A/N: This one was born from a short discussion I had with another writer on this board. Felicity is typically my favorite woman on TV (well, along with Demelza on "Poldark," another gutsy, unconventional woman involved with a dark, complicated man), but I didn't like Felicity very much in 4X16. Her bitter sniping at Oliver really bothered me and felt out of character. I said so to the writer.

Her response was that she didn't think Felicity liked own behavior very much either, and that's why she pulled herself off the team at the end of the episode. I think she was right. I think Felicity decided it was time to heal emotionally and the only way she was going to do that was by gaining some separation from Oliver.

I post here and on AO3, and this story got a very strong reaction on that board. People really thought I was unfair to Felicity and I got an earful! I guess I don't see that in this story - it was certainly not the intent. Digg isn't real kind to her but, watching the show, he's seemed to be more sympathetic toward Oliver than her. And she stands up for herself.

Anyway, enough excuses. Hope your feeling is a little more positive.

Felicity stood in front of the mirror in the City Hall ladies room and let the wedding dress slide down her body until it rested in a sparkling, white puddle on the floor by her feet. It was her real and very beautiful wedding dress just worn in an ugly and very fake wedding. Felicity had spent weeks searching for that dress. She'd pored over bridal magazines and photos her mother kept sending her, and visited at least four shops before she'd found it. The second she'd put it on she'd known it was perfect; old-fashioned princess meets the modern woman - innocent and sexy and hopeful all at the same time. She was confident she looked amazing in it, and she'd been certain Oliver would find her so. And now she hated it. She stepped out of the dress and, in one swift movement, swept it off the floor and stuffed it into the garbage can.

She'd been right about Oliver's reaction to the dress. Even though the ceremony was a sham to trap Carrie Cutter, for a second he'd looked at her as if she were his whole world – as if he'd forgotten the wedding wasn't real. And then there were his vows, clearly something he'd been thinking about for a long time. She'd been touched in spite of herself, his words warming her heart even when she didn't want them to. But only for a moment. In fact, in some ways Oliver's heartfelt vows had only made it worse. To say those things at a wedding that wasn't a wedding…when there was never go to be a wedding…well, they only served to remind her of what she'd come so close to having. His words shone a light on two people who loved each other desperately, yet remained separated by the paper-thin barrier that was trust. Paper-thin, but impenetrable as iron.

Felicity stopped to stare at her face in the mirror. She wasn't sure she recognized the woman looking back at her. She knew she didn't like her. She'd always been the optimist on the team, the one who saw the glass as half full, the one who found the silver lining, the one who – well, pick your cliché for the cute and quirky sidekick who always found the words to bring Oliver back from his darkness. Those words - those feelings - were so distant now that they may as well be in Nanda Parbat, buried under the Hindu Kush mountains. Broken by her hurt she'd been a bitter woman these last couple of weeks, muttering sarcastic digs aimed at Oliver – aimed at hurting Oliver the same way he'd hurt her. And she knew they'd hit the bullseye every time. She could see it in his eyes, in the way his body slumped when she'd delivered one of her zingers. She'd always had a gift for sarcasm – it was part of her armor - but never before had she used it so well against someone she loved. Hell, even her mother hadn't been this bad when her father had left them. Yet as much as she hated it…hated herself…she couldn't seem to bring herself to stop. And watching Diggle raise his eyebrows and glance sympathetically at Oliver only made her angrier.

She stepped into her every-day dress, pulling the colorful A-line over her sexy and sophisticated underwear, struggling a little to zip up the back. The woman in the mirror was quite a contrast to the one Oliver had met four years ago. Back then, she'd worn cotton – a basic white bra and simple panties under a schoolgirl skirt and sweater. Now it was lace and silk, grown-up seduction courtesy of Victoria's Secret. But she didn't feel sophisticated at this moment. She felt vulnerable and insecure, in need of reassurance. And the one person she usually went to for comfort was the one person she could no longer talk to. Despite being CEO of Palmer, despite her work with Curtis and her improved relationship with her mother, so much of her life revolved around Oliver. Take him out of it, and there was a big, gaping hole.

When she was eight years old her science teacher had taught her class about the solar system. They'd had one of those mechanical models with balls of different sizes representing the sun and planets, joined by a series of rods and gears. You turned the handle and the planets circled around the sun, some faster, some slower. Her teacher had explained that the sun's gravity kept the planets in orbit; that gravity was an invisible force that held everything in place, circling forever. She'd added that the sun's pull was so strong that other objects got sucked in as well – comets and asteroids and meteors – anything that traveled within a certain distance of big old Sol was inevitably caught.

