Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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part one: take my defenses, all my defenses

“Excuse me, miss Smoak?”

“Yeahhhh…” She spins around in her chair - pen in her mouth absentmindedly - to define where or from whom the sound is coming from, before spotting the actual source. “Oh!”

Spitting the pen out in what must the most unattractive manner in which a person could possibly spit out a pen, she clears her throat, unconsciously straightening out her blouse as she forces a smile on her face, “Hi. That’s me. Miss Smoak. Felicity Smoak. My name is Felicity. Smoak is my last name.”

She lets out a nervous laugh because this man standing in front of her must be God’s own personal handcrafted creation because, my my my, what a beautiful specimen. Annnnndddd he’s talking and she’s staring. This is awkward.

“S-sorry,” she stumbles out, putting a stray of hair behind her ear and sucking in a sharp breath as she looks away from his questioning glance. With two of the most gorgeous blue eyes she has ever seen, may she add. Not that she’s only this socially challenged around beautiful people, oh no, she does just fine around less perfect people. “What was that?”

“I said that I’m Oliver Queen,” he smiles, tightly and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He tilts his head slightly, “I’m here, about the laptop? We spoke on the phone.”

“Oliver Queen,” she tries out, drawing out his name as she taps her fingernails on her desk, trying to remember the particular conversation he’s apparently referencing to.

“What kind?” She eventually asks, sighing quietly in defeat, “What kind of laptop? I’m not really good with names but I am very good with computers.”

“Harper brought it here, I don’t,” he starts, staring at her in thought as he licks his lips for a second. “It was black, I think. It… had a blue logo on the front?”

An horrific sinking feeling settles in her stomach. Oh no. He’s a incomputerate—a computer illiterate! Why does the universe hate her? Not that she had any sort of illusion that they… No. Even in her own head she can’t seem to shut up.

“Have you been living under a rock for like, the past ten years? That trend of being cool for calling technology a phase is over, you know,” she teases a little as she opens a file on her computer, trying to decipher which one of her fixer-uppers he was talking about because that might be the worst description of a computer she’s heard since people still thought of them as Satan’s way to infiltrate society.

She had a carefully organized list of all her foster babies, and no, that did not make her a geek. Her ability to distinguish a FX-4 Quad Core 4300 from a Core i5 processor with one glance, did. Get your facts straight, mom.

He shakes his head to himself, shoulders tense, “Something like that.”

She nods tightly, turning back to look at him for a second to acknowledge she heard his response because she doesn’t really know what to say to that illusive, not-at-all-informing statement without going into full-on babble mode and she’d hate for him to think she was just ignoring him. That’s rude.

He seems to hesitate for a second, arms behind his back as he takes a tentative step closer to her desk, “It, it had a… hole in it. Several of them.”

Smiling a little, triumphantly pointing a finger at him and tilting her head in recognition, ”Ah, the one with the holes.”

“Yes. I… spilled my latte over it.”

“You spilled your latte over it?” She snorts, readjusting her glasses as she presses her lips together to keep herself from grinning widely. That was absolutely the worst lie she ever heard. But, it’s not really any of her business, now is it. “Here I was, thinking they looked like bulletholes.”

“My coffee shop is in a bad neighbourhood.” He looks amused, pursing his lips, but just for a second before it’s gone again.

“Silly me,” she mutters, holding up her finger to signal she’ll be right back as she appears into the backroom. She comes back out within under a minute, carrying a document under her arm and with a laptop pressed to her chest. She sits down at her desk carefully, manoeuvring the object infront of her and powering it up, all the while avoiding his persistent gaze. Avoidance wasn't usually her forte, she was mediocre at it at best (something about her mouth having a lack of hesitance when it comes to moving might have a little something-something to do with it), but it would have to do for now.

He steps closer as he leans over her shoulder to look at the computer, his hand resting next to her and arm supporting his weight. She turns her head to look up at him (it's only polite, okay) and he’s really close, face blank like isn’t aware he’s breached her personal space by about ten miles, and she gulps a little, facing the screen forcefully - shoulders stiff.

She’s proud of herself that she manages to get out the next sentence pretty normally because did she note he smells really, really good, “So I was able to recover some of the information on it, and I put it all in this folder.”

Then her mouth just takes it away on it’s own, “Some of it was protected but you’re lucky I’m a pretty amazing hacker. Don’t tell anyone I said that. As a matter of fact, forget I said it all together. I did absolutely nothing illegal to this computer. Or to any of the others. Seriously, Ray Palmer may come all the way down from the executive floor to this IT-cave to personally kick my ass and fire me.”

“What computer?” He deadpans in response and she snorts, because that was weak. Going for the obvious joke to make? Basic. Generic. Still, there she is. Feeling light and bubbly. How teenage girl of her.

She makes the mistake of looking back up at him, “I’m very regretful to inform you that I was not able to resuscitate this beautiful, beautiful baby for commercial use though, but I promise I will use her parts wisely in the future.”

“Thank you,” he says, not even fazed by the fact their faces are inches apart as he finally grins, and oh, what a beautiful sight. She makes a mental note to call up UNESCO later, this piece of art must be preserved. “That means a lot.”

She raises her eyebrows challengingly, “I do have to inform you a certain Mr. Patel might not be as happy with me transcending this information onto you. Since, you know, it is his computer and all.”

“My uncle gifted it to me,” he retorts, quickly adding, “Maternal.” She blinks a few times as they stare at each other, both not budging.

A dark man with big arms and an empty look on his face barges in unannounced, giving her a wary glance before focusing on Oliver, who straightens up immediately, face going hard. They have a small exchange in a different language, and it sounds... not-English. Like something out of an action movie. (Hey, there’s people who excel in language and there’s people who’s maternal language is binary.)

She widens her eyes as the unnamed man unawarely flashes his gun as he reaches into his pocket to get out his phone as she reaches up to scratch behind her ear out of sheer panic (okay, so her behaviour is more freak-out than flight or fight, who cares), before pretending she’s busy with organizing her post-its.

Okaaaaaay. Try not to freak out here, Smoak. Maybe it was just water pistol. Yeah, totally. A grown man would totally have a reason to carry a water pistol. The secretive conversation and the bulletholes? Explanations all around.

The man disappears as quickly as he came, mentioning that he’ll wait outside after giving Felicity one more calculating glance. Apparently she’s not too much of threat. She won’t be offended by that for purely natural selectional reasons.

“Sorry about that,” Oliver mentions before reaching out to gather the files and put them back in the folder. “I have to go, but, uhm,” the corners of his mouth lift up just a little, “Thank you. Again.”

Despite the fact her life feels like a soap opera at the moment, she doesn’t seem able to control her facial muscles, nor her mouth but that’s not an uncommon occurrence, as she smiles widely, “It was my pleasure.”

.

The next times, she manages to spot him first; so he isn’t able to take her by surprise looking like an idiot with a pen in her mouth and stuttering like a pre-teen at a boyband concert, like she’s never seen a good—okay, great—looking man.

Fine, he’s good looking. He’s also escorted by some heavily armed guys and seems to enjoy coming up with terrible excuses on the spot instead of thinking of one beforehand. Sometimes she thinks he was only doing it to humour her.

The next times, plural, because him visiting her seems to have become a regular occurrence ever since the first time. He has her hacking into criminals’ backgrounds, looking into arrow manufacturers and even analyzing drugs. Yes.

She has found a few dubious... things, most of them illegal, in the process, but she thinks it’s best not to think about those things. Not too hard, anyway.

“So, you’re telling me this is a energy drink that your friend, Kevin?” She looks at him for confirmation over the rim of her glasses and Oliver nods, lips pressed together in entertainment, before she continues, “Right, your friend, Kevin, produced but you want to know what’s in it so badly you want me to do a spectroanalysis?”

“Yes.” He’s very curt, she’s noticed, but not per se in the mean way a disappointed mother would speak to you, but more in the guarded way of the word. Like he’s afraid he’d reveal too much.

“It’s in a syringe,” she notes matter-of-factly, leaning back in her chair and he doesn’t seem particularly surprised she wants to have the same old useless argument.

“I ran out of sport bottles.”

“You do look like you would use those often, not that I noticed, or anything. I mean, you’re obviously easy on the eyes and really well-build and I’m not blind because you know, I’m not, but 3...2...1...Okay.” Deep breath, Felicity. “Sure. I’ll have it ready by Monday.”

When she finally dares to look back at him cheeks red of embarrassment, he is smiling the tiniest of smiles. “Thank you, Felicity.” He hesitates, hand on the door handle as he looks back at her, “You are remarkable.”

“Thank you for remarking on it.”

They exchange a look, and it’s not unpleasant or unnatural per se, it’s just strange. It’s like they have some sort of a—connection, even though she wouldn’t know the first thing about this man. It’s stupid, it’s a stupid thing to even consider—or, or think about.

For a second she thinks about his life outside of the basement of Palmer Technologies. Does he buy his mother flowers? Does he discuss business with his father? Does he have siblings? Does he ever make jokes around them or does things normal brothers do, like throw around balls and chase them around backyards? Or if they’re older, does he take them out to clubs and does he laugh at them trying to do the chicken dance? Does he speak Russian or English at home? Does he have a Mrs. Broody to call his own? Does he ever smile at her like he smiles at her? Do they know what he does? Is he happy?

She’s in so deep, darkness surrounds her.

Why her? Please, universe, God, Oprah, anyone, she needs answers or she might die. She hates mysteries. The real question here should be why the frack she is helping him to begin with?

Yes, Felicity, why are you exactly?

.

“Oliver,” a slightly less tall boy appears in the door opening—just as Oliver is trying to come up with an excuse as to why he just brought her a gun with the registration number filed off—and she recognizes him as the one who brought the laptop to her. Something Russian, she has figured out by now, follows so she’s not sure what he’s saying, just that Oliver responds to it mostly by tensing up.

She crosses her legs, and once again pretends to be interested in anything else but them, even though she doesn’t really think her bright pink dress is doing anything to help her in that department. She decides to get back to her own work, cracking her fingers before trying to ignore them.

It’s pretty hard.

Oliver starts talking back to him in their own secret language (that they share with the entire country of Russia, but still, she can’t help but feel excluded) and she has to admit it’s kind of hot. His voice is low and rough and what the hell is her mind even getting at right now? Is it so far in the gutter it doesn’t seem able to form any coherent thoughts, or...?

“More illegal stuff?” She says after Roy is out of earshot, arms crossed over her chest as she leans back in her chair. She knows she’s coming off as a rebellious teenager throwing a tantrum, like she has a right to know anything about him. Which is the problem exactly, because she kind of feels like she does, especially after all the things she has done for him.

“Felicity,” he dismisses her, tone cold, focusing his eyes on the gun, like she knows damn well he can’t discuss any of his ‘business’ with her. And she does. She just… She doesn’t know what she wants. There’s a lot of blurred lines and mixed feelings.

She sighs, and he hands her the gun, which she takes after some careful consideration. “Wow.” She tries it out, moving it over to her other hand and back. “It’s lighter than I thought it would be.”

He nods, jaw tightened, and she can sense he doesn’t really know what to say. She bites down on her lip and doesn’t look at him when her brain decides to shut off it’s brain-to-mouth filter without her permission once again.

"Is it weird? That I trust you, I mean. I barely know you beside the fact I know you’re a really bad liar and you have, at any occasion, at least, three, big armed guys waiting outside to shoot me as I do so much as give you an accidental papercut,” she rambles on, head tilted as she finally dares to make eye contact, waving the gun around somewhat carelessly out of habit, since she is quite the physical speaker. He tenses just a little as he puts his hand on top of hers to still her movements, and it’s big and warm and shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“Maybe don’t… do that as much,” he mentions quietly (and she bites down on her lip, hard, to keep from blurting out a 'same for you there, buddy!', a flush forming on her chest under his touch), before finally taking it from her and putting it down on her desk, but not before unloading it, putting the magazine down next to it. He looks back at her and she feels an all too familiar feeling of awkwardness creep onto her spine.

She goes into panic mode, because his hand just touched her for like, two seconds, and she thinks he might have gotten the wrong idea from her earlier ramble and she’s starting to sweat just a little and talking is kind of her go-to thing.

"It’s probably way, waaaay passed weird, huh? Or maybe for my standards it isn’t. I once thought it was a good idea to date a guy who’s first name was Leonard Stanley. Yep. Not just Leonard, oh no, Leonard Stanley. Leonard Stanley? Seriously? If that just doesn’t scream an infinitely big collection of sweatervests, a probability of him only conversing in binary language and,” she deepens her voice slightly, “‘I have a penis so I have more rights than you' superiority complex, I don’t know what is.” She takes a deep breath, collecting herself, as she brushes imaginary dust from the skirt of her dress, “My point is, I know nothing about you—and I, I shouldn’t trust you, but I do."

“I guess I just have one of those faces," he concludes casually, visibly more relaxed and she’s glad her ramblings are so embarrassing he feels like the coolest person in the room.

At the super-apparent-not-so-amused-look on her face, he softens a little, shoulder slouching as he bites on the inside of his cheek.

“If it makes you feel better,” he pauses, and seems like he is in thought, mixed feelings showing on his face as he settles on, “I have a sister. Her name is Thea.” It seems like a mundane fact, something you would tell a stranger in a passing-the-time-while-waiting-for-the-train conversation to keep it going without the situation becoming too awkward, but the way he says it, it feels personal.

She gives him a nod out of appreciation, grateful that he opened up to her, even just a little and he nods back.

“Not a real blonde,” she points at her hair, trying to lighten up the situation a little and he smiles that special smile. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Redhead?”

“Brunette.”

.

She doesn’t recognize it as a threat at first—she was used to receiving some more than questionable emails pretty regularly—and figured it was just Palmer Technology related, you know, her actual job. She interpreted that maybe Unidac was trying to psych out the competition, thinking they could get some valuable information about their arch-enemy’s applied sciences department through intimidating some silly little girl in IT.

Besides, she never would’ve considered she could’ve ever left a breadcrumb trail on any of her extracurricular hackings. At least not one that could be followed by someone that wasn’t at least twice times as good as her. She was that good at not leaving trails.

Turns out there is someone out there who’s twice times as good as her, even doing so much as adding a detailed description of some supposedly-locked-away personal information to the latest email to show her how serious they are. A pretty dangerous someone if they’re emailing people ‘THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING TO STOP YOUR RESEARCH. OR WE WILL COME FOR YOU’ in their spare-time was any indication.

She had done every possible thing to figure out where the email came from, or who, for that matter, but there was a dead-end every time. It kept referring her back to some sort of Chinese symbols, and even she wasn’t that big of an obvlious idiot not to make the connection to the fact she had been hacking into the Chinese’s maffia/mob/whatever’s database to provide Oliver with much needed intell for the past few weeks.

Honestly, she doesn’t know what she was thinking getting involved. This is so above her pay grade. Not that she even gets payed by Oliver for any of this beside promised but long forgotten bottle of wines and that one time he brought her a fern. She has to stop this. Which is what Oliver agrees with as soon as she tells him during his next visit.

She shows him the site that keeps popping up—which is just black, spelling out the symbol in white, which gets them zero points for originality to be honest—trying not to make too much of a big deal out of it, but trying to see if she can get any sort of reaction out of him to pin down the exact severity of it. His expression is blank, but his eyes are dark as he turns to look at her.

His voice is cold, harsh even, “When did you get this e-mail?”

“Last week. But I got more beforehand, this being the only one that actually threatened me with death. Not that it explicitly states so, but I have been forced to watch enough action movies to—Oliver, is something wrong?” She stops at the look on his face, she is starting to get kind of freaked out here. She had hoped he would’ve told her it was nothing and that she had been able to blindly believe him and go on to live in oblivion.

He takes in a sharp breath, breathing out through his nose harshly as he rubs his forehead in thought, looking pissed. He mutter something short in Russian that she is smart enough to decipher as some sort of profanity. Curse words are pretty universal.

“Chien Na Wei.”

“Huh?” She turns her head to look at him, taking her eyes off the screen once more and pushing her glasses further up her nose.

“China White. The symbol.” He nods towards her computer, fists balled.

“You speak Chinese?”

“Mandarin, but that’s—not important right now. I should’ve never,” he pauses, trying to collect himself. He is looking at her and for a second she sees something flash across his eyes, like he actually cares about her. Which is a stupid and wrong observation. It’s gone by the time he starts up his sentence again, eyes empty, “I should’ve never gotten you involved. I knew it was dangerous and I did it anyway. I apologize for that.”

“Oliver, please, you didn’t make me do anything, I involved myself. It takes two to tango.” She closes her eyes, tightening her jaw at her own comment, “And with that I mean the least sexual way there is to tango.”

He isn’t amused. He swallows hard, and in that instant she can physically see him making a decision and settling on an attack plan. “This will be the last time I come here. Don’t try to contact me. Don’t try and find out who’s behind this. Don’t—just try and forget, okay?”

“That’s it? You’re just going to let the terrorists win?” She frowns in disbelief, getting up from her desk and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Yes!” He snaps, arms flying up in the air and she winces, to which he takes a step back from her, as he adds in a somewhat calmer manner, “Because it’s too dangerous.”

“I can do something. I haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe—Maybe I can try and find out from which location—” she tries desperately. She can do better, be better, she knows she can.

“No,” he barks, cutting her off, “No, you won’t, Felicity.”

“Why do you even care what happens to me? I thought I was just your infinite supply of information,” she retorts without skipping a beat, taking a step closer to him as she challenges him with her eyes. She doesn’t like being told what to do, not even a little bit.

“Because of what I do, I can’t,” he stops, reaching out to touch her upper arm—lingering for just a second—and she knows there’s more he wants to say but then he shakes his head, just simply saying, “I can’t.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, before looking back at her, “Just promise me you’ll stay out of this.”

“How do I…” her voice trails off, eyes landing back on the symbol, because she trusts him, but this is the Chinese Triad. She isn’t even sure what Oliver is, or is part of, but she knows when the maffia says this is your last warning, they don’t mean the last warning before we come over to your house to calmly explain to you why we don’t like what you’re doing over a cup of tea.

“You’ll be safe,” he says, and she nods, because she believes him. She suddenly feels like there’s a weight lifted onto her chest, because this is it, isn’t it? She’ll never see him again and she know she shouldn’t care this much about that, because what does she really know about him anyway beside the fact he’s involved with the freakin’ Chinese Triad and they don’t actually qualify as friends but he kind of is, her friend. It feels like he is.

She swallows tightly, looking into his eyes to find any trace of—something, but comes up empty. She licks her lips, shaking her head lightly. “I promise,” she breathes and he nods and that’s that. He’s gone.

Being alive triumphs having a kind-of-a-friend, right? Right.

.

She wholeheartedly intended to keep her promise—no matter how much she disagreed with him on the matter, no matter how much she hated him for making her promise, no matter how much she hated herself for not wanting to break her promise to him—but it’s kind of hard when there’s some big guy bleeding over your new (and expensive, by the way) carpet and another smaller one is waving around a gun and screaming in your ear in half English, half Russian that Oliver is in danger and she has to help them.

“Are you going to do something or not?” He grunts in English, thankfully, jaw tightened as he finally stops pacing around, staring her down. His eyes are on fire, and she can’t help but think he’s directing it at the wrong person.

“Put that away,” she orders, nodding at the gun, because she might be the only one in the room wearing fluffy bunny slippers, but she’s not going to let herself be threatened by a middle schooler pointing a weapon at her.

“Look, lady—” He starts, taking a step closer to her threateningly but Guy On Carpet speaks up, and Felicity is a little impressed with the dismissive tone considering the state he’s in. “Roy.”

“Digg—” One looks seems to be enough and the young man puts away the gun, holding his hands up. Bitterly (and a little childishly in her opinion) he turns to her, “Fine. You happy now?”

Felicity nods, rushing to get out her computer and placing it on the kitchen table as she opens up the web, Roy informing her what to do and how to find out about Oliver’s location. Apparently they had an unexpected altercation with the Chinese and they took Oliver to some unknown location to torture him for information and kill him. It all didn’t sound very pleasant in her opinion.

A blonde woman, she hadn’t even heard or seen enter her apartment, comes out of her kitchen with a bottle of her favorite wine, a knife in between her teeth before kneeling down next to a shivering and sweat-covered Digg. She puts the knife down next to her, ripping the guy’s shirt open to reveal a small but blood-pulsating wound. She raises her eyebrows at him, tilting her head like some sort of screwed up ‘nice going there, buddy’ before noticing Felicity’s eyes on her, addressing her without looking away from the wound.

“Wine is the strongest alcohol you have laying around, that’s kind of pathetic, princess.”

Felicity snaps out of it, continuing to type away as she mentions bitterly, “I’m sorry it’s such an inconvenience to you that when you come to my house in the middle of the night with some dude I don’t know, bleeding to death, that I don’t have any strong liquor on me! Must’ve forgotten to put it on my grocery list, right under bleach to clean blood from my carpet and above some damn horse-tranquilizers for your boy here.” Talking of said boy, she turns to him, yelling, “Will you stop pacing?!”

The blonde woman in black snorts in response as takes a bullet out of one of the pockets of her pants, using the knife to nudge it apart and carelessly mentioning to Digg that, “I see why he likes her,” as she puts the gunpowder on his wound. “This is gonna hurt, Digg.” He just nods, eyes rolling back in his head, like he’s having trouble even remaining conscious as she lights up the powder with a match before Felicity has the chance to say, “Hey, do you think you should be doing that?!”

She seems unimpressed, “Relax, princess, this will keep him alive until our doctor can stitch him up.”

There’s one more grunt of pain before he goes fully unconscious and Felicity winces. Our doctor? Was he part of some sort of sect? What the frack was happening right now? What is her life?

“Okay, got it, he’s in a warehouse near…” She presses enter, quickly adding, “1700 Broadway.”

“If you don’t mind, I think we’ll keep him here until we’re back. I don’t think he’ll be of much use if he can only take out seven to eight Chinese.” She smirks, patting her shoulder and Felicity widens her eyes, lingering on the spot where she was just touched.

He could take out seven to eight people in this state? Frack doesn’t seem to be able to convey her true feeling at the moment, this is more of a fuck than a frack. What the fuck?

Roy huffs, loading his gun before pulling out a different one from somewhere behind him and reloading that one, also, “Right. Those motherfuckers seem to multiply by the second. There’s always more.” He doesn’t really seem to be talking to inform her, more to convey his own irritation into insults.

The woman nods to the door, informing him they need to make a move for it if they want to recover a person and not just body parts. Charming. Not nerve-racking at all.

“Wait,” Felicity says, “Is there somewhere I can take him? I mean, he might have internal bleeding and you guys might be away for a while and I don’t, I don’t want a dead guy in my apartment. The deposit I had to pay was like 800 and I work in IT, that’s a lot of money.” Realizing that might come across a little heartless, “Not, not that I want him to die anywhere else, but, also not here.”

The woman smirks, eyes lightening up, “Ah, princess - I knew we made the right decision coming here.”

.

Allegedly, Oliver won’t be happy she is here. At least, that’s what Raisa, the woman opening the door to the mansion she was ordered to go, informs her off the second she opens the door. She’s somehow not surprised an injured man is leaning on her heavily, or that she is here for that matter, but she is muttering a lot in Russian as they both support Diggle, who seems to be slipping back into unconsciousness with each passing second.

She leads them over to a room close by the front door—the place is huge so 'close' wouldn’t cut it under normal circumstances, but relatively speaking—and they carefully lay him down on a bed that seems to be designed just for these kind of situations. Like they happen all the time. Right.

There’s a metal table with medical supplies that looks out of place in a room with gold rimmed wallpaper. Raisa turns to her, “I call doctor, you wait here.” Felicity just nods, because what is she supposed to do? Run away? Call the police? Immigrate to Canada?

She looks over at Digg, who is shaking slightly, eyes rolling back into his head and she quickly rushes over to his side, grabbing a hold of his hand. He’s in worse shape than before.

“Lyla,” he shouts, head rolling from side to side and she squeezes tighter, “No, it’s Felicity. I understand you might not really remember me, but I’m the blonde. With glasses. I do all your dirty IT work, remember?”

“Lyla,” he repeats, and he seems to calm down so Felicity doesn’t try explain to him once again that she is a complete stranger when the man’s closer to dying than surviving another day. It doesn’t take long before he goes out again, and not much longer before a woman shoves her out of the way, calling for Raisa, ‘to get the blood bags’. Which is totally normal.

Felicity takes that as her cue to leave the room and finds a seat just outside the room, sitting down there on a wooden bench that's probably only there for 'decor' or 'ambiance'. She can't seem to make herself care at the moment. It’s not until she takes a deep breath that she realizes her hands are shaking. She’s covered in blood and that man—Digg—he was calling out for a person, a real person he loves and he might die and she can’t do anything. She’s useless. A tear rolls down her cheek but she quickly wipes it away. No time for weakness now.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, just that it’s getting light outside, before a young girl finds her—smiling warmly—vaguely reminding her of someone as she hands her a glass of water, which Felicity takes a grateful sip of.

