Author's Note: the response to this story has been fantastic, thank you all so much! It really means a lot. So, here's the next chapter; I debated for quite a while on what direction I wanted this to go, but my mind kept coming back to this situation, so I went with it. I've also split this into two chapters, because I wanted to take a look at it from different POVs, and there's a lot I wanted to cover. This chapter is in Felicity's POV, and the next will be Oliver's again. I hope you aren't disappointed! Oh, and I apologize for any mistakes; I'm trying to practice writing from a different point of view, and it's more difficult than I expected.
Felicity can't stop staring.
She's not sure how long ago Detective Lance left, or how long she's been standing in the middle of her living room, but she does know that her home is in shambles – and she can't stop staring at the wreckage.
There is a part of her brain that is running through the list of things she needs to do – now, preferably – but that part is being ignored. She might be in shock, at least a little bit, but she doesn't care about that either. Right now all she cares about is that the little world of her apartment has been rocked, and that it now feels tainted, and unsafe.
She finally wills herself into action, but only to cross the room to the bookshelf that occupies the far wall. The piece of furniture itself is still standing, but its contents have been strewn across the floor, and this is what draws her in. Pages have been torn out of books and now lie haplessly on the floor, but she doesn't look at them; she is searching for one book in particular.
Felicity finds her quarry half standing in the corner, propped up by a single corner of the hardcover; she can tell even before she's approached that it has not survived the encounter, and when she picks it up she finds that at least half the pages have been torn out. They are probably the same ones littering her floor.
Tired, aching, Felicity tucks herself into the corner where she found the book and slides down the wall. She pulls her legs up against her chest and stares at the dark leather cover of her book; the silence in her apartment suddenly feels as heavy as her heart, and she does nothing to check the tears that have begun to track their way down her cheek.
Is it considered irony, she wonders, or simply an unfortunate coincidence that her apartment was broken into the very night she mentioned needing better security?
She needs to get started on the cleanup, but she can't bring herself to move out of her corner. She can see broken glass peppering her carpet, glinting in the dying rays of sunlight that filter through her window, and she stares at them for awhile before finally pressing the book into her chest and resting her forehead on her knees.
Felicity doesn't consider herself a materialistic person, but there is a definite sense of loss in her breast at seeing the possessions she has worked so hard to obtain destroyed. She wonders what has been taken and knows that she should inventory her things, for her sake, and because she promised the Detective she would let him know if anything has been stolen, but she pushes the thought away. She needs to get a hold of herself before she can think about moving on, because she feels like something has been lost besides her sense of security.
She tightens her hold on the book and feels the edges bite into her skin; old memories call out to her and she starts counting her breaths, because she doesn't want to remember, and because if she does she will not get out of the corner.
She is on thirty- three when she realizes that someone is saying her name, and although her breath hitches in fear she is too tired to do anything but raise her head off her knees.
Oliver is motionless, staring at her with an expression that darkens as she watches, and his appearance is so incongruous that she can't immediately comprehend it. He looks so clean and put together in his dark jeans, gray t-shirt and leather jacket that the destruction surrounding him seems even worse by contrast.
His mouth is set in a very firm, very straight line as she watches him approach her; his eyes are surveying her, and her mind automatically supplies an image of what she must look like. Black eye, check; busted lip, check; and a few finger shaped bruises around her neck – check.
Oliver crouches down in front of her, one hand reaching out as if to touch her, and then drawing back. "What happened?"
"I interrupted him," she replies, and her voice sounds scratchy. "Surprised him. I, uh, tried to fight, the way … Digg's been teaching, but … thank God for lamps, huh?"
Felicity is well acquainted with Oliver's anger, and she sees it now as it settles over his face like a veil; she can feel it, hanging in the air between them like a storm cloud, and she tries to prepare herself for the backlash. The thing about Oliver is that he doesn't handle emotion well: every emotion ends up looking like anger, no matter what it starts out as.
As capable as she generally is of handling his intensity and anger, Felicity is, at heart, an affectionate and loving person; what she needs right now is not anger, or concern masked as such, but a friend – and, more importantly, someone who can offer her comfort.
She is reminded, not for the first time, that there is no such person for her.
