Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. I'm glad that everybody is pleased with my Undertaking! No return of Malcolm in this 'verse. (I really hated how they kept bringing him back and having him as an ally or enemy depending. Overuse of a plot annoys me. So he is dead and staying dead in this. Meaning, of course, that Sara wouldn't die in S3 and Thea wouldn't go through so much hell. I'm not going as far as S3, but it's good to know, you know?)

Read, enjoy and review!

It is not "forgive and forget" as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.

Alan Paton

Chapter Twenty-One

Forgive and Go Forward

The first sight to meet Oliver's eyes on waking was Felicity, slumped in an armchair beside his bed, her laptop perched on the duvet, the lack of glow signalling it had gone into sleep mode after a while of inactivity. She must have fallen asleep in the middle of working. How often had he caught her in a similar position when they were in college? He looked around, studying his surroundings. He was at home in the manor, in his bedroom, with several medical machines set up around his bed. When he turned his attention to her, he realized that Felicity was far paler than usual for her nowadays, with dark circles under her eyes and her clothes rumpled from being worn for too long.

"F'l'ity," he croaked, his voice hoarse and barely audible. She jolted awake immediately, tensing and scanning the room for threats before relaxing again and giving him a weak smile, moving to sit beside him on the bed.

"Hey, Babe," she murmured, running a hand over his hair. "Welcome back to the world. How are you feeling?"

"My head hurts," he replied tiredly. "I don't-did the machine go off?"

Her blue eyes glistened with tears, and now she was closer he could see the red tints to her eyes that showed it wasn't the first time she had been tearful recently.

"Um, you and Lance managed to disarm one of them," she explained. "But, uh, it turned out that Merlyn had a second device. It went off. The, the earthquake destabilized some stuff in SCT, and you ended up with some debris falling on top of your head and your leg was pinned as well. You've been unconscious for a week now, though the last few days was just because of sedation. Tommy took you off it yesterday evening and said to let you wake up on your own."

Oliver gave a slow nod, absorbing everything she had told him, though the fogginess of his mind made it difficult to comprehend the impact of what she was telling him. "My mom?" He questioned her, the thought popping into his mind. He struggled to push himself up, ignoring the agony in his head and leg. "Thea? Jesus, Will? Is he alright?"

"Hey, hey," she pushed him back down gently. "They're all fine. Thea was with Roy in the Glades when, when the whole thing happened, but she wasn't hurt, and he's okay too, just some bumps and bruises mostly. A broken arm is the worst of it. William is completely fine. He was here in the manor with Raisa, outside of the danger zone. Your mom isn't hurt either."

"She was arrested, wasn't she?" Oliver asked quietly.

Felicity bit her lip guiltily and avoided his gaze. "I'm sorry, Oliver," she breathed. "Yeah. But Jean Loring is already working on her defence. She says that the fact that Moira was trying to protect her family and that she admitted what she knew before it could start and provided evidence of Malcolm's actions will work in her favour."

"Right," Oliver said hollowly. "How's Dig? And you, you're alright, aren't you?" He scanned her as best he could, searching for any signs of injury. Felicity gave a tired smile, running a hand through her golden locks.

"Dig and I were both stabbed during the fight with Malcolm," she confessed. The heart monitor picked up as he panicked over her revelation, but she was quick to soothe him.

"Hey, hey, look at me, Honey," she demanded, grasping his jaw in her calloused hands and forcing him to meet her gaze. "We're okay. Dig is laid up with a broken leg, but neither of us are really hurt. We're okay. I promise."

"I can't lose you again, Lissy," he insisted in a shaky voice. "I just can't."

She nodded, sighing and leaning down to kiss him. "You're not going to," she murmured before pulling away and rising. "I'm going to go and call Tommy, alright? He and Aly are run off their feet with everything, but he's been stopping by to check on you every night and I'm under strict instructions to inform him of any and all developments."

