Title: Come As You Are (As You Were)
Part 2 of 3: And my bones are calling out your name
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,650
Characters: Felicity Smoak, Oliver Queen, Ray Palmer
Summary: To be standing with Felicity now—realizing that she was not the woman who he once depended on dangerously, but instead a new woman who no longer strove to impress him or prove her importance in his life—hurt immensely, it caused his heart to throb painfully in his chest and his brow to furrow heavily. All because he was still in love with her, she was still the only thing in his life he wanted, but couldn't allow himself to have. And she always would be.
A/N: And this is Part 2. I'm still not at peace with 3x12, but maybe I'll get over it. Probably not. I've got a drabble in the works that's helping me process. Anways, I'm working on Part 3 of this fic now, though I scrapped my my first and second drafts of it, I'm reworking it now.
The response for this fic has been amazing! This fandom is the best I've ever encountered and I thank you all for your reviews/favorites/alerts. I appreciate all of them greatly! I hope you enjoy Part 2, and you're not all suffering too badly from the 3x12 feels.
Disclaimer: Lyrics/Chapter title are from the song All I Want by Dawn Golden. Fic title is from the song Come As You Are by Nirvana. I do not own either of these songs, nor do I own any of the characters used in this fic, they belong to DC Comics and the CW.
Well, I know I'm hard to take
And my bones are calling out your name
While I try to forget
I used to be something great
Because you're all that, all that I want
Because you're all that, all that I want
He realized it now that Felicity never truly said in certain terms what she felt.
Sure, she spit trivial knowledge about herself and her current emotions all of the time—but when it came to the deep things she kept quiet.
He'd told her several times how he felt about her. She'd never told him once.
For months he'd convinced himself that she just didn't need to. She didn't need to say anything because he just knew how she felt, he assumed she had feelings for him deeper than friendship.
Assumptions and insinuations, but never words or declarations.
He sighed to himself as he stared into the glass case before him where his suit hung, ready for use but he had no need for it that night. His head was not in the right head space to don the hood, he would only hurt himself or someone else if he went out.
Sliding his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks he let his shoulders slump and he turned away from the glass case.
His body froze as the realization that he was not alone hit him. His body tensed when he realized that he had been so preoccupied mentally that he hadn't heard someone else enter the foundry.
He never made mistakes like that.
He needed to forget about speaking to Felicity. For everyone's sake. For everyone's safety.
But she stood in the foundry, she was the intruder that he hadn't heard enter.
He tried to keep his expression neutral as he stared at the blond woman, taking her in slowly.
Her hand was gripping the railing of the staircase tightly, her other hand was curled around the strap of her purse. Her dress was covered up by a plum pea coat, which was only buttoned up halfway, probably in haste. Her hair was still softly curled and hung around her shoulders.
She looked like she had just a few hours before, on the rooftop.
But now they were underground, out of the light, in the shadow. They were in his world.
As he stared at her, he realized, she no longer fit into the darkness of his world.
"What are you doing here?" He meant for his voice to sound hard and guarded, but instead it came out hoarse and throaty, filled to the brim with emotion.
He watched the muscles in Felicity's right hand clench around the railing before she released it and took a step forward, a step into the darkness.
"I," she started, but then something else caught her attention and her eyes jumped away from him, "where's the salmon ladder?"
His breath caught in his throat for a moment as a lump formed, but he swallowed it back.
"It got damaged during a mission." He answered vaguely.
"A mission? But it was in the foundry."
"The foundry was attacked."
"What? When?"
He stared at her for a long moment with a gaze that told her he wouldn't answer that question, that she had given up her right's to those answers months ago.
She swallowed and then nodded, her chin tucking in toward her chest slightly, "right," she whispered through an exhale. Her hand lifted to her forehead, rubbing at an invisible ache, "sorry I asked."
He set his jaw, "you never answered my question."
She gave him a look that said he was being unfair, but then her shoulders fell and she answered, "I didn't like how we ended things earlier."
He wanted to tell her that he hadn't liked how they'd ended anything between them for the past year, but he held his tongue.
