A/N: So if this chapter looks familiar to chapter one that is because we have caught up to when Oliver goes back to warm himself of Felicity's fate.
I hope you like this chapter.
All mistakes are not my own.
Oliver stared at his younger self aiming his bow at him, and he thought it ironic how he faced down countless criminals, aiming said bow, and now he was the one facing down an arrow being aimed at him.
But unlike his countless enemies, he was not afraid. For one, there was nothing his younger self could do to hurt him worse than the suffering he's had to live through since Felicity's death.
"Lower your bow. You are not going to shoot me."
"Are you sure about that?" His younger self challenged, the bowstring tightened.
"Yes." Oliver stepped forward without caution. "Lower your bow. I don't have the patience for this. I'm here for one reason, and I am not going to let you stand in my way. I didn't come all the way back in the past to have a pissing contest with myself."
"You're from the future?" Oliver lowered his bow slowly, he was hesitant to believe anything the man who was his double. "And I'm just supposed to believe what you say? Time Travel? Really?"
"You have to listen to me, or you're going to lose everything."
Oliver stared back at the man in front of him, and it was like looking into a mirror, only older. "This shouldn't be possible."
"After everything we've seen is time travel really that inconceivable?" Oliver responded, his eyes scanning the bunker, searching for her.
Looking for Felicity.
"But by being here, changing things aren't you running the risk of ruining everything else? The butterfly effect or something." Oliver was finding it really hard to focus.
What was so bad about the future that he had travel back to stop it?
"I don't give a fuck about some butterfly effect. I don't care about the consequences it will have to the timeline." Oliver snapped, his eyes livid with anger, a storm barely kept at bay. "All I care about is keeping Felicity alive."
Oliver stumbled back. "What?"
Something happens to Felicity?
How? Why? When?
"You think because we spent our life suffering, you know pain but you have no idea what real pain is."
Older Oliver's voice was filled with such pain younger Oliver felt like his chest was being torn open, leaving an open, bleeding wound.
"When the woman you love is ripped from you suddenly and without warning. That is real pain. True suffering."
A shiver traveled down the length of Oliver's spine. He sounded just like Slade Wilson.
"All I see is her everywhere. Her ghost haunting me with every step I take. There is so much I didn't get to tell her. So much, I should have said when I had the chance. There's so much I regret. It's crippling." He breathed harshly, his hand raising to press a fist against his chest as if he wanted his heart to just stop beating.
"I can't do this without her. Any of it. I won't." Older Oliver eyes filled with so much suffering and pain that it had younger Oliver flinching, almost recoiling. "I will save her or I'm going to die trying. Failure is not an option because there is no Oliver Queen without Felicity Smoak."
His hand tightened around into a fist, muscles coiling. "So you can help me or get out of my way. I don't care if you are me. I will put you down."
Oliver saw the conviction in his eyes but more than that he saw the pain, but he already knew he was going to do whatever he needed to do if it meant saving Felicity. "What do we need to do?"
"Well for starters we find the bastard who kills Felicity, and we kill him before he kills her out of an obsession with the hood.
Present Oliver clenched his fist. "We got her killed."
"She died saving Roy, but he was a target because of us, who we were when we came back." Oliver lips twisted as a look of self-loathing filled his eyes. "It was her choice to save him, but yes, she dies because of us."
"How-How does it happen?" present Oliver asked hesitantly, rubbing two fingers together.
"She pushed Roy out of the way of an arrow, it pierced her chest, she died in our arms, struggling to breathe, her lungs filled with blood. Her blood is on our hands." And he meant that in every way. He still remembered with a heavy battered heart, the way it felt to have his hands wet with Felicity's blood, to watch as the life left her, taking her light with her.
The picture his future self painted was ugly. He couldn't imagine Felicity dying at the end of an arrow like so many of the people he had killed.
She deserved better. She deserved to live.
"When does it happen? A few years from now?" Oliver questioned. His future self looked older by at least a few years.
"Three weeks."
Oliver's eyes widened.
Three weeks? But the man in front of him looked at least five years older.
