Hey there! I was blown away by the response this story received - thank you for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting! It means the world to know you guys were excited about it. Anywho, hope you like what you read :)

Alas, I do not own Arrow.


It took him three months to gather the nerve to ask her out.

Three, long months where he admired her from afar, enchanted by her whole sense of being. To pinpoint what exactly pulled him under her trance would be an impossible feat; the simplest of actions – whether it be the little shove she gave her glasses when they slipped too far down her nose or the way she chewed her bottom lip when she tried to work out a problem – enthralled him. She was just so…different and unexpected and surprising, but in the tiniest of ways. Oliver believed that he could stare at her for hours and never get bored. He often wondered what it'd be like to lose himself in her blue depths, discovering and exploring and learning everything he could about her. They did say the eyes were the windows to the soul, right? He wanted to see if there was any truth in that.

Being so out of touch with himself unnerved him though. Girls, and the object of getting girls, came almost naturally to him. Oliver could charm a wall if he tried hard enough; it practically oozed out of his pores. Somehow he just knew the right thing to say when the right time called for it – and he put it to good use in all his sixteen years of life. Of course, being the son of a billionaire helped too; once girls heard that nugget of information, they went out of their way to throw themselves at him, catching his attention in the most outlandish ways.

Not that he was complaining or anything. The majority of the time he happily obliged them. If making out was a subject, he was definitely sporting an A.

But Felicity? He could barely manage a sentence with her before he felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

It was just so…weird. But great, too. Weird and great all at the same time.

It turned out that Felicity was super smart and took a lot of AP classes, so the only class they shared with one another was English, which coincidentally was Oliver's best subject. He might not have been the brightest at math or science, but ask him to string a few sentences together and he wasn't half bad.

Yet the peril of only having one period together was that he rarely got to see her. Sure they acknowledged each other in the hallways and sometimes they'd talked briefly before class started, but because Felicity Smoak was extremely likable, it took her little to no time to make a band of friends and she always sat with them at lunch, leaving Oliver with very slight opportunity to work his magic on her.

Or lack thereof when it came to her.

But what really made his heart stutter to the point of lunacy was that every Wednesday and Friday, without fail, Felicity sat opposite him the library.

Opposite him.

She could have sat anywhere she wanted; the library was the biggest section of the academy with seemingly endless seats so it's not like there was nowhere else to go.

No, she chose to sit facing him.

Such a trivial fact shouldn't have made him so happy.

So it was three, long months of her sitting in front of him, distracting him through the simplest of means, all the while unknowingly making him pine for her more.

All it took was for her to smile quickly one day when she caught him looking her way – again – for him to take the plunge. He was tackling math – yet again – and was getting pretty sick of how it kept beating him when, out of seemingly nowhere, his mouth in a complete disconnect with his brain, he blurted quietly, "Hey Felicity, can I ask you something?"

Her head shot up immediately, her eyes warm. "Sure. What's up?"

A list of possibilities rushed through his mind all along the same vein of, 'Will you go out with me?', but the words froze in his mouth as though they themselves had forgotten how they sounded, and instead something else entirely came out. "Why do you always sit here?"

Nothing would have made him happier than if a giant hole appeared in the ground and swallowed him up, sending him spiralling into some kind of dense oblivion where every embarrassing moment in his life would dissipate into a nothingness. What was he thinking?! He wanted to ask the girl out, not give her a reason to run away.

He closed his eyes at his own stupidity and waited for the shuffling that would tell him that she was packing up her stuff and leaving him to drown in his own foolishness. "Felicity, I didn't mean –"

"Someone told me this was the best seat in the house," she quipped back, her tone coloured in amusement. Oliver opened his eyes warily to meet the shy gaze of the blonde. Though her voice sounded confident, she looked just as unsure as he felt and that, somehow, made him like her even more. God, he was pathetic. "Why would I move?" She shrugged, a cute whole body movement. "Besides, you're a pretty good study partner – not that I thought you'd be a bad one, just that usually I like to work in the quiet, hence why I'm always in the library, and that usually means not sharing a table with someone or sitting right at the end of one in my own little world, but you've been surprisingly silent and you don't crumple papers or grind your teeth…oh God not that I thought you would it's just…3…2…1…"

Her rambles were adorable – and he loved them. "I'll make sure to put 'Doesn't crumple papers or grind teeth' on my resume. I think it'll really make me stand out."

