Four.2

'The paradox is that, part of what binds us closest together and makes it true that no man is an island, is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you is there a self that longs to be known and accepted, but that there is also such a self in me, in everyone else the world over.

So when we meet as strangers, when even friends look like strangers, it is good to remember that we need each other greatly you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than more of the time we dare to admit.'

Frederick Buechner

After Tommy makes sure that Laurel is unlikely to wake if he moves, he snatches his phone and tries to contact Oliver - knowing that it's a useless attempt, but having to try anyways. The phone rings and rings and all Tommy can see is Oliver, probably running on rooftops,fighting China White, or putting arrows in her throat, or just snapping her neck.

There are a thousand ways to kill someone; Tommy personally knows about 13 that only require his bare hands. But the knife buried in China White's shoulder had been deliberate on his part, not a happy accident: Tommy did not survived three years of hellish torture just to yield now. His life those three years would have been so much easier if Tommy had allowed himself to become a murderer. He would have escaped that much sooner. But he hadn't. Personally, Tommy still is not sure of what had stopped him. Taking a life had been the last lesson the Magician had tried to teach him and out of pride perhaps, Malcolm had always left Tommy a choice. It had been important to him: the choice to kill.

Fucking egomaniac.

Most days Tommy believes he had resisted because killing would have been Malcolm's final victory; the last piece of Tommy Merlyn that the Magician had wanted to strip away. Perhaps it had been out of sheer malice, anger and pure defiance, that Tommy had wanted to deny him that. There are times though, rare times, when he feels like a good man and can bring himself to believe that it was more than that. That he had fought so hard because he had wanted to keep every piece of his soul he could afford to hold on to. Back then, between the betrayal, the pain and the anger, that last piece of him had seemed to sell for so little. The very last inch of him left; but within that inch, Tommy had been free and it had been the only freedom he had known for three years. A choice…

He had not let go of it then, and he would not now. Not for anything.

I am not my father's creature! …I am my mother's son.

Tonight though, seeing that woman aim her gun directly above Laurel's heart had snapped something in him and Tommy had known, without any manner of doubt in his heart, that if his soul were in the balance with Laurels life… he would chose Laurel. He hadn't hesitated, hadn't doubted it. He had chosen to act differently, yes, but he would have killed that white-haired woman if he had to.

That kind of clarity is... frightening. Now, in the darkness of their apartment, with Laurel sleeping safely in their room, Tommy wonders if there is some truth to what Malcolm believed: that perhaps there really is a killer in every man and all it takes to uncover him is the right incentive. (and thank god Malcolm had never understood Tommy well enough to find that button.)

But that grain of truth is also why Tommy knows that there is be no crevice or hole Chine White can crawl into tonight, that will hide her from the Hood's retribution.

Oliver is no stranger to killing (sometimes his familiarity with it makes a certain shiver crawl up Tommy's spine) but he has never killed in direct retribution for as long as Tommy has been with him since his return… but then again, Felicity has never been involved before. And if knowing that the Triad has a bullet with Laurel's name on it had almost made Tommy snap… well, three guesses what the mere possibility of the same thing happening to Felicity will make Oliver do.

Yeah, China White is probably already dead. (the possibility that she might have killed Oliver never even crosses Tommy's mind) Generally, Oliver is restrained in the violence he provokes in others; focused. Oh, he is capable of brutality the likes of which Tommy has rarely seen before, but he is never needlessly cruel. Oliver is calculating and even cold, but not sadistic; he is not sorry for killing, but he takes no kind of pleasure from it either. The Hood has never made his targets suffer a painful death, not even the worst of them. But Tommy knows that Oliver has the capacity for that kind of coldness; he can see it in his friend's eyes, in the lurking darkness that sometimes overtakes them. There was no doubt in Tommy's mind that Oliver was fully capable of inflicting maximum damage on someone methodically, patiently. And maybe that's what he's doing to the assassin that had almost put a bullet through Felicity Smoak.

Tommy redials for the third time, the ring echoing into the void, unanswered.

Whatever his friend had been through in these last 5 years, has broken him into a person that sometimes Tommy barely recognizes. There is something dark and twisted Oliver now; a rage that feels implacable and makes it very hard to see what's beneath it, if there is anything of his old friend left in there at all. But if there was, if there was any kind of hope left in Oliver, it was very closely entwined with the people he loved. And Tommy knew that the only way Oliver feels he can love without damaging people closest to him, is by protecting them.

