and fills his eyes. She doesn't mean to make him feel this way, but needs to know if these are just dreams or if they are lingering memories.
"Did those things happen? Are they just dreams?"
He opens his mouth, closes it. Felicity reaches out, touches his cheek and reaches to cup the back of his neck, trying to keep her expression peaceful and open. Trying to calm him into just answering and not making thins more than that.
He tells her about the Count and Slade Willson. How nobody had dragged her from their room in Nanda Parbat, but his betrayal later had probably felt that way. About him asking for trust and leading them into a dungeon.
"You left us there?"
There's no judgment in her voice, no incrimination. It's almost as if she's asking about the weather.
"You weren't going to die."
"But you made us think we were."
He looks away.
"Yeah."
Felicity stays silent to that and Oliver can't help it: he has to meet her eye, even in the semidarkness. She's giving him this look that seems to be somewhere between contemplative and accepting.
"That's cold."
It's Monday. This is a pen. That's cold.
Oliver feels his eyes fog up and he has to swallow thickly to speak past the ball clogging his throat.
"Yeah. Yes it is."
"Why?"
Oliver swallows down his heart and tries to keep his voice steady.
"I felt… I didn't think there was another way. I was wrong."
This should feel stranger, but the truth is that she's the most comfortable she's been in ever. What is strange, is how her feelings don't explain themselves to her; how she doesn't own them (she doesn't know why using his arms as a pillow feels so comfortable, why having this man's thigh between her own is so natural, why the small puffs of his breath against her face are a comfort, why watching him sleep feels so... real). And how, at the same time, these sensations belong to her, the same way her limbs do, the same way her thoughts do. She is confused and uncertain about a lot of things, but this she cannot mistake.
His arm around her middle feels like it belongs. Night after night she used to wake up clammy and shaky on her legs, look into the mirror and see his eyes staring back and not her own reflection.
This is right. This is hers.
And someone felt entitled to take it away from her.
That anger too, feels entirely hers.
Felicity feels him shift in his sleep, pull her closer, his thigh presses more firmly against her and that tingle... the warmth that pools in her belly and lower, making her tingle from the inside, that too, belongs to her.
She feels herself smile tentatively. This is so uncertain: it's like holding smoke between her hands and hoping to preserve it. She knows instinctively that she should not give in so easily. But another part of her, the part that has had sensations and truths branded with fire on the inside of its skin, whispers to her that this is safe. This is real. It's her home and nothing, nothing will tear it from her again.
Being divided between the two is unpleasant. It gives her doubts she cant afford to have. But for now, with this man sleeping so deeply wrapped around her, holding on to her so tightly, Felicity feels like she can rest, just for a little while. That maybe if she closes her eyes, it won't end, it won't stop. After all, there is the certainly that even if she does sleep, his will be the face she will see in her dreams too.
So Felicity closes her eyes and for the first time in a long time, sleeps without dreams. Without waking. And when she does wake, it's his familiar smile that greets her (it takes her a full five seconds to get out of the idea that she hasn't woken at all)
Oliver wakes up in that immediate, sharp way he used to wake when sleeping meant sitting target. It had taken him him five months to teach himself how to let peace sink in; how to wake up drowsy and let the feeling linger; it took him a fraction of that time to drill that habit back into him again.
The sun is high in the sky and it's shine only slightly held back by the gauzy curtains. It must be late morning. The clock is going to tell him exactly how late, but its behind him on the nightstand and Oliver is not going to move because if he does, he might wake Felicity too, and that's not something he'll risk just to know the time.
He remembers that there used to be a time when, fresh out of the battle with the League, he used to wake this way and wake Felicity up too immediately, because even though he never made a sound, he would tense and somehow, that would jolt her right out of sleep and into awareness. It took him a while to understand that ever since they met, he never faced any of his battles alone. That his secrets weighted on her too, on top of her own ('…so tell me Oliver. The bad things, the terrible things. You don't hide them from me. You give them to me. Let me share them. I love you. You are my heart. What happens to you happens to me[3].') Oliver looks at how Felicity is currently in his arms, sleeping undisturbed, and smiles sadly. She must have been exactly as tired as she said she was.
