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They run.
Oh, how they run.
This time, though, the only things they’re chasing are fading daylight and each other.
She falls asleep about an hour outside Starling, curled toward him in her seat and her left hand on his thigh.
(He tries not to notice how the last remains of the day highlight a finger that he just knows, with a depth of certainty he’s only felt a few times before in his life, should have a band of gold around it.
Because he – whatever is left of him – is hers, and by the grace of a god he’d truly thought he’d stopped believing in a long time ago, she is his.
He does notice, however, that she hasn’t really been able to stop touching him since the previous night, and he understands, because this feels surreal to him, too; almost uncomfortable in how right it is – how much heavier the crown of choice is, versus those he’d thought belonged to fate and destiny.
But the burden on his head is not unwelcome; not anymore. He’d used Becket’s ghost to cover his betrayal of the king, of Ra’s and everything he, Oliver, had been at one time or another, but now he steps into the honesty and the light with a name of his own – the name he’s reclaiming and putting above the mission, the mantle, everything he’d held so dear before he’d realized what actually mattered – and this time, he’s not alone.
One day he’ll understand he never was.)
She shifts in her seat and blinks into awareness when he pulls off the freeway and the smile that lights his face is immediately reflected upon hers. He lifts her hand and presses it to his lips, answering her question before she even has a chance to pose it.
(He wasted so much time with her.
That ends today. It needs to.
Because he’s beyond ready for so much more to begin.)
“We’re almost there,” he says softly and she nods, running a hand through her windswept hair that really only serves to tangle it just a little bit more. He notices a slight shiver as it runs up her spine and reaches into the backseat behind him and grabs the soft grey hoodie he used to keep in the foundry.
(The smile she gives him as she slides it around her shoulders defies description, save for one word.
This.
This is what it had all been for.
This was worth it.
Because it’s worth everything.)
He can see her eyes trying to make heads or tails of their location and he just smiles to himself, lacing his fingers with hers again as the off-ramp gives way to a divided highway, then a two-lane road, and finally a long gravel drive.
The sun set hours ago, but the night is clear enough that the moon and stars reflect onto the lake behind the property. The lights in the house are on, as he’d requested when he’d called the caretaker from Felicity’s bed that morning while she showered, and he smiles when she gasps a little bit as the house comes into full view, with its floor-to-ceiling, peaked windows and dark wood wrapped around into a porch as it sits surrounded by acres of undisturbed greenery.
(The forest’s terrain is not unlike the island; indeed, it had been the memory of summers here and jumping into the lake from a tire swing that calmed him sometimes on Lian Yu; it helped to imagine he was somewhere safe.
Felicity’s fingers flex in his hold and she stiffens a bit; he realizes she’s made the same connection and squeezes softly back, because he’s not afraid anymore – of the island, of his history, of his ghosts, because now she’s his somewhere safe.)
“My grandfather was a self-made man,” he says as he pulls the Porsche to a stop adjacent to the front door. “My grandmother, however, came from money, and for the longest time wouldn’t give him the time of day. But he never gave up, and finally he convinced her to go on a date with him when he promised that with a little time, he’d give her all the things a rich suitor would, including building her a dream house. Took him awhile, but he did it.” He glances over at her, and he can feel the warmth on his face when he looks at her and says, “Us Queen men aren’t always great at the timing thing.”
“Luckily,” she says, leaning over the console to rest her chin on his shoulder and brushing her lips against the underside of his chin when she speaks, “us Smoak women? Really good at waiting for the men we love to get their heads out of their asses.”
(His laugh catches in the wind and carries across the few ripples on the lake, and as he takes his overnight bag in one hand and finds her hand again with the other, and thinks of another word when they cross the threshold.
Peace.)
