title: Lost Happiness

author: Melpomene Blue

chapter: six

By the time Oliver returned to the lair, Felicity had given up trying to drink any of the broth. Her throat fought against every attempt and once she was able to finally make herself swallow any of it at all, it simply refused to stay down. She tried again with the same results only to push away the cup and the small waste can Digg held ready for her rebelling stomach. Shaking her head, she had eased her legs back up onto the bed and sunk back into the pillows, depression weighing her down much more heavily than her rapidly decreasing body weight. She was so very tired. So exhausted. Allowing her eyes to close, she listened to Oliver's footfalls as he descended the stairs and feigned sleep.

"How is she?"

"She's resting. She needs time, Oliver," he responded softly. "Just give her time. She's got a lot to deal with."

The silence that followed John's response was heavy. There was no question what looks were passing between the two men – she had worked with them for far too long not to know them that well. She kept her eyes shut. She needed no evidence to prove she was right.

Oliver's voice was hushed but his tone was heavy. "I know that but we need to find him."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to ask that of her and neither are you. She's been back for what, two weeks? You're not going to have her running her traces and searches on the man who tortured her less than a month ago. She needs time. She deserves to have time to recover. We're going to have to find him on our own."

"I'm not trying to force her to do anything she's not ready for. I would never do that."

"I know you don't want to hurt her any more but intentionally or not, that's exactly what you're doing. The entire time she was missing, all we could think of was getting her back. Now that we've got her, all you talk about is finding him so we can exact revenge. I don't blame you, I want to string the guy up by his own entrails myself, but even considering asking her to help us find the man who abducted her is not going to help her recovery." He paused a beat. "I know you care about her. I know you're worried about her. You should be worried and you should care. But as far as finding him goes, we'll just have to track him down on our own without her help. We managed to find her, didn't we? We'll find the Master too and then he'll be made to pay for his crimes against her...one by one."

"It took us so long to find her...we almost failed. We nearly lost her. That cave was too close to being her grave. And with the Master threatening to take her again... She won't survive another ordeal like that. If we lose her...we can't lose her. It cannot happen."

It took all of her will power to not react to that gem of news. The fact that she had been close to dying was nothing new to her, that much she had been painfully aware of, but another threat of abduction... She had known they were hiding something but she had assumed it had something to do with her previous abduction not the all too real risk of being taken again. She worked to keep her breathing calm and steady, not wanting to alert either of them to her wakefulness. There was no way she was going to be able to fool herself into going back to sleep now. She continued to listen even as the conversation faded to silence and both men walked away, John to the computers and Oliver to the salmon ladder. Her mind was racing with pure terror, her will power straining to keep the pure panic at bay. Long minutes later, when she was certain the two men on residence were otherwise occupied, she opened her eyes and stared at her hands.

There were marks on her hands, pairs of puncture marks, six that she could see. She could remember being hit with the stun gun, repeatedly, more times than she could count, many more times than she wished to remember. She could recall throwing up her hand in a vain attempt to ward off the assaults that would periodically come from the trapdoor far above her head. Her captors never missed their target. Back in that hellish hole in the ground, she could remember thinking, after the pain had receded to a dull roaring in her veins, that she had been unaware that the prongs of a stun gun could reach so far with such accuracy. There were more marks beneath the downy bandages, similar puncture marks on the rest of her body from her neck to her feet. Marks that could be easily cataloged and counted and provide definitive proof of the assaults. Marks she would just as soon forget existed. Memories she would just as soon banish to the realm of forgotten experiences.

She studied the marks until she could no longer bear the sight of her own body, until she could think of nothing but how wonderful it would be to rip the skin from her bones so there would be no more physical evidence to count, no memories to lurk in the dark corners of her brain and haunt her sleeping and waking hours relentlessly. In a desperate plea to turn her thoughts and drag her memory out of that cave, she buried her hands in the blankets and cleared her throat. Two pair of eyes instantly turned toward her.

"Felicity, are you alright?"

She shrugged an answer to Oliver's question. "Where was I and how did you find me? I mean, I'm pretty sure whoever it was that took me didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs for you or a great big X to mark the spot you were looking for."

Oliver and John studied one another for a moment before attempting an answer.

Diggle followed Oliver as he crossed the distance to her bed. "I explained to her about the first three statues."

"The first three told us you were underground, the fourth told us where but it took us a while to decipher the real meaning."

She nodded silently and ran the tip of her tongue across her healing lips. The skin was still torn and chapped but they felt better than they had in weeks. Lip balm could be an amazing thing. "Persephone, Alice, and Merlin. What was the fourth?"

"Empress Josephine," John replied.

That didn't make any sense to her. "Empress Josephine...as in Napoleon's wife?"

"One and the same."

She could feel her forehead furrow. "How did that tell you where I was? I can't have been in France."

John took up the explanation. "You weren't. The statue was a very specific one, a very well known defaced statue. At least it's well known in Martinique where, several years ago, the full scale version had its head knocked off and was doused with red paint. Apparently Josephine was born on Martinique where her family owned a sugar plantation, she grew up there and didn't leave for France until she was sixteen. Once we were able to track down the source of the statue, it was only a matter of finding the right series of caves. It turns out that Martinique has a lot of caves."

Felicity allowed that to run through her thoughts several times before her mind veered wildly off course. If the man who had taken her was still out there in the world, if her was threatening to abduct her again, then she couldn't go home. Home was where he had found her to begin with. Locked windows and doors would not keep him and his nightmares at bay, they could offer no safety. Home. She missed home. After so many weeks, she didn't even know if she had a home any longer...

"You do. I hired a maid to look after things for you while you were gone. She's there once a week to dust, vacuum, the usual. We also made sure your utilities and rent were paid. But I don't think it's a good idea for you to try to go back home just yet."

She looked up at Oliver, wondering exactly how much of her internal dialogue she had said aloud. It would seem that she had only vocalized the last part, the worry about her apartment being lost. She hadn't meant to voice any of it. She dropped her gaze back down to her lap, watching the blankets move as she fidgeted with the fabric. "My place probably looks better than it has since I moved in."

"No. It's just an empty shell."

"I always wanted to vacation on Martinique. It was one of those places that sounded too beautiful to be real: tropical, exquisite, exotic. Martinique, Barbados, Antigua... I don't want to see any of them anymore. He took that away from me and I don't know how to get it back. I don't even know if I want to get it back. When I left Las Vegas for college I had plans to spend as much time out of the desert as possible but all I managed to do was spend my life in an office building. Those trips to Russia and Lian Yu, those were the closest things I ever had to a vacation. I had always meant to go, you know, somewhere - anywhere. But I got wrapped up in my job and then in Arrow business." She let silence fill the room. "I should have gone before... How can I ever go to the Caribbean now without remembering being in that cave, dying?" She raised her eyes again to meet Oliver's just before he closed his, an unnamed emotion flickering across his features.

She watched him reach out and touch her, gently squeezing his fingers against her emaciated shoulder. She could feel his strength behind the gentle gesture as well as his pain and worry. It helped to ease her own worries even if it didn't sweep them completely away.

"Um... I know this is completely off topic but I was wondering, do you think we could dye my hair sometime soon? I know it's not really a priority, it's just that I probably don't even look like myself anymore. I'd like it if I felt more like myself."

Oliver leaned over to place a kiss along her hairline, a smile beginning to soften his expression. "You look beautiful, Felicity. But yes, we can find someone to dye your hair for you."

"Thanks. And maybe I could have some of my own clothes?"

"Anything else?"

She shook her head slowly, not quite able to force a smile. "I'll let you know if I think of anything."

"You do that."