The silence spurred her on, "I-I know I had no right asking about Arrow business, okay? I get that I chose to stop being a part of the team and I'm now just a normal civilian who has to pretend like she has no idea who is behind that mask. And that's fair." Her eyes lifted to meet his across the vast space between them, "But you can't say things like you miss me, because that's not fair."
He sucked in a quick breath, feeling like he had been punched in the gut, and his eyebrows tilted upwards just a fraction.
"We've both made a lot of choices in the past six months and we're living with them now. You decided that if I wasn't a part of the team, you couldn't be around me. And I've accepted that, I've sacrificed my friendship with you and I'm sorry if I maybe wanted it back." Felicity finished with a noncommital shrug, motioning with her hands like she always did.
He turned away from her, turning back toward the glass cases of suits and arrows, placing his palms flat on the glass. His body was thrumming with unreleased energy.
"I can't be your friend Felicity."
"That's not—"
He cut her off, "Felicity, I can't."
Something in his voice must have translated all of his unspoken words to her, because she let out a soft, understanding, "oh."
He sighed, feeling tears sting his eyes, because Felicity was standing before him talking about his decisions and actions being unfair—because if anyone was being unfair—it was Felicity.
He had been doing fine, he had been managing until tonight. He had been on a good path until Felicity stood next to him on that rooftop and asked him how he was doing. That was unfair. It was unfair for her to act like he wasn't dying to talk to her, like he wasn't dying to hold her, like he wasn't dying to have her back in his life. She had to know that talking to him would only make things worse, and yet she asked him the question anyways. It was unfair.
It was all unfair.
He'd come back from death ready to give her everything, to lay his heart down for her, to vow to her that he was done with keeping her heart at arm's length.
He was ready to love her, because, as he died, he realized he'd never known what is was really like to be in love with her. He'd only ever adored her from afar, he loved her at a distance, as separate people—but he never got to love with her.
He wanted to share their bond, to have it flow both ways in an unwavering connection that spoke of their commitment to one another.
And then he'd come home to Starling, and she no longer wanted the same things.
She had Ray. She had Palmer Tech.
She didn't have the team, she didn't have the Arrow and she didn't want Oliver.
It had stung, the rejection of the one person who had always supported him, but he could not blame her. He had been dead to her. Before this, he would have been okay with her decision, he would have accepted it.
But that was before he realized how ludicrous he had been acting for months. He could no longer accept her decision, he couldn't be near her, he couldn't speak to her. Even though he desperately wanted to.
She made it easier on both of them and stayed away.
He checked up on her. If she knew, she never gave any indication. He just liked to know she as alive and healthy and happy. If she was, then he had no reason to interfere with the life she had chosen, the life she wanted.
And he would live his life without her, even though he didn't want to. Not anymore.
And it was unfair that she was trying to ruin all of the progress he had made as he worked his way through the ruins of their what-if relationship.
"Oliver."
Her voice was at his back, and he could feel the heat of her just a few short feet behind him. His hands curled into tight fists atop the glass case as he fought for control over everything he was feeling.
"Felicity, you should go." He voice was unconvincing, if anything it sounded like he was really begging her to stay, but his mind told him that she needed to leave, that he needed to be alone. That he needed to put distance between them because they were in dangerous territory.
"Oliver, I'm not leaving."
Why did he think she would listen to him now? She always had been rebellious when it came to his orders, always challenged him, always stood up and called him on his bullshit. But now he really wished she'd just be submissive.
He was fracturing, and he didn't want her to see this, because she wouldn't be around long enough to help put him back together. She would return to Ray Palmer and then they wouldn't speak to each other for a few months and everything would go back to normal.
"Felicity, please."
A firm hand gripping his shoulder caused him to whip around so his back was to the glass cases and he was facing Felicity.
Her hand still hung in the air between them and her eyes were searching his face, her teeth biting into her bottom lip, worry evident in her expression and pity in her gaze.
He didn't want her pity, he bristled.
"You shouldn't be here."
The fire quickly returned to her blue eyes as she rose to his bait.
"I think this is the only place I should be."
"You chose to leave this," he motioned with one hand to the foundry, to her computers, to the glass cases of weapons.
"Because I thought you were gone." She responded, her arms coming up to cross over her chest. "I didn't have the heart to continue this mission without you."
"But you had the heart to move on with Ray."
