A/N: This was written in S7, following episode 8 (the first episode after Oliver has been released from prison). Many thanks to bushlaboo for the beta and to the folks who PM'd me asking for another chapter. Those PMs helped me get in front of the keyboard and writing.

He can't sleep. And given the circumstances, that really doesn't make sense.

He's in a large, soft bed – a far cry from the hard, narrow prison cot that he lay on for the last seven months. He's no longer surrounded by inmates who want to kill him or angry, resentful guards. He's next to the woman he loves and he's had more sex in the last week than some husbands get in half a year. He's warm, clean, and he even had a few sips of a good single malt as a nightcap. He should be slumbering, dreaming of his wife sunbathing on the beach in a bikini. But he's not.

It's late - somewhere around two or three in the morning, he guesses, although he can't be sure. Felicity threw her camisole over the bedside clock the first night he was released from prison and it's remained there ever since, hiding the bright LED digits. She hadn't done it as an act of seduction, even though he finds the black satin pretty damn seductive. She'd done it because Oliver had told her that they never turn the lights off in prison and he'd missed sleeping in the dark. So she'd grabbed the closest thing at hand to cover the clock, which happened to be the camisole she was wearing. Every morning when she can't see the time, she vows she'll put the silky thing back in her lingerie drawer; but then she doesn't. That's fine with him. He likes it where it is.

The bedroom is quieter than prison too; so quiet he can hear his wristwatch ticking on their dresser, yards away. The sound is rhythmic, like his wife's breathing, which should be soothing but isn't. The truth is that nothing has felt comfortable since he saw Felicity with the gun. Watching her handle the weapon, seeing her pull the trigger without hesitation was surreal - like something in a Barry Allen alternate universe. He feels like a drama queen for even thinking it, but it makes him question whether the woman sleeping next to him is the same woman he married. The Felicity he remembers used her brain as her weapon.

His wife sighs and shifts without waking, moving closer to him in their bed. She's naked, the way she's slept every night since he came home, and her skin is beautiful; firm yet soft, the color of peaches, and so smooth she looks like she's been airbrushed. Felicity is wonderfully uninhibited about her body; a fact he loves, and something that came as a surprise when they started living together in Ivy Town. It's not that he'd pegged her as shy or inexperienced. He hadn't. It's just that he can't help remembering the first time he met her, seven years ago at Queen Consolidated. She'd struck him as innocent then…or maybe unsophisticated is the better word. Oliver was raised on artifice. His mother, father, Laurel, and even his sister were all pros at putting on masks and saying the appropriate thing, however insincere. Felicity, in comparison, had seemed so damned honest.

Oliver knew right away that he was going to need help with the laptop. Waller's A.R.G.U.S. team had taught him a few IT survival skills, but recovering data from a bullet-ridden hard drive was beyond his abilities. He searched online for PC repair shops but quickly abandoned that idea when he realized he'd have to schedule an appointment. He needed to know what was on the laptop now, before its owner, Floyd Lawton, could assassinate another target.

He opted to head to Queen Consolidated. The company had a large IT department and he figured he could leverage the Queen name to get immediate assistance. After all, his mother was a majority shareholder and his stepfather was the CEO. And it worked, although not without some grumbling on the part of the IT manager. The man was obviously in a hurry and annoyed at the interruption, but he stood still long enough to direct Oliver to Felicity Smoak - probably because he was afraid Oliver would complain to his stepfather if no help was forthcoming.

Oliver nearly grinned when the manager gave him a female name; Felicity. His flirting skills were rusty and no longer a focus for his energies, but he assumed he could summon enough charm to persuade a woman who spent her days in front of a computer to give him what he needed. A few jokes about his hard drive and a vague hint about having coffee together one day, he thought, should be enough.

Until he met Felicity Smoak…and the suggestive banter died on his lips. In fact, for a moment he wondered if the IT manager had played a joke on him and sent him to an unskilled intern.

She was young – too young to have been at QC very long. She didn't look much older than his teenaged sister and she was dressed in a demure pink blouse that Thea wouldn't have been caught dead in. She was pretty in a fresh, natural way, but it was clear he made her nervous. When he introduced himself she started babbling, and he could see that a charm assault was only going to make it worse. So he simply placed the laptop in front of her and lied.

"I was at my coffee shop surfing the web and I spilled a latte on it."

