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It’s a Thursday when it ends (he won’t realize that until later).
Everything is a blur, has been a blur since the night in the woods and he can’t even begin to get out of the fog that has overtaken his body, his mind, his everything.
But then there was Felicity, or rather there wasn’t Felicity. She wasn’t in the foundry, she wasn’t at her townhouse, she wasn’t with Digg. She just wasn’t.
He doesn’t know how long she’s gone.
It seems like a lifetime.
He feels like he’s back on the island. No sense of time, nothing good happening, no hope for anything good to happen.
And then he is back on the island.
He remembers bits and pieces of the why, ‘Lian Yu’ ‘Slade’ ‘Felicity’ ‘Taken’ are words that float in and out of his head, words Diggle speaks.
He finds her on the beach. She’s on her knees in the sand, looking at the waves, the same waves he floated on for days, waiting for rescue. He knows that was years ago. Feels like yesterday.
Her hands are tied behind her back. He wonders how long she’s been here, how long she’s been waiting.
When he sees Slade, standing behind her, staring right at him, holding that damn saber, he comes back to himself for a moment. Slade killed his mother.
And now he has Felicity. He’s going to kill her, too. With the same blade.
Digg has caught up to him now. He’s saying something, something about a plan and timing. But Oliver doesn’t remember any plan.
Oliver remembers his mother’s body, lifeless on the cold, wet ground. He remembers Thea, eyes wide, so traumatized and in shock she couldn’t even produce tears.
He looks from Digg back to Felicity. The sun is hitting a spot on her head that makes her hair shine, glisten even.
He remembers that she dyes it. He tried to look at her roots when she told him, tried to see her real hair color. Would it be a darker shade of blonde? Or a different color entirely? Brown, maybe a dark brown.
He’ll never find out.
No, he thinks. No.
Digg thinks they have to be disciplined, precise, focused if they’re going to end this. But Oliver has been all those things, for so long. And look where all that got him. No, what he does next is not disciplined or precise or focused.
But it ends.
After he grabs Diggle’s gun, tackling the man to the ground and taking it by force when he tries to stop him, he enters into that fog again. He won’t remember the details of his final fight with Slade.
What he remembers is looking at Felicity, when he’s close enough to see her eyes. She’s still staring at the ocean. It’s not until she looks at him that he sees it. Her eyes are hollow, emotionless. She’s about to die but she doesn’t look afraid.
She looks like she’s dead already.
And then she looks away from him, back to the ocean.
That’s the moment he knows, he’s going to kill Slade Wilson.
He drops Digg’s gun. A bullet would be too kind. No, he’s going to kill Slade with his own blade. The blade he’d used to kill his mother. The blade he was going to use to kill Felicity.
There’s a struggle( there will be blood and bruises and cuts later as proof), but when he gets his chance he doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think about being a hero or wonder if there is anything he can do to save Slade.
There is no better way.
And if there is, he doesn’t care anymore.
Felicity’s face is still turned toward the waves when it’s over, but her eyes are closed now. She’s so still, so incredibly still.
He drops to his knees next to her and wraps a hand around her neck, his thumb landing on her pulse. She doesn’t react to his touch, but he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when he feels the rhythm of her heartbeat and presses his forehead to hers.
He doesn’t know how long they sit there, kneeling on the beach of Lian Yu, his hand around her neck, her eyes closed, foreheads touching.
At some point Digg comes up behind them. He doesn’t speak to them and Oliver doesn’t turn around, but he can sense him there.
When Digg unties Felicity’s wrists she still doesn’t move.
It’s not until Oliver whispers her name, the breath he says it on hitting her face, that she opens her eyes and looks at him.
When she pulls away from him, his thumb losing contact with her pulse, he feels the loss more deeply than he’s allowed himself to feel anything in the last few days.
She tries to stand but stumbles. Digg steadies her. She mumbles something and starts moving away from them, moving towards the water.
Oliver lets out a strangled cry, some variation of her name and ‘no’, but Digg pulls him back.
‘She said she wants to be alone’ Digg says.
As he watches her wade into the ocean, watches her arms hang limply at her side as she tilts her face up to the sun, he mourns for her. She’s alive, but part of her has died and he knows it. The same part of him died long ago.
Later, when some of the life has returned to her eyes, she’ll start talking to him again, give him bits and pieces of what was behind her eyes that day on the beach. ‘Slade told me things, he said so many things…’ her voice always trails off, that hollow look in her eyes returning, and all he can do is nod. Sometimes he takes her hand. When it’s especially bad he puts a hand around her neck and his thumb finds her pulse. Sometimes she leans into it, sometimes she needs to be alone.
It ends on a Thursday.
(it never really ends)