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The first time Captain Lance ever went in to the foundry, everyone was in full out crisis mode. Lance had led men in to a drug raid. Rumors of a new strain of Vertigo being developed had reached the cops and Lance had gone in to try to stop it at the ground floor. Evidently he wasn't the only one.

Queen and Harper had swung in to the industrial building and set to work, bows drawn and arrows flying. Lance might not have particularly agreed with vigilante methods, but he couldn't argue with their timing.

Or their results.

Even their strategy had been sound. Oliver and Laurel had gone straight in to fight close quarters while Diggle had cleared the entrances. If Lance had to guess he would say that Queen's bodyguard had also been in charge of the getaway vehicle. The sound of high-tech machinery and flashing lights overhead confirmed for Lance that Ray Palmer had been on literal over-watch. He knew enough about how the Arrow operated to know that each and every team member had Felicity Smoak talking in their ear.

The only snag had come when one of the dealers had fired a tiny dart in to Queen's neck. A collection of multi-lingual and highly varied curse words had reached Lance's ears through the sound of bullets firing, and metal crashing. Smoke and soot made the air dense and the semi darkness of the building made it difficult to see.

More bodies moving with brutal efficiency had entered the fray and Lance rolled his eyes. Couldn't he get anything done without some masked vendetta getting in the way?

Even after the dart had gone in to Oliver's neck he continued fighting. Lance watched as the kid who had once been unable to throw a decent punch without breaking his hand took down five attackers, alternating between shooting and using his bow as a club. Squinting, Lance could see Oliver swaying on the spot as he began to stumble towards the exit.

"Delta Charlie 52 to attack unit withdraw the hostiles are under arrest. I say again hostiles are under arrest," Lance called in to his radio as he moved quickly after Oliver. "Hey kid," he said, catching up and gripping Oliver's shoulder as he stumbled again. "Kid are you okay?" he asked. "Is your team around to get you back?"

Oliver swayed back slightly and Lance gripped both his shoulders to keep him upright, taking more of his weight. "There's someone" Oliver managed, the synthesizer barely hiding pain. "He's waiting outside. Laurel-"

"I'm here," Laurel said, emerging from behind a storage unit and sliding under one of Oliver's arms to act as a human crutch.

Lance stepped back and made a gesture. "One of the guys in masks stuck him in the neck with some kind of dart thing. I don't know what was in it but from the looks of him nothing good."

Laurel nodded. "We'll figure it out at base."

Lance returned the nod and muttered. "Take care of him. The city is going to crap anyway, we're going to need him if any more masked psychos show up." He took a step away and then turned back around. "Oh, and you might think to call Thea Queen," he barked. "I have a feeling she'll want to know her brother's been poisoned."

He had ignored Laurel's gasp of surprise and gone to stick every perp he could find in handcuffs. It was slightly depressing that the absence of everyone in a mask had vanished in to thin air by the time he got there. The only people left were the local level of drug producing low life. Win some lose some he supposed.

The criminals went to booking and Lance allowed himself a moment to collapse in his desk chair. He kicked his feet up on the desk and rubbed at his temples. Lately, he had been feeling inescapably crushed by the sensation that he was incredibly and completely out of his league. Pun intended.

Mentally kicking himself, Lance got up and swung his coat over his shoulders. He had gotten in to the car and found a note sitting on his dashboard. Four numbers were written in green sharpie and Lance considered the page for a moment before folding it and putting it in to his pocket. Then he had driven to Verdant and found himself standing in front of the forever locked basement door.

He ground his teeth together and slowly entered in the four numbers written on the page tucked safely in his pocket in to the digital key pad. The red light that indicated the door was locked flicked green with a soft beep. With a last sigh, Lance pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Steel. That was the first thing he noticed. Lots and lots of shiny steel and pointy objects as well as a large computer bank running technical programs he didn't understand. Two manikins, one empty and the other dressed in the red leather suit normally worn by Roy Harper stood in glass cases.

