So I have no medical knowledge, my apologies if it makes no sense. Also I'm super duper excited I got this completed by Sunday, hopefully another installment in a week or so? Hope y'all enjoy this, any questions please ask! The part in all italics is a flashback, by the way, and probably not the one you'd think.
Oh, and I upped it to Teen mainly because of the flashback.
"Yeah, I'm...I left you a message. Oliver, I know why Felicity didn't show."
Oliver blinked, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make sense of the words coming from his friend's mouth. Because what?
"How?" His simple, clipped response was all he could manage at the moment. He was feeling angry, and decieved; did Diggle somehow have some previously unknown connection to his beautiful blonde..? Wait, no. Not his, now never going to be his.
"Lyla called." Diggle started, and with the knowledge that Digg's wife worked in fire rescue, an uneasy pit began to form in Oliver's stomach. "That apartment fire from this morning? Felicity lives there. Lyla called to tell me her name was listed among the injured. She was taken to the hospital, Oliver."
She was taken to the hospital. That was why she hadn't shown.
He couldn't breathe. Things beyond her control had led to her being injured, taken by ambulance to the hospital where she was possibly fighting for her life while he'd been sitting, annoyed and insulted and contemplating her cruelty, completely safe in that stupid coffee shop.
He needed to see her. He needed to apologize. He needed to...
"Oliver, man, breathe." Diggle's hands were suddenly on his shoulders and the little shake his partner gave him finally got him moving again. Gasping sharply, Oliver turned back towards the parkinglot.
"I need to see her." The words left his lips without concious thought, but the sudden restraining hand on his wrist had him purposefully growling at his friend.
"Sure, and I'll take you, but Oliver...there is something else you should know."
Oliver was about to snap at the other man, tell him it did not matter, he needed to see her, when the next words from his friends mouth were some of the only that could've possibly brought him to a standstill.
"It involves Felicity's safety."
The first thing Felicity became aware of upon awakening was the pounding in her head. It felt like a couple of giraffes were tap dancing in her temples. Moments later, as sensation was returning to the rest of her being, she felt a red hot, ragged pain in her lungs and throat with every breath she took. At least she could breathe, but man it hurt...
Why did it hurt so much to breathe, and what on earth happened last night?
"I believe she is coming to... Miss Smoak?"
An unknown voice was calling to her, causing her to groan in response. Which she immediately regretted, because apparently any vocalizations also hurt. Wincing, Felicity concentrated and at length was able to pry her bleary eyes open. It took a few blinks before a man in a white lab coat finally came into relative focus. She didn't have her glasses and of course no contacts in, as she'd last been preparing for bed and wondering what tomorrow afternoon would hold...
"It is good to finally see you with us again, Miss Smoak. You were in and out of consciousness when they brought you in, and we had to sedate you while we put a tube in to help you breathe due to the swelling of your airway. The swelling has sense decreased, so just about an hour ago we took the tube out and now and replaced it with an oxygen mask. It'll be quite painful for sometime, but if the pain becomes unbearable, let us know and we'll see what we can do. We'd still like to keep you several more hours for observation, to make sure nothing else developes."
The man in the coat was explaining things she did not understand, because all she could think about was what time is it and that she was going to miss her date. So she voiced her question, only getting out the words, "What" and "time" before proceeding to hack up a lung and oh god, it hurts. The man looked up at something on the wall and informed her,
"Just past two in the afternoon. We'd like to keep you til around six, then if you are well enough we can contact someone to pick you up. And it would be best if you didn't try to talk much for the foreseeable future, Miss Smoak."
Felicity's eyes slipped closed and she couldn't feel the tears that leaked out from the corners beyond the strange sensation and sting against her heated, chapped skin. She felt heartbroken because she'd missed their date and Oliver would no doubt think she had stood him up. The rationalization that it was not something that could be helped was overcast in her brain by an enormous weight, heavy on her emtional chest, that she was only now realizing was there...because she'd felt like this once before. The blisters, the fire in her lungs, the pain...
"Miss Smoak? There are a couple of police officers here that wish to discuss the fire with you. I've told them you're not in a condition to speak much, but they still insisted..."