It was the very first lie he told her and it was utterly ridiculous. He wondered why he didn't try for something better; he'd had plenty of practice. Since he'd returned from the island and become The Hood he'd lied to everyone; his mother, sister, stepfather, best friend and his former girlfriend. And he'd lied with ease. He'd spread half-truths around like soft butter over warm bread and his family and friends had swallowed them – sometimes with skepticism, but never, ever getting close to the truth. It was because they considered him damaged, he knew, that they backed away from questioning him. They were afraid that if they pushed too hard he would fall apart.

Felicity Smoak, on the other hand, wasn't regarding him as if he were damaged. And his lie, absurd as it was, seemed to calm her nerves, because she placed one fingertip in a laptop bullet hole and gave him a look that said he was full of crap. For an instant, he was tempted to laugh. Then, before he was required to think up a more credible story, she took the laptop and expertly extracted the information from the damaged hard drive - in less than twenty minutes. He didn't think Waller's crew at A.R.G.U.S. could have done it that quickly. And not only did she recover the data, but she understood it and explained it to him. She recognized the blueprints for the Exchange Building and talked about the upcoming stock auction – information he needed to corner Lawton. It was unusual, he thought, for an entry level employee to be so interested in company strategy. Most new hires did what their supervisors told them to do and didn't worry about the big picture.

Later, as he was leaving Queen Consolidated, he realized that he hadn't asked her to keep their data recovery efforts to herself. For some inexplicable reason, it didn't worry him. He had no basis for his belief other than a gut feeling, but he didn't think she would tell anyone – especially not the police. She had nothing to tie him to The Hood. And the way she'd gone after that hard drive told him that Felicity Smoak was a young woman who liked coloring outside the lines.

In the weeks that followed he found himself going to her again and again for help; without, of course, letting her know who he really was. She never failed to get results and she never hesitated to provide support, despite the outlandish reasons he gave her for needing it. She just rolled her eyes and dug in, even when his requests drove her to cross the line from legal internet searches into illegal hacking. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the hacking far more than the legal searches.

He wasn't sure why she helped him. There was nothing in it for her and she could wind up in a whole lot of trouble if she got caught. Of course, he could say the same thing about himself as The Hood; except that he had the book of names and a promise he had made to his father as motivation. Felicity had – what? A disdain for authority? A secret desire to be badass?

Whatever compelled her, he was starting to feel bad about lying to her. She was putting her neck on the line and she deserved to know why; he wanted her to know why. It was strange when he thought about it. He could accept lying to his family and to Laurel, the woman he had loved for half his life, but he didn't like keeping a girl he'd met two months ago in the dark. He wondered what that said about him. More importantly, he wondered what that said about the girl.

Eventually he told her – in the most dramatic and unambiguous way possible. He hid in her car when he was hooded up and bled all over her backseat.

He didn't have to go to her. He had his phone – he could have called Diggle and asked him to drag his wounded ass back to the foundry. Hell, he could have even revealed himself to his mother right after she shot him. Mom wouldn't have been happy, but she also wouldn't have let her son exsanguinate in front of her and she probably wouldn't have called the police. But he chose Felicity – because she deserved the truth and because…well…because he liked having her around and it would be a whole lot easier if she knew. Everyone else in his life wanted him to be something he wasn't. His mother and stepfather wanted him to step up to his Queen heritage and be a hot-shot businessman; Tommy wanted him to be his former, party-boy self; and Laurel – well, God knows what Laurel wanted. Mostly, Oliver thought, for him to go into seclusion and feel guilty about Sara – more guilty about the cheating part, it often seemed, than the dying part. But Felicity? She didn't expect him to be anything other than what he was. Being around her was like stepping out of a smoky room into the fresh air. He could breathe.

And it turned out she really was pretty badass. Before he told her the truth, before she got into the foundry, he'd only seen a fraction of what she could do. Now that she was on board, she was hacking security cameras, the FBI, hell – she even hacked an A.R.G.U.S. spy satellite. It was amazing and it was scary, particularly when he thought about the risks she was taking. But he never once tried to stop her. She was too helpful. And she seemed confident that she was too good to ever be caught.

Badass.