"Okay," Oliver agreed. It was only a few moments after she left that he fell asleep again. It wasn't until he woke up again that he realized he had never asked about the death toll. When he learned it was still rising even a week later as people succumbed to injuries and bodies were uncovered, but at last count approximately 253 people were dead. He threw up from the horror of it, guilt and grief making him feel sick.

With everything going on, looking after William and Thea who were both distraught and confused by recent events, making large donations to the Glades to help with everything, rebuilding, housing, medical supplies and attention, as well as assuring the people that the Queen family as a whole fully intended to make restitutions for their actions, checking up on Dig (thank God Carly was there to look after him, because Felicity simply couldn't manage more, awful as she felt about it), and trying to keep Queen Consolidated from falling apart, especially now that some corporation called Stellmoor International was gearing for it, Felicity had little opportunity to even consider putting the mask back on in the first two months after the Undertaking. She wasn't sure she even wanted to.

She had wanted to help, but what good had she done in reality? She had failed to stop the Undertaking, and now five hundred and two people were dead, thousands more injured and homeless. She had gone through records, looking through each of the dead's profiles and imprinting their names and faces into her memory. Perhaps if she hadn't focused on going after Malcolm, if she had chosen to search for the device instead, she would have realized there was more than one and been able to stop the tragedy from unfolding.

It seemed that every time she tried to help, she only made things worse. And she was so tired too. So very tired of death and pain and, god, so much blood. Ever since the wreck, her life had been a blur of blood, death and a feeling of hollow grief, and Felicity felt on the edge, as if one more move would destroy whatever remained of her tattered soul.

The thought of fighting more seemed impossible and foolish to her. Instead, she threw herself into helping as best she could, and also put the household on a firm budget. Most of the Queens' assets were frozen for the course of the investigation into Moira, leaving them with only the trust funds, the personal accounts belonging to Oliver, Felicity and Thea (and also Felicity's offshore accounts, but the last thing they needed right now was for anybody to become suspicious of those). While money from the company, SCT and the club all continued to go into the personal accounts, it still meant that they were no longer able to live as lavishly as possible, and in anticipation of heavy fines being levelled on Moira, Felicity took over the household finances and put a cap on the amount each person was allowed to spend, as well as renting out several unused properties to gain more income. Thea had been more than a little pouty when her ability to go for retail therapy was firmly restricted, but Felicity had refused to yield, and Tommy asking her to help out at Verdant, given that he was too busy at the hospital and Oliver was still recovering from his broken leg, had distracted her.

Felicity sighed and rubbed at her temples, pressing on the pressure points to try and lessen her pounding headache. She was so tired, and the rare moments of sleep she managed to snatch were filled with images of the Undertaking and Hong Kong, William taking Akio's place and her replacing Tatsu, screaming helplessly as her baby choked to death on his own blood. It wasn't really a surprise that the Undertaking had brought memories of the Alpha-Omega Virus to the front of her mind, but she was still bitter over it. She had gone to a lot of work to lock up those memories nice and tight in a box at the back of her mind, and the Undertaking had made it burst wide open and flood her dreams with old and new horrors.

Yet another thing to hate Malcolm Merlyn for.

She had rushed Dig to the hospital on her bike, dropping him at the entrance and then dashing to the club where she had managed to dig Oliver out without too much difficulty. The damage to her building hadn't been too bad, not nearly as bad as other places, but the second device had been near enough to do some damage to it, and Oliver had been in a bad position, ending up with his leg pinned under some debris and a chunk of stone hitting his head. He'd had a brain bleed, and there had been concerns over brain damage which had thankfully been disproved after he woke.

And he would live as well, which was more than many could say. Felicity had taken him to the hospital, still in the clothes she wore under her coat and bleeding from the arrow she had jammed in her chest to kill Merlyn, and Aly had fixed her up hastily while Tommy, a bandage around his head, worked on Oliver. She had been discharged immediately, but Oliver had required admission due to his head wound. Tommy wouldn't allow anybody else to treat his best friend, and Felicity had needed to have one of their home security guards posted outside his room 24/7 until her husband had been sent home. After leaving the hospital, she had gone back to the Glades and started working on Search and Rescue as the vigilante. It spoke to the seriousness of the situation that none of the police had tried to arrest her, instead working in concert with her and letting her take the lead when it became clear she had the experience to do so. She had worked until she was near collapse, at which time Lance had ordered her to go.