A breathy laugh left her lips. Her very vibrant, full, kissable lips. "I'll be your reference."

He leaned forward on the desk as if ready to conspire. "I'll hold you to that."

They both fell silent for a few seconds; the sound of pages turning and the odd cough of a student were the only things to be heard. And maybe his heart pounding. Finally, she tilted her head to the side as if trying to figure him out. He adjusted his t-shirt self-consciously. "Are you okay?"

His brow furrowed. "Yeah, why?"

She spun her pen between her fingers. "You just look…I don't know, I thought you…you just a little distracted."

"Oh, yeah, uh it's just…this math homework. I can't seem to figure it out, that's all."

Felicity kept her eyes on him a little longer than usual, her mouth quirked ever so slightly. "Okay, well if you ever need help with it, you can ask me you know. I'm pretty good at math."

He beamed. "Thanks, Felicity." She turned her attention back to her own study, seeming satisfied, but the swooping in his stomach was relentless, driving him crazy. It was like it was doing it on purpose, compelling him to say something, anything. "Actually," he started, his throat dry, "there was something else I wanted to ask you."

Whether she was aware of it or not, her body mirrored his own, her arms sliding closer to his on the table. "I thought so," she said, visibly proud of herself. "What's on your mind?"

Now or never.

He took a deep breath, letting the air purify his lungs. "I was wondering, I don't know, if maybe…you would or you'd like to…wow, this is so much harder than I thought."

"Oliver…what's wrong?"

"Do you…do you wanna hang out sometime? Like, after school someday? Or even on the weekend?" Great. Now he was the one rambling.

"Hang out?" she asked, perplexed.

In an attempt to calm his nerves, he tapped his fingers on his book, the action itself less subtle than he had hoped. "Yeah…like a…sort of like a date?"

Her eyes widened. "A date? You're asking me out?"

"Yeah?" he affirmed, slouching back into his chair, nervous. In all his preoccupation with actually asking her out, he hadn't programmed in the thought that she might reject him. Now he was sweating for a whole other reason. Heartbreak was something he'd skirted around a few times in his short romantic history but he was certain that if Felicity Smoak turned him down, he'd experience it on a whole new level. Even the idea of her saying no made his heart twist in all sorts of unnatural ways.

Her reply was no more than the gentlest of whispers, "But you hardly know me?"

"Isn't that the point of a date - to get to know someone better?" he posed lightly, keeping a tight smile in check.

"But I could be anybody," she proclaimed a little too loudly, causing a number of heads to turn. Scrunching her shoulders, she whispered again, "I could be a serial killer or a jewel thief…or a really horrible person."

Even her rationalizing was charming.

"Are you a serial killer or a jewel thief?"

"Well, no but-"

"Or a really horrible person? Because from what I've seen, you're the opposite."

She narrowed her eyes. "Too nice for my own good?"

His attempts at supressing a chuckle failed miserably but he didn't care if he disrupted the whole library – not when he was gazing at her. "I think you're someone I really want to spend time with outside of this library."

Her eyebrows hiked, clearly taken aback. "Really? I mean…are you sure?"

"Felicity, I am more than sure."

Waiting for her answer felt like an eternity; every so often her mouth would open but then she'd close it just as quickly, her hands wringing her pen dramatically as though she was pondering a serious life choice. Yet he was patient, ducking his head so that she'd meet his eyes and offering her a grin when she looked his way. He prayed she thought he was being adorable and not pushy. "Okay," she declared suddenly, her lips curling up and eyes brightening so much they appeared to be sparkling under the light. "I'd like that."