It's getting lighter in their bedroom. He wouldn't be surprised if the hidden numbers on the clock are somewhere in the neighborhood of six a.m. It's typically the time they rise (or at least it was before he went to prison) and he sees that Felicity's eyelids are beginning to flutter.

Okay, he tells himself, so you knew from the start that she's brave and she's a risk taker. But she's a risk taker from a distance – with a computer. Not out in the field.

At least, that's the way he's always thought of her. It's why he eventually gave her the name Overwatch; because she's meant to be watching from the safety of their base. It's why he put three layers of security on every lair that they ever worked out of.

And it's why he never trained her.

Oliver stopped halfway down the steps to the foundry, surprised by the sight of Diggle sparring with Felicity. On second thought, he really couldn't call it sparring. Dig was making a move to grab her, signaling his intent from a mile away while encouraging Felicity to block him. She was responding with glacial slowness, clearly unfamiliar with any form of self-defense.

They were an odd pairing – the large, muscular man and the small woman. Dig's expression was patient and Felicity's was frustrated, especially after Dig caught her off balance and she fell hard to the mat. Oliver had to give her credit, though. She climbed back to her feet and appeared ready to try again, even if she wasn't exactly excited about it. He guessed the two of them had been at it for a while. Felicity's hair was in damp spirals at the back of her neck and her face was flushed in an attractive, healthy way. It was the first time Oliver had seen her in workout clothes and he thought she looked kind of cute. The skin on her bare shoulders was flawless.

Then he remembered that he needed her to decrypt Guillermo Barerra's phone to discover the name of the assassin's target…and that he had a date with McKenna Hall in a little over an hour. So he resumed his trip down the stairs and walked over to Felicity.

She blotted her face with a towel as she listened to his short explanation, and then took the phone to her computer to study it. Oliver headed to the bathroom to change, but stopped when he was halfway there. "Can I speak with you for a minute?" he called to Diggle.

As he expected, Felicity didn't even look up. She was too engrossed with the phone.

Dig nodded. "Sure, Oliver."

"Thanks."

He waited until Diggle caught up to him and then he asked in a low voice, "What are you doing?"

Dig appeared genuinely puzzled. "What do you mean, Oliver?"

Oliver gestured toward the computers. "With Felicity. What are you doing, training Felicity?"

Dig stared at him - still puzzled - and then a smile broke out on his face. "I'm sorry, Oliver. Did you want to be the one to train her? I didn't mean to steal your thunder. You seemed busy and I thought your mind was on McKenna these days."

Oliver shook his head impatiently. "That's not what I meant, Dig. I meant, why are you training her at all? She doesn't need it and it might give her the wrong idea."

Dig's smile disappeared. "It's been a couple of weeks since you brought her onto the team, Oliver. Someone needs to teach her how to protect herself, at least until she can run away or raise an alarm. Look at what happened with The Dodger and the bomb collar. She should be able to get herself out of those situations."

Oliver clenched his jaw. "I don't want her putting herself in those situations in the first place. If she stays down here with her computers, it won't be a problem. She'll be safe."

"You don't know that. With what you do, anything can happen. Someone could follow you here. The hood is kind of a giveaway, you know."

Oliver glared at Diggle and didn't respond.

"And besides," Dig continued, "even if she stays in the foundry, she has to get here - which means she's going through The Glades at all hours of the night. This isn't exactly a nice neighborhood."

"The club upstairs is opening soon. There'll be plenty of people around."

"Yeah," Dig agreed dryly, "including drunken men who might not think too hard about forcing themselves on a pretty young blonde." He crossed his arms over his chest. "She needs to be able to defend herself, Oliver. We can't ask her to come here and then leave her unprotected."

Dig could be annoyingly stubborn when he believed he was right. Oliver had a feeling the man was prepared to argue for the next two hours. And he was down to forty-five minutes to clean up and meet McKenna.

He exhaled. "Fine," he said shortly. "Train her. But just basic self-defense. She should know her limitations. She shouldn't feel ready to take on the world by herself."

Dig smiled. "Of course not, Oliver. That's your job."

Felicity's awake now; he can feel her gaze upon him and he wonders what she's thinking. He rolls onto his side to look more directly into her eyes.

She smiles uncertainly. "Good morning."

"'Morning," he replies.

Her smile disappears. "Did you sleep at all?" she asks. "You look tired." She reaches out and traces her thumb gently along what he assumes are the dark circles under his eyes.

