#him messaging ollie just made my heart swell once again | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adiwriting · 7 years

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My Home 1/2

Oliver and Felicity have been best friends since 1st grade. So when Oliver is found by some fishermen after he being lost at sea for 5 years, she’s ecstatic. The only problem is, the Oliver she lost, may not be the Oliver they found.

This is the final installment of a three part mini-verse. {Previous parts: “My Compass” and “My North Star”}.

This fic is the smuttest thing I’ve ever written, so the rating on this fic has definitely been bumped up to E. Shout out to @acheaptrickandacheesyoneline for the encouragement, roadmap help, and beta!

Read on AO3

Starling City 2012

Felicity is just finishing washing her makeup off when a knock at her bedroom door has her rolling her eyes.

“I already told you, I’m not going out with you tonight,” she says, walking towards the door. “Some of us have to work in the morning.”

When Felicity opens the door, she expects to see Tommy dressed for the clubs and ready with a witty remark. She does not expect to see him looking shell shocked, tears in his eyes, and hair a mess.

She's only seen him look like this once before — the night he told her about the Gambit getting lost at sea.

“What’s going on?” she asks as her mind instantly begins working through worst case scenarios. Somebody is hurt. Somebody’s been kidnapped. Somebody is dead.

She can’t do this. Not again.

“What happened?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper, not sure if she really wants the answer.

“They found him,” Tommy says, his voice shaky.

“What?”

“Oliver,” he says, a smile slowly forming on his lips. “They found him.”

Felicity’s heart speeds up and hope begins to swell, but she tries to push it down. They’ve been here before, too many times. After Hong Kong, Felicity vowed that she wouldn’t let herself go through that heartbreak again. She can’t do it.

She shakes her head. “No. Oliver is dead.”

By now the smile on Tommy’s face is a mile wide and she wonders if he’s using again. He’s been known to hallucinate Oliver when he’s high, but he’s been clean for over a year as far as she knows.

“It’s real this time,” Tommy says, reaching out to put his hands on her shoulders. “He’s alive. Thea just called me.”

“No,” she shakes her head, not daring to believe it. “We looked for him… We searched for years…”

“I know, but they found him. Moira talked to him this evening. He’s coming home,” Tommy says. “Oliver is alive and coming home.”

“He’s alive?”

Tommy nods his head and pulls her in for a hug.

“I don’t understand,” she cries into his shoulder trying to process everything.

She doesn’t understand how it is even possible. They searched for the Gambit for years. They hired people to do deep sea dives looking for their remains. They hired people to search any nearby land where they could have washed up. She had trackers on everyone’s accounts if they ever managed to make it back to the land of the living. They’d come up with nothing. The closest they ever came was in Hong Kong and the most that achieved was getting Tommy kidnapped and held for ransom before the police could rescue him.

Why now? If Oliver really is alive, where has he been all this time? Why hadn’t they been able to find him?

“Where has he been?” she asks.

“He was stranded on an island. Some fishermen found him,” he says, rubbing her back in soothing circles, trying to get her to stop crying, but the tears won’t stop. She’s too overwhelmed with a million different emotions at the moment.

“He’s been alive this whole time?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Alone?”

It had been her biggest fear for him if he had made it. That he would be the only survivor. That he would have spent the past 5 years alone. It was that thought that had kept her going in the search for so long, even when it felt pointless. The only reason she’d stopped searching was because of what happened to Tommy in Hong Kong. She hadn’t wanted to risk losing anyone else she cared about on what had started to look like a pipe dream.

“Thea said nobody else made it.”

“Oliver’s alive,” she says, taking a deep breath and letting the relief sink in along with the guilt.

Tommy nods. “Oliver’s alive.”

****

Through they’ve known of Oliver’s survival for almost a week, it takes him that long to make it back to Starling City. The Chinese government insists on putting him in quarantine until he can have a full work up from a doctor and the US Embassy has to confirm his identity before they will reissue him a passport. Contrary to popular belief, money can’t always buy everything. Felicity doesn’t know how anyone convinces Moira to stay in Starling and wait for Oliver to come home, but she suspects that it had to be a request from Oliver himself, otherwise Moira would have never listened.

After all, she knows how antsy she is to see her best friend again, so she can only imagine how anxious Moira and Thea have to be feeling.

“He flies in tonight,” Tommy tells her when she walks into the kitchen freshly changed out of her work clothes and into her pajamas.

“I’m sure Moira and Thea are relieved,” she says, sitting down to the dinner Tommy has prepared for them.

“I spoke with Raisa. Moira wants Oliver to be checked out by the doctor here first thing, but we can go over for dinner tomorrow.”

Felicity freezes at that. “Dinner? At the Queens?”

“You want to see Oliver, don’t you?” Tommy asks.

Felicity reaches across the table to refill her wine glass. “Well yes, but Oliver isn’t who I’m worried about seeing. Moira is not going to want me there.”

“You worry too much,” Tommy says. She notices his phone lighting up and when he glances over at it, he discreetly pulls it into his pocket like he’s actually hiding anything from her.

“What are you going to do about that?” she asks, knowing that it had to be a message from Laurel. There’s nobody else that Tommy would try and hide from her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m just saying, if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

“If I want to talk about it,” Tommy says with a self-deprecating laugh. “What’s there to say? I’ve been screwing my previously dead best friend’s girlfriend and now he’s back…”

“You were both grieving,” Felicity says, reaching her hand out to put it over his. “And considering the fact that Oliver sent me a drunken confession of love the night before he left and took off with Laurel’s sister, he doesn’t exactly have any room to be upset at you over Laurel.”

Tommy shakes his head and Felicity lets it go. This is something he’s going to have to work through on his own.

“So dinner tomorrow at the Queens,” she says, changing the subject and he sends her a grateful smile.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be there the whole time,” Tommy says. “Besides, everyone will be so overjoyed to have Oliver back that Moira will barely notice you’re there. I promise.”

“She does know I’m coming, right?” Felicity asks.

“Of course.”

****

“You’re sure that Moira is okay with this?” Felicity asks as they pull up to the Queen mansion the following evening.

She hasn’t been in here in years, not since she moved away from Starling in 8th grade, but it’s just as big and imposing as she remembers it being. The only place she’d ever been comfortable in this house had been Oliver’s room. The rest of the home always felt cold and lonely.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” Tommy asks as he puts the car in park and turns it off.

Felicity glares at him. She doesn’t know if he’s deliberately being obtuse or not, but she doesn’t appreciate it. Her nerves are already through the roof.

Moira has never liked Felicity, ever since the first day she came over to play with Oliver. The dislike only grew the older they got as Moira realized that Felicity wasn’t going anywhere. For years her dislike stemmed from the fact that Felicity lived in the Glades and thus Oliver often visited her in what Moira considered to be the ghetto. But dislike turned to pure hate when Moira found out that Oliver made the decision to get on the Gambit the day after Felicity turned him down.

“I doubt she’s still holding onto that,” Tommy says.

“Really?” Felicity says, unamused. “Moira Queen isn’t going to hold onto the fact that she blames me for Oliver’s death?”

“Well Oliver’s not dead,” Tommy says with a smirk, getting out of the car.

“Somehow I don’t think that will matter to her,” Felicity mumbles to herself.

Tommy comes around to open her door and pulls her reluctantly out of the car.

“I thought you wanted to see Ollie,” he says.

“I do,” she says. She just doesn’t want to have to see Moira.

“It’ll be fine,” he says. “Come on.”

Tommy doesn’t bother with knocking, something only he can get away with. He just opens the door and steps right in. Felicity freezes on the porch as she catches sight of Oliver in the entryway. Her heart gets stuck in her throat and the breath leaves her body.

It’s really him. They hadn’t been lying to her. Oliver’s really alive. No matter how many times Tommy had assured her that it was true, there was part of her that refused to believe it. That refused to hope. But now, here he stands, alive and well, and she feels like she might faint.

“What did I tell you, yachts suck,” Tommy says, causing Oliver to turn around with the trademark smile of his that she feel in love with all those years ago.

He looks different. He’s bigger, which is surprising. She’d been expecting him to be wilted away to nearly nothing like Tom Hanks in Castaway, but he’s built. His arms look significantly more muscular and she has to stop herself from thinking about how they would feel around her body… Now is hardly the time for those old fantasies to resurface.

Oliver’s eyes meet hers as he hugs Tommy and it’s like a scene out of a cheesy rom-com. The world actually slows down and all she can see is him.

She wants to go to him, but she can’t get her body to move. What if she’s just dreaming this? What if she wakes up and he’s gone again?

This can’t be real.

Felicity doesn’t get happy endings.

“Felicity,” Oliver says her name like a prayer and it’s those words that spur her into action. She runs into his arms with such force that he actually has to take several steps back in order to keep them from falling over.