Felicity had loved that model, loved the predictability and certainty of it. Friends might come and go and still the planets would go round the sun on the same path, at the same speed. You might come home and find your father gone, and still those balls would trace their inexorable circles.

Slipping on her shoes in the ladies room, she realized that Oliver was like the sun. Without meaning to, he sucked everything and everyone around him into his orbit. He had started his mission four years ago intending to do it all on his own. But then Diggle had been pulled in…and soon Felicity had followed. Eventually that gravity had captured Roy and Sara, Laurel and Lyla, Captain Lance, Ray Palmer and even Thea. And his force didn't just attract friends and allies; it also drew in evil and darkness. Slade Wilson, Malcolm Merlyn, Ra's al Ghul and Damien Darhk had all been susceptible. Just like the planets, friends and enemies alike were held in place, circling around Oliver, unable to escape his gravity. She was unable to escape his gravity.

Felicity gathered up her purse and took one last look at the wedding dress poking out from the top of the garbage can. Leave it, she told herself. She noticed that her hair was still swept up in Oliver's favorite style and hastily pulled the clips out, letting it tumble to her shoulders. She wished desperately that she had her glasses. They were part of her armor, along with sarcasm, and she knew she looked less vulnerable when she was wearing them. Unfortunately, she'd left them at home...well, not really home, just the place she'd dumped her boxes after moving out of the loft. She kept telling herself that with some furniture and pictures it would soon feel more welcoming.

She took a deep breath and stepped quietly out of the ladies room, adroitly avoiding the paparazzi as she headed for the stairs and the car that was waiting in the underground garage. She decided not to tell Oliver she was leaving. With Carrie arrested and Darhk in prison, there was nothing for him to worry about and it would do them both the favor of not having to talk about the almost-wedding. Besides, she was fairly certain he was still dealing with the police. The fake wedding had been his idea – well, his and John's – and it seemed fair that they deal with the aftermath.

She had barely arrived at her apartment and was half-heartedly contemplating unpacking her boxes when there was a knock on the door. Looking cautiously through the peephole she was surprised to see Diggle standing outside. A year or two ago this would have been normal. Back when they were fighting Slade Wilson, when Oliver had dealt with pain by disappearing, John had been her best friend. She would have sworn he understood her better than Oliver in those days - could read her better than Oliver. He had comforted her when Oliver had started his relationship with Sara, and united with her to pull Oliver back from the edge after Moira Queen had died.

But life had moved on. Diggle was married with a child now, and she and Oliver had become a couple – for a little while, anyway. She rarely spent time alone with John anymore; there had been no crises forcing the two of them to call on their unique friendship and Team Arrow had long since expanded beyond its three founding members. Still, if nothing else, she and John remained bound together by history, mutual respect, and the fact that they both continued to orbit around Oliver, caught in his gravity.

She opened the door a little reluctantly. She had a feeling she wasn't going to like what John had to say.

"Hey, Felicity." He stood in the doorway, studying her with his careful, measured gaze. His face wore no judgment, but it also wore no sympathy.

"John." She stepped away from the door to let him in. She saw him glance around at the unfurnished room and shrugged slightly. "I'd ask you to have a seat but…"

He smiled briefly, taking in the boxes that hadn't been unpacked and the assortment of shoes scattered haphazardly in the corner. Putting clothes in the closet was another thing she hadn't gotten around to. It seemed so final. And despite all her hard words to Oliver, she wasn't sure if she was ready for it to be over either.

"I came to see how you were doing."

His concern seemed genuine, which should have given her some kind of comfort, but her response still popped out sharply before she could stop it. "I thought you'd be with Oliver asking him that question. He seems to have all your understanding lately." There it was, the bitter comeback - Felicity 2.0 was definitely not an improvement over the old model. Diggle raised his eyebrows and stared at her. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, John…I just can't seem to help myself these days."

His expression softened a little. "The fake wedding couldn't have been easy."

"No, it wasn't easy. I was surprised Oliver agreed to it and I'm still not sure why you suggested it."

Diggle shrugged neutrally. "It worked. We drew Carrie out and now she's going to jail." After a moment, he added carefully, "You know he's in a lot of pain, too."

"I know that, John."

"So couldn't you take it a little easier on him?"