He shrugs. "I didn't sleep great. Still two hundred percent better than prison, though."

She raises an eyebrow and doesn't respond to the joke. Instead, she slides toward him until her entire body is touching his; chest to chest, thigh to thigh. "You should have woken me. You know I have ways of helping you relax." She caresses his back, running her hand from his butt to his shoulder. Her voice is apologetic, though, rather than coy.

He understands immediately. It's her way of saying, we may not agree about the gun right now, but I love you and I want to be with you.

It's what he wants, too. After months of holding only her photo, being able to touch the real thing is a gift he does not take for granted – and he's not going to allow a disagreement to diminish that gift. Besides, she's irresistible, the way she looks first thing in the morning. She's one of the few women he knows who is prettier without makeup.

He pushes her gently onto her back and then hovers over her, lowering his head to kiss her neck, her shoulder, her breast. After more than a week at home he's finally less desperate, so he can take his time and give her a wakeup to remember. It's his way of saying, I love you too.

When they're done, she presses her lips to his forehead and then slides quickly out of bed, getting into her bathrobe and heading out of their room before he can say a word. After a moment, he slips on his sweatpants and follows. She's in the kitchen making coffee and she doesn't look up as he approaches. He understands this unspoken message too. She doesn't want to talk about it. But he thinks they need to. He doesn't want to let things fester.

"Felicity-" he begins, from the other side of the counter.

Her gaze remains fixed on the bag of Kona Roast. Normally the woman can hack three databases while carrying on a conversation, but today, apparently, she needs to focus all her energies on spooning coffee into a filter.

"Felicity-" he says again, a little more loudly.

She looks up.

"Felicity, we need to talk about this."

She stares at him for a moment, then returns her attention to the coffee filter. "We already did talk about it, Oliver. I'm not changing my mind, and I'm not sure why it's so hard for you to understand what I did. Diaz was coming after me and I was alone. I needed to defend myself."

He shakes his head. "What I don't understand is why you keep saying that you were alone. The rest of the team is still here. There were people you could turn to."

She bites her lip and keeps her gaze down. "Which rest of the team? The rest of the team that walked out on you – is that the team you mean, Oliver?"

He sighs. "Fair enough. But even without the team, John and Lyla had A.R.G.U.S. agents keeping surveillance. They assured me it was twenty-four/seven."

She slides the filter into the coffee maker with more energy than is necessary, then jabs the On button with her index finger. "And yet, even with A.R.G.U.S. surveillance, Diaz was able to break into my home and nearly kill me – after which, he would have gone on to kill your son." She places her palms on the kitchen counter and leans across it to finally look him in the eye. "Did it ever occur to you to question how Diaz knew where I lived? We'd gone into witness protection, William and me. I had a new name, new job, new apartment, new everything. I hacked my new identity to test it and it was pretty damn convincing. They thought of all the details; social security number, bank accounts, high school records…they even gave me a couple of parking tickets. I couldn't trace it back to Felicity Smoak. And yet, Diaz found me."

He looks at her and waits, not sure where she's going with this.

"Did it ever occur to you," she says again, "that the man who had half the Star City police department in his pocket might also have people inside the FBI or even A.R.G.U.S.? Because it occurred to me, especially after he found me. And if that's the case, then using witness protection to set up another identity and start all over wasn't going to do a damn thing to keep me safe, because his informants would just tell him again." She slaps one palm on the counter. "I needed to be able to defend myself, Oliver. And I wanted to be proactive. I was tired of wondering every morning if that was the day Diaz was going to find me."

He runs his hand over his cropped hair, frustrated because she has a point, but not ready to concede that it means a gun is the only answer. "We both know that you could have set up a new identity for yourself, Felicity. You didn't need the FBI or A.R.G.U.S. to do that – you could have hacked every system necessary to become a new person. Then Diaz's informants, if he had any, couldn't have told him about you."

She nods. "Yes, I thought of that. But to convincingly disappear – I really would have had to disappear. I would have had to erase ties to everything – people, my work, my mother. I could never contact anyone from my past on the chance that Diaz was keeping an eye on them. Remember, Oliver, I didn't know how long you were going to be in prison. It could have been for decades. Doing what you suggest – well, it essentially would have meant giving up my life anyway. Felicity Smoak would have ceased to exist."