“I looked for you everywhere, I couldn’t find you,” she says into his shoulder as his strong arms wrap around her waist and pull her up and onto her toes so he can bury his nose in her neck like he used to do. “I had trackers on your email accounts and social media. I hacked into satellites to run facial recognition. I swear, we tried everything. We looked for you. We did—”

“Felicity,” Oliver cuts her off and his breath against her ear causes a shiver to run down her back, effectively shutting her up. “It’s okay. I’m home now. I’m home.”

He says the words with an extra tight squeeze and she gets the distinct impression that he’s not just talking about being back in Starling, but before she can ask him about it, they are interrupted by somebody clearing their throat.

Oliver lets go of her and she takes a step back from him to look at Moira.

“Ms. Smoak,” Moira says with a cool tone that is probably supposed to sound polite, but Felicity can hear the malice behind it. “Tommy didn’t tell us you would be joining us this evening.”

“Well, I didn’t… I thought that… Tommy said…” Felicity shoots Tommy a glare that he ignores as she stumbles over her words trying to come up with a good excuse for being here without an invitation.

“I figured the more the merrier,” Tommy rescues her with a warm smile, walking over to give Moira a hug. “I hope that’s not a problem.”

“I can just go,” Felicity says, inching towards the door.

She knew this wasn’t a good idea. As much as she wants to spend time with Oliver after 5 years away, she does not need to spend the evening with Moira shooting her dirty looks and making condescending comments every chance she can. Oliver’s back. He's not leaving again, she reminds herself. She can catch up with him another time.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Oliver says, grabbing onto her wrist before she can make a run for it. “Raisa always cooks more than enough to go around. It’s not a problem.”

“Of course not,” Moira says, though she can tell it pains her to say it. “I’ll just tell the staff to set another place.”

“I’m going to kill Tommy,” Felicity mumbles under her breath as Tommy follows Moira out of the room.

“Don’t do that. I’m glad you’re here,” Oliver says, pulling her in for another hug. “I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” she says, all anxiety gone the second his arms are around her again. She melts into him.

Oliver pulls away and helps her out of her jacket before taking her purse and handing both items off to one of the mansion’s many staff members.

“I didn’t realize you and Tommy were so close,” Oliver says as he places his hand at the small of her back and leads her in the direction of the dining room.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “We actually live together.”

Oliver’s hand drops to his side and she can feel the air in the room get tense. She turns to look at him in confusion, unsure of what it is that she’s said wrong. Was she not supposed to become friends with Tommy? Before the Gambit went down, Oliver was always pressuring her to hang out with Tommy more. Sure, he used to hit on her to make Oliver jealous, but he was never serious. Oliver knew that. It’s why he pushed them to be friends.

“I’m sorry,” she says, unsure why she’s apologizing exactly. She shouldn’t have to feel bad that Tommy and her ended up leaning on each other when the Gambit went down. “Things weren’t great for us. I mean, I’m sure they were better than wherever you were, and I’m sorry about that. But things were hard without you and Tommy was there.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Oliver says cooly.

Felicity reaches out her hand to place it on his arm and thankfully, he doesn’t flinch away from her touch.

“He’s my friend, but that doesn’t mean I missed you any less,” she says.

“Friend?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a strange look as the mood in the room instantly lifts.

“Alright,” Oliver says, placing his hand on her back once again to lead her into the dining room. “We should go eat before my mom has an aneurysm.”

They step into the room and Oliver leads Felicity to her chair, pulling it out for her like the gentleman he’s always been. At least that much hasn’t changed, even though she can tell a lot of other things certainly have, for starters, his sheer body mass… Not that she's noticing.

She's most certainly not having inappropriate Tarzan fantasies at the moment. That would be wrong.

She settles into her seat between Oliver and Tommy, and uses the opportunity to reach out and pinch Tommy’s leg as hard as she can.

“What was that for?” He glares at her, as if he doesn’t already know.

“You told me that she knew,” she whispers, not wanting to be overheard.

“I find it’s always better to ask forgiveness rather than permission,” Tommy says with a wink, not in the least bit apologetic. She rolls her eyes and makes a silent vow to get him back when he least expects it.

“Are we interrupting something?” Moira asks, raising her eyebrow in their direction.

“Felicity was just telling me how much she missed Raisa’s cooking,” Tommy lies effortlessly.

“You and me both,” Oliver says.

“No roast on the island?” Tommy jokes.

Oliver laughs, and to the untrained ear it would sound natural, but Felicity can tell there’s something just slightly off about it.

“So what have I missed?” Oliver asks the table after a few moments of awkward silence. “I’ve been gone for 5 years. When I left Thea was still in pigtails and braces.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Thea grumbles.

“Well I finally graduated college with the help of this one,” Tommy says, pointing to Felicity. “It’s no double major and two master's degrees but dear dad was still shocked.”

“I bet,” Oliver says, shaking his head before turning his attention to her. “So that means you ended up getting both your masters then?”

Felicity nods, blushing at the look of pride on Oliver’s face.

“And what are you doing now?” Moira asks, feigning curiosity. “Still an IT girl?”

Felicity bites her tongue at the way Moira says IT girl as if it’s a dirty word. It’s the same way that Moira used to tell the other parents that her mother was a cocktail waitress and that was why she couldn’t make it to school events. Like the two of them are no better than a prostitute working the street.

Alright fair. There were certainly days in the beginning when she was constantly clearing porn off of servers that she started to feel dirty, but working in IT is nothing to scoff at. Last week alone she managed to stop a Chinese hacker group from getting into their files and attempting to hold the company’s servers for ransom. It takes a lot of intelligence and determination to have gotten where she is today in such a male dominated field and she’s damn proud of her job.

“I’m actually Head of the IT department at Merlyn Global,” she says, trying to keep her voice civil. Oliver just got home. She’s sure that he doesn’t want his welcome back dinner to turn into a fight.

“Malcolm is lucky to have you,” Walter says, kindly.

Felicity’s always liked him. She’s not sure how Moira ended up with such a kind man. Tommy tells her that Moira has a good heart, but Felicity’s never seen proof the woman even has one. “If I remember correctly, Queen Consolidated has tried multiple times to steal you away with no success.”

“You have?” Moira asks with a tone of surprise.

“I’m happy where I am,” Felicity says, not bothering to add that it would be a cold day in hell the day she ever agreed to work for Moira Queen.

“You should tell them the exciting news,” Tommy says.

“News?” Oliver asks.

“Next month, I’ll be taking over as Head of R&D when Ryan Davenport retires,” Felicity says, unable to hide her excitement. She still can barely believe that she’s been offered her dream job. Malcolm gave her the position after hearing her vision to turn Merlyn Global into the next powerhouse tech company to rival even Palmer Tech.

“I didn’t realize Ryan Davenport was retiring already,” Walter says.

“It was a surprise to us all,” Felicity says.

“Nobody more than the soon to be ex-Mrs. Davenport,” Tommy says with a snicker. “Seems that Mr. Davenport met wife number 4 while vacationing in the Caymans two weeks ago.”

Moira gasps in shock. “Poor April.”

“Well that’s what she gets for breaking up his second marriage,” Thea says under her breath, but not quietly enough. Moira shoots her a dirty look. “What? It’s true. Eva Davenport told me.”

“I’m sure there’s a more appropriate conversation to be having right now,” Moira says. “Oliver doesn’t want to hear the neighborhood gossip.”

“Congrats on the job. I know it’s always been your dream,” Oliver says, reaching out to put his hand on her thigh, where nobody else can see. Unfortunately, the shock of it causes her to knock over her wine glass, earning her yet another glare from Moira as Raisa moves in to clean up after her.

“I’m so sorry,” Felicity says, trying to help the woman, but Raisa just shoos her hand out of the way.

“Smooth, Smoak,” Tommy laughs.

Felicity gives him a dirty look.

The room goes quiet as the conversation lulls for a moment or two, but thankfully Raisa comes out a moment later with their entrees, giving them the perfect distraction.

“It looks delicious,” Felicity tells Raisa as a plate is put in front of her.

“Yes, Raisa, thank you,” Tommy says as he starts to dig into his plate. “Okay. What else did you miss? Superbowl winners: Giants, Steelers, Saints, Packers, Giants again… A black president. That’s new. Oh, and Lost? They were all dead. I think.”

“For the last time, they were not all dead,” Felicity says rolling her eyes. “How many times are we going to go over this?”

“Were they not all dead in that church?” Tommy asks.

“They were dead at the end. But they weren’t dead the entire time,” she says with a long suffering sigh.

“I guess we’ll have to have Ollie over for a binge night so he can decide for himself,” Tommy says, giving Oliver a wink.

“If we’re going to binge watch shows that Oliver missed, I have a list,” Felicity says, immediately starting to think of all the important shows they’ll need to catch Oliver up on. Movies, too. There have been so many good movies…

“What was it like there?” Thea asks and instantly the room goes quiet as everyone looks around awkwardly, trying to figure out if they should step in despite the fact that they all obviously want to hear Oliver’s answer.

“Cold,” he finally says after several tense moments.

