My underground
sadness. Sleeping carcass hanging
on your windowsill sadness.
My hollowed tree sadness. My
favorite brick tied to my favorite
ankle sadness.
Bottom of the river sadness.
Once a year hunger sadness.
I pick a day and I eat the wood
from the walls. I wear my curtains
as a veil and marry my empty bed.
My abandoned building sadness.
Dirty sheets sadness. Teeth at
the throat sadness.
I pick a day and I swallow every
stone that's ever been thrown.
I pick a day and I gnaw at the
floorboards.

Caitlyn Siehl, The Sadness

She asked him once, if he had any happy stories. He didn't have an answer for her then, couldn't possibly have thought of any, but he does now. It's not really happy stories… more like, calm ones. He collects them, tiny moments that he can go back to and that brick by brick build a dam against the darkness of his thoughts.

The four of them at her apartment, five different kinds of takeouts crowding her tiny coffee table. The quiet of the Lair when she's the only one there and he can actually sleep, lulled into unconsciousness by the rhythm of her tapping fingers. Sparring with Roy and him getting something right, being so proud of finally making some progrees. The quiet between him and John when they just sit and have a drink.

Small things that settle him into the life he is living.

But here in her dark room, where she sleeps too deeply and her heart beats too slowly… here there are no happy stories.

Here there's just an abnormally still Felicity and her chipped nail polish.

It's such a stupid detail to focus on, but grief is a strange land. It warms anyone's perception of normal.

After Sara left, Oliver used all the strength he had in him to ask Cisco to locate Thea for him, after she didnt answer her phone for the sixth time. And then he just… collapsed.

He didn't want to go back to that room. He wanted to distance himself physically from that place and take Felicity with him, but at the same time, he really couldn't think of anywhere else to go. There were a thousand things to do, and he didn't have the energy for a single fucking one of them. So he drags himself to the chair by her bed, and crashes there. He realizes he hasn't moved for hours only when he looks up to see John sitting on the other side of her bed, and notices that it's night again outside.

He doesn't want to sleep, ( he's too fucking afraid to close his eyes no matter how tired he is ) but ends up collapsing anyway, folded on the side of her bed. In his mind, he's just waiting for Cisco.

He dreams of that night.

He dreams of doing it right. Of not being afraid, not being a coward with her over and over again. He dreams of leaning down just when she'd expected it, and kissing her on Verdant's parking lot in the middle of the night.

That's how it should have happened. And in his dreams he gets it right.

It's would have been soft, nothing but gentle. It would have been everything he wanted to show her, all his better self. And he would have taken her hand and gone back where it was safe, and stayed there all night. Just the two of them.

That's what Oliver dreams of.

But his dreams are never silent. Never.

In his dreams, more often than not, he hears himself screaming in the night, through a storm. Hears the unbearable whooshing of the open sea, or Slade's voice. He knows, even in his nightmares, how different a gunshot sounds when it's in open water and when it's in the closed woods. It snaps him awake in a cold sweat every time, no matter which one it is his brain shoves at him.

'Both my children will live... Close your eyes baby' .

He hears Thea's screams of terrified despair, they crawl under his nails like glass shards.

But what wakes him up this time is not a scream. It's not loud and it's not violent.

It's the way she lets her arms fall to her sides from where they'd been sneaked around his torso, holding on tight. It's the way she leans into him, swaying, her face against his neck, her body leaning into his like she's giving up on staying on her feet. Her name echoes in his head, in the foundry, so loud, even if it's just a whisper. And when Oliver leans back to catch her face between his hands, to look at her, he finds her pale, and cold, and that little lining of blood staining the inside of her lips.

The ground disappears from beneath his feet when she says his name.

She says his name and it's helpless, it's the end, and Oliver startles awake breath, his stomach somersaulting, as if it still thinks he's falling. His heart is trying to fly out of his breastbone, pounding relentlessly.

Oliver passes a hand over his face.

His mind has never given him any quarter but where it usually fuels despair now it just ignites anger. They're a mockery of his own cowardice.

He'd thought he really couldn't love her in any way that would ever leave her without bruises. He still thought that… He'd been so convinced that he'd hurt her just by being himself, same as he had hurt every single person he'd tried to be with, one way or another, and that had made him a coward. He hadn't even wanted to try.