"Get outta here, kid," he had urged her. "You've done all you can. You keep working in this state and you'll be a hindrance, not a help." He was right, so she had gone home where she had found her cell phone's memory full from the amount of missed calls and texts, Thea distraught and terrified, and William innocently asking what was going on. She'd had to break the news that Oliver was in hospital to them, and spent the next few hours trying to soothe Will's tears of fear and Thea's rage towards her mother.

The day after the Undertaking, Felicity, as Felicity Queen, had gone back to the Glades again and started helping to get people out of destroyed buildings, nursing their wounds and soothing their tears and enduring angry threats and yells from people. Her dad had wanted her to go, due to the threats being levelled at her, but she had steadfastly held her ground and continued to do what she could. Eventually, though, she had gone to visit Dig, who had been discharged, before going to the hospital to see Oliver and cry into his bedsheets. She'd passed by Tommy, but hadn't been able to talk to him, as he and Aly were both too busy to even stop and drink a cup of coffee, instead drinking it on the go.

She didn't know what she would even say, really. She and Tommy had spoken about anything other than Oliver's case since he had learned she was the vigilante. He hadn't revealed her to anybody, and she'd like to take that as a good sign, but he might just not have had the time.

Two months after the Undertaking, the total of dead was tallied at 502, and both William and Thea had needed to be withdrawn from school because both were receiving threats. It was the same reason that Oliver had been transferred home even before waking. They couldn't guarantee nobody would attack him, and even some of their security detail's loyalty was now questionable. Thankfully, Dig was mostly back to normal, though he was doing PT for his leg, and he had retaken his position as head of security for their family, something that greatly reassured her. She could trust Dig to make sure none of their employees tried to kill them in their own home.

She passed by William's room, and quickly peeked inside, seeing him contentedly playing Mario Kart on his PlayStation. It made her smile softly. She couldn't shield him entirely from what was going on, but at least he was hanging on. Her kid was one tough boy.

Roy was staying with them for the moment, as his house had been destroyed in the quake, and she could hear he and Thea talking in her room, so she didn't knock, not wanting to disturb the pair. Thea was suffering a lot lately, given what she had seen in the quake and the knowledge that her mother had taken part in that, while Roy was coping with the loss of eight of his friends and the same trauma as everyone else who'd been in the Glades during the Undertaking. The one small silver lining was that it had bonded them closer instead of pushing them apart.

She trotted past two of the guest rooms, chewing the inside of her cheek. She had considered opening some of the house to the new homeless, but she'd discussed it with Dig first, and he had advised her against it, given the angry sentiment directed towards the Queens and Merlyns at the moment. Tommy had actually sped up his marriage to Aly, saying vows to her in the hospital chapel while dressed in scrubs and on a coffee break, then promptly taken her name. Even William had been harassed, leading to her decision to take him out of school several weeks early. People couldn't get to Moira, and Malcolm was definitely dead (Tommy had refused to even have a funeral, the body simply being placed in a plain casket and buried in a tiny plot, not even in a graveyard and sans a headstone.) so people's ire was being taken out on their children. Felicity was pretty sure that if it wasn't for the fact that all hands were needed on deck at the two hospitals of Starling City, Tommy would've been fired. Inviting those angry people into the Queen estate was just asking for trouble. Instead, Tommy'd opened Merlyn Mansion to the public, and it was being used for housing and as a soup kitchen.

No matter what they did, however, the citizens of Starling were still brimming with rage towards them, and Felicity could hardly blame them for it. The wounds were all still so very fresh, and Felicity deserved a lot of the blame.

She should have realized. What was the point of having an IQ of 173 if all you ever did was fail with you most needed to succeed?