Felicity has an image of a cold, wet Oliver huddled under a tree for shelter as he tries to build a fire but doesn’t know how. Instantly, her appetite is gone. While she’d been living her life, getting her dream job, and living in a spacious downtown apartment with Tommy, Oliver’d been stuck on a cold deserted island all alone. It’s not right.

“Tomorrow, you and me, we’re doing the city,” Tommy says, thankfully breaking up the tension. “You’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Moira jumps in.

“Will you be there?” Oliver asks her.

“Felicity probably has to work, right?” Moira answers for her. “What with your new promotion and all.”

Felicity is tempted to call in sick just to annoy Moira, but she’s right. Felicity really can’t miss any work right now.

“I can’t,” Felicity says and the way his face falls just the slightest bit pulls at her heart and makes her wonder. Is it possible that he still feels the same way about her after all this time? After she’d turned him down because she hadn’t been ready at the time?

“But you can come over for dinner after I get off?” she offers.

“And by dinner, she means she’ll order us all something,” Tommy says. “The first night we moved in together Felicity tried to cook me pasta and I ended up in the ER.”

“Do you always have to tell this story?” Felicity asks, blushing. While she’s not usually that embarrassed about her lack of cooking skills, she doesn’t exactly want to give Moira anything else to add to the list of grievances against her.

“Oh, I remember her legendary culinary skills well,” Oliver says with a smile. “Only girl that ever tried to feed me burnt cookies on my birthday.”

“Har har. Let’s all make fun of Felicity,” she says.

“Sorry, Love,” Tommy says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. “But I did offer to pay for cooking classes and you turned me down.”

“I turned you down because the implication that I would ever have to cook simply because I’m the woman in our home is sexist and I…” Felicity trails off before her rant can really get going when she remembers where she is and sees the way Moira is looking at her. She puts her foot out, ready to bolt at any moment. This dinner cannot get any more awkward.

“So, where are you going to take Oliver tomorrow?” she asks, changing the subject, willing everyone to stop staring at her.

“I’d like to stop by the office,” Oliver says and Felicity is shocked. Oliver never once showed an interest in his father’s company except to show up at the start of summer each year to introduce himself to the new interns.

“Well there’s plenty of time for all that,” Walter says. “Queen Consolidated isn’t going anywhere.”

At that moment, Raisa ends up tripping over Felicity’s foot and tumbles into Oliver, who thankfully manages to catch both her and the dish she’s carrying.

“I am so sorry Mr. Oliver,” Raisa says.

Felicity is about to apologize as well when Oliver begins speaking Russian.

She’s surprised and completely confused.

“Dude, you speak Russian?” Tommy says, voicing all of their thoughts.

Oliver Queen is many things, but fluent in Russian isn’t one of them.

What exactly happened to him on that island? she wonders.

“I didn’t realize you took Russian at college, Oliver,” Walter says.

Because he didn’t, Felicity thinks, eyeing him carefully, trying to figure out the mystery that has been placed before her.

The island they found him on was deserted. How could he have picked up a new language? And even if that was possible, wouldn't he have picked up Mandarin? Or possibly Cantonese? Learning Russian seems unlikely. They'd found him in the North China Sea.

“I didn’t realize you wanted to sleep with my mother, Walter,” Oliver says.

The silence that falls over the room is awkward and uncomfortable. Felicity looks at Oliver, but she can’t tell how he’s feeling. She doesn’t know if he’s angry that his mom moved on, or just hurt. She can’t read him and that only further emphasizes to her that a lot has happened in the 5 years he’s been away.

“I didn’t say anything,” Thea says.

“She didn’t have to,” Oliver says.

“Oliver,” Moira says, reaching out to take Walter’s hand.

Tommy and Felicity share a look. They both know how hard it is to see a parent move on with somebody who isn’t your mom or dad. She silently tries to ask Tommy if he thinks that Oliver is alright and thankfully, living together for the last four years means that he knows what she’s asking. He just shrugs.

“Walter and I are married. And I don’t want you to think that either one of us did anything to disrespect your father.”

“We both believed that Robert, like you, was, uh, well, gone,” Walter adds.

“It’s fine,” Oliver says, even though it sounds anything but.

Felicity reaches out to put her hand on his thigh in comfort but he stands up before she can. “May I be excused?”

Moira nods and Oliver goes to leave. She wants to say something to him. She wants to make sure that he’s okay, but words won’t come. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say. She used to always know how to make him feel better, but she’s starting to realize that more may have changed between them than she’d like to admit. He’d been gone for 5 long years and she can only imagine what that had to do to him.

Oliver squeezes her shoulder in a silent goodbye.

“Hey, don’t forget about tomorrow, buddy,” Tommy says and Oliver gives him one quick pat on the shoulder in conformation and winks at Thea before leaving without another word.

“I swear I didn’t tell him,” Thea says, defensively.

“We know,” Moria says.

The room falls into silence as everyone begins inspecting their plates much closer than is necessary.

She’s worried about Oliver. It must be so difficult for him to adjust to being back. For him to come home to his entire world changed. Maybe he too, like them, expected everything to magically go back to the way things were before.

“Maybe I should go check on him,” Felicity says, but instantly regrets it when Moira says, “I don’t think that’s appropriate. This is a family matter.”

“Right,” she says, biting her lip. Family. Something Felicity is not a part of. Despite the fact that Felicity always considered Oliver family, she is not a Queen and Moira likes to make that abundantly clear.

She sends Tommy a pleading look. Now that Oliver is gone, she wants to leave.

Thankfully, Tommy’s skilled at reading a room and knowing what people want, even if he doesn’t always listen.

“We should get going,” Tommy says, placing his napkin in his plate and standing up. “Felicity has to work early tomorrow. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“Thank you for coming, Tommy,” Moira says, casually leaving Felicity out. “Oliver was happy to see you.”

Moira’s voice is shaky and she sounds like she’s about to cry. Which is a far cry from the woman Felicity is used to seeing, but then again, it’s been a hard 5 years for all of them.

“Hey, he’s back,” Tommy says, moving to give her a hug. “Let’s just focus on that. Everything else will come with time.”

Moira nods, patting Tommy on the hand in thanks when they pull apart. “Drive safe. These roads aren’t well lit at night.”

“I remember,” Tommy says with a smile. “Have a good night.”

Tommy walks her out of the room and back to the main entrance where a maid brings her her coat and purse. Felicity eyes the stairs.

“Do you think we should go check on him?” she asks. “He looked upset.”

“Just give him some time,” Tommy says. “I’m sure it’s hard being back after being away so long. We can talk to him some more tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she says, knowing that he’s right even if the thought of leaving makes her heart hurt. Five years ago, it wouldn’t have even been a question. If Oliver was upset, she would have been up those stairs in a heartbeat. She would have been the only person that Oliver would have been willing to talk to.

****

“So…” Tommy says as they make their way back into the city towards their shared apartment downtown.

“So?” she asks, though she can tell by his tone of voice exactly what he’s about to ask her.

“So you and Oliver,” he says, giving her a knowing look.

“There is no me and Oliver,” she says, not wanting to talk about it, but knowing that Tommy won’t drop it.

The two of them have spent too many nights talking over bottles of wine. Tommy knows all about Oliver’s drunken confessions to her and how she’d refused to get on the Gambit with him. He knows that it’s one of Felicity’s biggest regrets. When she’d told Tommy about her feelings for Oliver, she’d said them under the impression that Oliver was gone forever. If she knew he was going to come back to them, she would have kept said feelings to herself. Tommy Merlyn is like an old lady at church that’s constantly butting into everyone’s business and trying to fix people’s problems. She knows that his line of questioning means Oliver and her have just become his next project.

“I watched that hug when he saw you for the first time.”

Felicity looks out the window so that Tommy won’t see her blushing. Oliver had held her rather tight, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“He’s been gone for five years, Tommy,” she says, wishing he’d drop the subject. At least for the night. There’s too much going on in her head and too many emotions over Oliver being back that she can’t process everything that happened tonight. She wants some time to work through her feelings and Oliver’s actions for her before she has to discuss them with Tommy. “A lot has changed.”

“And one thing hasn’t changed even a little bit,” Tommy says with a smirk. “He still looks at you like you hung the moon.”

“My north star,” she whispers to herself.

It had been one of the last things Oliver ever said to her before he died. She still has that voicemail saved on her old phone that she’s never been able to get rid of. She still listens to it when she’s having a bad day.

Felicity isn’t completely naive. She’d seen Oliver’s glances at her over dinner. Hell, he’d even put his hand on her thigh. But she also doesn’t want to read too much into anything right now. He’s only just gotten back from years away. He’s changed, and she doesn’t even know yet how much. She’s changed. For all she knows, Oliver may not like the woman she’s become anymore. She can’t get lost in fantasies of them reuniting. Not yet. Not until she knows for sure where his head's at.