He looks at her and feels his heart hammer against his chest a little harder: she sleeps the way she always has - one hand curled over her mouth, another thrown around his waist, her thighs trapping his between them as if she's binding him to her.
(She doesn't need to. He couldn't be more hers if he tried)
He doesn't want to wake her, but his lips find her forehead almost without thought and he feels the shift of her body a moment later, burrowing closer. With the arm she is currently using as a pillow he circles her shoulders, bringing them chest to chest gently, tracing her spine lazily with one hand. Her breaths puff against his throat, spread over the hollowness in his chest, filling it again, and it's bliss. From this close it's impossible to ignore how more frail she feels in his arms, but he pushes those thoughts away. She is here now. She's here, right under his hands and they'll get through this, together.
Oliver opens his eyes, traces her every feature. Her lips are a little parted in her sleep, just like he remembered, (exactly the same) and he wants nothing more than to lean down and close that inch between them. Kiss her again.
God, he missed her… five years living through various degrees of hell had made him think he knew what missing meant, when what he'd been missing was his whole life. He'd thought a year of having her just at his fingertips and not being able to touch her had taught him what all the possible shades of longing.
It had taken a single night without her to turn all that into its head. He'd he misses her in ways he didn't even know were possible to miss someone.
Gently, Oliver rests his forehead against hers, barely touching and feels the tendril of a forgotten happiness pervade him. It expands his chest, fills his every crevice, mending the cracks that had left him bleeding and raw all these months without her. She is warm and safe and alive in his arms and there is nothing, nothing that Oliver can ask from this moment. This is enough, he won't be greedy. He won't. He will be whatever she needs him to be, and it's not even going to be that hard. Felicity had been doing exactly that for years for him. He wouldn't deserve a fraction of that love if he couldn't do the same.
But then her eyes blink open, hazy with sleep, unseeing and he smiles at her, instinctively. And his heart legitimacy flutters in his chest when she smiles at him ever so softly, the way she used to every morning. Her hand comes to his cheek and god, it opens him up to her in a way that its almost frightening. Because this is Felicity, and this is the way she always says good morning, and before his brain can catch up with his feelings, she tilts her smile upwards in invitation, eyes closed and he is kissing her softly, gently, breathing her in, needing her in his lungs more than he needs air. The line between reality and wishful-thinking blurs further, because she opens up for him like a blooming flower, parting his lips with hers as her hand caresses the back of his head, his neck, pulling him closer just as she rolls her whole body into his with the gentlest sigh and Oliver… Oliver is lost. (He stood no chance against her anyway)
He falls into her touch, into her kiss, with a helpless groan, (the rush he feels when she slips her tongue in his mouth, touching his tentatively, is blinding, it slams him into his body so violently he shudders) with the restrained longing of accumulated solitude, and pain and fear and love… so much that it chokes him, it flays him open for her. He feels her hot hand against the skin of his back, traveling upwards; on the back of his neck, his cheek, angling his head so she can kiss him deeper and Oliver feels his blood thicken and his body grown heavy, one word beating in his veins 'Yes. Yes!' as he reacquaints his hands, his body with the feel of hers, starved for her skin and her taste to the brick of delusion.
Yes, possess me, invade me, I want you… I've missed you.