"Lis?" She was broken from her brooding by her husband's voice, realizing that she had entered his room to check on him without noticing her own actions.

"Honey, you okay?" He asked her, full of concern as he looked at her. She exhaled heavily and opened her mouth, shutting it a second later before opening it again.

"I think it's time for that talk, don't you?" She said softly. "We've been putting it off for so long and-we need to talk about this. There's never going to be a perfect moment. We might as well do it when we're both awake and have nothing to do for once."

He took a deep breath and nodded, leveraging himself into a sitting position. "Yeah, I agree," he murmured. He gestured to the chair beside his bed, and Felicity snapped the door shut quietly before sitting down.

"Do you want to start or will I?" He asked.

She gave a shadow of smile as she responded. "Ladies first, right?"

His own smile barely curved up the edges of his lips as he nodded.

She inhaled and exhaled, trying to put herself into that relaxed, meditative space that Shado and Tatsu had taught her to reach. It was a lot harder without her bow in hand or a candle flame flickering before her eyes.

"I think our problems go back farther than just the island, Oliver," she admitted. He knit his brow, waiting for her to expand. "Laurel," she stated simply with a shrug.

"What about Laurel?" He wondered. "I mean, what about Laurel before the island? You know I've never had eyes for anyone else since we met."

"That's the thing, Oliver," she argued. "I don't know that. The whole of our marriage, whenever we argued, the first thing you'd do was storm out and go to her. And no, I don't believe you ever cheated on me with her, but can't you see it from my point of view? The husband I loved, but that I never felt I was good enough for, went to his ex-girlfriend, who made no secret of the fact that she wanted to get back together with him, whenever we had an argument?" Oliver looked stricken, but she forced herself to go on, wanting to get the whole thing out quickly.

"It hurt whenever you did that sort of thing, Oliver," she confessed. "So many people thought I was just some gold-digging whore, that I deliberately got pregnant to trap you into marrying me, and that Laurel was your 'One True Love'. They were convinced that you'd go back to her eventually. And every time you went to her while upset with me, it made me wonder if they right, at least partially, in that you only married me because of Will, and you really wanted to be with her. And it wasn't just that.

I get that you've known Laurel since childhood, but it was so hard, Oliver, when she'd bump into us, and talk to me so condescendingly and passive-aggressively, and you wouldn't defend me, or you'd make me feel like I was overreacting by being upset. Maybe sometimes I was, but you never did a lot to make me feel secure in our relationship, and it was so hard, Oliver. I loved you, I love you so much, but I've never felt good enough for you, and she was Gorgeous Laurel, clever and beautiful and with so much history with you, and damn it, I had good reason to feel insecure.

I wanted you to reassure me that it really was me you wanted, but you never seemed to get that. I mean, remember that time we bumped into her in the café, just before the Gambit? She was flirting with you right in front of me, and you didn't tell her to shove off, and that hurt Oliver. It really did."

She finished her rant and looked at her hands.

A second later, she felt him pull her into his arms, cradling her and kissing the side of her head, nearly her ear.

"God, Felicity," he said, voice chock full of guilt. "God, I'm so sorry, Baby. I never meant-I didn't realize how much this affected you. I'm a self-centred idiot, but God, Lissy. I never thought I needed to assure you how much I love you, because I've been in love with you since I first laid eyes on you. Remember that day?"

"Yeah," Felicity smiled genuinely that time. "I was working at a tech repair store in Boston, and you brought in your laptop to be fixed. You'd downloaded a virus on it watching porn, but you didn't want anyone to know because your parents would've flipped, so you dumped your latte over the keyboard. You wanted to get your stuff off it and buy a new one, but you had no clue about tech stuff, so you asked me for a recommendation."

"You were chewing on a red pen when I came in," Oliver recalled, smiling softly and a distant expression on his face. "Wearing a short black skirt and a pink shirt with the store's name on it. And you started babbling so adorably when I introduced myself, but you didn't take any of my shit. I loved you straight away, just because you were the first person I ever met who actually called me on my bullshit. And when you were disappointed with me, I never felt as if you were upset because I wasn't the person that you wanted me to be, like I felt with my parents and Laurel, but because you really believed that I was better than that. I wanted to live up to that. I wanted to be a better man. To be good enough for you. You say you didn't think you were good enough for me? It's always been the other way around.