“Do you think he’s okay?” she asks, changing the subject. She still can’t get over the fact that he suddenly knows Russian, or the fact that his laugh had sounded forced when Tommy made a joke about the island.

“I don’t know,” Tommy says with a deep sigh. “I’m sure it’s not easy being back. But that’s what we’re here for, right? To help him get back to himself again?”

Tommy reaches out to take her hand over the center console. She allows herself to take comfort in the fact that he’s here with her right now, even though she’d rather be back at the mansion with Oliver.

“What do you think happened to him there?”

Tommy shakes his head. She’d asked him this question before, so she knows that Tommy hadn’t known much beyond what Moria told him about there being a lot of scarring. Still, she feels the desperate need to know exactly what Oliver went through and she doesn’t know who else to talk to about it. It’s clear that Oliver doesn’t want to talk about the island based on his reaction to Thea’s question at dinner.

“It’s not something I want to think too long about,” he says, shaking his head. “Because then I’ll have to feel guilty over not doing enough to find him… I’m sure that whatever happened, none of it was good.”

She nods, knowing that he’s right. “He needs time to get readjusted.”

Tommy nods. “We’ll help him.”

Felicity nods in agreement. If there’s one thing she’s always been good at, it’s helping Oliver. She couldn’t be with him the last 5 years to help, and that’s her fault for not getting on the Gambit with him, but she’ll be damned if she lets him go through anything else alone again.

****

Felicity sits at her desk, working through project proposals from her team when the text comes in.

From Tommy: He wants to see Laurel.

Felicity’s heart drops to her feet. She’s not sure why she’s surprised. After all, it makes sense, Oliver and Laurel had been dating when he’d boarded the Gambit. Hell, they’d been about to move in together. Of course he would want to see her. Why should she think that some drunken phone calls made to her would change any of that?

From Felicity: Well that’s not going to end well…

Felicity hasn’t been around Laurel often in the last 5 years. Laurel has never been a fan of her, and that feeling is mutual. However, with Tommy and her sleeping together, she’s fairly aware of all things Laurel. And from her impression, Laurel was none too pleased with Oliver’s decision to take her sister out on the Gambit — not that any reasonable woman would be. Felicity can't imagine she’ll be happy to see Oliver again.

Then again, their anger with each other always burned bright but died out fast...

She bites her lip and tries not to worry too much about it.

She attempts to return her focus to the files at her desk. She has plenty of work to do here without being distracted by Oliver’s fascination with Laurel. If he wants to run back into her arms, it’s not really any of her business. And if Laurel is going to pull a typical Laurel and take him back, what should she care? Oliver and her are just friends. She had her chance, and she didn’t take it.

She really shouldn’t care.

So why does she feel like she’s going to be sick.

From Tommy: Well, she didn’t slap him in the face… But she may as well have based on the way he’s looking. We’re coming to get you for lunch.

She rolls her eyes at Tommy’s text. They’d already had this discussion this morning and she’d informed him that she wasn’t available.

From Felicity: I told you that I was going to have to work through lunch if I wanted to get home in time for dinner tonight.

From Tommy: One of the benefits to my name being on the building you currently work at? I can steal you away whenever I want and nobody will question it. You can even call it a working lunch if you would like.

Felicity has to laugh at that.

From Felicity: Do you even know what a working lunch is? Have you ever worked a day in your life?

From Tommy: I’ve done plenty of hard work in my time, it just happens after hours in dark rooms with good booze ;)

We’re on our way. We’ll be there to get you in ten.

Felicity doesn’t bother protesting any more. She’s known Tommy long enough to know that no is not a word in his dictionary. Besides, she’s hungry and her best friend has just returned after 5 years of being lost at sea. She can afford to take a lunch break.

After all, she really should get Sanders to work through the project proposals instead. It is going to be his job in a month and he’s got to start training for it.

She packs up the folders and puts them back in her to do tray before grabbing her purse and heading downstairs to meet Tommy out front. The last thing she wants is for Tommy and Oliver to come upstairs to get her and make a spectacle. Oliver being back is big news and Felicity has fielded enough questions from her staff about his return without him showing up at the office.

She stands outside for fifteen minutes before she starts to get annoyed. The two of them are perpetually late for everything, but Tommy knows how much she hates it. She's yelled at him before for it. She can't take long off for lunches and he knows that.

Twenty five minutes of waiting and she sends him a text.

From Felicity:

If you're not here in five minutes I'm going back inside and eating without you two. Some of us have to work for a living.

When that doesn't earn her a witty reply back, she starts to wonder what it is exactly that they are doing. Tommy always texts back right away, even if he's driving.

At the thirty minute mark, she gets genuinely pissed off. Tommy had texted her to say they were on their way and CNRI is barely a 10 minute drive. She knows that the two of them can both be rather flaky, but had they seriously forgotten about her?

“I swear to god, Merlyn, you'd better be lying in a ditch somewhere,” she grumbles as she dials his number.

“Hello, this is Detective Hilton, who is this?”

Felicity’s heart leaps into her throat and she feels like she can't breathe. She'd only been joking. It's a saying… She didn't actually hope something had happened to Tommy. To either of them.

Oh god.

“Hello?” Hilton says.

“Where’s Tommy?” she asks, her voice shaking with fear.

“Tommy?” Hilton says. “Ma’am, there's been an incident. We are still trying to ID all parties involved. Can you tell me who's phone this is?”

The blood rushes to her ears and suddenly everything sounds a million miles away. The entire world freezes and she feels frozen in her place. This can't be happening. Not again.

What does an incident even mean? Is he dead?

Please, if there’s any mercy in the world, they cannot be dead. She can’t lose them.

A man pushes into her on the street and it causes everything to come screaming back into focus. The sounds of people walking past, the cars on the street, the Evangelist on the corner lecturing about sin. It's overwhelming, but she has to focus. Her boys need her right now. She instantly begins looking around, like they will suddenly appear in front of her.

“Ma’am?” Hilton says.

“Tommy Merlyn,” she responds suddenly. “He was with Oliver Queen. Please tell me they are okay.”

“They’re not here,” Hilton says. “There's a car registered to Malcolm Merlyn. Silver sports car?”

“That's Tommy’s car. Where are they?” Felicity asks. Her mind is going a hundred miles a minute trying to figure out what to do. How is she supposed to help them if she doesn't even know what happened.

“The car belongs to Tommy Merlyn, he was with Oliver Queen,” Hilton shouts out to somebody in the background.

“Queen? You don't think this was a kidnapping do you?” a voice in the background says.

“Kidnapping?” Felicity asks.

“I need to go. Thank you for your help,” Hilton says before hanging up on her.

Her knees give out on her and she stumbles backwards. She collides with the building and slides down until she's sitting on the pavement. She can’t breathe. Her entire body is shaking.

Tommy and Oliver have been kidnapped. She's not even sure how it's possible. They've already gone through this, in Hong Kong. How can this be happening again? She only just got Oliver back.

She takes a deep breath and counts slowly backwards from ten like her therapist taught her to do back when she was having more regular panic attacks. When she's done, she still feels panicked, but it's manageable. And she needs manageable because her boys need her right now.

She pulls her tablet out of her purse and immediately starts hacking into traffic cameras, trying to figure out if she can determine who took them. As she hacks away, she runs back inside to her office. She's going to need more juice than her tablet can manage if she's going to run facial recognition.

She’ll be damned if she lets something happen to either of them. Not again.

****

It’s several hours later when Felicity rushes past Raisa and follows the sound of voices to the sitting room where, thankfully, Oliver and Tommy are.

“Oh thank god,” she says.

Both boys stand up and she runs straight into Tommy’s arms, squeezing him tight.

“We’re okay,” he says, rubbing her back.

She lets go of him and pulls Oliver into an equally tight hug.

“I kept having flashes of you being kidnapped in Hong Kong,” Felicity tells Tommy when she steps back. “I was so worried.”

Oliver tenses up at her words, but she brushes it off as a reaction to her bringing up the word kidnapping.

“I thought I lost you again,” she says, reaching out to put her hands on both her boy’s arms to reassure herself that they really are here. They are both okay. Those men in those creepy masks didn’t kill them. She can breathe again.

“I’m right here,” Oliver says with a kind smile.

“You’re not hurt?” she asks, checking them both over for injuries.

“We’re alright,” Tommy says. “Take a breath, Smoak.”

“Smoak? Felicity Smoak?” Lance’s partner, Detective Hilton she’s pretty sure, steps up. “You’re the girl from the phone.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Thank you for finding them.”

Detective Lance laughs at that, causing all eyes in the room to look his way.

“We didn’t find them,” Lance says in the sarcastic tone he has reserved specifically for Tommy over the last five years. Now that Oliver is back, she can only imagine how bad he’ll get it from Lance. In fact, she’s surprised he’s even allowed to work this case.

“Apparently they got rescued by some man in a green hood,” Lance says.

“What?” Felicity says, utterly confused. “What do you mean you were rescued by a man in a green hood?”