Oliver Queen lay on a stainless steel medical table with two IV needles in one arm and a blood pressure cuff on the other. A monitor that wouldn't have been out of place in a hospital beeped at an alarmingly fast rate, showing Queen's heartbeat. Every member Lance knew about on team Arrow including Palmer and Thea was moving around the foundry and paid him absolutely no attention.

Roy gathered his weapons and started to pull on his own disguise before barreling out the door past Lance with barely a nod his direction. Thea split her focus between her boyfriend's retreating back and cleaning away blood that had splattered on Oliver's forehead. Diggle was rigging up medical monitors while Palmer drew blood and examined it under a microscope that Felicity was connecting to one of her computers. Laurel was unloading a cabinet of medical supplies.

"Damn it," Diggle swore. "His heart rate is all over the place! One second it's through the roof and the next it's nearly flat lining. I can't get a good enough fix to give him anything for it."

"Is giving him meds for both an option?" Thea asked.

Felicity shook her head quickly. "Mixing opposite drugs is not a thing anyone should do. Best case scenario they cancel each other out and the worst case is they make everything worse," she looked to Ray. "Have you got anything?"

Palmer shook his head. "I can't get a good enough focus on these machines," he pulled the prepped slide and the blood vial from the counter and dropped them in to his pocket. "If I can get these samples under the machines at palmer Tech I can try to figure out what exactly is in this drug and try to work out an antidote."

"I'll come with you," Thea said immediately. "I can call Walter to get you the records from the last Vertigo antidote we cooked up at Queen Consolidated." He swung on a leather jacket and stepped away from the medical table. "Besides I can't just sit here doing nothing while Ollie is... like this." She looked to Palmer, "I'll meet you at the car outside."

Palmer nodded to her and looked at Felicity. "I'm sorry," the blonde said. "I wish I could come with you but-"

He cut her off. "Felicity. If what we know about this new strain of Vertigo is true then it means Oliver is about to go through something inside his own head that is a hell of a lot worse than Purgatory." He trailed off and gave her a small, somewhat forced smile. "Someone you care about is hurting. I would be shocked if you didn't want to stay."

With that he turned and left and a moment later Diggle's phone buzzed. The bodyguard glanced down and swore again under his breath. "Lyla's sister was in a car accident and the babysitter isn't available," he looked up at Felicity. "I can stay-"

"No," she cut him off. "Go and take care of your daughter," she tapped his shoulder gently. "I've got this." Diggle nodded and pushed out the door, nodding to Lance as he went.

"What about me?" Laurel asked, standing up from her raid of the medical cabinet. Lance watched the interaction with interest. The last few moments told him something interesting about the chain of command in "Team Arrow". John Diggle may have been the soldier, and Roy and Thea were fighters, but Felicity could give orders.

Felicity sighed. "Go home," Laurel looked affronted and Felicity spun in her chair to face her. "Don't you have like the mega court case of all mega court cases tomorrow morning? There's no point in us catching the criminals if we can't put them in jail."

Laurel nodded slowly and turned to walk out the door. She gave Quentin a small smile on her way out which he returned tightly. He wanted to be on good terms with his daughter, but that didn't mean he couldn't be ticked off over being habitually lied to for nearly three years.

The foundry was empty apart from Oliver, Felicity, and Captain Lance and Felicity sagged back in her chair. With a sigh she pushed her feet across the floor and over until she was sitting near Oliver's head. She folded her arms on the edge of the table and placed her chin on top of them. "I know you're a hero and everything Oliver," she said quietly. "But do you think maybe you could take a day where you don't end up, you know, dying? Maybe day isn't the right term. Night is probably better. Crime seems to increase remarkably after seven thirty at night."

"The criminals with a sense of morals generally seem to feel better under the cover of darkness," Lance said. Felicity didn't move or show she was startled by his presence so Lance moved forward. "It's the criminals who aren't shy about being criminals in the light of day who are the really slimy ones."

"I understand that logic," she said without looking up. A frown crossed her face, "although to be honest I kind of wish I didn't." She sighed. "My life has gotten weird lately."

