Thanks to everyone who has liked my story so far! We're about halfway through, so I hope you stay with me to the end. Enjoy this chapter!

-6-

"Oliver?"
At the sound of Felicity's voice, Oliver turned his head. She stood in the doorway to the living room, dressed in a t-shirt and yellow pyjama bottoms, her blonde hair illuminated by the moonlight coming through the open windows.
"Felicity. Are you ok?" he asked her softly.
"It's one in the morning. You were supposed to wake me up." She came to sit opposite him on the window seat, rubbing her bare arms against the cold. He shifted and pulled out the blanket he had been leaning on, handing it over to her. She smiled gratefully at him and draped it over herself.
"So we're not going to the Sanctuary tonight?" she asked.
"Diggle said he'd call if he needed us," he said.
She nodded her head then looked out the window, her face thoughtful. Oliver couldn't help but gaze at her face, liking the way the moonlight made her skin glow. More often than not, he was with Felicity when they were busy talking about crime, monitoring crime, fighting crime or being blown up by crime. Spending time with her when everything was calm and quiet was rare – and, he was coming to realise, precious.
"Why have you got the window open?" she asked, leaning her elbow on the windowsill.
He shrugged a little ruefully. "I spent so long out in the open, sometimes I feel claustrophobic."
She gave him a sympathetic smile, then looked out towards the dark empty street. A slight breeze blew through her hair, sweeping a few strands across her cheek.
"The city's so quiet from a distance," she said. "Sometimes I can't believe that you spend most nights fighting out there." She glanced at him. "Do you think it will ever be quiet? I mean, quiet for real?"
He sighed and turned his gaze out the window, away from her watchful face. "I hope so."
"Me too," she said. "I hope so. For you."
He avoided looking at her, knowing that she would see more than he wanted her to see if he returned her gaze. Felicity was always so observant, it scared him a little sometimes; sometimes he thought that one day she would see too much of who he really was, and he would lose her.
"Did you wake up because you had a nightmare?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "But they're better. I mean, they're not as bad anymore. I can almost remember what it was like being able to sleep a whole night through."
"I've completely forgotten what that's like," he said. "It must be nice."
He heard her sigh as she shifted her position, pulling her knees up to her chest, keeping her gaze up at the sky.
"One time when I was a kid and I was having trouble sleeping, my mom drove me all the way out into the desert in the middle of the night just so we could see the stars," she said. "Since then I dreamed that I would buy a house somewhere out in the countryside where there are no lights and there's no noise."
That made Oliver smile. "That's a good dream. You should keep it."
"Maybe one day, huh?" she said quietly.
They sat in silence for a while, staring out into the night, feeling the cool breeze on their faces. Oliver thought about Felicity's words, about what she had just told him now and earlier in the evening – about having dreams and making plans for the future. Sometimes the things she said really made him think and question whatever he was doing. For some reason he couldn't figure out, he always found himself explaining things to her about how he felt and why he did certain things. With most people he was able to keep stony-faced and unapologetic; but there was something about the way Felicity looked at him sometimes that made him talk to her like he talked to no one else.
"I don't like thinking about 'one day's," he said. "Doing what I do…it's difficult for me to think about the future."
She turned to look at him. "It makes me sad when you say that."
"Why?"
"Because it makes it sound like being the Arrow is all you can be."
"It is."
"I don't believe that," she said.
He shook his head. "As long as I keep being the Arrow, I can't be anything else."
"Why not?"
He took a deep breath, reining in his self-control. That was always the way with Felicity – always one more question.
"Don't you want other things besides taking down bad guys and saving the city?" she asked. "Don't you want…I don't know, to get a dog? Go on a world cruise? Fall in love?"
He gave her a grim look. "Before the island, I thought I would grow up one day, get married, have a family and carry on with the family business. But now I'm the Arrow, and that changes everything." He looked at her, willing her to understand. "If I found someone I really cared about, I don't think it would be fair of me to give them this life that I've chosen."
She looked back at him, her eyes sad. "You know Oliver, every night I watch you get into your suit, walk out the door and I wonder if that's the last time I'll ever see you again. But you know why it makes me sad every time? Because if you died, it'll be not remembering what it was like to be happy." She gave him a sad smile. "I think if you found someone to share your life with, it could only be a good thing."
As Felicity's words sunk into Oliver's mind, he found his hand reaching for hers. When his fingertips softly grazed her knuckles, her hand opened up without hesitation and held his. He looked down at their entwined fingers resting on the windowsill, a mixture of feelings heavy in his chest. Felicity had a way of saying things that made him feel simultaneously better and worse. As the Arrow, often she was the only thing that kept him fighting the good fight, kept him strong and believing in himself. But as Oliver Queen, often she was the only thing in his life that made it hard to keep fighting – because all he wanted to do was let it all go and find peace…in her.
As if she read his thoughts, she squeezed his hand and spoke. "Has it ever occurred to you that you can be both the Arrow and Oliver? With the right person, you can be both."
He shook his head a little wryly. "Always optimistic, aren't you?"
"One of us has to be," she said.
He gave her hand a squeeze. "Felicity, do me a favour."
"Of course."
He opened his mouth to say what he wanted to say: Don't ever give up on me. Don't ever leave me. But the habit of keeping her at arm's length, to keep her free from his darkness, to leave her with the choice to live her own life, stopped him. He gave her a smile he didn't mean.
"Go to sleep," he said.
She looked at him long and hard, her eyes searching his face, before she seemed to relent and nodded slowly.
"Ok," she said. But she didn't move away – she just stayed there sitting next to him, holding his hand.