Felicity looks first to Tommy who shrugs, and she can tell he doesn’t really know much but it’s Oliver’s reaction that catches her eye. He’s completely calm.

Too calm, she thinks.

They’d just been drugged and kidnapped by several men in masks holding military grade guns. She’d seen the video from the traffic cam she’d hacked into. How isn’t he more freaked out about this?

“We were kidnapped. A man in a green hood showed up and took care of it,” he says, like it’s not a big deal. “Are we about done here?” Oliver asks.

Took care of it. It’s an odd turn of phrase to use when discussing your own life threatening event isn’t it? You take care of a hang nail. If it’s 1920s Chicago, a mob boss might take care of a nark or something. This mystery man in the green hood didn’t ‘take care of it,’ he saved their lives.

Felicity narrows her eyes and studies Oliver, trying to figure out why it is that he can have such little reaction to what happened. She’d like to believe that experiencing one life threatening event doesn’t make additional life threatening events irrelevant.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Lance says with a self-satisfied smirk. “One day back and already somebody’s gunning for you? Aren’t you popular?”

Felicity’s attention moves to Lance and she instantly shifts into Momma Bear mode. She crosses her arms and moves to stand in front of Oliver and Tommy. Lance has always been an ass, but it’s been understandable. After all, his daughter died after sneaking off with Oliver. Lance blames the Queens — and by extension, Tommy — for her death. But this is crossing the line. Oliver and Tommy had just been kidnapped. They could have died. Yet here he is revealing in it and she’s not going to stand for it.

“Were you able to identify the men?” Moira asks, looking to Detective Hilton for answers, since all they’re getting out of Lance are more condescending remarks.

“Scrubbed identities. Untraceable weapons,” Hilton says. “These were pros.”

Tommy catches her eye and he doesn’t have to say anything. She nods her head slightly. Untraceable weapons and scrubbed identities or not, she’s in the process of figuring out who this was. Nobody threatens her family and gets away with it. As soon as the detectives leave, she’ll get back to work.

“Yeah. Well, they probably figured you’d pay a king’s ransom to get your boy back. Or a Queen’s ransom as it were,” Lance says.

“Excuse you?” Felicity says taking a step towards him, but Oliver reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder and hold her back.

“It’s fine,” Oliver says.

“I don’t find your tone appropriate, Detective,” Moira says, remaining as composed as ever, but Felicity knows that tone of voice well. Moria isn’t a woman to be messed with.

“If Oliver can think of anything else, he’ll be in touch. Thank you, gentlemen, for coming,” Walter says, effectively breaking up the tension in the room and ending the conversation.

Lance chuckles as he gathers his things and it’s only Oliver’s hand on her shoulder that keeps her from lashing out in rage.

“You’re luck never seems to run out, does it?” Lance says, sizing Oliver up for several long seconds before finally allowing Raisa to escort them out of the house.

“Luck?” Felicity scoffs.

“‘Lis, don’t,” Tommy says with a warning tone.

“No. He’s been harassing you for years, and I’ve let it go because we all know he’s grieving for Sara, but the two of you were just kidnapped and he wants to talk about luck? There’s nothing lucky about what just happened or what Oliver went through.”

“She’s right,” Moira says, shocking everyone in the room, nobody more than Felicity.

“Just let it go,” Oliver says.

“He has no right to talk to you like that,” Moira says.

“I killed his daughter,” Oliver says solemnly. “He can talk to me however he wants.”

And with that, Oliver walks out of the room without another backwards glance, leaving them all speechless and her to wonder, once again, what exactly happened to him on that island.

****

“We are not watching Criminal Minds,” Felicity groans at the opening theme music playing on the TV.

“It’s Wednesday night. We always watch Criminal Minds,” Tommy says, carrying their takeout over to the coffee table where she’s set up her workstation. She’s been working like crazy trying to find out who the men that kidnapped Oliver and Tommy are and who the mysterious man in the green hood is.

“Do you see me here?” she says. “Our life just became an episode of Criminal Minds. Do you really want to watch a show about serial killers when you almost died today?”

“‘Lis, look at me,” he says.

She refuses to meet his eyes until he sits down next to her and takes her hands off her laptop and into his own.

“I’m okay,” he says. “I already told you. Ollie’s fine, too.”

She takes a minute to let his words sink in, examining him closely for any sign that he’s lying. When she finds none, she sighs and turns back to her computers.

“I just think we could stand to watch something lighter tonight,” she says. “Like Supernatural. Or X-Factor.”

“You hate X-Factor,” Tommy says, pouring her a generous glass of wine.

“I do hate X-Factor,” she agrees.

Tommy laughs and picks up the remote to turn up the volume on Criminal Minds as it comes back from commercial. Halfway through the episode, Felicity has finished off two glasses of wine and fairly certain she’s already figured out who the TV murder is when there’s a knock at the door.

“Did you order more food?” Tommy asks, giving her an incredulous look. They still have several unfinished boxes of Chinese food left.

She shakes her head and Tommy raises his eyebrow at her like he doesn’t believe her.

“I swear,” she says holding up her pinkie. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a lava cake right now… You know, your dad never checked on you. Maybe he’s here to make sure you’re alright.”

Tommy laughs at that. “Yeah. Good one. I’m sure that’s it.”

He opens the door and Felicity squeaks when she sees Oliver on the other side.

“Hey buddy, I didn't think you were still coming.”

“Is that okay?” he asks, hands shoved in his pockets awkwardly. It’s a weird look on him. He’s never been awkward around either of them, but then again, none of them have ever gone 5 years without seeing him.

Felicity looks down at her worn out pajamas. There’s a coffee stain on her tank top and a hole in the knee of her pants. If she’d known Oliver was coming over, she wouldn’t have changed out of her dress, but it would be weird if she went and changed now that he’s already seen her. She runs her hands through her hair through, trying to make sure her curls aren’t took out of control. Damn her for forgetting to put a hair tie on her wrist.

“You’re always welcome here,” Tommy says, opening the door wide for him to step inside. “Felicity ordered enough food to feed a small army.”

“She always does,” Oliver says with a smile in her direction that causes her to blush.

“So what were you guys doing?” he asks.

“Well I’m relaxing and watching TV,” Tommy says. “Felicity is trying to play Nancy Drew.”

Oliver comes into the room and looks at her setup. “What exactly are you Nancy Drew-ing?”

Felicity looks up from her screen. “I’m trying to find the men that took you. And the man in the green hood.”

“Isn’t that a job for the police?” Oliver asks, and she can see him tense up. It’s subtle, but she notices. It’s interesting for him to tense up now, since he wasn’t tense at all talking to the police about the ordeal. Maybe everything that happened is finally hitting him now that the adrenaline has worn off.

“Well I didn’t get the impression that Detective Lance was going to give it his best, did you?” she asks. “Besides, I hate mysteries.”

“She says as we watch Criminal Minds,” Tommy says.

“This show isn’t a mystery,” she explains. “I solve most of the episodes within the first fifteen minutes.”

“I thought you hated this show.” Oliver gives her a weird look. “You said it freaked you out.”

Felicity shrugs. She doesn’t want to explain that she’d only started watching the show after he went missing. That a part of her thought if she could figure out how the FBI finds people who go missing, she could use those same skills to track Oliver.

Well, she’s gotten incredibly good at figuring out the bad guy before the BAU does on the show, and she can come up with a mean profile, but she hadn’t been talented enough to find Oliver on Lian Yu. And she still hasn’t found the men that kidnapped her boys today, so she probably shouldn’t apply for the FBI just yet.

“I decided I liked it,” Felicity says when Oliver won’t stop staring at her.

“Sit down,” Tommy says, handing Oliver a glass of wine. “Stay awhile.”

Oliver takes a seat on the couch next to her and reaches over to close her laptop.

“I was working,” she says, indignant.

“Well stop,” he says, his voice more commanding than she’s ever heard it.

“You don’t want to know who took you? Or who the man was that saved you?” she asks.

“I don’t want you looking into things that could get you hurt,” he responds, and there’s something in his eyes that she’s never seen before. A darkness that wasn’t there.

“It’s not like they are going to kidnap me for ransom,” she says. “You’re the billionaires.”

“Just promise me you’ll let it go,” he says.

Felicity looks to Tommy for support.

“He’s probably right,” Tommy says with an apologetic smile. “You should let the police handle it.”

“Whatever,” she says, though she has zero plans to actually drop it.

She crosses her arms as she sinks back into the couch to finish watching the episode. Oliver and Tommy chat about the Rockets during the commercial breaks, but Felicity stays silent. She’s never been a big sports fan, and she’s too busy trying to figure out the new mystery before her. Oliver.

She’s not going to lie. The look in his eyes earlier kind of scares her. She’s never seen him look at her with anything other than kindness and compassion. To think that something happened to him to destroy that makes her nervous.

At the end of the episode, Tommy takes their dishes and leftovers into the kitchen, leaving Oliver and her alone.

