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A hundred days have made me older

Since the last time that I saw your pretty face

A thousand lies have made me colder

And I don't think I can look at this the same

But all the miles that separate

They disappear now when I'm dreaming of your face

 

I'm here without you, baby

But you're still on my lonely mind

I think about you, baby

And I dream about you all the time

I'm here without you, baby

But you're still with me in my dreams

And tonight, it's only you and me

(Here without you - 3 Doors Down)

Oliver Queen

She is so beautiful.

I look at her, happy for the chance to see her again.

I miss seeing her face all day long, even when we were apart I was, at least, sure that I could see her in the bunker, look at her when she was not noticed, or even when she was, I was never good at not looking at her. How I missed our little moments, losing myself in her eyes, our touches that were not accidental at all. It looked like little at the time, but now I realize that I would give anything to have that little back. And now all I have left are the dreams. When I'm dreaming with her I want to be able to stop time, I want to calmly observe her and perceive all her details, record them in a permanent memory, and revisit it whenever the longing is too much.

She walks closer to me, but to my sadness it’s not close enough.

Never close enough.

I control the feel of diminishing the distance, wrapping her in my arms and ending the feeling of missing her. To touch her, to kiss her and to love her because I know that the instant I'm too close the illusion of my dream will fall apart.

But I accept that, because it's still better than nothing.

"I miss you, Felicity.” I confess, and she gives me a sad smile as if to say she regrets the distance between us too “It's been so long since you've gone, people want me to give up. They say I should just remember what we shared together, what you have changed in me, what good things you have given me, and move on with my life ..." I say, fearing that Felicity of my dream agrees with them. "But I cannot. How can I move on with my life? If you, Felicity, is my life?”

She sighs, seeming to be touched by what I say and moves to me, as if she wants to wrap myself in her arms and cherish me too, but she stops, saddened by that invisible barrier that keeps us from touching each other.

“I'm sorry I disappeared.” she says at last “But I'm so close now. Can you feel me, Oliver? Can you feel in your heart that I'm coming back to you?” She asks, her face illuminated by an emotion that I have not felt for a long time, at least not so strong, so full of certainties.

It is hope.

I let it take care of me too, I let it touch me and move me, making me happier at the mere thought of having the woman I love back in my arms once again.

“I feel it.” I answer, my heart is firing inside the chest feeling anxious for the pain to leave, so that Felicity returns and fills it with nothing less than love.

“Wait for me.” she asks and stretches her hand, I feel the warmth of her fingers almost touching my face, but then too soon, everything disappears, she goes away, and here I am, still without her.

***

I wake up feeling light and hopeful as I have never dared to feel before, I face the emptiness at the side of the bed, and this time it doesn’t hurt so much, because I know that soon she will be here to fill it. The thought distracts me and I allow a smile to spread on my face as I imagine the crumpled sheets, her warm and small body wrapped in my arms, secure and protected from where I would never let her leave again.

My dreams with Felicity were regularly, almost every night I see her, equally beautiful, smiling and saying that she loves me, and asking to me not forget her because I am in every thought of her, and she will never forget me. I try to touch her in my dreams, I try desperately to find a way to feel her. But I always wake up with that feeling of emptiness inside me, as if she were so close that I just had to stretch my hand around her waist and pull her to me, but whenever I try to reach her, she simply escapes between my fingers.

I know, it's different this time.

I wake up and feel filled. Of hope. Of love. Of the happiness that only she can give me.

She's facing me, I feel it.

***

Hope is dangerous because you allow yourself to believe, you create expectations, and when nothing happens the way you expect, when they are squashed right in front of you, the result can be disastrous.

Too much hope can destroy you.

It completely destroyed me.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Queen.”

The words are in a loop in my mind even after the call was cut off. The voice was impersonal, almost mechanical. Even if the stranger said he was sorry, he didn’t really feel anything. How could he, if he didn’t even know her? If he had not been touched by the light she radiated? If he had not laughed every time she wrapped herself in a lovely way? Or had his heart altered by the purest love that only she could give? If I had no idea of the emptiness I had in my life without her?

