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“I love you.”
“I love you so much.” His fingertips leaving hers are the last thing she feels before she sinks to the floor.
It seems like a lifetime, but only six minutes pass before she pushes herself to stand and then runs to the front door, out and down the steps into the rain-soaked grass, barefoot.
Maybe they haven’t left yet.
Of course they’ve left, she chides herself. Did you think he came for your husband in the Monitormobile? But she checks anyway, scanning the street for an idling vehicle, or mystical tire tracks. Anything.
Mia is sleeping by the time Felicity stumble/tip toes into her room to gather diapers and a couple of sleepers from the changing table drawers. When she can’t think of anything else to pack she backtracks as quietly as possible into their—oh god, her—room and cobbles together something of a bag for herself.
Sleeping babies are not a thing to be trifled with, but she picks her daughter up anyway, holding her breath as she eases her into the car seat and wrestles gently with the harness. For once Mia sleeps on.
She calls John as soon as she’s on the road.
“Felicity, hey. How’s—“
“I’m on my way. To you. I need my computers.”
“Oh...Kay. What’s—“
“Get Rene and Dinah out of there. It has to be just you. It has to be—“ Her voice catches so she stops speaking, just clamps her jaw tight and keeps driving.
“Felicity, where’s Oliver?” His voice is calm, but she can hear the concern woven into his familiar deep timbre.
“He’s gone.”
A few seconds pass. She flicks on the windshield wipers and glances at each of the mirrors. “Get them out of there,” she repeats. “I’m bringing the baby.”
If John replies she doesn’t register it, because her thoughts spiral away. She should’ve always had a set up at the cabin for emergencies. More than just the laptop and the two tablets. They had been so naive. A wave of guilt crashes through her. A perimeter, a monitor for the Monitor, SOMETHING to give her fair warning. It’s not logical, she knows this, but it feels like she could’ve prevented it if she’d just known.
The thought pursues her all the way to Star City.
Nothing has changed, except for a few crumbs in the keyboard; she files that away for her loud voice later. But besides that—and the addition of the car seat and diaper bag—this could be the Bunker the night she and Oliver left it. John had met her at the elevator, arms loose at his sides like he was ready to take a swing at whatever was chasing her, but now he stands behind her chair, waiting. Probably with his huge arms crossed.
She hasn’t turned around to check.
“Felicity,” he finally begins after watching her fingers fly for several minutes.
“Something took him. Some...being. Not a kidnapping—“ she amends quickly, because she can hear those giant arms uncrossing—“he had a deal. He...made a deal with some cosmic being last winter to save Barry and Kara.”
Felicity’s fingers pause long enough to spasm into fists at the unfairness. “To save the universe,” she clarifies as she resumes her work. She can hate her friends less if she pretends her husband is giving up his life for all humankind.
An hour passes while she checks the airlines, the bus station, the port. The Monitor doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to travel commercial, but stranger things have happened.
Mia sleeps on; that was the first long car ride of her young life, and it did a number on her. Felicity flexes her shoulders back with a groan. It’s past time for her daughter to eat.
She starts another search algorithm, the one she and Curtis created the time Adrian Chase took Oliver—the one she never thought she’d have to use again but kept all the same—and swivels around to the car seat on the floor next to her. Her breasts are tight and achingly full. They make her hiss in discomfort as she unhooks the safety harness and extracts the sleeping baby.
Felicity doesn’t even bother warning John first, just lifts her top and coaxes her infant to latch. Mia, still groggy, remembers she’s hungry and dutifully gets to work, which is great for the one she’s on, not so much for the one still waiting. It begins to leak and brings tears to her eyes. By the time the baby’s all done her diaper is wet and Felicity’s shirt is soaked.
“Give her to me,” John says, so softly, and when he puts his hands under her body Felicity sees Oliver’s hands lifting her away and her breath hitches painfully. In the time it takes to half-stumble to the bathroom for a clean shirt and a much needed restroom break John has changed Mia and is holding her face out in the crook of his arm, bouncing her ever so slightly.
“She burped.”