Lance chuckled once without humor. "I can only imagine." He took a few steps forward until he was standing across the medical table from Felicity, Oliver's body between them. "Hey listen, can I ask you something?" Felicity looked up at him and waited so Lance continued. "You seem like a sweet girl. God knows you're smart. You must have had options. So how did you end up mixed up with all of this?" he gestured around them. "How did you end up in the middle of all of this?"

Felicity bit her lower lip. "My mom was a cocktail waitress in Vegas," she said. "And while I love her, I have never wanted to be like her. So I went to MIT as soon as I could apply which was two years early I might add." She took a breath and Lance recognized that she was using the opportunity to stay on topic. "In college I was part of this group..." she trailed off. 'Which I should really not discuss with an officer of the law. Anyway, after that ended I saw this interview Walter Steele did on 60 Minutes about how they were going to rebuild Queen Consolidated."

She shrugged and put her chin down on her hands. "I wanted to be a part of it so I took a job in the IT department. After about three years Oliver got back and I didn't pay much attention to it apart from being happy for the Queen's that they had a family member back. Then three weeks after everyone found out Oliver wasn't quiet as 'dead'," her fingers sketched air quotes around the word. "as they thought. He walked in to my office with a laptop full of bullet holes and some ridiculous story about spilling a latte on it."

A small smile moved across her face as though the memory was more amusing than it sounded. "He kept on showing up but his lying didn't get any better." She glanced down at Oliver and ran her fingers lightly over the back of his knuckles. "For someone who lies literally all the time, he actually kind of sucks at it. Then one night he showed up in my car outside of Queen Consolidated in full Arrow gear with a bullet hole in his shoulder." She paused for a moment. "I wanted to figure out a way to make the world better. I wanted to be a part of something better," she waved at the foundry. "This... it's my something bigger."

"There was a night almost three years ago when the Arrow paid Moira Queen a visit," Lance remembered. "He put his weapons down and she shot him in the chest before jumping out a window. We had a blood sample but the lab screwed up and destroyed it. That was you." It wasn't a question but Felicity nodded in answer anyway.

The monitors beeped shrilly and suddenly Oliver thrashed, feet kicking out. He bolted upright with a gasp and looked around wildly. His gaze locked on Felicity as he struggled to breath. "Felicity?" he croaked out.

"I'm here," she said, locking her hand around his fingers. "I'm okay Oliver."

Oliver sagged slightly towards her. "John?" he asked. "Thea, Laurel, Roy, Lance..."

Lance froze at hearing his name on the list of people Oliver checked on immediately after regaining consciousness. "All fine," Felicity assured.

The beating of his heart picked up and the harsh beeping of the monitor began to fill the room. "Shadow..." he trailed off, eyes drooping. "Sara-" A coughing fit wracked his body and his hand disengaged from Felicity's to cover his mouth. When it came away it was spotted with blood. His head jerked up, eyes suddenly clear. "Tie me down," he said speaking quickly and clearly. "You have to."

"Oliver..." Felicity said pleadingly.

"Felicity," he gritted out, face contorted with pain as another set of coughing wracked his chest. "My nightmares get violent and these will be worse than any I have ever had. If I am not tied down I will hurt you and I can't do that." He searched Felicity's face quickly before turning to Lance.

"Handcuff me," he said. His voice was filled with authority even as his eyes began to go clouded and his body started to shake. He fixed Lance with a hard stare. "If I start moving you handcuff me to the goddamn table."

Lance nodded once and Oliver looked briefly relieved before his body collapsed back on the table. A moment later he began to jerk. Lance jumped forward and moved as quickly as possible to secure Oliver's hands to the table. A few moments later, his body went briefly lax, small jerks running through him like after shocks. His chest arched up off the table and Lance launched his body forward to try to hold him down. Eventually he went still.

He took a step back and Felicity reached forward, brushing a cool cloth over his forehead. "When Palmer left he said something about going through something worse than purgatory inside his own head," Lance said slowly. "What exactly is this stuff he got injected with?"