“Raisa mentioned you were still sitting here. Would you like some clean clothes? I think I’m about your size and not to talk shit about Raisa, but her taste in clothes is a little...1960’s underpaid housemaid.”

Felicity just nods, not finding the strength within her to laugh even though it did lift a little of the weight on her chest. She puts her glasses back on as the girl leads her to a huge staircase, nodding for her to follow her up.

“I’m Thea, by the way, not that anyone here seems to care,” she starts, rolling her eyes and Felicity realizes this is Oliver’s sister. His sister. She seems so open and warm and careless—nothing like him at all. He always seemed like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, a darkness in his eyes she hadn’t come across before. “Welcome to Prison Facility Queen. I would give you a tour, but it’s mainly just paintings of old dudes collecting dust and long corridors leading to nowhere. Diggle is fine by the way, don’t worry. Laurel is good at ever-y-thing she does, after all.”

She senses some sort of aggravation in that statement but knows better than to ask. She’s glad Digg, or Diggle, was okay, though. That was good. Thea sighs, opening the door to a brightly decorated room and Felicity takes another sip of the water before putting it down on a makeup table next to a tall boudoir.

Thea opens another door, to which appears to be her closet (the size of Felicity's entire living room), throwing some things over her shoulder while claiming them to be ‘so passé’ or ‘not your color’, like Felicity actually cared about anything like that right now. She guesses for Thea this was normal, though, and normal equaled impassivity. Finally, she emerges with a small cobalt dress that was a little too bedazzled for Felicity’s taste but she wasn’t one to complain. Her mom always said never to look a gift horse in the mouth (or in her case, free martinis and fake diamonds) - which was a stupid saying because 1) why would someone give you a horse unless you're a six year old girl (although sidenote: Thea probably has a pony stocked somewhere in the mansion) and 2) why would you look it in the mouth, wouldn't you just make an x-ray or something like—okay, so Thea has been talking the entire time she was thinking about frickin' horses and was now pulling on her hair. She is probably in shock. It feels like she is in shock. She should be in shock, it would be weird if she wasn't.

“...but if there's one thing I've learned is that you can never go wrong with a dress,” the brunette smirks, tugging some hair out from behind her ear and Felicity figures now isn’t the time for shame, so she steps out of her pyjamas pants and pulls her old, fluffy t-shirt over her head before shrugging into the stiff dress. It’s a little tight, but it works. Most importantly, it isn't covered in someone else's blood.

Thea tsk-tsks disapprovingly at Felicity’s choice of foot attire (fluffy bunny slippers were apparently so 2011) before disappearing back into her closet and re-emerging with a pair of black flats of some expensive brand—the worth of her apartment probably (twice, now there were bloodstains permanently imprinted on her floor), wiggling them in the air and raising her eyebrows suggestively.

Felicity manages to smile this time, stepping into them and thanking her. She bites down on her lip, straightening out the a-line skirt of the dress before finally daring to ask, “Do you know if Oliver…” Because despite everything, she was still worried about him.

Thea’s smile disappears instantly, pulling on an imaginary thread on her sweater. Her eyes turn guarded, and Felicity recognizes it immediately. Oliver. He has that same exact look.

“Ollie told me about you, you know,” she says instead, staring at her with some sort of challenging look, “He said that for the first time in a long time he met someone who looked at him like he was human. A person.”

Felicity just looks at her—pulse speeding up a little—not really knowing what to say to that. It doesn’t take long before they hear rummaging downstairs, if you define rummaging with a lot of yelling and the sound of solid objects being thrown around.

Thea nods for her to follow as she rushes downstairs, and Felicity follows in a slightly less dangerous way. Knowing her, she’d trip down the stairs and break her neck. It’d be quite the entrance, maybe the one of the year, but might not be worth the title.

“—don’t care! Just fucking cover it up, Laurel.”

“It will get infected, Oliver, and when it does, you can go to an ER because I’m not operating on any of you with equipment straight from the seventies, ever again,” she spits back, obviously not taken back by his aggressive attitude.

Thea is at his side in no time and he seems to soften, reaching out to squeeze her hand before wincing, leaning away from the doctor’s touch as she presses down on his skin a little more rough than necessary.

“You did that on purpose,” Thea notes while Oliver just directs his gaze at the ceiling as some sort of way not flip his shit and Laurel looks up to raise her eyebrows at her.

“Hell yeah I did.”

She finishes up bandaging whatever wound was inflicted onto his side, and Thea helps him back into his shirt, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head as a thank you.

Eventually, he notices her. Felicity. Standing there.

“You’re still here?” Tall, pretty brunette doctor asks, not deeming her worthy of a look as she disposes of her gloves.

Scratch that allegedly she mentioned before, he is not happy to see her. At all.

“You involved her?” He narrows his eyes, turning to the woman and boy from before, who were evidently on her left side the entire time.

“Hey, boss, you were gone,” she accuses, almost stubbornly, as a devious smirk plays on her lips, “Someone had to haul our asses out of there and make the decisions.”

“Sara!” He yells, obviously not happy with her easy-breezy attitude about this. He slams his fist down on the metal table, before proceeding to harshly wipe everything on it, off it. Felicity winces, having not seen him in such a deranged state before. “Now they’ll come for her.”

“Is that really our problem?” The boy cuts in and Oliver turns to look at him, eyes dark, apparantly not deeming his comment reply-worthy before turning back to Sara.

“This is your fault.”

There’s some yelling in Russian, calm on Sara’s side, not so calm on Oliver’s side. She doesn’t seem to budge though, same stubborn, disobedient look in her eyes as before.

“As much as I appreciate you guys talking about me like I’m not here, in the room with you guys, not even three feet away, I can handle myself,” Felicity takes a step forward, brow furrowed.

The blonde, Sara, laughs, like an actual loud, happy laugh. Roy seems again, more annoyed at her presence that anything else, huffing, “Sure thing, blondie.” Oliver is visibly tense, fists balled at his sides.

He rolls his shoulders, like he’s trying to snap himself out of something before he focuses his gaze solely on her, “You’ll stay here tonight.”

She snorts, uncrossing her arms as she walks towards him, “Uhm, thank you for the kind offer, but I think I’ll be just fine at my apartment. If anything happens, I’ll call the cops.”

Sara exchanges a look with the doctor, Laurel, offering her a shrug, “Told you she was feisty.”

“You’ll stay here, and that is final,” he barks, making Thea wince before he disappears out of the room.

“You can stay in the room next to mine,” Thea informs her, and Felicity just nods, too stunned to say anything. You know what? This isn’t the 1950’s—he doesn’t get to control what she does—not that they’re even dating, or courting or whatever they did back then. Neither is she their prisoner—she can leave if she frickin’ wants to, it’s a free country! But she’s too tired to fight, and the look on everyone’s faces pretty much already spelling out she shouldn’t even try. (Except Sara’s, she just seems to be challenging her to walk out.)

So in the end, tired wins from sass and she passes out in her bed almost instantly after Thea leaves the room. Quite the eventful night.

.

She wakes up when it’s dark outside, and she guesses from the sounds coming from downstairs, it’s around dinnertime.

She’s grown more accustomed to the dress now that she’s slept and it and all, so she feels less like a stranger in her own body. Which is good, since she’s an actual stranger in this house and all.

Instead of going downstairs, she decides to roam the halls to get some answers of her own, because she hates mysteries and Oliver doesn’t seem to want to give her any and she is sick of it. Thea was right, there’s mostly just painting on the walls of old people and most of the rooms are eerily sterile, like no one’s lived in them before. She finds a few that are thoroughly lived in though.

One with dirty clothes (including boxers) spread all over the room, empty candy wrappers on the floor and a iPod on the bed. Another one is slightly less messy, but there’s still a fair amount of clothes thrown around, a dogtag hanging on the side of a mirror, right next to a picture of two people, tucked into the border. One of which she guesses is Diggle. There’s one that pretty tidy, but smells like sandalwood and girl’s perfume but there’s one half of a pair of nunchucks hanging out of a drawer of a cabinet to the wall on her right side. There’s goes the idea that there might just be a manic pixie dream girl living here, ready to save the day.

She just about enters the fifth (!) bathroom when a voice from behind startles her.

“Snooping around in your host’s house, huh?” It’s Laurel, leaning against the doorpost with her arms crossed, perfect eyebrows raised. “That’s kind of rude.”

Cutting right to the chase—after she decides that this woman might be her only chance at getting some answers—Felicity huffs, “So what’s this? You’re just going to keep me here forever? Are you guys CIA or secret service, or something?”

“All you need to know, all you need to understand, right now,” the brunette shrugs idly, stepping closer, “Is that you’re safe. Your instinct to survive should trump everything else. Even your insatiable thirst for knowledge.”

She cocks an eyebrow.

“So,” Felicity squints her eyes, not budging, “You are secret service? Do you guys work for the president?”

“Bratva.”

“Huh?” Felicity blurts out unintelligently.

“I take it you saw the tattoo on Oliver’s chest earlier?” Felicity nods, because yes, she did register some kind of black blob on his chest, similar to the one she had seen on Diggle earlier, but you know, he was bleeding from his side and Laurel was bandaging it. No time to gawk or linger. Laurel nods, too, “They all have one because they’re part of the Russian mob.”

Okay, that made a lot of sense. She was in the middle of a mob war between China and Russia.

“You’re not?”

She cocks her head, like she’s taking Felicity in, sizing her up, “It’s better not to ask questions around here. We all have a story—we all have a reason to be here. Mine is mainly because my sister ends up almost killing herself each week, so I’m here to make sure she doesn’t. The rest I just help because I’m not a shitty person.”

Felicity chuckles a little at that and Laurel seems to tense at the sound. Felicity seems to start to understand the severity of the situation they’re in.

“You need to understand something. If the Chinese Triad didn’t like you hacking into their files, they sure as hell won’t like you giving away one of their clandestine locations. They’re not kidding around, Felicity. They will kill you. And I’m sorry, but the police can’t help you—they’ll trade one innocent life for a halt on a mob war any day of the week. The only people who can help you are here.”

.

There’s a knock on her door. After her encounter with Laurel, she didn’t really have an appetite, nor a sense of courtesy, so she figured it was best not to go downstairs. She stayed in her room, talking to her friends and family—making up some excuse about a job opportunity in Central City that she might go and check out for a few days (wishful thinking that they —until her phone gave out and then she just lay in bed until sleep overcame her. Which was not a very fun Friday night, but what other option did she have?

“Mr. Queen would like speak to you,” Raisa informs her, opening the door after the second knock. “I will show you his room.”

Felicity nods, ignoring the fact she probably looks like a hobo and the fact that she is so hungry she thought Raisa was a waffle for a second there, as she straightens out her dress and follows Raisa downstairs, into a long corridor, and eventually to a large door. She knocks once, before opening the door, talking in Russian from which Felicity is only able to decipher a “Mr. Queen”.

There’s some muffled talking before Raisa reappears, ushering her inside what seems to be an office. There’s a desk and some bookcases and Oliver is facing a large window, his back towards her. He turns around at the sound of her coming to a halt near his desk, nodding at the plate of food on his desk, “You must be hungry.”

Really? She’s been locked up in a room at his house for 24 hours because the Chinese Triad has put a bullseye on her back and that’s his opening line?

She nods and he pushes the plate towards her, signaling for her to sit down on one of the chairs in front of the desk. She’s about to politely decline and tell him to go screw himself because she is going home to fix herself a big ol’ bowl of fruit loops—but then her stomach rumbles and her hands reach for the plate without permission. She sighs softly as she takes a bite of the toast, before pushing the bacon to the side of the plate.

“I’m Jewish,” she notes, before shoving a spoonful of scrambled eggs into her mouth.

He just simply nods and she looks at him, chewing, as she waits for him to say something. Anything.

“Felicity,” he starts, trying it out, arms behind his back. “The only way we can justify protecting you is if you’re part of the Bratva.”

She nods for him to go on as she shoves more food in her mouth.

“You can’t become part of the Bratva unless you are willing to do some unspeakable things—which is out of the question—or...” He’s obviously uncomfortable as his voice trails off.

Unspeakable things? What does that even mean? Strangling a man with her bare hands as an initiation into their little close knit sect? The look on his face doesn’t beg much to differ.

She swallows the food in her mouth, eyebrows raised in dreadful anticipation, “Or what?”

“Or you marry into it.”

“You marry into it?” She repeats, laughing. Okay, totally. Logically speaking, that made sense. Considering what he was implying here, it didn’t.

Marriage?

“Yes,” he simply says, not as amused.

“And what do you propose?” She snorts humorlessly, stabbing her fork through a piece of toast violently, “I put on a nice dress and hit on Diggle? Or better yet, I make a move on Roy so he’ll just go ahead and go for the mercy kill.”

His jaw tightens, but his voice is eerily calm. “There is a third option.”

She scoffs, leaning her hand on her balled fist, elbow on the table (excuse her manners but screw the proper etiquette right now), “Enlighten me, Oliver, please.”

“Me.”

That little word was the equivalent of a mic drop; her heart beating loudly in her throat as she stares up at him; gaping almost. “What?”

“I don’t intend to marry, ever, for which I have my reasons,” he informs her, leaning back against his desk. “It’s the rational choice.”

Her eyes widen as she points her fork at him, a piece of egg flying of the plate as she laughs, a little manically, “The rational choice is for me, to marry you, head of the Starling City department of the Russian Mob?”

“Yes,” he answers, once again, stoic. “There’s only one other way this could end.”

“Which is?” She cocks an eyebrow, because about anything else would sound better than Oliver Queen pity-marrying her because she took part in saving his life.

“Death.”

Well, okay, except that.

.

“Are you sure getting married so soon is a good idea? It might look suspicious. I mean, tomorrow is… Tomorrow."

“Why?” He asks idly, looking up from a few files as she storms into his office, unannounced, nervously fiddling with her hands as she comes to a stop next to him.

“Well, okay, maybe you’re right. You were in my office quite a lot and your men were always outside. Not that that means we would be doing anything! Not that it would be bad to do anything with you, I just—am gonna stop talking in 3, 2, 1.”

“Felicity, it’s not a real marriage,” he reminds her, and for the first time since she’s been in this house, the corners of his mouth tug up just the slightest bit. Not real, she tells herself, a sham, and pretends it doesn’t sting just a little.

She runs her hands over the sides of her hair, interlocking her fingers behind her head as she thinks it over. She is so screwed.

“People will probably just think I’m knocked up, that’s the logical conclusion for such a quick wedding. Not that I’m being hunted down by the Chinese Triad, but that I had sex with you, Oliver Queen, totally out of my league, and am pregnant.” Her face pales as she takes a few deep breaths, what is she supposed to tell her family? Friends? Dying sounds a whole lot easier.

She doesn’t even have time to blush at the fact she mentioned having intercourse with him for the second time in under a minute. He tentatively places a hand on her arm. “Felicity. It will be fine. We’ll figure out.”

The way he uses the word ‘we’ warms her heart in a way it shouldn’t until she realizes he probably means the mob and them, not her and Oliver. Why would he?

She can’t help but wonder why he would go through all this trouble just to save her, one little girl from an IT department who happened to help him out a few times. One part of her wants to know why, wants answers and the other part knows better than to look a given horse in the mouth, the horse being her life. The latter one wins out for the time being.

.

“Wakey wakey, little miss sunshine!”

Thea barges into her room on the day of the wedding, a white summer dress in her arms as she wakes Felicity up. To say Felicity has been having a hard time adjusting to the mob life was an understatement. Three days here and the only person who she could talk to was Thea—because the others (Sara, Roy, a bunch of other people dressed in black) were always off joking around in Russian and laughing, Diggle was still recovering in a room somewhere in this God forsaken maze, Laurel only seemed to come around when someone was dying and well, Oliver was Oliver. Any sort of friendliness that was between before had pretty much disappeared the minute she stepped foot into the mansion. And Thea was loud, warm, friendly, but also dark and secretive.

Yesterday she almost walked in on her doing a line of coke in her bathroom. Almost, because she hopes Thea didn’t notice. She was doubting whether or not to tell Oliver, but then figured it was really none of her business. Maybe it was Russian mob thing, who knows? She had yet to be introduced to their customs.

Still, even without any of that, Thea was still Oliver’s sister. So she couldn’t really talk to her.

“Thea,” Felicity sighs as she sits up, rubbing at her eyes before reaching for her glasses. At least she didn’t have to sleep in formal dresswear again.

Yesterday, Oliver oh-so-kindly allowed her out of the house under Sara’s (and three other unnamed guys) strict supervision, to get some stuff out of her apartment for the time being. They hadn’t really discussed living arrangements but she had assumed he wouldn’t try and cram himself, Roy and Sara into her small queen sized bed. Those three were inseparable. She was yet to figure out if it was out of actual love and friendship or out of honor and duty.

At least she was reunited with her tech, which did considerably approve her stay here.

“I know this isn’t a real wedding or anything,” she moves her head as she talks, rolling her eyes, “But, I figured you could at least look the part. Of course, I didn’t have time to go shopping on such short notice but I pulled this out of my closet. It’s so out of fashion, it’s vintage.”

Felicity squinted at the bright lights, nodding her head along to practically everything Thea was saying as long as she didn’t have to talk back. She hadn’t had coffee yet and to say her sleep schedule had been off balance lately would be an unfortunate truth.

“I wore this to Coachella two years ago,” Thea informs her, not really interested in a response as she hoists her into the white fabric of the summer dress, dragging a comb through her hair at the same time.

The dress was delicate, not wedding-like at all; the sleeves reaching till just over the elbow with an off-shoulder neckline and the flowy, layered skirt ending just above the knee; it was more hippie than wedding, but cute. Her mother would die if she knew she was getting married in this. Getting married. This was surreal.

She kicks some heels her way before she starts on her make-up, smiling determinedly, “You just wait. By the time I finish, Ollie’s going to want to marry you for real.”

.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the minister smiles warmly before turning to Oliver, who looks rather impatient, “You may kiss the bride.”

“That’s really not nec—” He starts, looking at his watch and back at the minister before Felicity leans forward and plants her lips on his. Just for a second—a peck—but still. She can’t even believe she did it herself.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, I always imagined doing that. Not to you! Oh god, no! Not that I wouldn’t want to kiss you, but I mean on my wedding day. And this might be my only one ever, you know so I’m sorry,” she stammers, not making any sense and earning a strange look from the minister.

She blushes as he stares at her, studies her even, unfamiliar look in his eyes. They walk out of the ceremony hall in silence, his hand slightly hovering over the small of her back.

“Thea made me wear this,” she clarifies, because the silence is suffocating and she doesn’t want him thinking this is like a dream come true for her. It would be, if she actually loved him and they were together, but that’s not that case.

“I figured,” he states and she feels his eyes on the side of her face but she refuses to meet them.

“Thank you,” she says, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear as they reach the door of civil hall, knowing they won’t be alone for much longer after they step out of these doors because he’ll go beat up some Chinese, or whatever he does, and she’ll be escorted back into her room at his house by his people waiting for them in the cars.

He nods curtly and she sighs.

“I kind of feel like you deserve more than a thank you for marrying me,” she adds, before her mind trails off to the normals customs of marriage and realizing what he must think of her. “N-not that I would give you sex as a thank you, I’m not a complete hussy and before you go there, I don’t mean that it’s the most horrific thing having sex with you, not that I would know, or ever find out but—oh God, why do I even bother opening my mouth? It’s like every time I try and say something, my brain just goes like, wait Felicity, there’s ten more ways for you to say this in a way more sexual manner and I—”

He smiles, a genuine one, a special one he keeps locked away from everyone else, putting a hand on her shoulder. It’s not the earth-shattering, mind-blowing, love-proving, world-conquering wedding kiss she had hoped for as a little girl but she’ll take whatever she can get.

“It’s okay." There's hesistance, and then, "They were going to hurt you, Felicity, there was really no choice to make."

For lack of better words and as a lame attempt to distract him from the fact she's gaping at him in awe like a lunatic, she emphases, "Thank you."

He presses his lips together, nodding, "You’re welcome.”

.

Chapter Text

.

part two: e ither way i'll always be your home

She hadn't really expected anything to change, like that she would suddenly be curling up to his side every night, or they would you know, have actual conversations, but marriage life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Frankly, it's boring.

Her morning consists of breakfast with the mob; she reads a book from Oliver's study till Thea comes in to get her for whatever shenanigans she's thought of that day before they have lunch, after which the tiny brunette disappears until dinner; so she watches Sara do push-ups in the work-out room while envying her abs, or plays cards with a pretty mute Diggle in his makeshift hospital bed she is able to locate on her good days, or actively avoids Roy who seems to have it out for her, or sometimes fixes some of the tech for one of the other guys; then after dinner she reads some more, or if she feels like sinking particularly low that evening, reads up on some gossip on her tablet.

Sometimes she even manages to stream a whopping fifteen minutes of a movie. Fun fact: the Russian mob's wifi connection sucked.

The house is mostly empty, except for the fleeting moments she catches one of them working-out or eating or not sleeping their lethal injuries off. Oliver is always gone, doing God knows what—cutting off pinkies or putting horse heads in people's beds? Imagination was running wild here.

She's glad her 'honeymoon' is almost over and she gets to go back to work, albeit flanked by a few Russians, but at least she'll get to see other people.

She's feeling particularly fat one day as she admires Sara (doing something she calls a salmon ladder) while she pigs out on twizzlers, trying to read a book. It sounds stupid, a 'salmon ladder', like how hard could it be, but it's really intense.

It's chilly in the room if, you know, you are not actually working out so she pulls on a random sweater she found laying around the weights. It smells like cologne and faintly like man sweat, but it's better than dying of hypothermia.

"You're wearing my sweater," he states as he takes the towel hanging on his shoulder and throws it onto a bench near the salmon ladder. It's Oliver. Appearing out of nowhere.

Unless, of course, it turns out to be your fake-husband's sweater. Dead by freezing would sound pretty good right just then.

"Well, if you would clean up your dirty clothes I wouldn't have found it lying around here and if you weren't such a cheap scrooge and would put on the damn heating, I wouldn't have to put it on to begin with," she arguments triumphantly, sending him a challenging look but he just stares her down. She doesn't know why she keeps thinking she could win a stare contest with the captain (as Roy so nicely informed her) of the Russian mob, but she keeps trying anyway.

"Mom, dad, please, I don't like it when you fight," Sara whines mockingly, slapping Oliver's chest with her own towel before taking a sip of her water, disappearing off to somewhere.

Why does she always have to make it awkward? Felicity manages to do that just fine all by herself, thank you.

Oliver decides, wisely, not to continue their discussion about dirty laundry and pulls off his shirt (but wait for it, it gets worse) and gets on the salmon ladder himself. Which is just rude. So rude.

Like if she wasn't already having a hard time pretending like she wasn't attracted to him, physically (because there's no feelings involved whatsoever), and here he was, showcasing at least six of the reason why she was.

"You're staring," Sara whispers out of frickin' nowhere (why—and how—do they do that?!), poking her side before skipping off with a loud laugh. Geeze, can't a girl gawk at her fake-husband in privacy?

.

"Why does Roy hate me?"

"He doesn't hate you," Thea says, legs dangling from the counter as she nibbles on one of Raisa's cookies. At the look on Felicity's face, Thea budges, "Fine. He doesn't love you, but—"

Felicity scoffs, stealing another cookie from the plate, "He hates me."

Thea sighs loudly, tapping her fingers on the marble kitchen island, "Okay, before you came here, Roy had a cat. Her name was Speedy. He loved Speedy."

"Oh my God, did she die?" Felicity gasps, pressing a cookie-crumbled-covered hand to her chest. That would explain a lot, traumas can really change a person, make them angry, maybe even at an innocent bystander, much like herself.

"No, Oliver banned him to the pool house when you came here."

"Why?" She frowns, pushing her glasses further back onto her nose, feeling a little offended. Was he purposely sabotaging his relationship with the others now? Scratch a little, she was a lot offended.

The younger girl shrugs, then she looks like she's thinking it over before she pops the last of her cookie in her mouth, "Iw dwon't knwow." Classic deflection technique.

"I'll just ask him," she kindly informs Thea, who starts to protest, but Felicity is already halfway over to his office.

"Why did you exile Roy's cat?" She wonders, voice a lot less confident than her march over here had been, suddenly not knowing how she got it in her head to come barging in and ask him about a cat.

He sighs loudly, not saying anything for a moment before offering, "Because you're allergic."

"You remembered that?"

"Of course I did."

No, he doesn't get to do this. He doesn't get to be nice and sweet and remember things she told him in passing by, maybe six months ago, or do considerate things for her, or make her feel all warm and fuzzy. He made it clear he wasn't really really her husband and they're not friends so no. She's drawing a line. Taking a stand. Yes.

"You know you don't have to exile cats for me, right?"

"I know." That son of bitch does not get to be amused right now.

"I can exile cats just fine on my own."

"I'm aware." He passively looks at her as taps a finger on his desk; once, twice, three times….

She stares at him, brushing imaginary dust off her skirt, swallowing tightly before lamely adding, "Thank you."

He presses his lips together, "Sure."

.