The ring gets cut off, the call goes into voicemail again. Tommy didn't expect Oliver to pick up, not really, but having confirmation of it makes a heavy weight settle in his stomach.

The next morning, the news was all over every channel in the city, and a couple of international ones too: China White, suspected leader of the Triad and implicated in a dozen hits around the world, was found dead in the docks of Starling City, 10 of her people badly wounded, 3 of them dead. They give a recount of her injuries (three broken ribs, multiple bruises and a stab wound on her shoulder) and Tommy is relieved to deduce that the fight that been vicious, but quick. Efficient to the last, as was Oliver's style… but not as controlled as he usually is: China White's neck had been snapped so viciously that her collarbone poked from out of the skin grotesquely. She was the only one that didn't have a single arrow in her body. (…not nearly as detached as usual, either.)

oOo

Navigating the press coverage of the Triads case that Laurel was heading is like trying to steer through a storm, but thankfully Felicity avoids the worst of it. Laurel however is right in the eye of the storm and she is eating it up, crusading like she is born for it… and maybe she is. Eventually Felicity convinces herself that the Hood wanted nothing bad to do with her and, though Digg gets another friend of his on duty to shadow her during the day, the police blanket on her gets lifted (with much reluctance from Quentin, obviously, cause the man has the pigheaded of… well, of a stone wall, perhaps.)

In the end, the most exciting thing that happens to her those two weeks after the attempted assassination on Laurel is the fact that Walter, during one of their lunches with Thea, makes Felicity promise that she would not, for any reason, visit the warehouse that Tempest had bought in Starling. He made her promise twice, and then he promised back that he would explain everything once he knew more. She didn't have a chance to ask anything more about it because Thea came back from the ladies room and all Felicity could do was talk about how much she wanted to visit Australia, but she never would because kangaroos wigged her out and they were probably everywhere down there. Walter smiles tightly, promising to scoop the place out for her.

And then, just when Felicity starts to think that the excitement in her life is finally over, she has another very close and personal meeting with bullets through windows.

Yes, this is officially her life now: secret presents from the vigilante, Triad assassins and shootouts. The question that rises in these cases is obviously 'How the frack!?' but apparently that didn't seem to matter to the universe.

Oh, and another thing movies don't prepare you for: getting shot in any kind of capacity - it freaking hurts!

oOo

"I really don't see how you have a choice here." Tommy says, raising his voice over the incessant thuds of Oliver's fists on the practice dummy. If he keeps at this, he will have to replace the thing – again! That's how he'd been dealing these past two weeks: breaking practice dummies and living more under that hood and out of it.

'Keeps my ears warm.'

Tommy snorts at the memory. Cheeky fucker.

And also, 'dealing' is too generous a term for what Oliver is doing. Tommy and Laurel are dealing: Laurel by throwing herself into her cases and locking up slimy fuckers like nobody's business. Tommy by going full-on mother hen on her (and setting up the kind of security in and around her house that would make the Fort Knox proud), which Laurel found by turns endearing and irritating, depending on her mood. Felicity is dealing, by working her ass off harder than ever.

Oliver most definitely is not dealing. In fact, not only was he empathetically not dealing, but it's as if he has no idea how.

He hasn't said anything of course (why would he? He is too busy being a brooding, growling asshole!), but Tommy is not blind: Oliver is more brutal than ever on the field, the accumulating anger exploding out of him. When he is not punching things, or training, he is sitting in a corner, self-loathing expression painted on his face like a mask, forgetting time and company. Because, as Tommy had predicted, Oliver had found a way to blame himself for what had happened with the Triad, so now every time Felicity's name is mentioned, he looks ready to punch a hole through the closest wall; or Tommy's head, on occasion. In two weeks he has barely strung more than 12 words together and quite frankly, it is driving Tommy at the end of his rope. He has no idea what to do, how to handle this. Oliver isn't the kind of person you handle anyway, not usually - and even less when he is like this. He is more like a sword without a hit: there is just no way to get to him without him splitting yourself in two.

