-8-

3 months later

"Again."
Diggle wiped the sweat off his brow and raised an eyebrow at Oliver.
"That's three times I've beaten you, Oliver," he said, leaning on his staff. "Your head's not in the game tonight," Like it hasn't been for ages, he added silently in his head.
Oliver glared at him. "I'm fine," he growled, moving off the exercise mat to put his staff away. Diggle watched him go, shaking his head. He leaned over and picked up his drink bottle, taking a long drink, waiting patiently. The two of them had been sparring for about ten minutes now. It usually took Oliver ten minutes and a few knocks to the body to work up the courage to ask the question. Sure enough…
"How was your visit to Central City?" Oliver asked, his back to Diggle.
"It was good," Diggle replied, grabbing a shirt and putting it on.
"And how was Felicity?" Oliver asked, his voice even.
Diggle turned his head to look at Oliver, but he could only see the back of his head and his shoulders tight with the tension of asking the question.
"She's fine," he said.
"That's good."
Diggle watched as Oliver silently went over to his bow and arrows and sat down, his face a mask. With a sigh, Diggle walked over to the computers, which he still thought of as Felicity's computers, and gave them a quick glance. Before Felicity had left, she had streamlined the system so that he could understand it. Just.
"So," he said, leaning on the table and looking towards Oliver. "When are you going to ask her to come back?"
He saw Oliver tense as soon as he asked the question. "She left, Dig," he said.
"Because you told her to."
"She left because she wanted to."
Diggle crossed his arms, looked up at the ceiling and tried to find some patience. He was not going to get anywhere with Oliver if he lost his temper.
"Oliver, you and I both know that Felicity would never leave us," he said. "She would have only left because of some misguided notion that it was what was best for you."
Oliver didn't reply, merely picked up an arrow and began to inspect it closely. Since he wasn't arguing back, Diggle took that as a good sign to keep talking.
"Look, I don't know what happened with the two of you, that's fine, that's your business. But you need to fix this. We need her on the team. No one else can do what she did."
"We can find another tech expert."
"You know that isn't what I mean."
The silence hung between them, thick with words that both of them left unsaid – about Felicity being the heart of the team, about how she was irreplaceable not because she was such a talented hacker, but because she made what they did not so dark and horrible to deal with.
"What did she always used to say?" Oliver said, his voice quiet. "My life, my choice. She left Starling City because she chose to, not because I pushed her away. It's not like she's never disagreed with me before."
Diggle gave him a thoughtful look. "Why did you push her away? It's not like…well, you've had feelings for her for a long time, Oliver, but that's never gotten in the way before." He smirked at Oliver's sharp look. "I may be older than you, but I'm not blind."
Oliver sighed. "I've always been able to put the team and our mission above my feelings and her feelings before."
"What changed?"
Oliver shrugged, his expression growing dark. From experience, Diggle knew that was pretty much everything he was going to get from Oliver tonight. Against his better judgement though, he decided to go with one last parting shot.
"Oliver, I know that you think that being the Arrow means you can't be with someone you could care about. But you're wrong. Having someone to care about in your life won't make you weaker. It'll make you stronger."
Oliver's jaw clenched as he let out a deep breath, but still, he said nothing. Diggle felt truly sorry for his young friend. He wondered if he would ever let himself be happy.
"You going out on patrol again tonight?" he asked.
"Yup," Oliver said tersely, pushing his chair back, standing up and walking over to his suit.
Diggle watched him open up the glass case, the silence in the Sanctuary heavy. In the past, whenever Oliver suited up, Felicity would always call out to him 'Be careful' before he left the building, and Diggle knew that Oliver had appreciated it. One time he had caught him smiling from underneath his hood.
Now, Oliver suited up and left the building in a stoic, business-like manner, reminding Diggle of the first few months he had signed up to be Oliver's partner. The pre-Felicity days.
Diggle watched his retreating back, missing Felicity more and more.

Felicity tapped away at her computer, a pen hanging from the corner of her mouth. The project she had been working on for S.T.A.R Labs was almost finished, but she was trying to finish it as slowly as she could. When it was done, she knew she would have to start thinking about what she would do next. Would she accept another project and stay in Central City, or would she go back to Starling City?
She looked up at the clock and sighed. Well, ten minutes. Not a bad record. She had gone ten minutes without thinking about Oliver.
Her mind flicked back to that day three months ago when she had decided to leave Team Arrow. It hadn't been easy for her – in fact, she almost hadn't gone through with it. But she knew that although a large part of her loved doing what she did with Oliver and Diggle, a small part of her also wanted to be happy.
She knew that, unlike her, Oliver believed that he couldn't be both the Arrow and Oliver. And since she knew how much Oliver needed to be the Arrow, needed to be a hero, she knew she could never ask him to choose between her and his mission. So she had made the decision for him. It was time to move on with her life, time to simplify and focus on what it was she really wanted.
The first step had been to leave Starling City. The second step was proving even more difficult: she had to stop wanting to be with Oliver. And judging by the fact that her record for how long she went without thinking about him was a mere ten minutes, she thought that her road to a new life was going to be a lot harder than she had anticipated.
It was a welcome distraction from her thoughts when she heard someone calling her name from down the hall. She looked up and smiled when she saw Barry walking through her door.
"Hey–" she started to say, then stopped when she saw his face. Usually smiling, his face was sombre as he carried a tablet in with him and approached her with an air of dread.
"What's happened?" she asked, her instincts going into overdrive.
"You need to see this," he said, giving her the tablet. She quickly took it off him and saw that he was streaming a live news story. The running headline made her throat constrict: THE ARROW GUNNED DOWN IN DRUG RAID. Desperately she turned up the volume.
"Sources have confirmed that the vigilante known as The Arrow was involved in tonight's capture of one of Starling City's most prevalent and elusive drug kings operating under the moniker Morpheus. Witnesses at the scene have said that they saw The Arrow fighting various bodyguards and armed gunmen before being shot down in front of Morpheus' nightclub. Although a body has not been found, detectives on the scene have expressed concern at the amount of blood left behind by the vigilante."
"Felicity!" she heard Barry calling out to her, but she wasn't listening anymore. She was racing out the door, her blonde hair flying behind her, her fingers working at an impossible speed on her phone, booking a train ticket that would take her back to Starling City.