A/N: Again, thank you to everyone who is still reading. Sorry these chapters are so far apart. I promise you I haven't abandoned the fic, I'm just juggling more than I can manage at the moment... Thanks to my lovely beta westernbeauty. Your kind words and encouragement always make me feel better before a new chapter gets posted.

An Arrow Thru It

Lian Yu 2009

She sat with her feet dangling in the water as bright sunlight beat down her. It had been too long since Felicity had felt the warmth of the sun on her skin. It had been too long since she had breathed in anything other than sweat and blood and other things that she refused to let herself think about. She had spent more than two years in captivity. Two long, torturous years that she had spent in the dark. Those were years that she would never get back.

"Felicity?"

She jerked, her entire body responding physically to the sound of his voice, and she scrambled to cover her bare flesh with the clothes that Sara'd procured for her.

"Wai- wait! Oliver, I'm – just stay over there!"

Felicity wasn't even sure where he was in the crop of trees behind her but she hoped that he had the decency to keep his distance. Sara had helped her to the small inlet so that she could wash some of the grime from her body. The other woman had only stayed long enough to make sure that Felicity didn't need any help before she'd afforded her some privacy. But now Oliver was there and she was naked and getting dressed around her injuries was proving to be tedious.

She struggled into a pair of underwear, ignoring the way the incisions in her abdomen throbbed, and she had just managed to get one leg into the loose cargo pants she'd been given when she lost her balance. The boulder that she stood on was slick and as she lifted her right foot to step into the pants, she slipped, toppling over into the dirt rather than the stream.

Pain tore through her side where it collided with the hard ground and her startled cry rang out.

"Felicity!"

She heard his thunderous steps as he raced toward her. She wanted to tell him that she was alright but the ache that burned its way through her stopped her. She wasn't sure that she could even open her eyes let alone get off of the ground.

"Felicity?"

The note of panic in his voice caused an emotion that she wasn't familiar with to blossom in her chest. It had been a long time since anyone had cared about her wellbeing.

"I-I'm okay," she managed weakly, blinking up at the blinding sun, "I'm okay. I fell."

She heard him sigh with relief as his pace slowed.

"I – Oliver, I don't think I can get up."

Warmth rushed to her cheeks. She was laying there in nothing but a pair of panties, one leg in her pants, with her chest completely exposed. She was fortunate enough that a baggy t-shirt was all that she needed to cover her small breasts – it would've been too much to hope for a bra – but she hadn't gotten so far as to pull the shirt over her head.

Oliver was certainly going to get an eyeful when he found her.

Fear spiked inside of her suddenly, quickly overshadowing her embarrassment, and her heart was suddenly thundering in her chest. Sara trusted Oliver. He had helped her escape from Ivo. He'd been kind to her. But he was a man, a stranger, and she was almost naked and in too much pain to fight him off. She had been hurt so many times in ways that she refused to dwell on. She didn't want to go through that again, she couldn't.

Oliver's footsteps drew closer and she could tell that he'd slowed his pace considerably. She turned her head toward the sound of his breathing but she couldn't see him. Her heart skipped.

"Ol – Oliver?"

He cleared his throat.

"I'm here."

There was an emotion in his tone that surprised her. He was angry. Disgusted. And for the first time, Felicity remembered the black that marred her skin, the bruises that didn't want to fade. He'd told her that Sara had been the one to patch up the stitches she'd pulled when they'd come for her. He hadn't seen the damage that they'd done to her. He didn't know that she was broken.

Shame replaced the fear quicker than she'd thought possible and she blinked the tears from her eyes. They burned as they streaked down her face.

The soft cotton of the t-shirt was jarring as it touched her skin. Oliver crouched beside her, draping it over her chest like a blanket as he brushed his fingers gently across her cheek.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, his voice cracking, "I'm sorry that they – that this happened to you."

Felicity swallowed back the sob that threatened to escape her.

"Can you… can you help me sit up, please?"

He slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her carefully. A fresh wave of pain rippled outward, its center somewhere near her bellybutton, and she gasped, leaning heavily against Oliver's shoulder in order to stay upright.

Oliver touched her gingerly, the hand not around her shoulders skimming over her bruised flesh.

"You're not bleeding," he concluded, "I don't think you tore your stitches this time."

Felicity nodded, biting her lip to keep from whimpering under the prodding of his fingers, and clutched the t-shirt tight to her naked chest.

"Let's get you dressed and back to the plane."

She didn't reply to his soft suggestion but she didn't protest. He moved around her carefully, slowly, as he kept a hold of one of her hands and used his free hand to pull the pants up her legs. He sat quietly as she leaned into him to do up the buttons on her own and when she tried to struggle into the shirt without revealing anymore of herself than she already had, Oliver pried the material from her fingers with his eyes locked on her face.

He gave her an encouraging smile.

"Hold onto me."

She grasped fistfuls of his shirt where it was stretched across his chest. Oliver lifted the shirt over her head and tugged it down until it was situated around her neck. She had to blink a few times to clear the fuzziness from the edges of her vision while Oliver held the shirt away from her body, giving her ample room to work her arms into the sleeves. He tugged the rest of the material down until she was completely covered.

His eyes never left her face.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Do you – do you want to try to walk?"

Felicity nodded and moved her grasp to his forearms. It took very little effort for him to bring her to her feet. Another stab of pain, like a kick to her ribs, caused her breath to catch.

Oliver sighed, "You've got a broken rib. I don't know if it's from the fall or…"

She shook her head.

"I didn't fall that hard."

He adjusted the hold that he had on her and suddenly she was in his arms, cradled against his chest yet again.