"Felicity …"
"Don't yell," she says quickly, cutting him off. "I'm kind of having a bad day, in case you didn't notice, and I don't think I can handle being yelled at right now, Oliver."
Her words have surprised him, but she is the one caught off guard, because now that's she's started talking, it feels like she can't stop.
"I don't celebrate my birthday – I hate my birthday." She is speaking quickly and it feels like there's a giant bubble working it's way out of her chest and into her throat. "My mom had a heart attack four years ago, and the last time I saw her was on my birthday. We didn't have a lot of money and she'd spent almost all of her savings to buy me this book, a first edition Dickens, and I was so mad I yelled at her and then she died, Oliver, she died and when I came home the stupid book was waiting for me and she wasn't and …"
Felicity can barely breathe through the tightness of her throat and she feels a little bit like she's exploding, so she uncurls herself ever so slightly and let's her once beautiful copy of Great Expectations fall to the floor in front of her feet.
Oliver is reaching for her and for just a second she thinks about slapping his hand away, because this is not Oliver. Well, not the version of Oliver that he allows himself to be around her, at least; for all she knows he is the world's most affectionate man around Laurel, but he is studious about not touching her. She and Oliver do not hug.
Nobody hugs Felicity anymore.
This is what breaks her; she has been attacked, her home defiled, her dearest possession destroyed, but it is the reminder that there is no one to comfort her that finally unhinges her.
There are hands on her arms then, pulling her to her feet, and they do not let go when she starts to struggle – or when she starts to yell.
"What are you doing here, Oliver? I told Detective Lance there was no one to call, there's never anyone to call, not anymore …"
She tries to shove Oliver away from her in a feeble attempt to break free, but her body hurts and her throat is on fire and Oliver's arms are like iron.
Unable to free herself, Felicity does the next best thing, and collapses into his chest.
Her head is pounding and her eye is throbbing and that just makes her cry harder, because the pain grounds her and tells her that she's still alive, when she'd been convinced not that long ago that she was going to die with a stranger's hand around her throat. Oliver's chest is a warm plane beneath her cheek, and he is so much larger that she feels completely engulfed by the arms that are now wrapped around her.
When she finally manages to stop the flow of tears, she pulls away to say something, but stops when she notices that there is blood on Oliver's t-shirt. She touches the spot gingerly, unable to process the bright spot of color against the grey, and feels him take a breath under her hand.
"I, um … I think I got blood on your shirt."
"It's just a shirt."
She feels his words as a rumble against her hand, and then there is a finger under her chin, turning her face up to his.
"Your lip is bleeding," he tells her.
"He had a pretty fierce backhand."
She knows she's said the wrong thing before she's finished speaking, but there's no helping it.
She can hear the barely contained rage in his voice when he speaks. "Come on."
He leads her to the couch and motions for her to sit, then disappears into the kitchen; when he reappears he sits down next to her, wet rag and a frozen pack of peas in hand.
"Put this over your eye," he instructs, handing her the peas. "And hold still."
She flinches when the peas come in contact with her eye, the sensation distracting her from the sting of the rag against her lip.
Only now will Felicity admit that she is exhausted, truly and to her very core, but she's not sure that she will ever feel safe enough again to sleep – not here.
"What are you doing here, Oliver?" she queries again, rerouting her train of thought. "How did you even know where I lived?"
"I came to see if you needed help with those locks; when I got here, your door was open." He doesn't answer the second question.
"It was?" She thinks she can remember Detective Lance saying something about the door frame being damaged, but the last few hours are a tangled mess that she doesn't even want to consider untangling right now. "Well, thank you, but you don't have to stay, Oliver – I'm fine."
His eyes shoot to her face so quickly that she almost thinks she can hear a snapping sound.
"Yeah, okay, or not."
"I'm gonna call Digg," he tells her quietly. "Have him bring over some stuff to help put this place back together."
Felicity wants to protest, but she can't find the words; instead, she watches him pull his phone from his pocket and disappear into another room, and then curls into the corner of her couch and tries to turn off her brain.
Something is crashing, and she is screaming.
Her body is on fire as overtaxed muscles catapult her up and away, but she's disoriented and has no sense of where she is; a sharp pain radiates up her back and then she is falling.
"Felicity! Woah, woah!"