Felicity nods once and sits to resume her search.
———————————————————————
Sometime into the second day—after a few hours of sleep at the Diggle’s and a good long cry in their shower—it finally dawns on her that her search parameter may be too small by magnitudes.
“I’m looking on the wrong Earth,” Felicity says suddenly, lunging for her tablet to check her notes. Lyla is here today too, taking her turn cooing at and cuddling Mia; Felicity hears her tongue cluck in surprise.
“If so, how will you...” She trails off. “There’s so many.”
Felicity narrows her eyes, fingers flying. “Never tell me the odds,” she mutters under her breath.
It’s hard not to nap when Mia does; since her birth Oliver has insisted mama sleeps when baby sleeps. Often he joined them. Now the thought of curling up around their daughter without him takes her breath away. She wipes a stray tear and presses on.
It is the end of the second day before she picks up his trail. Earth 2, thank god. Felicity reels in the breadcrumbs like they’re on a string, faster and faster, until his coordinates come back and throw her for a loop.
“He’s on Lian Yu,” she whispers as she falls back against the chair. It’s just John again, holding her daughter who’s beginning to fuss. He steps forward to get a better look over her shoulder and Felicity automatically lifts her hands to take Mia from him so she can feed her.
“Earth 2 doesn’t have an Oliver,” he muses, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Is Lian Yu even relevant?”
“A reset, maybe.”
John makes a sound that says he’s mulling this idea over. “Is there a John Diggle on E2?” he asks finally.
She just stares at the screen without answering. Explaining the difference between finding her husband in a parallel universe from a definite starting point and essentially google searching one particular human being from nothing would take more time and post it notes than she has at the moment.
“I could go,” he says suddenly, surprising her as he straightens to his full height behind her chair. Felicity rotates to face him carefully, conscious of the baby nursing in full view.
“If there is another John...and you meet...”
“Get me there and I can find out. If I can find him I can avoid him. Oliver needs me.”
In the end, despite her reservations, it is just that simple. She looks down at the tiny human milk-drunk at her breast and knows that she can’t go. But John can.
“Cisco.”
It’s all she has to say.
————————————————————————
Another night arrives but she stays in the Bunker to give John and Lyla their privacy. The bed she bought Oliver is still here; John sets it up before he heads home but it’s a long time before she can make herself do more than sit on it.
Felicity considers writing him a letter, something for John to deliver on her behalf, but in her heart she knows they said everything in their living room. When fatigue finally crosses her eyes she curls up in the center of the bed with her daughter tucked safely against her side and cries herself to sleep.
Barry zooms in bright and early with the breach device. He hugs her and thankfully doesn’t tell her it will be okay. He seems to be carrying his own weight but she can’t bring herself to ask. He doesn’t stay long.
Lyla is there to see her husband off; there are no tears or declarations of love, but maybe they did that last night at home. Felicity tries not to make comparisons.
For just a moment John studies Baby Mia, places his giant hand on her head in a benediction. His other hand rubs up and down Felicity’s arm and he drops a kiss onto the top of her head before she hands him the device.
“Any last words of advice?”
“Assume he’ll try to ditch you,” she says with a shrug, which makes him huff a laugh.
“Copy that.”
“Thank you,” she remembers to say just as he begins to step through to the other side. If he hears her he doesn’t answer.
———————————————————————
Felicity spends the rest of the day with Lyla making plans for the computers she’ll need at the cabin. ARGUS will do the work under her own supervision. She already knows it will be a secret from her daughter, a place she can go after Mia’s gone to sleep at night. Or during the day when she’s at school, though thinking that far ahead is akin to throwing herself off a cliff headfirst.
Lyla asks her to stay another night but she knows she can’t. After months away from civilization the city is too much, too loud, too full of memories of the years they spent here together. Friends, partners, lovers, saving the city and each other again and again. It is too much of him and not enough. It will never be enough.
She knows this now.
Her daughter falls asleep as soon as the car starts, and Felicity’s mouth opens to comment on the novelty of it but closes on air when she remembers there is no one to tell.
She drives home in silence.