Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. I own nothing in relation to Arrow or it's characters.
Chapter 5: Two Sides to Every Story
I felt her eyes boring through the fabric of my jacket as I walked almost stiffly to the elevator doors. Most people did things in a normal fashion you know they would meet first and exchange the awkward hello and nice to meet you followed by the stray smile or flirtatious glance. Those first few moments would then be followed by the lame pick up line or even two lame pick up lines. If you were lucky enough those few stupid lines would at least open the door enough so that she'd even consider giving you more of her valuable time by saying yes to your invitation to dinner. With Felicity well we'd done nothing the right way...
We'd done it all the wrong way...
I stepped forward and had to resist turning back knowing that her smiling face would be there waiting for me. I'd spent hours dreaming of that smile, of those lips that were always so full and soft when I leaned in to kiss them. She'd never know just how much she truly meant to me...
She'd never know how much she changed me...
She'd never know how she saved me...
I could barely hear the rustle or the bustle as body after body filled the small cramped elevator as I passed through level after level until I finally reached my own. All I could do was picture that moment...the first moment that I saw her coming towards me from beneath the pale, dim, and strangely never ending light. I'd lost my parents that night...they'd gone out to see a play what play I couldn't begin to tell you but they'd left us alone with nothing more than a few vague happy memories to keep us warm at night. I could still hear Raisa's raised panicked voice as the police told her that there'd been an accident...I could still hear the rain as it hit softly against the tempered glass...I could still feel the blood draining from my face as I leaned against the rail of the winding staircase...the news floated upwards and hit me square in the chest.
They'd died instantly upon impact so at least according to the police they'd felt little to no pain. No the only pain that was felt was by those they'd left behind. Raisa didn't stop crying for almost four days while Thea wandered around the house in a confused babbling haze. I on the other hand went numb...I'd stopped caring for things long before that day but not even my iron walls could erase the cold ache that had begun to invade my small young body.
Their loss should have broken me...
It should have destroyed what little light was still evident beneath my cool dead eyes...
I should have accepted my fate without hesitation or fear...
I should have died that night but instead I met the one person who made me want to live...
I met the one person who made me fight to survive...
I didn't know it then but I met the one person who would love me scars and all.
She was younger than me with dark wavy hair that fell just below her shoulders. All and all she was nothing much to look at nor did she hold anything more than a passing interest as I sat there huddled against the back of the foreign black wall. No her appearance isn't what drew me in...What made me trust her...what made me open up to her was her voice. She'd speak every once in awhile as I stayed curled in the fetal position just waiting for the dream to end so that I could once again return home. After the first night I felt nothing more than a twinge of regret as I woke the next morning her soft wistful voice still filling my senses as the morning sun warmed my tear stained face. The second night was no different the twinge was stronger but the regret remained the same. By the fourth night I'd finally snapped...she'd be there sitting in the middle of that damn room just talking about nothing and everything all at the same time...she was so...so...
She was the light in my otherwise darkened universe so against my better judgement I spoke letting her in one small simple word at a time. She always went first telling me about her day...about her mother and about her loss. Her father had left them for another woman...and another life. She'd been devastated so I did what I normally didn't do I actually asked to know more.
"Will you ever forgive him? You know for leaving you?" My voice was hesitant and almost shockingly still but still despite all that she'd heard me...she always heard me.
"One day...I'll forgive him one day...but it just isn't going to be today." She smiled softly in my direction as she picked at a loose string on her panda covered pajama bottoms. "How about you? Will you ever forgive them?"
"For what?" I was curious so I inched a sheer millimeter closer...for once I brought my face forwards into the light.
Her voice was soft and delicate like a melody floating along the air on a warm spring day. Her words striking a cord that I feared I'd never fully let go of. "For dying...do you think you'll ever forgive them for leaving you and your sister alone to fend for yourselves?"
I chewed on her words as they bounced back and forth within my head until I found the words that up until know I'd been reluctant to admit. "No...No Felicity I don't think I truly ever will." With that last parting thought I leaned back settling firmly into the wall but this time with one stark exception this time I held out my hand...
Much to my shock she accepted.
As I turned the knob on the glass door I smiled recalling another moment of our shared history that had brightened my usually very dark soul crushing days.
"You know you're skin is going to be a roadmap of scars before too much longer..." We'd been sitting in front of each other for about an hour at this point she had her legs curled beneath her while my own were spread out around her small form.
"Really I show you something that greatly bothers me and you make it into a joke? You know I'm just not sure about you sometimes Felicity." My tone was light so she knew I was kidding but none the less she looked up from the game she'd insisted that we play.
