XI.

Oliver

Sometimes, it seemed like he would never leave the island. Not really. Even when he had left the first time and was in Hong Kong, then Russia, he knew that a part of him would always be on there, as left behind and dead as those he had lost to the island.

Yao Fei. Shado. Even Slade and Sara who had both made it off, but were just as imprisoned as he was.

Felicity… was different. There was something about her. Maybe it was the innocence, the mere fact that she had lived this double life with them for so long and still remained pure. He had the feeling she could be dragged through the fires of hell and still remain as untainted as ever.

He'd known for a while that he would do anything to protect her, to protect the light inside her. But when he kissed her, when she kissed him… it was like nothing he'd ever felt before.

He'd loved before, of course he had. But with Felicity, like everything about and around her, it was different. She'd snuck up on him, endearing him with her accidental innuendos and rambled explanations that somehow made whatever she had let slip even worse. She believed in him when nobody else - including himself - did.

She alone knew each and every part of him. She knew of the Oliver before the island, even if she hadn't been around him at the time. The tabloids had spared no expense in highlighting his many faults, and he was ashamed to admit that more often than not they got it right on the mark. She knew more about his time on the island - and off - than anyone else, even Digg.

When they kissed, everything fell away. There was only him and her.

When they kissed, he knew he would do anything and everything to protect the light inside her.

Felicity

Oliver had a bit of an exhibitionist streak about him. Of this, there could be no doubt. Now though it seemed as if he took each and every opportunity to work out in the foundry while she was around. Shirtless, she might add. Shirtless… all the time.

Felicity wasn't complaining, per se. She was simply taking note of certain things. Six of them, to be exact.

The stairs that led down to the foundry weren't exactly meant for someone as ungraceful as her to make their way down quietly. People like Sara and Oliver? Sure! They could walk across the most rickety of surfaces and still be as silent and graceful as a wraith.

She knew he heard her the moment she was started making her way down the stairs, the metal clang as he worked his way up the salmon ladder filling the otherwise noiseless foundry. When he saw her he smiled, letting go of the bar and landing gracefully on his feet. The sweat that dripped off of him should have been gross, lord knew that she hadn't found that kind of thing attractive from any of her past flings, only it wasn't. His scent was stronger as he approached her, and it too wasn't as gross as it should've been. It was comforting and spicy and completely male, and it made her toes curl with appreciation.

"Any news on this new drug-lord?" Oliver asked, his smile still in place.

"I managed to get a complete analysis of the chemical structure of the new drug. It looks like this guy took vertigo and gave it some highly unpleasant alterations."

"Their effects?"

"Still not sure," she admitted, interlacing her fingers in front of her. "But whatever it is it can't be good since it's put five people in the hospital with some very, very bad trips."

Oliver frowned at her. "Is there anyway we can find him."

"I've been working on that," she pipped up, pointer her finger at him and stepped around to make her way to the computers. "I modified the facial recognition program I 'borrowed' from the FBI to notify me if any faces popped up repeatedly in or around the area where the overdoses cases were found."

"Did you find anything?"

"I'm a little hurt that you asked that question honestly," she laughed, scrunching up her nose when he got closer to her. "Eww Oliver, you're sweaty!" she complained when he got close enough she could feel the heat radiating off of him like a furnace.

Oliver shrugged, "I didn't hear any complaints earlier," he teased. Felicity blushed, but otherwise decided to ignore his comment.

"This man," she said, pointing to her screen where a picture was displayed. He looked to be no older than his late twenties and completely ordinary, perfect for someone looking to not stand out. "Adam Taylor, the program picked him at each of the five scenes, my money's that he's a provider."

"And the provider can lead us to the maker." Oliver finished, already walking towards the glass case that contained his leathers.

"Oliver," Felicity spoke up before he could leave to get himself ready. She didn't know what possessed her to think that moment was right, but suddenly she knew that she needed to tell him everything that she'd been keeping from him. Even if she didn't still understand why she'd kept the secret from him in the first place. Oliver - and not just him, but John and Roy and Sara, too - had all earned her trust with their lives. What kind of a person was she if she kept this from them? She couldn't afford to keep going down that path, a path that had already been treaded by someone she didn't really know all that well but still managed to make her cringe at the very thought.

