A/N: Sorry, meant to get this out this morning but then - well, then I went to Wilmington. Sorry. Thank you all for the AMAZING response to the last chapter of For Darker Days! Ahhhh! So many wonderful things that I need to reply to - which I will - but wanted to get this out ASAP.

Hope you all like this - and don't kill me at the end. PATIENCE, VIRTUES, GOOD THINGS, WAITING, ETC ETC

It was nearing lunchtime and Oliver and Lance were camped out by Felicity's bed, completely ignoring the hospital's one-visitor-at-a-time rule. Dig was in the waiting room with Thea and Roy, still pouring over the hospital's surveillance which had taken way too long to get a hold of, and even longer to get it in some semblance of order. He needed to give his friend a raise.

Lost in thought of everything that his friends were doing for him, Oliver almost didn't hear Lance repeating his name.

"Queen...hey, kid, Queen - would you look?"

"Hmm?"

"I think she's waking up."

That got Oliver's attention. "What? Why?"

"Look, just look - watch."

Sure enough, Felicity's hand closest to him was moving ever so slightly. Another look at her face and he could see her struggling to open her eyes. She let out a tiny gasp of air when she felt her body protest any type of movement, but finally, finally, finally, she managed to get her eyes open.

"Hey."

It was all Oliver could manage, all the words he could get out. A part of him wanted to say so much more, to say how happy he was to see her open her eyes, to say how grateful he was that she was there and alive and conscious, but all he got out was that one word. Hey.

"Nice to see those eyes again," Lance told her, a smile pasted on his face, barely masking his concern.

She took it all in, the faces in front of her, the creases of worry, the steady beat of her heart monitor, the passage of people outside the window of a room she had never been in before. Her heart sunk the more she looked at the two men in front of her. Oh, no.

Her throat was scratchy and raw, which she would later learn was from the breathing tube, but she licked her lips a few times before she opened her mouth, determined to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.

"Oh, god...who died?"

A strangled laugh escaped Oliver's throat as the irony of her words hit him. Lance allowed himself a few moments of weakness and didn't immediately brush the two tears that had escaped his eyes, instead just lowering his head and pressing a chaste kiss to her hand that rested still on the bed.

"Felicity…" Oliver breathed her name like it was a prayer, like it was the only song he ever wanted to sing again.

"What happened?" Her voice was still strained and he knew that she was still under the effects of a lot of sedation. Not knowing if she was still inquiring as to the fate of everyone on their team or if she was actually curious about her current predicament, he just shook his head.

"Everyone is fine. You're fine. Everything is going to be okay."

Dr. Ling interrupted them shortly after, checking vitals and adjusting her medicine. Felicity wasn't awake for long, but it was all Oliver needed. It was amazing how just seeing her eyes for a brief moment took away the brick that had been sitting on his chest for the last two days. He could breathe.

She wasn't in the clear though, Dr. Ling was quick to remind him. She was going to have a hard road of a recovery ahead of her, including more of the painful physical therapy sessions with Steve and a lot more medications to keep her immune system up, but she was okay for now.

She was okay.

He saw her eyes again the next afternoon, and for much longer.

"Don't be sad," she mumbled to Oliver, who hadn't even noticed that she was awake. "S'okay."

"Hey, how are you feeling?"

"Not great."

He wanted to laugh but his body wouldn't cooperate. "I believe that. Everyone is going to be so happy to see you. They said you might be able to move upstairs tonight."

"Mmm good. I hate this window. I miss my other window. Don't like people just staring at me. 'Cept for you. Not that I don't stare at you sometimes. I do. You should get a salmon ladder in the room upstairs. Think they'll allow that?"

It was a sad rant by Felicity standards, but her run-on sentences just drove the point home all the more strongly to Oliver.

"God, I missed you."

He didn't think she really understood the severity of the infection she had, or how close they had all come to losing her, but he knew that it would eventually hit her. He just hoped he was around when that happened to deal with any fallout that should occur.

Felicity, for her part, just knew that she felt awful. Her body ached in ways she hadn't realized it could, her head pounded with every inhale, and she couldn't help the wince that escaped every time she swallowed. Not to mention the look in Oliver's eyes that she couldn't get to go away. That hurt a lot too.