The caretaker – paid through a trust set up by his grandfather long ago and one Oliver didn’t have the heart to touch even when things were financially most dire – has left some groceries in the fridge, and as Felicity goes to the adjacent living room and its picture windows, Oliver pulls out a premade lasagna – Italian seems to be destined to be their “thing”, because the more things change, the more they stay the same, and the more he likes it that way – and sets it in the oven to warm before walking up behind her and sliding his arms around her waist. He presses a kiss to the back of her head and then rests his chin atop her blonde locks.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmurs, covering his hands with hers.
“It is,” he agrees.
(He’s not talking about the view.)
They stand there in silence for a long few minutes, but it’s neither weighted nor charged. It just is; the world breathes simplicity around them for the first time in a long time, and all is quiet both within and without. He has to swallow a few times when it really, truly hits him that this is his life now – a life that 72 hours ago he was fine giving up for what he thought was the greater good.
(He didn’t expect his certainty to lead to questions, because as he feels her in his arms and in his head and in his heart, that finally fully opened heart – in the very soul he thought he’d sold long ago – he wonders how he could have ever been so wrong, because she is the greater good. They are. They’ve always accomplished more together than apart, and there is a shadow of guilt that rests on him like night has settled on the lake house that he could have ever doubted that she, that they, were always the right choice.
And as she does, she saves him from himself. “We’re here now,” she murmurs, again turning her head until her nose and mouth brush against the column of his neck. “And we’re going to work like hell to stay here. That’s the only thing that matters.”
He turns her to him and kisses her then, hands framing her face like in the hospital hallway a lifetime of countdowns ago, long and slow and sweet and certain, because he doesn’t have the words.
He doubts he ever will.
But he is, as with everything when it comes to her, determined to try.)
They eat dinner in the sunken family room, socked feet crossed next to each other on the coffee table in front of them, and she is warm and solid and here, and for some reason, his father’s face comes to him, his last words echoing over the late local news broadcast playing on the TV above the fireplace.
“Survive.”
He’d wondered before why his father had used the breath that would turn out to be his last one to tell him that; it was, even for Mr. Ivy League Dropout, obvious and basic, something he’d been doing the minute he’d surfaced in the water.
He looks at Felicity now, here after all this time – here at the right time – and he understands what his father meant: fighting to survive is the first step in learning how to live.
This had never been about the list or the league or the mafia; not about building a vigilante or an assassin or an enforcer. This had been about building a boy into a man.
It had been about making him into the man his father both wanted to be and the one he knew Oliver could be.
He looks at Felicity and remembers his father and thinks the same thing he had when he washed up on Lian Yu, when he awoke in Hong Kong, when he pledged himself to the Bratva, when he arrived back in Starling to resume his old name and his new ways: I can do this.
This time, it’s not a lie he tells to comfort himself.
He leans over and presses a kiss to her temple and automatically her right hand rests on the cheek not nuzzling her hair, and he wants to tell her all this – wants to share the last few things she doesn’t know about him and fall into the serenity of the surrender – but he’s interrupted before he can find a starting place.
(He’s fine with it, though; he’s gotta work on the timing thing.
Besides, this is one thing he never wants to end.)
Felicity purses her lips and sighs, reaching for her phone as it lies on the coffee table. She puts her dinner plate down and answers the call. “Hi, Mom.”
Oliver can hear Donna’s bright voice over the line, though it sounds more panicked than energetically rushed, and Felicity immediately starts trying to interject to calm it. “Mom. Mom. No, Mom…Mom! I’m fine. I’m fine. I promise.” The guilty look on her face matches the tightening in his heart; of course her mother would’ve heard about another attack on Starling, and in the chaos of everything, they’d neglected to call her. “I’m sorry I worried you, Mom. Really. But I’m fine. Everybody’s fine, I promise.” She looks over, smiling at Oliver. “The good guys won.” There’s another pause, and Oliver starts to stand, intent on carrying his plate to the kitchen and giving Felicity a little privacy, but instead her hand moves to his leg to keep him seated. He twists a little bit, settling further into the couch, and as she does, she picks up right where he leaves off, and leans back against his broad chest as she settles in for what appears to be a long conversation.
