Let me wear
deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
T. S. Eliot
The next hour is surreal: there's a sort of anxious, too-fast-for-true-understand feel to it that dreams usually have. And just like a dream, its pieces scatter at the fingertips of consciousness every time Oliver tries to separate a particular moment from the whole.
They tell Roy and Sara to not go inside Felicity's house for any reason. (When Oliver explains why, the heavy silence on the other side of the line presses against his ear like the ocean at 100 feet of depth. It reminds him of the stillness on Felicity's face.) Felicity makes both Oliver and John take blood tests. They do that without too much fuss. As they do, she changes into a pair of sweats Oliver hands her - the only pieces of clothing he could find at the moment that were clean enough for her to wear.
It's such a surprise seeing her in them. Felicity usually seems larger than life, so bright and colorful that she can literally fill a room all by herself. Maybe that's why she seems even smaller than usual like that, swallowed by his clothes. Fine-boned and breakable, wrapped in swaths of fabric too big for her. All the grey makes her look paler, it makes her puffy eyes look even redder, the skin looking so tender Oliver can't look at her without his breath staggering.
But those are thoughts that scab at Oliver's control and threaten to smash the already tenuous hold on his calm, so he puts them in the box of things not to dwell on just yet.
Not yet.
When their tests come back clean, Felicity orders both John and Oliver to get out.
Digg flat out tells her he's going nowhere near his daughter – or anyone else out there - until they know what they're dealing with. Oliver… Oliver just looks at her and says nothing, his silence falling between them with the heavy thud of an anvil.
He could go.
There is a familiar part of him – the skin he's lived in for years, the one that has kept him alive - that wants to. That part of him is itching to run, as fast as he can, and find someone whose face to break open over this, because he can't stay and be still within the same space where she's hurt. Where dark thoughts crowd over him, reminding him of every ounce of blood he's seen spilt, every death and every way this could become a nightmare.
He can't stay here where he's just terrified and helpless…
All of this is true, and it builds restlessness inside him into a living, breathing little beast that scratches at the insides of his ribs, wanting to rip out.
He could let it out; he could leave. But he won't.
Because they don't really know if they're in the clear just yet and because… because knowing that Felicity expects him to just walk out of the very same place where she had so stubbornly insisted that 'if you're not leaving, I'm not leaving' makes Oliver's hands curls into fists with frustration. It makes him want to shake her to her senses: We don't just accept things, remember!
But then again, Felicity accepts things just fine when it's the people she cares about tipping the scales, doesn't she? She's proved it more than once.
The real wonder and the secret Oliver will never be able to unravel, is how she so often finds herself expendable.
He's known for a while how much she is not, but the stark reality of it starts to corrode Oliver's insides at about the same time as Felicity starts being stubborn about letting either of them close to her, as if that would change anything. After the second time she almost tips over in her chair, white-knuckling her way through what has got to be a wave of pain, Oliver tries to get her to take some sort of sedative. Felicity refuses it - she's too busy running searches for a virus no database seems to contain. Oliver, in turn refuses to move away from her, which prompts her to Felicity refuse to drink the rest of the antitoxin until he does.
It's how they find themselves locked in a standstill for about five minutes until she stops talking midsentence, her breath coming short, eyes rolling at the back of her head a moment later.
Both John and Oliver move for her – Oliver just gets there faster. (He was closer) He catches her by the shoulders, saying her name over and over, heart in his throat. She burns beneath his palm, the heat of her body coming off her as if in waves and this - this is the moment when fear starts to really gnaw him open where it had sunk its sharp teeth in, earlier.
Felicity's loss of consciousness doesn't last much. Before Oliver can even work himself into a full panic, she's already blinking her eyes open.
"I'm ok." She says breathlessly, repeats it to herself. She pushes at his hands, turns her face away. Oliver doesn't budge.
"No, you're not." Oliver insists.
And it's time to face and they're not treading waters anymore. There are no waters shallow enough to tread here. He hasn't been able to touch solid ground ever since he found her on that bed.
"You're sick, Felicity, and we can't just sit here and…" and wait! It's starting to sound more and more insane the more time scraps by.
"We're not." Felicity insists. "I've already send my bloodwork results to Caitlyn. She is the brightest bio-engineer on this side of the country. She'll know what this is."