Fire. Heat. Burning. Trapped.
Felicity's eyes flew open, because she had been through this before.
And if it was happening again, it meant he was nearby. He'd found her.
Even though she'd not had a panic attack in years, she was having one now. Her breath came in ragged, stuttering gasps. The pain such a breathing pattern wrought ripped through her with such intensity, but she was defenseless against it. There was nothing she could do to stop it. She knew, rationally speaking, that she was safe in this moment and he was not here - especially if there were police nearby - but these thoughts meant nothing. Right now, her brain was completely irrational and she had no idea how to stop this.
There was a commotion somewhere around her, towards the entrance of the room perhaps, and then there was a different person standing before her, leaning over her. It was another man - this one wearing dark colored clothing, short blonde hair and blue eyes that she could only make out the colors of because he was holding her face in his hands and leaning in close. He was saying something, she could tell because his lips were moving, but she could make no sense of the sounds. The thought crossed her mind that he was oddly familiar, and like really unfairly handsome, but she was not able to dwell on this thought as a sudden cooling sensation entered her veins and she was suddenly so...sleepy...
...
"What'd you say to her?" Oliver growled at the doctor, his hands still framing Felicity's face even though she had succumbed to the seditive they'd put in her IV and was now unconscious.
"I didn't - if anything, it is your presence here that has set her off. I merely mentioned police were here to dicuss the events surrounding the fire, then she delved into this attack of paranoia. Perhaps you should leave."
Oliver barred his teeth at the doctor, ready to shout that he was not leaving this woman.
But in reality, there was a war going on in his head - because yes, he did want to leave. A huge part of him wanted to go out there right now and find this twerp that had been the main suspect of the fire she'd endured in Boston, but...until he talked to her, he did not have much to go on. Lyla had been able to dig up reports from the fire that had consumed her dorm in Boston - under suspiciously similar circumstances to those they were currently facing - but other than a name (Cooper Seldon) and the fact that this guy had never been formally charged, there was nothing.
He needed to talk to her, and ask her if she'd seen the jerk recently or if he'd made any contact. If she was safe. He couldn't do that with her unconscious, however, and she'd probably be safer if he watched over her from a distance. The thing was, he wasn't sure if he could do that. Swiping at the wetness on her chapped cheeks, Oliver sighed and finally leaned back, breaking the contact. Would she even welcome his protection, his care?
After the events he'd had to endure five years ago, events that ended in less than two weeks but that succeeded in ripping him away from everyone he'd loved in one way or another, he was uncertain if he was even capable of feeling that emotion again. Caring. If you trusted someone enough, loved them, then betrayal could follow. If you put your heart on the line, it could end up with a bullet in it.
Or the limo you were in could be T-boned by an SUV and you could spend a little over the next week and a half running for your life.
Oliver shuddered, forcibly shoving those memories to the side and focusing again on the blond in the bed. Thea had slowly been helping him thaw, helping him when he needed it whether he wanted to not - she was family, and she was never giving up on him. Even when he'd given up on himself.
One thing that had kept him waking up in the morning was the knowledge that someone needed him. Thea had needed him, less these days but she still did. He would never turn away from an innocent in danger, never turn away from someone needing help. And right now, Felicity Smoak needed his help.
It was a cold day in late February...and Felicity had just told Cooper that she was changing her major from a cyber degree for one of dentistry. The mechanics of the mouth and the details of the teeth placement, names, shapes and workings had long fascinated her. She would never fully leave her love of the cyber world behind, of course, but she was just interested in taking a different path. Interested to see what her new boyfriend would think of it.
He had not taken it well, Felicity thought with a frown as she went about her evening routine. He'd yelled at her for wasting her talents, for destorying her future, when it was clear that he himself was more interested in the chaos they could cause using their cyber smarts than the actual code itself. And that was one reason for her change - did he want her for her, or was it more for her abilities?
When he'd stormed out and called her some creative but never-to-be-repeated names, her answer was clear. Still, she hadn't actually gone and changed her major yet...but with him acting like this, there was no way she wanted to stay here.
She went to bed that night with the hope that she'd see him again before she left, for them to have a civil conversation.