The excited spurt of breath that exploded from him wasn't planned, nor was it his finest moment, since he was about a second away from hopping out of his seat, but it was exceedingly difficult to contain his elation at a single world – four letters that were usually so bland but now held such promise.

He swore he could feel the shift in the atmosphere, a change that had welcomed itself into his world, settling around them like a comforting blanket.

"Great. Uh, how about Saturday?"

"Yeah, Saturday works for me."

Their eyes met again and Oliver winked, feeling more like himself now that he was sure she sort of, kinda liked him too. Her giggle was soft and musical and so damn cute; if he didn't comprehend just how much trouble he was in beforehand, he definitely did now.


"You finally asked her out?!" Tommy exclaimed in the car on the way home, his outburst so abrupt that the vehicle swerved into the other lane for a second longer than what was deemed safe.

"Yes, but if you keep driving like this I won't live to see it happen." Oliver reached over and straightened the steering wheel.

For Tommy's sixteenth birthday his dad bought him his first car – a slick Lamborghini to be exact. It was the dream car; Oliver distinctly remembered drooling over the bodywork when he clapped eyes on it for the first time. Living a privileged life meant that wanting for something wasn't something he was used to, but when he heard that sweet engine rev for the first time, Oliver wanted that car so bad. So when he turned sixteen, his parents threw him the keys to a brand new Porsche. How could he complain about that?

The only problem was that Tommy wasn't exactly the best driver. He passed his test, sure, but to what extent the instructor let the test slide because of the Merlyn connection he wasn't sure. There was no way Oliver would have passed him anyway.

At least he was finally getting better.

Kind of.

"I got it, I got it," he assured, placing both hands back on the wheel and studying the road with great intent. "It's about time, man. For a second there I thought you were losing your touch."

"So did I," he agreed, resting his elbow on the door so that his head could fall into his hand. "I've never been so nervous around a girl before."

Tommy pressed a little too hard on the accelerator and the car jolted forward, making all sorts of horrible sounds that no engine should make. His hand grappled with the stick shift until the ride smoothed out and Oliver couldn't help but snicker at the pinched expression plastered on his best friend's face. "Stop laughing," he said petulantly, "I'm still getting the hang of this." He remained in deep concentration as he attempted to merge. "So what exactly is it about this girl that has you so…off your game?"

"I'm not off my game; I was just…not myself."

Tommy shot him a dubious look.

Oliver pointed out the windscreen. "Eyes on the road, Merlyn."

"Come on, Ollie, spill. You weren't even nervous when you asked Laurel to that stupid dance. Remember Laurel Lance? The girl you've been practically crushing on since first grade? Brunette with a piercing glare? What makes this girl so different?"

He shrugged. "I knew Laurel liked me; she made that pretty obvious. So it wasn't hard to ask her. But going to the dance with her wasn't such a good idea. Making out with her on the other hand was." Tommy chortled, pounding knuckles with his. "But Felicity…she's not just some girl, you know? I don't know what it is but she's just so interesting - she makes me want to know everything about her. And she babbles, like, a lot and it's the just the cutest thing. And then there's the fact that she's super smart; I mean, she takes like four AP classes."

His best friend whistled, his head shaking as he drove. "Dude you have it so bad. If I didn't know better I think you'd be turning into a one-woman-kind-of-guy." Oliver rolled his eyes at his friend's dramatics. That was Tommy for you. "Now personally I don't see the appeal – why settle down when there's still so much out there to see…and do…" he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, "but if this is the path you want to go down then I, as your loyal and ultimately cooler best friend, will respect and support you because that is the kind of guy I am."

"Gee, thanks buddy," he laughed, smacking his shoulder playfully.

"Hey no hitting while I'm driving. You wanna stay alive for your date with the girl of your dreams, right? One word of advice though?"

Oliver rested his head against the window, peering back at his friend who had turned deathly serious all of a sudden.

"You might wanna think about doing something with that hair of yours. I mean, it's doing that rogue surfer thing that just does nothing for you."

Shaking his head, Oliver vibrated with laughter, thankful that he had someone like Tommy in his life.