She shifts, lets his thigh slide higher between hers and moans in his mouth, arches into him like a bow when he pushes just a tiny bit into her that way. (his head feels lightheaded with it, all of it. Felicity and her mouth, the taste of her skin; the feel of her breasts against him, her thighs, her waist and her back… all of her…) She steals his breath and all he wants is more; he wants to be lost in her, swallowed whole. He wants to be claimed and branded all over again and urges her to take him, learn his mouth as he knows hers and mark him…
Their mouths part, his lips hovering close, almost touching as they share breaths. Oliver doesn't open his eyes for a very long moment, chooses to let the feel of her cheek beneath his palm anchor him, as the feel of her hand rubbing the back of his neck settles into him. (he's reeling and it feels like being into shock, but in a good way. The best way. His head is spinning…) The haziness of sleep has long since cleared and once he opens his eyes, he watches, fascinated, the stupor of need clearing from Felicity's eyes too. For a moment he thinks he sees confusion on her face and he makes to move away (dread dropping in him, plummeting his stomach to the ground) but Felicity doesn't let him go (she tightens her hold, keeping him in place, half on hop of her). She is startled and confused, but not afraid.
Oliver takes a deep breath, willing himself to relax into her again.
"Hi."
His voice is rough and low, and he winces at the sound of it. Sleep and lust do not make him sound normal in any capacity. She used to like that but now Oliver can't be sure. Until she smiles at him, that is, amused as a brad new flush creeps around her neck.
"Hi."
They are still tied together, most of their bodies against each other so Oliver feels it the moment when she starts to relax again. It's a process she wills herself to go through, one breath and then another, she closes her eyes, brings her hand from the back of his head to laying it right on top of his heart, and yes, Oliver thinks. Yes, some things just don't change. Please, if there is any kind of god, let this not change.
"I meant to say earlier… I've been meaning to say it for a while actually."
She opens her eyes and meets his look, so utterly open and vulnerable to her, (because so far, that is the only think she responds to with stingless sincerity) He doesn't dread anymore, what she'll say. It's worth it.
But then he sees guilt creeping in her expression and he frowns.
"What is it?" he asks, trying to make it soft, not pressuring; trying being the key word here. his voice still sounds like he chewed on gravel.
She bites her lip. "I'm sorry I shot you."
Oliver blinks, tries to hold it back, but honestly he can't not chuckle at that: low and a little breathy. The way he always does when she pull amusement out of him when he least expects it. Because how crazy are their lives, honestly, if 'sorry I shot you 3 times in the chest' make it on their list?
"It's ok." he murmurs, kissing her forehead.
"It's really not." Felicity immediately corrects, the hand over his heart pushing him so that she can look at him in the eye again. "I was scared and confused and I didn't know what to do, but I saw that you aimed away the second you saw me. I saw it. And I shot you anyway."
She had. Oliver had been useless in that moment. If Roy had not been there with Digg to protect him, he would have probably been killed, and not by Felicity either. He had completely frozen in the middle of a gunfight; that had not happened to him since he first landed on Lian Yu! But the sight of her there, alive, all in black and Kevlar, planting bombs left and right and with eyes that didn't know him… it had disarmed him in the worst way possible.
And Felicity, she'd pulled the trigger and put three rounds into him.
Oliver takes a deep breath. "Well, then let's be thankful that I was wearing body armor and you weren't sure enough of your aim to go for the head." Or the throat, now that he thinks about it.
Felicity scoffs, amusement lightening her eyes.
"I'm plenty sure of my aim." she retorts archly. The teasing in her voice doesn't take away from the heaviness of total self-awareness in her eyes. Oliver freezes.
"What?"
She shrugs, a tiny movement beneath the blanket of his arms, because no, they haven't pulled away from each other yet. On the contrary, he is holding her tighter.
"I couldn't really keep up with the physical training. Anything more than self-defense is beyond me. So they put me on target practice and I figured, if I did well there, they would stop trying to beat me into a mush."
Oliver feels his jaw tighten, a muscle jumping out. But the coil of anger only lasts a moment, because the heavy setting guilt gives him no quarter.
"Is that why you froze up when Thea asked you to join their sparring session?"
Felicity looks away then, setting her eyes long the frayed collar of his T-shirt.
"Reflex, I guess." She tells him in a murmur.
"I am so sorry Felicity." he says heavily. "I'm so sorry we had to go through that."
But then what she is actually saying, sinks in, and his eyes snap open, suddenly aware. He meets her amused smile - a shadow, a mere flicker of what it used to be, but still there. Still familiar.