"I know. I look like Hell. Losing the woman you love will do that to you." Oliver replied, caustically.
Oliver swallowed his heart, suddenly thundering in his chest. "When did you know that you fell in love with her? When do we fall in love with her?"
"Stop." Oliver's voice was hard. "Stop lying to yourself. You are already in love with her. You told her."
"I was fooling Slade." Oliver shifted uneasily.
"You're fooling yourself. You love Felicity, and you're too afraid of how important she will become to you if you accept how you feel about her. However, none of that matters. Felicity and I were never together, and she was the most important person in my life, and I still lost her." Oliver took a step toward his younger self. "Keeping away from her, ignoring what's right in front of you will do nothing but give you regrets, and we have enough regrets to last us a lifetime."
Oliver swallowed thickly. "Did she die not knowing what she meant to us?"
"She knew she was important, but she didn't know how much. I don't know when we fell for her. It could have been that first time we saw her, and she was speaking to our picture. It could have been that day we walked into her cubicle or when she challenged us to be more than just a guy in a hood killing criminals. It could've been the night of the Undertaking when she refused to leave. After Rusia when she told us, she thought we deserved better. When she told us the truth about Thea even though she was afraid to lose us. It could have been when she told us to go save Thea. We could have fallen in love with her every night she chose to fight our mission, to stand beside us. How she tried to help, get our family company back." Oliver shook his head, swallowing hard. "There are so many moments that could have been the moment I started to fall in love with her. But that's exactly what my love for Felicity is about. It's never been just about one moment. It's about all of them and how every moment with her no matter how small has left its mark on me."
Oliver fell silent, his heart pounding in his chest with every word his future self spoke. He was forced to acknowledge everything he tried to ignore when it came to his beautiful blonde partner.
"I've been, we've been falling in love with Felicity over and over with every moment we ever spent with her," Future Oliver stated, and he had never been more certain of anything in his life.
Oliver was stunned. How do you deny something when you're confronted with yourself and the truth that you refuse to acknowledge.
However, the sound of the foundry door opening.
Future Oliver's head snapped to the stairs with laser-like focus, holding his breath.
Oliver watched as this desperate look appeared in the older version of himself eyes, his body tensing like he was preparing for a brutal blow at the sound of heels coming down the stairs,
He focused on every minuscule change of expression of the man before him as he turned slowly to the stairs, watching as Felicity walked down the stairs with Digg and Roy not far behind.
Future Oliver pressed his hand to his chest as he watched Felicity descend the stairs.
She wore a black skirt and a purple blouse, her hair pulled back in its signature ponytail.
God, she looked perfect. Even more perfect than her ghost who has been haunting him whenever he was alone.
Knowing she was real that he could reach his hand out and touch her, had him stumbling forward, his heart pounding painfully against his ribs, his breath seizing in his chest. "Felicity."
Felicity looked up as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes widening as she looked at the sight of not one Oliver but two.
Why were there two Oliver's?
"Why do I see more than one Oliver?" She questioned, she took a step toward the two Oliver's but stopped taking them both in.
There was the first Oliver who looked slightly different, his eyes had dark circles, his hair was thicker and sticking up in every direction like he just rolled out of bed, and he had more than a week worth of stubble covering his jaw.
The other Oliver was more kept together, with no bags beneath his eyes, the usual stubble and his hair looked the way it always did. The strange thing about him was he was focused on watching the other Oliver.
Her eyes went back to the slightly haggard looking Oliver, noting that he was watching her like he thought she was going to disappear.
Future Oliver took a step forward, stopping just short of standing directly in front of Felicity. His hand reached out slowly, touching her cheek.
He gasped, his breath leaving him, feeling her warmth against his hand. "Felicity," his voice was gutted.
The way he said her name caused Felicity to shiver. It was deep and sensual, but it was raw with pain. She had never heard him speak with that much pain in his voice before.
"Oh God, Felicity, you're really here." Oliver surged forward, bringing his arms around Felicity, crushing her to his chest as he wrapped around her, burying face in her neck, feeling the tears slip down his cheeks as he held her.