She didn't want to call her life peachy or anything, but being at work and having her own life on track were helping her get there, until, of course, White China (or whatever the frack her name was) had to come barge into her office in the middle of office hours (rude) and try and kill her. Seriously? It's been three hours. She's been back at work for three hours. She couldn't wait until lunch like any other normal person would?

She yells something in chinese—mandarin, and Felicity doesn't really understand what's going on because her samurai sword is so shiny, and sharp, and pointed directly at her face.

"You made a deal with devil," the Chinese woman cocks her head, eyes wide as she stares at her, even adding in a little mandarin nickname Felicity guesses sure is sweet, but it doesn't take away from the creepy Triad aura surrounding her and messing with her vibe.

She presses the blade further into the IT-specialist's direction and—in a flash of sheer panic—Felicity manages to grab a hold of her tablet, slamming it into the side of China's head, and causing her to fall over. Felicity blinks, once, twice, not really sure how or why that worked before leaning over her desk to check if she didn't kill her.

She seems to just be unconscious, chest still moving quietly but Felicity can't help but carefully manoeuvring herself around her desk, wondering why the hell today was the day she decided to wear her favorite pencil skirt as she tries to tip-toe past her. Of course, the white haired woman chose this moment to pull on her ankle, and she, not so subtly, tips over. The woman—whose name kind of implies she's about to drop the hottest rap album of the year—crawls on top of her, smirk playing on her lips, as she presses a karambit knife to Felicity's throat, "You are a brave one. It is a true shame—"

"You take so long to get to the damn point," Diggle concludes, just as he fires off his gun into her direction. She dodges it just in time, but he fires another round and she disappears out of the window. That was pretty badass, if she says so herself, although she doesn't think she needs to be complimenting women who just held a knife to her neck.

"Sorry, she brought an entire army of clowns," Sara smirks, stepping over a dead guy's body too casually for Felicity's liking, "Surprised you kept it up this long, princess."

"I," she pants, chest heaving as she struggles to get up, "I, smacked her against the head, with my, with my tablet."

"Nice," Roy says, dragging one of their own guys into her office by his feet. Nodding at Diggle, who in return walks over to the guy and slaps him in the face, hard, waking him up. "Stay woke, Alexei. You might have a concussion."

She can't believe this is her life.

"You're lucky we were having lunch nearby, she took out Alexei and Vyacheslav without so much as—"

"Felicity!" Oliver calls out and he barges in through her door (and honestly, she should report Palmer Technology's security department for taking this long to check in on a frickin' massacre in their IT department—luckily she has a damn office and not a cubicle, to warrant her some sort of privacy while… getting almost murdered), taking her face in his hands. "Are you okay?"

She nods slowly, still a little dumbfounded at the situation—flashes of white hair and karambit knives appearing in front of her eyes ever so often—but she's relatively fine. She didn't die.

He yells something in Russian over his shoulder, and Alexei seems to tense up, face white as a sheet. Roy decides it's a good time to guide Alexei outside before Oliver attacks him, which was a pretty smart call, because Oliver seems all fifty shades of angry right now.

(Angry the triad got to a member of his mob, or angry it was her? Or just because it's monday? Because angry is kind of like his default setting so who knows, really. Not her, his wife, because they don't spend any time together and she's not bitter about that because he married her to save her life and he doesn't owe her anything and she's getting way off point here. The point is—he's angry. At something.)

He turns back to look at her and says something to her before he starts caressing her cheeks with his thumbs, still cupping her face. It's then she realizes she's having a full blown panic attack because she can't hear a word he's saying nor can she breathe.

She closes her eyes trying to focus on his voice, "...deep breaths. In and out…" as he tries to breathe with her in the same fashion, hands moving to rub her arms slowly.

"You're safe, don't worry, just focus on my voice."

She does and eventually her breathing evens out a little and her vision gets less blurry and she finds herself with her face pressed into the crook of his neck and arms around his waist.

And all she knows as he brushes her hair and whispers, "you're safe, don't worry, I got you," is that she actually believes him, and that's bad.

.

She kisses him once—and it's not a peck either.

Sara has been trying to get her drunk for three weekends in a row, because 'it would be funny, Lis', and it seems like she finally succeeded (and exceeded) in accomplishing her goal. They play a card game with some other guys—in which whatever number you pull just basically means the amount of shots you have to take (there's more rules, she's sure, but her mind is fuzzy)—but she's not allowed to trade the vodka for something more mellow, even though she's a rookie. Russians are hardcore.

She's hammered after pulling two cards and after downing a glass of water, she calls it a night. At least that's what her not-fully-functioning brain had decided before her legs made it up the stairs, then spotting Oliver's room on the end of the hallways and deciding, what the heck, let's pay him a visit; ask him how he's doing! She had no actual say in this. It was her dummy, drunk brain. Promise.

She fixes her hair a little, pulls on her skirt to straighten it out and slips her cardigan back over her shoulder (not that it is useful because it slips right back off within seconds), trying out a few 'sensual' stances (settling on resting one arm against his doorpost) before knocking on his door.

He opens it after a moment or two—which felt like an eternity to her drunk brain so it made her hand knock four more times—and he seems surprised as he takes her in. He looks like he was getting ready for bed, just in his jeans. Damnit. Now she suddenly doesn't remember why she came here in the first place.

Barefooted, there's even more height difference between the two of them and she tentatively reaches out to touch his Bratva tattoo, testing out if it's okay to touch him but he doesn't say anything. Carefully, she runs her fingers over one of his scars on his left peck. She had noticed them before (they're hard to miss) but they all had them here—it somehow reminded her of when Laurel told her they all had their stories, their reasons—and she figured it was better not to ask. Not that she would've gotten an answer, but still.

"Do they hurt?"

He shakes his head slightly, flexing lightly under her touch. She quickly pulls her hand away as she looks up at him, as if suddenly reminded he's there with her and very much undrunk and mentally present, blinking a few times to clear her vision.

"I'm sorry," she says, not sure why, ready to turn away and descend into her bedroom with at least a little bit of her dignity left. He frowns and grabs her hand, sighing her name, "Felicity."

She doesn't want to blame it entirely on how her name sounds on his lips, but yes, she guesses it was the katalysator for actually doing something she had been resisting for a very long time (that or the alcohol). She reaches up and plants her lips on his, knocking teeth against teeth and her glasses askew at first but then finding a happy medium. He lifts her up slightly to get better access and he tastes so good, like him and winter and vaguely like toothpaste and the thought crosses her mind that she might taste like vodka but it's long gone when he pushes her against the wall, hands on her face.

It ends as abruptly as it started—he lowers her to the floor and distances himself, hands on her arms. He's slightly out of breath, when he says, "Because of the life that I lead, I just think it's better... if we don't, if I..."

"What?" She blurts out, still not completely out of the blissful make-out haze she was just in and Oliver shakes his head, running a hand over his face.

He reaches out to touch her cheek one last time and she automatically closes her eyes, leaning in to his touch, "It's better to not be with someone that I could really care about." She nods her head, because what the hell does she know—she is totally frickin' lit like a christmas tree; feces-faced; inebriated as frack—and when she opens her eyes, he's practically on the other side of the room, looking both regretful and thoroughly kissed.

She kissed him, true, but he kissed her right back and that's the single-worst thing that could've happened. And you bet your ass she's going to remember that in the morning.

.

"I saw you coming out of Ollie's room last night," Thea mentions casually as Felicity peeks through one eye, groaning loudly. She doesn't care how early it is, it's too early for this conversation. Ever.

Her head is pounding and her first instinct is to call her out on her spying but then she realizes that would admitting it happened and playing the drunk amnesia girl card is so much more convenient. "What are you talking about?"

"Last night. I heard footsteps and I thought it was—anyway, I saw you coming out of Ollie's room."

Felicity is still too drunk for this shit. She drunk so much, that's she's tipsy at best right now. "I have honestly no idea what you're talking about." She closes her eye and snuggles further into her pillow.

Thea sighs loudly, annoyed as she gets up from her cross-legged position on Felicity's bed. "Fine, be that way."

Felicity decides not to pay much attention to her and soon falls back into a slumber, waking up again around noon. Still not a long enough nap, but close enough.

She stretches, immediately reaching for the Advil and the glass of water on the nightstand that Thea left as an overwhelming wave of nausea hits her. She breathes in and out deeply for a few times before deciding taking a shower is probably what's best for her, and the survival of mankind.

Finally pleased enough with her appearance (after two showers and some serious use of concealer) that she can be around other people, she makes a beeline for the kitchen for some more advil. Or tries to, because the moment she steps outside of her room, she collides into something warm and solid.

She fixes her glasses before realizing it was Oliver. Of course. Who else would it be? If it was Sara or Diggle, it really wouldn't be so awkward, and then it really wouldn't her life now, would it? It's like one of those scenes from a cheesy nineties romcom.

"Hey," he greets her calmly as he fixes his shirt (like nothing happened—two can play that game) and she manages to get out a relatively normal, "Hi."

Not throwing up on his shoes is a true accomplishment right now for her. She feels lightheaded though and wobbles a little on her feet because of it.

"You okay?" He asks, stabilizing her by grabbing hold of her elbow and she nods, which was a massively stupid idea. She winces, "Yeah, just... No... sudden movements."

He looks at her and she looks down at her elbow before looking back at him and he quickly pulls back. Trying to break the somewhat awkward silence and getting back to their game of oblivion, she casually remarks that, "Sara made me drink like half a bottle of vodka last night. Well, actually I did pull that seven myself, but I still think she rigged the game."

"Ah, I think you were hazed."

"Really? Hm," she considers it, before adding her closing statement, the finale punch, the KO, "Shame I don't remember much of it."

He lets out a breath, and relief seems to wash over him. Asshole. It stings.

The worst part is she remembers everything. From the way he tasted to the way his warm fingers felt on the exposed skin of her side when her shirt had ridden up to the way she felt when he breathed her name like a prayer. And screw him for pretending he didn't feel the exact same way.

"Yeah, well," he declares, pointing downstairs over his shoulder with his thumb, "I have some work to do."

She tilts her head in understanding, "Of course." and she wasn't so much pissed as disappointed until he patted her shoulder, like a dog he just threw a secondhand, no good, rotten, lying bone. Now she was pissed.

.

Things go fairly back to normal, or at least, their version of normal, the following weeks after the kiss. Because, what kiss? They both supposedly don't remember their tongues in each other's mouth so what's there to be angry/disappointed/awkward about?

So it's all small smiles, short nods and strictly no touching again. Which is fine. It's not like they're married, or anything.

There's a benefit for the children's hospital that the bratva is invited to (don't ask her why the Russian mob gets invited to benefits and galas for Starling City's elite) and it's apparently the event of the year for Thea Queen, who starts planning outfits and hairdos three months in advance.

"Don't worry, I picked up a dress for you, too!" Thea informs her all too happily and out flies Felicity's last excuse for not going. Now she had a dress, and now that Thea had measured her temperature she turned out to be in peak condition, and now she had no reason not to go.

The dress—peplum of course—is red and partly backless and has a v-neck and Felicity just thanks her lucky stars there's no sequins on it. The night would be slightly more dreadful if there were sequins involved.

This will be her and Oliver's first public event together, so she can't even hide in the corner with a glass of champagne all night. She'll have to actively pretend to still like him. (Which she does, which is part of the problem. Or is the entire problem. Or one of many problems. She doesn't know exactly.)

"Felicity," he breathes as he turns his head to look at her descend the stairs. He actually looks stunned for a second, and she has to give props to his acting abilities. His voice is soft as he adds, "You look beautiful."

No, no, no, stomach, remember what we talked about? No butterflies tonight. No butterflies ever again. He is not interested.

"I know right," Thea exclaims loudly, throwing her arm over Felicity's shoulders. "And it wasn't even that much work."

"Ha, thank you so much," Felicity asserts sarcastically, shrugging Thea's arm of in mock hurt before making her way down the last step of the staircase.

"Ready?" Oliver asks, not taking his eyes of her (those damn eyes) and she nods curtly because they're not there yet and she might as well get all of her passive aggression out before they have an audience.

"I'll be right there, just going to touch up on my lipstick!" Felicity swears Thea just put some on, any more of it and she'll look more like Ronald McDonald than herself.

"We'll wait in the car," Oliver informs his sister before leading Felicity outside, hand on the small of her back and sending sparks up her spine like firework. She reminds herself firework is bad; it's dangerous and smells really bad and only has purely aesthetic value.

"I forgot my purse," Felicity says dumbly, as Oliver holds open the door of his car for her. She really did forget her purse and her phone's in there and well, anything to not be alone in a car with him for five minutes, knowing Thea, maybe ten. "Just wait one second."

She thinks she might have left in her room, and damnit, she'll have to ascend the stairs in this damn dress again. Fantastic. As if the dress being 'cutting off blood supply to her organs' tight wasn't enough of a hassle.

Ascending the stairs had been the plan, until she spotted Thea on the top of them, Roy a few steps below her. Her hands are on his shoulders and they're talking—intimately—and honestly if she just walked away now she would be able to claim she never saw anything, and no, Oliver, I didn't see it coming at all! but she is frozen on the spot. Then Thea laughs quietly at something he said and leans down to kiss him.

Yep. No denying that. No de-romanticising her tongue going down his throat. No I-think-they're-just-really-close-friends-honey-don't-worry.

She thinks she can do without a purse tonight (although she's a little less sure about her phone), she decides as she stalks back to the car, an unfamiliar feeling arising in her stomach. Was she actually jealous of two clandestine, hormonal teens sneaking around? No, she was jealous because they had something—something real, something she wanted and couldn't have because Oliver didn't want her to. Well, she didn't need him.

She's never been to a benefit, but it's pretty much the same as prom, only with alcohol. So… better. Still, she envied Sara, Diggle and Roy, being able to sit in front of the TV with sweatpants on and pig out on cheetos. Damn, she could use some cheetos right now.

Oliver is good at playing the charming husband card (all small talk, hand low on her back, attractive smiles) but she knew that from the time he first came to her office. She'd never encountered a man so dark and sheltered in private, and so light and careless in public. She isn't going to pretend that she doesn't like it just a little bit—the pretending. For a few hours, she gets to hold his hand and use the pronoun 'we' and feel people stare at them, probably jealous of her or of the thing they pretend to have.

She hears Thea laugh loudly at someone's joke and looks over her shoulder to see who's she talking to. Malcolm Merlyn. Gross. The outstanding acting abilities were definitely a genetic Queen thing.

Sporting the uncomfortable look on Thea's face shimmer through for just a second as she downs her glass in one gulp, she sends Oliver and the old lady with two cleavages (a push up bra when you were above seventy wasn't the most attractive choice to go with) a blinding smile, excusing herself as she decides to go rescue her sister-in-law.

"Thank you," Thea mutters as Felicity manages to get rid of Malcolm by casually ordering him to try out the benefit's specialized cocktail, friendly pat on the back and she gently shoves him into the direction of the bar. Felicity smirks, tipping her champagne glass into the brunette's direction. "You're very welcome. Everyone knows he's a... clown."

She has this thing (that really seems to work) in which she just talks a lot while guiding someone into a direction away from her so they don't notice she's literally pushing them away.

The girl snickers in response, taking another glass of champagne of a tray nearby and Felicity feels old for wanting to ask her how many she's had, "How very political of you, Lis. Try dickhead."

"Or that," Felicity answers, blush on her face as they both turn to look at the dancefloor. It was stupid to try and pretend like Thea was an innocent little girl, because frankly, she wasn't. Oliver tried to protect his sister from a lot, but he couldn't protect her against life.

"Thea, your nose," Felicity says, slightly panicked, shifting so she's blocked everyone's view of Thea. The small brunette frowns as reaches up before looking at the blood on her fingertips, blinking stupidly. Figuring this was a problem they could solve, Felicity guids her over to the bathroom as discreetly as possible.

Thea starts wiping at the blood on her face with a wet paper towel as she uses her other hand to press a dry one to her nose. "Damnit," she mutters, hand shaking as she moves her hair aside.

Felicity doesn't have to say anything for Thea to understand she wasn't happy with the situation.

"I'm fine," Thea snaps harshly as Felicity stares at her in the mirror. She's not going to stand here and lie and say this is her area of expertise (besides that one pot brownie she accidentally ate in college) but she knows that bleeding is never a good sign. "Thea."

"It's nothing," she barks back, refusing to meet Felicity's strong gaze. Fine, whatever. She was not going to force her to do anything. Felicity throws up her hands, shaking her head as she makes a beeline for the door.

"Please don't tell, Ollie," she whispers, hands braced on the counter as she stares at the water disappearing down in the drain—Felicity has to strain her ears to pick it up, halting to a stop and looking back at the girl. A scared, young girl. She's just a girl.

She should tell Oliver, but somehow she doesn't think that would help the situation. Thea lost so many people, from what Felicity was able to gather in between funny stories and false truths down in the mansion, she didn't need to lose Oliver, too.

Thea takes in a sharp breath, tightening her jaw, like she's trying to convince herself more than anything, "I can handle it. Tonight was the last time. I'll stop." Felicity swallows hard, because she doesn't want anything to happen to this girl, but doesn't want to cause a drift between her and brother either. In the end, she decides to trust Thea and believe in her strength.

"You know you can always talk to me, right? If you need help or… anything." Thea looks over her shoulder to face her, expression fearful for a moment before she nods. Felicity hesitates, taking a step back towards her petite frame before squeezing her hand, "I won't tell him, I promise."

Oliver didn't seem to notice their absence, however short, instead just waves at them slightly when they return back into his line of sight, hands intertwined. If he's surprised at their friendship, it doesn't show on his face.

He dances with Laurel for a song and half, but his face says the conversation is more business than light party conversation. Then broodily stares at her from the bar while some rich guy called Bruce from Gotham City tramples her feet and tries to uphold small talk about mainly Palmer Technology and his own company. Since she's not feeling particularly chatty tonight, it doesn't go over as smoothly. They dance together eventually though, and thank you universe—note the sarcasm—a slow song starts playing just as Oliver had stepped in to relieve her from Bill.

Bill is 68 and likes goats. His goat farm is worth millions thanks to the blooming goat cheese business. Goats are important. Without goats, there could be no human life on earth. Did she want to hear his theory on how men evolved from goats?

They move to the song slowly and it feels strangely familiar. She rests her head on his chest because it's the wife thing to do—heart beating steadily under her ear, one of his hands on her waist and the other in hers and it feels nice; safe. She feels safe when she's with him. She doesn't want to, but she does.

He rubs the exposed skin of her back softly with his fingers, but she doesn't think he even really notices he's doing it and she wants that with him. She wants the routine; she wants the things you don't even have to think about doing because it's natural; the things you do unconsciously; the things you do very consciously; she wants the boring, normal life; or the not-so-boring mob life; the small things; the big things; she doesn't care—she just wants him. She wants him.

When she shifts her head to look at him, he's already looking at her. She doesn't know why it's taken her so long to realize but she loves him. She might tell him, maybe she should, maybe it would change things.

But when she opens her mouth to speak—nothing comes out.

.

Chapter Text

chapter three: feel this scar of where you entered

She didn't really think going out with Barry for lunch was such a big deal, or that she had to ask Oliver for permission. Pfff. Barry was just a friend from MIT who happened to be in town, and even if he wasn't, even if he was more than a friend, why would Oliver care?

Besides, before she could think of any strange answers for that one in her head, he didn't own her. They might be legally (as he so kindly kept reminding her) married, but that didn't mean he had a say about everything she did. She even brought Vyacheslav so that if she happened to die and he'd made this obvious nightmare of a deal for nothing, at least he wouldn't be able to blame her. What more could he want?

It appears to her he does care, and does expect more from her, because later that night when she goes to get herself a glass of warm milk—she can't sleep and she's eight years old at heart—he's there, leaning back against the counter.

"We have to keep up certain appearances," he says lowly in the dim kitchen light; muscles tense like he's ready to attack his prowl. It's after 1am and she's not really feeling up for this because-I-said-so discussion right now. She can literally feel a headache coming up at the mere thought.

"Really?" She snaps, closing the fridge a little too forcefully as she turns to look at him. She isn't quite able to make out his face in the darkness, but his condescending tone had been enough to set her off. She can't help but sound bitter, "That's all I am to you? A way to keep appearances?"

"Yes," he states finally, voice cold and she doesn't believe him, not for one bit. But his voice feels like a stab in the chest, like someone just twisted a knife in her heart and was enjoying it, too.

"What am I supposed to do?" Wait around forever lingers on the tip of her tongue, but she can't bring herself to say it. She's not going to pretend like she doesn't know he feels something for her too, because she can't believe that with the way he looks at her sometimes that he doesn't. She can't.

"We're married!" He grunts, taking a step into the light, and something about the tone in his voice makes it seem like he isn't just speaking about their image; or his ego. Calmer, trying not to wake up his mob family probably, he urges, "You are my wife."

"You don't get to do that!" She yells back, moving closer to him to show him she isn't afraid of him. "You don't get to ignore me for days and lock me up and then pull the marriage-card like you're the loving, charming husband you pretend to be in public."

"It isn't like that and you know it," he barks, whole body tense, body heat radiating off him, looking ready to punch something. "He can't protect you." Like I do, just say it already!

He throws the argument back onto the good ole I'm-just-trying-to-keep-you-safe boat, typical. She was already married to him, what would change about that if it was real? The only person who was hurting her was him, and the only person he was protecting was himself.

"You told me right from the start this marriage was fake," she bites back, pushing against his chest, before adding the final blow, "Or should I forget about that, too?"

There's realization in his eyes, and he looks surprised for just a second that she remembers or maybe that she lied about it straight to his face.

He swallows and she can see a mix of emotions swirling across his face before it goes cold, rational, guarded. "What I did… I shouldn't have done it—no matter how I felt, or feel." Feel. Present tense. There he goes again—leading her on, dangling maybe's and what if's. He sends her a what she guesses must be an apologetic look, "That's on me, not on you and I apologize f—"

"Bullcrap," she spits back, chest heaving up and down harshly with anger. He's treating her like a little girl, not giving her any say in the matter, pretending it's just some silly little one-sided crush. She starts to make a move for the door, because she's done with this conversation and she's done with him and she's just… done, when he speaks.

"Felicity," he seems to be having trouble controlling himself, face full of mixed feelings, suddenly vulnerable and she hates him; she hates him so much. "Do you remember what I said to you, that night?"

(It went something like this in her head every night when she couldn't sleep:

-"It's better to not be with someone that I could really care about."

-"Okay, fine, I don't care, Oliver. Psh. I don't need you. I don't have feelings or anything."

Or,

-"It's better to not be with someone that I could really care about."

-"You know what? Go eff yourself, Oliver."

Personal fave:

-"It's better to not be with someone that I could really care about."

-Just a lot of tears until he pity-holds her and they eat leftover pizza from the fridge and there might sometimes be a small confession of love somewhere in there.)

As long as it wasn't the version where she stared at him in awe/confusion/pain/anger/lotsa-feelings, stammering like an idiot before drooping off to her own room, but of course not before tripping and needing him to keep her from breaking her neck, which she was actually 98 percent sure was what actually happened)

She remembers what she tried to forget so badly; from the way he said 'could', all the way down to the look on his face. He wants to pretend like if he lets himself care that he'll just lose her, that's fine. If living in fear all the time and closed off from the world is the life he wants, fine. If he really thinks the only ending to his life is a premature death, that's fine, too. But he can't—can't drag her down with him.

"Crystal clear. And if you want to live like that, that's your choice. But don't expect me to do the same. I married you so I could live, not so that I could wait around to die."

She slams the kitchen door on her way out.

.

They go back to their annoying in-between state of not being friends but not really being strangers either. Which is weird when your names are hyphenated on your driver's license.

It's also easy; because she doesn't have to think about the look on his face when he told her she was just a way to keep up appearances. Or the way his lips felt on hers. Or anything to with Oliver Queen really. She was moving on.

That's right. Felicity Smoak, moving on.

But, every time, just when she thinks she's fine with being platonic acquaintances, being on the sidelines of each others' lives, with their marriage being a sham—he does something to undo all of her hard work and start a spark in her heart that won't quite go out.

Trivial things like making sure Raisa buys her favorite kind of breakfast cereal (who even does that?); setting up an office in another wing of the house with big windows and a big fluffy armchair and a brand new computer to make her feel more at home; resting his hand on her back as he reaches over to take a plate out of the cupboard when she's baking cookies with Alexei to pass time; sending her that special little grin when she babbles on just a little bit too much; saying her name like he does as if he doesn't know he says it like that; taking down one of the dusty old guys in the corridor upstairs and replacing it with a Wonder Woman painting from her apartment, which looks silly and out of place, but she loves it.

Or, you know, that one time he tells her he loves her.

"You do know I wouldn't mind if you got yourself a friend," she mentions casually—picking out a book from his shelf like she does every five days or so—one day, after a woman named Isabel Rochev leaves his office after a heated discussion. She's beautiful, dark-haired, speaks Russians, there's obvious some UST there from the way they were yelling at each other in their secret language.

Not that she was snooping; their voices echoed through the entire house. Not that she was jealous either, she just wanted to casually let him know she was a better person than him and would not flip out like he did over Barry. Not that she cared about any of this, at all. Just... you know, being a better person.