"Oliver I'd like you if you were covered in boils and pot marks. You're my best friend...you're the only person I can talk to these days..." I heard her tone shift as she slightly stumbled over her last words.
"Felicity what are you hiding from me?" She chewed at her bottom lip just as she always did when she was nervous or attempting to hide something from me so I pressed on bringing my palms up to touch against her own as she kept them held stiffly over mine. "Felicity talk to me...what's wrong?"
She'd gone silent which for Felicity was a dead give away that something was truly wrong. "Felicity..."
"They think I'm crazy...the whole lot of them think I'm nuts because I keep dreaming of a teenage boy who has more scars on his body than a goddamn mafia solider. They've sent me to this doctor and Oliver it's bad she wants to put me on all these drugs...she claims I'm and I quote..." She held her fingers up as she signaled the sign for quotation marks as she finished the woman's absurd claims. "That I'm experiencing a break with reality...I think she's just hard up for money and that she's see's my parents as easy targets. Either way Oliver...she's...she'..." Her voice began to shake and tremble so I did what I'd always done to comfort her I moved forward until I had her small frame wrapped in my much larger one.
"Felicity shhh...it's alright...no one is going to hurt you..." She coughed and hiccuped as her cries lessened and her body stilled.
"She's going to take you away from me...she's going to make it so I can't find you anymore..." I could hear the fear and the panic in her voice as she continued to quietly sob into my grey shirt. I held her as I kissed her darkened tresses. My heart was breaking for her...but it was also breaking for myself as well. She was my light...she was my one bright spot in a world filled with grey...she was my best friend and I wasn't about to lose her without a fight.
"She can't take me away Felicity..." I spoke softly into her hair as her fingers dug deeply into my forearms.
"You don't know that..." She snuffled and shifted as she curled closer into the warmth of my chest.
"Yes I do...she can't break us if we don't let her."
"What do you mean?" She was still snuffling into my chest but her voice had shifted from sad to suddenly hopeful.
"I mean she can't break what she can't reach. Felicity I don't know if this is real or all just made up by two very broken and scared people but she can't touch what doesn't really exist."
"So if I say you're not real then it's like I'm shutting off the part my brain that reaches out to you?"
I smiled into her hair marveling at how smart someone so young could truly be. "Yes she can't touch what doesn't exist. She can't touch us Felicity...no one can..."
I'd grow to regret those words as she grew...
I'd grow to hate that moment as she became this strong, beautiful force of nature that one day was the little girl I'd sworn to protect...until she was the only woman I'd risk life and limb to see. Yes I'd grown to regret telling her we weren't real...because in some way she'd been more real to me then all the people who'd floated in and out of my tortured life.
No I did regret those words but in that moment as she smiled lightly against my tear soaked shirt I'd never felt happier in all my life.
I'd unbuttoned my dress jacket and was in the process of undoing my tie as i took my seat behind my own glass desk. This moment didn't bring me joy but it did tell me that no matter what I'd done or became she'd always care for me...
"Tell me where you hid the money Victor...tell me and all this can end..." My skin was coated in his dried blood as my voice almost slithered slowly past my tense lips. My assignment was clear...
Simple...
Direct...
This man had been working for my father's company long before my training had begun. He'd been present as they tore apart my back with the thick leather whips...each lash tore away small bits and pieces of flesh as I screamed until my vocal cords bled. He'd stood there as they broke every bone in my young unmarred hands claiming that through pain one found strength...through pain one found redemption. He'd stood there as they almost burned me alive...yes Victor has seen them beat me, torture me, drug me, and finally break me. He'd seen the kind of monster they'd created and he'd never once flinched. Now as I stood before him with a bloodied screw driver in my hand he looked scared, alarmed, and shocked. He'd seen them create me but he never wagered that they'd really break me...he never thought he'd one day be at my mercy as I was so often at his.
I brought the metal weapon down until I could feel the crunch of his skull beneath the metals angled head. I kept hitting him until the one side of his face was caved in... the only way to identify him would be through dental records...I was covered in his blood...I was covered in his life...I was finally the monster they'd worked so hard to create. His crime had been minor but his goals had been long term. My father had been involved with the Bravta for years but I'd never realized just how far down those ties truly lied.
"He ordered your parent's murder Oliver...he is the reason you're here instead of your father...he's the reason you're the monster you are...he took away your choices in life...he created his own destruction..."
I could hear Alexi's dead cold voice as I drifted off to sleep my heart torn between what was right and what was wrong...