For a while Tommy had let it be, but now there seems to be no way around it: after killing Holder and almost getting Oliver killed too with a poison-laced bullet, Deadshot had slipped through Oliver's fingers, leaving behind only a shot up laptop. At Oliver's request, Tommy had tried to (discretely) get someone from Merlyn Global's IT department look it over, but no technician in there could tell him anything more than 'sorry, this one's friend'. So when Tommy had – rightfully! - suggested Felicity - aptly standing 15 feet away and ready to catch whatever Oliver threw at him. Predictably, Oliver had given him a glare that could curdle milk.

"We know that he is targeting the potential buyers of Unidac Industries." Oliver says through gritted teeth. "We know the auction is tonight, in four hours, and we know where. We'll be ready for him."

Tommy narrows his eyes. "You keep saying 'we'. I don't remember agreeing to be your sidekick."

And this time Oliver does meet his eye, and the calmness Tommy sees there sets him on edge. He doesn't like it when Oliver looks at him like he is a target.

"The Exchange Building is surrounded by three towers with eye-lines into the building. Lawton can get his killshot off from virtually anywhere. I can't cover the whole area alone Tommy."

It's as close to 'I need your help' as Oliver is ever going to get and Tommy knows it, but that's not the point. He doesn't share Oliver's mission and he doesn't agree with the Hood's methods (and that is putting it fucking lightly), but this is not about that stupid list and crossing names off it. This is about protecting innocent people from a hired assassin, and that's who Tommy finds that, yeah if that is the case, he doesn't exactly mind stepping in. It's a surprise to him that he feels that way, but apparently not to Oliver, the smug bastard.

The understanding passes between them silently, and at that pint even Tommy's small nod is superfluous: they already said everything there was to say in a look.

"You should think about enrolling Lance too." Tommy mentions casually. "Even with the two of us, someone inside the auction needs to provide security and crowd control if something happens."

Oliver nods. "Already have."

This gives Tommy considerable pause. It's is a bit of a deviation from pattern: Oliver doesn't like people interfering. It had taken him a month before he relaxed into the idea of Tommy so much as visiting the Foundry, even if it was to occasionally spar, or share a meal, or try to talk. But he doesn't comment further than a small hum. He knows Oliver is planning something – beyond this one mission, that is. But though the secretive bastard does share that part, as far as strategy is concerned they put their heads together and come up with a pretty decent plan. When they set out, both in their respective camouflages (Oliver in his green suit and Tommy in his tux, a choice that is almost ironic, on both their parts), they do so thinking they are ready.

But not as ready as they should have been, apparently. Which is probably why they end up with an armful of bleeding Felicity Smoak barely two hours later.

Things go to hell surprisingly fast.

Tommy is used to speed and strength and relying on his trained reflexes, but at most, he has had to watch out for only one person (Malcolm's lesson had never included the protection of anyone but himself, but that is not the point. It is not technique or training Tommy finds himself lacking). When the bullets start flying and people start screaming, the confusion of the crowd makes it difficult to actively do anything that feels truly productive. Anticipating this, (and paranoid because, goddamnit, Thea was not supposed to be there!) Tommy had been steering her and Moira away from the windows for the last 10 minutes.

"Tommy, where?"

It's irritating how even Oliver's voice is in his ear.

"Southwest." Tommy murmurs as keeps pushing both Thea and Moira towards the back of the room. "Between the twentieth and twenty second floor probably."

"Got him. Get my sister and my mother outa there Tommy." He hears Oliver say before the rush of wind blocks his voice. He was supposed to keep an eye on Walter, but - as he tells Moira while urging her to walk faster - Walter is already safely out, with the police. Tommy escorts both Queen women out and patiently waits in the cordoned area. He holds on to Thea tightly the whole time, one arm wrapped around her shoulders: she is still shaking. Over the coms he can hear Oliver's clash with Deadshot, and silently urges Oliver to make it quick. The sooner he gets out of here the better, because in a few more minutes this whole blocks is gonna be crawling with cops.

It's not that surprising that the assassin seems to think he and Oliver are in the same line of work, but the way Oliver's response is borderline indignant, proves to Tommy that whatever the outward appearance, Oliver had quite a lot to say about the things he did and how he did them. Whatever his actions, there is no doubt in Tommy's mind that Oliver is convinced he is doing the right thing. And that makes Tommy wonder, not for the first time, about what kind of pitfalls of humanity Oliver has witnessed to make him think that these kinds of drastic measures are the right way to go.

"Police will storm the building soon." Tommy murmurs as he fakes a cough.

"I'm already out." Oliver grunts, and then. "Thank you, Tommy." And they both know that Oliver doesn't only mean than you for identifying the angle of the shot as fast as he did and sending him to the right location.