He raises his eyebrows as some sort of sign for her to go on and explain, cheek resting on his fist, elbow on the his desk supporting it's weight, but he doesn't look up from his work.

"I mean like a lady friend," she clears her throat, trying to remain unattached and cool even under his curious gaze, opening a random book and pretending to be interested in it as she flips through the pages.

"A friend that is a female, a woman, you like, for things. Stuff," she feels her cheeks heating, heart beating loudly in her chest, but her mouth doesn't stop, "For your… needs. Sexual or emotional or conversational, I don't know. Whatever. A friend...lover...female."

He chuckles, just a little, writing stuff down profusely (list of people he needs to threaten? groceries? diary?) and she rolls her eyes at his childishness (ignoring the fact she just blushed at the word 'thing' because of what it insinuated). "I wouldn't mind," she adds, giving him a pointed look, as she blindly pushes a book back onto his shelf, "That's all I'm trying to say."

He doesn't even sound particularly emotional when he says, "I don't want any other woman." Which makes it worse, like it's just a well-known fact he throws around carelessly. She winces, because that use of the word 'other' stings.

"Stop," she says loudly before she even knows she is saying it, as she watches the grip on his pen tighten, and her voice wavers, "Stop saying things like that when all you're ever going to give me are maybes. Just say it. Say you don't ever want to be with me, say that you only married me to save me, say that you don't love me—"

He rises up from his desk, slamming his fist down on it harshly, giving it a kick for good measure and cursing himself in Russian as he turns away from her, hands covering his face before turning right back to look at her, faces close as he leans over his desk. He grits his teeth together before unclenching his jaw, breathing in sharply before announcing unfamiliarly and almost scarily soft, "Don't ask me to say that I don't love you."

She takes in a shaky breath as she stares at him in disbelieve before making a straight line for the door, ignoring his pleas for her to stop. She slams the door closed, leaning back against it and for the first time, she lets the tears come out.

.

"—maybe when you turn twelve, Droopy." She hears Diggle's voice nearby her office one morning, when she's working on some stuff for work, figuring Roy and Sara must be close and decides to check out what they're up to. She wanders through the halls, towards the sound.

There's a clicking sound, a magazine being emptied, then the sound of a gun being loaded. "It's dopey, dickhead. Droopy isn't even one of the seven dwarfs."

They finally appear within her line of vision and she watches Sara pat Roy's back before zipping up her jacket, freeing her hand by bracing the apple that was in it between her teeth, "Yeah, not really helping yourself there, buddy."

"Where are you guys headed this early in the morning?" She quips happily, because just because Oliver crushed her soul, trampled on it and sold it to the devil without her permission, doesn't mean she has to be a mean, bitter bitch all the time.

Sara takes a bite off her apple, sliding a knife into a holster on her leg and opens her mouth to respond. Diggle cuts her off before she has a chance, "Out."

"Wow, what are you? Fifteen? Is this your version of 'it isn't just a phase, mom!'? Are you rebelling?" Felicity babbles, watching the man hide more ammunition on the inside of his jacket.

Sara laughs loudly, shaking her head as Roy tries to hide a smile. She can't really look at him though, because all she sees now is a side of him she hadn't seen before—sweet. They way he had caressed the side of Thea's face like she was all that mattered to him.

"Can I come?" She asks, because she's bored and she hasn't been outside for a few days because she's technically on a 'vacation' from work and she likes hanging out with them.

The other blonde shrugs, discarding her apple into a trashcan before hiding a pair of expandable batons in the hemline of her pants on her backside. "Sure, princess, why not? The more the merrier!"

"Sara, Oliver will kill us," Diggle informs her, once again just pretending she isn't there, or a child. Both of which aren't true. She is very much there and very much an adult. She scoffs at his words, sighing aggravatedly. Oliver can go eff himself.

"Isn't that part of the fun?" She winks at Felicity, who visibly cheers up at the thought of leaving the house, of not having to constantly hide from Oliver.

Diggle tightens his jaw, but Sara—who rolls her eyes at him, shoves him and calls him old—obviously outranks him because he doesn't oppose anymore.

They get burgers and milkshakes from Big Belly Burgers and listen to the radio—Sara is apparently an avid fan of Katy Perry, Diggle likes creepy Russian lullabies and Roy loves Britney Spears. She swears she almost choked on her drink when he enthusiastically sang along to all the words of Oops, I Did It Again.

As they sit in the back of Diggle's black bulletproof SUV, Roy informs her with his mouth full—after some prodding by Sara—that they're going to collect some monthly fees and debts from some of their 'afflictions'. Which sounds relatively normal if you put it like that, but she watches Diggle slam a guy's face into a counter at one of the addresses; Sara drive a knife through a man's hand out of nowhere before breaking his fingers at another place; Roy breaking a bottle of Jack on someone's head somewhere else (all totally on accident because she had to promise to stay in the car and mind her own business) and she is suddenly reminded of the fact she's friends with the Russian mob. Not just that, she is in the Russian mob.

At the next address, some Italian pizza place, she turns up the radio to tune out the screams, starting to feel slightly uncomfortable as she rolls her shoulders to get rid of some of the tension. She doesn't know how they managed to get down those greasy burgers knowing what they were about to do. Maybe this had been a mistake. She didn't need any more reasons to dislike herself for liking these people.

"Mio dio, questi russi sono stupidi." She hears from outside the car accompanied by the sound of shotgun being loaded, her eyes widen in panic as she slouches down in her seat, laying down on the floor of the vehicle. Shit.

She curses herself for feeling and being so defenseless. No tablet to smack people with this time. Desperate, she grabs a straw from the car bench, clinging onto it desperately. She's read articles about mother's lifting cars because of adrenaline, she might be able to jam it through someone's eye if the situation calls for it.

She closes her eyes tightly, staring at the carpet as she breathes heavily into her hand, trying not to make too much sound. She hears their footsteps fade, and relief washes over her, maybe this is her lucky day, maybe this is the day she won't—the car door opens and someone grabs a hold of her ankles, dragging her out and roughing up the skin on her palms as they drop her onto the pavement. She screams, kicking her legs as hard as she can but it's no use. There's three of them, speaking Italian to each other, laughing loudly, probably making fun of her. Which is not cool.

Also not cool: being pulled up on your feet by your ponytail. It hurts.

"Mrs. Queen, in front of our restaurant!" He lisps with a thick accent, "To what do we owe this honor?"

Well, at least when the Italians kill her, she'll have survived the Chinese. She says nothing because she won't give them what she wants and another one with a mustache grabs her face harshly, fingers digging into her skin, "What? You too good to speak to us?"

It takes everything in her not to snarkily reply with 'yes' but 1) only doing something out of spite is never smart 2) the purpose of the her answer would be defeated 3) he might break actual skin by digging his fingers in deeper.

He finally lets go of her face, almost twisting her neck in the process before they go back to conversing in their maternal language. It looks like the one with the facial hair is nodding inside to where her friends (for lack of better word) are before nodding to the third guy with a cigarette in his mouth to take her inside. Or that's what she thinks went down because he grabs her arm roughly, pushing her towards the back entrance of the restaurant. She guesses she'll have to lay of the spaghetti for a while if she survives this.

He pushes her inside and she stumbles over the threshold, falling to her knees and scraping her forearms. She winces as she scrambles to sit up, fixing her glasses before he squats down next to her, grabbing her hair at the nape of her neck and pulling her head back. He exhales slowly into her face, and she chokes on the smoke, coughing loudly.

He whispers something in Italian—eyes empty as he leans close—that sounds vaguely like he's going to kill her, but, to be fair, it could just be the creepy tone. She doesn't speak Italian, or Chinese, or Russian—maybe she should pick up a language before one of these days one of them gives her an out and she just whimpers because she doesn't know what they're saying. That would be a stupid way to die.

"So you're Queen's whore, huh?" The first one with the chubby face and the thick accent emerges and she wonders what the hell happened to Sara and the others if he's back here. Where's the third one, putting their body parts into trashbags and dumping them all over the city?

"Always thought he would go for that filthy, big mouthed bitch, what's her name?" He snaps his fingers and Cigarette speaks, as he takes another puff, "Lance."

"Ah, Doctor Lance. Yet, here you are." Felicity knows this is a life-or-death situation so she shouldn't really feel insecure about the fact he's comparing her to long legged doctor Laurel and basically implying Felicity herself isn't crap (which is probably, true, but still, where are the manners?) but it's all she can think about.

Maybe it's her brain's coping mechanism to keep from letting her body go into cardiac arrest. Yes. Distracting herself from the fact Accent is pulling out a display of different sized knives.

"Wouldn't have anything to do with the Chinese Triad putting two million on your head, now would it?" He slowly starts cleaning one of the knifes, checking if he can see his reflection it it, before using the same cloth to wipe the surface of the metal item again.

She knows he's trying to psych her out, it's a classic putting-the-fear-of-God-into-someone trick but she can't help but feel scared anyway. So scared, she doesn't even have time to think about sending the Chinese a thank-you-note for deeming her worth two million.

Suddenly, the door is blown up in which what must be a scene taken straight from one of those action movies Iris always forces her to watch, and Sara flies in, going straight for Cigarette with her batons. A limping Diggle follows as he takes out his gun. Her heart does a little jump out of relief as she scrambles up on her feet, breathing speeding up exponentially although she knows she doesn't have time for a panic attack right now. Soon Mustache appears from behind the door, engaging in a fight with Diggle. Which gives Accent the time to knock the wind out of her and jump on top of her, closing his hands around her neck.

Tears collect in the corners of her eyes as she gasps for air, kicking her feet and pulling on his hands for the life of her, but she isn't strong enough. She sees Diggle trying to fight of the aggressive Italian out of the corner of her eye, but can't make out Sara from her position on the floor. She's helpless. She closes her eyes, and lets the tears fall, head getting light as she hopes for a miracle.

She struggles to breathe as she thinks of her mom and the way she always managed to burn everything she cooked; of the dog, Baby (after Dirty Dancing), she had in high school before he ran away; she thinks of her best friend Iris's wide, beautiful smile; sees Thea hand her a glass of water; feels the way she felt when she graduated MIT, sees the gowns and the diploma flash before her; hears Sara's careless laugh, Roy trying to hide a smile whenever she says something she knows he thinks is funny and Diggle shaking his head at them; one fleeting memory of her dad; the Las Vegas Strip she became accustomed to when she was just a little girl; she thinks of the ocean; Oliver, her Oliver. And then—then nothing.

.

"...the hell did you shoot through her arm if she was already unconscious? Trying to finish the job?" She hears Laurel's voice, vaguely, she thinks. It's soft and she has to try to make out the words.

"It was the only clear shot I had of Salvati," Diggle grunts and her head feels light, like she's floating.

"Through her?" She is able to distinguish what is obviously Laurel's what-the-frack voice. No words follow but the discussion seems to be over and she tries to peel open her eyes, tries really hard, but her body won't cooperate.

"What the fuck happened?" It's Oliver. He sounds pissed. Oops.

They switch to Russian, as always, and she is only able to make out some of it. Like her name, and the name of the restaurant. Finally, she is able to move a finger, and she tries to get out a 'why me' but all that comes out is a hoarse groan. Everything hurts.

"Felicity, you're awake," Laurel says and Felicity kind of wants to thank her for noticing and it's now she realizes the intelligent doctor is applying pressure on her shoulder. Suddenly she remembers the image of Accent strangling her and winces.

Laurel says more which for Felicity just sounds like jumbled together messy sentences—which her face must convey pretty clearly—but then the tall brunette tries again, this time in short sentences with little pauses in between them. It's like she's talking to a toddler, but the blonde IT-specialist's brain kind of hurts so she has no time to be offended.

"Good. Listen to me. You're alive. You're fine. I can't give you any sedatives because you're drifting in and out of consciousness as it is. You'll be in pain. Try and remember that's a good thing because it means you're alive. I have to go check on Roy, but Diggle will take care of your shoulder, okay?"

She mutters something about him cleaning up his own damn mess and then she feels a sharp sting in/on the general area of her shoulder, crying out in pain before it disappears just a little.

"Careful," Oliver hisses and Diggle just grunts in response, as she hears him rummage through some medical supplies, with, what she guesses is, his free hand.

"Felicity?" It's Oliver's voice and she feels his fingers closer around hers. She doesn't respond, trying to speak but for once her facial muscles don't seem to be cooperating—or operating at all for that matter, since they sometimes like to act on their own—so he seems to direct his voice at the other man in their presence, "Where's Sara?"

"I don't know," she manages to make out of Diggle's response, before prying her eyes open tentatively. The light is bright and she has to blink a few times to regain focus, when she does, all she sees is Oliver frowning. Which is maybe his default expression she thinks; he probably invented resting bitch face. He carefully runs his calloused fingers over her neck, which must be bruised—it feels bruised—a dark look brewing in his eyes.

She knows it's stupid (because she just almost died and there's much more important things in life and she doesn't need a man in her life to be happy and all that jazz) but she feels so relieved he's here, that he came, that he cares, for her, and a small tear rolls down her cheek. What? At least she can blame it on the adrenaline still pumping through her veins right now.

She feels like talking. She always does but right now she really feels the urgent need to just, talk. Say something. For the first time in her life, it comes with some difficulty.

"You're here," she whispers, voice raspy and barely audible but he just nods his head, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. She closes her eyes again, small smile on her face as she feels sleep overcome her again as thoughts clutter and disarrange in her mind.

She's so tired and a little hungry she could go for a pizza right about now but those are Italian and Italian is bad right now so no pizza for her in the foreseeable future although, really, she shouldn't judge an entire country on the actions of one person, well actually three but...

Oliver's here, he has nice eyes. He feels nice, too. His skin is warm…

...She's okay. She didn't die. Which is good. A really good thing. Because her supervisor really needs that processor she was working on and if she has to call in one more time with the excuse of getting like, shot at or stabbed at, he might start to think she's involved with the mob, which she is, kind of, but he didn't know that and he shouldn't because even though it technically wasn't in their marriage contract (she thinks) that's kind of like the unspoken rule of the mob or mafia or triad whatever it's all very...

...Tired but okay. She just hopes Roy is okay, too. God, she really does.

.

The next time she awakes, it doesn't go over as smoothly and mellow as it did the first time. She's right back in that room, being strangled and gasping for air and then... then she suddenly wakes up with a gasp, flying to sit up before she feels Oliver's hands on her arms, hears his voice, "Felicity. I'm here. You're safe."

She nods, once as he helps her lay back down. They seem to be the only ones in the room at the moment and when she looks over, her shoulder is bandaged. All that really comes to mind is, "Roy?" and she apparently says it out loud.

"Roy's... fine. Laurel's still fixing him up." That'll do for now.

He brushes her hair from her face as a way to calm her down, which works somewhat, until Sara barges in, eyes red and swollen.

Oliver lets go off her and she misses his touch immediately. It had been soothing, inexplicably reminding her of home. Nice.

(Major sidenote: she keeps using 'nice' to describe Oliver because that's a neutral word like 'nice dress' or 'nice job on your homework!' and she doesn't really want to think about how she really feels because she feels a lot of things about him, some nice, some less nice, but all very… nice. It's like a collective term for her feelings. Feelings she doesn't want to think about.)

"Where have you been?" She hears his voice, loud and clear. She thinks everyone did.

"I was at Nyssa's.." she states weakly, voice trailing off before she shakes it off, looking up at Oliver. There's still blood on the side of her face from their earlier encounter with the Italians, sporting a black eye and swollen lip, and for some reason it makes Felicity feel frail, fragile.

Here she is, lying in a bed totally anemic and helpless—she wasn't even able to fight back—while Sara probably survived ten times the crap she went through, was most likely hit over the head with a chair within the past 24 hours and there she was: unaffected.

"Do you see what you've done?" He growls and she can't see the look on his face but Sara—for the first time since she's known her—flinches, and steps back, hands shaking.

"I made a mistake," Sara yells, and Felicity has never seen her like this before. So serious, and regretful, even a little uncalculated as she ran her trembling hand through a hair. Her voice is softer, but rough, when she repeats, "I made a mistake. I thought it was just a routine meet-up with the Italians, Captain. Bertinelli had other plans in mind."

She had never heard Sara call Oliver 'captain'—it's like she was starting to get to know a new person today—but Oliver seems to respond to it with apathy. They continue to talk stiffly (but softer, which Felicity hopes is a good sign) in Russian before Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose, dismissing her.

"It wasn't," she coughs, recoiling in pain, and Oliver tries to shush her but she shakes her head, before forcing out, "it wasn't her fault."

He tenses, obviously disagreeing, but doesn't argue. Softly, he touches her cheek and she leans into his touch slightly, blinking up at him. He looks like he wants to pull away and then he says, unsteadily, "Don't ever do that again."

She opens her mouth, but she doesn't know what to say which has never occurred to her this many times until she met Oliver. He shakes his head like he was supposed to be talking himself out of it, not into it, leaning down to connect their lips, for just a second. He pulls away, resting his forehead against hers as he begs, "Please."

He opens his eyes and she must look like a desperate idiot, staring up at him in surprise with such unadulterated happiness and adoration, even after she just got strangled, even after she told him to go screw himself because she was moving the frack on—but she forgets about her pride for two seconds and nods anyway.

.

She's in the kitchen, chopping up vegetables to help Raisa—because even though she's using up all her sick days doesn't mean she's suddenly not bored, even if Roy (who almost broke his back from what she heard) gets over himself now and then and lets her sit on his hospital bed as they play cards or watch tv together and shit-talk every reality show out there—and they're just having casual small talk about her childhood when they heard a loud crash and screaming coming from the entrance hall.

The first thing her eyes land on is Thea, on top of the stairs staring down at the scene with empty eyes before stalking back up to to her room—Felicity feels her heart tightening at the sight, promising herself to check on the teenager later.

The second thing she sees, as she adjust her eyes, is Sara and Evgeni dragging a guy over the floor, leaving a trail of blood as he screams for mercy. Sara tells him to shut up as they drag him past Felicity and Raisa—who is eyeing Felicity suspiciously—not even bothering to look at them. The look on Sara's face is blank, devoid of any emotion or humanity. Swallowing hard, Felicity realizes she's in killing mode.

Then she looks down at the screaming and whimpering man, after some trouble because of the blood and wounds on his face and body, recognizing him as the guy with the accent—Salvati, Diggle called him—who had wrapped his fingers around her throat and squeezed until—Raisa grabs her arm, pulling her back into the kitchen.

"Where are they taking him?" She doesn't realize her voice is shaking until she hears it echo around the kitchen. She reaches up and fixes her glasses out of nervous habit.

Raisa doesn't look at her, focusing on the food. Suddenly the radio playing happy tunes so mundanely doesn't seem right. Her voice is emotionless out of normalcy, or self-protection, Felicity isn't sure, as she speaks. "To the freight container in the backyard."

Felicity swallows tightly, tensing up, not sure if she even wants to know the answer to the question she's about to ask. "What are they going to do to him?"

She sighs. Since Felicity is technically her boss, she isn't supposed to lie, but she thinks Oliver's wrath outranks her in this particular case. "Some things are best left unknown, Mrs. Queen," she remarks, going back to stirring the stew on the stove.

Felicity doesn't press, looking out of the window at the backyard. She isn't able to see the container from here but she can only imagine what they're doing to him, considering how bad, worthless, he'd already looked.

Raisa excuses herself after a moment, wiping her hands on her apron and asking her to look after the stew. Felicity can only guess what she is going to do, but something tells her the red stains on the floor in the entrance don't quite go with the floral murals.

She finds herself staring out the window again, putting the spoon in her hands down distractedly. She can't really seem to make herself care about whether the stew will burn right now. She needs to know. She walks into the backyard with a determined stride, slowing down the closer she gets to the container. She isn't sure if she'll like what she finds inside.

She pulls the door open at once, because if she doesn't, she might not go through with it, every single one of her nerves on fire. Oliver is crouched over Salvati's body, staring at it as he twirls a knife in his hands absentmindedly. Sara and Evgeni are flanking the door on each side, arms crossed behind their backs.

Sara spots her and grabs her arm roughly, ready to push her back out without question. It reminds her off the way the Italian had grabbed her, the bruises on her arms in the shape of his fingers, the ones she had to look at every time she looked in the mirror and she cowers from her touch.

"Let her go," Oliver states calmly, getting up, face clouded with indifference as he slowly rises from his position.

"Oliver," Sara protests with her teeth gritted together, adding something Russian. She uses the word 'stupid' (she's starting to learn thanks to an online course and some help from Alexei and even Roy, who's bored in that bed all day anyway—she only recognizes this particular word because they begun their lessons with curse words, which might be an universal, unspoken rule for when people first start to learn a language) and Felicity gets, wholeheartedly, that Sara opposes her being here strongly.

"It's fine. Leave us."

Sara purses her lips, straightening her stand and squaring her shoulders as she lets go of the other blonde's arm. She doesn't look at her when she follows Evgeni outside. She realizes now that Salvati is passed out from the pain, judging by the amount of scratches and cuts on his body. The strong smell of blood almost makes her gag but she manages to keep somewhat a straight face.

She's frozen on the spot as she stares at his hands, covered in blood. She feels a little out of touch with reality, standing there in a crop top and a floral skirt with her nails painted a light bright blue.

"What did you expect, Felicity?" He mutters, noticing her gaze and throwing the knife down next to Salvati and kicking it away. "He hurt you."

"No. This isn't you, this isn't—this isn't about me," she finds her voice, balling her fists at her sides. "This isn't… Don't put this on me."

"This is who I am, Felicity! This is what I warned you about!" He clenches his teeth together in anger, punching the wall next to him with a loud clang. "In order to be who I am—what I am—I have to do certain things—"

She cuts him off, glowering, "We all have to do things to survive, things we aren't proud of. I know you did… I don't condemn you for that. But this…?" She can't really explain it, but when she thought of him doing wrong, she always considered it to be something he had to do, that he was forced to do, but she never thought he might actually just want to.

There's silence. She takes a step towards him, because she wants him to know she's not scared, or disgusted, or running away. Ever. She knows he has done things, horrible things, killed people even—but she wishes he would understand it doesn't always have to be that way. It doesn't. She knows she is just a silly, little IT-specialist, what does she know, but she knows that.

"I helped you that day—even though your story was full of crap and you had me hack into a stolen computer with bullet holes—because deep down I believed you were a good guy and you were doing what you did for a reason."

And it's true. She had to believe that. She had to believe that he wasn't just doing these things for the heck of it, that he didn't attain those scars (emotionally, physically) for fun, that he didn't take it as lightly as he was making it seem right now. It wouldn't make sense, she wouldn't love somebody like that. She couldn't.

"Felicity. You shouldn't be here."

"Don't you think he'd be better off at the police station? In prison? That he would suffer more behind bars, wasting away and having to live with himself, the things he's done than five painful minutes before he's released of all his burdens forever?" She knows it's dumb and naive to come in here and give him a piece of her mind, when he's probably already considered this, and so much more, way before she came into his life.

Killing isn't the way. It shouldn't be. He dismisses her, "It's not that simple." She knows what he's trying to say, but she can't stand for him making an example out of a man's death.

"This isn't.." she stares at Salvati's body, licking her lips nervously and shaking her head, "This isn't good, Oliver. I know you have to do certain things because they're necessary, I never wanted to pretend you didn't. I never wanted—want—to deny your past. But this isn't who you are."

She reaches out to touch his hand and he pulls it away, glancing at the crimson color staining them with an uncomfortable grimace before looking back at her. She doesn't give in, grabbing his hand and intertwining their fingers.

"I'm not scared of you."

He chuckles humorlessly. "You should be." His grip on her hand tightens but she doesn't let go.

"I'm not, because I know you. And I believe in you. And I…" She stares at him, swallowing tightly. Dropping the love bomb right now probably wasn't a good idea. Not the most romantic setting, hovering next to a bruised and broken body in a dark container talking about death and all. "I believe in you." That would have to be enough for now.

.

Things don't change, but they feel different. She knows violence is a permanent part of all of their lives and that won't ever change, but she feels lighter, somehow—knowing that maybe there's a life being spared somewhere down the line. But like the mismatched joke her life is, the other ugly looking, soul wrecking, life destroying shoe eventually drops.

She finds Thea, on her stomach in her bed, hair covering her face, the smell of vomit entering her nostrils as soon as she opens the door to her bedroom. The young girl doesn't respond when Felicity calls out her name. Probably just sleeping, she thinks, possibly got really drunk last night and is hung-over, she tells herself, maybe she is feeling ill.

She carefully tiptoes into the room, swallowing harder as she tries breathing through her mouth—the smell almost unbearable. Then she starts to panic, because the closer she gets, the more she starts to doubt if Thea is actually still breathing. She rushes to her side, falling down onto her knees next to her to brush the long brown locks of hair away from her face—her skin clammy and cold, expression stiffening Felicity's shoulders. Her eyes are open, but there's no life in them. There's nothing left. The blonde's heart beats loudly in her throat as she tries shaking her, pushing her onto her back, calling her name, even slapping her cheeks but nothing seems to work. Normally she'd use the Magical & All Knowing Internet to find the next logical step to take, but she thinks even that won't help this time.