But if he'd been brave enough; if he'd had even a fraction of faith in himself that she seems to have in him and thought 'maybe i can do this', instead of 'i'm going to fuck this up because it's my nature and it will ruin us', Felicity wouldn't be laying here, on this bed, in this dark room, her heart barely beating.

And then he has to laugh, bitter and hollow, because it's not as if he's suffered some bullshit illumination. Nothing has changed. … But even ruin would have been better than this.

He'd started relationships for worse reasons, it was true. And they'd all ended in the dust, taking pieces of him along the way.

He couldn't be that careless with Felicity. She was too important to lose.

His heart lurches in his chest. He had though. She'd slipped right through his fingers, like smoke.

Careless…

Oliver wraps his fingers gently around her wrist, counting her heartbeats.

There has been no word from Sara. Nothing. Thea hadn't called him back either. He should go out and search for Cisco but he can't really move. He's trying so, so hard not to fall into the mire of his own mind again, but it's claws are deep into him. it's right there at the corner of his eye, waiting. All he can do is stare straight ahead and ignore it.

Fear is not new to Oliver, but coupled with this unbelievable sense of helplessness… it brings up the worst in him, and the worst he's live thought. He feels more stranded here than he ever was on the island and the helplessness of it corrodes him from the inside. But there is nowhere else he feels he can go either. He's strapped in place, and being pulled apart at the same time.

Something will have to give…

In the end, it takes Cisco two days to locate Thea. Felicity opens her eyes in half that time. Twentyfour hours, on the dot.

If before that moment Sara's words hadn't really sunk in, what happens after drives them home like the slice of a knife to the side.

Waking up has never felt quite like this before.

She's had hard hours for more than two years now. Times when she steps in her apartment on a saturday night so late that it is almost early and just pases out on the bed, forgetting to close the window and the curtains. So it will be a noisy sunday morning cutting through her sleep even though she is bone-tired, pulling at her scratchy eyelids, insisting ' wake up wake up ' with a cacophony of a thousand different noises that don't care if she does, but won't let her sleep either.

It's a bit like that, this awakening… but harsher . Deeper sleep, slower awakening. It's crawling your way up from a dark pool, with the water fighting back to keep you under, but without really wanting you there.

There's nothing welcoming about the depths Felicity finds herself in, but at first she doesn't really want to leave them. She's the kind of tired that reaches all the way into unconsciousness, she doesn't think she can leave it. Her eye's still itch as if she never closed them, her body heavy with exhaustion that pulls her every bone, weighting her even further down the bed.

But her senses keep pricking tiny annoying holes into her sleep, stubborn tendrils of awareness cutting through the darkness. The prickle of her sweater, the burn of her palms and the itch of her feet. Noises that she can't tell apart by name punch straight through her skull, ringing in her head, a nameless cacophony. There is numbness, parts of her body that feel like they're missing, but there is also aching without any awareness of where the hurt is coming from. Her mouth is dry and she needs to pee too, so badly that she wiggles on the bed, pushing her thighs together.

Felicity drags herself inch by inch through this state of drugged awareness, for what feels like hours. ( later, she will be told it lasted perhaps one hour, since she made her first sound of discomfort, until she opened her eyes in the dark ) She's not conscious enough to know that her restlessness is actually fear. She just shivers at it's bitter taste. She doesn't know where her body is and why it feels so heavy, as if her every limb is twice its weight. Can't find her eyes with any kind of precision that it would take to actually open them.

Words get lost from her brain to her mouth, make it out as tiny little groans that hurt her throat and she feels the sting of irritation behind her eyes, wetting them.

Warmth finds her as she struggles, on one side of her face, soft and rough both, human. Familiar.

A hand around her hand - and there it is, she finds her limp, chances that surety all the way up her arm, to her face where her lips are. Where her eyes are.

One moment she is in darkness, and the next the spark has lit her brain and she opens her eyes as if she always knew how - and closes them almost instantly, the burn of the light so harsh that tears slide down her temples as a heavy breath parts from her lips.

The light is so bright it burns through her eyelids.

But then it's gone and she can breathe again.

She can breathe again!

Felicity flexes her fingers around the hand holding hers. She knows that hand.

John…

His name doesn't make it out of her mouth. Her throat is too try; talking scrapes at it.