That last sentence is a knife to his heart, particularly when he recalls that he surrendered to the FBI in order to protect her. How'd that work out, Oliver?

He tries again. "But you had John, Felicity. After all we've been through, you had to know that he would never let anything happen to you." He remembers years ago, when a drugged-up Slade Wilson had threatened to kill everyone Oliver cared about. John had spent nights in a car outside of Felicity's apartment making sure Slade couldn't get near her.

She purses her lips and abruptly returns her attention to the coffee maker. It's not the first time she's gone silent when he's brought up John's name and he wonders what happened between the two of them. John and Felicity have always been close. In the early days of Team Arrow, there were times he believed John understood Felicity better than he did. They certainly talked more. When they came together to meet him at the gates of the prison for his release, he assumed things were the same as always. But he can see now that they are not.

She slides a couple of mugs across the counter and pours coffee into them, then pushes one toward Oliver. He takes a sip and prepares to resume the argument. Then he pauses. He has a better idea.

He's going to see John.

Seeing John isn't as easy as it used to be. He's an A.R.G.U.S. agent now, buried somewhere in the walls of the facility, protecting A.R.G.U.S. secrets. Oliver has to text him multiple times before John replies and says he'll meet Oliver after work for a quick drink. It feels strange having to make plans to see his friend. In the old days when they were in the bunker – or the foundry before that – he could count on having a few minutes every day to talk. They were roommates, in a weird way, along with Felicity, and their hideout was their home. Now their paths have separated and Oliver realizes he no longer knows everything that is happening in John's life.

They settle on a bar near the A.R.G.U.S. facility in case John gets called back to work. Oliver suspects many of the people drinking there are also agents. They recognize him and a few give him curious looks, but no one approaches. In their world of international secrets and security, one guy in one city with a bow and arrow isn't that big a deal.

John orders a beer instead of his favorite whiskey - probably to keep his head clear - and Oliver does the same. He's tempted to ask John what he's currently working on for A.R.G.U.S. but doubts his friend will answer. John takes his secret-keeping duties seriously; and anyway, there are more important matters at hand.

So Oliver comes straight to the point. "Do you know that Felicity carries a gun now?"

John doesn't look surprised. "She didn't tell me she got a gun, but I thought she might do something like that," he says matter-of-factly. "The thing with Diaz really shook her up."

The thing with Diaz? Oliver isn't sure he's hearing John correctly. "By thing," he says slowly, "I assume you mean Diaz breaking into her home and trying to kill her?"

John sighs and gives Oliver an apologetic look. "Yes," he says. "I'm sorry if I made it sound less serious than it was. But you know we offered to continue her witness protection with A.R.G.U.S. and she declined it. It was her decision to go after Diaz herself." His voice signals his disapproval.

Oliver nods. "I know."

"I tried to talk her out of it, Oliver, multiple times. She wouldn't listen."

Oliver nods again. "Yes, I can believe that. So once you found you couldn't talk her out of it, what did you do then?"

John pauses with his glass halfway up to his mouth. He puts the beer down. "Do?" he repeats.

"Yeah. What did you do to keep her safe?"

John narrows his eyes. "I didn't do anything, Oliver. I didn't want to encourage her – and helping her would have been encouragement."

Something twists in Oliver's gut. He hears Felicity's voice from this morning. Diaz was coming after me and I was alone.

"So you just left her alone?" he asks John.

John doesn't answer, which is answer enough for Oliver.

Alone. He's beginning to understand why Felicity keeps saying that. Oliver pushes his half-filled glass of beer away, suddenly losing his taste for it. He's not so sure he has a taste for John's company, either. He stands.

John is watching him closely. "You're angry that I didn't help her get Diaz, Oliver? Seriously?"

Oliver looks at his beer glass and is tempted to hurl it across the room. "I'm angry that you left her alone, John. I remember a time when you stood guard three nights in a row in front of her apartment to make sure Slade Wilson couldn't get her. I remember when you stayed next to her even though there was a bomb collar around her neck."

John looks like he's becoming angry, too. "That was years ago, Oliver. I didn't have a wife, a child or a job back then. Now I have all three. My life has changed – our lives have changed. And our priorities change, too." He shrugs a little desperately. "I offered her A.R.G.U.S. protection," he repeats, "and she said no."

