"Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don't make a noise,
don't leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will
come back from the dead for you."
–Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain
"Hey."
John looks up to see Cisco Ramon hovering in his periphery, holding out a cup of what he assumes from the smell is coffee. John takes it with a small thank you.
"You ok?" Cisco asks softly. John just holds the cup for longs moments, fingers curled around the porcelain tightly.
It takes him a while to answer.
"My best friend has been poisoned and she might very well be turned into something straight out of a horror movie. My other best friend is half a world away, trying to find his runaway sister before her mass murdering father does. A man we thought was dead, but who apparently got over it." John takes a deep, steadying breath, trying to order his thoughts into some semblance of calm, despite the fact that they were more slippery than they had been in a long time.
The thought of Merlyn gave him incredible focus though. The kind of focus that came with having a clear target.
"The same man that got 503 people killed and who might also have a hand in setting all of this mess up in the first place. We have no idea what is play is, so we have to assume we'll have the even bigger trouble on our tail sooner or later."
It wouldn't worry him as much, but 'bigger trouble in this instance is the League of Assassins. Just the look on Sara's face when she talked about it would be enough to make John tense. Sara Lance was the kind of woman who didn't flinch for anything other than a bullet with her name on it. What could scare her like that had to be taken seriously.
The silence that falls is heavy, but John almost smiles at Cisco's next words, hesitant but genuine in the kid's desire to lift his mood even just a little.
"So that would be a 'no' then?"
John exhales, long and slow.
"No, Cisco… I don't think 'okay' is the word I'm gonna use anytime in the near future." he shakes his head. "Look, you don't know me that well. But I'm the type of guy who's only thought about one thing: how do I keep the people I love safe. And right now, seems to me I'm doing a pretty shit job at it."
Cisco's eyes are wide and honest when he rebuts that. "Not from where I'm standing. You're taking care of Felicity just fine, cause if you haven't noticed, you and Roy are the only ones she hangs around comfortably with. Whatever happens, I'm sure you're gonna do fine, cause you're Team Arrow man! You guys always win."
John gives the kid a tired, humorless smile. In many ways, Cisco reminds him of Felicity so there is a measure of calm that the kid gives him, despite all odds and chances.
"Yeah, but that was before. In a world where dead people stayed dead, people weren't able to run at the speed of sound and myths didn't turn out to be real."
His life was a freaking movie all of a sudden and Digg was taking to the shift about as well a straight thinking man like him ever could: that is, he wasn't taking to it at all. He could hardly wrap his brain around it.
"Or walk on water?"
Digg throws Cisco an alarmed look. "Barry can walk on water?"
Cisco just smiles, and Digg rolls his eyes. This kid…
But then the kid straightens and leans forward, his face set in the kind of conviction that itched to reach out and pull you in.
"Mister Diggle, this world was crazy way before all the meta-humans and super powers started popping up. And if what you already know of this thing is true, even what Felicity's going through is result of a virus that has existed for thousands of years."
John kept looking at him, completely nonplused.
"What's your point Cisco?"
"Well, maybe meta-humans and superpowers were given to us to deal with the crazy."
"You mean by God?" the edge of disbelief in his voice was obvious. John had never gone that far to search for explanation because he'd always believed that it lay closer; namely in people.
"No. By nature. And a dark matter wave released from a failed particle accelerated reaction," Cisco deadpans. "Either way, I think people like Barry - and Oliver and Felicity too - are supposed to be a kind of hope for people like us."
"Oliver doesn't have superpowers Cisco." John specifies. "He has a particular set of skills; and how he came by those skills should be nobody's envy."
"Right. But still, you see my point, right? Plus, you've got to admit, it's all pretty freakin' cool, right?"
John feels a flare of irritation. Nothing about what felicity is going through is 'cool'. But he stamps on it hard. That's not what Cisco meant and he shouldn't have to deal with the results of his exhaustion. John has more self-control than that.
Roy however, who just arrived, has no such reservations.
"Yeah? Tell that to the girl holing herself up in a cell right now, because she's afraid to be around people."
Cisco sobers immediately.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"
"I know what you mean Cisco," John interrupts gently, glaring at Roy who just stalks back out. "And you can just call me Digg."
When Oliver walks into STAR Labs, the slightly alarmed look that the redhead doc greets him with puzzled him, but it's not until he gets to Barry and John that he gets it.
The reaction is instantaneous.
HE takes a threatening step towards Barry, his voice falling so low that it's almost a growl.
"You did what?"
Barry doesn't try to run from his anger, holds his arms up and accepts it instead. "It wasn't my idea! I tried to talk her out of it!"
Oliver turns to Diggle, eyes blazing with cold fury. "How could you let this happen?"