Tommy's lips curve into a smile… which is about the time when Thea jerks out of his arms and runs. Tommy doesn't actively stop her, but he turns fully intending on following to wherever it is she is going. And then, when one word out of Thea's mouth stops him.

"Felicity!"

And whatever Tommy was about to yell at Thea for running away from him freezes in his throat. Because there Felicity is, on the back on an ambulance, one sleeve ripped off and a thick bandage around her upper arm, with John Diggle standing like a tower to her left, not exactly fussing but not allowing her out of his sight either. Tommy has no idea how the fuck he missed her before: she is like a freaking beacon in that flaming red dress, shivering and looking pale as a sheet.

At the sound of Thea's voice, Felicity jerks in her direction and a moment later she is out of the ambulance and they are hugging. Felicity looks at him with misty eyes once he reaches them, looking both shell-shocked and relieved and afraid.

"Are you… Oh god, you're hurt!" and this is the first time Thea's voice shakes, thick with tears and fear.

"Yes I am. I mean, I was." Felicity says with a smile, though she is pale and her lips tremble a little. "Bummer too: I really liked this dress."

"Felicity!" Thea's tone is admonishing and scared, and it makes Felicity's eyes soften. She reaches to Thea, smoothing her curs from her face with one hand in a gesture that is so familiar it makes Tommy's breath catch.

"I'm ok, Thea." Felicity reassures the other girl, but its an empty promise.

"Tommy…"

Oliver's voice carries the kind of tremulous uncertainty that is entirely foreign on his vigilante persona, and it makes Tommy's hair stand on its end.

"Felicity, was it the glass or a bullet." Tommy asks, and there must be something that gives away the gravity of the situation in his voice or in his face, because Felicity stills, eyes fixed on his.

She shakes her head, confused. "I'm not… sure…"

"Bullet." John Diggle answers for her, hand on her shoulder. "Got her out of the way, but not fast enough."

Tommy bites back the curse that, on the other side of the line, Oliver lets flow freely. Among them Tommy thinks he makes out the word 'distraction' but he can't be sure. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what Oliver is going to do, though: Oliver – every version of Oliver, even the ones Tommy doesn't immediately associate with his childhood friend – was amazingly predictable when it came to Felicity Smoak. Tommy eyes John Diggle carefully, hoping that distraction Oliver muttered about is a freaking good one, 'cause that man has hardly blinked away from Felicity, keeping her in his radar like she is his reason for breathing. But just as Tommy comes up with that thought, the twenty-second floor of the building across the street explodes in cacophony of light and fire, rising a new wave of panic among people and policemen both. Tommy grabs Thea and covers her with his body from the flying debris, while Diggle does the same thing with Felicity. In that split second when everyone ducks and the lights of the street flicker on and off, Tommy senses a shadow move towards them. He knows who it is, but it still takes all of his self control not to tense for a blow. (Instincts are harder to master once pain has drilled them into your bones, the magician's sly voice reminds him, making Tommy gritty his teeth.)

Oliver has Diggle in a choke-hold and dropping down in less than a moment. The next moment he is gone, and Felicity with him. All that Tommy hears from her is a yelp that nobody else catches.

oOo

When he picks her up, she sucks in a harsh, surprised breath, but she can hardly resist him. She still tries though: her hands push at his shoulders with a barely-there pressure that is alarming. She tries to talk too (scream?), but he puts his hand over her mouth. He absorbs her shiver of fear, taking a small comfort in the promise he makes her: 'I'm not gonna hurt you.' but that kind of denial is a thin blanket already. From the way Felicity is struggling, she doesn't believe it either. Oliver doesn't let it stop him though.

He's never moved so fast, doesn't even bother to be silent. It a strange mixture of absolute focus and threadbare panic that he feels in his veins as he shoves her as carefully as possible in the front seat, buckling her in before sliding as swiftly as possible into his and flooring it.

Felicity tries to struggle with her seat-belt.

"Oh god…"

"Miss Smoak, listen to me: I mean it, I'm not going to hurt you. This is not a kidnapping." And it's the first time he hates that voice modulator. It doesn't make him sound reassuring at all – as if to prove that she flinches even further away from him, almost flat against the door.