And how could he talk about my loss? I have not lost her, we lost things that we forget where we keep, or when we do not take proper care and it gets lost on the way. I had not lost her, I always cared for her, I cared about her, I never forgot how important she was to me.

I had not lost her, she had been taken from me.

There was a big difference.

I've spent the last six months refusing to feel anything, because to feel the grief would be to accept that she's gone and will never come back.

I hugged to the idea that she was fine, that she had survived. All the others were well and alive. Why not her? I was so relieved to discover that they were all well, but when I looked her face between them, so that I took her in my arms and kissed her again, this time a decent kiss, to celebrate that we had won this battle.

But she was not with them.

John just shook his head and said he was sorry.

I sent search teams. Hell! I have torn every wreck of what is left of that damn island. But I found anything. And yet I kept my hopes up all this time, because I knew she would do just that, she would not give up on me, no matter how improbable it seems to survive.

But I can no longer lock my feelings, the pain of not having her by my side is too much to bear and I can no longer pretend that it is not there. So I stop fighting, I allow myself to feel everything that I have kept and I simply collapse under my feet.

I still stand by the phone in my ear, refusing to accept what I heard. It takes a few minutes until I can get out of the static position I am, I grab the cell phone around my hands feeling the frustration overwhelm me, when I throw the device on the wall in front of me like a baseball and I see it with pleasure falling to the floor and crash.

But that is not enough.

I go to my desk and I throw everything on top of it on the floor. I break things, I kick and ruin every part of my room in the city hall, I do not care what people think, I just need everything around me to reflect the destruction that I'm inside.

Finally, when there is nothing else to be broken, I lean against the wall and let my body drop down it. I feel the warm tears coming down, I feel my heart breaking in so many parts that I don’t know if someday it will be whole again. And I sit there, looking at the opposite wall just thinking about how unfair life is.

We’ve almost got it.

She and I.

We were so close to having everything, I could feel the sensation rising in my heart the day we got caught in the bunker. After that day everything changed, we both lowered our guard, we both stopped hiding how we felt, and on the day of my birthday she had simply given me the best gift: hope.

I believed we could have it all.

That I would do everything right this time, no more lies, no secrets, just the two of us and all the future that awaited us. The future I wanted was right there in front of me, within reach of my hand.

But life is treacherous, just as Chase had been.

They took it from me.

And without her, without her love, how could I be the man she'd always believed I was capable of? She always had faith in me, she saw the man beyond the mask, but the difference is that without her, what was the purpose of being someone better?

“Ollie? You're ...” My sister opened the door, standing watching the mess in the room and the mess I am, sitting on the floor, with  tears streaming down my face. She knew better, she shouldn’t ask me if I was okay, nothing would ever be better after that day. “... What happened here?”

"Six months, Thea.” I say in a choked voice, she sighed, giving me a sympathetic look of understanding, she came to me and sitting next to me “They said they will not look for her anymore, that it is impossible for her to survive. They gave me a fucking sorry.” I said bitterly “I'm sorry, it will not bring the woman I love back to my life, and a sorry one will not fill the emptiness that her absence left in my life, in my heart.”

"Don’t do this to yourself, Ollie.” Thea asked. "Felicity didn’t ..." just hearing her name hurts.

"Don’t you dare say she wouldn’t like to see me like this," I snapped, irritated at her touch, I've been avoiding talking about Felicity because I knew this speech would come sooner or later. But I figured it would be Diggle and not Thea to use it. "She's not here, and she will not be, she'll never be.” I screamed, feeling how bitter those words.

“I know." She sounds understanding. "But you know it's true, she would never forgive herself if she knew that her…her death did it to you." A deadly silence sets in as soon as Thea speaks the last sentence.