Oliver had endured a lot of injury over the years but the one day he wanted to be of full of energy, his whole body ached from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. The slightest of movements made ligaments cry, tendons wail, muscles tighten, and bones scrape – even frowning caused him discomfort.

Just great.

Since the Undertaking there'd been an influx of criminal activity around the city with citizens going around and taking the law into their own hands, acting out purely because they could; reckless individuals who cared little for the repercussions of their actions, their purpose lost amongst the chaos and threatening the safety of others. The city needed the Hood now more than ever - and Oliver was, evidently, paying the price.

The missions seemed to get more and more dangerous; the stakes higher than ever before. Sometimes when he got back to the foundry, he just stood there in the dark, letting his breath move in and out of his lungs easily as he waited for the adrenaline to subside. The quiet stilled his raucous energy, but it was the aftermath, when everything had settled down, that really packed a punch. The 'what if?' game was a staple of his life at this point: what if he didn't move quick enough? What if his bow didn't meet its target? What if he lost concentration for just a breath of a second?

But the question always remained: did he really care?

Sometimes he did.

Sometimes he didn't.

He often wondered when thoughts like that crept into his psyche, when it became so normal for him to have this debate with himself, when the thought of life or death was so casually resting in his mind.

"Heading out?" Thea's voice asked from behind him, its sound diffusing the darkness for now.

Oliver turned from the mirror, appraising her affectionately. "Nothing gets past you, Speedy."

She stepped into his room, arms swinging so freely that her bracelets cracked off one another roughly, making her entrance far louder than necessary. Thea was constantly going through fads and trends, though in fairness what fifteen-year-old girl wasn't, and apparently loading your arm with as many bracelets as physically possible was all the rage.

"So who is she?" she drawled, platooning herself onto his bed.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh come on, Ollie. You're wearing the expensive cologne that you only wear to fancy dinners that makes you smell all important and successful and you've spent the past fifteen minutes fixing your hair even though there's not much you can do with hair like that." She pointed idly at his head with a grin. "Remember when you hair was longer and it used to get in your eyes?"

"How could I forget? Tommy made fun of it all the time." A sharp pang at the mention of his friend's name rocketed through his chest and he struggled to hide the wince. If his little sister noticed, she didn't show it.

Thea pushed herself into a seating position, one of her legs tucked under her. "So tell me, who's the girl? Don't act all dumb, I'm not a little kid anymore."

Oliver sighed and crossed over to the bed to collect his jacket that sat next to her. "No you're not," he agreed sadly.

"And don't get all pouty on me either," she warned good-naturedly, leaning over to slap his arm.

It was hard to see Thea so much older, so much more independent, so much more unpredictable. She was this ball of energy, a pumped up life force akin to a hurricane; she'd whirl in, make her mark and spin out in leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. He might have been home two years but it struck him daily how different she was and how he had missed crucial years of her life that he'd never get back. When he left, she was a kid who dreamed of owning a pony and living in a candy store; when he returned, she was more occupied with boys and clothes and her phone. The transition from treating her as a kid to treating her as a teenager was not a smooth one to say the least.

A deep breath calmed his already erratic nerves and he slinked into the jacket. "Do you remember Felicity Smoak?" he asked offhandedly.

Oh, that piqued her interest. The girl straightened immediately, eyes incredulous. "Are you kidding? Of course I do! She was like a big sister to me! That's who you're going to see? She's back in Staring?"

He nodded self-consciously, pursing his lips. "Yeah, she is."

"Wow," she breathed. "You know, I always thought you two would be together forever, but then she moved to Europe and you became a jerk so that put an end to that plan." Well he could hardly argue with that assessment. Her eyes turned up toward the ceiling in contemplation, her bottom lip jutting out. "Gosh I haven't seen her since…well, since your funeral. I can't believe she's back."

He stilled, the words pressing pause on his life. "What…what did you say?"

"I just meant I thought she'd left Starling for good."