"It's ok, Felicity," he says, and Felicity flinches. Why is he shouting? "Don't try to talk yet. We're in the STAR labs medical wing. You're safe and you're okay."

She takes another breath and knows this time just by the scent of his skin and soap clothes that he's there.

But there is someone else there also.

Felicity lets her head turn a bit to the right, where Oliver is standing. She knows it's Oliver, knows it without needing to open her eyes with the kind of certainty that she knows she has ten fingers and toes still ( the kind of certainty that her senses translate into her mind like they never have before, and that she is too shaken still to question ). She takes another breath and there he is.

And it's just like being on the field again, where among violence and uncertainty she knows her team will keep her safe. The thought - the surety of their presence there - settles her more than any words could have.

"You can open your eyes now. I turned off the light." Digg says gently.

Felicity huffs, and then regrets it. Her chest hurts. But she does take John at his word and dares to open her eyes again.

She blinks against their blurriness, and then blinks again, stunned at all the details she is capable of taking in.

It assaults her, matches objects with the noises buzzing in her head. Her friends, the room, her own body and the machines humming by it. It's never been so… she thinks maybe she has a fever still. She takes in the luminescence of the corridor beyond, where the daylight filtering in is so bright it seems violent. There's a steady drumming she doesn't recognize moving in two different rhythms and in the next breath, as the acrid scents of a dozen different medical concoctions pierce her nose and make her eyes water again.

Felicity squeezes her eyes closed, tries to hold her breath. For a moment it's too much. She just wants to go to sleep again.

She tries to talk, but ends up coughing. John holds out a glass with a straw on it. The water inside it sloshes heavily. Felicity tries to breath in without breathing in the whole room, braces herself. she hates being sick with a passion, hates how dependent it makes her.

She takes a gulp of water anyway though, and then another, her parched throat almost sizzling for how thirsty she is.

"Easy." John cautions.

Felicity looks at him. He's looking back as if he hasn't seen her in ages, shoulders slumped and his face lined with exhaustion, but still, he smiles at her brighter than he ever has.

Felicity manages a smile back.

"Why are you shouting?" she finally asks, her voice so far removed from its usual sound that it's almost funny.

Confusion flits across John's face. He shares a quick look with Oliver - Oliver who seems to have crawled from under some rock, looking so pale she thinks he's sick too, his lips bloodless and the circles under his eyes so dark they almost reflect the blue of his irises.

"I'm sorry." John says then, much more softly.

Roy comes in in that moment and there is such honest surprise on his face at seeing her awake that for the first time Felicity wonders how long she'd slept for. Roy means to say something but Digg holds his hand up, puts a finger t his lips. She sees him clearly even though he's just at the edge of her eyeline.

Roy steps at the foot of the bed, a lopsided smile on his face and mouths 'hey Blondie' to her with a wink.

Felicity looks at them carefully, their faces and the way their eyes fit over her restlessly, their placid expressions… It's as if they're trying to keep her calm but as usual they're not doing a good job at pretending.

And it's not that Felicity's not scared or worried. She is.

But… she really doesn't like the looks on their faces right now, and really, she just doesn't know what else to do.

"I bet I could make you sing 'soft kitty' to me right now." She says with difficulty. "As a round, too."

Digg hangs his head helplessly, but she can hear his laugh (she can hear the thickness of tears it hides too), and roy grins, but Oliver… Oliver just looks at her with endless eyes. His smile looks so hollow that it makes even Felicity's pained one fall.

"Please don't." he says, straight face and shiny-eyed. "I don't think either of us would survive Digg's singing voice."

"You wish you had my singing voice, Queen."

Oliver groans very softly. They play her game almost as if they'd practiced, and Felicity feels her heart swell will warmth.

She's so lucky. So lucky in her friends.

"No seriously blondie, I would pay to have you do that." Roy says, glancing at Oliver.

Felicity raises one lazy eyebrow.

"Huh. Since when can you afford me?"

"I can't. But Digg can."

John's smile widens, brushes back her hair from her forehead.

Oliver steps closer. He's trying to keep his face so placid, but Felicity can see the strain beneath as if it were a live string pulled so tight it vibrates.

"How are you feeling?"

Felicity takes the time to consider an answer.