"It sure as hell… looks like one." she hisses, breathing shallow and fast. "Ugh, I feel strange… Did you roofie me? Oh god… Oh, I'm in trouble…"

Oliver clenches his jaw shut and swerves between traffic, blocking out the fear that makes her voice shake. He is going so fast that she doesn't even try to open it, though her hands are still trying to undo the seatbelt (he doesn't miss how she fumbles with it and the thought that she is already experiencing the first stages of muscle failure makes his heart thud against his breastbone so hard that he thinks it might just crack a few ribs.

"Why… what…"

But precisely in that moment Oliver takes a brusque turn and she is jolted back into the seat with a whimper.

"The sniper that shot up the auction tonight laces his bullets with poison. You're experiencing the first symptoms." Oliver keeps his voice even and as calm as he can make it. It's not as difficult as he might have thought, being detatched from this moment: he needs about 84% of his concentration to race through the glades without crashing them.

"Is that a synthetic voice modulator? I bet it is." She murmurs. "You sound… really creepy, by the way. Unless it's your real voice, cause in that case… in that case… Ow, that hurts."

He can't afford to take his eyes off the road but he can tell she is moments away from going under completely: her words are starting to slur, like she is drunk. Her chin is already falling on her chest.

"We're almost there." He grunts between tightly clenched teeth, more for his own benefit than hers.

He isn't sure how many traffic laws he breaks to get to the foundry – probably all of them. When he skids the car to a stop, Felicity has already lost consciousness. Once he sets her on the table, her pulse is barely there under his (shaking) fingers and he has to take his glove off to find it. (That one moment when he thinks he can't and she'd just died in his arms, his everything screeches to a halt and Oliver feels all his energy, all his strength abandon him. Fear he knows intimately, but this… this is different). But her hearts is still beating, she is still alive and Oliver doesn't have time for the upheaval inside him; he can't stop to feel any of this. Instead, he gently lifts her arm and pierces the blue vein on the inside of her elbow, injecting the antidote straight to her bloodstream and hooks her up to an IV to keep her hydrated. He moves with deliberation; only action, no thought, focusing his every sense inwards - slowing his pulse, controlling his breathing, blocking out distractions. Only her pulse under his fingers matters and he narrows his world down to that, to her steady breaths and nothing else. Detachment is a dangerous talent to cultivate so meticulously, but it is also one that Oliver has developed when he realised he had to survive by sitting himself at the same table with the worst of humanity. It was either that, or go mad, so he found himself fostering and honing disconnection as if it was another of his senses.

But after a while Felicity's heartbeat picks up, her breathing evens out and her skin doesn't feel so clammy, so Oliver doesn't have an objective or crisis to deal with anymore.

All he has is Felicity Smoak in a flame-red dress, laying on the cold, metal table of the foundry, surrounded by his gear and his arrows and a general feeling of surreality stirring in his gut. Life doesn't make any fucking sense anymore, because if there was one place she was never, ever supposed to set foot in, was this.

Yet there she is, as real as his hand around the back of her head, holding it up so the small gulps of tea he pours between her lips can go down her throat more easily. And there he is, trying to keep distance, to ignore the closeness of her and what it means to him, trying only to focus on keeping up with the rhythm of her pulse. It gets harder to do so with each of her strengthening heartbeats, making the unavoidable reality of his situation come into sharp, inescapable focus: the crisis is over and now there is nothing to stop him from just… being there, closer to Felicity than he's been to her in five years!

And god… he has no idea what he's feeling anymore! Cat read the emotions coursing through him, its as if they're written in a different language.

Being close to her used to fill him up with warmth; it used to tether him back to things he knew in a time when he had felt completely removed from his life. Now though… now the nearness of her lands heavily in him, like a black stone falling, and Oliver is completely unprepared for it.

It's nothing like he thought it would be. His heart thuds its way out of his forced composure and there's nothing Oliver can even begin to do about it. He looks at her, seeing her for the first time (her, not the paleness of her skin, the tiny glass-made cuts all over her, or the bruises); he looks at her and sees her teasing smile, even though her mouth is unmoving, her deep-red lipstick smudged. He sees her smooth face, the long lashes… and remembers how they used to flutter closed every time he would lean in to kiss her. Sees her right hand and her wrist wrapped in bandages, the quick work of the paramedics, and remembers the way she used to touch him (tentative at first, then all over, with not even a memory of hesitation left). He looks at her and whatever remnant of feeling he has left, all those pebbles of emotions he's been hiding from, they overpower him, cracking through his bones and veins like thunder, breaking goosebumps over his skin. The feeling shudders up his spine, settling beneath his breastbone and the weight of it curves Oliver over her without him even being aware he's moving. And from that deep please inside him, his emotions echo and shiver through him with every heartbeat, like ripples over water: starting small and getting wider, upsetting the whole surface.