Death.

Finally someone had the courage to say the word in my face. And it hits me with a right shot in the heart, it's hard to breathe, I pull the air, but it doesn’t find the way to my lungs. I almost lost her so many other times... When Vertigo kidnapped her, and then Slade and Damian, the last one almost managing to get her out of my life forever, but somehow I always get there in time.

When she joined my crusade, five years ago, I said I would protect her, day after day I have been honoring my word.

Not this time.

This time I had failed.

I shake my head and rise from the floor under my sister's worried gaze. I dry my eyes, I take a deep breath and pull all that pain into me again. She is not dead, I refuse to accept that as truth.

"Felicity is not dead.” I speak in a louder tone and my heart agrees effusively, as if it knew that there was still hope. Thea gives me a condescending look, I know what she is thinking. That I'm fleeing, avoiding the truth and that soon I'll freak out again, and maybe she's right. Maybe I'm a clock bomb about to explode, maybe I'm holding off the fuck all, and the next I'm sorry for your loss, I freak out and destroy it all over again.

"You cannot be sure of that, it's been six months, Ollie."

Why are you doing this to me, Thea? Why do you want me to accept it?

Thea was right, I could not be sure she was alive. But there were the dreams.

How could I explain to Thea and make her understand? Every night I saw her, in those vivid dreams. When I dreamed with her, I felt her love, pure and alive calling for me. I felt she was alive, somewhere, trying to get back to me while waiting for me to find her in the middle.

I could not leave her alone.

"I just hate to see you like this." she rises from the floor as well and looks at me, her clear eyes showing me how much my pain hurts her. "It's not healthy to continue like that, Ollie. You should talk to someone...” I shake my head, talk doesn’t relieve the pain, and honestly, I do not even know if I want to relieve it, the pain reminds me of her, that's all I have left of her.

"I do not want to talk about it, Speedy." I try to be gentle, but my sister, stubborn as ever, still insists.

"Remember when I told you that you had to let someone in?" she puts her hand over my heart reminding me of something that happened more than five years ago. "You cannot keep that weight to yourself. You need to let someone in, Ollie.”

"I let someone in, Thea, I let her make here her place. And she's still here.” I answer urgently putting my hand on top of hers. “I'm fighting for her not to leave. Cannot you understand me?” her look at me is pity, so I avoid it  “I'll promote a new search, look elsewhere” she disagree as I move away and Thea sighs, knowing I'm a lost case “She's alive, she has to be alive. And maybe she's somewhere, needing our help.”

“It's all right.” Thea gives up, and I force a smile. Smiling seems so strange, the muscles of my face take time to perform, almost as if they had forgotten what it was like.

I cannot blame them, there are not many reasons to smile since she disappeared.

"I'm sorry, I cannot go to the bunker today, I need to sort this out. Tell John and the others to take care of everything.” I know I've gone far less than I should, but the city is quiet and I know they can handle it. It's me who cannot, it's weird to hear Curtis’s voice on the communicator, sometimes on the adrenaline of the moment I forget everything and just say her name, I call her, as if she's still there behind the computer keyboard ready to save the city. And when I hear an awkward silence, followed by Curtis's voice, I remember that she is no longer there. Sucks. "When Felicity come back, everything will return to normal." I say forcing her name down my throat, ignoring the pang of pain it brings. I try to smile at Thea again, before turning her back and leaving.

This time I cannot even pretend.

***

I throw my jacket on the black leather couch, and look with regret at the familiar place. I've spent the last few months in her apartment.

I've slept on her bed too. Yes, I'm pathetic, but that's where her scent is stronger, I hug her pillow and sometimes pretend it's her. I should not be here, it's almost masochistic, but it's where I have so many memories of her, of us, of what we were and what we wanted to be together.

Of what we will be.

I force that thought.