Felicity sucked in the corner of her mouth and glanced back down at Oliver. Lance followed her gaze. Queen's eyes were shut but he could see that there was movement under the lids. The tendons and muscles in his neck stood out in rigid lines. "The version of Vertigo before this made people see their worst fears," she explained in a quiet voice. "From what we've figured out about this version, it basically traps you inside your own nightmare. It targets," she stopped and swallowed. "It targets the part of your brain that generates fear combined with the part that makes you sleep. When you wake up and the hallucination breaks, your fear level decreases, and the Vertigo puts you back to sleep again. Then it starts over."

Lance's brain spun as he tried to process this new information. "So this drug," he said. "Has gone from some recreational pill that made you go loopy to an injection that actually traps you inside your own worst nightmare."

She nodded. "Whatever Oliver is most afraid of. Right now... that's all that's in his head."

Oliver made a gasping choke and jerked. His knees bent and his legs kicked out before he collapsed back. The handcuff chains rattled and his hands clenched and unclenched before his eyes shot open. He turned his head sideways and locked them on Felicity as his chest jerked with another round of coughing. Blood gathered by the side of his mouth but he didn't look away. "Felicity," he croaked. "John, Roy, Thea, Laurel, Captain Lance?"

"We're fine," Felicity assured. "We're all here, and we're all okay Oliver." She ran a hand over his head and shoulders, passing over the lines of his neck and shoulders. Oliver dragged in a deep breath and seemed to relax back in to the table. He dragged in slow deep breaths and his heart rate seemed to regulate before it suddenly jumped back up again as Oliver's head lolled sideways.

The process repeated again and again. Lance wasn't sure why, but he stayed. It was twisted, like watching a fish being pulled on to dry land before being dipped back in to a pool of water for a few quick minutes before the life giving water turned toxic. Slowly, the sleeping periods got longer. Oliver jerked and twitched, coughing up blood during the brief periods he was awake.

Each time he asked the same question, the same list of names. The list got shorter as Oliver's breathing grew more labored, but Lance was actually shocked by how long his name managed to stay on the list. It didn't escape the captain's notice that each time he asked, Felicity's name was the first on the list. She told him each time that everyone was okay, and each time he nodded exhaustedly and slipped back to unconsciousness.

It had to be called unconsciousness. This kind of torture couldn't be called sleep.

Lance drifted to sleep at one point and woke up to hear a rush of what he was pretty sure was Mandarin Chinese. "What's going on now?" he asked tiredly. "Sleep talking? What is that... just another symptom of this thing?"

"According to the internet the medical term is Somniloquy," Felicity said, not looking away from the tablet she was typing on. "It's been going for a while. He was speaking Arabic a while ago before he switched to Chinese. Then he was speaking something that my translation program identified as Kurdish but I think that might be a glitch." She glanced up, "there's been some interesting rounds of personal history. Very violent shouting stuff. Plus some quality apologizing."

Lance shrugged and leaned closer to the med table. "Guess I might want to listen in then. Seems like I've got a lot to catch up on."

What followed was a very fragmented story. Most of it was about Lian Yu in the beginning before it moved over to Hong Kong. Queen changed languages at least three times and called out lists of names, please, and cries for help. It was fascinating and horrible all at once. It was like eavesdropping on eight conversations at once.

Palmer showed up again at around three in the morning with a medical syringe in hand. He tapped it to prep the fluid. "Well, this should work as an antidote to the Vertigo. And well if it doesn't it's not like he can get worse." He pressed the needle in to Oliver's neck and injected the vial of liquid. Then he turned his attention to the monitors displaying Oliver's condition. His heart rate and blood pressure equalized and some of the muscle tension shown in his neck eased out.

Palmer sighed. "Well, I'm going to head home and try to get at least two hours of sleep before my meeting tomorrow morning. You should tell Oliver that Thea is at her boyfriend's house. I figured she would be okay there." He gave Felicity a small smile. "I'll see you tomorrow. Captain Lance."

Lance nodded back and watched him walk out the door. Then he turned back to Felicity who met his gaze. "You should probably go to," she said.

Lance weighed his options and then shook his head. "No actually." He made himself comfortable in his chair and stretched his feet out in front of him. "One of the benefits of my promotion is that I get to pick days when I just don't feel like coming in on time. The precinct will run it's self without me for a few hours."