You're a genius and beautiful and you can wrap pretty much anybody around your little finger. I never really put any thought into those people saying Laurel was the right one for me, because it was just so damn obvious to me that you were the one who was really the one I was meant to be with. You're meant to be with someone who brings out the best in you, right? That's always been you, Felicity. Always.

As for me going to Laurel when we had an argument. I have no excuse. I was, probably still am, a selfish asshole. I'd feel awful, and she always stoked my ego, made me feel better. Same with the flirting. I liked knowing women wanted me, even after I got married and had a kid. The only thing I can say is that I never, ever wanted to hurt you. If I'd realized that I was upsetting you, I'd have stopped straight away, I swear."

"I never really told you," Felicity acknowledged. "Not until..." She drifted off, but they both knew what she was referencing. "And by then it was too late," she finished. They were silent for several long moments, thinking over their discussion.

"Anyway," she said, trying to lighten the mood a bit. "What I'm hearing is we need to work on communicating with each other." He grinned slightly, though his eyes stayed solemn.

"Sounds about right, yeah," he agreed.

She took a deep breath and went on. "When I came back, I knew you'd probably have moved on," she admitted. "But it still hurt. Especially because of course you were with Gorgeous Laurel again. And that photo of the two of you at my funeral-"

"I told you, Lissy," he interrupted. "That was an accident."

"On your part, maybe, but what about on hers?" Felicity argued back lowly. He fell silent.

"I don't think she's that bad," he protested weakly, and she shrugged.

"She's good at putting on an act in front of you and Tommy," she agreed. "But when she's not around people she wants to be on her side? Then she can be damn cruel, Oliver. You know the party just before you two got together? The one the cops interrupted?" He nodded and she continued. "Sara had a crush on you back then, and she was going to ask you out, but Laurel called the cops on you guys to stop her. Then the next day she asked you out instead. Sara was humiliated."

"Seriously?" Oliver raised his eyebrows in shock. He thought back over his years of knowing Laurel, re-examining certain things and suddenly seeing them in another light, picking up on passive-aggressive comments directed towards her sister or Felicity that he hadn't paid attention to before then. "You never told me," he frowned. She shrugged again.

"Like I said, I never felt secure in our relationship," she confessed. "I didn't want to-I was anxious to upset the status quo when it came to her. I never doubted your fidelity to me, but I still-I was frightened to push, in case I pushed too hard and you left."

"I'm not your father, Felicity," he said lowly.

"I know," she sighed. "But all the same. That's how I felt."

He sighed and pulled her closer, her hands playing gently with the hairs on the back of his neck. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize you doubted us. I never did."

"You were always more confident than me," was her rueful response.

"You were talking about after you got back," Oliver prompted her after a few moments of silence.

She cleared her throat and nodded. "It hurt," she said after a second. "It hurt to see you with somebody else. And then, when you said that you'd never really believed that I was gone-that really hurt, Oliver. I mean, either you were telling the truth and you really had believed I was alive, in which case you had given up and abandoned me, even after swearing you never would. Or else you were lying to me, and I hate being lied to. It hurt. And it hurt that you didn't break up with her straight away either. I know it's not fair, but that's how I felt."

"You lied to me as well," Oliver pointed out softly, before going on without giving her the chance to answer. "I never meant to hurt you, Lissy. I just-" he sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead with one hand. "I didn't want to move on. I really couldn't bring myself to accept that you were dead, but it was harder and harder with every year. And then after Hong Kong, it felt as if the last chance of you being alive was gone, and everybody kept telling me that Will needed a mother, and Laurel-she was easy, you know? She was always there, and she never pushed me to work to be better. Not the way you did. I didn't have to make an effort with her. And when you came back, I had made a commitment to her, and I didn't want to hurt her. You were pushing me away too. That's why I didn't end the engagement straight away."