"No, before that," he emphasised as he failed miserably to feign nonchalance. Always one to fidget, Oliver shuffled from one foot to the other, never finding a comfortable place to rest. It was such a tell for him – and definitely something he needed to work on considering the line of business he was in.

Suddenly his sister's eyes softened in understanding. "Oh, sorry Ollie, I – I guess I just forgot." In a move that made her look older and wiser than her mere fifteen years, she caught his hand with her own. "Did you really think she'd miss your funeral? Look, you guys might have broken up and even though I don't really know what happened between the two of you, I know that you loved her and that she felt the same. There was no way she'd miss something like that."

"But she was in London…she had left…?"

"She came back for the weekend," Thea filled in the blanks, pulsing his hand once for good measure. "Just showed up at our door the day before the ceremony."

It shouldn't have surprised him really – Felicity had always been remarkable in more ways than he count, so maybe it shouldn't have caught him off-guard to discover that she had made it her business to drop everything and come home for him, and yet he felt something he couldn't fully comprehend wash over him. It was like knowing what something meant without being able to describe it.

"Ollie," her voice sliced through his daze, "I think it's great you get to see her again. Who knows, maybe you two were supposed to end up together. I, for one, think it's romantic; two lost souls finding their way back to one another." She was also been going through a watch-as-many-rom-coms-as-humanly-possible phase. "Just don't blow again this time, hey?"

An easy chuckle rumbled from him. "I promise I'll try."

"Good. Now hurry up or else you're gonna be late." She shooed him away, wafting her arms dramatically in his direction. With a smirk, Oliver dropped down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Tell her I said hi."

"You got it, Speedy."

"To be fair, I think she always liked me better anyways."

Oliver couldn't hide his amusement - she was just what he needed at that moment.


For possibly the first time in his life, Oliver was early to the café. How exactly he managed that, he didn't know but there was no way he was going to question it, so instead of pondering over the symbolism and reading too much into pointless signs, he just accepted it. Life was easier that way. In a weird way he felt exposed; almost as if every person he encountered looked at him a second longer than they usually would. Paranoia had been a close friend of his for a long time now, but this was more of a self-conscious nervous concoction that he wasn't used to.

Taking the initiative, he ordered two coffees and prayed that Felicity took hers the same way she used to all those years ago. It was long-shot, but you couldn't blame a guy for trying. Back in high school, she had an obsession with coffee; at one point, she enjoyed going to different coffee houses just so she could try whatever they had on sale. Oliver must have seen the inside of every establishment that served the beverage in Starling – not that he ever complained though. She was always so impassioned about it that he didn't have the heart to tell her that he hated the taste of it.

Since returning from the island he had changed his outlook though; it turned out that it was the only thing that kept him alert through the toughest of days.

He found an empty table facing the window and waited, doing his best to keep himself occupied. The rustling of the sugar packet proved rather soothing. Soon enough, her frame passed by the window, her high ponytail bobbing as she walked. She was on time of course. That simple fact alone was comforting; it was nice to know that some things never changed.

Oliver waved to grab her attention, basking in the knowledge that no matter what happened after this, at least he got to see her again. Seeing her in the flesh – the striking blue of her eyes, the flush of her cheeks, the warmth in her smile – was so much better than pathetically staring at the picture he used to carry of her in his wallet. It wasn't an image of anything special really, it was more a spur of the moment quick snap of them when they were in the car one day, but it kept permanent residence behind his credit card in his leather wallet until the island swallowed up every last bit of his life. When he couldn't sleep at night, and the cold, dense air would wrap around him, he'd sit up and think about his family, especially Thea, Tommy, and Felicity. A trifecta of pain one might say.

"Hey," she greeted, standing away from him. Her face conveyed the same sense of disbelief it had the previous day, her mind still trying to piece it all together.

"Hi."

He sat and she stood, both waiting for the other to make the first move.

Oliver cracked first. "Sit, please, you're making me nervous," he joked, pulling out the stool next to him. Felicity, biting her lip in deliberation, eyed the seat warily as though it was it some kind of dangerous animal. He gestured to it again, entertained by her dilemma. He'd wait all day if he had to. Eventually she gave in and hopped onto it, disposing of her scarf and coat and draping them over the table. "I got you a coffee," he said after a beat. "It's still pretty hot."

