It's happened. It's done. I have completely rewritten this fic, and I will post it chapter by chapter every Wednesday, starting on December 16!

I am not going to be posting it on this site. It's easier for me to keep it focused on one site, and that site is Archive of Our Own.

If you wish to read it, you can find the story already posted under the name Bre. You can search for it by name, and it'll pop up.

I will not be deleting this version from here, at least not for the foreseeable future. I liked the idea of keeping them both up to compare them, but I didn't fully appreciate just how different they would wind up being.

While they still share the same plot, they are completely different stories.

So what the hell happened? I mean, I last updated this literally five years ago.

When I first started this fic, I had a general idea of what I wanted: something Bratva, something dark, Oliver claiming Felicity as his, and... Well, that was it. I had an idea, but I didn't have a plan for all the promises I kept making. It was around Chapter 7 that I realized I didn't know what I was doing and had a mild panic attack. An amazing human being (who will never know just how much she helped me) offered her time to get my head on straight. She helped me get out Chapters 8-12. But the issue persisted, because what I was actually doing was getting myself in way over my head on something I didn't trust myself to handle.

"It's a fanfiction, for fuck's sake, Bre, calm down!"

I know.

But these are more than fics to me. All my writing is. It's me on paper, and I didn't know how to tell a story like this yet. And worse, I knew I wasn't doing the story I had chosen justice. And because I knew it, the writing was suffering. I went through, like, thirty fucking drafts. This became more than a fic to me. It became my white whale. This story has everything I love in a fiction, and if I didn't finish it, what good was I as a writer? If I can't learn how to get through this, what good are these dreams of publishing? (No pressure or anything, jeez.) And naturally this was all happening while swimming in a highly fluctuating ocean of depression from 2016 to 2018, sort of finding my feet in 2019, trudging forward in 2020... only for a goddamn pandemic to hit! And then, the cherry on top, getting laid off from the job I'd had for ten years.

I hit the 'fuck it' wall, and I hit it hard.

So, of course, I rewrote this entire story within the last six months!

Why am I telling you all this?

Because while writing the recent version, I realized what was holding me back: I was terrified of going too far. This story involves the fucking Russian mafia, and they are scary. (I hate when I pick up a book about anything mafia-related, and they rely on vague hints to carry the tension without delivering the goods. That's what I did in the original one. BUT I WANT THE GOODS, DAMN IT. So I damn well did my best to deliver them!) And this plot heavily involves human and sex trafficking, stalking, kidnapping, and making Oliver's past very dark to reflect all that in some capacity. So I got rid of my fear and wrote the grittiest thing that I could. I took everything I vaguely promised in the original, injected it with steroids, doused it with gasoline, and then set it on fire.

Because of that, it will not be for everyone who enjoyed the original story. It just won't be. And on the flip side, I'm sure there will be some who think it's not as dark as I do. We all have different barometers, so please make sure you read the tags if you do venture over to AO3!

Thank you so much to everyone who has asked after this fic over the years, everyone who has offered kind words and encouragement and PATIENCE. My god, the patience. It means so much to me, and I so, so appreciate it, and I really hope it was worth the wait.

Blood Hands is now finally the story I wanted to tell. It doesn't shy away from anything.

Please go check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!