Reality comes to her slowly, and when it does she finds that the only thing keeping her from the floor is Oliver. She gathers that she must have thrown herself over the arm of her couch in panic, and that Oliver caught her mid-fall.
"Where am I?"
"You're at home, you're okay," he tells her, helping her to her feet (again). "I didn't mean to wake you."
"How long was I asleep?"
"Maybe thirty minutes."
She is facing the door, her back to Oliver, when there's a knock and the still unlatched door swings inward. For the second time in less than a minute she is throwing herself backward, right into Oliver's chest, and the arm that wraps around her waist is almost enough to distract her from the fact that she is literally trembling.
The man on the other side of the door is Digg.
"Oh my god, I can't take this," she utters, and it's all she can do not to cry.
"What happened?" Digg demands, stepping inside.
"I think I'm dying." She's gasping, but the air won't stay in her lungs and she can't stop trembling. "I can't breathe, I can't …"
"Focus, Felicity; take a breath. It's just Digg; you're okay, you're safe."
She's trying to do as he says, trying to count her breaths to calm herself down, but she can feel Digg's eyes taking in her injuries and for just a moment she remembers being pinned to the floor.
"What happened?"
She gets the feeling that Digg was asking Oliver, but she can feel the hysteria rising and her words are spilling out before she can think of what she's saying.
"I caught him by surprise, I interrupted him and he struck me ... hard … I tried to stop him, but he had me by the throat and I thought I was dying and …"
The look on Digg's face is so mortified that it halts her rambling; she focuses on his face, and the arm around her waist, using both to remind herself that she has probably never been safer in her life than she is right now.
"I'm assuming you got my message?" Oliver asks over her head, and Digg nods.
She doesn't think she can stay in this room for much longer.
"I'll … you guys can … I think I need a shower."
Felicity isn't entirely certain how she gets out of the room; it almost feels like she blinks and finds herself standing in the bathroom, a fresh change of clothes in hand. She thinks she might be losing her mind, and she's still shaking from the adrenaline that lingers in her system; tension is all that's keeping her together, but that tension is slipping and she can feel herself about to fall apart.
Which is why she's run to the bathroom, because she's had about all that she can take, and the last thing she wants is to have an audience to her breakdown. Well, another audience to another breakdown, anyway.
She turns on the water, adjusts the temperature and then steps away to undress; she shucks out of her clothes without thinking, but makes the mistake of glancing at herself in the mirror as she pulls the hair tie out of her hair. She really does look terrible: her eye is not swollen shut, but it has turned an admirable shade of violet, and her lip isn't bleeding anymore but it is definitely split. Worse than all of that, though, are the bruises that have bloomed against the skin of her throat in the perfect shape of fingers; pointer, middle and ring, if she's not mistaken.
The reflection is too much.
The water burns as she steps into the flow, and she hisses in pain when it strikes her face but doesn't turn away. She needs this burn, needs to feel the way her skin crawls with the intensity of it.
She goes through the motions, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and conditioner and body wash, ignoring the tears that she knows are falling – even if she can't feel them.
She spends a long time under the water, even after she's clean, because she doesn't know how to face the world outside her shower; Felicity isn't sure how to handle what's happened, or the tight knot of fear in her breast, or the thought of having almost lost her life.
When she does finally emerge, she's in a pair of leggings and a tank top, and it's only when Digg utters a muffled curse that she realizes that one of her arms is also peppered with bruises.
She's too tired to care.
"Either you guys work really fast, or I was in there longer than I thought."
Digg is working on the door frame, and Oliver is on the other end installing what looks like new hinges; there's no longer glass and torn paper littering the floor.
"A little bit of both," Oliver answers, and she knows that despite the gravity of his tone, he is trying to tease her.
"What time is it?" she inquires.
"A little past one," Digg answers. "Why?"
"Haven't eaten since yesterday," Felicity replies off-handedly. "I was thinking pizza."
"Better get enough for all of us."
"Thanks, guys, but you didn't have to do this. I'm sure you've got better …"
"Don't finish that sentence, Felicity," Oliver warns, and there is something dark in his tone that heightens the sentiment behind the words.
She nods and turns away, reaching for the phone so that she can order the pizza.