Felicity gasp, looking over the shoulder of the Oliver who was hugging her like she was his lifeline to the one behind him watching them with the strangest expression.
What the hell was going on?
"Oliver?" she whispered uncertainly.
And Oliver pulled back just enough to stare into her eyes, and Felicity was shocked to see a tear slipping down his cheek, his chin quivering, struggling to hold it together.
"Felicity," he said her name like it was the only cure for his pain. The answer to all his pain.
She reached up, brushing his tears away with her thumb. She didn't know what was happening, all she knew was that she wanted to help him. "I don't know what's wrong, but whatever it is it's going to be okay."
Oliver shuttered, and pulled her back into his chest, engulfing her in his arms, the feel of her beating heart against his chest, the feeling of her in his arms, her warmth filled him with such relief, he couldn't keep it together. He hugged her as tight as he dared, as close as she allowed, sinking into her warmth, her hands smoothing down his back, moving over his shoulders and through his hair, whispering, it was going to be okay.
He took comfort in her embrace, in the way she was trying to take away his pain.
"Felicity," Oliver breathed against her skin again and again.
He needed this closeness with her more than he needed air to breathe.
Oliver's chest tightened as he watched himself with Felicity, clinging to her like he was still drifting at sea and she was his first sign of shore.
He knew his feelings for Felicity were deep but to be told by himself that it was love and to see his older self reacting to Felicity's near presence, it was so painfully obvious that his older self really did open his eyes to what was in front of him.
He loved Felicity. Hell, Oliver can't even remember looking at Laurel the way his older self had looked at her.
Did he look at Felicity in the same way?
He caught Felicity staring at him over his future self shoulder. Her eyes were full of questions.
And his chest tightened. How was he supposed to tell Felicity that the Oliver that was hugging her so tightly came back in time to save her?
How did he tell her she was going to die in three weeks unless they stopped it?
And how the hell was he supposed to explain that his older self was clearly in love with her without making things awkward between them more than they already were thanks to the whole fake 'i love you'.
Except it wasn't fake. Oliver meant it.
He just isn't sure if he's ready for all that entailed.
However, what does it matter if he's ready? According to his future self, he didn't have much time with Felicity if they failed to stop her from being killed.
Plus as weird as it was he didn't like seeing someone holding Felicity the way he was.
How messed up is it that he was feeling jealous of himself?
A loud throat clearing broke him from his thoughts and had him turning to his friend.
"What the hell is going on?" John demanded, eyes narrowing on both Oliver's.
"That's what I want to know." Roy tilted his head to the side. "Hey, Oliver, you plan on letting Felicity go anytime today and explaining why there's two of you?"
Oliver arms tightened around Felicity at Roy's words and Felicity instinctively tightened her arms around him, whispering." It's okay, I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."
Felicity felt like Oliver needed the reassurance.
Oliver sagged against her and pulled back after a moment, his hand against her neck, her pulse thrumming strongly beneath his hand. "You have no idea how much I have missed you, Felicity."
Felicity felt his words beneath her skin. They were said with so much emotion, she was sure there was more to them than what she knew.
"Oliver, what is going on? I'm so confused right now." She took a step back from him. However, Oliver's hand dropped to her's tangling their fingers together like he was unable to bear losing contact with her completely. "There is two of you. You look like you need some rest and you keep looking at me like you're afraid I'm going to disappear."
"I'm afraid this isn't real." his hand tightened on hers. "I'm terrified I'm not really standing here in front of you." Oliver was terrified he was going to wake up on Felicity's couch, and she would still be gone. "I need to be where you are."
Felicity's eyes widened, her heart literally skipping a beat in her chest.
What the frack is happening?
"Oliver?" she breathed. "What is going on with you?"
Oliver stepped toward them. "He's from the future."
Felicity's eyes shot to the other Oliver, stunned. "I'm sorry, what?"
A/N: This will be the last update for a while. I'm taking a break from writing for personal reasons however once RL is less hectic I will start posting again.