Felicity gave a small nod as her eyes flicked to the side. "About Hong Kong," she said cautiously after a moment of inner debate. Oliver was no fool, and understanding lit up his eyes.

"It was you who used the email, wasn't it?" He demanded sharply, voice accusing. Her eyes stung as she nodded silently. Oliver pulled away, expression betrayed. "You weren't on the island? What the fuck, Felicity? Why didn't you come home? If you weren't really there-"

"I was, I was on Lian Yu," Felicity insisted desperately. "Just-I was there for around three years, not five. And I wanted to come back, Oliver, I really did. But ARGUS picked me up at the end of my second year there. They threatened to kill you and Will, and even Thea and Quentin if I didn't do what they said. I saw a live video of an armed ARGUS agent walking just behind Raisa while she was with Will in the park. Waller threatened to have all of you killed if I revealed that I was alive. When you went to Hong Kong? They sent me to kill you. I looked through a sniper scope at you and Tommy. I had to stay away, Oliver. She would have done it, and not even batted an eyelash."

Oliver was pale at that, and he ran a hand through his hair, trembling slightly. "Then what changed?"

She shrugged, expression turning from desperate to guarded. "I managed to negotiate my release," was her vague response.

He clenched his jaw, face turning frustrated. "You know, you have to let me in at some point, Felicity," he insisted, voice strained. "If we want this marriage to work, you have to talk about what happened. Hell, if it's too hard to talk to me, talk to Dig, or we can find a therapist or something. But you can't keep bottling this up for the rest of your life, Felicity. It'll kill you way faster than any bullet will."

She swallowed and clenched her hands into fists. "It's not that easy, Oliver," she whispered. "What I went through, what I did...just thinking of it makes my throat close over. I just want to forget."

His face softened and he ran his thumb over her cheekbone, eyes gentle. "Babe, you know it's not that simple," he said kindly.

She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself. "I know," she admitted. "I will, I swear. Just-give me time, please? I'm not ready yet."

He pursed his lips but gave a reluctant nod. "So what now?" He asked.

She shrugged, a half-smile making the edges of her lips quirk up at the sides. "Couples' counselling?"

"Actually, I think that's a good idea," Oliver replied seriously. "Obviously we won't bring up the whole vigilante thing, but maybe it could help."

She bit her lip and then squared her shoulders, meeting his gaze. "I'm willing to try if you are," she agreed. He leaned in to kiss her forehead, and she closed her eyes to savour the touch.

"I'd burn the world to make you smile," he told her. "So I think counselling isn't too much to ask."

She smiled and kissed his cheek.

"What about the Archer stuff?" Oliver asked after several minutes of the two of them just sitting in a comfortable silence, his arms around her.

She wanted their marriage to work purely for the feeling of safety he gave her every time he held her, even knowing that she far outstripped him in fighting prowess, and this position would actually work against them if they were in it when attacked. Nowhere and nobody else gave her that feeling. It was pure nirvana.

"What about it?" She replied in a guarded tone.

"Are you going to keep on with it?" He clarified.

She sighed, and rubbed her forehead. "I don't have the time right now," she dodged the question. "Later, when we're all healed and everything, then we'll talk."

"Alright," Oliver agreed. "Hey, I have an idea."

"Oh? Do tell."

He kissed her forehead, eyes sparkling with mischief when she met his gaze. "Go get William, and we can watch Brave," he suggested.

She grimaced. The prospect of watching a film with her family was lovely, but Merida, like the Hunger Games, caused her physical pain at how terribly the archery was portrayed. Unfortunately, William loved the Disney movie, and Oliver took an impish joy in the way Felicity had to hide her winces at the terrible inaccuracy of the shots made.

"You're bold," she scolded him lightly as she levered herself off the bed and made her way to the door.

"Ah, you love me anyway," Oliver retorted with a grin.

She smiled back. "I do," she confirmed, before heading out to retrieve their son.