There are so many ways Oliver can reply. He can say that he put his neck on the line for the city, even though he has a family. He can say that after everything the three of them have been through, Felicity is John's family. But he doesn't. Instead, he says to John, "Did you ever figure out how Diaz found Felicity in the first place? She was worried that he has informants in the FBI or A.R.G.U.S. and that he would find her again. That's why she didn't jump all over the witness protection offer."

John gives him a startled look. "No," he says slowly. "We didn't figure out how Diaz found her."

"Did you even investigate it?"

John lowers his gaze and has the grace to appear a little embarrassed.

Oliver shakes his head. "What the hell, John. You didn't look into it?" He doesn't know what else to say.

John doesn't raise his eyes, but he replies defensively, "You're in no position to judge, Oliver. I can think of a dozen times when you let Felicity walk into a dangerous situation. The illegal casino, The Dollmaker, Slade Wilson – do you want me to keep going?"

Oliver stares at John. "Maybe I did," he says evenly, "but I was always there. She was never alone."

Oliver sat in a chair and studied the broken mess that was now the foundry. Felicity was going to have her work cut out putting the place back together – they all were going to have their work cut out. But at least Slade had been caught and tomorrow they'd be flying him to an underground prison on Lian Yu. Starling City was once again safe.

Dig sifted through the debris on a table and grinned. "Look what survived," he said, holding up a bottle of vodka.

Oliver grinned back. "Well, what are you waiting for? Pour us a couple of glasses."

Dig searched the table once more. "No glasses," he said. "We're going to have to drink from the bottle."

"Works for me."

Dig nodded. "Here's to the team," he said proudly, lifting the vodka. "We crossed a really bad name off the list tonight and Starling can breathe easier." After a moment, he added, "And here's to Felicity – who disabled a homicidal maniac and who, pound for pound, has more courage than the entire SCPD put together." He drank from the bottle and then walked over to hand it to Oliver. "You're sure she's okay?"

"Yup," Oliver replied. "She was dead on her feet when I dropped her off at her apartment. She'll get a good night's sleep and come with us tomorrow when we take Slade to Lian Yu."

Dig perched on the edge of a table that held one of Felicity's servers. It was something he would never have dared to do had Felicity been there to see it. "What the hell possessed you to set her up like that?" he asked. "That was a huge risk you took, getting her close enough to Slade to hit him with the Mirakuru antidote. He could have killed her." He sounded more angry than curious.

Oliver took a swig of vodka. "I was sure Slade wouldn't hurt her unless I was there to see it," he explained. "In Slade's mind, the whole point was to kill the woman I love in front of me – to make me suffer. I was confident I'd be able to get to Felicity before he did anything."

Dig shrugged. "I would have thought Slade would have gone after Laurel, then, not Felicity. You had Laurel's picture with you when you were on the island. Other than your jobs as CEO and assistant, there's nothing that publicly ties you to Felicity. So what made Slade think to pick her?"

Oliver's face suddenly felt warm. He wasn't so comfortable with this part of the story. He took another deep swallow of vodka. "I knew Slade had bugged the mansion," he said reluctantly, "so I took Felicity there and told her that I loved her…in front of Slade's microphones. And then I left."

Diggle stared at him. "The hell you did." He walked back to Oliver and retrieved the bottle of vodka. "You know she really is in love with you, right?" He raised the bottle and drank.

Oliver looked down at his hands in his lap. "I've suspected for a while that she has a crush. She's never come out and said that she loves me."

Dig snorted, "Like she needs to. A blind man could see it." He took another drink. "Which makes you kind of a jerk for telling her that you love her…unless you mean it."

Oliver kept his eyes on his hands and said nothing.

"Oh good God, you do, don't you?" Dig continued. "I can see it on your face. And frankly, I could see it any time she didn't give you one hundred percent of her attention. You'd always get jealous. Remember Barry Allen?" He walked back to Oliver and handed him the bottle. "Here – you better have another drink."

Oliver accepted the bottle but shook his head. "I don't love her, Dig. She's an amazing person and I just…care for her. And I feel responsible for her. As you've told me many times, I dragged her into my world. I can't let her be hurt by it."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew they were a lie. He was lying to Dig – and he'd been lying to everyone, himself most of all, for almost a year. The truth was he couldn't imagine life without Felicity – and not just because of her hacking. When he pictured his future - however long or short it might be - she was always there.