The accusation in his voice isn't subtle at all and the betrayal chases right on its tail. John passes a hand on his tired face.
"Couldn't stop her, man."
That gives Oliver pause and John watches, completely helpless as realization blanks Oliver's face and then fills it with fear.
"She… this was Felicity's idea?"
John nods. There is the kind of exhaustion in his eyes that seems to go beyond the physical. He feels like he's lost literal years of his life worth of stress these past few days alone.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"You were en route to the states by time this happened. There was no point."
Oliver's frown deepens. "How long… how long has she been in there?"
John just signs.
"How long John?"
"A day, more or less."
Oliver grits his teeth, looks away. And John, he knows his friend well enough to know what's going on behind his eyes: he sees the change happening. The determination hardening the lines of his face, cooling his eyes into a pitiless look that usually belongs beneath the hood.
His voice his hard when he speaks again.
"Doc, I'm gonna need a couple of things from you." He starts, but Caitlin is already handing him a small thermos.
"I figured if anyone could get her to do this, it would be you." She says with a shrug.
"Right." Oliver looks at the container in his hand like it's a foreign thing, but then he just nods. "What would happen if she didn't…"
"What happens to every creature that can't feed, i suppose." Caitlin says helplessly.
Oliver's face blanks out of any and all expression. "Open the door."
"Mr. Queen, I would advise…"
He looks at Wells with barely concealed hostility.
" Open the fucking door Wells !"
It feels like a bit of a deja vu to John. he's pretty sure that in the haze of the last three days, these words have been spoken before.
She is sitting in a corner of the cell, legs drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped against them, her forehead resting on her knees. He can tell by the small tremors of her shoulders that she's crying.
"Felicity…"
His voice is so soft it barely moves the air around him, Oliver knows that she heard him. When she looks up, her face is blotchy, eyes wide and puffy, bloodshot because of the tears that are still wet around on cheeks.
"Oliver," she breathes out his name in what appears to him as relief. "I heard you coming in."
"Yeah, I thought you might have."
She passes her hands over her face, wipes the tears away. "Heard about that did you? Pretty insane huh?"
Oliver just shrugs. "I've seen weirder things."
Her laughter is bitter, it catches in her throat. "I doubt that."
"I saw a demon being pulled out of a thirteen year old girl once."
She frowns at him. The narrows her eyes the way she does when she calls bullshit.
"I swear. This guy put a big mirror over her, and said some words in latin. And when i looked at the mirror again i almost lost it cause the thing was there, like it was trapped or something. Weirdest thing I've see by far."
This is the strangest thing he's ever told her of his past, but he's been dropping secrets on her for a while. Six months really, so in a way, this is almost familiar.
"What happened to the girl?"
"She got out of it fine." Oliver assures her.
"And the… demon?"
"We threw the mirror from the fifth floor's balcony. Ended up landing right on top of the cab we'd taken to get there."
Felicity doesn't say anything, just looks at him for really long moments. Oliver hates the bars that separate them more with every passing second.
This is ridiculous!
He takes a step towards her and that newfound calm on her face immediately melts to alarm.
"What are you doing?" the panic is clear in her voice as he pulls at the door separating them, opening it. "No, no. Stop!"
She's on her feet now, and pushing herself against the wall so hard that she seems like she wants to melt through it to get away from him.
Instinctively it stops him, even though Oliver knows that it's not him that she's actually afraid of.
He's starting to hate this place with passion reserved for very few versions of hell he's known.
"Felicity, I'm going to come closer now."
"No, you're not." She says firmly. "You're going to get out and lock that door!"
"No." He keeps his voice calm, quiet, hoping that it will ease her into some kind of calm the same way Sara's steady voice and heartbeat eased him not even a few days ago. "I'm not leaving you in here. So if you want to stay, fine. But we'll be sharing a cell."
He takes one small step towards her and watches her cringe.
"Don't come any closer!" It's a warning but it sounds more like a plea.
The look on her face, that naked fear, it's all so surreal, it feels like he's stepped into one of his nightmares. "Felicity, I'm not… You know I'd never hurt you."
She throws him an exasperated look.
"I'm not afraid of you, you idiot. I'm afraid for you!"
Oliver let's go of a slow breath. "Don't be. You're not going to hurt me either."
Fresh tears collect on her still-wet lashes. "They said… they…"
"I know."
Her shoulders slump and she sits back down in the same position he found her in, her face against her knees, hidden from him. Her voice comes muffled through them.
"This doesn't make any sense!"
"No it really doesn't," because he can't deny the obvious. Felicity looks up and Oliver tries to school his face into some sort of encouraging expression. "But we'll figure it out together ok?"