This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening.

She grabs her chin, tears collecting in her eyes as she begs one last time for the troubled teen to open her eyes. Thea, please, you can't do this, you're so young, you have so much left to do, Oliver needs you. She presses her ear to the girl's chest, and surely hears a small heartbeat. Then something catches her eye and she grabs her hand, carefully prying her fingers open only to find a small bag with little remnants of what she guesses was white powder. No.

No.

She scrambles onto her feet, running into the hall, calling out for help to anyone who'll listen. She doesn't have her phone on her, but she doesn't want to leave Thea alone either. Who knows what may happen? She wasn't necessarily a doom-thinker, but the worst possible outcomes were playing out in front of her eyes every time she looked back at the young, lifeless girl in front of her.

Roy runs in first, stopping abruptly when he notices the state she is in. Whatever she may mean to him, or whatever he is feeling right now, now is not the time to reflect on it, now is not the time to choke. Deciding he needs a little direction Felicity calls out his name as she tries lifting Thea off the bed. This isn't her area of expertise, but she knows one thing—they need to get her to a hospital. Now.

"Roy, I can't carry her by myself!" She presses, gritting her teeth together as she pulls on the smaller girl's arm. Thea surges awake, gasping for air—and for a second Felicity is relieved; maybe it is over, maybe she's okay—then her eyes roll back in her head and she starts shaking uncontrollably.

"Roy!" She screams more loudly than she had intended, turning to look at him. Call 911. Run out to get someone else. Help her carry Thea downstairs, goddamnit. "Roy! Do something."

He doesn't take his eyes off Thea, brows furrowed together as he opens his mouth, but nothing but a stutter comes out. "I-I.. I don't…"

Felicity is about to stalk over there and punch some sense in him—because this isn't the time to have a crisis and contemplate your life choices, not when there's a lifeless girl in her arms—but luckily, Oliver rushes in next. He spots Thea and his face hardens before lifting her into his arms in one swell swoop.

"What happened?" He yells as they rush down the stairs, Roy finally having sprung into movement as he jogs passed Oliver, informing them he'll bring around the car.

"I don't know, she was just, she was lying there and she didn't respond and I thought, I thought, and then—" Felicity cuts herself off, figuring stumbling on her words like an idiot isn't what he needs right now. She doesn't have an answer to his question, so she shouldn't answer. She presses her lips together as she squeezes the bag in her hand, figuring she probably should show it to the doctors.

"What is taking him so long? Fuck," Oliver spits and she can see his grip on his sister tighten, his entire body tense with adrenaline and anger and she knows he wants to kick a wall or punch a door but he can't.

She offers him a small hand on his back, because it's all the kind of comfort she can give right now, and he relaxes just a little under her touch as he turns his head to look at her. She locks her gaze with his, hoping to pass on some sort of support without actually having to say it out loud as she rubs his back. He was never one of words, and she figured now wasn't the time to go into a ramble or say something inappropriate.

Then Roy comes around the corner, breaking their whatever-it-was and she slips into the car next to the younger boy as Oliver gets into the back with his sister. He wipes her bangs, wet from sweat, away from her face carefully, as he puts her head on his lap, whispering something to her she can't make out over the sounds of their surroundings.

She's never seen him like that, this part of him, and for once she'd wished she'd never had to.

.

From behind the glass, Thea looks almost peaceful, serene, pure. Then Felicity catches sight of the IV dispersing some kind of fluid into her arm, or the small breathing tube going down her throat and she again is reminded of the fact she's in the ICU.

She wraps her arms around herself as she watches Oliver finally return from a conversation with the doctor. He doesn't look happy. She looks over her shoulder to see if Roy notices the dark look in Oliver's eyes, but he's been—and is still—stuck in a chair in the waiting room behind her, staring into nothingness since the second they got here.

He walks over to her and stands next to her in silence as they watch Thea's chest move up and down, although thanks to a breathing machine, but moving nonetheless. His forefinger and thumb connect, something she's come to recognize as something he does when he's thinking, considering, calculating. She knows his hands are itching to hit something, or someone, but he can't because no one did this to her. She did this to herself.

Eventually he speaks, not turning to look at her as he does so, and she realizes she's been holding her breath this entire time, "She was something, some… hypo-hypoventilating and the doctor said we were lucky we found her on time, or she would've…" He stops, running a hand over his face as if he doesn't quite understand it himself before stating, "She OD'd."

"Oliver, I'm so sorry," she breathes, tears forming in her eyes as she reaches out to put her hand on his bicep and he turns to look at her, nodding tightly. "This isn't on you."

She doesn't quite register his words as she continues, dropping her hand in favor of using it to press it to her forehead, "I thought, I thought she had handled it, she said she would handle it and I—" Now that she says it out loud it's starting to sound more and more stupid, and selfish, and completely reckless and irresponsible and a lot of other bad things she can't think of right now.

"You knew?" He spits, taking a step back from her as his fists ball against his sides. Tears spill from her eyes as she realizes this is on her, this is her fault, she did this. "You knew about this and you didn't tell me."

"She asked me not to tell you and I didn't know what to do and I thought she could—"

"I can't talk about this right now," he dismisses her as he takes another step back (which somehow symbolically feels like he's taking not just physically taking a step away from her). His eyes are boring into hers, but not like they usually do. This time they're cold, hard, full of betrayal. She betrayed him.

She opens her mouth to say something, to apologize, to...anything but then he turns around suddenly and disappears around the corner and she's the one to raise the heels of her hands and hit the safety glass in front of her in frustration as more tears spill.

Damnit, Thea.

.

Chapter Text

chapter four: i hope i'm not too late

She'd been sitting at her side for what seems like forever—doing what she'd think Thea would like her to do (hold her hand, make her hair look somewhat presentable and kill anyone who tries to create photographic evidence of her wearing the fashion tragedy they call a hospital gown)—but nothing really works.

Doctors say she allegedly won't wake-up until she's physically ready, but the doctor's don't know Thea. She won't miss a single episode of Project Runway if it's up to her, broken body or not.

For at least three hours, Oliver sat on a wooden bench across from Thea, in total silence, looking at nothing but her (which was as awkward as it sounds, but at least he didn't ban her from his sister's side) until Sara forced him to go to the cafeteria with her to get something to eat or 'one of those silly balloon animals you know Thea will love' before 'he turns into the hulk and destroys the entire hospital'. He'd been reluctant, of course, but Sara has her ways—as Roy stands guard outside, having apparently pulled himself together long enough to move his limbs and wipe the look of terror off his face.

Felicity sighs as she takes out half a donut she stuffed in her bag yesterday. It's going to be stale, but she's a stress eater. And your kind-of-sister-in-law almost ODing was pretty stressful. Color her surprised. After taking her second bite, there's a groan—and Felicity disregards it as her body's involuntary response to food—then another louder one—to which she suspiciously checks over her shoulder, just to be sure Sara isn't screwing with her—and then the brunette opens her eyes. It's not so much opening her as it is peeking through them leerily, but since that's pretty much the usual way Thea wakes up every morning it only gives Felicity hope.

"You're awake," she breathes, mouth half full and spilling donut crumbs everywhere (see if she cares), eyes filling with tears as she immediately reaches forward to hug the other girl. To which Other Girl makes more groaning noises, a complaint probably lodged somewhere in there.

She was mad (like, all capitals and gun emojis and three exclamation points MAD), but also incredibly happy right now, which is the weirdest combination of emotions she'd ever endured. "I should get a doctor, or Oliver. Not necessarily in that order because he might get offended if I get a doctor before I get him. You never—"

"Felicity," she croaks out, dismissing her ramble like this is just another morning in their everyday lives and she isn't waking up in a hospital bed after an 16 hour coma, "He'll be, he'll be fine for five more seconds."

"Are you okay?" Felicity asks, despite knowing she isn't. Hospital bed. Duh. When it comes to Thea, she just unfortunately has a habit of turning into her own mother. If you would've told teenage, kind of a rebel (hello, purple streaks, in her hair!) but unfortunately still socially awkward Felicity Smoak she'd ever become even a little like Donna Smoak, she probably would've put you on the no-fly list for the rest of eternity. Okay, maybe she still would now.

"You really, care about, about my brother don't you?" Thea asks, with more pauses than usual, because somehow she always manages to turn everything into a bad telenovela plot and the attention off herself. It's a Queen thing, Felicity tells herself, avoiding the real stuff.

"I asked you a question," she replies warningly, just a little teasingly, because she is serious. One, she wants to know if she's okay and two, it's a perfect attempt at dodging answering that obviously inappropriate question. Let's see, how does she feel about her pretend-but-legal-Russian-mob-husband, the currently-situated-in-a-hospital-bed-teen's brother? Nevermind the entire lying-drugs-Roy's-dating-your-sister-and-I-kinda-love-you situation.

"I just want to go home," she simply states, a weak smile playing on her lips (always trying to keep up appearances that one, even if it kills her) and Felicity cocks an eyebrow in response.

"Me too. I can't wait to yell at you in the privacy of our own home, since I can't do it here because people are dying and died here and are going to die and I have morals, and all."

Thea sends her one of her skeptical looks, true to herself even from her horizontal position in a hospital bed. Felicity shrugs casually, adding, "Kind of. But it's going to be very good. I practiced in front of the mirror and everything."

"I can't wait," the wavy haired brunette cracks half a smile, but it's sincere.

There's so many questions she wants, needs answers to, but it doesn't seem important right now. Felicity takes a deep breath, swallowing down any more tears, "I am really happy you're awake."

She squeezes the blonde's hand softly, "Well, this might shock you—but I am very happy to not be vegetable. I could probably do without another one of those comas, for probably the rest of my life."

The IT-specialist-turned-mob-wife-although-still-an-extremely-capable-IT-specialist mocks a gasp, pressing her free hand to her chest, "Except food comas. Right? Right?! Nurse, nurse, there's something wrong with my sister-in-law!"

She shakes Thea's arm lightly, and she laughs, and it's small and fragile, but it echoes around the small room and makes Felicity's smile stretch wider across her face. "Except food comas."

.

Sara jumps on top of the counter, stealing a twizzler out of Felicity's hand before doing so, and chewing on it loudly. Then, she takes a large gulp of wine from the bottle, also courtesy of one Felicity Smoak. The other blonde looks up from her magazine, eyebrows raised as she automatically reaches for a new twizzler, using the other hand to reposition her glasses. Candy before wine, seems like she has her priorities straight.

"Are you and Oliver…?" Sara wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, laughing at the panicked look on the other woman's face.

Felicity chokes on the red sugary stick, managing to swallow it before washing it down with half a glass of wine. "If you were going to say 'still not talking and actively ignoring each other's existence', then yes."

"I was going to suggest 'participating in some very hot make-up sex' but—"

"Did you miss the part I said we aren't talking?"

Sara's smirk only widens. "In which universe do you have to be talking to have mind blowi—"

"Don't you dare even finish that sentence," Felicity interjects quickly, pointing a half-eaten twizzler at Sara accusingly, "You're a pervert."

She laughs in response, head thrown back, the sound fading away in the kitchen like it was never even there as she much more seriously implies, "He does have a story you know. We all do."

Those Lances and their 'stories'. Everyone has a sad sob story, some more sadder and sobbier than others, but in reality, they're all adults who make their own choices and sad sob stories are no excuse. Apparently it's his choice to give her the cold shoulder like she's a petulant child. Which is totally okay, it's cool, she's chill. She's just here so no one earns 2 millions dollars of of killing her butt, because her butt is her best asset (pun intended) and she doesn't really want to enter the after-life just yet. Maybe when Scandal ends.

She's not bitter that he's ignoring her, and what happened, but it's been a week since Thea went to rehab and she knows he misses Thea but she misses him and she wishes he would just talk to her, or be angry, or anything. The silence between them is loud and maddening and infuriating. She's not bitter.

"There's a darkness in him, and for a long time it was all that there was too him." There's a long pause, like she's mauling over on how exactly to bring this subject to Felicity's understanding. "You lit a light inside of him, and he can't," she inhales quietly, biting down on the inside of her cheek in thought, "he can't harness it on his own."

"That's just the problem, I don't and I will never be able to understand what he's been through. My hardest experience in life was probably that time Lee's Discount Liquor ran out of my favorite wine or when my mom made me have a very uncomfortable talk with my rabbi about, you know, intimate stuff, or, or maybe that one time my boyfriend in college was arrested for a hacking program I made and I had an extremely awkward pat down by a gender-ambiguous FBI agent with boobs and a mustache and I can't imagine what he…" She pauses, staring into the distance with a frown on her face, teeth gritted together before she looks back up at Sara. "I can't be what his happiness depends on."

"You don't have to go through the same thing to understand someone—he would never, want you to understand him like that—you just… have to be there for him, I guess." I guess. Sara Helpful Lance strikes again. There's a highly uncomfortable look on her face like she's started a conversation she didn't want to finish.

There's more moody silence, and there's so many questions left unanswered (she knows better than to ask), Felicity pushing the information to the back of her mind, and because it's starting to feel a lot like a nineties romantic thriller in here, she decides to finally break the silence.

"So what's your story?" She teases, not feeling like talking more about Oliver's supposed sobby past, she tries to playfully lighten the mood a little (although sometimes she feels there's a permanent dark cloud hovering above Queen Mansion). "Did you deliberately join because you enjoy cutting off fingers more than a 9-to-5 desk job, or is it more like 'I didn't choose the mob life, the mob life choose me'?" She deepens her voice on the last part, which is supposed to sound tough and mob-ish, but instead comes out like her groggy, grumpy morning voice mixed with an autotuned robot.

"Well, long story short," she hops off the counter, shoving a handful of twizzlers down one of the sidepockets on her legs, mysteriously adding, "I choose the mob life." She smirks deviously before starting for the exit of the kitchen.

"Seriously? That's it? That's all you're going to give me?!" Felicity responds, looking at the other blonde over her shoulder in disbelief and mild curiosity, "I did like, ten push-ups for you two months ago!"

Her laugh echoes in the room, for a long time.

.

That night, when she's tossing and turning and totally not thinking about Oliver sound asleep like three doors over, she realizes Sara was trying to give her love-advice. In her own way, of course, but she thinks it'll be the most of it that she's ever getting. Hence the uncomfortable, almost pained, look on her face during their earlier conversation.

The question that still remains is how you can be there for someone who doesn't want to be around you. The only answer that comes to mind is pretty much 'force them'. Which is slightly creepy and stalker-ish, and is starting to sound a lot like her freshman year in college.

Still, it's, like she stated before, the only answer she has, so she has to take it, which is probably like a cordial rule in someone's life, so it might as well be hers. How better to force someone to talk to you than to sneak into their room in the middle of the night and present yourself in an old, soft Wonder Woman t-shirt and pink polka dot pyjama shorts?

She tiptoes over there pretty successfully, if she does say so herself, because all of these mobsters are light sleepers (probably because they're in the mob) and she manages not to wake any—that she knows of, anyway, but still.

"Oh God," she breathes to herself as soon as she's opened the door and stepped inside. What the hell is she doing?

"Felicity?"

"You're awake?" Okay, to be perfectly honest, in 9/10 hypothetical situations that played out in her head before she came over here, he was either asleep or not talking.

"Nightmares," he just simply explains, sitting up a little as he probably tries to make out her face in the dark, and she wants to scream. How does her heart feel warm at him answering a question she only half-meant, with something surprisingly personal for his doings? Her standards are so frickin' low.

"Look," she states, after noticing how very-much-more-awake-than-expected and very-eerily-calm and very-half-naked Oliver is, or more like rambles, in what she hopes are understandable sentences that make sense outside of her own head, "She trusted me. She trusted me not to tell you, so I didn't, because I promised."

She feels pretty stupid standing there, in his bedroom, by the door, nervously fidgeting with the material of her pyjamas and waiting for him to say anything.

"I'm her brother," he replies, grunting, because, honestly, how else.

"She didn't need a brother—she needed a sister," she swallows tightly, starting to move closer to his bed before her mouth starts moving entirely on it's own, "A pretty crappy one at that, I admit, but I grew up as an only child so you have to give me some credit. My social skills are little underdeveloped compared to others because I mainly talked to computers and of course, I should've known better but if you don't count my extensive and useless knowledge of comic book plotlines, my level of experience is literally zero." Her knees are against the bed by now, hands moving without permission to illustrate her points.

He seems conflicted, even in the dim light coming from the hallway as he looks down at his hands, resting on top of his knees—like they hold all the answers of the world. "She is all I have," he opens his mouth, and closes it, before he adds, "I am all she has." Like that means something else in his book. Maybe it does.

"No, she has me. I'm her family, too, Oliver. You're my family," she admits, surprising herself, since it feels a little heavy to just casually blurt out like that, but it also feels so very good to get out, "Both of you. And I did make a mistake and that mistake was trusting Thea to take care of it herself. Not that I didn't tell you about something private that I promised to keep a secret, and I won't apologize for that."

He sighs deeply, rubbing his free hand over his face before looking back up at her. He looks unsure, as he hesitates, fingers twitching beside him as he studies her. Then, he lifts the covers next to him and she takes in a sharp breath, "Is that like your universal sign that the conversation's over and you want to go to sleep? I'm not very up to date with Russian customs, so…"

He lets out a low chuckle, shaking his head, and she's happy he's making different sounds than the usual groan and grunt for the past two weeks. "It's me, inviting you, to come sleep with me." She missed his smile.

"Oh," her eyes light up—so unaccustomed to any actual married couple things, she's forgotten how to recognize them—and it's not until he raises his eyebrows that she makes a move to actually slip in the bed next to him. Slowly, of course, she doesn't want to seem to eager, or as Thea would call it, thirsty. She has some dignity left.

It's awkward because it's their first time sleeping next to each other and she's forgotten how it works and it's new and he's so him and she's so her and where does she leave her hands and then a little more awkward when she accidentally knees him somewhere in his groin area (to her surprise, he only flinched a little), forcing him to turn onto his back and then it's warm and familiar and really good. She fits perfectly in his arms, she thinks, and she's the kind of person who thinks things like that now—like she isn't just 5'5 and small and he's 6'1 and huge and it's not biology but meant to be—because she's in that deep.

There's a warmth spreading from his fingers on her arm to the tips of her fingers and the roots of her hair, settling low in her stomach and it's nice. Almost, homey. Somehow this kind of sleeping feels much more intimate than actual sex… Oh no.

"Wait," she quips, adjusting her head on his chest, a little so she can look at his face as her chest flushes, "When you invited me to sleep with you, you did mean sleep, right? As in lying in a horizontal position and get unconscious together? Or this has just become one of the weirdest and most uncomfortable situations of my life. And that's saying a lot."

He grins, and he has the decency to hide his amusement somewhat and spare her a little embarrassment, eyes still closed as he talks, "Goodnight, Felicity."

And a good night it was.

.

She knows she shouldn't compare herself to brave fearless strong Sara or badass lifesaving doctor Laurel or anyone else in this house really, because it wasn't fair to her or them. She knows they all grew up differently, had interests and hopes and dreams and goals and priorities in life that probably didn't match up with hers. She knows that's okay, because she's awesome at what she does, computers—or anything with internet—are kind of her thing. IT work is her bitch.

So she knows. She knows she shouldn't, but, she still has nightmares that leave her breathless and she still has days where a slamming door makes her flinch or the rustle of the wind against the window makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight, because right then, in that moment—when those men had her and she almost died—she felt helpless, and—and weak. And if she really knows anything, it's that she never wants to feel that way again.

Diggle agreed to train her after she dumbly tried to do it by herself and strained her wrists. Both of them. Even after some intense internet research. Let's just say, punching bags aren't for amateurs. She learned this the hard way, for example, when it swung back with full force into her face and she has to hide a black eye the size of a newborn baby's head for three days.

There's—not so surprisingly considering her record of number of crunches in a row is four and half—a lot of blood, sweat and tears involved.

Although, it was pretty easy to get John to agree. He likes yelling and he likes to see other people bloody, sweaty and in tears, so it was a win/win really. (Some of the time it was more win/tie—one morning she'd looked over at Sara's rock hard sixpack full of envy and had mistakenly wondered out loud if she was going to have one soon herself, and it's the first time she's heard him laugh. Ever.)

His only condition was she was the one to tell Oliver which she mentally changed to 'you tell him only when absolutely necessary', which had conveniently actually been her plan to begin with. She didn't like keeping secrets, but she figured that it was a touchy subject for him, with his ever-lasting fear of her name and any sort of violence in one sentence and all. Plus, they'd just gotten somewhat back to normal.

The new normal, at least.

The new normal includes her sleeping over in Oliver's bed a lot—which actually has kind of helped with her nightmares—although there's not a feminist bone in her body that really wants to give him any credit for that. The hopeless romantic part of her, however, is a different story.

New normal is also more smiles, definitely more smiles, and God, does he look beautiful when he smiles. It's holding her hand under the dinner table when nobody's looking, which kind of makes her feel like she's back in middle school but hey, baby steps. It's offering her his favorite books instead of letting her decide between the hundreds in his office for minutes (and who is she to say no to some 18 century 800-page Russian crime novel when he apparently now wants to share these things with her). It's telling her about his day—as best as possible in his 'situation'—which usually ends up being just a little, but he reaches out to her. He asks questions about her, sometimes like a curious toddler who won't shut up, sometimes out of nowhere and without any further explanation.

(They're on the coach (one of many), both reading, him a Russian book and she a new article on an IT programme on her tablet, when he asks, "What's your favorite color?"

She doesn't even look up at first as she just starts babbling, "Green, but not the ugly neon kind because there was a kid in middle school who only wore that color shirt and he always called me 'Smelicity', like that was an actual insult. I mean, I smelled fantastic, if I do say so myself. Nothing like scent of pink bubblegum, Barbie's Fun Bath and Shower-gel and a hint of my mom's flirty exotic waitress perfume." Finally meeting his eyes, she settles it on, "So green, like a nice verdant."

"Okay."

He goes back to reading his book, and she curiously looks at him for another moment, awaiting an explanation that never comes. (Something about the expensive backless verdant dress that awaits her in her room before their next benefit that might have something to do with it, but who is she to speculate like that. Especially not when there's pack of pink bubblegum tucked inside of the box, oh no, not she.)

Or that time at the dinner table Roy and Sara are in a heated discussion about if 'Superman needs to be Clark Kent' ("uhm, obviously if he wants to have a normal life" "or maybe he needs to stop trying to delude himself into thinking he could ever have a normal life. he's goddamn alien, he isn't normal.") until Diggle throws some oil in the fire by calling 'Batman overrated', which is priceless just because of the look on Harper's face (he takes his superheroes seriously) and she's laughing along until he suddenly leans in, "Do you believe in aliens?"

She shifts in her seat and stops playing with her potatoes long enough to send him a look. She wasn't sure if he was being serious or just screwing with her in his own, special way.

She finds no sign of humour on his face beside genuine interest so she decides to just answer, pushing her glasses further up her nose, "Did I think the government was hiding alien life in Area 51 before I hacked into their servers and disappointedly found out they were just trying to revitalise project Captain America and failing badly at it? No comment."

His grins every so slightly, squeezing her knee under the table, his gaze unfaltering as she searches his face, and all she can gather from it is that he's storing every piece of information somewhere in his brain and keeping it for later, which is seriously sweet and considerate and totally endearing. He was always one for details. She's has to watch Roy disappear off into the pool house once a day and feel guilty because of it. Because of his cat, not because she like, told him she doesn't want Roy around.)

It's a lot of things, but it's especially spending more time with him, and she's realized she loves that. She doesn't think she's even physically or mentally or spiritually, or anything else besides that, able to go back to the way it was before. She doesn't want to either.

It's like he finally realized that she isn't going anywhere; she doesn't care about his baggage; she knows how to deal with his issues; fill in the blank with any of the endless possibilities. That time she almost died must've helped, too. It's like he's finally trusting her. It's like he's thinking of the long run, seeing the bigger picture.

The new normal is way more awesome than the old normal.

She doesn't really see why she should ruin that by bringing up something as stupid and insignificant as her new workout schedule, so she doesn't.

.

"Can I just make a long story short?" Roy nods, relief on his face. "Like, shorten up a really looooong story into a much, much shorter one?" He nods again, even more eager than the last time. "Okay, my head feels funny and I'm married to Oliver, but not out of free will, it's kind of like an arranged marriage and it sucks because I'm just Felicity and he's like Oliver, and I love him and I kind of want to marry him for real but I can't even, like I can't even feel my face right now and oh my god, I think I'm going to throw up?"

"Felicity, how much did you have to drink?" Roy's eyes are wide with excitement (she's glad her misery excites him) and glinster with delight as he steadies her by grabbing onto her shoulders.

"Like, I don't, I don't know? Sara made some pink cocktail, Sara made it and it tasted realllllllllllly good, so I like, drank all of it." She tries to fix her glasses, but instead they end up even more askew than before, and she sighs, giving up.