Living here was a way to feel Felicity's presence, surround me with her things, smell her every night before sleep. And it was also a good place to stay with my son, who spent every weekend with me. I could not spend all the time with William in the bunker, as much as he liked to go there. The memory of him anxious and curious with all the Arrow's things, wanting to learn how to use the bow and arrow, it was one of the few things that still made me smile, but even that happiness came with a bittersweet taste. I wanted to share this with her, I could close my eyes and imagine Felicity teaching him how to hack security cameras from anywhere, and then giving him a speech that it was illegal and that she only did it to help save the city.

I was sure he would love her.

But Felicity was not here.

William did not even get a chance to meet her.

That's why I brought him to the loft that looked like a better place, it gave me a more normal and familiar feeling. Maybe it was because it was full of Felicity and she was the woman I wanted to build a family with.

I let my tired body fall on the couch and relive a little of that day. I got a new search team, and they would start on Monday. To my desperation it was still Friday, but I needed to stay calm. Tomorrow William would stay with me and I would not want my son to see me in a miserable state.

I wonder what I should do tonight. Drink a little? Maybe wrap myself in that green blanket filled with so many memories and try to fall asleep? It looks promising. I want to sleep, I want to dream about her again and ask her where she is and why she has not come back yet.

I close my eyes and breathe slowly trying to relax, let the tension go away and be surrounded by dreams, where is the only place I see her and feel less broken. I hear a click on the door and I open my eyes, but I don’t move, I don’t even turn to know who it is.

Thea had tried earlier. This time it would be John, he was more incisive, would bring a drink and try to make me accept. We'd talk all night about her, remind ourselves of unique moments with her, and with the help of the anesthetizing alcohol, it would not hurt to either speak or hear her name. And then he would talk about that day, how she was a heroine saving everyone at the last second, how he blamed himself and regretted that he had not been able to reach her when the plane crashed into the sea and the waves pulled her.

She had saved everyone, but no one had been able to save her.

We would make a toast to her and say we would never forget her. Which was not a lie. How to forget the person who has changed so much inside you? Who rescued you from the darkness and brought you into the light? How could I forget that when she was still in my heart and would remain there until my last breath?

In the end, the whole conversation with John would be purposeless, because it would not change the way I feel.

"We'd better not talk today, John.” I still did not look at him, I was feeling too tired to handle it today.

"I don’t know if I'm happy or offended that you think I'm John, I mean he's at least a foot taller than I am.” I blink still incredulously that what I'm hearing is real. It's her voice. Clear and perfect exactly as I remembered it.

I must have gone crazy.

I rise from the couch and stare at her.

I am struck by the sight of her, my heart beats desperately in the chest in recognition of her owner, I feel the moisture accumulate in my eyes as the emotion overwhelms me. I am static, unable to speak or move, I am afraid that if I do this and it will just disappear.

“Am I dreaming?” I ask myself, shaking my head and narrowing my eyes, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. "That's it, I'll wake up any minute, and you will not be here."  I complain “Just the pain.”

"I'm here, Oliver.” she tells me with a sad smile, I look into her eyes so blue and excited. There is urgency in her too, her breasts rising and giving as if breathing was difficult for her, I can almost hear her heart beating in a desperate and intense rhythm, almost as if she was running to get to me. And when tears start to fall on her face, I see the pain in her too, I see how hard it was for her, how much she suffered because we were apart, and I know it's her, she's my girl. She found her way back to me.

I feel it is her.

That is real.

“How?” I'm still incredulous, good things don’t usually happen in my life. And as much as my heart is in the purest state of ecstasy, I am afraid to draw near, to try to wrap her in my arms and it will simply disappear once more.

“Do you really want to know how? It's a long story and I'm going to take hours to tell." I know she'll tell me one day, just not now, that's the way she says we have other priorities.