He reaches for her dinner plate and after he hands it back to her, she rests it in her lap, talking around mouthfuls, and yet still somehow swipes at his hand when he tries to snag one of her pieces of garlic bread. She swats at him again after he pinches her side lightly in retaliation, and this time when she leans back, she adjusts herself and her hand, running it high alongside the inner seam of his jeans, nail flitting dangerously close to his groin.
“Not fair,” he whispers, barely containing the deep groan that wants to escape him. She wiggles once more against him, glancing over her shoulder and up at him with a wink and he feels like he’s needlepoints and desire and wonders if he’ll ever get enough of her.
(Mr. Ivy League Dropout knows the answer to this one, too: no.)
Felicity’s reply to her mother of, “I’m actually not in Starling,” pulls his attention back to the woman in his arms now rather than the one he’ll have in his bed pretty soon – if not immediately after – she hangs up with her mother. “I’m –“ She wrinkles her nose adorably when she realizes she actually doesn’t know the answer, and turns to ask him, “Where are we again?”
“Chatham Woods,” he supplies.
Felicity doesn’t even get a breath to explain where exactly that is before Donna, clear as day and the enthusiasm back in her voice in spades, asks, “Wait, you’re not alone? Is Oliver with you?”
(He doesn’t think until later to ask why Donna had assumed it was him and not Ray, and all Felicity says is, “Mother’s intuition is an actual thing, apparently.”
He’s never been the kind of guy you bring home to meet the folks, but he thinks maybe Donna saw something he and Felicity were afraid to: that they were already there, home in together.
He keeps that with him after they return, after they start working support for Digg, Laurel and Thea, and after she takes on trying to salvage what’s left of Palmer Inc in the aftermath of Ray’s disappearance.
Even when they’re apart, she is always with him, and after awhile it doesn’t feel strange anymore.
It feels like he can finally say when.)
He chuckles and grins, nudging behind Felicity’s ear, and she pulls the phone down, putting it on speaker.
“Hi, Donna,” he says, and it’s more from Felicity’s facepalm that he realizes the sound coming from the other end of the line is a happy little yelp.
Donna covers quickly, though. “It’s good to talk to you again, Oliver. Without the power outages and kidnapping attempts.”
He asks after Vegas and she after baby Sara, and after about ten minutes of pleasantries – because she is, once she’s convinced everyone in Felicity’s life is safe and sound after yet another threat to the city – she ventures, this time a little less nonchalant than she’d managed earlier, “So what are you kids doing skipping out of town in the middle of the week? Not more work, I hope.”
Felicity looks up at him and sticks her tongue out at him when he shakes his head and waves his open palm, indicating she should go ahead. With a sigh and clearly bracing herself, she says, “We’re on vacation.”
(We is another single word that sounds so, so good to his ears. And from the breathless, barely contained excitement in her tone, Donna’s the same way.)
“Oh, a vacation? In the…same place? Together?”
Finally, Felicity puts words to it. “Yes, Mom. We’re together.” She anticipates the request for clarification from her mother. “Together together.”
There is a long, long pause – long enough that Oliver sits up a bit to look over Felicity’s shoulder at the phone as it rests on her thigh to check if the call is still connected, and then Donna says, “Hang on, honey, somebody just knocked at the door.” There’s some shuffling as she apparently puts the phone down and a distinct sound of footfalls walking away, and then a noise just this side of a shriek that sounds suspiciously like “YES!” bounds through the speaker.
He laughs heartily then, wrapping his arms around Felicity’s waist as she ducks her chin to her chest and just sighs. There’s a blush climbing up her neck and he presses his lips to the base of it before kissing right below her ear. He’s just finished whispering, “I love you” against her skin when the shuffling resumes and Donna’s voice comes back over the line.
“I’m sorry, honey, it was…FedEx. Wrong address.”
(He’s sort of impressed she pulled that lie out so quickly and mostly convincingly, given what they just heard. He could’ve used her to come up with something better than my coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood.