She feels… foreign in her own body, she realises, as she carefully takes stock of herself. She doesn't have the words to explain it though. She doesn't even know what she's feeling exactly, other than the fact that she is overwhelmed with it and has to concentrate just to make out their voices form the hum of every other noise around them. It bothers her, but she's scared to ask them what is going on.

What if she had brain damage? She doesn't remember what happened. She just remembers falling asleep, and then crawling back up from it.

Felicity tries to lift her hand again, but barely manages to move her fingers.

"Heavy." Felicity finally says, because it's the easiest answer to give. She does feel heavy, like someone filled her bones with iron while she was knocked out.

"Your muscles are just tired, that's all. And so are you. You'll get your strength back in no time." John explains.

"I'm kinda hungry too, actually."

That makes the three of them smile for real for the first time.

"Your stomach is a bottomless pit, Barbie."

Felicity raises both eyebrows. "Look who's talking."

"I'm training." Roy protests, his voice raising a bit, before he catches himself. "And still growing."

She snorts. "Sideways maybe."

She counts and mentally fist-bumps. Two genuine smiles now. Things are looking up.

"What is that noise?" she finally asks, face scrunching up in both concentration and frustration.

It's like beating drums in the background. It's not loud but something about it focuses her, in a way she is not at all used to. Like the beating of fingers on a keyboard - that same sense of familiarity, except this one was baseless. It wasnt familiar. It just felt that way, like the weirdest deja vu ever.

The three of them look a bit alarmed and the fact that one simple question can get them to that state is a bit unnerving to Felicity.

"What noise?" Oliver asks, leaning a bit into her line of sight.

She's about to answer him, she really is, but then his face hovers close and she is looking at him and… she sort of… loses her threat?

It's funny how it works. One moment that soft drumming sound just a humming background noise and the next moment, she focuses on it and it settles on her senses like a blanket.

An invitation.

Felicity releases a long breath, helpless and confused, too tired to resist the pull of her body.

Her eyes smooth down from Oliver's face to his neck and there she finds his pulse, pounding beneath his skin.

Her breaths grow heavy.

She's smarter than most people in any room but the knowledge that infuses her mind in that moment comes to her the way most instincts do: from the dark and without name. Only certainty.

"Is that… is that your heartbeat?" She asks between heavy breaths.

Oliver's eyes go wide. "What?" the word is breathless and disbelieving.

Felicity doesn't need an answer though: she already has one. Her thoughts steamroll her like a truck, feeble fingers gathering the sheets in loose fists as nervousness grows. Her own heart starts drumming faster. It's not possible , but it's true. She knows it, she feels the truth of it as undeniable as the sky looking blue is undeniable - and that frightens her.

Even as she says the words though, Oliver's face changes, the surprises emptying his face of expression and his heart… his heart changes rhythm. Faster now. Restless, just as her own was.

"Ok this…" She tries to clear her throat but it hurt. "This is really weird so someone please explain."

John's hand on her shoulder is warm and heavy. The sensation of it is a clear bell right by her ear.

"We will, but you have to stay calm. We'll tell you everything we know, okay?"

Felicity grits her teeth. They hurt too. Great.

She nods.

"Too tired to babble my way through anything anyway." She says absentmindedly.

"I should go call the doc." Roy volunteers. John nods and he goes.

His steps are heavy all the way to the door, and when the mechanic thing slides open, Felicity can hear the tiny scratching sounds that she's never heard before as it drags on the little bits of dirt on the floor.

She purses her lips, closes her eyes.

'Do not panic' seems to be a good refrain to stich to, for now.

"How long was I asleep." she asks, trying to concentrate on something else.

"You weren't asleep." Oliver says slowly. He sounds so exhausted, even his voice is rough with it. "You were in a coma."

John's disapproval rolls off him in waves, but Felicity turns to look at him with wide eyes, so Oliver keeps his eyes firmly on her.

"Oh."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Felicity thinks about it. The memory is like a bad taste in her mouth. She just wants to heave it out.

The last thing she remembers is being afraid. Being desperate. In pain.

The very last thing she remembers is thinking she was dying.

Felicity gulps that down.

"I'm not sure." she says carefully. "How long…"

"Twentyfour hours." John says. "On the dot."

Felicity expels a long breath. Her breastbone still hurts like someone kicked her real hard on it.