Roy exchanges a look with the other blonde in the room, who's on the couch, feet up and shrugging casually, hands behind her head and not even trying to deny Felicity's accusation.

"Guys, is my face on fire?"

He ignores her, not turning away from Sara, "You won't let me try Nyssa's old weird foreign family's sect's recipe but you let her? That stuff could knock out a horse."

"Maybe you should tell him, Lis," Sara offers with a sneaky smirk, ignoring the only guy in their midst and Felicity gasps, pointing her finger at her in glee, but it ends up a few feet to her left, "You. You. Ssssss… Sa-ra. S-S-Sa-ra. You have a pretty, pretty name." She grins goofily as Roy glares at one of his oldest friends over his shoulder. He seems to know exactly where she wants to take this.

"You're such a conniving bitch sometimes, Sara."

"Your face's a bitch!" Felicity exclaims, before bursting out in a giggle fit none of them has witnessed on anyone, ever, before. Roy can't really hate her for it, since he patented that comeback and she must've learned it from him. Sara just looks like she's enjoying very much how her leisure activity seems to be playing out.

"I'm going to tell Oliver. I am. I am going to tell the frick out of him. Wait, what was I supposed to tell him again? Maybe I shouldn't talk, because I don't know what I'm saying and really, I just want to kiss him. So maybe I should do that."

"Great," he hisses, keeping Felicity in place with one hand on her shoulder, which she just stares at like it's a flying pig, or some new computer server no one's heard of besides supernerd Smoak, "You made her horny for Oliver."

"You're such an uptight little asshole sometimes—"

"How about you stop insulting me and start thinking about who Oliver will lecture and yell at when he finds out you fed Felicity that poison you cry over weekly just because Nyssa—"

She growls, "Don't bring Nyssa into this—"

Felicity is already halfway upstairs by the time they stop arguing long enough to realize she's gone—and it took a while because she had to crawl for a feet due to spinning walls—so they don't bother trying to get her back into (one of) the living room(s) and away from Oliver. Later, she will realize they're bad friends. Both the lazy one, and the one that orchestrated the whole ordeal to begin with.

Later, not when she's knocking on his door, only to find his room empty. Not when she hears a shower running and decides, hey, maybe I should just, like go in there. Not when she actually goes in there and he stares at her, eyes wide with surprise and she wonders out loud, if he ever blinks, because that's what's on her mind. Not the fact he's naked and wet and she's standing in front of him, fully clothed and dry and really drunk. Had she not been completely frick-faced, she'd probably taken a better look at the entire image to get some better memories out of it for later (hey, if she was already embarrassing herself, she might as well have gotten something out of it).

Later, not when she leans forward and presses her lips against his and doesn't stop until he kisses back and her hands are in his hair and she's feeling a little non-alcoholic lightheadedness.

She doesn't know what comes over her, but somehow she still has a few braincells left and manages to stop before doing any more damage. Not before she takes a few steps back (him standing there naked and wet and very naked and dumbfounded) and lets him know that, "You're welcome."

He's about to open his mouth when she puts up a hand, swallowing tightly with a disgusted look on her face, "I think I'm going to throw up."

.

She expected to wake up in a bathtub downstairs, with a damp shirt, a disgusting taste in her mouth and her glasses hanging in her hair. Instead, she's in Oliver's bed, shirt damp from her husband's shower-water or from panic alcohol sweat—she's not entirely sure—disgusting taste in her mouth and her glasses on the nightstand beside her.

She faintly feels a pounding headache and some crippling nausea, but the unmistakable sensation of shame oozing from every inch of her skin is undeniably worse.

"Oh no," she growls, slowly sitting up to find out she's only wearing one shoe, "Oh God, no." She puts a hand to her forehead and prays for a serious case of amnesia. She can't keep kissing Oliver when she's drunk! Especially not when he's in a shower and she's in love with him and he doesn't know and he's naked and she's not a better person than she is right now.

She wishes she didn't remember, because that would've been super convenient. Apparently, the universe capital h, a, t, e, and let's see, s—HATES—her and she's a bad person and she deserves this.

The aspirin and glass of water on the nightstand are just taunting her.

After an additional twenty minutes to think about 1) how much the universe must hate her 2) how much she hates herself and 3) what Oliver must think of her, she finds the courage and the stomach to get out of bed and preferably into a different life or an alternative timeline of the embarrassing life she already has.

She stocks up on enough bottles of water and protein bars in the basement to last a zombie apocalypse, ready to kill her hangover and possibly, herself. She's managed to successfully tiptoe past a kitchen full of Russians, Oliver's office and two of their living rooms when she hears heavy footsteps emerging from right around the corner. The corner she needs to pass to get to the stairs so she can safely enter her room and lock herself in there for the next 48 painful hours of regret, shame and hungover.

Panicking (looks like she still doesn't have that thing down, how do they call it? calming down), she dives over the nearest couch and presses herself into it so tightly, that by the end of it, her butt might actually be permanently imprinted on the white flowery print that reminds her of nursing homes and those rich people on the titanic.

"Felicity?" She can just hear Oliver's smug, amused smile from somewhere directly behind and above her. She lets out a long sigh as she sits up, casually trying to fix her hair and praying she looks more hot mess than trainwreck, because that's all the hope there is for her at the moment.

"Oliver," she acknowledges him, literally biting down on her tongue to keep from asking him a million questions about last night or stumbling through an apology that won't make any sense because she can't think straight when he's standing there so casual, hands on the backrest as he grins at her while she's nursing the world's biggest hangover since the movie franchise that went on two movies too long.

"Rough night?"

Still, she'd like to try that second option. "Kind of. Look, Oliver," she grimaces, pressing her palms together, internally screaming, "I don't want to lie again and pretend like I don't know what I did last night. Just know that I'm so sorry about what happened, I feel so bad and I genuinely mean that. Like I don't usually make a habit out of sexually harassing men—people—husband! Naked husbands. My naked husband." She pauses, shaking her head quickly (what is wrong with her) as she hopes the hung-over paleness is washing out her blush considerably. "Anyway—I don't know what came over me, Sara thought getting me drunk was funny and then, like you know firsthand, I make some really bad decisions while intoxicated."

Unlike their usual conversations in which he cracks one to two smiles (seriously, it's like he has a limit of smiles per day and will not make any exceptions for anyone)—if she's lucky—he's still grinning the same smug, almost teasing smile, as he sits down next to her, "I get it. You think of me when you're drunk, it's endearing, really."

Her neck flushes as she sinks further back into the couch, pulling her knees closer to her body as she hides her face in a pillow, "Oh my god, please shut up, I want to die." but since it's muffled it sounds more like "ohmwwygawdplweasshwutupashjdksehk" or something.

"Well, if you ever want to try it while you're sober, you know I'm here for you," he counters, putting his hand in between them. She sits up carefully as she looks at him, suspicious. It's not many times she encounters playful, teasing Oliver and never does he suggest a make-out session. She might still be drunk, God knows what was in that cocktail.

"I…" she starts, but doesn't really know how to finish as she looks at him with wide eyes, clutching the pillow to her chest. Her brain is short-circuiting and there's nothing she can do but gape at him like the idiot she is.

He leans in and like a deer caught in the headlights, she scrambles away and onto her feet. Damnit. She balls her fists at her side, squeezing her eyes shut. "Oliver. You honestly do not know how long I've waited for this moment to come."

"Okay?" He looks confused, and it's adorable and it just makes her want to kiss him more and that's very counterproductive.

"So you understand that I can't kiss you with hung-over morning breath, looking like I just lost a triathlon to a bulldozer while being electrocuted."

"I understand. You'd rather kiss me when you're halfway on your way to being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning so you have an excuse on why you're attacking me." He leans back onto the couch, arms crossed and challenging, smug look on his face.

"Attacking you?" She raises her eyebrows, huffing as she crosses her arms. "I might've been the drunk one, twice, but you were the sober one, twice, and you kissed me back, twice. I'm usually pretty great at math but my brain is floating in, what I sincerely hope, was a FDA authorised cocktail so I think you can figure it out by yourself this time."

"Well," he concludes, standing up, and towering over her as always, smirking, "Don't say I didn't offer." She feels like she just lost a game she didn't even know she was playing.

She stands there, gaping to herself (in offence, totally) as he walks away. She feels like she just entered an alternative universe, which was technically what she wished for, so she shouldn't complain, and she isn't, because it's Oliver, offering to kiss her. And she rejected him because she hadn't brushed her teeth and combed her hair yet.

Way to go, Felicity, that makes sense.

.

"So now we're alone," Thea gushes after half an hour of her babbling on about literally nothing ("the walls are so white here, like not even a normal white, it's just so white and boring. boring white walls." "the vending machine only sells organic chocolate which is disgusting. have you ever had organic chocolate? it's organic which means no sugar which means I'd rather swallow my own hair" "I had a dream about elephants yesterday and nurse hippie informed me it means I can deal with any obstacle I'm facing") so Oliver didn't have the chance to lecture her. That, or, Felicity guesses, she's still on drugs.

Which seems unlikely, since they're only here because the doctor finally allowed them two hours after 28 days of rehab. He wants her to stay here even longer, surrounded by the white, boring walls. God, Felicity would lose it here. They don't even have Wi-Fi. But, she agrees with Oliver. The longer she stays here, the better the chance she fully recovers. "What's up?"

"Well, nothing really happened. We had mac and cheese last night, which I had to practically harass Raisa about for three weeks because it went against her 'Russian cooking standards' or whatever. Oh, Roy and I watched 'pretty in pink' because I made him and he cried. It was honestly the best thing ever. Sara—"

"As much as I love to hear about you making people cry," she sits up, pulling her knees to her chest, feet covered in fluffy bright yellow slippers as she smiles excitedly, "I meant with you and Ollie."

"Uhhh…" Her eyes widen as she manages to almost choke on her own tongue, trying to come up with an answer. Any answer that doesn't involve her talking about Oliver with Thea. "Me, me? Me and Ol-Oliver?" She stumbles over the words, trying to give her brain more time to think as she gestures wildly, fixating her gaze on the door as if to send Oliver a telepathic message to get his ass back in the room, fast.

If possible, Thea's eyebrows disappear further into her hairline and Felicity inwardly groans at her own inability to come up with a witty response when she actually needs it.

Really, any answer would be cool. Any answer, instead she comes up with the one answer she didn't want to use. The truth. "I don't know, we're kind of friends? Sometimes we sleep together and we like spoon? And we do this thing where we joke and he treats me like an actual human being and a few days ago he asked me to make-out. I don't know if it was a joke or not, but it happened."

"Dude," Thea slaps down on Felicity's thigh, completely flabbergasted or excited or a weird combination of both. "Dude," she emphasizes, like Felicity is just supposed to know what that means. And she kind of does. Girls.

"I know."

"Dude."

"I know."

.

Chapter Text

.

chapter five: you can hear it in the silence

"John, can you leave us for a moment?" She freezes as she hears Oliver's voice echo through the training room. She watches Digg stiffen, reaching out to steady the punching bag as he nods, shortly, before sending her a look that ratios somewhere from 'good luck' to 'told you so, dumbass' that penetrates through every bone in her body.

She's still slightly out of breath from her almost-finished-work-out as she squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation, waiting for him to say anything, too afraid to face him. He touches her shoulder, and he's standing close, too close which is unexpected, and mean, because it feels so intimate while she knows he's pissed.

He's tricking her, but she turns her head anyway (noting that somewhere in that sentence probably is a 'love is…'-calendar idea, but that's an email for later). "Look, before you say anything that closely resembles anything anti-feminist and condescending and completely s—"

"Felicity," he says her name with a sigh and… is he… no? He's smiling?

This means that a) he's gone full on bat shit crazy with anger, b) he's suffering from some sort of brain injury causing facial muscle dysfunctionality or, c) he actually doesn't mind she's been hiding her road to protect-and-kick-ass-dome from him. Which, no.

"I know you've been training with Digg, for a while now," he informs her, hand slipping away from her shoulder and leaving her skin cold.

She's kind of alarmed. She had expected a lot of… yelling. At least some kind of reaction beside, well. This. Maybe she had unconsciously expected the worst of him, and that kind of makes her feel like an asshole. "Why didn't you say anything?"

He shrugs, and his hand twitches, like he wants to reach out and touch her, but is waiting for her to make the first move. "I figured, you know, you would. Eventually." She's totally an asshole.

She closes her fingers around his, and his tiny, almost timid smile stretches. She considers him, then, hikes an eyebrow, "And?"

He doesn't even look surprised she has him all figured out, "Sara told me to give you 'space'." By the way he's passive-aggressively air-quoting, she can tell he thinks it's stupid. But he did it anyway.

(She squeezes his fingers, just to be sure it isn't option b) he's having a stroke, but since he's squeezes back, still smiling, she figures hemiparesis isn't the case here.)

(She also makes a mental note to tell Sara to get a life later on, she's too invested in theirs. It's kind of… sweet. And creepy.)

"I want you to be able to protect yourself. I mean, I'm not an idiot. Being married to me, doesn't only protect you. It also makes you a target," he licks his lips, staring at a wall over her shoulder but not actually at the wall, as if he's trying to find the right words, trying to remain collected. "It be really naive for me to think that there's always going to be someone around, to, to protect you. You should—I don't know. I just don't want to make it any easier for them."

She kind of wants to tell him she loves him right there and then, but decides she wants to save it for later. Instead, she settles on playful, "So you're going to make me do all the hard work?"

His shoulders sag just a little as he swallows tightly. "I just don't—every time I think about you going off on your own, all I'm able to think about is you—you getting hurt. And I don't…" He looks almost pained that he has to say it out loud, has to be so vulnerable, "I don't know what I would do if that, if it ever happened."

Screw her heart for skipping a beat, screw that warm feeling spreading across her chest, screw Oliver. She hates it.

"I'm not going out there at night to try and catch the bad guys and put them away like, like some vigilante," she presses lightly, placing her hands on his sides, sliding them under his jacket before further clarifying, "I just want to be able to defend myself so that if anyone ever tries to hurt me, I won't go down without a fight, and very possibly, crying for my mother."

He smiles, a little, but it doesn't quite reaches his eyes, before he's back to brooding. She smooths out his frown with her fingers before informing him, "I thought you were going to yell at me."

"I know," he says, leaning down and kissing her forehead, wrapping his arms around her. "There's still time for that later."

She laughs against his shoulder, leaning back and settling her hands on his cheeks, wondering when the last time was she was this happy, ever. Looking at him, all fondness and crinkled eyes from smiling, she doesn't really remember.

"I can protect you, too, you know," he says low, almost possessively, his grip tightening on her arms ever so slightly. Her hands slip down to his neck, offering him a small supporting smile.

"I know," she replies softly after a moment, 95 percent sure a 'but I like to take care of myself' is laced somewhere inside of those two words. Still, she feels all warm and fuzzy when she think about another person, him, feeling that way about her.

She's realizes she really would, too, wouldn't she? Jump in front of bullets, and catch grenades, and run through fire for him, right. To protect him. That's... That's a completely new feeling, almost like a new kind of dependency, and it's in her every instinct to fight it, but she doesn't want to.

"I just want you to know you can trust me," his voice fades as his gaze trails off to his hands, now on her arms, using his thumb to caress her skin softly, creating a weird swirly feeling in her stomach. "I could've helped—trained you, too."

"Okay," she says, a little too hasty, but who is she to pass up any opportunity she has to see him shirtless. Seriously, it should be illegal to be this hot. "Just let Digg down easy. I think he was really enjoying making me cry."

He laughs, but it's an half-assed attempt at pretending he isn't staring at her lips, hand frozen on her arms as she slides her hands down his shoulders. He swallows hard, searching her face and for a second she thinks he isn't going through with it. Luckily, she is wrong and he surges forward to press his lips against hers, hands on her face, but it isn't desperate or fast, but slow, almost soft, steady. It's almost like coming home.

This time she honestly doesn't care she's covered in a thin layer of sweat, or looks like an asthma patient that just ran a marathon because of the five push-ups she did ten minutes ago, or that this isn't a very romantic story to tell her grandchildren—all she sees, feels, breathes is Oliver.

Somewhere in between his hands tugging on her ponytail to free her hair, his mouth on her collarbone and her hands touching his abs with church music playing on the background (that part only happened in her head, she thinks) she notes that if someone would've told her a six months ago that right now she and Oliver would be having sex on his weight training bench—she would've questioned your level of creep, wondered about your ability to ESP and laughed in your face if you thought she was ever voluntarily stepping foot inside that training room.

Who's laughing now? Not her. Definitely not her.

.

"Shitake mushrooms," she mutters under her breath, considering giving up on hanging the brightly neon colored 'welcome home' banner and settling for something less… tall. Eye-level was high enough, in her opinion.

She hears a chuckle behind her, a hand being placed on her hip as someone appears next to her. "Need any help?"

"Not really, I'm fine," she says, a little too enthusiastically as she damns her mother and father for making her so damn vertically challenged. What the hell's up with that, mom? Can't give her the big-boobgene but she'll give her the shortness gene? She refuses to look at him.

"Thea's going to be here in…" She sees a movement in the corner of her eye—which is probably him looking at his watch—because she is still refusing to look at him because of like, pride and not a complete feeling of uselessness. "Two minutes, you really want to take that chance?"

"She practically organized this party herself, down to the damn color scheme. I only had to pick everything up because she 'trusted me to handle this one tiny thing while she was still confined' so no, if I want to live beyond today, maybe I shouldn't," she gives in, sighing as she steps aside, giving one part of the banner to her So Tall (and handsome as hell) boyfriend-husband (how do you define what they have, honestly?) and pointing to a spot on the wall.

"I know, she called me to confirm you picked up the blue candy buffet."

"Yeah, because 'blue is the color of healing in many buddhist tribes in southern and central asia', didn't you know?"

He grins. "Don't forget it means reliable and responsible."

There's a moment of comfortable silence (dumb smiles one both of their faces because they're those people) as she collects a few thumbtacks and hands them to him, stepping back to her original spot to admire him as he basically does all the work.

"I'm happy to help," he mentions casually, shrugging a little, "Make things easier for you. Things like helping you hang up streamers and balloons, or open up your jars or maybe making your travelling distance shorter."

Something is up. He never uses the word happy, that's for one.

Her head snaps over to him, pushing her glasses further up her nose as she licks her lips in hesitation, trying to stall, "Are you—are you asking me to move in with you? Because we kind of live together, already, like, have been for a little while now. Or are you asking me to start working from home because I told you that I'm going back and there's nothing—"

"No, it's not that," he replies as he pins the banner to the wall, moving closer to her to pin the other side as he avoids her gaze. "I mean…" he sighs, clenching his jaw, probably angry at himself for not always being able to say what he wants to with words. "We could share it, my room."

She understands him still, and she smiles, brightly and genuinely because that's about the cutest thing she's ever heard and every time she looks at him the beat of her heart just becomes his name. "I'm in as long as I can bring my babies with me," she teases, trying not to make too big a deal of it as she leans up to peck his lips. "And with babies I mean my tech, not actual babies."

"Just to clarify," he asks cynically, definitely amused and she's happy that she gets to see this Oliver, happy that he's less guarded around her, and just all around happy.

"Just to clarify," she echoes, mouths clumsily bumping together because she's too busy smiling. Maybe Just To Clarify could be their 'Okay' faintly (and ironically, she feels it's important to point this out) crosses her mind, then there's a whistling sound and when she breaks away from Oliver, it becomes clear it's the one and only Thea Queen.

"So I leave for like, two little months and I come back to find out Oliver… has teeth?" She hugs her brother, looking up at him as she does so, feigning surprise. "Oh, they're even prettier up close. So white and blinding."

"Thea," he states with a hint of menace, but since he's still smiling it doesn't do much.

She moves over to Felicity next, swaying them from side to side while they hug. "I hope you didn't forget my blue twizzlers for my—"

"Candy buffet, yes." She exchanges a look with Oliver, laughing loudly. "How could I ever?"

.

For a while, Felicity is pretty certain it's the best welcome home party she's ever been to.

Thea planned an elitist party of the year for her own homecoming, even though the only people attending are Oliver's people. (She planned a better party from a hospital bed than Felicity could've planned standing and along with an actual party-planner—that's kind of pathetic, isn't it? Felicity feels like she's lacking on so many levels.) She guesses Oliver's people are Thea's too, though, and thinks they're even hers, now too.

There's lots of food, like not even the nasty stuff you'd expect at fancy parties like caviar (way to keep the stereotype going) but actual delicious food, like donuts and ice cream, so naturally, she's eating a lot. (When she asks Thea about it she just rolls her eyes and mutters something about sugar being an addiction.) There's awesome music, people are dancing, everybody's happy. Even the neon-and-mostly-blue decorations are super on point, if she does say so herself.

Then she hears yelling from the kitchen, making out a 'don't even try to make up one of your lame excuses, Roy', even above the music. When she looks at Oliver, he's already looking at her. Which is still something she has to get used to.

"Thea and Roy…" she starts off pretty crappy, not really sure how to break it to him that his right (or left or third?) hand's been doing stuff with his baby sister.

"You think I didn't know?" He raises his eyebrows and she purses her lips to keep from gaping at him because he just keeps surprising her, doesn't he? "For two people who think they're talented at hiding secret relationships, they're as subtle as a brick through a window. I wouldn't call making out frequently and not in the privacy of their own rooms, secret."

"You don't mind?" She gives him a look that at least a little skeptical, and not just complete and utter disbelieve.

"I never said I don't mind, I was just waiting for one of them to screw it up themselves before I had to step in and be the bad guy."

"That's kind of morbid," she huffs, raising her eyebrows as she looks up at him while he rolls his eyes, squeezing her hip.

"It was before I met you." He doesn't really seem to notice how she tenses up at his words, probably because he didn't really realize the weight of what he said.

They haven't actually exchanged an I love you out loud, but she figured it was kind of implied (and as long as it was implied, she wasn't going to say it first, accounting to the fact she might end up looking like an idiot). Him casually throwing around an "I want to live together together" and a "you changed me basically" in one day was kind of the closest they've ever gotten to a verbal confirmation since his infamous "don't ask me to say I don't" and was seriously kind of bad for her heart. Super stress-inducing and all.

"I take it you don't approve?" She says instead of making a bunch of indecipherable noises, because that's what she actually lowkey feels like doing.

"Roy's not a bad kid, but he's done a lot of bad things. He's been through a lot, I don't think that's… what Thea needs."

"We all go through hard times and sometimes we make mistakes, but you're seriously not going to write him off because of his past, are you? That's kind of hypocritical," she replies, focusing her energy on fixing what's left of Thea and Roy instead of figuring out what the frack is going on with Oliver and Felicity because she might explode otherwise, making a point of looking at his hand on her hip and he presses his lips together.

"If it makes you feel better—she is my sister. I'm never going to approve of anyone."

"An egalitarian hater, nice."

"I'll just go talk to Thea, tell her to keep it down—" She cuts him off by putting her hand on his chest. "I'll go, if you don't mind? I kind of feel like this requires a little more…" she purses her lips, nodding at him, "subtlety?"

As if on cue, there's a loud, dramatic, "JUST GET OUT ALREADY!" coming from the kitchen and Thea. They exchange a silent look as he deadpans, "Yeah, subtlety's Thea forte."

"I'll be right back," she replies as she reaches up to kiss his cheek. She flashes him a bright smile before hurrying off to the kitchen.

It's not like her to physically run from her feelings, or even run to begin with, but she needs a little time away from him to figure out how to deal with them. The… feeling stuff. He has a habit of incapacitating her. He's like that attractive and intimidating with all his unadulterated, unspoken feelings for her.

Besides, there's family drama. She's pretty sure family drama beats 'So, You're Wondering Why You Can't Tell Your Husband You Love Him' on the list of priorities one has in life.

"Get out," Thea snaps, voice getting louder the closer she gets to the kitchen. "You didn't visit me once, you didn't pick up when I called, you ignored all of my texts."

"If Oliver—" Roy protests, at least making an effort to keep his voice down. When she steps inside, she notices how exhausted he looks, eyes rimmed red, shoulders hunched as he tries to reason with his… whatever she is. The frack. There's so much undefined relationships in this family, it's kind of screwed up. Nevermind they could dedicate an entire season of Dr. Phil to all of their dysfunctionalities.

The blonde decides to clear her throat, to make her presence aware, but all she gets is a weary half second glance from Roy and complete neglect by the Queen in their midst.

"Not Oliver, me! You're in a relationship with me. Or you were." Thea has always been passionate, Felicity can't fault her for that. She loves, or she hates. There's really no in between with her.

Roy sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, voice deflated and defeated, "It's complicated."

She huffs in response, arms crossed over her chest as she pauses aggressively ordening her goodie bags, because only Thea would give away goodie bags at her 'welcome back from rehab' party. "You weren't there for me. What's complicated about that?"

"Guys," Felicity interjects, glancing between the two of them, "There's about twenty people in your living room wondering what the hell is going on."

"Nothing," Thea bites, glaring at her (ex?)counterpart before stalking back to the party, muttering, "There's absolutely nothing going on here."

"Roy," she starts, trying to offer him some comfort, but he shakes his head.