The next morning Felicity woke up to the feeling of the sun warm on her face. She opened her eyes and found that she had fallen asleep sitting up on the window seat opposite Oliver, her hand still clasped within his. She didn't move, but instead took the chance to study his face. Although he was sleeping, the grimness in his face that was always there while he was awake hadn't disappeared. Felicity's heart went out to him – even when he was resting, he still looked haunted.
His face twitched suddenly as his breathing quickened, his grip on her hand tightening almost painfully. She cringed, wondering if he was having a nightmare.
"Oliver," she said gently.
In an instant, he opened his eyes.
"Felicity," he said, his voice coming out in one rush of relief. "I was dreaming…" he swallowed heavily and rubbed his face with his free hand as if he was trying to banish the dream from his mind. His other hand still gripped her hand tightly. "Slade took you and I didn't save you," he said in a small voice.
"It was just a dream," she said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. She was feeling a little scared – Oliver always looked so determinedly composed. She was totally unused to seeing such stark fear in his eyes.
"I'm sorry that I let him kidnap you," he said, his eyes pleading as he looked at her.
"We did what we had to do," she told him.
"But I put you in danger and I told Diggle that I would protect you. So many things could have gone wrong that night."
"But they didn't," she said. "We won. We saved the day." For some reason her heartbeat was quickening in pace. There was something about the way Oliver was looking at her that was making her quite nervous; there was an intensity there in his blue eyes as he searched her face.
"This is why I can't be with someone I could truly care about," he said. "What Slade did to me, baiting me with someone I loved…" he paused as he looked down at their joined hands. "I was only able to give you up to him because I convinced myself that we were partners, that you were someone I could work with, not someone I had to protect at the cost of everything else."
Felicity swallowed heavily, her heart in her throat. What was Oliver trying to tell her?
"If we're only partners, then I know you and I will always put this city first," he said. "But if I love you, then everything else…it wouldn't matter. You would always come first." He looked at her, his face bleak. "Do you understand?"
Felicity stopped breathing, for once at a loss for words. She couldn't have answered Oliver even if she knew what she wanted to say. A long, heavy hesitation passed between them; then without a sound, Oliver pulled her hand and tugged her towards him, at the same time as he sat up to meet her.
Then all of a sudden, before she could make any sense of what was happening, Oliver leaned down and kissed her.
As soon as his lips touched hers, Felicity felt as if her world had tipped just slightly off its axis – that strange mixture of fear and exhilaration hitting her all at once, like the moment at the top of a rollercoaster ride before it launched itself back to the ground. Before this moment she would have said that she liked kissing well enough; but 'liking' didn't quite describe how wonderful it felt to be kissed by Oliver. She had known this man for two years and she knew that most people only ever saw what he wanted them to see: someone tough, scary, determined and unflinching. But as his lips explored her own, and his hand caressed her neck, she saw, really saw, what she glimpsed in him every day: his gentleness, his fragility, his humanity.
After a moment that could have been a second or an entire year, he pulled away from her and she opened her eyes, looking dazedly at his face. There was a heartbreakingly sad expression in his blue eyes as he looked at her.
"Felicity," he whispered and stroked her cheek with his hand. Then without another word, he stood up and walked away from her, leaving her sitting there by the window, alone.