“Felicity,” Oliver says, reaching out to put his hand on her leg.

“Hm?” she says, looking up from where she’d been studiously picking at the hole in her pants.

“You know that I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you, right?” he says. “I wasn’t trying to be an ass.”

Felicity shifts on the sofa so that she’s facing him head on and takes a deep breath, preparing herself for this conversation.

“You were gone for five years, and try as I might, I couldn’t do anything about that,” she says. “Then about two years ago, Tommy was kidnapped in Hong Kong, and I couldn’t do anything about that . So imagine my terror when I found out that you’d been taken again today. And imagine how terrified I am that you might be taken again. I just need to know that the men that did this to you won’t come back.”

“They won’t,” Oliver says. “They’re dead. The man in the hood took care of them.”

There it is again. That phrase. He’s being too nonchalant about the entire thing and that phrase is really bothering her but she can’t put her finger on why.

“And what about whoever hired them?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

Felicity turns back on her computer and shows him what she’d found. “Somebody paid those men to take you. I just can’t figure out who.”

“Felicity.” Oliver takes the laptop out of her hands and places it on the table behind him out of her reach. “I can appreciate that you want to protect us. But I’m telling you to leave it alone.”

Felicity scoffs at that and Oliver immediately realizes his mistake.

“I’m asking you to leave it alone.”

Felicity still glares at him. Asking or not, it’s ridiculous for him to think she’ll let this go when she is more than capable of finding the people responsible for this. Doesn’t he want to know who took him?

“How can you ask me to do that?”

“Because I watched my father and Sara die on that boat and I thought I was going to have to watch them kill Tommy today… I’m still trying to figure out how my life works now that I’m back. I can’t have something happen to you. I’ve been around enough tragedy for one lifetime. So please, for once in your life, do as I ask and drop this.”

Felicity doesn’t want to, but she can’t say no to him when he’s looking at her with tears in his eyes. So she relents.

“Okay,” she says, reaching out to take Oliver’s hand in her own and give him a supportive squeeze.

She can’t imagine what he’s been through. She knows how traumatized she would be if she had to live on an island all alone for 5 years, but to have also had to watch his father and Sara die? It’s no wonder he’s different. He’s experienced real tragedy and that leaves a mark. His memories will forever be tainted with darkness.

Felicity gets why Tommy says he doesn’t want to know what happened to Oliver. He’s just let one single detail slip and already she wants to wrap him in a blanket and never let him go.

“You’ll really stop looking into this?” he asks, not quite believing her.

“I promise,” she says.

Oliver smiles at that and pulls on her until she’s falling into his open arms.

“Good. Can I tell you one thing that I’ve really missed?” he asks.

“Lava cake? We could order some,” Felicity says innocently and she can hear Tommy snort from the kitchen.

“Our lazy Sundays on the couch together,” he says with a warm smile.

She can’t help but smile back at him and cuddle into his side, relishing the feeling of home and safety that she never thought she’d feel again.

“Yeah,” she hums as he begins to run his fingers through her hair. “But also, lava cake.”

“Relax, Smoak,” Tommy says, emerging from the kitchen. “I already put in an order for us.”

“You did?” she asks, getting excited.

“I figured if I put the order in, you wouldn’t end up buying out the entire bakery,” he says.

“Well at least that hasn’t changed about you,” Oliver says. “You’ve always had a dangerous sweet tooth.”

She pulls back to look him in the eyes. “Does it seem like we’ve changed a lot?” she asks.

“It’s been five years,” Oliver says with a bittersweet smile. “It was bound to happen.”

Felicity hates the fact that he’s lost so much time. That they all have. It’s not fair. Oliver never deserved that.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I’m home, that’s all that matters.”

He kisses the top of her head before turning back to the TV and asking Tommy what movie they are going to put in. They decide on Inception and settle in to watch. Felicity manages to make it til the lava cakes arrive before the excitement of the day finally hits her and she falls asleep with her head in Oliver’s lap.

She wakes up sometime later to Oliver tucking her into bed and kissing her on the forehead.

“I’ll see you later,” he says with a smile. “Sleep well.”

“Be safe,” she says before falling back asleep.

She dreams of the Gambit that night. The first time she’s had that dream in over a year. She dreams of a giant storm that has Oliver washing overboard. Only this time, instead of her being frozen on the boat as everyone around her dies, she watches as Oliver cries out for his father and Sara. She watches as he sobs over being unable to save them as they drown and he’s left clinging to a broken piece of the ship as struggles to stay afloat in the storm.

The look of pure agony on his face has her waking up in a cold sweat.

The horrors Oliver has to have seen have her crying into her pillow unable to get back to sleep.

****

“He wants to have his party where?” Felicity asks Tommy the next day as she talks to him over the phone.

“At the convention center. He’s insisting on it actually.”

Felicity scoffs at that. “How many people is he inviting?”

“If he wants to rent out the convention center, I’m thinking the entire city,” Tommy says.

“Do they even do parties there? It’s not exactly a club,” Felicity says as she hands off the pile of contracts to Christine for delivery.

“Ye of little faith,” he says, pretending to sound hurt. “Who are you talking to here? After I finish working my magic, it will be the place to be.”

“Can’t wait,” she says sarcastically.

It’s not that she doesn’t ever go out. She’s been best friends with Oliver Queen her entire life and Tommy Merlyn’s roommate for the last four years. She’s been to her fair share of parties. Big events like this just aren’t her thing. She prefers smaller venues with private rooms. Otherwise, she finds that people get distracted, lost in the crowd, and she ends up sitting alone at the bar all night fending off handsy strangers.

“I hope you realize that attendance is not optional at this party,” Tommy says.

“Despite my better judgement, I will be there,” she says.

“Do you think I should invite Laurel?” he asks, sounding nervous.

Felicity wants so badly to say no. That Laurel shouldn’t be anywhere near that party. But it’s clear from Oliver’s visit with her yesterday that he intends to keep Laurel in his life. As much as that idea makes her want to vomit, she knows it must be worse for Tommy.

“Are you going to tell him about you two?” she asks.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he says. “We aren’t dating.”

Felicity rolls her eyes as she sits back down at her desk and pulls up her emails, trying to figure out how much more work she has before she can head home for the day.

“Is that so?”

“We’ve hooked up a few times,” Tommy says.

“Right,” she agrees, knowing that it’s total bullshit. They’ve done more than just hook up. Tommy doesn’t make breakfast for any of the other girls he brings home. He likes her.

“It would only upset him,” he says, and she can hear in his voice how hard this is for him. “Besides, it’s not going to happen again.”

“I think I’ve heard that before,” she says, responding to several emails before exiting out of the program and signing off. She’s done enough work for the day. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“It’s not my secret to tell,” she reminds him, packing up her purse.

“Good... He wouldn’t understand why it happened.”

“Why did it happen?” she asks. She’s never gotten a straight answer from him about it. It’s something she’s always wondered.

“I was lonely, I missed my friend, and she was there. She gave me something to lose myself in that wasn’t drugs.”

“Oh Tommy…”

Felicity doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s watched him struggle for the last several years to get clean and sober and it’s only been in the last year that he’s been able to stay clean. She hadn’t realized that he attributed that change to Laurel. Maybe Tommy and Laurel are a lot more serious than she’d previously thought.

And maybe Laurel is better for Tommy than she ever was for Oliver.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, trying to write it off like his confession wasn’t a big deal. “She doesn’t want to see me anymore.”

“She always says that,” she tries to reassure him. He sounds genuinely upset. She wonders if this is a recent revelation and if it is, how she’d missed it.

“She means it this time. With Oliver back, it’s bringing back old wounds for her and she told me she doesn’t want to see me anymore,” he says, and if she didn’t know any better she would say he was about to cry.

“That’s going to be difficult considering you all share the same friends,” she points out. When he doesn’t respond, she decides to try a softer approach. “Tommy, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You guys have too many years between you to leave things this way. If she’s really that special to you, then have faith. She’ll come around.”

“She’s Oliver’s ex-girlfriend,” Tommy says. “Even if that is true, we can’t continue this.”

Felicity sighs. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say to that. She could bring up the fact that Oliver and Laurel weren’t good together. That when Laurel asked him to move in with her, Oliver literally ran away with her sister. But they both know how little that means. Oliver and Laurel are like magnets. No matter what happens, somehow they always gravitate back to each other.

“I’ll pick you up something stronger than wine on my way home,” she promises.

“Tequila please,” he says. “And not that crappy kind you usually get. The good stuff.”

“Fine,” she says. “But I’m taking it out of my rent this month.”

“Somehow, I think I’ll survive,” he says.

They say their goodbyes and she heads out the door. She walks down the street to the high end liquor store to pick up Tommy’s tequila. She then hits up her favorite mini mart to stock up on some red vines and chocolate. And that’s when she sees the news report.

Adam Hunt, the CEO of Hunt Multinational and overall douchebag, was attacked. Several of his bodyguards are in the hospital after being shot with arrows.