"I did treat her badly, and the worst part is," he pauses, clenching his jaw so tightly it makes her own teeth ache. "I knew I was doing it and I still did it. She…" He stops again, considers her, which, naturally, makes her pat down her hair and have at least twelve conspiracy theories about what kind of food could be stuck to her face. He sighs, looking at the ceiling as he speaks to her. "Oliver, he—he saved my life, gave me purpose. He promised he would never abandon me, I can't—"

There's a hostile tone, an angry edge to his voice, like he's embarrassed to talk about it and anger was the only way to save some of his manhood. She rolls her eyes, leaning back against the counter, because, men.

"Look, this might be news to you, probably Oliver, too, maybe the entire male population but, nobody owns Thea." She grabs his forearm, squeezing gently as she softens her voice. She's half-surprised he's even letting her, considering he mostly pretends to hate her. "She's an adult that is very capable of making her own decisions, and she decided on you."

He swallows tightly, and she makes a move to take her hand off him figuring he might need space to deal with his manly feelings, but he uses his free hand to keep it put, turning his head to look at her. "How do I?" His voice lingers, and she figures it's as much of a thank you she's going to get from him tonight.

"I'll talk to Oliver," she suggests, and it's weird, that she doesn't second-guess her influence on him as much anymore, because he's her husband, he really is, and he cares about her and people who care about each other care take each other's opinion seriously. Right. (She said she doesn't second-guess it as much, okay.) "In the meantime I suggest you gravel. Lots and lots of gravelling."

.

"So. Now that I also live here—am I allowed to make a few adjustments?" She props herself onto her elbow, making sure everything is covered up with their thin sheet since she like, needs him to focus on her words right now. His eyes are closed, but she knows he's awake. He usually got up hours before her, but lately had gotten the habit of reading or browsing around on her tablet while he waited for her to wake-up, too. He was trying to be more normal. It was clingy, in the best way. She runs a hand over the arm covering half his face. "Like, a few pretty pillows or, I don't know—open the curtains?"

Dark and moody was kind of his signature style, which was fine, honestly, but also kind of depressing? She could do with a little more sunlight in her life.

He chuckles, low, turning his head into the pillow as he slowly starts stretching. "I'll think about it." He lazily slings an arm around her waist, pulling her in closer as he adjusts his face to look at her. She presses a kiss to his shoulder, hating herself for having to do this, but well. She was an adult. She couldn't continuously avoid all her problems and live in a bedroom for the rest of eternity. Right?

"Are you going to talk to Thea?"

He sighs, heavily, as he re-closes his eyes. "Probably."

She presses a kiss to his temple and runs her finger through his hair, which has been getting longer than his usual army-style buzzcuts and is apparently her secret kink. She doesn't even know, okay? What even is sexy about hair? They're literally dead skin cells. Get it together, Felicity. "They remind me of fetus us. I mean like, Thea is definitely a little more passionate than me."

He rolls over onto his back with a half-hearted sigh. "I have zero doubts she would fight him."

"Roy is not as decisive as you, but he is just as emotionally insufficient, only less…" She narrows her eyes, trying to find the right word. "Broody." She laughs as he pokes her in the side, and she has to slap his hand away to continue without tripping over her tongue. Which is already hard enough of a task without him being cute and playful. "—and he is a little less tall than you."

He yawns, like it's casual, just, bro voice: 'joking around with the wife', as he adds, "—and he obviously doesn't love you as much as I do." Joking around with the wife he loves, it is.

She shifts, propping her chin on his chest, if only to give herself some time to process it and not completely chicken out. "So we're doing this? We're two married people in love?"

"Yeah," he says, certain as he brushes some hair away from her face. Then, insecurity washes back over him as he looks at her. Her cheeks-hurting, teeth barren, shit-eating smile was apparently not enough of a confirmation. Soft, he confirms, "Right?"

She leans forward, licking her lips as she hesitates before pressing her lips against his, warm and a little wet and, "right."

.

The next couple of days she barely sees him, besides fleeting good morning pecks and if she's lucky, she'll vaguely register him slipping into bed and putting his arm around her. If he's lucky, she doesn't accidentally elbow him in the face, hazy with sleep.

There's a bunch of mob people from all of the world in town, like a convention or a meeting (is there some sort of pamphlet available for these sort of situations, like Russian Mob 101 For Blonde IT Girls Who Know Nothing? ? ?), and apparently they don't 'do' hotels or maintain some difference between night and day, so they're in her house most of the time, too. It's almost too much testosterone and indecipherable Russian for one girl to handle.

While she inhales her Big Belly lunch, Sara, in combat with three German Bratva guys twice her size in their work-out room, informs her half highkick that there's a gala tonight and that'll be 'basically the last of this elitist shit show'. One of the guy smirks, though—even though Sara's heel is pressing into his neck, and Felicity winces, as the other woman slams the heads of the remaining two together —so she figures it's all in good faith. Kind of like those big family reunions she used to watch on tv; a 'hate to see them go, love to watch them leave' situation. In this family they just enjoy to kick each other's asses and communicate in different type of growls.

The 'basically the last' is the best vague phrase she's heard the last couple of days. She had kind of been spoiled with company the last couple of months, and downsizing that to just one other person was kind of depressing. She misses the companionship, the food (Vyacheslav bakes surprisingly good chocolate-chip cookies) and the bad jokes, she misses Oliver. Granted, that's kind of pathetic, because he's right there, in the same house as her, but still. She misses the just being, which is so cheesy, and a little too Nicholas Sparks, even for her, but. It's the way she feels.

She manages to corner Diggle Saturday afternoon in the garden to binge-watch Too Cute on Animal Planet (a show about, you guessed it, cute animals) on her tablet and share a tub of cookie dough ice cream because they deserve good things in life, while her husband and his minions (she means this in the nicest way possible, probably) congregate with half of Russia.

It's sunny out, so naturally, she looks like a sweaty tomato in a flower printed romper. She's staring at the bottom of an empty tub of ice cream, a tiny polar bear growling on the background, when she realizes pigging out and dying from cuteness might not be everyone's first life priority. Pff. Right? Dig probably has stuff to do. Man, she really cannot wait to get back to work on Monday.

"If you need to be in there, you should go. No need to keep me company out of pity, or anything. I could always make a troll account on Reddit and correct people's grammar on popular posts."

He shrugs lazily, and it's now she realizes he's practically dozing off in his seat, fingers linked over his stomach and feet resting on a chair opposite of him. Ha, his loss. He missed like, five baby animals she didn't know existed. "Nah, it's all politics in there, and I don't really care for politics."

"No?" It pops out before she realizes it, and sounds probably ten times more judgemental than she originally meant.

He sighs, adjusting his sunglasses to the top of his head, turning his head slightly so he's looking directly at her. "I know you've been dying to ask me, so just do it."

Her pride is telling her to shut up, but curiosity wins out every time. She sits up, shoving the empty tub away and pausing netflix. "Why?" She winces a little at her next words, because she's never this blunt on purpose. "You had a wife, right?"

"I did." His jaw tightens and he doesn't make eye-contact with her. She already regrets asking, just because of the look on his face. "We met during our first service, married before our second, divorced before our third. We had actually just gotten back together when we found out she was pregnant. She had just requested furlough when we found out one of our own was working together with a criminal organization. That organization was called HIVE."

She pulls her knees to her chest, shaking her head to herself as she thinks it over. "HIVE? I've heard that name before, haven't I?"

He nods, stiffly. "You might've read it before when you hacked into Oliver's computer. HIVE has ties with a lot of criminals, mainly in Asia, including and not limited to Chien Na Wei." His shoulders straighten, grip on the armrests of his chair tightening at the memory. "I told Lyla not to get into it, that we should just report it and let the army deal with it."

Her voice is strained when she asks, "Why didn't she?" She's not entirely sure the answer will make it better.

"The one of our own happened to be my brother and she didn't just want to give up on him, not like I did anyway." He purses his lips, pausing for a moment as he remains deep in thought. "She was shadowing him during a drug deal, it went bad and she tried to save him, my brother. Andy—" he clears his throat, rolling his shoulders backwards to get rid of some of the tension. "He was hit by a wandering bullet and Lyla insisted on driving with him to the nearest medbay, and the truck, it hit an IED, some sort of anti-tank mine and she, uh.. She died on impact."

Her heart is beating loudly in her throat, and she doesn't get it. How the world works the way it does. Why. "I'm so sorry, John." She reaches out to put her hand over his, and the cold metal of his wedding ring feels like it's burning her skin.

"I didn't even get to bury my wife, or our child." He shakes his head, wiping away the moisture that had collected under his eyes with his free hand, brushing it off. "I lost my brother, too, and I, I never thought I'd get another one. Oliver, he offered me an opportunity to make it right, and I took it. Without him, I don't—I probably wouldn't have been here today."

She doesn't understand, furrows her brow together in thought. "So this is… it's about vengeance?"

His head snaps towards her as he corrects her, firmly. "Justice."

She must look as uncomfortable as she feels, because he draws his hand back. They're playing jury, judge and executioner. They're not any of those things, and they're certainly not God. She opens her mouth, but he speaks before she gets the chance.

He uses a voice that makes her feel like she's back in detention for hacking into the school's fire alarm system because she didn't prepare for a test. "There are a lot of bad guys out there, Felicity. I know you think we're one of them, and maybe we are, but you don't know what all these people would get away if it wasn't for us—" he pauses, before tentatively adding, "murder isn't the worst thing they're capable of."

She does understand, on some level. It's just hard to wrap her head around sometimes. She used to just be the IT girl, her only acquaintance with death was watching her favorite characters get killed off on tv. That didn't quite have the same impact as being surrounded by it twenty-four seven. It is uncomfortable, and it is messy, and bad, and difficult, but maybe it's not wrong. She manages a, albeit weak, smile onto her face. "Maybe there's no such thing as the good guys, Digg. Maybe we're just all doing the best we can."

There's a contemplative look on his face for a moment, almost amused, before he leans forward. "You know, Felicity, I don't think love is about changing or saving a person, I think it's about finding the person who's already the right fit." The way she looks at him must convey something like 'Ok..ay?'.

She's about to thank him for keeping her informed when he elaborates. "To some extent, I think you did both. Without you…" He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. "Everything here would still be the same. I think it would've broken him at some point. So thank you."

She leans over and throws her arms around his neck, squeezing tightly before pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. Before all this, before living this kind of life, before meeting all these people, she wasn't unhappy. Now her heart just feels so much—fuller. "Thanks, Digg."

Besides seeing Diggle here and there, she spends most of her free time with Thea, since she's the only other inhabitant of the Queen mansion that doesn't have Bratva duties to fill or How To Get Away With Murder workshops to follow. She figures Oliver squeezed in talking to his sister, because there's a considerate amount less glaring and death wishes, and the corner of her mouth actually lifted like an inch when Alexei made a dumb joke at dinner.

Figuring they're close enough to talk boy problems, she corners her an hour before the party, under the guise of needing a pair of earrings to match with her emerald dress. She'd kind of found out green is Oliver's favorite color on her, too and she isn't a tease, but, she's really missed him. Like a lot. Plus, she looks hella great in green and it's her personal fave. It's a win win.

Thea, of course, snatches both of the pairs she's holding up out of her fingers, and immediately hands her a new diamond pair that'll 'make her eyes pop' and throws a pair of heels her way. She thanks her, trying to gently ease into the subject Roy, which her very special brain apparently takes as an cue to ask her, "So, how are things with Roy?"

She closes her eyes, mentally cursing herself as the brunette's hands freeze while straightening her hair. Felicity is sure the smell of burnt hair is infiltrating her nose when Thea clears her throat, putting the straightener down and pats down her hair. "It's, uhm." Her jaw tightens in that emotionally closed off way only Queens can do. "I'd like to say it was a difficult decision, but it really wasn't. I can't be someone's second choice. I won't be."

Felicity is not entirely sure that she'll give out better advice than her usual 'I need to use the bathroom for a sec' to which she proceeds to Google said problem. She's spent more time on Yahoo Answers then she did on the computer that one time she tried to hack the Pentagon.

"If it helps, I don't think Roy did what he did on purpose. I don't know him as well as you do, but I'm actually pretty great at counting cards while getting people to tell me juicy stories and Diggle happens to really trust that I'm not cheating, so I've heard about his life here and there. That he was abandoned and dumped in the trash and practically everyone he loved, either died or left, until Oliver took him—okay, not under his wing, because that's cliché and maybe a little patronizing, but, you know what I mean."

Thea's hardened face softens a little, but it doesn't look like she's telling her anything new. So, against all her basic survival instincts, she digs a little deeper, into personal territory. How does she always manage to end up in an entire monologue? "I know, from experience, that it's hard to tell the difference between people who are out to intentionally hurt you, and the people who do it with the best intentions. Especially when all your life you've been told you shouldn't trust anyone."

Thea raises her eyebrows, but there's an amused glint in her eyes. "Shitty mother?"

"No," she laughs, putting her arm around the other girl. "My mom's pretty great, actually. Dad left us and she can hold quite the grudge. Not that I blame her. My father is a piece of junk, who, by the way, does not have Felicity proof firewalls. Booyah."

"You know," Thea tells her, putting her own arm around the blonde's waist and squeezing, "it's actually kind of funny, because I overheard Oliver talking to Roy and then he caught me. I had to convert to sulking and told him Roy would always pick him over me, and he gave me the exact same 'that boy thinks he owes me' speech."

"Hmm, that's strange. It's almost like we're trying to tell you something." Thea huffs, knocking her hip into hers before playfully pushing her away, cocking an eyebrow. "I guess distrust runs in the family. It took Ollie a while, too, didn't it?"

"And I'm way more charming than Roy is."

She smiles, bright, and then it turns a little timid. "I do want to say thank you, Lis."

She fixes her glasses, blinking at her friend in confusion. She had basically just reminded the girl of something she'd already heard before. "For what?"

Bold as ever, she fumbles with the fabric of floor-length blue dress as she blurts out, "I think I turned to drugs because turning towards my brother, my family, it was too hard. You made it a whole lot easier. I had a lot of shit I needed to sort through and," she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, shaking her head lightly, as she sighs, defeated. "A therapist might've not been the worst idea."

"You did all the hard work." The corners of her lips turns up, waving her off. "I'm just glad you're okay."

She bites on the inside of her cheek, like she's deciding if she should reveal the next piece of information. "I have actually been trying to get back into a college. Just community college for now, and just a couple of classes, but—it's good. I'm, uhh... Getting there."

She leans forward to hug her, immediately withdrawing. "Oh my God. I'm sorry—I'm just.. Wow. That's great news, Thea! I'm really happy for you. Wow." Thea laughs, pulling her back in for a real hug. "It feels great to finally tell someone besides my own reflection in the mirror."

"I bet Oliver would be very proud."

Thea raises her eyebrows, arms crossed over her chest, and Felicity snorts. "Fine. He'll struggle a little, and I'll have to talk some sense into him, but then he'll be super proud."

They talk some more about the classes she wants to take, most of them fashion based and Felicity suggests she takes a digital designing class, too, and then she figures she should probably finish getting ready since the party's already begun and her hair has not yet made contact with a brush.

Thea catches her hand before she leaves, offering her the kind of broken smile only a boy can cause. "Felicity. Thanks. I just.. I think I need a little more time."

.

The party is very tiring, mostly boring, a little weird, too. Thea keeps dragging her around to introduce her to people she's apparently already familiar with; most of the men try to dance with her so she practically babbles them to death until the song's over (something about matryoshka dolls, the process of turning a potato into life-ruining alcohol and little broken Russian words she's learned that they clearly find very funny); she does a secret shot with Sara in the kitchen to make it a little more bearable; this all accompanied by mostly classical music.

Who even threw this party together anyway? A 200 year old member of a Bratva subdepartment dedicated to vampirism? She would not even be surprised at this point. There's not even food, which barely makes wearing heels worth it. She's afraid to go the bathroom for half of the night, the possibility of walking into someone snorting up powered blood or sucking one someone's neck have never been this high. Okay, and maybe she's been inhaling champagne like chocolate-covered pretzels.

Finally, she finds Oliver, by himself and moves to stand next to him, leaning her forehead on his shoulder and groaning softly. He chuckles, brushing a hand over her head. "You look really nice."

She smiles into the fabric of his jacket lazily, resisting the urge to throw her fist into the air and scream about how she was totally right about green being his favorite color on her. Booyah. "Thank you."

"How you're doing? I heard you called a Captain a disgusting pig?"

"What?" Her head snaps up, a little belatedly because he smells really fricking fantastic (and she wants to cry) and she might be more clingy than she'd like to admit, eyes widening as she clutches a hand to her forehead. What did Sara put in that shot? Did she black out? Her hold on his arm tightens in horror, color draining from her face. "Oh God."

"Thea said you kept bad mouthing them with a polite smile on your face and they loved it."

She puts her head back on his shoulder, groaning again, this time with a little more heat. "I might kill Roy. Here I am, thinking I'm learning how to order pizza, while in reality I'm probably asking questions that leave people to wonder 'how many fingers' and 'where, m'am?'. I want to die. Literally."

He laughs, puts his arm around her so she's resting her head on the juncture between his chest and neck instead, and rubs her arm softly. "They all love you, I promise."

"Speak of the devil," she mutters as her eyes narrow in on Roy. He's talking to his (ex)-(girl)friend, and Thea's actually smiling and not looking like she's about to throw up or throw punches. "If I was a bad person like him, I'd be hoping she'd throw her drink in his face right about now." In reality, she's kind of rooting for them. Baby steps and all. She still wants him to trip down the stairs, though. Softly, but painful enough for him to reconsider his decisions in life.

"If you think that makes you a bad person, you don't want to know the things I wished upon him when I first found out," he teases and she half-heartedly slaps him on the chest, which hurts her more than him. He sighs, as he mockingly recites, "I know, I know. This isn't 1840 and Thea can take care of herself."

"She kept introducing me as.…" she racks her brain for the right pronunciation, closing her eyes in thought and also because her head feels pretty nice there and she's just a tiny bit exhausted. Thea made up for it with her usual Queen charm, but her Russian was still a little rusty and Felicity's feel for language was worse. "Sestra? What does it mean?"

He smiles, timid but obviously pleased, pressing a kiss against the side of her head. "Sister."

"Would it be weird if I use your sister as a transition into hitting on you? Usually I'd obviously be able to come up with a more clever line, because you know me, smooth is my middle name and all, but I haven't seen you in like three years and I really want to kiss you." She lowers her voice, checking to see if anyone can hear them, "On the mouth."

He laughs, in that endearing boyish way that makes her chest feel warm, and she realizes it's slowly starting to become her favorite sound in the world. "It would be weird."

He looks out at the rest of their company, scanning the crowd, pursing his lips while she's already rolling her eyes in disappointment and frustration. She needs some quality time with her damn husband already. Some of that frustration might be sexual and quality time might involve a little something sexual, too, but that's just getting two birds with one stone. It's efficient. Good for the environment or something. "But, I also think that everyone's drunk enough at this point that they won't notice if we sneak out."

She pumps her fist enthusiastically, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. "I love you, so much." It's only like the second time she's admitted it out loud, so it feels a little heavier than it was intended, but he just takes her hand in his and intertwines their fingers, bringing up her hand to kiss her fingers.

"Me too."

.

♫ my anaconda don't

my anaconda don't

want none

unless you got buns, h—♫ 

She finally finds her phone, on the floor next to her nightstand, half hidden under the bed. She blows some hair from her face so she'll be able to make out who, rudely, awakened her from blissful sleep. Why did she make that her ringtone again? Oh right. She didn't.

It's Iris. At 5 AM in the morning.

After about a million dodged calls and half-assed excuse filled texts, she probably deserves an explanation (and at least twelve awards for not giving up on her yet). Felicity feels like she's in a good place now, anyway. She's not even sure how much she's even allowed to reveal, since she probably will never learn the mob ways, but. It's all good, she's happy. In a perfect world she could've done this a few hours later when she isn't sleep-deprived and has had a chance to brush her teeth and fill up on some fluids, but this'll have to do.

She reaches for her glasses sleepily, freeing her hair from the messy bun it was in before she tiptoes into the bathroom, careful not to wake Oliver, and puts the toilet seat down before sitting on top of it. After not even one and a half second of dial tone, Iris answers.

"Glad to hear you're still alive." She can practically hear Iris teeth grinding so naturally, her own jaw starts to hurt in sympathy pain.

"Hi," she breathes, and figuring it's best to rip of the band-aid, "I'm so sorry. Really." Gravelling, lots and lots of gravelling, she reminds herself.

Iris huffs on the other side of the line and the blonde can just picture her offended face clearly. "You can't just send me occasional snapchats of you stuck in some sex dungeon—"

She shrugs to herself, because, okay, the Queen mansion does look like it was pulled straight from Hugh Hefner's wet dreams. "It's not a sex dungeon. Okay, wait, let me rephrase. It's not a dungeon, like, at all. Not a dungeon. It's mostly dark in here, yes, but that's because I think the curtains are sewn shut together. They like it dark and moody here."

She lets out a nervous little laugh, because she's rambling like a crazy person, and this is Iris—who's not only her friend, but also three more big articles away from winning a Pulitzer—and if she continues at this rate, she'll be confessing to a murder she didn't commit and probably admit that that one time five years ago she didn't tell her there was something stuck on her teeth for the first half and hour after she noticed because she was talking to the guy Felicity had had her own eyes on. In highsight, Iris wearing red always wins out over anything Felicity could possibly put on and also, she probably wasn't looking to hook up with her half-brother anyway. Oh, Wally. She'll never forget the look on his face when he realized he was checking out his sister (which she belatedly found out was because she was his sister and not because he was totally knocked out by her flawlessness). Amazing.

"Felicity. Hello? Are you still there?"

Frack. Why is she such a bad person? She can't even listen to her own friend rightfully complaining about something really crappy she did.

She presses a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes in lowkey self-hatred. "I know, I know! I suck. I'm the worst friend ever. I don't even deserve you."

"At one point, I took the train to come check up on you myself and you were nowhere to be found. I even went to your job and they told me you took a leave of absence. A week later I found out you managed to make time to see my boyfriend, while you couldn't even be bothered to send me a quick e-mail."

"To be fair, at the time I didn't know he was your boyfriend." She winces, because even she knows that's a lame excuse. She didn't know, though, honestly. It was about the first thing that came out of Barry's mouth when she met up with him, but it wasn't a premeditated crime of friendship. She was also still bitter about Oliver being so possessive back then, so that probably clouded her rationality. Also, she's just an asshole and Iris deserves a better friend.

"How would you? You never answer your damn phone." The tone of her voice is harsh, but Felicity knows that means she's more sad than angry. It's screwing with her brain. This is why she couldn't call her earlier, she would've come home in a heartbeat.

"Fine. Here it is. I got married. And, well, it was all a little complicated. It still is. My mom doesn't even know and I know you have her on speed dial and that you're probably, and rightfully! Angry right now, but don't you dare. I'll call her. Preferably sometime far in the future, but I will."

There's just a scoff on the other side of the line and she feels really, really bad. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt her best friend. "Have you been abducted by some sort of vampire sect? Are you doing drugs? What is up with you, Lis?"

That seems like an abnormally long and weird conversation to get into over the phone. "I promise I'll tell you exactly what happened, okay?" She sighs, because she does want to tell everyone she knows that she found someone and that they're happy, but the circumstances surrounding the how and the why would make it a very difficult conversation that she should probably talk about with Oliver first. "But for now, could you please try and trust me that when I tell you I'm happy, I really mean it, I."

It's silent for ten uncomfortably long seconds that feel like ten eternities, before she finally sighs, giving in. "You really got hitched?"

"Yeah. His name is Oliver, he's—he's great." She pauses, tries to rail in the huge smile on her face a little because it almost feels unfair that she gets to have this in her life, him. She finally feels like she's in a good place, a place where she can share him with the other people in her life. "I promise. I hope you'll get to meet him, sometime soon."

"Pictures or it didn't happen!"

She laughs, and Iris laughs, too, and she's so glad, because this doesn't mean the end of the gravelling or mean she doesn't have to buy Iris a year-supply of her favorite coffee and apology cupcakes, but it does mean they'll be okay. "Wait, okay, hold up."

She puts her on speaker as she starts scrolling through her phone's photo library. The obligatory stiff wedding picture they took at civil hall that kind of makes her cringe because it's them, but it's not them. There's one that has more than the usual defects, beside Sara and her two middle-fingers photobombing them, her eyes are half-lidded and Oliver is in the middle of talking (yeah, it surprised her, too—oh how the tables have turned). One she took herself where he's hugging her from behind, but he's shirtless and she's only wearing the bedsheet so it's a little too racy to send to Iris. There's no way her phone's cloud is protected as well as her own and there's no guarantee that at one point China White won't go after her social and / or professional life.

She ends up sending the one Oliver has on his desk in his study, where they're standing in the garden. It's from the waist up, his hand on her back, smiling down at her while she stands sideways and shows off the colorful flowers behind them like she's one of the models on the Price Is Right. The sun had been nice out and Thea was screwing around when she had taken it. Various graciously zoomed in versions of alike photos had surfaced over time.