And of course, Dig wasn't fooled. The man groaned. "That's bullshit and we both know it. Drink up, Oliver. It's going to be a long trip to Lian Yu."

After leaving John, he takes the long way home. He's got the bike and the anonymity that the helmet provides, so he travels the streets of Star City slowly, looking at things he hasn't looked at for years. He goes into The Glades and sees what's left of Verdant. He drives by the family mansion, which is vacant and in need of attention. Mostly, though, he just thinks.

When he gets home he finds Felicity at the kitchen counter with her tablet and a glass of wine. She isn't shopping or surfing the internet; she's coding. The screen is full of lines of gibberish (he can't distinguish C++ from Perl or Python, or any of the other languages she mentions) and he wonders for a moment what the lines of code will actually do. Then he remembers that it doesn't matter. He learned long ago that coding is for Felicity what shoe-shopping used to be for his mother. It's a coping mechanism. It soothes her nerves the same way that beating on the dummies in the foundry used to soothe his.

Felicity looks up as he enters but doesn't speak. There is a stubborn set to her jaw that says the burden is on him to get the conversation started - and he has no idea where to begin. He's afraid that if he gets it wrong she'll retreat from him the way she has in the past. He may not babble, but when it comes right down to it, he's no better with words than she is. And he has a feeling that the words he chooses in the next few minutes are going to be very important.

He walks over to her and rests one hand on her shoulder, then picks up her wine glass and takes a sip. "I went to see John," he finally says.

She watches him drink from her glass and raises an eyebrow.

"I think I understand now why you felt alone," he continues.

"You do?" She studies his face and doesn't resume typing. He takes that as sufficient encouragement to sit on the stool next to her.

He nods. "It's because you really were alone." He takes another sip of her wine and shrugs helplessly. "I'm sorry, Felicity. I guess I never imagined that everyone would move on with their lives when I went to prison. I thought that some things would stay the same."

She takes her wine back from him and drinks. "Everyone being code for John," she says.

He sighs, "Yes. It didn't occur to me that he would be so occupied with his own life that he wouldn't have time for yours. And I understand that you wanted to be in control of your fate and not feel like a sitting duck, wondering every day if Diaz was going to make his move. I would have felt the same way. So I guess I also understand the gun – and I understand you going after Diaz."

She looks surprised. "Who are you," she says, "and what have you done with Oliver Queen?"

He laughs, but it's a nervous laugh. This is the easy part of the conversation. They haven't gotten to the hard part yet – the part that had him going fifteen unnecessary miles on the bike to think about what he's going to say. He doesn't think she's going to like that part nearly as much.

He licks his lips. "I understand you going after Diaz," he repeats, "but Diaz is behind bars now and I'm home. You don't need to worry about protecting yourself any longer. I can keep you safe. So I think you should get rid of the gun and go back to being who you used to be. I don't like seeing you with it." The last sentence comes out in a rush.

He expects an angry retort, but instead Felicity gives him a long, steady stare. Then she turns and types something on the tablet keyboard.

"And this isn't about trust or respect," Oliver continues, anxious to forestall an argument she's used before. "There's no one in the world I trust or respect more than you. No one."

She nods. "I know that."

It's his turn to be surprised. "You do?"

She nods again. "Yes. I know this isn't about trust or respect – well mostly not, anyway. This is about you not wanting me to be like you. This is about you being afraid that I'll lose my light and embrace the darkness."

He looks at her and says nothing.

"I thought we resolved this over a year ago," she resumes, "when Adrian Chase had us trapped in the bunker. We talked about it, remember?" When he doesn't reply, she says, "I told you then that there was no way I could love you as much as I do if you weren't a good man. I stand by that."

"Felicity-"

She shakes her head and puts her hand on her tablet. "Be quiet for a minute, Oliver, and look at this."

He knows what she's going to show him before she even turns the tablet toward him. She's going to show him a blog or a news article about the good The Green Arrow has done for Star City; a warm, fuzzy piece about a store owner who doesn't get robbed anymore, or the medicines that now make it to the hospital instead of being stolen. It's not going to help. Those are his deeds, he thinks; they aren't who he is.

But then she turns the tablet to face him and he sees that isn't at all what's on the screen. What's on the screen is a pie chart.