“Can you believe that?” Marty, the owner of the mini mart, says as he checks her out. “Arrows. Looks like this city has a Robin Hood on its hands.”

Felicity laughs with him. “I don’t know why. Archery looks utterly ridiculous to me.”

“Yeah,” the man says as he bags her items. “Either way, I’d say that man did the city a public service. Adam Hunt is a thief.”

“I’m sure he’s much more than a thief,” she responds. “Not that anyone can pin anything on him. Have a good night.”

“You, too. Be safe out there,” he says.

“I’ll do my best to avoid Robin Hood,” she says, waving as she steps out of the mini mart and makes her way back to the parking garage to get her car.

Robin Hood.

Felicity stops in her tracks as she puts the pieces together.

The same man that rescued Tommy and Oliver yesterday just attacked Adam Hunt.

Marty might be right. Starling City has it’s own vigilante.

****

Felicity looks out the window as she helps Tommy setup for the party that afternoon and the logo of Hunt Multinational catches her eye. She’s not on this side of town often, so she didn’t realize how close the convention center is to Hunt’s building. She isn’t sure why it matters, but it feels important.

“What are we looking at?” Tommy asks coming to stand beside her.

“Did you know Adam Hunt was attacked last night by the man in the green hood?”

“The hood guy?” he asks, giving her a peculiar look. “Where did you hear that?”

“It was on the news last night… And I might have checked out some more information on the SCPD’s website,” she admits.

“You know one of these days, you’re going to end up getting caught and thrown in jail,” he says. “And we’ve been through this, there are better ways to try out your handcuff fetish.”

“Your lack of confidence in my abilities hurts,” she says. “If I’m going to get caught, it won’t be by the SCPD who barely understand how to work a firewall.”

“I don’t even know what a firewall is,” he says. “Now come help me get this staff in line. We’ve got 6 hours to turn this into the most epic party that’s ever been seen.”

Felicity nods her head and gets back to work, putting all thoughts of Adam Hunt and The Hood out of her mind for now so she can focus on making this party everything Oliver wants it to be.

****

Felicity stands in front of her closet in her underwear cursing her life. She’d bought a gold dress specifically for this event, but now that she’d put it on, she hates it. It’s not good enough. She looks like she’s trying too hard and it’s not flattering.

Maybe she shouldn’t have had Tommy order the lava cake this week.

She stares at herself in the mirror and frowns at the extra fat around her waist that she’s never been able to get rid of. Well… that’s a lie. She probably could get rid of it, but she’s addicted to food and allergic to exercise. Normally, she doesn’t spend a lot of time obsessing over her body. However, with Oliver back, she’s been taking note of every single change her body has gone through in the last 5 years and she’s feeling incredibly self-conscious.

Laurel doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her. She’s tall, skinny, and has curves exactly where the boys want them. Laurel doesn’t have thick thighs or a soft tummy. Felicity doesn’t know how to compete with that.

It’s actually laughable to even call it a competition.

“Maybe I should go with pants,” she says.

She pulls at the extra skin on her arms.

“And a parka.”

Not that it matters, she laughs at herself for turning into such a stereotypical girl. Oliver won’t be looking her direction when there will be hundreds of women throwing themselves at him.

She’s better than this, she reminds herself. She’s Felicity Smoak, MIT class of 2009. She’s smart, successful, and funny — unintentionally so, but the fact still stands.

She turns back to her closet and pulls out a dress, determined not to let herself fall into the trap where she’s dressing to impress a boy. She pulls the purple dress on and looks in the mirror and instantly groans. She looks like Violet Beauregarde. She strips the dress off and debates telling Tommy that she can’t make it. She’s got several episodes of Sons of Anarchy to catch up on anyways…

There’s a knock on her door. “Are you almost ready?” Tommy asks through the door.

She looks down at herself and laughs. Hardly.

“I’ll meet you there,” she calls after him, knowing that canceling isn’t an option.

“Nope, not today, Smoak,” he says. He walks into her room without waiting for permission.

“Tommy!” she yells, her hands instantly moving to cover her body, but there’s only so much she can do.

He ignores her, like always and begins digging in the back of her closet. He’s never had any sense of boundaries. And really, it’s not like he hasn’t seen it all before anyways. There had been plenty of bad days that first year that Oliver left where she could barely get herself dressed and Tommy was always there to help her into her pajamas at night and stay with her while she cried herself to sleep.

Even now, he comes into her room often enough to try and force her along. He has no patience for the female process.

“Can I help you with something?” she asks, finally dropping her hands when she realizes that he hasn’t looked her direction even once.

“Wear this,” he says, pulling a little black dress out from the back of her closet. She hasn’t seen the dress in almost two years. Not since she’d worn it for Tommy’s birthday party. He’d convinced her to buy it, but she’d felt self conscious in it so she’d never worn it again after that night.

“What are you—”

“You’re welcome,” he interrupts her with a smile. “Now put it on and let’s go. There’s fashionably late, and then there’s just obnoxiously late. We at least need to be there before Oliver.”

“Fine,” she relents. She knows that Tommy would never steer her wrong. He’s always incredibly honest about her fashion choices. He’s the reason that she’s switched from button ups and pencil skirts to designer dresses.

‘If you want people to take you seriously, you need to stop dressing like a high schooler trying to play business woman,’ he’d told her. And as much as she hates to admit it, he’d been right. After she’d changed her style, her co-workers started taking her more seriously and the promotions started coming.

Anything Tommy picks out for her will achieve the goal she’s been searching for: She wants Oliver to see that she’s not the confused girl he left five years ago. The last time he saw her she was a complete wreck. She could barely function and she needs him to know that’s not her anymore. She’s grown up. She’s about the become the head of R&D. She’s changed. She knows who she is now. And she wants him to see that. It feels important.

“You can leave now,” she says when he makes no move to go wait outside.

“No,” he says. “I know how girls work. If I give you the space, you’ll spend the next thirty minutes trying on five more dresses. We don’t have time for it today.”

“You should probably work on your manners if you ever want a serious girlfriend,” Felicity says as she steps into her dress.

“Well lucky for us the only girl I would have considered a relationship with doesn’t want me,” he jokes, but she can tell he doesn’t find it funny. “Loose the bra.”

“Excuse me?” she says. She’s never quite gotten used to how straightforward he is.

“You can’t wear a bra in that dress,” he says matter of factly. “Lose the bra then I’ll zip you up.”

“I swear to god you only doing this so you can cop a feel,” she glares at him, but takes her bra off under the dress.

“You’ve found me out,” he deadpans. “Now I’ll have to come up with a new ruse.”

She turns around so her back is to him and he zips her up. When she turns back around, he whistles in appreciation.

“Much better,” Tommy says. “Ollie won’t know what hit him.”

“I’m not dressing up for Oliver,” she lies, not sure why she even bothers. Tommy will always see right through her.

“Sure you’re not,” he says. “You were just standing here refusing to get dressed because you’re trying to impress Mr. Hampton downstairs.”

Mr. Hampton is the doorman of their building. Tommy always jokes about him because he’s completely smitten with Felicity. Probably because she’s always willing to bring him a coffee and listen to his long winded stories about the war. He’s also 84 years old.

“Well Oliver is going to be busy making heart eyes at Laurel so it really doesn’t matter,” she reminds him, stepping into her heels before grabbing her purse and following him out the door.

“If he’s too stupid to take you home tonight, I sure will,” Tommy teases. “Because that dress deserves to get laid.”

“Just the dress?” she laughs.

“I guess the girl in the dress is alright,” he says with a wink.

****

Felicity is at the bar making best friends with the bartender so that he’ll keep her drink full the entire night without having to fight her way through the crowd. She’s also purposefully taking a break from Tommy who is in full playboy mode and has surrounded himself with several women, all of whom look more than willing to take him to a private corner and have their way with him. She sincerely hopes that she doesn’t have to listen to his stories of an orgy tomorrow morning. Tommy can get a little over the top when he’s trying to mask his pain, and Laurel calling it off with him has hit him harder than she expected it to.

The music cuts out and she turns to see what’s going on. Tommy is at the stairs with Oliver as everyone cheers.

“Well those two are in full force,” she says to herself as she throws back the rest of her drink. If they are both going to be full on frat boys tonight, she’s going to need a lot more wine. She barely did the college thing when she was in college. She enjoys partying with her friends most nights, but dealing with Tommy and Oliver when they are like this is never fun. They feed off one another and it’s like they constantly try to out douche each other. It’s hardly their most attractive look.

Queen starts to play and she rolls her eyes and laughs to herself. At least some things never change. She turns back to the bar when she notices Oliver getting surrounded by girls in skin tight dresses. There are some things she’s happier not to witness.

A shot is put in front of her by the bartender with a wink. “Smile. Only two more hours before it’s socially appropriate to call it a night.”

Felicity snorts. “Clearly you’ve never met my roommate. He won’t let me leave anytime before closing.”