His fingers shake with the very tips of them skim the skin of her shoulder, the warmth of her hitting him with the strength of an electric current. He takes in huge gulps of ai, but the oxygen seems to have left the room completely. He touches his forehead to hers lightly, and his chest opens up, leaves his gasping. He doesn't even realise the reason behind his blurry sight until he closes his eyes and one teardrop makes it down his nose and falls on her cheekbone, trailing down.

He can practically taste her scent from this close, the warm and lingering sweetness of her… and the coppery tang of blood, too. And once that registers, it freezes him, crashing him back into himself, into that moment…

Because the problem with making apathy your main way of coping with reality, is that the moment you let yourself feel something, you feel everything - and it doesn't stop. And to Oliver, that feels like going under a wave of broken glass: there is no way for him to resurface from that, other than in shreds.

So he straightens (even though his insides are screaming to touch her, to gather her into his arms and fall right into her; a need so acute it slices through him harder with every inch of distance he puts between them); makes himself take his hands off her (gently, pulling her hair from beneath her shoulders and draping it to her side). He turns her back to the gurney completely, takes a deep breath, then two, planting his hands on the cool metal of the table and hunching his shoulders, trying to roll back into himself. Striving to contain this… whatever he is feeling. It's perverse how he feels like he's having a panic attack, when this is what he's wanted, what he's literally dreamed about, for years. Except in his fantasies she had not been bleeding on his table, right in the heart of his secret. Oliver knows that's only a part of what's unhinging him at the seams. The real reason is her; it's them. It's finally being so close and finding that his hands shake if he so much as reaches to skim his fingertips across her face; it's a want that rattles all the way to his bones in a way he didn't even think was possible anymore, and yet he can't even remember why: why he wants to touch her in the first place, why he's breathing so hard, why his palms sweating and the air in the room is not enough to fill his lungs.

Felicity was shot, poisoned and she is in the foundry, unconscious. Oliver repeats that reality to himself, consciously trying to slow down, find a point to this situation where he can tether himself to in any kind of rational way. In the end he can't find one, not really, so he surrenders for tending to her the only way he knows how without the risk of losing the small measure of sanity he has left. He grabs his grey blanket (too rough and scratchy for her, but then again he'd never imagined Felicity would be the one he would wrap it around) and gently wraps it around her. He unwraps the hasty dressing on her hand, exposing the deep cut that has sliced her palm open (it will be a couple of weeks before she can type without wincing, and the thought makes a wave of hot anger lap at his ankles, but he pushes it away). He cleans it carefully, puts butterfly stitches on it before bandaging it again, acutely aware of the smallness of her hand in his (no longer a memory, now. She had always been real to him though, even when she was only in his head. Sometimes, she had been the realest thing he experienced. His only tether to sanity, to the memory of a feeling he had given up on.)

That's how Tommy finds him thirty minutes later: hunched over Felicity's unmoving form, putting a wide green leaf over the wound on her upper arm that would help her heal and carefully wrapping clean bandage over it.

"She's fine" Oliver says as he straightens. He doesn't even notice how his hand smoothed back her hair from her forehead, touch lingering.

Tommy does though. Oliver's words fill his with relief and he finally is able to take a deep breath as he lets himself fall on the closest stool. Oliver wishes he could do the same, but he can't. He is stuck by her side, unable to move closer, unwilling to move away.

"That's good to know." Tommy says around a sigh. "But we have another problem."

Oliver doesn't look away from Felicity's face, but nods anyway, encouraging Tommy to go on, even though he looks supremely unconcerned. (Tommy pretends not to notice how Oliver's fingertips catch a straying lock of Felicity's hair, winding the pale strand around a finger and then letting go. It's an deliberate gesture, the enactment of an old, almost-forgotten habit.)

"John Diggle." Tommy says and its all that needs to be said, but it gets worse than that. "I think he has a trace on her or something cause last i saw him, he was heading for the Glades like he knew exactly where to look. Does Felicity have her phone with her? He could have tracked its signal to here."