She looks him in a way that he can't really fathom. He doesn't have to. Her tears fall so fast down her face it's like they had been waiting for him to say those exact words all that time
"You're scared."
"I'm not." He's petrified really.
Felicity scoffs. "Tell that to your face."
Oliver is almost halfway to her by then. He sits down almost a foot away - close enough to be close, but not so much as to crowd her.
He opens the small container that Caitlin gave him and inside it, between packets of ice, there were three neatly bags of blood, so dark that their insides looks almost black in the dim light.
Felicity closes her eyes against them, against reality, her breath coming out harsh and shaky.
"This is insane." She whispers. "It can't be real. It just can't be."
"It is what it is, Felicity. Doesn't matter if it's insane or not."
She opens her eyes to look at him but they're so glazed that she doesn't even seem to see him. ( Oliver will realize later that that's not it. Her pupils were simply so blown out that they made her eyes seem unfocused .)
"You realize that you're offering me a bag of blood, which i am supposed to drink, because now i'm apparently a vampire. In a world where vampires are apparently a thing that exists."
The words are so ridiculous. They don't make sense. They bring forth a whole mythology of stupid movies he never liked that have nothing to do with the girl that he saw deteriorate into painful death before she woke up and took a breath days later.
They have nothing to do with the reality of Felicity right now, hiding in a hole because she's afraid she's going to attack her friends because she can't keep food down when her body needs something else.
"You know, when i first got to the Island and actually had to fight… Slade put a knife in my hand and told me 'this you use to kill. You're going to kill someone or get killed'. And that was it."
Her tears have dried on her cheeks, and she's looking at him so intently and so still that Oliver feels the weight of this moment as if it was a real person on his shoulder. He feels it as he felt her weight in his arms that day: it was the whole world he'd been holding.
"That was insane to me too." He tells her softly. It had been. "It was impossible, but i did it anyway."
Oliver takes one hand from where they're curled around her folded legs, and she gives it. He holds in both of in his before he folds her fingers around one of the blood bags.
"We are what we need to be to survive."
She shakes her head though. "I don't think i can be this ."
Oliver feels the first flutters of real fear. His fingers tighten around hers gently.
"You have to ." For a moment he almost panics. But he can't very well shake her and tell her 'you can't die' until she believed it. It occurs him then that he doesn't have to. That he knows how to get Felicity to be the bravest she ever is.
"And if you cant do it for yourself… do it for me, and John and Roy. Your mom." one of his hands wraps tightly around her pulse. "We can't just accept things, remember?"
Her fingers twitch in his and she draws back her hand, taking the blood bag with her. Oliver's relief is so real it lets him take a lungful of air and be satisfied with it for the first time since he walked in here.
"I'll need a moment."
"Felicity..."
The last thing he wants is to leave her alone right now, but the next words out of her mouth stopped him cold.
"Please. Just… I can't do this if you're still here. Please get out."
He takes a shuddering breath and lets go, stands up and then walks out of the little cell. She hasn't looked away from the blood bags, but does not need to. The tears are in her voice.
Felicity hears him leaving, hears his echoing steps all the way out to the fortified doors of the accelerator, where he stops, waiting for her. She can't tear her eyes away from the blood bags in her hands, she can't stand up, can't move.
This is nonsensical, her brain whispers to her. It's ridiculous and at the mere thought of tasting blood her belly rolls.
But it's not disgust that's was making it clench that way.
She was starving and hurting because of it.
She hadn't felt hunger like this ever before. It was sharp and focused, as if she hadn't eaten in days and the only thing she wanted was what she was holding in her hands.
But that's a lie though isn't it? She'd wanted to bite Oliver too, stared at his throat and known as she did that she'd love, love , to sink her teeth into him and tasting what was in his veins.
It was what had made her shudder when he came closer.
It had terrified her enough that her knees had turned to water. She didn't recognise herself in those thoughts. Doesn't recognize herself in these ones either.
But he is gone now and she holds the key to her own deliverance in her hands.
Maybe if she doesn't do this, it won't be real. Maybe this is just an elaborate nightmare, and she never woke from that coma anyway.
She'd tried that thought. Pinched herself so hard it bruised.
This is real.
Only one way to go: straight through.
She unscrews the tiny cap on the blood bag. The scent of it fills the room and Felicity expects to be grossed out but instead she just brings it closer to her lips and sucks.
It tastes weird. She doesnt stop until she'd gone through all three of the bags Oliver brought her.
She cries the whole time.
Notes:
please guys, take mercy on my medical mumbo jumbo stuff. they're pure bullshit, out of which i've tried to make sth that sounds respectable enough not to pull you out of the story, but i got them from sites that said 'yes camps are real, this is how' and i'm no doctor, so bear that in mind for this part of the fic.