title: Lost Happiness
author: Melpomene Blue
chapter: seven
With the increasing passage of time, she almost felt normal...almost but not quite. She really wasn't certain if she would ever feel totally normal again. Maybe it was time to reevaluate normal...
Her hair was once more bottle blonde, the mousy brown locks relegated yet again to the roots below her scalp. Her neatly trimmed fingernails sported a bright clear blue color that matched her newly lacquered toenails. The clothes that hung loosely on her wasted frame were soft, familiar, and her own. Her tablet had again become an extension of herself, her fingers racing across the sleek surface, pulling up an almost endless cascade of flickering windows streaming countless bytes of data.
In so many little ways she felt almost as if nothing untoward had happened but then reality would rear its horrific head and she would catch sight of the lingering scars or an unexpected sound would send her heart racing in a blind panic and her memories would be plunged back down into that cold, hopeless cave desperate and alone.
The impromptu nail painting session had pulled a smile from her despite her preoccupation with all those things she was desperately, albeit unsuccessfully, trying to avoid. Seeing John wielding the nail polish brush in his strong, calloused hands had been enough to start a small fit of giggles.
"John, you don't have to do this. Really, it's okay," she had tried to insist once the giggles abated. "Besides, you don't look like a very trustworthy manicurist."
"I thought you wanted to look more yourself for your mom's visit. I didn't hear you complaining when I was dying your hair."
She had shrugged, a small smile tugging the corners of her mouth into a sad smile. "I couldn't see you then. You were behind me and my eyes were closed."
He merely shrugged back at her and unburied her toes from the mounds of blankets Oliver had insisted were paramount to her recovery process.
"I don't know if I'm ready to see my mom."
John had patted her foot affectionately. "You don't really have a choice in that. You know we put her off as long as we could but she's your mother, she's worried about you and she's coming to see how you're doing. Her flight won't arrive for another two hours and Oliver's going to get her checked into a hotel before he brings her here to see you but she will be here."
"But she can't see...here. She's going to want to know why I'm not in the hospital. You can't just bring her down here and expect her to not notice...all this."
"Which is why, for the duration of her visit, you'll be a resident of Starling City's very own intensive recovery and rehabilitation facility." John grinned. "You didn't notice we cleared out all the weaponry?"
For the first time in a very long while, Felicity actually looked around the room. All the arrows, bows, and disguises were gone. She had no clue how she had missed noticing it before. Even her bank of computers displayed medical data rather than her usual research profiles. "How could I possibly not have noticed?"
"You've been a little preoccupied. Actually, we started making the changes as soon as Oliver decided to bring you here. We figured that your mom would be coming sooner or later."
Once he was finished with her toes, he had left her to her own bemused thoughts with a halfhearted glare and a dire warning to not mess up the paint job he'd just finished. "I'm going to go see about getting us some lunch. Any special requests?"
"A Big Belly burger?"
He had simply nodded and left, taking the stairs two at a time. Once she had finally managed to keep down solid foods, John and Oliver had become purveyors of any kind of sustenance she happened to mention. They'd trekked back with everything from sushi to barbeque and never pointed out that she rarely took more than a bite or two at any one meal. Maybe, just maybe, she could manage to eat the whole burger this time.
She lay in the peaceful quiet and wondered just how long ago it had been that she had complained that Big Belly Burger was giving her a big belly. Her hand strayed to her stomach and she winced when her fingers found the outline of her pelvis all too easily. A big belly was certainly the last of her worries just now. She'd be thrilled if she could manage to have a stomach that wasn't concave.
Pushing aside the deepening worry that nagged at her thoughts from the dim recesses of her subconscious, she had picked up her tablet and delved into her most current scans and research. John didn't know it and Oliver didn't know it either but she had begun looking into this Master person who had such a fascination with miniature sculptures...and apparently with her.
No, that was probably wrong, very wrong. She felt that she was putting far too much importance on herself in the scope of the Master's interests, after all, she was merely a means to an end. She was just a pawn in his cruel game. It was Oliver, or possibly the Arrow, that had drawn the Master to abduct her. She wasn't important at all. She was just an object, a thing. She was disposable.