She woke up hours later to a smoke-filled room, alarm sirens screaming at her - from the room next door that she shared a wall with, strangely not the one in her dorm. Almost choking because seriously, there was a ridiculous amount of smoke already in this room, she rolled out of bed and dropped to the floor. Thankful she'd worn pants to bed and an over sized t-shirt, she started crawling on her hands and knees towards the door. Wrapping her hand in the shirt material, she lifted up to grab the handle, just in case it was hot to the touch.
So, it was not hot but...the weird thing was, it wouldn't budge either. It wouldn't turn, almost as if it were stuck, or locked. Locked, of course. Felicity cursed to herself and, coughing, dove for her purse on the other side of the door, surely the keys were in there...
Her eyes were starting to water by the time her too-warm fingers closed around the cold metal, and, pulling her shirt collar over her mouth, she tried the door again.
Only the lock would not engage, it wouldn't even go in all the way...almost as if something had been wedged in there to block the key, to prevent its being unlocked.
Panic welling up, Felicity scrambled for her only other method of escape: the window. She didn't care if she were three floors up, she would not stand a chance if she stayed here. She could feel the heat from the door and the handle was now much hotter than it had been intially.
Easing herself up once she'd reached the window, she unlocked the seal, braced a shoulder and pushed.
The window did not move, not at all.
Panic flooded her system now because, what the heck!? She tried again and again, pushing and shoving and hitting at the window with all her might, but it wouldn't move, it wouldn't even break. She had no idea what to do now. She turned and started pounding on the window, yelling. She could see lights on the pavement below, but she had no idea what was going on because she couldn't see any other details, she didn't have her glasses on nor contacts in.
She hit the window again, then backed up and fell to the ground, coughing and crawling her way to the door again. She tried the handle one last time if for some miracle it suddenly worked, but the moment her hand wrapped around it she winced and yanked it back; it was too hot to touch. Tears rolling down her cheeks now, she yelled and yelled for help, pounding on the door. She was trapped, she was trapped, and oh god she was going to die here... She'd never told her mother that she didn't truly hate her, she'd never get to see her again, she'd never get to eat sweet, cool, tasty yummy ice cream again, she'd never get to see the endings to her favorite shows...
She was unconscious by the time the firemen broke down her door.
Felicity awoke with a gasp, pain tearing through her throat immediately turning it to a moan. With those memories running fresh through her battered brain, she really didn't want to return to the land of the living. But there was a pleasant voice calling out to her, calling her, saying her name. She decided she wanted to give this voice a chance, she wanted to see its speaker.
A fluttering of eyelashes, and at length, blue eyes met blue. Oliver Queen, her mind immediately supplied. He was here, why was he here? Her thoughts turned to their never-was date and she interally cringed. She'd let him down, whether she'd wanted to or not.
"Sorry," she wheezed, eyes filling with tears. Oliver frowned and then shook his head, for some reason.
"Don't apologize - you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for." He paused as he actually bit his lip. "Me, on the other hand...I'm the one that should apologize, for thinking some not-nice things. I didn't know what had happened, I didn't know it was something so completely out of your control. I was mad at you...and for that I'm sorry."
But it wasn't...what was he talking about? If she'd never involved herself with a creep like Cooper to begin with, this situation would never have happened...and her mind was blending the two fires, but she didn't care, because even if he was not responsible for the second, well, she could blame it on her ex anyway. Her ex who may still be out there somewhere, waiting. She gulped, then winced.
Anyway - to her, it wasn't something as completely out of her control as Oliver seemed to think.
"But I'd still...I'd like to help, I'd like to be there for you in whatever way you'll let me, if that's ok with you." He spoke again, keeping his voice low but his gaze connected to hers so she could see he meant every word, and whoa when had he leaned in that close?
Then his words caught up with her, and she realized what he was really offering, and she kind of froze. Because he didn't even know her, and she didn't really know him, so how could he offer his devotion so seemingly easy? It was...too good to be true. It couldn't possibly be real. She must still be dreaming, she told herself, blinking slowly but thise blues remained trained on her.
What was she supposed to say?