Right. Because so far they have no idea what she's been infected with, which is about the only reason why they haven't run to the hospital yet.
She was so calm when she told them earlier, that she'd thought someone had tried to infect her to kill the Arrow. As if it's par course. As if expects the idea to be obvious. Easy to consider.
(She doesn't feel the tectonic plates of the core of him shifting in the face of her so calm acceptance, all the ripples spreading. Howcouldshe? She has no idea) But so far she's the only one who's sick.
The second option, she told them steadily, was that it's not about the Arrow at all. That this was about her. She's gave them five of names of people who might want her dead right off the bat. (It's how Oliver knows she's been listing possible suspects ever since she woke up) They're all people the Arrow has dealt with, who might have gotten a whiff of the vigilante's tech support.
Oliver doesn't know which option feels worse. The more he thinks about it the more it all feels like a double-edged knife he keeps turning inside himself: he can't really tell which side cuts worse.
It shivers something loose in him… calls something back from the depth of a dark place where deadly instincts have calcified.
Tension climbs him, like cockroaches under his clothes.
Fear…
Oliver looks at her. Sweat is starting to bead her forehead, her hands are shaking and she looks about to pass out. She pushes at him anyway, trying to make him step away again. Oliver presses his tongue on the roof of his mouth, biting back the first frustration-tinged words.
"It doesn't matter." He says after a slow exhale. "If we haven't been infected by now…"
"We don't know!" Felicity hisses back and inches away from him as much as she can. Even that small exertion costs her. Her breathing shortens, her hand goes to her abdomen, wincing. It's ultimately why Olive takes a few steps back and grinds his molars together.
"We don't know anything." Felicity continues. "And until we do, we have to be safe."
"When is Barry going to be here?" Oliver asks for the fourth time. Felicity just gives him a firm look.
"Is this a grown up version of 'are we there yet'?"
There's exasperation in her tone, but a small, forced smile on her lips too.
Oliver presses his lips together in a straight hard line. "This is not funny, Felicity."
Her face falls then, and Oliver can suddenly see the exhaustion, every single line of her worry, the sparkles of fear she's trying so hard to contain behind deep-set eyes, the smudges like bruises around her eyes, her pale lips. He sees it all. There's no way to escape it.
And she's living it.
"Oh, believe me, I know." Felicity says tonelessly.
"Ok, let's just take a breather here." Digg intercepts before this can go any further. He turns to Felicity. "How are you feeling?"
She sighs. Grabs the fresh icepack John hands her and puts it on her forehead with a wince.
"My throat aches, my head is throbbing and my eyes feel like they're going to pop out any second." And she move the icepack over her eyes just then, trying for some relief. "But, you know, details…"
Felicity gives John a plastic smile that falls almost immediately. She's downplaying it and they both know it.
(She is. She doesn't tell them about how her heart flutters for no reason from time to time. About how she can't stand the light of her own screens and how every single fiber of her hurts. She feels as sensitive as scraped, raw skin - and yet, at the same, different parts of her body are growing numb. She doesn't say how scared she really is… how can she? They both look at her like they're a breath way from drowning and she's the only one keeping them up on the surface.)
"How about your wounds?" Oliver asks.
He hasn't missed a single muscle moving on her face. She flinches every time she has to move.
Felicity just sighs. "Hurts."
John crosses the distance between them in three strides. "Let me have a look."
They know something is wrong the moment Felicity gathers the long hem of the sweatshirt back and they see bluish bruises blooming on her skin, stark mementos of violence, peeking from the corners of her bandages. Oliver almost chokes on his breath when he sees the state of the wounds beneath.
Her whole side is one big bruise in various shades of purple and the punctures are badly inflamed.
"That's… not supposed to look like that, is it?" Felicity asks in a low whisper.
John shakes his head, wordless.
"Ok. Ok, let's just, calm down for a bit." Felicity says, entirely for her own benefit as she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes tries to think.
Think, dam it!
This is her job: she's supposed to know things, figure them out when she doesn't know. She's the one who predict all the things that could go wrong at any time and finds a way to be ready for every single possibility.