There is a certain calm to Oliver's motions, to his face that is really starting to freak Tommy out. And yeah, Tommy gets that having Felicity there with him is a big deal, but you'd think that risking almost certain exposure would make a bigger damage Oliver's calm a bit more, considering the length he has gone to keep his recent 'updated-to-alive' status hidden.

As it is, Oliver just shakes his head. His fingers skim the shell of Felicity's ear, tracing the industrial piercing on it - making Tommy feel the need to look away, because that look on Oliver's face, he deserved to have privacy for that, if nothing else.

"It's not her phone." He hears Oliver say in a tone that Tommy has never heard before (doesn't take a genius to know why). "It's probably her earring. Could be anything really. She used to talk about nanotechnology all the time."

It makes Tommy feel like the most worthless piece of shit on the planet, it really does, especially since the weight of the sadness in Oliver's voice, that softness that practically thrums with longing - Tommy knows all that well enough to recognize it and respect it, and want to get the hell out of its hearing distance so that Oliver can have at least this moment to himself - but they don't have time for this! Because in about another five minutes, two hundred pounds of muscle strapped on the six-point-three frame of one very protective and mighty pissed off Special Forces Commander would bust through their doors like a hurricane (with possibly half the SCPD force in tow, for all they knew) and they had to do something about that. Because though the truth was that Oliver and Tommy could handle Digg - hell, Oliver could handle him on his own - that was very much not the point. Digg was Felicity's friend and he had been on good(ish) terms with Oliver too, as far as Tommy knew, before the whole Gambit thing.

So hence, their problematic situation.

Yet, Oliver seemed fresh out of fucks to give, and it was starting to get Tommy antsy because godammit, he didn't sign on for this shit!

"Oliver!"

"I heard you Tommy." comes the supremely serene response. It makes Tommy frown because this kind of carelessness, its totally out of character for Oliver these days… which means its probably not carelessness at all. And it brings Tommy back to his suspicions that Oliver had been planning something for a while.

"Oliver… what are you doing?"

Oliver doesn't respond. He doesn't pick up his bow to face off with John Diggle, doesn't do anything.

"Did you... did you contact him? Tell him you have Felicity and that she's safe?"

Meaning, is he gonna storm this place with Lance and the rest of SCPD or not?

"In a manner of speaking, yeah."

"What makes you think he's not talking to Lance right now!"

But Oliver just shakes his head. "He won't."

And then it dawns on Tommy - and he feels stupid for not seeing it sooner.

"Oh." because that's about the only word he is capable of, once he realizes the fullness of the situation. and then, once he has a moment to think about it, he gets angry. "You idiot! Have you lost your mind?"

It makes Oliver huff, which is what passes for a laugh these days with him.

"Jury's still out on that." he says calmly, and Tommy can't believe the man's nerve! (he totally can though, cause this, this is pure Ollie shamelessness)

"Look, Oliver, I am the first person to tell you that you can't do this alone, but John Diggle is the last man in the world to ask into this! He will out you in a heartbeat, Ollie."

That catches Oliver's attention, finally making him look away from the blonde laying still and pale on that sorry slab of a medical table.

"He won't." Oliver says firmly, and he believes it too. "Jon's a soldier. He understands war; he is loves this city and is more loyal to it than anyone I've ever met. He will do what's necessary to save it."

Tommy bites back a curse, lips thinning in anger. "Forget the city for a second. I'm not talking about him outing you to the police."

"What?"

Ah there it is, the all-encompassing frown of doom. Finally something familiar (and yeah, Tommy was well aware he was starting to contradict himself, but fuck it.)

"Felicity, Ollie. He will tell Felicity. There is no way in hell he won't."

And the frown gets deeper, Oliver's eyes get darker. "What do you mean?"

Tommy shakes his head. For all the tabs that Oliver keeps on the people closest to him, sometimes he misses the simplest things.

"John Diggle is one of Felicity's best friends, Oliver. And he knows exactly what she went through when you were lost at sea, because he was there with her the whole way. If you think for a moment he won't tell her you're alive, you're seriously deluding yourself."

That is the first time that he sees a serious pause come over Oliver's features, but the next moment the hesitation is gone.