It's a goofy one, but it's cute. She likes it.

She can't deny she's kind of holding her breath when she presses send and doesn't release it until Iris brings out a low, "Damn." Iris snorts, like she can't quite believe it. Neither can she, and she was there when it all gradually happened, so she feels her best friend on a personal level. "Now I understand why you didn't want to share."

"Okay, okay," she brushes it off, glad they're not facetiming so she can't see the blush creeping down her chest because she'd never hear the end of that. "Enough about me and my life. How are you?"

.

"Plant your feet outwards." A fair thing to say, she gets it. Stance is the entire foundation of a good defense and bla, bla. She can take constructive criticism because she's not a baby or an old white privileged man.

"Straighten your posture." She cracks her neck from left to right, straightening her posture, but clenching her jaw in the process because one) she hates working out and he's not motivating her, at all and two) he's just being really annoying and his arms look really good but she can't appreciate it fully without compromising her pride because he's being annoying. It's a vicious cycle.

He's just circling her now with his arms crossed over his chest, spitting out criticism and reminding her vaguely of one of those shitposters on reddit who dared question her knowledge of Dr. Who. "Keep your hands higher up."

"Oliver," she warns him, dangerous tone to her voice. She hits the punching bag half-heartedly, deciding to just quit hitting it all together. "Am I doing anything right?"

He raises his eyebrows, "Hey, you wanted to learn how to defend yourself." She narrows her eyes at him, because that's a new low and dare she say it, a little childish, too and is he..? Is he just flexing on purpose now, or what?

There's a beat, the heat radiating off him making the hairs on her arms stand straight up, and then she surges forward, and he does too, mouths meeting in the middle. He's halfway done with taking off his shirt, and she's in the middle of pushing her yoga pants down her hips when she pauses, laughing against his shoulder. "You know, if we're going to keep doing this, I'll have to get a new trainer."

He runs a hand down her side, making her shiver, tightening her grip on his arm. "I think this counts as a pretty good workout actually."

"Meh," she shrugs, trying to hide a smirk and he sends her an offended look, tilting his head sidewards. "Really, honey, you're going there?"

She snorts in response, which she really has to unlearn, because that's not sexy at all. Neither is cheesy pet names, so. They're even. "Really, you're going there? Honey?"

"Ah, I see how it is. You're just making fun of me now."

She's full on laughing now, choking out a sarcastic no when he picks her off the floor and muffles her giggles with his mouth, teeth knocking together from smiling. More often than not, they do end up here. She'd complain, if she really actually cared that much about her physical condition.

Granted, these are—decent workouts. Kind of fun, too.

.

"Hey, are you okay?" He asks, soft, while he shrugs out of his jacket. She can practically feel his warm gaze on the back of her neck. It's late and she's tired and she doesn't know what he is talking about.

"I'm fine, why?" She answers casually, avoiding eye contact as she pretends to be busy taking bobby pins out of her hair. How slow can a girl fake taking apart a bun? She knows exactly what he was talking about.

They met up with Iris and Barry so they could judge her life, in a friendly way. They were all just casually chilling and being cool and cracking jokes, and then Iris, pink margarita in hand, had to be all like, "oh my god, your kids are going to be so pretty". Barry was laughing, like he does, and Oliver was smiling that dumb smile and then she was all like, choking. Choking, as in a piece of bread escaping her mouth and ending up in her windpipe because she literally could not for the life of her breathe.

His hand is suddenly on the juncture between her neck and shoulder, his thumb caressing the back of her neck. It's not fair, because after the whole choking incident, he'd been pretty quiet for the rest of the night. Not his usual quietness, but different. Like she'd done something wrong. "You know what I'm talking about."

"Look, Oliver," she starts, sighing, as she grabs a hold of his wrist. "I know you're mad about the whole kids thi—"

"No, I'm not mad. It's just. I never really wanted kids. I didn't really think it would be a good fit, but. I don't know." He shakes his head, staring at her necklace instead of looking at her directly. "I met you and I kind of thought that maybe now I could. It's stupid." She lets go of his wrist, wraps her arm around his waist instead and turning in his arms. Because—God. It wasn't like that. At all.

"Oliver. I want children. With you, I do. Just. Not right now." She cups his face, and he smiles, timid, leaning down to kiss her. It's soft and gently and literally out of her dreams, but not able to keep her head from working overtime. She's given up hope by now. "In which right now is a generally broad time frame by which I mean the next few years. I know you're older than me and probably want to start sooner but hey, that's why biology has blessed men with the ability to procreate even after they've turned seventy. Not—Not that I want to wait that long, but still. There's too much other things I want to do before I exchange my dresses for mom jeans."

He raises an eyebrow, locking his fingers together at the small of her back and when she looks at him she almost feels stupid for feeling like she did two seconds ago. Of course he wouldn't be mad or try to push her. He just wanted to know the possibility was there.

"I want to at least move out of the literal basement and into bright daylight at work. Maybe get into applied sciences so you can retire and become a house-husband." She smirks and he leans down to peck her lips. She's about to deepen it and bring it to their bed when he pulls away, smiling suspiciously. "That reminds me. I wanted to ask you something."

He's asked her almost everything a guy could ask a girl. They're married, they're living together, and one time he casually admitted he needed her signature to finalize 'some stuff for his will'. It literally can't be children because they just discussed that. Somehow knowing all the things he can't ask her, doesn't stop her heart from racing with anxiety. Especially not when he sits her down on the bed and he's disappearing into their closet, and doesn't return until a painful thirty seconds later.

"I'm going to say something and you can't talk, okay? I know that's very difficult for you, but please try, yeah?" He's looking at her, careful and nervous, and she nods, because she feels like if she verbally answers him right now, she might not be able to stop babbling. Also, her vocal cords might not be working at the moment.

"My entire life I've watched people in love be torn apart. My parents, Sara, Nyssa. Diggle. For the longest time I was in darkness but your kindness, your wit and your trust brought me into the light." He takes her hand, and her gaze lands on his other hand, a small box resting in it. "You were that light." He swallows tightly, thumb running over her ring finger. "I still don't know if I deserve that, deserve you. But the way you make me feel is the best part of my life. You are my always, and I... I just want a chance to be yours, too."

Her heart is pounding in her chest, tears collecting in her eyes as her breath catches in the back of her throat. He takes out a ring; a small silver band, with a diamond the size of her college dorm room, or like a human organ. Her eyes widen, because 1) that ring is like, really big and pretty and making her question the reason she's alive, and 2) is this some alternate universe or some sick dream in which they didn't already get married?

When she looks at him, his jaw clenched like he's bracing himself but his gaze not faltering anyway, she knows he already knows what she's thinking. Why?

"You never got one, and I think you should." He presses his lips together, frowning as he struggles to find the right words. "Marrying me was never really your choice, but I guess—I'd hoped that it could be."

She presses her hand to his cheek, and looks at him, really looks at him for a moment before she leans in to press her lips against his. Hoping she can tell him this way, make him understand. That it was. It was her choice, and she would choose him everyday for the rest of her life if she needed to. It is her choice.

(In the morning, when she wakes up with her cheek pressed to his warm chest, his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder and an unfamiliar weight to her finger she can't help thinking he was the best choice she ever made.)

.

Being part of the bratva and some sort of elite rich white males circle in Starling City meant attending a mayoral benefit to show support to a different rich white male high on power. To say Felicity hated this side of her the mob life would be the grossest understatement since someone called the 2011 hacking of 77 million PlayStations all around the world 'intense'.

At least she gets to dance with Oliver and make everyone else really jealous of how good they look together. "So. Do you actually support this guy, or is this just politics?"

"He isn't the worst guy running," he offers after some consideration and she sends him a look, because, 'he isn't the worst option, per se' isn't a very good reason for publically endorsing someone. "Both, I guess," he adds, chuckling a little at the look she's giving him. "At least this way I can always pull the 'I endorsed you' card whenever he tries to really screw up this city."

She snorts, squeezing his shoulder as she looks at the other guests. "Right." When she looks back at him, he's looking at her with some sort of contemplative look, small grin playing on his lips.

"I love you," he says at the same time as she blurts out, "I need to pee." He laughs, quiet and boyish and she loves him so much it hurts a little. She sends him an apologetic look—she's such a romantic. "Don't let me keep you."

He presses a kiss to her temple before he lets go of her, signaling for Sara to come accompany her. Sara downs her drink in one gulp, handing it to the guy babbling her ear off and excusing herself.

"Bathroom," Felicity mouths at her as she makes a move for the two of them.

She groans in lieu of an actual greeting. "I was just eyeing a pretty brunette when that sleazeball attacked me with a monologue about how well his company was doing and apparently, how small his dick is."

"Ah, men," Felicity sighs mockingly, before patting Oliver on the shoulder and taking a hold of Sara's arm instead. Oliver just scoffs, shaking his head. The other blonde sticks her tongue out at him over her shoulder, emphasizing, "Who needs them."

She and Sara are about to enter the bathroom, when someone grabs both of them from behind. A hand covers her mouth, and she kicking and screaming and praying she doesn't pee herself right now. That would be an embarrassing death. Sara reaches behind her and, in something that in Felicity's mind would require for her to be actual Wonder Woman, throws the man over her shoulder and onto the floor, before knocking him out cold.

She then reaches out for Felicity's own personal rude grabber, but he grabs her arm, revealing China White's symbol tattooed on his wrist. Right, why not? Sara rolls her eyes, twists his arm around until his hold on Felicity loosens enough for her to escape. The asian man uses his free hand to grab Sara by her neck, choking her at a safe distance. Felicity eyes widen as Sara looks at her and then back at the man who's trying to kill her. Trying to kill her. Right.

Felicity's brain starts working again and she punches the guy in the face. She yelps out in pain, shaking her hand as he starts laughing. Spitting out some blood on the floor next to him, he tells her, "I'll get to you in a minute, beautiful."

Okay. He wants to be a little condescending misogynist on top of being a murdering asshole? Fine. She'll threat him like just that—she stabs her heel into his foot, twisting around while he cries from pain. She's surprised that actually worked for about five seconds before muscle memory kicks into action.

She elbows him in the stomach, his fingers loosening around Sara's throat and allowing her to hit him on the back of his neck. He sinks down on his knees and Sara gives him one final blow, taking Felicity with him to the floor since her heel is still stuck. In his body. God, if she survives this she's going to be so sick. Also. She's going to need a lot of ice cream.

She leans her hands on her knees as she tries catching her breath, Sara patting her on the shoulder with a laugh. "You did good, princ—"

"There they are!" Felicity groans, throwing her head back. She doesn't need to turn her head to know there's more of China White's little helpers approaching. For real? This is possibly the worst scenario ever for when you're about to be chased down—with a full bladder and in an incredibly tight dress. Seriously, these bad guys have the worst timing, ever.

"Stairs! Go," she yells, pushing her forwards and into the direction of the door as she takes out another two guys while all Felicity manages to do is almost fall flat on her face. Why is she wearing heels? Why must she and all other woman cause this kind of harm upon themselves?

She stumbles through the door, opting for down until she spots another herd of Asian men storming up so she figures going up is the only other option she has if she doesn't want to die while being lectured by Sara about following her 'damn orders' and all.

"Sa..Sara," she pants, because okay, she's been working out and all, but she still can't walk more than three stairs without a little (twenty minutes or so) breather in between. It's not because she's weak, it's because she spends most of her time behind her computer and she's weak.

"Come on, Lis. We have to get to the roof so we can lock them—" Felicity's eyes widen as the door to the fifth floor opens and a minion stabs Sara in the shoulder. She's at a loss of words as Sara sighs deeply, connecting her stabber's head with the nearest wall before throwing him over the railing and down the stairs. Felicity feels like some really badass Paramore song should be playing on the background as the other blond reaches for the dagger, "Here's to not having hit any important arteries."

Felicity tries to reach out, warn her. "Sara, don't—"

She winces as Sara pulls out the dagger anyway, not even flinching as she smirks, discarding the object by ramming it in some bad guy's shoulder when he tries to make a pass at her. "Pain and I came to a little understanding years ago." She connects his head with her knee before grabbing Felicity's arm and pulling her back up the stairs.

They make it up the roof, and Sara barricades the door with a long piece of metal, taking Felicity's hand as she pulls her over to the edge, looking for a way down. Felicity gulps, taking a few steps back because even though her body is still shaking with adrenaline, that's a long way down.

"Normally I would try and go down the side, but it can't be long until Oliver either puts a stop to this or White gives in and retracts her men and I don't think I can carry you when you pass out."

"If I pass out," she corrects her, pushing her glasses further up her nose and Sara huffs, snickers a little before she smirks, "You're cute."

Felicity is about to open her mouth when Sara's eyes widen and she starts running towards her, pushing her aside. Everything is going so fast she barely registers a throwing scar scraping the side of her face before the next one digs into Sara's chest. Another one follows and another follows and they keep coming and coming until Sara is near the edge of the roof. "Sara!" She cries out, reaching out for her, fingers grasping hers, tears clouding her vision before she falls over.

"No," she screams, sinking down on her knees as she watches Sara's body hit the floor with a loud thud that she knows will haunt her dreams for the rest of her life, hand lingering in the air. "No," she gasps, falling back on her back. Gravel scraping her hands, her heart thumping against her rib cage like it's giving one last show before it gives out.

"No," she whispers, barely registering China White appearing into her view, long white hair blowing in the mind as she kneels over her with a wicked smile. "Finally, we meet again."

Blood rushes back to her ears and suddenly she hears everything happening around her, China's voice, the banging against the door, the sound of metal giving in, a sword being pulled from a holster.

"I'm sorry, Sara," she whispers, tears spilling from her eyes as China presses the tip of her sword into her chest, smirk wide and cold. She could try and fight, but she doesn't want to—not when… Not when she could end this, for everyone. She wraps a hand around the blade, staring straight into the devil's eyes. Blood drips down the sword, as she, shakily, but strong, spits out, "Just do it."

"Any last words?"

Normally she opts for words like 'frick', and when she's feeling extra risky she'll even use 'frack, but this moment calls for a really big fu-the door blasts off it's hinges and Diggle immediately makes a move for the sword, kicking it out of China's hand. A combat between her, Digg, Alexei and Vyacheslav starts, but she barely registers it as two familiar arms wrap around her and pull her back to the staircase, more of Oliver's men passing them on their way to the roof. He takes her face in his hand, thumb running over the cut on her face making her wince. His brow is furrowed, and he looks like he's about to cry. "Where's Sara?"

"She—I don't—the roof. She fell, and I-" She chokes on her words, a sob erupting from her throat softly before more and more follow. He presses her head into his chest, kissing the crown of her head.

Somehow they get to the ground floor and outside where Laurel is crouched over her body, shaky fingers trying to find a pulse and trying to postpone saying what everyone already knows. Nobody falls off a six story building and walks away alive. Not even Sara Lance.

Her vision starts flashing and suddenly she can't—she can't breathe. Her hands tremble as she reaches out for Oliver, her knees already giving out. "Sa-Sara." Her chest hurts and her face feels warm and her head is spinning and she can't—everything turns black.

When she opens her eyes she's on a cemetery. The rain makes the hair on her skin stand straight up, and she isn't sure why she's here until she sees her. She's kneeling down next to a grave in the far distance and as soon as Felicity spots the flash of blonde hair, her feet start moving. She wants to run, but she can't.

Because she guesses that's not what happened the first time, anyway. It figures her mind takes her back to her fondest memory of Sara.

Sara had went off the grid for a few days and when she asked anyone, they wouldn't tell her why or where she was. Finally she gave in and just hacked into her phone's GPS. Now she knows what kind of invasion of privacy that was, and how bad of friend she was being really, and that it was probably about the third worst idea she's ever had, but at the time she was worried out of her mind and expected to find her somewhere dead in a ditch. Or in an actual grave.

She stops a few feet away from Sara, hovering there because she suddenly realized she didn't actually know what she was doing her now that she wasn't injured or dead. Sara must know she's there because she starts talking. "I know I should've left my phone."

Felicity's eyes land on the headstone, and it suddenly clicks. Nyssa al Ghul. Nyssa. "I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't know," she offers, lamely as she takes a step closer. The other blonde turns her head, sniffing lightly as she rises up to her feet, wiping her dirt stained fingers on the side of her thighs. "Not for hacking into your phone, which I'm also sorry about, but." She clears her dry throat, digging her nails into the palm of her hands and deciding to just—shut up.

She huffs, brushing her hand over the top of the stone. "I'm surprised Laurel hasn't tried that trick yet. Then again, she probably figured out where I was after a while anyway. It's not really a secret."

"I'm not going to pretend like I know, because I don't, but I do know she meant a lot to you," she says, not knowing what else to say as she takes another step closer, tentatively reaching out to touch Sara's hand in comfort.

The other woman clenches her teeth together, a tear rolling down her cheek and she swallows, tightly. "For a long time I never really had anyone, never really knew what my place was on this earth and… She was… My home, my person. She was where I belonged."

Felicity sniffs herself, wiping away a few strands of wet hair, but it feels wrong to be this sad about a situation she doesn't even fully understand, never even lived. It's fine, she doesn't need to know everything. She figures that if Sara wants her to know, she'll learn about it eventually. In time. But, God. She hates that Sara feels this way.

She smiles, small and broken, but it's still just as brave, just as strong, just as unapologetic as always. "You know, Laurel thinks I stay with Oliver because I have some sort of emotional trauma or, or PTSD, or something," she pauses, smile fading into something more serious, "but I stay because—they are my people now." She looks away from Nyssa's stone eventually, up at her. "You all are."

"She did know how to make a really good cocktail," she blurts out, closing her eyes at her own insensitivity. Because cocktails is what Sara wanted to remember about her most, sure. To her surprise, Sara laughs, loud and bold and bright, wiping a tear away from her cheek before slinging her arm around Felicity's shoulder. "That she did."

Suddenly it's hard to breathe again, and she gasps and gasps until Sara fades into black and Oliver appears into view. She immediately recognizes their surroundings just by looking at the ceiling. They're in medbay at the mansion. Her hand wraps around his arm tightly, tears escaping from her eyes and sliding down her temples as she turns her head to look at him. She doesn't have the strength to sit up.

The sobs come first, his hand on the side of her face second, and then the words spill. "This is, this is all m-my f-fault."

"No." He demands, shaking his head. But she sees his eyes, the way they're glazed over with tears, the way he's looking at her, the way he blames—not her—but himself. For not being able to save her. "No. She did this. That—This wasn't your fault, okay? It wasn't."

She sniffs, her breathing hitching in the back of her throat and struggling to come out anything less than shaky, her body protesting until she's finally able to catch her breath. The tears falling silently now as she directs her gaze back to the ceiling. She decides. "Oli-Oliver."

He brushes her hair back from her face, nodding his head. His brow is furrowed together, bags under his eyes and his eyes a kind of exhausted that few people know. She doesn't have to ask to know. Her voice is eerily steady, scaring herself. "You know what you have to do now, right?"

He nods again, eyes hard, and she watches his adam's apple bob up and down, her own chest heaving from labored breathing, before she elaborates, more tears sliding down her skin. "You have to kill her."

He inhales sharply, putting his free hand over hers. "I know."

.

It's pretty easy to get lost in the anger, in the need for revenge so they don't have to feel the pain, feel the sadness. She takes it upon herself to start hacking back into China's servers to find out her weaknesses and where to find her, no discussion necessary, and he spends most of his time training to the point his muscles are trembling, meeting up with his sources to find out more about China, or yelling at the other's for not trying hard enough. It keeps them determined, ready, but also far apart.

So naturally, instead of talking to him about it, she ignores it until she blurts it out in the most awkward possible situation. Read: dinner with most of the guys and Thea. Something along the lines of "Can we actually fight instead of doing this passive-aggressive kind of 'pass me the salt, please' and 'I'm going to take a shower first, is that okay' thing? It's exhausting." while she's stabbing her fork in her peas aimlessly.

It turns so quiet she can hear her own pulse, before Roy starts laughing and doesn't stop until someone (Thea, obviously) kicks him in the shin.

He manages to unclench his jaw and loosen his grip on his own fork long enough to grunt, "Felicity, a moment."

He takes her by the elbow and leads her into his study, sending her an expectant look.

She waits a moment, before gently asking, "Are you mad at me? For what happened on that roof, what happened to S—" Because she would understand if he did, if he was—she would.

"You were ready to die, weren't you?" He spits out suddenly, interrupting her, and she's taken back for a second because was he mad at her for that? He runs a hand over his hair, visibly trying to calm himself down, but his voice is still not quite as steady as usual. "I saw you, holding that blade, ready to—"

"I was," she admits, interrupting him this time, and his face deflates, like he had wanted her to defy him. "I wanted it to be over. I didn't want anyone else to die or get hurt to save me."

He is about to say something, but discernibly changes his mind, nodding instead, signaling he understands or, or figuring he wouldn't be able to change her mind about this particular issue anyway. He leans back against his desk, hands supporting his weight.

It's her turn. "You blame yourself."

He stiffens, but doesn't say anything. His knuckles turn white from his grip on the desk. She takes a step closer to him, running a hand up his arm. "You—" she shakes her head, closing her eyes. "You don't want me to blame myself for something she did, but you'll blame yourself?"

Sometimes he's so frustrating.

"I could've, I should've noticed you two were gone for too long sooner, or I should've send Diggle with you or—"

"For a trip to the bathroom?" She halts her hand on his shoulder, her mind flashing to Sara pulling out a dagger from that exact place like she was taking out a splinter. "We don't have to do this to ourselves. It's not what Sara would have wanted. She would have wanted us to take her down, and make sure she burns for what she did."

He nods, hesitantly, before taking her hand in his and kissing the inside of her wrist. He looks up at her, nods turning into shakes, tears collecting in his eyes, "I'm sorry."

She moves her hand to back of his head and presses it against her collarbone, squeezing her eyes shut so her own tears can fall. "I'm sorry, too."

.

She finally manages to get through China's firewalls a week after Sara's death, but has to set off a few alarm bells on the way there. She cracks her fingers (which isn't as painless as she had expected), ready to take down whoever is part of this hackathon on the other side of the screen.

Diggle and Oliver are both hovering over each of her respective shoulders, while Roy paces back and forth in front of her and her trustworthy companion—the computer.

All it takes are ten fingers, thirty-five minutes, a little piece of her dignity and all of her bomb-ass hacking skills, but she perseveres. All it'll take it just one last press of a button. "This is for Sara, you albino-haired bitch. May that weave forever burn in hell."

She presses enter as Roy erupts into a loud cheer of joy, Diggle rubbing his face with a sigh of relief as Oliver leans down, looking at her in expectancy. He knows exactly what she is thinking. He understands. He understand that this isn't about justice, or making things right. This is about vengeance, and that's okay. She looks at him, nods firmly once, before telling him, "Winick Tower. The basement, to be precise. I could see about forty guys on the security cams before she cut me off."

"Diggle, alarm the others. Roy, start loading the car with gear."

She catches his arm before he turns away completely, staring up at him, feeling a lot of things at once. Most conflicting with others. "Be careful."

"She won't get away," he promises, leaning down to press his lips to hers for a second. The warmth of his presence lingers for a long while as she waits, and waits, and waits.

.

They spread half of Sara's ashes in the sea on a Tuesday, so she can always travel wherever she wants to. So she can always be a part of something. Laurel will spread the rest of it on top of Nyssa's grave, so they can be together at last.

She finds him sitting in the sand, and sinks down next to him.

"Thank you," she tells him after a while, shoulder brushing together as she stares at the same sunset as he is. Thanking whoever is up there that they get to share the same one.

"For what?" He asks, turning his head to look at her instead. His fingers twitch in the sand, but he doesn't reach out. Like maybe he's afraid this is a goodbye.

"I don't know?" She smiles, weak—because the stitches on the side of her face still hurt—but content. "Everything. Starting a mob war to save my life when you could've easily given me up and moved on. Ending a mob war so I could be safe."

"I was just protecting my wife."

She leans into him, pressing her lips against his shoulder before resting her head there. He looks back out at the sea, and she can see him grit his teeth together. "You know you could leave now, right? If you wanted to."

She takes her head of his shoulder, trying to get a better look at his face instead. "Do you want me to?" She licks her lips, salty from the beach air surrounding them, as she clarifies. "Leave."

"No," he says, quick and without any hesitance, before he leans down and kisses her, hard, like he desperately needs her to know. Her hands clench his shoulders, nails digging into them. All she can do is kiss him back, kiss him back, kiss him back, because she needs him to know, too.

He rest his forehead against hers and she catches her breath for a second before she tells him. "I don't. Want to leave. For the record." Her hand catches his, thumb running over his bruised knuckles before kissing them gently.

He kisses her again, so soft she barely registers it, before he presses his lips to her temple, and she thinks of their first meeting, of his bad excuses and that damn pen in her mouth, and how she could have never imagined this, any of it. She would take back some of it, some of the trauma, she can't lie about that, but. She thinks that maybe this was always where she was supposed to end up, with whom she was supposed to end up. "Good."

.

fin.