And there it was; she assumed this was the real reason John had come here, to plead Oliver's case. She felt a small spark of anger and held onto it because it was better than the empty, hollow feeling. She looked defiantly back at Diggle. "The difference between Oliver and me, John, is that he created this…situation. He lied. He had something…huge…in his life, and he didn't tell me about it. He did what he always does. He tried to solve it on his own."

"That's Oliver. You can't have been completely surprised. You've been with him long enough to know who you were getting involved with, Felicity."

That was true. Trust John Diggle to be brutally honest. She turned her gaze away from him to look blankly out the window. The view from her apartment was not nearly as good as the one from their loft…from Oliver's loft. "I don't know, John. A lot of things about Oliver have changed. I guess I thought by this time that his secrecy was one of them, that he'd left this piece of the island behind. But he hasn't."

"Not yet," John agreed. "But it doesn't mean he won't someday." He walked over to her and placed his hand gently on her shoulder. His face was kind. "He's come a long way, Felicity. You've been good for him in so many ways. Are you really sure you want to give up on him now? He may still figure it out."

She stepped away from his hand and looked up at him. Suddenly it felt important that he understand even if he didn't concur. She tried to explain, without anger this time. "When I found out that Oliver had a son he didn't tell me about, it was like a knife in my gut. A son he'd known about for months, John. Had been going to Central City to visit for months. A whole other life that he wouldn't or couldn't share with me." She shook her head. "It was worse than being shot by Darhk's ghosts, worse than being in that chair." She ran her hand tiredly through her hair. "I don't think I have it in me to face that kind of hurt again while Oliver figures out whether he wants to be open with me. Chances are good it will keep happening, and it's just too hard."

Diggle frowned. "This was a tough one, Felicity. He was protecting his son. Before Sara I might have looked at it differently but, believe me, when you're a parent, you do whatever you have to do to keep your child safe."

"Does that include being stupid? Because in what universe does having Merlyn know and me not know make his son safer?" Diggle opened his mouth but she hurried on, "And be honest with me, John. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that if Lyla kept something like this from you, if she had some whole other life that she didn't tell you about, you wouldn't at least question the strength of your relationship?"

He stared at her a long time. She could almost see the thoughts as they flickered through his brain – he wanted to tell her that they would stay together and work things out, or that the situation with Oliver wasn't the same. In the end, however, honesty prevailed. He said nothing and lowered his eyes.

She turned back toward the windows. "That's what I thought."

The room lapsed into silence. At one time, their silences had been comfortable – they had blanketed long hours in the foundry or flights to Lian Yu. Now, however, it felt awkward.

Diggle cleared his throat. "Well, Felicity, I guess I'll be going. I'm sorry for the way things have turned out. I still have hope for you two, though. You love each other, and if there were ever two people who were meant to be together..."

"I think that hope is misplaced, but thank you anyway, John."

He gave her one last, penetrating look and then left quietly, making the apartment feel bigger and emptier, less like a home than ever.

She spent the next few hours unpacking boxes, trying to put some stamp of herself on the new place with marginal success. One thing that was abundantly clear from her conversation with John was that her pain and bitterness were not only affecting Oliver, they were affecting everyone. To think that she could no longer be in a relationship with him yet remain a part of the Team was foolish. She needed distance, otherwise his pull on her was going to keep her in orbit forever. She would feel this pain forever.

When she was ten and in an advanced math class with kids two and three years older, the teacher had shown them the equation for gravity. He'd told them about Isaac Newton coming up with the formula almost 400 years ago, and how astrophysicists still used it today. They'd done a few exercises where they'd calculated the gravitational force between the earth and the moon, and the earth and the sun. It hadn't meant much to her at the time; it was just numbers with no frame of reference.

And then the teacher had told the class about escape velocity. He'd explained that if something moved fast enough it could elude the force of gravity and not get pulled into orbit. He talked about how the Voyager spacecraft, launched more than twenty years ago, was going to eventually pass beyond the solar system, able to avoid the pull of the sun because it was traveling at escape velocity. She'd found that idea much more interesting. To her ten-year old ears, it had sounded magical.

Felicity glanced around her apartment, at what was supposed to become her home. There really was only one option if she were going to stop being the bitter, angry woman she'd been these last couple of weeks. For everyone's sake, she was going to have to break free of Oliver's gravitational force.

It was late, but she wasn't sleepy and there were a few things at the lair she needed to pick up. She put on her glasses and left the apartment.

She was going to achieve escape velocity.