"I'm right here," she told him. It wasn't everything she wanted to say and it barely chased the shadows out of his eyes, but it did draw a small smile from him.

"You are." As much as he wanted to bask in that simple fact, he knew it wasn't fair for him to monopolize her time like this. She had slept all the sedatives off that had been in her system, but she was still recovering and if she was awake, he needed to let others see her. He stood, adjusting his coat. "I'll go let the - oh," he pulled out the item that was in his pocket. "From Trey."

It was an old transistor radio that he had fixed in the last 24 hours, and he had made another appearance in the ICU last night to give it to Oliver for Felicity.

"He said the radio was the only thing his mom was willing to give him from his house, but after you gave him that whole bag full of stuff, he wanted to return the favor." Felicity smiled as he put it on the table next to her, flicking it on to static and then off again. "It works, too."

"He's a good kid." Her slight ramble earlier had left her breathless and she was mincing her words to make up for that.

Oliver was suddenly reminded of how Trey knew she was in the hospital in the first place and he knew he had to come clean with Felicity.

"Felicity...I had to- when you were sick, and I brought you to the ER…" How did he tell her that her safely guarded privacy had all gone up in flames the same time her immune system did?

It turns out, he didn't.

"Lance told me this morning."

"He did? He told you...everything?"

"Pictures and press conference. Said you felt bad."

"I...I do, Felicity. I tried so hard to shield you from this and I just...made it so much worse." A part of him couldn't believe that Lance had took the bullet and been the one to tell Felicity about all of the media craziness that had been happening, but another part of him definitely could. The man had shown so many different sides of himself in the past two days that he would believe anything at that point.

"You saved me." He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of that. She was the one who was doing all the saving. "Don't feel bad."

"No one knows that you have cancer," he rushed to tell her. "That was never mentioned. It was all very low key and it has pretty much blown over by now. Dig's trying to find whoever leaked the picture to the press, but there's not much to go by. Camera angles in this hallway are all wrong for what we need."

"We'll find them."

"Yeah. We will."

He leaned over and took her hand in his, the same gesture he had been so used to before. He was always holding her hand while she was undergoing chemotherapy or feeling scared about something. It felt different to him now, having almost lost her. It all just felt different.

As the days went by, Felicity was starting to feel a little more human. Oliver was checking her vitals more often than her nurses and Lance had taken a sort of mini-vacation from the precinct, having finally explained his situation to the captain, but still - she was back in her own private room, she could talk in complete sentences, and she was even sitting up and doing some light exercises with Steve. Those exercises made her want to murder the physical therapist, but still, it was nice to have some sense of normality, which was definitely missing in the ICU.

Unfortunately, not everyone was ready for things to get back to normal.

It was five days after she had been moved back to her room and she was sitting in a wheelchair at the table in her room playing chess with Dig while Roy watched and commented. She hadn't positioned herself very well though, and she was a bit too far from the table to comfortably maneuver all of her pieces.

Oliver walked in as she was stretching to move her pawn and just happened to catch her as she grabbed her side. Some of her bones ached more than others, a side effect of some of the medication she had to have in order to increase her white blood cell count, and her ribs were always catching her off guard.

"The hell are you doing?"

"Wha?" She fell back into the wheelchair, startled by Oliver's harsh tone.

"What are you even doing up and out of bed?"

"Steve said it was good for me to start getting around...I just got into my chair," she told him, baffled by his reaction.

"And you let her?" He directed his ire towards Dig and Roy.

"Hello, still right here!"

"She didn't go far," Dig assured him. "And we were both right here."

"Get back in bed," he told her.

Oh, hell no.

"Since when do you think you can tell me what to do? And when has me being out of bed become such a huge deal? I just stretched too far before is all-"

"Just do it, Felicity."

"Not until you tell me what the hell is going on with you! Since when do you even care?"

In retrospect, she should've chosen her words more carefully. She hadn't meant for one second to question Oliver's feelings for taking care of her and it had just come out - she had wanted to ask him since when did he care that she was moving around, but she was mad and he was being bossy and it was all just a little too much. For his part, Oliver couldn't even pause the runaway train that was his mind at that moment, only hearing her words and taking them at face value and feeling so completely...enraged.