"Starting to catch on, are you?" she teases… and watches hope flare in him bright, lighting up his eyes like blue flames.
"You missed on purpose. Is that what you're saying?"
Felicity gulps, amusement dissipating.
"Let's not give me too much credit there. I still put three bullets in you."
"You didn't kill me though."
But now she looks a bit annoyed and pulls back, away from his arms. Oliver lets her go and sits up, for a moment fearing she's leaving. But Felicity just sits on the edge of the bed, doesn't go any further away from him than that.
"I did kill you, Oliver." She says solemnly, turning only halfway so that he can only see her profile. "You just didn't die[4]."
Oliver sits up as well, right by her side, his thigh touching hers. He waits until she decides to look him in the face out of her own volition.
"You shot me in the shoulder, side and hip. Even if I hadn't had armor on, those would have been flesh wounds."
She looks away from him. Gulps.
"I know what you're thinking. It would be nice to think that I did that on purpose somehow, because it was you, but I didn't." Felicity shakes her head and turns her eyes to him, wide and shiny with uncertainty and the hints of fear, of confusion that seems to be a permanent marker on her now. "I just wanted you to know that I don't go around shooting people dead just because they're in my way or something, because I don't. And it matters to me that you know that."
Oliver nods, but beneath that Felicity can see the true understanding starting to take shape.
"Did you…"
His words stop and for a moment he looks helpless and she wishes she'd never said anything to begin with. As it is, all she can do is save him the trouble of saying the words himself.
"I was an active operative for a while. I had targets. Some of them I killed."
Breath leaves his body in a whoosh and Felicity braces for impact. He closes his eyes, focuses on breathing in and out – trying to calm down.
"I'm so sorry…"
"I'm not." And she isn't. Not really. Not in the way he seems to think. (the surprise she gives him with those words somehow manages to derail his anger) "The ones that died were horrible people who were doing unspeakable things and weren't going to stop and the world will be a more beautiful place without them[5]."
His thumb traces circles against her knuckles, her hand practically enveloped in his. He hadn't let go for a moment.
"Do you regret it?"
Felicity looks back into those eyes that have known fear and death and rage… and she doesn't lie.
"Sometimes." And so what if her voice shakes a bit? Because there have been times in the dead of night, when all fire and hope was gone and all that was left was nightmares. Times when death snapped at her heels and made her doubt everything and the spaces in between. …Times when she looks in the mirror and sees only razor-smiles and cold eyes, alike enough to hers to make her want to scream. "Isn't it hypocritical though, to want someone dead but not be willing to do the ugly yourself?"
Oliver sighs deeply, his forehead coming to rest lightly against her temple.
"I wish you'd never had to make that kind of choice."
"Too late. Did I ever… before?"
"No."
Felicity looks away. "Does that change things for you?"
Her voice is steady, almost unaffected, she should be proud. Her heart is in her throat though, and horrible dread burns though her insides, heightening her pulse to an irritating pattern.
She feels his fingertips brushing against the side of her face, tracing her cheekbone, soft lips against temple.
"No." He says it so softly that if he hadn't been speaking right against her ear, she might have missed it (and her heart falls to the floor and tries to soar at the same time. She didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath). "It changes nothing for me."
All she can manage is a nod.
"Felicity…"
She closes her eyes. She has been reminded of her name many times during these days and the name fits. It feels right. She knows her name. But the way he says it… he breathes it out in complete self awareness, infusing each syllable with meaning and letting it call to her softly. Like he respects every single thing it could possibly mean, in every single way.
…like he loves me.
Tears burn behind her eyelids and Felicity keeps them down, takes deep breaths through her nose, waits for what he has to say as she lets her own name slide over her like warm water. She absorbs the fact that she knows, without knowing, exactly what he means to say to her, and she does it without fear. The time for fear is past. She cannot fear a man who says her name as if even if it were the only word he could ever use, it would be enough.
"Felicity, whatever happens, whatever happens - you are not alone."