Felicity has no idea what to do when she's the one with the problem though. And this… this isn't something she can hack into. Something she can research or dig up, or outsmart, or solve. This is…
What is this? What is happening?
For the first time, she allows herself to face that she has no clue at all. None.
It makes her want to cry, maybe just a little bit. Instead of giving in though, she just tries to put a calm face on before opening her eyes. She knows what she'll see when she does: the faces of her two friends, at the end of their wits, watching her like she's about to shatter. And she can't do that right now. She really doesn't have it in her to make them feel better because she's at the end of her rope too and they're just feeding each other's panic at this point.
It's why she wanted Oliver and Digg out of here. To keep them safe and keep them away. So that she could crack all by her lonesome.
As it is, Felicity has to choke back any signs of fracture and fear, because barfing is one thing, as is the occasional stumbling, but she can't cry in front of them too!
When a hand brushes her shoulder, Felicity knows exactly who it is. This is the way they reassure each other: touch, firm and present, a silent 'it's ok'. It's steadying enough that Felicity feels she can lean on it a bit. Just for a moment.
Is it strange that she knows he can kill someone with those bare hands. That he is capable of violence she has never been faced with (she's seen its ugly ghost haunt his eyes countless times, bloody fingerprints everywhere on his soul, whenever he lets his guard down for her to see it). And yet from those same hands Felicity has only experienced gentleness.
His hands… an anthology of tender touches…
It should be strange…
What?
"Felicity."
She blinks, frowns as she tries to focus her eyes on Oliver's face. He's right there. Her first instinct is to hold her breath. He doesn't seem to care for proximity but she does.
His eyes are wide and sad, but burning with determination. His whole face is set.
How can someone look so angry and so sad at the same time?
"It's going to be ok." Oliver tells her, eyes impossibly blue and wide - and she could almost smile. As if he senses the flimsiness of his own words, his tone gets insistent. And she can see it, the script getting skewered into italics by the heavy intensity of his will behind every word. "It is. Barry will be here to take you to STAR Labs, and they'll figure this out. They deal with weirder stuff than this, right? It's going to be ok."
She lets her eyes roam his face for a while, lingering more freely than she usually allows himself, and wonders absently if he's saying these things for her or for himself. Faith and optimism helps when dealing with problems, but Felicity likes ripping through them with logic just as much. It's the only thing that has never failed her.
But then again, Oliver is the exception there too. Maybe compartmentalizing things is contagious.
… maybe he just needs to believe his own words as badly as he need her to believe them. Maybe it will make him feel better.
So she nods. Tries her damnest to let go of the fistfuls of the sweater over her stomach. Tries to regain some level of functionality outside of the frantic noisiness of her brain.
It's strange, how slow she feels. Thinking is hard when you have a headache that is banging on your frontal lobe like the fist of an angry god to distract you, but this is different. She can literally feel her brain being cottoned, her concentration scattering at her fingertips every time she tries to think her way through this.
She feels restless, wants to move, do something. Anything! This stillness is aggravating.
But she can't… She feels like her internal organs have gotten evacuation orders from her nervous system and are not fighting each other for a way out or something. There is that saying that you don't really feel your insides unless there's something wrong with them and if that's true, then her insides must be one giant fuck up right now, because Felicity can feel each and every fiber she is made of and that is something scary all into itself.
"Felicity!"
She snaps her eyes open - hadn't even been aware she closed them, not really.
"I'm here." She says immediately… or tries to. Her words slur just a little bit. She looks at both John and Oliver and they look… she has no words for those looks.
Wide eyes and pursed lips and shaking lips.
"What?" she asks, looking at them in turn. "I'm ok."
Oliver shakes his head minutely, wild-eyed and bone-pale.
"You weren't breathing, Felicity." He whispers and Felicity has to stop for a moment to comprehend that.
"Sorry…" the word is out before she can think about it. The way he's looking at her - like she just delivered his death knell or something - makes it the only acceptable thing to say. But Oliver just shakes her head at her minutely, like she's not making any sense.
Maybe she's not. Everything feels like so far away all of a sudden. Slow, like cotton candy has grown in between the gears of her brain.
It's not fear that she feels…
Felicity knows what fear tastes like, many different flavors of it. Empty rooms, raised voices. Needles, swords, bombs… what was she talking about again?