A friggin' pie chart.

They're having one of the most important conversations in their married life and she's showing him graphs? He gives her a bewildered look.

"Do you know what this is, Oliver?"

He rubs his jaw and plays along. "A pie chart?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, of course it's a pie chart. Do you know what it's a pie chart of?"

He shakes his head. "Haven't got a clue."

She gazes at the chart with fondness as she says, "It's a pie chart of the composition of the universe." When he obviously fails to share her appreciation, she adds, "You know, the stuff the universe is made of? This chart is the result of thousands of years of study; everyone from the first person who looked up at the stars to data from the most sophisticated telescope ever developed."

This is so not where he expected this conversation to go. He holds up his hands. "And?"

"And do you know what this tiny little piece of the pie represents?" she asks, pointing to the smallest wedge.

It's a rhetorical question, because of course he has no idea.

"It's known matter," she says. "Atoms, molecules…the stuff we can see and touch. And it's less than five percent of the pie. The rest of it," she runs her finger around the pie chart, "is dark matter and dark energy – more than ninety-five percent of the universe. Scientists have no idea what it is."

He's beginning to understand…just a little. "This is some kind of metaphor, isn't it?" he says.

She shakes her head. "No, it's not a frackin' metaphor, Oliver; it's life. You seem to have it in your head that we live in an either/or world. You think things are dark or light…people are dark or light. And in your mind, you're dark and I'm light. Well, that's an utter load of bullshit. It's as ridiculous as the stories you used to make up before I learned that you were The Hood."

He opens his mouth to explain, but she's worked up a good head of steam and rushes on before he can say a word. "The universe is made up of light and dark," she says. "It's just the way things are. And the darkness doesn't erase what's good. The fact that ninety-five percent of the world is made of dark matter and dark energy doesn't take away from the pleasure of a sunny day, or an ice cream cone, or," she gestures at her glass, "a good red wine. Believe it or not, I have darkness in me. It doesn't consume my life or make me a bad person. I live with it and I deal with it. And just because you have darkness in you... well, it doesn't mean that it defines you and that you aren't a good man."

Her face is flushed and he can tell that she believes one hundred percent in what she's saying. He wants to believe it too, but he's not sure he can. He's obsessed over his darkness since the first time he killed a man, more than a decade ago on Lian Yu. He's not sure a silly pie chart can make him think differently.

She sighs and the flush fades from her cheeks. "Tell me, Oliver – suppose this were any other woman you know who wounded a man when he broke into her home; Laurel, McKenna, Sara…God, even Susan." She makes a face on the last name. "Would you think it means that they've been consumed by darkness?"

He frowns. "No, but-"

"No buts," she interrupts. "It's the same for me. I'm still your Felicity, even if I have a gun. I'm just a little tougher than I used to be. Stop holding me to some impossible standard for light. And while you're at it, stop holding yourself to an impossible standard too."

She makes it sound so simple. God knows, he wants it to be simple. He reaches over to retrieve her wine glass and takes a long swallow. "I don't know-" he begins.

She shakes her head. "Look, if none of these very excellent arguments are working for you, try thinking of it this way. If you really were consumed by darkness, then you wouldn't care so much about any of this. You'd be indifferent right now, or maybe even happy. And we both know that you're never happy."

He laughs. It's as good a reason as any of the others that she's given him. "I suppose you have a point there," he concedes; and then he thinks, I'm happy when I'm with you like this - just the two of us. The only thing that would make it better would be having William here.

She looks down at her tablet. "I think I'm going to print out this pie chart and stick it on the refrigerator," she says. "That way, we can have a talk every morning about dark matter and how it doesn't ruin the universe – until you get it through your incredibly thick head."

He laughs again – something he never thought he would be doing this evening. "Fair enough."

"So we're good?"

He nods. "We're good."

She smiles, pleased with herself. "And Oliver?"

"Yes?"

"Get your own damn glass of wine."

A/N2: Thanks for reading. I wondered if I was too hard on John in this chapter, but he's seemed like a different man starting with late Season 6. You can tell me what you think. I also can't believe it took me this long to use Dark Matter as a subject for this collection. Arrow can't seem to ever get away from the subject of Oliver's darkness.

Oh - and while I'm pretty sure everyone reads these for Olicity and not the science - you can google the pie chart of the universe if you're so inclined.