"Oliver, I –"

"Hey, just – just let me do this. You don't have shoes, your ankles are still raw and your ribs are killing you. Please, I don't want you to hurt yourself just to prove a point."

He didn't look away from her as he spoke. The intensity in his words and his expression caused goosebumps to break out along her arms where they were wound around his neck.

After a long moment, Felicity nodded her consent and allowed herself to relax in his arms.

Starling City, 2012

"Deadshot, huh? What the hell kind of a name is that?"

Felicity scrunched up her nose at the information on her screen, including the moniker that Floyd Lawton had been saddled with. The name – while ridiculous in her opinion – was appropriate. The man was obviously good at what he did.

She flinched as the needle snagged her skin.

"Yeah, well, stupid nickname aside, you're lucky that Lawton wasn't actually aiming at you."

Oliver's words were clipped and his fingers moved methodically, stitching up the shallow gash that Lawton's bullet had let in her arm. She allowed her fingers to skim down the side of his ribcage, still covered by his jacket, and glanced up at him.

"I'm okay, Oliver."

He sighed, "He got too close."

She certainly didn't disagree with him. She fisted the material beneath her fingers, holding onto him as he finished suturing her wound. It was high up on her bicep but not high enough that she would be wearing anything sleeveless any time soon.

"Why are you so sure that this shooter actually isFloyd Lawton? It isn't like we got a look at him."

Oliver shrugged, "It would be too much of a coincidence that an ARGUS file dedicated to Deadshot shows up on your tablet while we're out in the field. Amanda Waller – for reasons I don't want to even think about – is helping us. Somehow."

She wasn't certain what to say to that. Amanda was not a person that Felicity liked, nor trusted, and the fact that a woman who had used them both as pawns was suddenly interested in just handing them information made her hackles rise. If she never saw Amanda Waller again it would be too soon. As far as Felicity was concerned, that woman was the devil.

A sharp sting shot through her arm suddenly, racing along her nerves and causing her fingers to flex involuntarily. Her tablet clattered to the tabletop beside her thigh. She gasped at the sensation, at the unexpected cramp that seized her muscles, and terror crept up her spine. She dug her fingers into the hard plane of Oliver's chest.

"Felicity? Felicity!"

She was struggling to breathe. The pain had intensified, tearing through her shoulder and across her chest, radiating down her back. She would've screamed if it wasn't for the fact that her throat was suddenly swollen closed.

Oliver laid her back on the table quickly before he stepped out of her reach. She wanted him beside her. She wanted to see his face, to hear him tell her that she was going to be okay. But as she lay there in the damp foundry basement, her airways closing and lights dancing in front of her eyes, Felicity didn't know if she would have believed him anyway.

"Come on, baby. It's going to be alright."

He was there again, leaning over her and holding something to her lips. Oliver's hand beneath her head held her aloft enough to allow at least some of the concoction to make it into her mouth. The liquid was warm and bitter as it slid down her throat and her brain registered belatedly that he was feeding her the herbs from Lian Yu. It was a mixture of roots and fungi indigenous to the island that they had learned could counteract almost any type of poison. She'd been poisoned.

When Felicity opened her eyes again, she had no way of knowing how much time had passed. There was no natural light in the basement of the old steel factory, nothing that she could use to judge time of day, but her body ached from lying on the hard table and she didn't feel rested in the slightest. She'd lost consciousness after choking down the herbal water. She had been shot and poisoned – presumably at the same time – on the same day. It was like being back on the island all over again.

She sat up slowly, the movement causing the entire room to tilt up on its side for a moment, and Oliver appeared at the edge of her vision. He caught her gently before she could topple off of the table.

"Hey."

"Hi."

Her voice was hoarse but working and it was no longer a chore to breathe.

"What happened?" she asked, leaning into his warmth where he stood beside her.

"Apparently Deadshot likes to ensure that he does what he's getting paid for. He laces his bullets with curare as insurance. You were really lucky."

She slipped her arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. She wasn't sure she could move much more than she already had. Oliver drew her closer, dropping a kiss to the top of her head, and for a long moment, they were silent.

"How long was I out?" she asked after several long minutes.

"A couple of hours. We should go. It'll be morning soon and the last thing that I want is to have another conversation with my mother about where we've been all night. She already thinks that we're avoiding her and evading Diggle."

She set her chin in the center of his chest and grinned up at him.

"Both of which are true."

Oliver shrugged and laced his fingers through her hair. He brought his mouth to hers, their lips slanting, and she melted into his kiss.

He stepped away a few moments later, withdrawing his hands from her hair and letting it fall in a cloud around her shoulders. He smiled down at her.

His eyes were creased with worry and Felicity knew that she had come to close to death thanks to Deadshot's curare-laced bullet. It wasn't the first time that her life had been threatened. It certainly wasn't the only time that she had been on the brink of death. They had both had their fair share of close calls. But things had changed. They weren't on Lian Yu. They weren't in Hong Kong. They weren't under Amanda Waller's thumb. They didn't have to live that way anymore. They could walk away from their mission – deny Robert Queen's last request – and just live their lives.

Suddenly, Felicity ached for it to be that simple.

"Are you ready to go?" Oliver asked.

For a long moment she stared at him. She looked at the man who stood before her, the man who had saved her from the darkness that she had been shrouded in, the man who had somehow learned to love her even though she was damaged. Felicity looked at him and knew that she couldn't ask him to abandon his mission. She wouldn't ask him to give up the goal that had kept him alive for years after the Gambit sank. She would do whatever she could to help him right the wrongs of his father. And then – only when they had accomplished that goal – would she ask him to live a normal, quiet life with her.

"Yeah. I'm ready."