"Okay then. Honestly, out of all the weird things we've seen, this isn't really the first on that list." she says, and though she's trying to sound lighter, her smile is wane, her voice shakes. "Definitely top five though."

Oliver huffs. "You have no idea."

They tell her everything they know and what they don't, and she just sits up on her cushions and stares ahead, takes it all in.

She doesn't say a single thing, but goes paler when they mention Merlyn, grits her teeth. Her eyes shine with anger, but she's too weak to do anything about it yet. She can't even fist her hands yet.

"For now you are… perfectly healthy actually. Your parameters are top notch." Caitlin says with a smile, voice pitched barely above a whisper. She's just gone over Felicity's whole medical condition with a tone of definite positivity, but after what happened Olvier doesn't really trust any of it.

"There are some irregularities - like your hypersensitivity - that with your permission, I'd like to check."

"Yeah, hearing someone's heartbeat from across the room could be considered an irregularity." she says absently. Oliver can tell just by the veiled look in her eyes that her brain is already somewhere else.

Caitlin shifts on her feet. "Yes that's… that's strange i admit, but come on - i work with Barry. I've seen weirder. Don't think of the worst yet, Felicity."

"We'll run some tests. I promise that I'll stick to the least invasive procedures i know of."

She stops and waits for some response from Felicity, but instead of looking at the doc, Felicity focuses her eyes on him. She's still so pale but her eyes are alight.

"I need my tablet." She says, voice so rough it breaks every two words.

Oliver just stares.

Caitlin takes a step forward, suddenly very serious.

"Felicity, did you understand what I…"

"I understood everything." Felicity says, patience thinning right there in front of their eyes. "I want teh tests. I want to know what's gong on with me. But right now, I need my tablet."

Digg doesn't wait to be told again. He hands it to her.

She has some trouble holding on to it, but then she just leans forward with a grimace and balances it on her thighs.

"I can access the Foundry's system from here." She mumbles, fingers moving on the screen so much slower than usual.

Out of everything that she's heard so far, that is the thing that makes her scrunch up her face and close her eyes, taking deep breaths as if to calm down.

When she opens them, her determination is written in hard lines across her face.

"I should be able to find Thea. Hand me your phone Oliver."

He reaches for it without even thinking about it.

"Dont you need your glasses?" He says softly as he sets the phone close by her table.

Her glasses are the first thing she reaches for, even before she's really up. In the thirty minutes she has been awake, she hasn't asked for them once.

Felicity looks up, her hand going up as if to push the frames of her glasses up her nose and seeming startled to find them missing. He's seen her do that before. Sometimes she forgets that she took them off, but it's not like that now.

Her eyes blink at him, lips open with something that looks a lot like fear crawling in her eyes but then she shakes her head as if that's enough to banish the feeling and goes back to her tablet.

"I'm going to find Thea." She tells the screen resolutely. "And you're going to get her."

"Felicity…" Digg tries, but she shakes her head.

"Doable things now. Everything else later."

Digg looks at him over the top of her head. It's avoidance and it's also a situation they know well, but neither can really say anything because this - focusing on the immediate and on the damage control - this is how the survive when it comes to cataclysmic events. It's ingrained now, as deeply set in Felicity as military and experience have drilled them in Digg and Oliver both.

It would be unfair to take away from her the only way she has of coping when they were the ones that taught it to her in the first place.

She sighs heavily. "Stop that. You're not talking,but i can hear it."

John looks away, Oliver looks at the side of Felicity's head. He wishes, feebly, that he could tell her to rest and take it easy but he's too relieved for it. He needs her to find Thea, yes, but it's not that. Not really. Cisco is working on that. It's the fact that seeing her back to doing what she does best, in a setting that is familiar enough that is the only thing that settles his mind for the first time in days. Seeing her like this, stubborn and awake and dipped up to her head in code, in that place that is her solace as much as an arrow between his fingers is his, makes him breathe easier. And Oliver keeps looking, hoping that the way she looks now: tired but relentless and alive, is how she'll look next time he closes his eyes. He doesn't even blink for wanting to burn the sight into his brain.

A big part of him is so intensely relieved that Felicity won't have to remember those last moments and how frightened she'd been. That she won't remember that desolation he'd only seen a fraction of in her eyes, which must have been big enough to swallow cities whole inside her.