His blood still slightly stained my arms as the remnants of his flesh clung tightly in the spaces between my fingernails and my skin. His death coated me...and covered me with a thick veil of shame. I'd killed a man today...I'd tortured a man until my own rage ended his life. She's seen it all my sweet Felicity she'd been there when I'd first killed...she'd been there during my second and third...she'd held me as I broke down her open pure and loving heart kept my own afloat as my demons threatened to swallow me whole. Now as I shut my eyes and closed off my heart I prayed to see her face so that my broken tattered soul might one day find a way to forgive itself for the vile acts I'd committed today.
"Oliver...oh god...Oliver what have you done?"
I rushed towards her as the tears fell freely down my face I had my face buried in her abdomen as I slowly slid down her shock ridden form. I clung to her needing her warmth... her words...her comfort...and her heart. I needed to remember what it was like to feel alive so I clung to the one person who'd made the instinct to survive burn that much brighter.
"Oliver please talk to me...tell me what happened...Oliver please you can trust me...I won't ever abandon you...I promise..."
With my fingers digging roughly into her soft pliant flesh I gave her the only words my raw frozen throat could create...
"I love you Felicity..."
She'd said nothing all she did was run her soft and sure fingers through my course hair until she felt my body finally begin to still...she said nothing as she slid down her chest brushing lightly down the path of my skin until her eyes were level with mine. There we were both of us on our knees as my arms banded securely around her waist her own hands held my face so her lips were directly in line with mine.
"I'm never going to abandon you...I promise..." She brushed her lips rather timidly against my own before I took control sealing us together until I felt we'd began to become one.
She didn't say the words...
Because she knew deep down she didn't have too...
My musings were interrupted by the small knock at my glass door.
"Have you told her yet?"
I looked up to see his slightly worried face as he came closer...
"You're nerves are going to be you're undoing my friend. I'm going to see her tonight...all this will be over soon John I promise."
"You said that two years ago when I tracked your ass down after she almost got herself killed trying to get to you...you were her world then I can only imagine how much worse those damn visions are going to get now that you're together again."
I signed as I ran a hand down the length of my face. He was now seated before me and his anxiety was clearly written all over his tired and drawn face. "I love her John I won't lose her again."
"I don't doubt that you forget I've seen what those visions do to you...I've seen you tear into your own skin while you're in the midst of those damn visions. But you haven't seen what they do to her..."
"John..."
"No you don't understand that damn doctor had her so drugged up that she flat-lined twice in the span of five minutes...Oliver her heart stopped because she so desperately wanted to find you..."
Anger was edged in my voice as I rose from my chair. "You forget what happened when her heart stopped... so did my own"
"It doesn't matter Oliver she'd almost died again when she came to Starling City because she against any form of good judgement kept going to that doctor in a vain attempt to bring about those damn memories...she was so desperate to prove you were real that she wound up almost dead in that damn alley..."
"John I never would have let that happen..." my voice was edged even further as he circled around a subject I'd rather forget.
"She thinks Laurel is dead Oliver...she as no idea that it's Laurel who's responsible for all this...she doesn't know the whole story...she doesn't know who Laurel and Lance for that matter really are...Oliver she's going to be crushed..."
He hadn't risen once during his entire speech he just sat there with his elbows braced against the hard surface of the tables unforgiving glass. His eyes were lined at the edges and his lips were thinning with age. He'd grown tired of the constant lies...and frankly so had I.
"John I'd die for her...hell I have how many times now..."
He exhaled loudly before replying. "Based on all the stories and facts we've managed to find in the past two years..." He closed his eyes briefly before delivering his final response. "You're at lucky number 13 and we're still no closer to figuring out how all this is actually possible."
"She's the key Digg...according to Julie she's has the memories that we need but without a direct connection to me she can't..."
"Access them yes I've heard it all before...She loves you Oliver this is going to destroy her..."
I smiled softly before turning my computer screen around revealing how little he really knew of the woman I'd spent lifetimes falling for. "She knows more than you think..."
"Oliver how?...How did she gather all this intel?"
His voice was shocked and to my amusement also slightly proud. "She's a genius Digg...she's also stubborn so after we well um..."
"Yeah after you two had sex Oliver it was in some messed up dream world that only you two can access it wasn't real..."
"It was for me..." I whispered the last part as he smiled nodding in understanding as he reviewed her many findings.
"You think she's ready for the truth?" His voice was hesitant but ready for this whole long drawn out story to be finally over.
"She has to be...if the timeline remains consistent than in less than 6 months we're both going to die..." My throat clenched as the last words caught in my throat.
"But this time it will be for good..."