She opens her eyes, looks at him. Doesn't even need to voice her question; he snatches it right out of her eyes.
"You saved my life so many times, just by reminding me I wasn't alone. You're not either. I promise. You never will be."
Felicity gulps. Nods. She wasn't aware of when exactly their hand slipped into each-other's but the fact is that their fingers are laced together.
She takes a big breath then, one Oliver recognizes as her trying to get ready to face the day.
"We have a lot of work to do." She says that as if to point it out to herself. Oliver nods anyway. She sighs. "I'm gonna be needing a lot of coffee."
"Yup." And he can't help the smile as he gets up and pulls her with him. "It's gonna be one of those weeks."
"Oh, we have those?"
"We do. Often." He adds, ever the precise asshole.
Felicity groans. "No rest for the wicked."
"Nope."
Felicity gives him a look that might be surprise, it might be amusement. "Look at you, all perky and monosyllabic. You're gonna ruin your reputation."
Oliver rolls his eyes. "It's been shaky for a while anyway."
Felicity chuckles despite herself, more at his deadpan delivery than the words themselves. She makes a deliberate choice to step up close to him and it's still tentative but not hesitant anymore, because her mind is made up. (if there was a way to describe the look on her face, Oliver would go with curious, like a spooked cat edging towards the newly offered place of milk) She touches the back of his hands with hers and he turns it immediately to welcome her, and its new to her but more fascinating is the way he looks at her when Felicity tilts her face up. He looks at her in a way that makes Felicity feel like there's nothing else he'd rather look at. It's strange how it makes her chest ache and makes her uncomfortable at the same time. She's not used to his focus being honed only on her and he probably notices, because the next moment his face softens with a smile, and after a heartbeat he reaches for her face with both hands, giving her the kiss she wanted. (more than she wanted: soft and sweet, lingering on her upper lip and her lower one, fingers tracing her cheekbones, the back of her neck like he was mapping her… melting her against him through sheer sweetness of longing)
Later, when Felicity is brushing her teeth in front of the mirror in her bathroom, she makes up her mind (even though she still can't stand to look at herself in the mirror too long). She dresses in Thea Queen's clothes and her own socks, apparently, makes a mental note to ask Oliver what she used to wear before. When he tells her about the countless dresses of all colors, she smiles wide and thinks 'I like that'.
Entreat me not to leave you, or return from following after you.
Where you go I shall go and where you stay, I shall stay.
Where you die, I shall die
and there shall I be buried.
The lord do so to me, and more also,
If ought but death part thee from me.
[1] Taken from 'Thor: the dark world' Loki says it to Thor
[2] Adapted from the similar quote by Zora Neale Hurston 'She had been waiting all her life for something and it had killed her when it found her.'
[3] Taken from 'Scandal'; Abby, season 3
[4] Quote from the movie 'Stage Beauty'
[5] Quote from the movie 'Byzantium': Clara says it to one of her victims.
End Note: Sooo, this is the end of 'To rage' (My first ever Arrow finished story, YAY!)
Im really happy to have closed this story! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has read and commented, each and every one of you guys helped me write this thing so if you like it, pat yourselves on the back cause you co-wrote it with me, so thank you. *hugs from distance*
I know it feels abrupt as far as endings go, and sort of unresolved, but that was the point. It was supposed to go in stages: of the team losing Felicity, finding her, of her not being quite there and everyone making their peace with that. There is going to be a followup that will dwell on the development on Oliver and Felicity's relationship from now this point on, (and her eventual gain fo her memories) mostly from Felicity's perspective and a lot lighter in tone. But I'm not going to post immediately because im knee deep in research and work for my OlicityFicBang piece already (a season 3 rewrite with a vampiric twist ;) Wish me luck, i definitely need it)
Also, if you wanna talk or just fail about olicity with me, come on over at my tumblr and we'll have ourselves a party.
Im yellowflicker09011996 over there.
Thank you, agian, and I hope you liked reading this as much as i liked writing it