"You remember how I take it?" she asked curiously, bringing the mug close so close to her nose that her glasses steamed up.

"I remember a lot of things."

She took a sip. "Always full of surprises, aren't you?" she mused, sighing contently at the taste. Her head nodded to his drink. "Since when do you drink coffee anyway?"

"What do you mean?" He spun his cup absentmindedly, letting its warmth mollify him.

"Come on, Oliver; you used to hate coffee."

A warbled chortle burst out of him. "Wait, you knew?"

"I think the pained expressions and lack of enthusiasm pretty much gave you away right from the start," she explained, taking another sip.

Oliver grinned. "And you still dragged me around the city despite all that?"

"First of all, dragging implies that you didn't want to go – and from what I can remember, you never once complained so don't try pulling that card now, and secondly, you still made me go to all those Queen family functions even though you knew how much I hated having to dress up and talk to all those spoiled brats so really you have no reason to argue." Felicity cringed once she had finished, fixing her gaze onto the wood patterns on the table, the façade now back in place.

It struck him how easy it was to be around her even now. A quick ramble from her and a joke and it was as if no time had passed at all.

Unfortunately, too much time had passed.

"I missed hearing you babble," he admitted softly, spinning his cup again. "I – I missed yo-"

"Oliver, don't," she interjected, her voice so small, nearly lost in the swell of background noise. All around them people were meeting up and chatting and exchanging happy stories and here they were, two disconnected people searching for…something. A missing link, perhaps. "Please don't do this."

Scratching the back of his neck awkwardly, he cleared his throat. "You're right; I'm sorry. Uh, how…how did your interview go?" As far as subject changes went, he assumed that was pretty safe. It was better than him finishing off his thoughts. I missed you. Did you miss me? Do you still hate me?

"Really? You want to know?"

Oliver nodded.

"Well it went pretty good. More than good, actually; I got the job. I start Monday."

"That's great, Felicity. I knew you would. Someone with your credentials can't be passed up."

She snapped her head to the side, regarding him seriously. "You didn't have anything to do with me getting the job, did you? Because if you did, Oliver, that's so not cool. I mean, I know you only mean well but it doesn't really stand to me if the CEO puts in a good word for me and it could get people talking and I am perfectly capable of getting jobs on my own so you don't have to-" She moved her hands around as she spoke, the light illuminating her sky blue nail polish as she made weird patterns in the sky.

"Felicity," he cut in, leaning closer to her, "I didn't say a word."

Her hands fell down onto her lap. "You didn't?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

"Well…why not?" She spied him suspiciously.

"What?"

"I don't mean why didn't you say anything, I mean what made you not say anything – ugh, even when I'm trying to make sense, I'm not."

He mulled it over for a minute and then shrugged. "I knew you wouldn't want me to," he answered simply.

"Simple as that, huh?"

"Simple as that."

It was only then when she let out a long breath that he realized how close they were sitting to one another. Her breath tickled his face, his chest tightening at the feathery touch. Felicity, too, at the same time, noticed and began to move away but something caught her eye, and her gaze melted, her whole demeanour changing rapidly.

Oliver stiffened as her hand came up to cradle the side of his face. It was like she was transfixed, not even aware of what she was doing. It was only when her thumb brushed across the area under his eye that he realized what had her so rapt. His scar. One of the tiniest ones he had, actually. He had so many that they generally all meshed into one, with only a handful distinguishable.

Her touch ignited his skin, his eyes falling shut for the shortest of instances.

"They said your body was 20% scar tissue but I never…" she mumbled, her voice low like a hum, "I never…let myself think of it." Her thumb padded across the imperfection again.

"I'm sorry."

It was a prayer; a promise breathed into the void, pouring out of his entire self.

The silence that followed was so long Oliver thought she didn't hear him. An eternity could have passed for all he knew; he was too focused on her touch and the charge between them.