That was how it came around that Lance slowly regained consciousness with a stiff neck and blearily cracked his eyes open. Oliver was sitting up and rubbing his wrists. Apparently lock picking was on his list of shadier abilities. Felicity was packing her purse.

"Stay?" Oliver asked. "For a minute. Just until I can change and take you home."

"Oliver," Felicity started without looking at him. "You just spent the last six hours recovering from a drug overdose that had you literally living your worst nightmare. If anyone should be driving anyone home I should probably be taking you to Thea's loft so you can sleep in an actual bed instead of on the cot in corner. I never did buy you a bed did I? In hindsight that might have been a good idea. Oh well."

Oliver sat up straight and his hands clenched around the edge of the medical table. "Felicity," he said. He said her name gently but firmly. Lance was beginning to recognize it as his way of very nicely interrupting her rambling without flat out telling her to stop talking. "I spent six hours living out my worst fear," he said once Felicity was looking at him. "My worst nightmare."

Felicity huffed impatiently. "I just said that Oliver. So?"

"So," Oliver filled in. "I saw you." He locked his eyes on her. "I watched you and everyone that I care about die over and over and over again for six hours." Lance saw out of the corner of his eye that Oliver's grip had contracted further, his knuckles turning white. "So please," he continued as Felicity took a few steps towards him. "Please let me drive you home."

Felicity walked up to him and cautiously put her hand over his, purposely prying up his fingers. Oliver let her and Lance saw him make a conscious effort to release the tension that had him clenching his other hand to avoid crushing Felicity's fingers. She gripped his other hand as well and lifted both of them up so that Oliver could see them. "Look," she said. "I'm right here. I'm fine."

"But you could easily not be," Oliver said, looking at her hands instead of her face. "Next time you might not be. In my..." he swallowed and searched for his next words. "Nightmare I was too late. There was nothing I could do and... you died."

"You, John, Roy, Laurel, Thea, and Captain Lance might day every day," Felicity told him matter of factly. "Statistically I am way safer in the foundry every night than any of you guys ever are."

Oliver let out a deep breath of air and let his head drop forward. "Felicity please just let me drive you home," he pleaded.

Felicity took his hand and moved it until it rested over her heart. "Can you feel this? This is me being okay. This is my heart and lungs working exactly the way they are supposed to in order to keep me living. Something your heart and lungs were both not doing half an hour ago. If anyone should be hovering it's me. I'm a hoverer. I am practically a helicopter, and doing this was my choice. You do not get helicopter privileges with me. I am not giving you those helicopter privileges."

"Ray is the one with the helicopter," Oliver said, his voice taking on a self-mocking edge. "I've just got a motorcycle and some archery skills."

She nodded, basically ignoring the comment about Palmer. "And let's not forget your barrel of emotional issues and familial problems." Felicity cut herself off. "I shouldn't be bringing those things up right now when you already feel kind of crappy."

Oliver actually cracked a smile at that. Then he moved almost gingerly to wrap his arms around her. He tucked her gently against his chest and Lance got the feeling that he was watching someone who wanted to hold something precious as tightly as possible and wasn't quite sure how to do that without crushing it. Oliver caught his eye over the top of Felicity's head before breaking eye contact and deliberately burying his face in her hair. "Please," he said after a moment. "Just... please."

Felicity simply tucked her head closer in against his heart as though to make sure it was still beating. Queen ran his hands slowly over her hair and pressed a kiss against her temple. "Okay," Felicity sighed, pulling back and picking up her purse. "But you're ordering food. I am driving."

Oliver kept the fingers of one hand knit with his as he moved after her. "Okay."

Lance sat up and stretched. Well hell if that wasn't the most interesting result to an experience with solimnoquy he had ever seen.

A/N: So What do you guys think? Tell me! I've been trying to make each chapter have something to do with talking. I figured Oliver sleep talking would be pretty interesting. I also just want to put on the record that I don't dislike Ray Palmer. I think he's a good guy and a decent character. I just like Olicity better. Review! Review! Review! xoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxox