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“Mr. Oliver?”
Raisa’s careful tone causes his stomach to fill with lead.
When he looks up from his desk, he doesn’t even have to ask her what she’s referring to. He can read the worry plain on her face, in her solemn, knowing look. It’s a quiet, secret language they’ve perfected over the years.
“She’s worse,” Raisa whispers to him in Russian. And if the pitiful look she's giving him now is not enough to make panic flare up within his chest, the fact that she's using Russian--to prevent listening ears from overhearing--is more than enough.
He swallows, trying--and failing--to repress the sudden, ugly worry ravaging its way through his heart. Worse . Such a vague and agonizing word, one that tells him exactly nothing and yet conveys everything regarding the woman he loves in the other room. Is she worse than she was a few minutes ago or a few months ago? Is she worse than even his deepest, most twisted fears? Is she worse than ever and beyond rescuing?
Then again, when was the last time either of them was actually better after sundown? Nighttime remains more unpredictable than the day, darkness more oppressive than the light.
And he hates this part--the plummeting, endless abyss before the crash, the sharp reminder that even on a quiet, stormless night, there can be no escape from the mind’s hellish surges. Purgatory is forever.
He spots the familiar prescription bottle sitting on top of his dresser, taunting him. Next to it, flickering against the light, lies a long, thin...cruel needle. A sedative.
“I do not wish to harm her, Mr. Oliver. But perhaps, if she harms herself...”
“No. No needles,” he reminds her sternly. He doesn’t mean to sound harsh. He’s not angry at Raisa. He’s not angry at anyone , really, other than the universe for allowing this to happen to the one he loves.
God, he hopes it doesn't come to that.
He made a promise to her once that he'd never inject her with anything, no matter what happens.
Carefully, he swipes the container up as he slowly makes his way towards the adjoining bedroom door--the open gate between their respective cages, their respective prisons.
This big place used to be sacred; now it’s become tainted. The mansion is where she used to stay as a regular guest during the summers when they were children. As kids, they would unlock the door and sneak in and out of each other’s rooms next door and have long chats filled with laughter and playful mischief. As teenagers, however, they soon discovered that co-ed sleepovers were not as innocent nor as possible as they had been during the golden days of youth. But they still made an effort to say goodnight to one another, while the rest of the house slept unaware. Even when she went to M.I.T., he personally never allowed anyone else to stay in her room, the room next to his own, the one corner of the universe that remained purely and completely theirs.
But that was many years ago...before they both became orphans. Before the nightmares. Before the pain. Before he became like the very monsters he’s trying to protect her from.
They grew up together sleeping a wall apart. Best case scenario, he expects that they’ll grow old together the same way.
It takes him an eternal second to cross the threshold. One second for his mind to fill with damaging scenarios. One second to worry if this is the night he loses her forever.
Oliver takes a deep breath, pausing despite himself. Invariably, the moment before he steps into her room, into her safe space, he feels severely unqualified to administer any sort of aid. He’s the last person in the world who can make the demons recede.
Her room is dimly lit, with warm yellow light coming from a lamp on a small end table, illuminating just enough of her bed for him to see her. There she stands, hunched over her computer, like always, utterly immersed within her vast, coded, digital world, a world he can never really follow her into. The world outside this room could be crumbling to pieces, and she'd never know. And maybe it's better this way, for her to retain some naivety about how unkind the real world can truly be, how it preys on the gentlest of souls.
She doesn't react, doesn't see or hear him come in. Her distinctive ponytail is falling loose and knotting, in a state of disarray. The harsh blue light of the computer illuminates her worn but concentrated face. Her eyebrows are drawn tight with determination, her cheeks thinner and paler today, probably because she still hasn't eaten anything, if the untouched plate on her coffee table is any indication.
Stuffing the bottle of pills into his pocket, he approaches her unsafe haven, softly, gently, like a panther aiming to befriend a deer,. That’s when he hears her.
“I have to find it...skeleton key...I have to find it...” she mutters to herself, typing away, never ceasing, working herself back into paranoia and exhaustion.
She’s haunted by ghosts even he can’t kill.
And he hates seeing her like this, so close and so far beyond his reach.
Every time is like the first time. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to this dreadful urgency. He never wants to get used to this.
Like a match being struck, he can feel his own insatiable need to fix this sparking within him, a kind of throbbing violence that makes him tremble. On the outside he may be stoic, but it’s just a facade in effort to quell the craze inside him. He feels like he’s suffocating in his own skin, so utterly powerless.
But he only allows himself to be angry for three seconds. He doesn't want to make her more upset. He's here to heal her, which is as frustrating as it is painfully ironic. She's done more for him than he will ever be able to do for her.
Suddenly, she stops typing.
He feels the instant the room shifts, the instant her whole body stiffens as her walls go up, already on guard, already ready to run away from him.
She looks at him with closed-off and cautious eyes. “Are...are you my doctor?” she asks quietly.
He swallows the lump in his throat. “No, Felicity. I’m...” he hesitates, always unsure how to begin. “I’m your friend,” he settles.
It feels hollow. but at least it’s a start. It’s the truth. And even if she doesn't remember right now, he promised her he’d never lie to her again.
“My friend?” she asks, unconvinced.
He just nods, trying to ignore the flare of selfish pain that rips through him. It doesn’t matter how many times they go through this twisted ritual. This part still guts him every time--every time she doesn’t recognize him; every time she looks scared and lost and unsure, such a frail fragment of the woman he knows.
“We...we haven’t seen each other in awhile,” he finally says. And that’s true enough. It feels like it’s been years since he’s really seen the woman he loves.
Nervously, Oliver stuffs both his hands into his pockets, whether for her sake or his own, he’s not entirely sure. “Felicity, do you know where you are?”
She frowns deeply, adorably, eyes wandering around the large space with a slight pout in her lips. “My room?” she asks. Yet it’s the way she asks, in that wonderful Felicity way, that really gives him pause, gives him hope. She asks not because she’s truly uncertain, but more like she’s wondering why he’s even asking her in the first place. Which means she can’t be too far gone after all.
“And where is your room?” he continues, daring to hedge just a step closer. His heart lifts when she doesn’t back away from him.
“Upstairs to the left, down the second hallway. The left window doesn’t open,” she recites faithfully, glancing towards the window in question.
His lips twitch. He recalls with fondness one particular night they tried to sneak out through her window and discovered just how inoperable it was. Since inheriting the mansion, he’s never had the desire to have it replaced. After all, it seems the blueprints of her childhood never go away. Her feelings are less constant.
And Oliver doesn’t know what does it this time. He can never predict what triggers the change--perhaps, she’s remembering that same night of teenage mischief--but he sees the moment the light goes off behind her eyes, the moment she finally sees him. Like waking up, one second she’s looking through him, and then suddenly she’s looking at him...like she knows him, like she can stare straight into his soul. Just like when they were kids.
He can’t breathe.
She hasn’t looked at him with such deep recognition like this in weeks . The intensity leaves him awestruck. He hadn’t realized how much he’s been aching to see once more that soft, trusting, vulnerable gaze. But now that he has it, has her back again for just a moment, his brave, beautiful Felicity...he doesn’t want her to leave him again.
“Oliver?” The hesitation in her voice nearly chokes him.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
She makes some kind of sound he has no name for--something between sorrowful and relieved--and then she runs into his arms, slamming into his chest. He has no choice but to scoop her up into his arms, hauling her as close to him as she can get, cradling the back of her precious head, pressing her heartbeat up against his own where it belongs.
She clings to him as desperately as he clings to her, clawing her fists into his clothes, rubbing her nose against his neck, breathing him in.
And then she lets out another noise, this one smaller but just as fierce. It’s such a quiet whimper, he almost thinks he imagines it. But he knows it’s real. He can feel her quivering agony down to his bones. He’s grown so attuned to her every sound that he recognizes the acute cry for what it is.
And in that moment, he doesn't want anyone else to touch her. He’s the first person in the world who will do everything, anything to keep her safe. He may be the least worthy, but he needs to be the one who comforts her. (He still hasn’t determined where the line between selfish yearning and selfless desperation resides where she’s concerned, and yet he doesn’t really want to make up his mind about that either.)
“I missed you,” she mumbles against his throat.
“I missed you, too,” he manages to get out. You have no idea how much.
Reluctantly, Oliver lets her slide out of his grasp just enough to look up at him. She studies him intently, cataloging all of his face, searching for the secrets he keeps burying and uncovering and burying again.
Felicity reaches up to rest her palm against his cheek, and he starts, because now he’s starting to forget what this feels like.
“When did you get back?” She means the island. Her memories always seem to reset back to the day he first returned after five years in hell...only to find another five years of hell awaiting for him at his doorstep.
“Just now,” he answers honestly. He’s never really home until she comes back to him.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?” He stills instantly at her grave tone. But then he sees--the sparkle, the teasing in her eyes.
“You have mopey face. Are you here to tell me that I'm crazy?” She tips her head at him playfully.
He tries not to smile, but there are some things that simply cannot be helped. That's his Felicity...always to the point, always making the world a brighter place even as her own world spins out of control.
He leans in close, like they’re sharing an old, secret antic. “That depends. Are you crazy?”
She sighs, averting her gaze, as she takes to fiddling with the wrinkles of his shirt. “I know when I’m being like Ophelia.”
His smile fades. While this isn’t the first time she’s used that joke--so he actually understands the reference--this is the first time she’s done so in such a despondent tone, as though she truly believes what she says. So he decides to tease her, to lighten the mood, to make her smile. Anything to make her smile, to feel as normal as she craves to be. What a messed up pair they make.
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t study Shakespeare, remember?”
It works a little. At least she’s looking him in the eye again.
“I promise I'm not as bad as the doctors think I am.”
His heart beats a little faster at that, filling with trouble that somehow she knows . Even so, he shakes his head, trying to assuage her. “Who said anything about--”
“You don't have to pretend. I saw the medical documents.”
He frowns, studying her right back in the silence, until it finally hits him. “You hacked into your medical records.”
The way her eyes grow just a touch wider, deceptively innocent, is conformation enough.
“Fe-li-ci-ty...” he prompts.
“Ugh. Hacking is such a dirty word.” She scrunches her nose, an act that he should not find as endearing as he does. “Oliver, I am a Grade A genius.”
“I don’t need to be told that. But do we need to have a conversation about computer privileges again?”
“Is that judgment I’m hearing?”
They share a look, as he attempts to admonish her, while she just silently challenges him to do something to stop her, when they both know he never will. He sighs with amusement mixed with pride. But the concern never goes away.
“I mean, technically, they are my confidential patient files that I’m...perusing. I have a right to know. According to the doctors, I should be moved to an institution.”
He starts. The way she just casually mentions it, as though sending her to a place like that, all alone and away from him didn’t absolutely disturb and terrify him on every possible level. In reality, though, he knows her life under constant care of trained professionals would not be that much different than her is now. And it’s not as though he and Raisa and John have never discussed this very topic. He’s discussed it while shaking to the core and blatantly refusing to allow anyone other than their family doctor near her, but he’s discussed it.
What if she has an episode when he’s not around to keep her from hurting herself? What if she hacks her way into the FBI again and the police come calling? What if by some chance that broken window betrays him and manages to crack itself open just enough for her to slip out and get lost?
But what if he sends her away and loses her forever anyway?
And why does he so badly need her here in their childhood home? Is it for her? Or is it for him?
He clears his throat. “We’ve already had this talk. Many times. And you’re staying here.”
“Promise me?” she asks in a soft, timid voice he hardly recognizes. He feels as though someone’s punched all the air out of him. But then she looks up at him with those big blue eyes, so lost, silently pleading with him, as though he holds all the answers. Oh, this is why he can never send her away. This familiar, steady, disarming look.
“I promise,” he vows. “And I promise not to reveal your...browsing history to the doctor.”
That puts a little spark back in her expression. “Well that’s good, since I keep your secret, too.” She winks at him.
Which one? he wonders.
But before he can even dare to tackle that subject, her computer starts beeping, and she’s darting away from him to resume her typing marathon.
Please don’t go. I just got you back.
“Felicity,” he warns, moving to stand beside her and watch her work.
“Just...one second.... It’s been running all day.”
Felicity types for another minute or so, and then like a tornado dissipating, she goes still, glancing back at him for approval. “So what do you think?” she asks, almost giddy.
He swallows when he sees it--a night time camera shot from a street corner in The Glades. It’s dark and grainy, but he can make out the shadow of a figure in the middle of the street. A hooded shadow.
He tries to keep his voice casual. “You...you’ve been tracking the vigilante?”
“Mm-hmm.” She smiles, clearly pleased with her handiwork.
“Took me awhile. This hood guy , as the internet is calling him, is pretty clever, I’ll give him that, trying to make it appear like there is no method to his madness--”
“Well, maybe there isn’t--”
“Oh, there is. Trust me. I am an expert at madness--” She winces. “Poor choice of words, sorry.” She shakes her head a bit, grabbing his arm to pull him closer still. “Take a look at these videos I found from the back alley of his secret lair.”
He pretends to focus intently on the blurry video, watching himself hop onto his motorcycle before taking off into the night. “His secret lair is an abandoned nightclub?”
She shrugs, ignoring his over-the-top skepticism, sticking her chin out proudly. “Well, I’ll admit, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing location, but we can’t all be a Queen heir, can we?”
She’s defending him, he realizes. She’s defending the vigilante. To him.
All these months of trying to keep this part of his life as far away from her as possible, and in her classic, brilliant Felicity way, she’s somehow managed to plop herself directly into it.
He’s so stunned, reeling from this new information, that it takes him a moment to catch up to what she’s saying.
“--so with my new algorithm that compiles and predicts all the main routes the vigilante takes in and out of The Glades... Oliver, I think the vigilante could be a lot closer to home than we realize.”
She’s not wrong in this case, and that’s what scares him even more.
He must not disguise his reaction very well, because whatever she reads in his expression sends her babbling again. “Look, I know my brain is not always the most reliable source when it comes to these sorts of things, but cameras and news articles don’t lie. Well, cameras don’t lie at least. Unless someone hacked into the entire city’s traffic camera system, which is...technically not impossible but highly unlikely and would take at least--”
“I want you to stay out of this, okay?” He cuts off her rant. He can’t take this anymore. He can’t just stand here calmly and listen to her casually talk about the vigilante, as if she were talking about her favorite character in a book.
“Why?”
“Because this guy--whoever he is--he’s dangerous.”
“I don’t know. Seems to me he’s just trying to help. I’ll admit, his methods are slightly misguided but…”
He crosses his arms, waiting for her to finish. “But?” he prompts.
“Oliver, I just want to meet him.” Something in her voice...changes. Elevates. Fills with some timbre that’s never been there before. She’s acting like...like a fan . Of the vigilante.
“You want to meet the vigilante?” he almost growls but manages to keep himself in check.
“Yes!” she answers brightly. “Don’t you?”
“Not particularly.”
“I just want to tell him how amazing he is. To say thank you. Everything he sacrifices to keep the people of this city safe, to keep me safe, to keep you safe. It kind of makes him a hero, doesn’t it?”
He sighs heavily. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that this other side of her still exists, when there’s so much else happening on the surface that breaks his heart. Her brightness is enough to give him hope, even as every fibre of his being revolts against every word she says.
She’s always had a vivid imagination, but not like this. This is one thing that she is completely right about. But telling her means opening up a rusty can of worms and lies, and he’s not ready to let her see the worst parts of him yet. He does what he does so she can see what little humanity he keeps. He keeps for her. It’s wrong, he knows. And he’s only half a person, when he’s with her and when he’s without her. But he’ll gladly go insane if it means preserving her sanity. It’s more than he deserves, anyway. She’s more than he deserves.
“Let’s talk more about this in the morning. It’s time for bed.”
She pouts. “Noooo. But I’m not sleepy.”
“Yes, you are. Come on.”
Oliver practically drags her over to her large queen-sized bed, the same bed she’s had since she was seven and first came to live with his family. Carefully, he pulls the prescription bottle out of his pocket and holds it out to her expectantly.
She makes a face in disgust.
“Please,” he whispers.
“Those gross pills never work. They don’t help me sleep.”
After another half-hearted attempt, he just sighs, stashing the pills back into his pocket. “Well then, what does?”
She tips her head, and to her credit, she at least pretends to contemplate his question for a few seconds before responding. “Hmm...hacking.”
He’s already shaking his head no.
“You.” She gently tugs on the front, unused belt loops in his jeans, pulling herself nearer to him. “You make everything better.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“And I seriously disagree with you. Why can’t I stay in your room with you?”
His heart kicks into overdrive as she leans in even closer. Boundaries, Oliver.
“Felicity…” He breathes her name to caution her, but it comes out more desperate than deterring.
“Oliver…” She copies his tone.
He doesn’t know how to go on, until he does. And he knows he should stop her from leaning in this close, from rising up on her tiptoes, from brushing the tip of her warm, soft nose against his. But he just doesn’t have the strength to fight her anymore. Not tonight. He needs to feel loved and protected as much as she does.
So he lets her kiss him. And he kisses her back.
It’s not a harsh or passionate kiss like the ones they used to share in the early years; it’s not an inferno of hunger and need. No, this one is more tender and slow, more patient, more like the dying embers of a warm hearth, like the easy swell of a sunrise.
And when they eventually break away, her power over him feels even greater. Those eyes calling out to him, wanting him... It’s addictive to be needed this way. He craves her company as much as she seems to crave his.
Sometimes he feels ineptly qualified to cater to her every psychological need, no matter how much she asks of him. Sometimes he feels disturbingly overly qualified. He’s incapable of saying no to her.
“Fine,” he says at last. “I’ll stay with you till you’re sleeping.”
She smiles, clearly relishing her victory. He can’t even be sorry seeing her so happy.
“And rain will make the flowers grow,” she chimes, twisting out of his arms to begin removing a few of her twenty-something pillows.
“What?” he asks, helping her pull back the duvet.
“It’s from Les Mis, remember? We watched it last week.”
He stills. Last week? She remembers that?
And now, he wonders, not for the first time, if her brain isn’t actually spiraling out of wack, but instead if it’s something more like what Barry’s heart was while he was in that coma. Moving too fast for the doctors to pick up. What if her brain is just moving too fast that the doctors have no other choice but to label her as something beyond reason?
And as though he’s the one who’s been struck by lightning, Oliver knows that this odd thing about Felicity Smoak...it’s not a curse. It’s a gift. Because everything about her is a gift.
“You sure you want me to stay?” He tries to mask the hope swelling inside him, bursting like honey.
“Come here,” she reaches for him, yanking him down onto the bed to plop beside her. “I always sleep better when I’m next to you anyway.”
She wakes in a cold sweat to an abrupt shifting on her mattress. Her bad vision barely has time to adjust to the pitch darkness before she’s startled by a painful groan. She scurries in the abyss to turn on the lamp--to chase the demons away with the light.
She squints against the brightness, putting on her glasses...and then she sees him.
“Oh, Oliver...” she breathes, her heart squeezing.
Her wonderful, darling friend--who’s always been far more than a friend--trembles and twists in the night, fighting against faceless enemies she can neither stop nor see, struggling mercilessly, endlessly. She knows exactly what that’s like.
She chases monsters in the day, while he chases monsters in the night. So maybe they can be each other’s cure.
And so Felicity does the only thing she knows how to do, the only thing within her power to do. She throws herself into the fire with him, wrapping her arms tight around his back, hauling herself against him, pressing her ear up against his back where she can feel his heartbeat, her favorite spot in the whole world. She loves the strength of his heart.
His whole body is tight, cramped and coiled in a near fetal position. “Please,” he mutters in his sleep. “Please, make it stop. Make it stop make it stop make it stop...”
I want to, honey. I want to so much.
He flinches against a memory of a swift blow, shaking them both, but she doesn’t let go. He whines in pain, lingering in a hole of agony she has no name for. God, she’s never really been a violent person, but sometimes she just wants to find whoever did this to him on that island and make their lives as living hell. See how they like spending their nights, afraid and ashamed and broken and...and still so beautiful.
Felicity holds onto him just a little bit tighter, squishing her face against the burning muscles of his body, as though to mold herself into his form permanently. She can feel the raised pattern of one of his scars. It’s from a knife wound apparently--one of many, at least that’s all he’s told her. Still, she knows it well. She’s charted the history written into his skin so many times. She even has secret names for some of his scars, like constellations, names like valiant and stubborn and winsome.
While he whimpers in his sleep, there comes a moment, so brief and yet it seems to last for hours in her mind, when she begins to wonder, Is this the one that never ends? Is this the night we both lose our minds?
But then...his breathing gentles; he stops shaking.
And miraculously, the horror does end.
And she feels her body relaxing along with his, muscles that she didn’t even realize were tight beginning to loosen. And just before letting go, she clings to him one last time, hoping that maybe this time , if she holds him tight enough, maybe she can hold together the broken shards of their minds.
When she feels him turning over, she scoots back to make room. As soon as his head hits the pillow, he blinks awake, frowning up at her, a little delirious, in the strange place in between sleep and reality. But when he grabs her hand, she doesn’t try to stop him; quite the contrary, she relishes his touch.
“Felicity?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
“Sorry I...I fell asleep,” he mumbles, his eyelids already falling.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m taking care of you for once.”
“M’kay. Don’t tell...Raisa...”
And then he’s gone, back to the land of dreams, hopefully good dreams this time.
Felicity smiles, like she does almost every night they go through this ritual, the ritual of pretending they’re not going to end up in the same bed together but somehow still ending up here anyway. “Don’t worry, Mister Vigilante. I can keep a secret.”
She decides to leave the lamp on this time, lying down to rest her chin on his shoulder, her preferred pillow of choice.
Whatever comes tomorrow, it doesn't matter. They have tonight. She has her sanity. She has him--her pillar of strength and book of secrets; her hero and her home. With a mind overflowing in brilliance like her own, yet as equally uncharted in its terrain, that sometimes Felicity thinks he’s the one mystery she’s never going to be able to solve. And that’s okay. She’s happy to accept the challenge of spending a lifetime to puzzle him out.
Even in the darkness, they’re inseparable, the boy he was before being lost at sea, and the girl she was before being smothered on land. Sometimes if feels like they both died the nights their parents died. They are both a little mad, but maybe together they can make one whole, rational person. Maybe together they can rebuild what was stolen from them.
As Felicity drifts off, she runs her hand over his heart in soothing strokes, in one last act of comfort before they start all over again tomorrow. She pleas as much as she promises him, “It’s okay. You’re safe...you’re safe. I’m here.”