"Since when do I-" He took a deep breath, trying futilely to calm his instinctive reaction and lower his voice, but he couldn't. "Since when do I care? Since when do I care about you? You almost died, Felicity!" He all but roared at her. Dig's eyes darted to the door, positive that they were about to get interrupted by a nurse, but no one came.

"I didn't-"

"You almost died, so I'm sorry if I seem a little over-protective. You were in a medically induced coma, and they couldn't get your damn temperature down, do you understand that? Do you understand that I almost lost you? That I had to watch them put tubes down your throat and ice packs around your body, and that I had to sign off on all these different treatments that could have killed you, or worse, left you somehow...damaged? That I had to make the decision whether or not to call your mother, knowing that there was a chance if I didn't, that I would have to call her and tell her that her daughter was dead? Do you understand that I'm spending hours on the phone, trying to convince Walter that he didn't give you the germs that caused your infection because the man feels so damn guilty that he could have, and I'm trying to take care of my little sister who thought she was going to have to say goodbye to you? And you have the nerve to ask me since when do I care?"

The silence was deafening.

Suddenly, the door flew open and a nurse was standing in the frame, taking in the scene in front of her and getting ready to chastise Oliver. Before she could say anything, he whirled around, coming back the way he had just came.

"I was just leaving," he bit out. "Get her into bed."

She didn't have to even be asked to return to her bed. She just slowly pushed her chair the few feet towards her bed and painstakingly eased her way up onto the mattress without the assistance of anyone. Steve would be proud, she thought fleetingly as she relaxed into the pillows before she remembered the last few minutes.

She answered the nurse's routine questions, grateful that she didn't mention the shouting that she had to have heard from the station down the hall. Finally, she was alone with Dig and Roy.

And promptly burst into tears.

Around her sobs, she managed to apologize to Dig and Roy and to try to convince them that she had been misunderstood, but it didn't serve to make her feel any better.

"He was just worried about you, Felicity. We all were." Dig rubbed her back as she continued to cry but it was nothing like the way Oliver did it and remembering that brought more tears.

"Yeah, it was...it was really scary," Roy agreed. "He knows you didn't mean it though. Don't worry."

"But he meant it! He's doing so much for me and I...and I…"

"He's been carrying that around for a while. Hasn't had a chance to get out of here in a while, and he needs a chance to process everything. Just give him time."

"Yeah, I haven't seen him that mad since...since he first found out you had cancer. Guess he stormed off then, too." Roy shrugged apologetically at Dig's glare. How was he supposed to know that would set off more crying?

It took a bit of time but she finally calmed down. Roy took this as a good sign to leave and gave her a light hug before backing out of the room. That was a lot more emotional than he had anticipated. He had been promised a boring afternoon of chess. Not only that, but he felt like she needed some intimate knowledge of Oliver's psyche and he was not an expert in all things Oliver. That was going to have to fall on John's shoulders.

Felicity looked at Dig sitting in what she had dubbed as 'Oliver's chair,' and decided to ask the question that she was trying not to think about lately.

"Was it really that bad?"

"Yeah." He knew exactly what she was talking about and didn't try to make her feel better. Someone needed to explain to her what had happened.

"I don't really remember much," she admitted. "I remember Oliver telling me we had to go to the hospital, but then that's it."

"It was bad. He was a mess at the hospital before we knew anything and then once we did...the doctors weren't very hopeful in the beginning. Your fever was too high and that whole septic shock thing had taken hold really quickly."

"And then the news…" She encouraged Dig to continue.

"And then the news and the picture and the press conference - it was like, one hit after another. The man was supposed to give a press conference on how you were just a casual acquaintance all while he didn't know if you were going to survive the night. It had to have been hell, Felicity."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"It's not your fault. None of this is your fault and he knows that, he does. He'll come around. It was just a lot for one person to handle, you get that? He's doing the best that he can but - but the man is drowning. Just hope he realizes it before it's too late."

"What can I do?"