"No, you're right, it can wait.” I take desperate steps until she breaks the distance between us, I stop in front of her observing her details that I feared that the time would make me forget. I intoxicate myself with her scent, the warmth emanating from her body so close to mine, with the taste of her breathing. And it's just too much, after six months without her I'm like an addict about to suffer an overdose of Felicity Smoak. "I just want to..." I don’t finish, because I don’t know how to complete the sentence without scaring her, because other than what I said before, I don’t want to go slow, because I just want everything from her.

“I know. Me too.” she takes another step completely closing the distance between us, she raises her face to me and I see that her eyes are full of love, the love that has waited for too long.

I put both hands around her waist, pulling her to me, pulling her body close to mine. I rejoice that I can feel that contact again. I down my face to hers, I close my eyes and she does the same with hers, in a perfect synchrony. I can feel how much we are both longing for this kiss, but I want to do it right, I want to enjoy it, I want to satisfy of it, but I want to enjoy every little moment too. I slide the tip of my nose over hers and I hear her sigh, but when I'm ready to taste her lips that I've missed so much, she walks away putting a hand between us on my chest where my heart beats only for her.

“Oliver, wait!” She asks with a frustrated sigh. Does not Felicity realize how much I've already waited? How much do we both waiting?

“What is wrong?” I ask, trying to understand why that sudden distance.

"You should test me." I don’t understand what she means saying that “I could be an evil doppelganger for one of those hundreds of earths, or a meta with powers of metamorphosis or even a...” I can't avoid a broad smile to spread across my face. I missed seeing her babbling nonsense, it's so adorable, it's so much Felicity. But her concerns are so purposeless that I just interrupt her by sticking my lips to hers.

She exhales a sigh of satisfaction against my mouth, and I take time appreciating just the good feeling it was to have her lips perfectly molded to mine. I squeeze her a little firmer, ensuring that her body doesn1t go anywhere away from mine, while my other hand lodges around her face, the thumb stroking her cheek as the other fingers sank into her soft hair. Felicity sighs again melting in my arms, and I take the time to deepen the kiss.

Then that sweet kiss, marked by longing, slowly take on another form. Felicity presses her body against mine, and I correspond more ferociously, moving my tongue over hers, feeling her taste that I missed so much, sucking the bottom lip, brushing my teeth over the soft flesh. I simply take all of her in that one kiss.

There are so many things we say in this kiss.

So many feelings that we denied for so long, and when we finally accepted them, when we were ready to live them, we had to save them again and wait for a new chance.

That is why there is still that pessimistic part of me, that fears that at any moment something goes wrong. It's only when I feel the palm of her hand over my heart, her simple touch calming a little of the fury, reminding me that she's here, that the thought gone. It's always like that. She is my light in the midst of darkness, who makes me believe that I deserve good things.

I finish the kiss, slowly moving away from her lips, but without breaking the embrace. I end up because I know there will be others, endless kisses, as many of us as we want, we have time for that. And now I just want to miss longing to look at the face of the woman I love and haven't seen for six long months.

Felicity opens her eyes that get lost in mine, they seem happy to be home.

"I know it's you." I say, caressing her face with affection and answering the doubt she had, and I interrupted when I kissed her.

"How can you be so sure?" She asks and I smile sweetly at her because I know the perfect answer.

“Because we find ourselves in each other.” She smiles, a tear trickles down her face and I dry her with the tip of my finger. I know it's an emotional tear because I feel just like her. Immensely excited, absurdly happy. "I just feel this with you, Felicity, even if there was another face like yours, she could not fool me, because I fell in love with your heart, and it's unique," I explain, "my only fear is that this is just a dream .

Felicity gives me a sympathetic smile, as if she understands my fear.

"If it was a dream, I could not do it." she wraps my neck with her small hands pulling me to her and she kisses me again.

It is not a dream.

I know it's not because when I kiss her I feel the broken parts of me getting together, I feel like my heart is whole again, the pain goes away giving way to just good feelings.

Everything will return to its proper place.

Just as Felicity returned to hers.

What is, here, with me.