title: Lost Happiness
author: melpomene blue
chapter: four
Every time she fell asleep she lost more time. While sleep was her best and easiest escape mechanism, she hated not knowing how much time had passed between falling asleep and waking up. What she found even more disturbing was that every time she awoke up she would find that both Oliver and John were still present. It seemed to her that at least one of them should have left for the comfort of their own home and bed at some point since her return. That they were both always present made no sense to her at all and it did nothing to help her figure out the passage of time.
After everything she had survived, what she wanted more than anything else was normalcy. This, whatever was going on with Oliver and Dig – it wasn't normal. If her leg weren't so well immobilized, she would just drag herself out of the bed, plop down at her computers and dare them to say anything to her, dare them to challenge her, dare them to question her quest for regaining normal. As it was, she itched to get her hands on her tablet at least.
She shifted her weight against the mattress and tugged the blankets up just a little higher – she wasn't willing to risk even a second of warmth now that it was attainable. Her glasses were close at hand and she slipped them on as silently as possible. Noting that she had not yet drawn either man's attention, she took the time to study them more closely. There was a tenseness to them both – something in the way they stood and moved, something in their expressions, in the creases of their eyes and set of their mouths. It was almost as if they were still wound up tighter than springs. They both looked even more grim than they usually did – and that was really saying something given how they all spent their nights.
She was still watching them when Oliver turned around. "Felicity, hey. How do you feel?"
She shrugged. "Better, a little. Definitely warmer..." she allowed her sentence to trail off incomplete. Her throat still felt swollen and her voice was hoarse but that wasn't what held her tongue.
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around her wrist in a comforting squeeze. "You know that if you want to talk about...anything..." If nothing else could be said about her partner, he was certainly consistent...persistent too.
She froze and shook her head sharply. "No. I don't. I'm okay."
A distant, pained expression shadowed Oliver's eyes when he nodded and squeezed her wrist once more before releasing his grip. "Talking about what happened – it won't make you weak, Felicity. You could never be weak. What you lived through in that cave...talking could help." Yep, definitely persistent.
"I don't want to talk about it." She made sure to enunciate each word very carefully so there could be no confusion as to her meaning. Had she felt stronger she would have used her loud voice but, as it was, she could barely choke out an intelligible whisper.
"When you do..."
"I won't." She clutched the blankets so tightly that her knuckles were white and bloodless against her already pallid, sickly skin tone. The death-grip sent bolts of pain through her fingers and up into her arms but she couldn't convince herself to care enough to release her grip.
"Felicity." He lightly brushed his fingers against her shoulder.
She shuddered involuntarily and jerked away from his gentle touch. There had been a time that she had, she didn't know if enjoyed was quite the right word, but she had liked the way he said her name and appreciated his rare affectionate touches. The people who had taken her captive had destroyed even those small pleasures.
The heart monitor gave away her skyrocketing anxiety, the rhythm quickening until John and Oliver both became alarmed. She didn't care how much it worried them; friends or not they were both being way too pushy. They needed to back off – right now, if not sooner. They had no idea how much she simply wanted to ignore what she had been through, how much she needed to ignore that it had ever happened irregardless of how much they wanted her to talk about it. Her subconscious mind agreed with them, acknowledged that they were right, but even thinking about talking about her ordeal threw her into a blind panic. There were things she was ashamed of and embarrassed by, things she couldn't bear for them to know...things that, if she could help it, they would never know.
"I don't want to talk about it. You never talk about the island, I'm not going to talk about the cave. We all have our secrets and I don't have to share mine any more than you have to share yours." It was the most she had said at one time since her return.
"Okay, Felicity. It's okay." John stepped up to the opposite side of the bed from Oliver, drawing her attention. He gave her a small smile of reassurance. "You don't have to talk about anything if you don't want to."
She eyed him with open distrust.
"Felicity?" John maintained eye contact with her even as he moved closer to her side. He stopped moving only when he came into contact with the side of the bed. "Would you like your tablet? We kept it charged for you." He raised the item in question and set it on her lap.
"Thank you." She hadn't meant to whisper so softly – she sounded pathetic, she could hardly hear her own words. Clutching the piece of electronics as tightly as she could manage given the condition of her re-healing fingers and how sore they were from clinging to the blanket, she slid her gaze toward Oliver.
"Diggle's right, Felicity. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. Just remember that if you ever need someone to talk to about your day: I'm always available."
She nodded solemnly.
Typing one-handed slowed her down only marginally. Soon enough, she was so deeply immersed in re-familiarizing herself with her scans and programs that everything else around her melted into white noise. She relished the ability to lose herself so completely and be able to push back all the torment of the past...however long it was. She kept at it until physical exhaustion and pure pain forced her to put her tablet aside.
"I lied."
"What?" She opened her eyes and squinted up at John. He and Oliver had been on the mat for a good portion of the morning and she had blocked them from her notice so well that she hadn't realized they had stopped sparring. She knew she was simply too exhausted to keep her expression blank. She had never been able to keep her feelings secret even under the best of circumstances and this was certainly nothing close to the best of circumstances.
"I lied," he repeated. He pulled her chair up beside the bed and settled down into it. "I agreed with you before since it seemed so important to you. But," he gestured to the room at large, "I convinced Oliver to go home to check on Thea and get some rest so it's just the two of us here now and you need to talk."
"No, I don't." She could feel the blind panic welling up in her chest and threatening to choke the breath from her.
He reached out and snagged her hand, not in an unbreakable grip but in a firm one. "Felicity Megan Smoak, you are not the quiet, brooding type, that would be Oliver's specialty."
"But..."
"There are no buts. Oliver was right, you know: talking about what happened down in that cave will not make you weak. After surviving what you did, nothing could make you appear weak."
She dropped her gaze to stare at John's hand holding her own. The bandages looked so very white against her friend's fingers.
"Felicity, it's been more than a week and you're not recovering, you're just surviving. I know what happened physically – I was there when the doctors explained what they had to do. I know how much damage was done to you. What they had to repair..."
She drew in a quick, ragged breath, snatching her hand away from John and curling in on herself as much as she was able.
"I know it won't be easy at first and you don't have to talk about what happened to you but you do have to talk." He touched her chin until she raised her head enough to meet his eyes. "Brooding silently is only going to tear you up inside, Felicity. Look at what it's done to Oliver."
She shook her head. "I can't. I just can't."
He just wouldn't let up. "Yes, you can. And you can start by asking those questions I know are bouncing around in that brain of yours."
"Dig, I can't."
"Why not? What harm could it do?"
She allowed the blinding fear to fill her eyes before she replied, "It could destroy me."
"Not a chance." He shook his head and took one of her hands in both of his. The last doctor to visit Felicity had said that physically she was recovering well but he was growing worried about her mental health. "You're a fighter, girl. You're a survivor. You just need to remember that yourself."
"But I gave up, not as in threw in with my captors in some kind of freakish Stockholm Syndrome thing, but I literally gave up. I wanted to die, John. I wanted to be dead, to never have to get out of that cave and face everything."
John nodded again as she fell to silence. "Felicity, you were held captive for eighteen weeks. There's not a soul alive who would have still held out hope, not in those circumstances. And I'm sorry for bringing up how long you were gone but I think you were letting it hold you back. Now you can't hide from it."
to be continued...