A small, whispering part of him though, is already crippling under the weight of that knowledge, and Oliver knows himself well enough to know it will never leave him. He feels lonely in it, but knows that for the sake of keeping that same feeling from her, his legs would never give, and he'd take that solitude to the grave, with the rest of his secrets.

It takes Felicity four hours to find Thea's location. Oliver doesn't really hold it against her that Thea lied to him. it would be fairly hypocritical if he did, and he realizes that. But he does want to know why however. He'll ask her once he manages to bring her home. He still has no idea how on earth he'll do that.

Cisco walks in five minutes after Felicity's tablet pings, and when they tell him that they got it already, thank you, he purses his lips, grumbling about 'unfairness' all the way out.

That is the first time Felicity smiles since she woke up.

He doesn't know what to say as he prepares to leave. She's just sitting there on her bed, looking smaller than usual and he just.. hovers.

"I'll call you when I know something more about whatever..." she looks away, shakes her head like she still can't believe it then makes a wide gesture towards herself with her hand. She's getting better at moving, just like Digg said she would. "Whatever is going on here. With me."

Bye. I'll call you.

It's such a shockingly normal thing to say that for a moment it manages to make it's way through the restrain and numbness he's been building brick by brick since Sara left, Warmth laps at his angles like a warm wave.

All Oliver can do is nod.

"Have you figured out what you're going to tell Thea?"

No. No he hasn't. Just the thought of it makes his palms sweat. "Sara thinks i should tell her the truth."

Felicity contemplates that. There is no surprise or alarm in her face and that's how Oliver knows that she's thought about it before.

"It's a good place to start, considering how things were when she left." She says softly, mindful of the minefield that his family is in his head. She treads softly on these topics for him, and he knows it's a lot of effort, for someone who always speaks her mind as bluntly as she does.

"I don't know." He doesn't know anything anymore. He's been telling himself that he'll know what to tell Thea when he sees her face, but the truth beneath that thought is another. He'll know how much to lie, when he sees how angry she still is at him. How much he can get away with it.

It's just a thought. He hasn't made up his ind. He thinks he'll be better than that. He wants to be.

But he knows himself. He knows that whenever it hurts, he will want to take the path that carves him up the least. He'll want to make that easy choice. And just wanting it is enough for Oliver to fall into it sometimes.

"I'll see you soon, Oliver."

Felicity's words derail his thoughts and that's when he notices that he's been standing on the doorway of her room (that fucking Oliver had it his way, he'd burn it to the ground) and hasn't said anything in probably a few minutes. And Felicity, she looks so unhappy beneath that tilt of her lips that he just can't tear himself away.

So he walks further into the room and takes her hand on impulse. She lets him.

"It's going to be okay, Felicity."

Her smile, the way she looks at him, makes him feel completely stripped. The awareness in her eyes of what he means, what he's doing make the words feel ridiculous, but he doesn't let go of her hand.

He doesn't want to leave her hopeless. He can't.

"Say that again." Felicity dares him, eyes smiling. "Try to believe it this time."

Oliver gulps. How did this go from him offering reassurance to him needing it? He tries something closer to the truth this time. Something he believes in. "Whatever this is, we'll figure it out. Together."

She nods. "Better. Believability factor way higher this time."

His chuckle is breathless: unwilling to laugh but helpless against her. He leans into her space, doesn't miss the way she stills immediately. His lips ind her forehead, just at the edge of her hairline and lingers as much as he dares to. it's not much.

Felicity stiffens even further, but then slouches with a small groan.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "I stink."

She didn't, but didn't smell of a spring morning either. She smells of iodine and disinfectant, and beneath that of unwashed hair.

"Not the worst thing I've ever smelled." Oliver says offhandedly with a shrug that is trying too hard to be nonchalant.

She scrunches up her nose at him, pushes his hand away as far as she can, and Oliver as to purse his lips to hold back the smile. He has no idea how she gets these things out of him, never has.

"Not exactly comforting, Oliver."

"Not really the point, Felicity."

She opens her mouth no doubt to quip something interesting at him, but then she catches his eye and stops. The look on her face softens, settles, and that look falls in him like a stone.

All lightness leaves him.

"I'll see you soon."

Felicity's nod is shallow. "Yeah."