Secrets had a way of coming out. Better that Oliver learn it from her than from someone else. "I need to talk to you," she finally spit out, her voice sounding much more uncertain than she would have liked.

Oliver's brow furrowed in confusion as he took a step closer to her, "whatever it is, we'll talk about it when I get back."

Now or never, now or never. But despite what her more sensible self was telling her, she nodded at him, not trusting her voice to completely giver her away.

Oliver

Felicity found him soon after, one of her many programs having found him in one of the more unpleasant part of the Glades. He knew that he shouldn't be surprised by what she could do anymore. Ask Felicity for something and it was only a matter of time before she came through, it was what made her his secret weapon. The one everyone always underestimated always turned out to be the one who saved them - saved him.

It was a blur from there, because for the life of him Oliver could only barely remember what led up to the confrontation. He found him, this Adam person, and put the fear of God in him. He got a location, a name and a face. It was almost too easy.

It was too easy. Oliver should have known.

That person - drug-lord - whoever they were, wanted to be found.

They were standing in a small circle in the middle of the room when he ghosted in, using the shadows as his camouflage. He could hear the sound of their hushed whispers, the action itself making Oliver tense. People only spoke in whispers when they expected to be overheard, and the warehouse they were in wasn't the type to expect company in. The other two were tall and broad, with wicked looking expressions, but it was the third one that caught Oliver's attention. Shorter than the other two and by no means looked as strong. His back to him all he could see was the gray suit and slicked back gray hair on the back of his head. Experience had taught Oliver that underestimating someone was a good way to get yourself killed, and the man looked just enough out of place that he became his instant focus.

Gray-hair nodded at the other two, their faces expressing confusion for a brief second before their mouths set into identical firm lines. They nodded in response and turned, walking past the set of doors that led to another part of the warehouse. Gray-hair walked towards the table in the middle, a soft blue light illuminating whatever was in front of him, but still dark enough that Oliver couldn't see.

Quick as lightning the man turned around, his hand flying out. The sharp sting of the needle penetrating his neck was almost instantly overruled by the sense of unbalance that hit him. The sensation of vertigo.

"Hello, I'm Werner Zytle." The man announced as he approached Oliver. "But you can call me Vertigo."

"The Count is dead."

"Somethings never die. Like you, for example." Vertigo struck out. Oliver reacted instantly, blocking the Count's strike and countering with a blow to the face. His balance was lost for a second as the Count took a couple steps back, the drug affecting him even more. "A funny thing really though. The Count may be dead true, but his glorious narcotic lives on," his voice began to echo, almost as if he were speaking from the other end of a long and hollow cave. "And I've made a few enhancements, that will reveal to you your greatest fear."

Oliver's eyes widened as the man's face began to change, flickering from one image to the other. Count to something unrecognizable. More flickers, the other face solidifying. Count to-

Oliver.

It's not real.

The drug made him slow, sloppy, and uncoordinated. Or maybe that's what he wanted to believe. That he was fighting himself wasn't something that disturbed him to his very core. The two sides of him, the two sides he was positive would never be able to coexist. Oliver Queen and the Arrow. He fought as hard as he could, but the drug handicapped him. His blows didn't land where they were supposed to, he didn't dodge quite as neatly as he should have been able to. A kick to the center sent him sprawling back, bow lost somewhere on the floor. A punch to the face disoriented him long enough for the Count-Oliver to grab a hold of his neck, the brunt of the pressure on his windpipe.

"On second thought, maybe you do die." His doppelgänger said, his voice that of the Count's as he raised a syringe filled with more of his nightmarish vertigo.

A blade cut through the air, too fast and too dark for Oliver to see in the low light until it sprouted from the count's upraised hand, the syringe falling to the ground at Oliver's feet. The Count cried out, wrenching the familiar looking dagger from his blood soaked hand.

"Sorry dear, but I can't let you kill this one. Let him go… or get put down."

That voice! He knew that voice, even if the drug was still affecting him; the voice sounding as if were farther away than the the length of the room they were in.