Yet her hand slipped away too soon, her frame backing away from him. "I don't want you to be sorry."

"But I am," he offered, arms open. Underneath it all, he knew the real reason he wanted to meet Felicity: he wanted the chance to apologize. Was it selfish of him? He wasn't sure. All he knew is that he had to say it, had to let her know that he regretted the way it all ended, had to just be honest with her.

"For what Oliver?" she asked, exasperated. "Because if you're apologizing for everything that you went through, then don't. None of that was your fault. I can't even imagine what you went through, and I'm not going to ask you about it because I know you and I know you don't want to talk about it. And that's okay. You don't have to." He moved to speak but she raised both of her hands defiantly, silencing him for now. "And if you're apologizing for…us, I don't want to hear it either. We were just kids then. I've had a lot of time to think about it and to be honest, I'm sick of thinking about it. It feels like it was a whole other life ago and I guess in your case it was. So just…just don't okay?"

"Felicity…" If he couldn't apologize, what could he do? How could it make it better? After all, that had been his mantra since he'd come back – to right wrongs and fight injustice and hopefully better himself in the process. He just wanted to make everything better again.

The curl of her lips into a pained smile only served to perturb him more. "Why did you want to meet me, Oliver?" she questioned, gesturing around them to the dizzying activity of the everyday. Suddenly, it felt as though they were outsiders; observers instead of participants.

"Why did you come?" he countered.

Her chin dipped, a sigh tripping from her. "I should have known you'd answer a question with a question. You always did like to do that." Slowly, she inched over to him again, gripping his hands in hers. "I came because I…seeing you yesterday, brought back a lot of memories and feelings that I had put away a long time ago; I never really knew how I would react if I saw you again and it sort of frightened me as soon as I did. I know that you're not okay, and I wouldn't expect you to be, but I just needed to see it for myself. Part of me wants to know everything that happened to you because I've lived with these questions for so long, but another part of me doesn't, and it's selfish of me to admit, because I know that it'll hurt. And just the thought of something so terrible happening to you…" she trailed off shaking her head. "The fact is I still care about you – even when you're not popping back up in my life randomly, and I probably always will. And to be honest, maybe subconsciously I chose to come back to Starling City because of you; once I saw the job opening at QC, I had to at least apply. Even just being back in this city felt like coming home. I just…I don't know." She shrugged, settling her stare onto their hands. Oliver held his breath, noting the tears that had begun forming in her eyes. "And that's the thing about me - I hate not knowing things. I hate mysteries. I hate questions that seemingly have no answers and you, Oliver, left so many questions unanswered in my life. Why did you break my heart? Why did you have to get on that stupid boat? How could you do something so jerky as bringing Laurel's sister with you? Did you even care about me? About Laurel? Did you die? How did you die? Did you feel pain? Did you suffer?"

She was on a roll now, her hands letting go of his to jab the air every time she finished a question. Felicity's eyes never landed on him; she was lost in a world of her own, spilling everything she had kept bottled up for the past seven years.

"So you came here for answers," he surmised, the weight of guilt plundering him from the inside out.

Stormy blues searched his, her face drawn with emotion. "I thought you were dead, Oliver. Dead. I thought you weren't coming back - and I hated you for it. I hated the way we left things, and I hated the way you just moved on without a second thought and I hated the way you used your dad's boat as a way of running away from responsibility…and I hated the way I cared about what happened to you. I was eighteen – just a kid. We both were. We jumped too quickly and made promises we should have known we couldn't keep. We were irrational and completely unrealistic, caught up in every moment. And I told myself that every day after we broke up. And then I heard that the Gambit went down." She swallowed hard, burying her chin into her shoulder. "I cried for days, scrambling for any information I could get, looking up as many conspiracy theories as humanly possible, and just praying that you had been handed a miracle. That you had somehow survived it and were trying to get back home. But I hated caring about you because it hurt so much. I thought my heart would never heal, Oliver."

The muscle in his jaw flexed, every single emotion flooding through his system. "But you went to my funeral," he supplied thickly.