"You get in the damn bed when he asks you to." He smiled at her wide, unblinking eyes. "I'm kidding. You do what you always do. You fight this. You show him that it's not going to be that easy for you to give up."

Dig left a little while later at her insistence. She needed some time alone to think things through, and she needed to figure out what she was going to do with Oliver.

She had heard his words - and Dig's subsequent ones - loud and clear. She had the easy role in all of this, especially last weekend. She didn't have any of the painful memories that he did, none of the responsibilities. It was easy for Dig to tell her to keep fighting, but it was even easier for her to do so in the case of the last weekend. She didn't remember anything; it was all up to her body to do the hard work.

She hated that she had put Oliver in such a hard position. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she got stuck with this stupid disease and had to not only watch it wreak havoc on her own body, but to watch it destroy the people around her. She hadn't really allowed herself to wallow in self pity, but she figured that it was okay just this once. She cursed the disease, she cursed her body, she cursed Oliver, she cursed just about anything she could think of.

Why her? Why did she have to get screwed over with this sucky disease? She was a good person, minus some of her earlier hacking exploits. She helped save Starling City. She gave money to charity. She braked for animals. So why in the world had she been the one to get this stupid fucking cancer?

She slammed her arms down on the bed in frustration, even giving a little scream. This wasn't how her life was supposed to turn out! And now Oliver was mad at her, rightfully so, even she had to admit, and her life was just in a complete tailspin.

Some of the things Oliver had said to her - or, well, yelled at her, really - were things that Felicity had never even considered. Her heart hurt for Walter. The doctors told her that the infection probably had taken hold 18-24 hours prior to admittance, and if she was being honest, she hadn't felt great the night before but had blamed it all on nerves of going to QC. She knew that the man was not responsible for her hospital stay, but she hadn't had to be the one to convince him of that.

Thea was another story entirely. She had seen her a few times since the last weekend and had noticed that she was a little less sunny, a little less accepting of the cancer, having seen its effects firsthand. She took for granted the fact that Oliver was the one that was reassuring her every night, not her.

And then there were the other things Oliver had said. Things about signing forms for medications and not calling her mother. Things that she had never once considered in her selfishness to name Oliver as her health care proxy. To be fair, she had made that decision only after working with him on some of the more dangerous Arrow-related assignments, but still. He took care of her day and night and she repaid him by giving him insane amounts of pressure. It wasn't the first time he held her life in his hands, but it was the first time he didn't know all the variables. With an Arrow case, he was usually directly responsible for getting her out of situations safely. With this, he had to just trust he was making the right decision and leave the work to a complete stranger, hoping that he hadn't just damned her to death.

She felt like a horrible person.

And worse, she didn't know what to do to fix it. She worked with absolutes in her life. She had problems and she fixed them. Her computer had problems and she fixed those. Starling City had problems, and she - well, she helped to fix those. She was not used to feeling so completely at a loss with what to do.

Everything she thought about doing had a ridiculous downside. She contemplated removing Oliver as her health care proxy, but really, what good would that do? He might not feel pressured to make the right choices when she couldn't, but she knew that he would feel worse at the thought that she didn't trust him with that. Not to mention the fact that there wasn't anyone else she could see giving that responsibility to. Dig, maybe, but that would still leave Oliver feeling slighted. She thought about pushing him away, of giving him an out, some time alone and away from her, but she knew that wasn't what either one of them needed or wanted. Having him living with her had saved her life, and she wasn't in a rush to lose that kind of support at that moment.

What else was there?

He did so much for her and she couldn't even make him see that.

Lost in thought, the hours ticked away. She barely picked at her dinner, ignoring the stern looks the night nurses gave her, disappointed with her lack of nutritional progress. She didn't want to turn on the television or a movie, feeling like she didn't deserve an escape from her mind. She may not have given herself cancer, but she had certainly created the mess that she was currently in. She needed to show Oliver that she appreciated him and everything he did, but how?

A/N2: Sorry, not everything is happy in Olicity world. BUT a lot of those topics NEEDED to be broached and look at that - now they are! Y'all couldn't have thought Oliver was going to last much longer, right? Next chapter will be a For Darker Days companion piece again - let's see just what's going on in his mind! Love all of you a weird amount!