She flinched, "Ray understood what I was going through. We'd always been attracted to each other, but I was always in love with you. When I knew that I was never going to have a chance at a life with you, I opened myself up to the possibility of Ray."
"I know. I saw."
"What?"
"The night he kissed you."
She deflated slightly, "that was before you left."
He didn't respond, just sighed and paced away from her before rounding back, "I was going to tell you how I felt. I was going to tell you I loved you and that I wanted to try again."
She looked shocked, like the carpet had been ripped out from beneath her feet, but she recovered remarkably quickly. "But you didn't."
"You and Ray make sense."
"And you and I don't." She said, sounding defeated and angry as she glared at him.
"No." He stopped, just in front of her, "nothing in my life has ever made more sense than you and me."
Her jaw went slack as she stared up at him.
"But things are different now, Felicity. You left the team, you started a relationship with Ray and he's good for you. Being away from this life is good for you. Being away from me is good for you." He took a step back. "You deserve happiness, Felicity. If anyone who has survived this life deserves it, it's you."
He exhaled softly and then moved to walk past her, heading for the stairs that led out of the foundry.
"Is it that you don't think you're worthy of happiness? Or is it you don't think you can be happy?"
Her voice caused him to pause on the first step. He turned slightly to face her, his left foot stepping back onto the concrete floor of the foundry as his brow furrowed, "what?"
"Do you purposefully try to deny yourself happiness? Or do you think real happiness doesn't exist? Which is it, because they're the only two reasons I can think of as to why you don't want to be in a relationship with someone you really care about."
Her throwing his own words back at him stung, but her questions stunned him in an entirely different way because even he couldn't come up with an answer.
And then his mind flickered back to the mountaintop, to Ra's al Ghul's sword slicing through his torso, tearing vital organs and ending his life. And in his last moment all he had seen was Felicity, and all he could think of was all the moments in which she had made him really smile and how he would have given up anything to return to her, to change the way he had treated her.
His feet carried him across the foundry floor without thought and suddenly he was chest-to-chest with her and she was back up against the glass case of arrows.
"I was ready to take my happiness. I came home after Ra's al Ghul killed me to do just that. I was going to have my happiness, consequences be damned because I was done with not being able to feel happiness every single day."
His mouth was a hairsbreadth away from hers as he loomed over her, his face just far enough away so they could maintain eye contact and his blue eyes were dark and intense as he stared down at her.
Felicity's mouth opened and closed as she tried to respond, but she had no words.
"When I woke up, alive, all I knew was that I wanted to come home to Starling City, and tell you I love you and that we deserve the happiness I know we can give each other."
He watched the tears well in her eyes, because she understood finally, and she knew where this was going.
"But when I came home, I quickly realized I couldn't have what I wanted—I was too late."
"It's not too late."
He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose, "Felicity."
He wouldn't do this to her, he would not be the reason things went south between her and Ray, he would not be the other man, he would not be her infidelity.
When her hand landed on his chest, he opened his eyes and stared down at her with an expression that pinned her down. She didn't move another inch, she barely breathed, just stared up at him with a pleading look in her blue eyes that he could not understand—that he could not allow himself to decipher.
"You're making this harder than it has to be," he whispered through a tightened jaw, "I've done well in keeping myself away because Ray is better for you than I will ever be. I will always care for you, Felicity. But it is too late for us to be anything more than what we are now."
For a moment, the air between them remained charged as Felicity's brows furrowed indignantly and then it was broken, and the buzzing fell flat as she wrenched herself away from him. She stepped back, trying to put space between them, only to run into the glass case, causing the shelving to shudder slightly with the force that she had run into it.
Oliver stepped back, allowing her space and he dropped his eyes to the floor, focusing on keeping his heartbeat slow and his breathing steady.
Her heard her heels clack against the floor as she slowly walked away, but she stopped at his shoulder, turning her head to look at his profile.
"What are we now?"
He lifted his head, eyes staring into the glass case holding his Arrow suit, seeing the reflection of her back in the glass.
"Strangers."
And she left, taking with her the life he wanted.
Leaving him with the life he deserved.
Still pretty angsty, I know. But right now, I'm feeling pretty angsty about the Olicity relationship, so... Drop a review, tell me how you're feeling? xo