"He won't though. Because he cares about her and he wants her safe. And there is no safety in knowing about… about all this – as we both well know." Oliver pins Tommy with a hard look, meant to remind him of the Triad mess and the fact that they both lost two very important people that night, because of something Oliver called 'carelessness', but all Tommy wants to do is scoff in his face. Yeah, Oliver thinks that, but that's because he assumes that everyone loves the way he does.

Personally, Tommy can live with the consequences of however this gamble turns out. If this is a chance Oliver is willing to take, so be it. All the better for it really. Why are you arguing against this so hard? Tommy asks himself. Oh right. Because one never knew with Oliver's moods these days and that meant that an arrow through John's throat was probably just as possible as an alliance, if the whole thing went sideways. (Lies, really. Because they no matter what Oliver's homicidal tendencies as of late, he would never kill someone like John Diggle just out of convenience.)

"Fine. But…"

Neither of them gets to hear what Tommy would add to that though, because a small groan echoes between them, and both their eyes snap on Felicity, who is apparently not as unconscious as they had thought she was. Tommy sees the way Oliver goes utterly still, the tension returning to make the line of his shoulders even more pronounced. One of his hands hoovers over her, as if to touch her, but then he makes a fist of it and slowly, it falls back to his side… and Tommy feels is a pang of deep sympathy for his friend, who is so fucked up in the head he is afraid to touch the woman he loves.

A small whimper of discomfort makes it past Felicity's lips and and it makes Oliver flinch. He moves quickly, the needle in his hand before Tommy can see what it is he filled her with (though he dearly hopes its not morphine cause that one makes Felicity wonky as hell). After a few moments, Felicity quietens, her face smooth again from any remains of pain, though she keeps moving restlessly.

"What's the matter?" Tommy asks once he is close enough to put a hand on her forehead, feeling for a fever.

"The psilocybin in the curare is starting to take effect." Oliver says and this time, the calm in his voice is forced.

Tommy's eyes snap on Oliver's face.

"What, she'll hallucinate?"

Oliver isn't looking at him as he shakes his head, his lips pursed almost in anger. "More like really vivid dreaming. Not the good kind, usually. Most people talk about nightmares."

A soft beep off Oliver's computers alerts them to a presence in the foundry and they exchange a look. Tommy rolls his eyes.

"You owe me big, Queen." he says with a firm finger in front of Oliver's face, to drive his point home. Because facing a pissed off John Diggle right about now was not Tommy's idea of fun. But Oliver just nods, solemn as ever, and Tommy waves him away as he pulls on his black jacket, pulling the dark sash over his mouth and nose to protect his identity.

It takes longer than Tommy had initially thought to take John Diggle down without damaging the man too much (that soldier fight hard… and boy is he pissed - the hits he does manage to land make Tommy feel like he's being beaten with a block of solid marble!). To add to the fun of it all, Tommy also has the pleasure of dodging a couple of bullets before the gun is knocked out of the ex-military man's hands. Once the giant has been subdued, there comes the hard part though - the part Tommy and not been looking forward to; namely dragging the huge fucker down into Oliver's foxhole. Yeah, good times.

The things I'll do for love, Tommy things ruefully as he lays Diggle on a less grimy part of the foundry's floor. What what he sees when he walks into the small medical area where he left Oliver in, that is what stops Tommy cold (…because how else was one supposed to react to seeing Oliver Queen, one time best friend and current Starling vigilante, wrapped around Felicity Smoak like a barnacle, her head on his shoulder and his buried in the slope of her neck, her whole body curved around his torso like she was trying to wrap herself around him, even half-delusional and sedated out of her mind…) But then again, Tommy should have expected this kind of fuckup, because honestly, when have Oliver's plans ever gone as he meant them to? Before the Gambit, or after, that was probably one of the few things that would never change.

And maybe Tommy was an optimist by nature, but there was a small kind of comfort in that.

oOo

AN:: I'm sorry for changing that last part - about Felicity beign shot instead of Diggle I mean, but I promise that it's for plot reasons. I needed it to be Felicity because something happens later that is gonna tie into this... and because i needed Oliver to hold her at least once before she finds him out. That was also important... for reasons... many reasons...
But if I can figure out how to make that happen without changing the canon part of 'Lone Gunmen' then I'll probably change this chapter, because I have always thought that while Digg's involvement had been planned by Oliver in advance, and didnt just happen because he was shot, the fact that Oliver also saved his life was important to their relationship, the dynamic they had.
anyway, enough of that.
i hope you liked. thank you, as always, for reading