They have just enough good days in a row that she stops expecting the bad ones.
Things haven't been perfect. Digg still isn't speaking to Oliver and Thea's still struggling to find her footing with Roy out of her life. But with him, with them, things are better than they've ever been.
Until they're not.
She's gotten used to waking up beside him, head resting in the crook of his arm and leg draped between his. She's gotten used to waking up to his fingers stroking her arm or his lips meandering a path down her body. She's gotten used to things being fantastic, feeling like every dream she's ever had came true all at once. It's dangerous, she'll realize later, to start expecting things to be perfect. Because when they're not…
She wakes with a start. It's not his usual slow exploration of her body coaxing her to awareness. It's the press of a forearm to her throat, not enough pressure to do real damage, but surely enough to wake her up and put her in an immediate state of terror.
It's not Oliver she sees when she wakes up, his eyes are always warm and familiar. Loving. No, when she wakes up it's Al Sah-him she sees, face blank and eyes drained of any sense of affection. She can't help saying Oliver's name anyhow, can't help hoping somehow, some way, just saying it will bring him back.
"Oliver Queen is dead," is his immediate response.
"Well he's sure not here right now," she manages to breathe out.
His arm lets up slightly on pressure against her throat as he studies her, studies the room, takes stock of where he is and what's going on. Felicity's blinking back tears, wondering what the hell happened, how to bring him back, what Oliver will do when he realizes he's not always Oliver.
He thinks he beat this, she knows. He thinks that all of the conditioning and the drugs and the god-damned brainwashing Ra's put him through amounted to nothing. It's not as simple as that. It never was. Sometimes he was stronger than it, convincing everyone around him that there was nothing of Oliver Queen left. And sometimes… sometimes he ran a sword through someone he was hallucinating to be his best friend.
She hopes, wild and desperate, that he doesn't hurt her. He could, she knows. He could kill her as easily as he breathes. But Oliver would never forgive himself. John would never forgive him either. There's some things you just don't come back from.
"You were his beloved," Al Sah-him says, releasing her entirely but eyeing her closely and still looming over her.
She's the furthest thing possible from a threat at the moment, naked in every possible way, sprawled across their bed and pinned beneath him.
"He's still mine," she offers up, voice thick and daring, chin jut out proudly.
Something flashes through his deadened eyes at that and it's terrifying. She sucks in a breath and tenses, half expecting him to strike out at her, but it never comes.
"I am not him," Al Sah-him tells her, voice deadened.
"No," she agrees, wholly meaning it. "You are not."
There's satisfaction, if not happiness, on his face at that and some of the wariness and tension in his impressively muscled frame eases off. He pulls away from her and she lets out a tentative sigh of relief.
His eyes drift down her nude form and her hands itch to grab for the sheet and shield herself from his gaze. But she doesn't. She lays still instead, letting him drink in the situation in whole. It has to be confusing for him, she realizes, to wake up one morning weeks after he last surfaced in a situation worlds away from what he remembers. She doesn't want to jar him for so many reasons.
"What's the last thing you remember?" She asks him curiously.
"My bride trying to stab me at our wedding," he answers immediately.
She winces at that, which is something he catches instantly because Al Sah-him is nothing if not observant.
"You object to that," he notes curiously. "Because she tried to harm the body that used to house your beloved or because she's my wife?"
"That's not really an either/or kind of question," Felicity tells him honestly.
He doesn't respond. At least not with words. He's appraising her anew, cold, hard eyes searching her face before drifting back down her body.
There's interest there, she realizes, suddenly. She knows that look. Or, at least, a look much like it. Oliver has never been detached like this. Not ever. But the way his pupils dilate slightly, the hungry edge to his perusal. She knows that. Even if she didn't, though, he's looming over her, caging her in, and his cock is half hard against her hip.
The realization stuns her, leaves her reeling. Because what does she do with that? How does she react when Oliver isn't Oliver. It's not something she's ever contemplated before. It's not something she's ever thought she'd have to contemplate.
"And yet I wake to find myself here. With you," he points out.
"Your relationship with your wife isn't exactly the conjugal sort," she points out.
His eyebrow lifts slightly at that and it hurts how closely that looks like Oliver. It's not though. It's not. And she knows it.
"Ours looks to be," he points out.
"No," she tells him definitively. "It's not."
"All evidence to the contrary," he tells her.
"You might wear my lover's face, Al Sah-him. But you are not him," she says defiantly.
His brow furrows a little at that as her words turn over in his mind. The spark of interest in his eyes an instant before shifts into something else entirely, quite suddenly. His face grows harder as the confusion lifts.
"Oliver Queen is not dead," he realizes aloud.
"No," she replies. "He's not. But apparently neither are you."
There's fury on his face, probably masking fear, she realizes, but that doesn't make it any more comforting. She tenses for whatever is going to come next. But there's no violence. Instead, he pushes off the bed and stalks to the bathroom. It's only when the door slams behind him that she breathes out a shuddering exhale. It's not relief and it's not terror. It's both. And neither. And a hundred feelings she hadn't expected and can't quite define.
Her hand drifts to cover her mouth, shaking fingers doing nothing to muffle the sound of a desperate sob. She gives herself two minutes to break down. Her body shakes and tears spill down her cheeks and she can't even breathe properly.
The shower turns on then and reality settles in. Al Sah-him is in her bathroom. He slept in her bed and wears Oliver's skin and oh my God this is a problem.
She scrambles for her cell phone on the nightstand, fingers hovering over the contact list for a moment as she weighs what to do. Ultimately, though, given the realities of their lives now, the choice on who to call is simpler than she'd like. She glances towards the closed bathroom door for just a second before clicking the call button on the phone.
"Felicity?" Asks a tired voice on the other end of the line. "Is everything okay? What time is it?"
"Laurel," Felicity says, trying and failing to keep her voice from shaking. "We have a problem."