Felicity's depths studied him. "I had to say goodbye," she said with a sniff.

Though it didn't seem like the right time to make any kind of move, Oliver swiped away at a loose tear on her face, letting his fingers rest on her cheek for a moment. Rather than pulling away as he'd expected, the blonde leaned into the pressure.

"There wasn't a day on that island when I didn't think about you," he confessed solemnly.

Felicity chuckled humourlessly. "Do you think that somehow makes it better, Oliver? That you can just say that and it somehow fixes us? It doesn't. You're the one that broke us. Instead of thinking about me, you should have been thinking about Laurel – or even Sara," she snapped petulantly, freeing her face from his hold and leaving his hand grasping at air.

"I was an idiot, I know. God, Felicity I know that, trust me. I was young and dumb and I acted out because I was hurting. Does it excuse everything I did? No, but that's just…" he paused, angered by his inarticulacy, "it didn't mean anything. Nothing I did after you meant anything."

"Nothing you did after me meant anything? What about when you were with me, huh?"

Oliver closed his eyes, fighting the dull pound in his head. "It was a mistake."

"Yeah, a big one." The woman rose to her feet, collecting her jacket and scarf hastily and throwing them over her arm. "And I'm beginning to think coming here was a mistake, too."

"Felicity, please." He stood as well, catching her elbow. "Please don't leave it like this. Please don't go."

Her hand rifled through her ponytail, her body shaking. "Why? We both know you won't follow me."

The words hung ominously in the air between them, smothering them with the weight of the past.

Without hesitation, Oliver engulfed her in an all-consuming hug, letting his actions do the talking instead of his words. She fought him, arms pushing and shoving against his chest, tears soaking through his shirt until she finally gave in, falling into him in one final movement. Her ear rested against his heart as if she needed the confirmation that it was still there and beating.

He didn't care if people were staring, he didn't care that all of his muscles ached, he didn't care that there was still so much to say and so much to do; he only cared about the woman in his arms. The woman that held his heart in her hands. The woman that had even through the minutest of things, dappled light into an otherwise darkened soul.

"Let me just say I'm sorry," he implored with trepidation, "because I am. You can reject it all you want but I am sorry, Felicity."

"Sometimes it's just a little too late, Oliver."

"But not all the time."

"No," she whispered into his shirt. "Not all the time." A few beats passed with them just embracing, the rest of the world passing by as normal, and then, "I still can't believe you're alive. I mean, I don't think I ever really thought you were gone but I never thought I'd see you again."

"I know. Me neither."

She parted with him just enough so that she could look him straight in the eye. "Look, I think…I think I should go."

The words stung a little, but Oliver noted the distinct lack of finality in them. "Where does this leave us?" he asked nervously. "Friends?"

"I don't know yet. I think I need time to…process everything."

"How much time?"

"However long it takes." She fixed her glasses. "You know, you never told me why you wanted to see me."

"Is it so wrong to want to see someone who's important to you?"

A slight nod of understanding made his stomach knot, his arms itching to pull her flush to him again.

Felicity, fully disentangling herself from him, took a step back, regarding him once more. "See you around, Oliver." And then she backed away puffy-eyed and red-faced and left, with her scarf trailing the ground behind her. Something about that scene invited a small smile from him.

"Bye, Felicity," he whispered into the empty space in front of him.

What was ahead for them stayed a mystery, but he revelled in the fact that at least they had a start.

That was better than nothing.


Okay I'm gonna be honest - that last scene was so incredibly difficult to write. It could have gone so many different ways and it definitely took a few twists and turns before it ended up like that. It just felt so important and I didn't want to let the story down by not delving into the emotional web they're stuck in. I wanted the scene to feel heavy, like there was this weight constantly on them and to be honest, I have no idea if I achieved that or not lol. My worst fear is that they're too OOC even for this AU where they already are quite different from their respective characters. But anyway that's just me babbling about it because I'm nervous to hear what you all think haha please do drop me a review because I would really love to hear your comments on it all :)