Right… fear.
No, she's not really afraid. There's a whole wall between her and emotion right now, she's just peeking from the other side. She's not feeling anything. Maybe that is the problem.
Her mouth feels so dry.
Felicity reaches for the glass of water on the table. She's been drinking a lot of water in the last hour. It's with a strange, almost foreign sense of detachment that she watches the glass slips through her fingers.
Felicity stares at the glass fall; watches Oliver catch it, his reflexes as sharp as ever. Watches her own had, fingers curling into her palm, sliding over it and then opening again.
She didn't even feel herself grabbing it that glass… She can't feel a thing.
"Oh…"
"What's wrong?"
He's right there when she looks, crouching by her chair to be closer to her eyelevel, his whole face a soundless plea… and all Felicity can think about is how she'd never noticed there were tiny flecks of gold in his eyes.
"Doesn't you knee hurt?" she hears herself ask, almost without meaning to. It's one of those things that just make it past her lips before she can close them. Her head is spinning a little. She leans back on the chair. God, her neck is so stiff, she would give just about anything for a deep tissue massage just about now.
"What?"
It's how shaky Oliver's voice comes out that gets Felicity's attention, more than the question itself.
Is it the light that is making his eyes look so shiny?
"Your knee. From sitting like that." She takes one long deep breath. Talking… what was she saying? "Get up, Oliver."
He does, and leans in close, both hands holding her face so gently she can hardly feel that either.
"Felicity, what's wrong with your hand?"
She reaches out, sees her own hand on his cheek and it's like it doesn't belong to her. Her brain tells her she should be feeling his stubble right about now (she's always wondered…) but she's not and wow, it's like an out of body experience.
Her sight gets fuzzy and then clears, tears tracing an itchy path down her cheeks.
"What is it?" Oliver asks her, his worry deepening every line on his face. There's almost a frantic feel to the way he traces her every feature. "Tell me.Just tell me. It's ok."
It doesn't sound ok, though. Not ok at all. He sounds scared and so sad. Looks it too…
She's never outright lied to him about important things before, though.
"I can't feel it." Felicity says simply. "I can't feel my hand…"
Doesn't even feel it when he covers it with his, wrapping his fingers around hers, engulfing her palm. She can see that he's holding it tight, but doesn't feel it at all.
"So weird…"
She remembers that one time when she was maybe six years old and got local anesthesia when she went to the dentist. She'd bitten her lip to bruising because she couldn't feel it and figured it wouldn't hurt ever.
It had hurt later though…
She's about to tell Oliver all about it (he looks like he needs a happy story right about now; she figures her stories are pretty nice comparing to his) when a loud banging from upstairs interrupts her. Felicity sucks in a sharp breath and almost chokes on it. John leans over and punches the opening code of the Foundry's door. Before Felicity can say anything, there's a flash and she flinches, closing her eyes and bodily turning away from the light.
Felicity rests her forehead on what absently registers as Oliver's arm for a couple of minutes. Her head feels so heavy all of a sudden. When she manages to turn it, Barry's in her line of sight and she can't help a small smile. (Doesn't feel that one tear that slips out and slides down her nose)
"Hi, Barry."
His eyes are huge and shiny, chin trembling a little before he presses his lips together.
"Hi Felicity."
She frowns at him. Tilts her head out of habit – and has to close her eyes because the whole room tilts with her.
"Are those bruises?" she manages to ask. The left side of his face is covered in them.
"Yeah. We had an incident, it's gonna be fine. Listen Felicity…" He comes real close too, bends so that his face is all she can see. She wants to tell him not to. "…I'm going to need you to hold on to me as tight as you can, ok."
She groans, rolls her eyes. A moment later, Oliver is right in her line of sight.
"What? What's wrong?"
And he sounds so anxious. She wants to tell him not to be, even though she's really scared too. But that gets lost in the translation and all that comes out of her mouth is a faint 'why does that never happen the way I imagine it?'"
Barry frowns. "What?"
He looks at Oliver as he gather Felicity close, head tucked safely into his neck to avoid giving her whiplash on top of the wound. He almost flinches when he feels how hot she's running.
Oliver just shakes his head. "Just take her. And Barry – come back for us, after."
Barry nods and then he's gone.