"Who are you?" Vertigo demanded. The sharp whistle of another blade cutting through the air was the only answer he received, the wickedly sharp dagger impaling itself in the wall centimeters away from the Count's face.

"I'd leave if I were you," she declared, her voice dangerously low. Oliver fell forward as the Count let go, desperately gasping for air. The sound of the double doors opening and closing as Vertigo fled barely registered with him, his body already preparing for attack.

Oliver struggled to raise his eyes, but he couldn't get further past the top of her black boots. "I hope you're not too heavy," were the last words he heard.

Felicity

The pacing definitely wasn't helping. She really hated it when he did that, shut off his comm so she couldn't hear. It was dumb and reckless. How was she supposed to know how to help him when she couldn't hear or see a thing, what if he couldn't turn it back on to tell her he needed help?

She was definitely going to have to talk to Oliver when he got back. He would never turn it off again if he knew what was good for him. Even better, she'd make sure he never went out in the field alone again. Seriously there was no reason for him to do so anyway. There was John, Sara, and Roy, all three of them deadly and exceptionally good choices for backup. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't really sure why she hadn't sooner.

"Felicity?" Oliver's voice reached her, and she turned around mid-circuit, eyes wide as she took him in. How he had managed to get down the stairs as quietly as he had she didn't know, the thought that such stealth wasn't really fair fleeting as she ran to him.

"Oliver what happened?" she demanded.

The look he gave her froze her on the spot. She liked to think that she was getting used to him, or at the very least even more so than she already was. His eyes were always so expressive, except when he didn't want them to be. Felicity didn't like it when he shut her out, when whatever was happening to him caused him to naively think that keeping everything to himself was the best thing to do.

Maybe that was why she was both grateful and scared at what she saw in his eyes. Grateful, because he wasn't keeping her out, he was letting her see everything he wouldn't let anyone else. Scared, because of what she saw there could mean.

"I don't remember," and she knew it was the truth. Despite his ability to lie - yes even while wired to a polygraph - he wasn't the greatest liar when it came to her, and she loved that about him.

"What can-" she didn't finish her question, the words getting lost in her throat.

"I remember fighting him…," he confessed, his eyes falling from her to stare at the bow he still held on to, answering her unfinished question. "He got me with something… said it was vertigo."

"I don't remember vertigo causing acute memory loss."

"He said he added something to it, maybe it messed with my memory, too?"

She caught it, though she didn't know if he knew she did: the implication that something beside his memory had been attacked.

"I fought him," he continued, leaning slightly into her touch as she led him to her chair by the computers. "he was going to kill me and then…" Felicity pursed her lips, waiting for him to finish and afraid that if she said something he never would. "Nothing," Oliver eventually said, his eyes seeking hers.

"Oliver… what else happened?" She eventually asked. They sat on the desk of her computers, their shoulders touching. She looked at the side of his face, a muscle on his jaw ticking.

"He said…" he paused for a second, his eyes wondering to the ceiling before looking down at her again. "That the new vertigo… would show me my greatest fear." Felicity reached over and tightened her hand around his. His fingers interlaced themselves with hers and his gaze dropped to them. "I saw myself," he whispered, the words quiet, as if the softer he spoke them the less true they would be.

In that moment Felicity felt a painful lurch in her chest, the same kind she had already come to associate with Oliver Queen. She felt his pain as acutely as if it were her own, knew that the reason he saw himself was that some part of him still feared that he couldn't make his two lives coexist, that he would always have to be the Arrow.

…to be continued…

AN: Sorry for the delay! This is only part one of chapter 11, part two should go up later tonight or tomorrow! Again I would really appreciate your feedback. Last chapter got some amazing reviews and I got even more than the 15 I asked for. I will ask for another 15, but those will be to unlock chapter 12, which was easier to write than 11, so is actually mostly done.

If I get 25 reviews, I will begin to post the companion piece to this story. It will raise questions, has tons of action, and a development for our favorite IT girl.

I am addicted to tumblr. All the Olicity feels. I can't handle this... I've lost the ability to "even".

Happy Holidays to all of you, and I wish all of you a Happy New Year!