Moot point now, though, because it was the words before that mattered: Felicity Smoak? Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.
And look where that laptop and that lie got him: in this life, living truth.)
“Now, what were you saying?” Donna asked, voice like a live wire about to throw sparks in its obvious glee and Felicity’s face is still buried beneath mortified hands, so he takes the opportunity to answer.
“We’re together,” he says, specifically staying away from “dating,” because this is so, so much more than that. He tightens his grip on her, resting their joined hands on her abdomen – a flash forward in touch if ever there was one – and his voice is reverent when she turns her head to look him in the eyes and he barely blinks, saying quietly, reverently, because these words will always be said to her first and foremost like they are a liturgy and a lesson in one, “And I love her.”
There is a similar sanctity in the pause Donna takes, and the change in her voice pulls Felicity’s gaze from his. “Felicity, honey, could you take me off speaker, please?”
Felicity does as she asks, and he hears Donna say something, and is surprised when Felicity holds the phone out to him. “She wants to talk to you, actually.”
(He’s expecting something along the lines of Vegas was a mafia town for a long time, you know and I know the desert and I’ve got a shovel and a couple of lawyers at my table at Caesar’s, so don’t do anything stupid with my child’s heart, but as they do, the remarkable Smoak women surprise him.
For someone who lived life by architect’s plans, equally his own or someone else’s, he really hopes they never stop.)
“You are in charge of sending me a post card from every place you stop,” she says, Mom tone activated in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever heard from her, and it actually takes him a minute to fully register what she’s saying. “Felicity, she’ll text or email pictures, but I prefer something I can easily hang on the fridge, you know? No muss, no fuss. So that’s your responsibility. And I don’t care if you go to Kansas to see the world’s largest ball of yarn or the largest ball of paint in Indiana –“ he has no idea how she knows those are real places, but of course she does; she’s Felicity’s mom, after all – “ I still want a post card. Got it?”
His voice doesn’t work at first, but finally he finds it and answers. “Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s a good boy. You two have fun and be safe.”
He pauses again, and Donna’s voice softens into a tone that immediately feels like warmth and safety and mothers. “I’m not going to tell you to take care of our girl, Oliver. I know you will. I know you already do. It’s clear how much you love her. Just –“ she sighs, and there’s a depth to it that he comprehends even without words, “take care of yourself, too, okay? That’s just as important. You’re just as important.” She sounds so like Felicity when she finishes, soft but sure. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he says after a moment, swallowing thickly and pulling Felicity even closer, breathing it all in so deeply his lungs burn. “I understand.”
“I knew you would.” There’s a smile in her tone, one he can’t help but return, even if she’s not there with them. “And though I’m sure my daughter will try to talk you out of it, if you find yourselves out this way during your time off, you’re more than welcome to stop by. I’d love to see you.”
He chuckles. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“May I speak to Felicity again, please?”
He murmurs a soft goodbye and hands Felicity the phone before sliding out from behind her. He presses a meaningful kiss to her lips when she turns her face up toward him in questioning before finally taking their dinner dishes to the kitchen. He rests them in the sink and curls his hands around the edge of the counter, taking long, slow deep breaths before looking around the main floor.
For something belonging to the Queen family, the house is actually quite modest; humble. He knows his grandfather probably wanted to build his grandmother a palace when he’d promised it to her, something worthy of her status and her station, but their dreams had changed with the times – with the life they built together. The house was a place that the family would gather, one filled with light and laughter, where his grandparents could see everyone and everything; take in all they’d accomplished in turning a house into a home.
He’s been a house in a storm, the derelict on the rocks, a compass with no north.
A heart without a home.
As he listens to the honey tones of an amused, giddy Felicity filling her mother in on everything about them and their plans – which, he fully admits, now have to include trips to the world’s largest ball of yarn and ball of paint – he whispers something to himself he never thought he’d get to say.
Welcome back.