The trembles started before she even realized it and in no time at all her hands were shaking so badly she had to put down her tablet lest she risk dropping it and destroying her only tangible link to normalcy. What began as tiny little tremors grew in intensity to the point that the entire bed was soon shaking.
"Hey, you okay?"
John's question almost became her undoing. Luckily she had already set the tablet down on the blankets that shielded her stomach from the chill of the lair. Dropping it in fright at the voice of a friend would not convince anyone that she was alright. "I'm fine. Great. Terrific."
John quirked his eyebrows. "Yeah?"
"Well, as close as I've been for a while. Yes."
He held up a bag that was already becoming stained with grease from its contents. "Hungry?"
"Starving."
Their meal was a quiet affair, too quiet. John's silence resounded with remorse and concern, Felicity's with fear and guilt. She wanted nothing more than to be completely open and honest. She wanted to tell John about her worries, about what she was doing, but she wasn't foolish enough to think she could admit that she was trying to track down the Master, not even to John. And hell, she knew she was a bad liar. She knew better than to try to lie about what she was doing which meant she couldn't say anything at all. Neither John nor Oliver would ever truly agree to her help. But in reality, they had no say. No say whatsoever.
"Talk to me, Felicity."
"No."
"Felicity."
She cut her eyes at him, chewing very determinedly on the last bite of her burger. She wouldn't touch the tablet, her fingers were covered with burger and french fry grease and she refused to mar the glass so she simply glared. Without something to hide behind she was left dependent on the power of her expression. Unfortunately she was still too weak to put any of her usual ferocity in it. Even her loud voice was supremely lacking these days.
"Come on, girl. Talk to me."
"I can't."
"Listen, this is me here, just me. No one's going to disturb us. You know you can talk to me. This silence has gone on for too long now. It's not helping you recover. Is it your mom's visit that's got you so worried?"
She took a deep breath, expelling it slowly. "No, it's not that. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing her for a change. I mean, I love my mother but she's...my mother. It's just..."
"Just what, Felicity?"
"I'm scared. I overheard what you and Oliver said before about how the Master is threatening to take me again..."
"Never. It's not gonna happen."
She tilted her head, exasperation darkening her expression. "How are you going to manage that? He took me once and you couldn't stop him then. Who's to say he won't be able to do it again?"
"I'm saying he won't be able to do it again. We didn't know the extent of danger you were in before but now we do. There's no way that either Oliver or I are going to let him get anywhere near you. You're safe. He will not hurt you ever again."
"I know you want to mean that but, seriously, I'm hiding in a basement. It's not a lot different than being held captive in a cave." Her tone of voice was flat when she made the admission, unaffected and cold. It reminded her of the despair she succumbed to in that cave.
"That's how you feel?"
Her head snapped up to face Oliver. He stood on the landing, his expression unreadable but his posture rigid. She had never heard him come through the door. "Sometimes. Mostly when I'm wallowing in self-pity but occasionally even when I'm not." She let her gaze slide back to her lap where her fingers were twining with the edge of a blanket, unable to meet his eyes any longer. The admission wasn't one she was happy making.
John stepped back as Oliver closed in on the bedside.
"You're not our prisoner here, Felicity. We're just trying to protect you. We're trying to keep you safe." Oliver's fingers closed around her own, ceasing the nervous fidgeting and gently squeezing.
"I'm going to be in danger so long as he's still out there. I'll never be safe again." She inhaled a quick gulping breath, fighting against the rapidly rising panic. She had not mentioned her fears aloud before and having done so now only seemed to intensify them. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and shook her head desperately. "Never. How can I go on living my life if I know I can be snatched up at any time by some lunatic who just wants to play a sadistic game? It's like I'm stuck in a nightmare so some endless horror movie."
A new thought occurred to her. "How am I going to explain any of this to my mother?"
John and Oliver shared a quick look before they filled her in on their hastily created cover story.
"She's never going to believe I was shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean."
"She already does believe it," Oliver assured her. "A sudden squall came up and sank the yacht you were on. You washed up on a small island and were stuck there until a Coast Guard vessel happened to see your signal fire. You lived on coconuts and yams."
She shook her head in disbelief. "Even my mother isn't that blonde."
"Oliver can be very convincing when he wants to be," John assured her.