“You can always tell him you met a cute boy and you’re going back to his place. I’d fill that role if he needs proof,” he says with a wink.

“Smooth,” she says. “Keep that expensive wine coming and maybe we can talk.”

She has no intention of going home with him tonight, but she’s learned a few useful skills from Tommy over the years. One of which is how to easily get out of awkward situations without making anyone upset. He felt it was a valuable skill for her to learn after he ended up with a black eye fighting for her honor at a club one night.

A hand at her back has her ready to slap somebody when a familiar voice says into her ear, “Who let you out of the house in this?”

She smiles. She’s not sure she’ll ever stop feeling relieved to hear Oliver’s voice. The pain of losing him is something that she’s never going to forget.

“You can blame your other best friend for this,” she says, turning around to face him. “I originally planned for something with far less cutouts.”

She waits for him to complain about it like he always used to. He hates it when she wears anything tight or revealing. He always gets over protective and shifts into big brother mode. And lord knows he can’t enjoy himself is he’s too busy making sure that the boys keep their hands to themselves. She likes to lie to herself and say it’s because he’s jealous, but she refuses to get her hopes up tonight. Not when she’s already spotted Laurel. Even if Oliver hasn’t seen her yet, she knows it’s just a matter of time.

“I’ll be sure to write him a nice thank you card,” Oliver says, shifting his hand so it’s against her bare back. She instantly feels warm all over and starts to blush at the way he’s looking down at her. She thinks that he’s pulling her close to kiss her, but she soon finds out that he’s just pulling her out of the way of a girl trying to get to the bar.

Of course.

“Seeing you in black brings back memories,” he says.

Felicity rolls her eyes and she pictures her goth days. It’s not something she’s overly proud of, looking back. She was trying too hard to rebel and it wasn’t really her. Not the her she wants to be. The woman she is now? It feels more natural.

“Can we not talk about my horrible fashion choices?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you were beautiful back then. Of course, you’re even more gorgeous now, but that’s not surprising.”

Felicity blushes at the compliment. Oliver’s always been kind to her and overflowing with nice things to say, but he’s never been quite so complimentary before.

“Thanks,” she says. “Puberty had to come sooner or later.”

“Well you grew up nice,” he says. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“It’s an open bar,” she points out, amused.

“Well in that case, can Tommy buy us both a drink?” he asks with a smile.

When he’s staring down at her like he is now, it’s easy to forget that they are in the middle of a crowded party. It’s easy to tune out the loud music and hustle and bustle that surrounds them. The world becomes just the two of them and it’s easy to pretend that this is the way things could always be. It’s easy to convince herself that maybe he had gotten her message. That maybe he does know she loves him and he still loves her back.

Maybe they hadn’t missed their moment.

Oliver looks over her shoulder and suddenly frowns. “Back in a minute.”

Without waiting for a reply from her, he walks away. She follows him with her eyes until she sees him pulling Thea by the arm. She doesn’t have to hear their conversation to know what it’s about. Thea has been sneaking into clubs and parties for a few years now. Everyone is well aware of her drug problem, but nobody has been able to get her to stop. Felicity had hoped that Oliver coming back would mean Thea could finally get clean, but if her showing up tonight is any indication, that won’t be happening.

“I explicitly told her she wasn’t invited,” Tommy says, stepping up next to her.

“Which probably just made coming that much more tempting,” she says, giving him a knowing look.

“So what were you and Ollie talking about?” he asks, raising his hand to signal that they’d like another round.

“Nothing really,” she says, ignoring the look Tommy gives her.

“He has been watching you from the moment he stepped into the building,” he says, knocking shoulders with her. “Please promise me you’ll tell him how you feel so we won’t have to do this dance for 9 more seasons. This slow burn has gone on long enough.”

“Slow burn?”

“It’s a term Thea taught me. It means—”

“I know what it means,” she cuts him off.

“Tell him,” Tommy says. “Trust me when I say, he’ll be open to it.”

He’s probably right. If the way he was talking to her tonight is any indication, he’s not acting like he’s over her. She waited to tell him she loved him before and it ended up being her biggest regret. She shouldn’t wait any longer. If she’s learned anything in her life, it’s that time isn’t limitless.

She nods and turns to see if he’s still talking to Thea and her stomach drops to her toes. He’s talking with Laurel. She bites her lip as she watches Oliver lead Laurel out of the room.

“You were saying?” Felicity says and she watches as Tommy downs both his and her drinks.

“She can have him,” he says before walking away and into a group of women with his fake smile. “Ladies!”

“Still looking for an excuse to get out of here?” the bartender asks her as he places another drink in front of her.

Felicity looks to where Oliver has just left with Laurel and she’s tempted to do what Tommy’s doing. To accept the cute bartenders offer and go have meaningless sex. Go try and erase the image of Oliver from her fantasies and see if it can cover up the horrible twisting feeling in her stomach. But then she looks towards Tommy and she knows she can’t leave. Somebody needs to make sure that he sticks to his sobriety and doesn’t take anything tonight. He’s worked too hard to lose it now.

“Like I said, I’m here until closing,” she says.

****

Felicity grabs Tommy’s arm as he heads towards a back corner of the party where she knows people have been going to do lines of coke.

“What’s up?” he says. “I was just going to hit the head.”

“Walk with me,” she says, pulling on his arm. “The line to the girl’s room is super long but I hear there’s another bathroom in Hall H that’s open.”

“I know what you’re doing; you’re not that sneaky,” he says as she leads him through the crowd of people.

“And what am I doing?” she asks innocently enough.

“You’re babysitting me,” he says. “I’m not going to fall off the wagon. I just needed the bathroom.”

“Great!” she says with a wide smile. “So you won’t mind walking me to Hall H. After all, I shouldn’t be wandering these halls by myself, right?”

“Curious how you only play the damsel in distress card when it’s convenient for you,” he says as they make it out the door and into the much quieter hallway.

“Well I only play it because you have a white knight complex,” she says.

“Nope, that would be Oliver,” Tommy argues. “I’m much more of a dark knight.”

“If you say so, Batman,” she says as they walk hand in hand towards the other end of the convention center. She tries very hard to keep her eyes forward as she knows exactly what kind of things go on in dark corners and hidden alleys at the parties that Tommy throws.

“I can’t believe she left with him so quickly,” Tommy says. “You know he’s not back yet, right? That means they’re fucking. They always left parties to go fuck. I wouldn’t be surprised if we caught them somewhere out here.”

Felicity stops walking immediately. The very last thing she wants to walk into is Oliver and Laurel going at it.

“Thank you for that,” she grumbles.

“I don’t get it,” Tommy says, pulling on her until she starts walking again. “He was staring at your ass all night. Then Laurel shows up and bam? I don’t understand. I mean, that dress makes your ass look fantastic.”

Felicity is impressed. Her word vomit is clearly rubbing off on Tommy. That and he’s three sheets to the wind. She needs to get some coffee in him and help him sober up or he’s bound to do something stupid and end up getting arrested. Again.

“He should have never looked at her twice,” Tommy grumbles.

His words sink in and her jaw drops as she realizes what he’s saying.

“Tommy Merlyn, did you get me to wear this dress so that Laurel and Oliver wouldn’t hook up?” she asks, feeling dirty all of a sudden. What did he think she was? Some sex toy to wave in Oliver’s face as a distraction? That’s not like Tommy.

“Well it failed,” he says. “So now we’re both miserable.”

“Tommy,” she says seriously, pulling on his arm to get him to stop walking and look at her so he can see she’s not amused.

“I was trying to help you both out. I know how much you love him and I’m telling you that he wants you, too. I didn’t make that up, it’s true. If pushing the two of you together also happened to help me, then great.”

Felicity doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s angry, but she’s not sure if it’s more that Tommy tried to get Oliver and her together or the fact that it didn’t work.

She’s not this kind of girl. She doesn’t cry over whether boys like her or not. She’s smarter than that. And yet, here she is feeling like she wants to curl up in a ball and eat several pints of mint chocolate chip until it doesn’t feel like the world is caving in.

For five years, she’s built up what happened before Oliver died. She’s listened to those two messages he sent her repeatedly. She took his words to heart. Really let the idea that he’d been in love with her since they were kids sink in. And that belief has been at the center of every single decision. It’s why she spent so much time with Tommy. Why she moved to Starling after graduation. Why she accepted the job at Merlyn Global instead of Queen Consolidated despite them offering her a better position.

She’d built it all up in her head. She’d been trying to play it cool this last week, thinking that Oliver would just need some time to adjust but they would eventually get around to talking about his last message. But… it wasn’t real. None of it. She’d built it all up.

And Tommy had let her.

God. She knows he was Oliver’s friend first, but she thought that they were close. She thought he would have the decency to not feed into this delusion that Oliver and her would ever make it work.

She’d been wrong.

“I want to go home,” she says, holding her hand out for his car keys.

“‘Lis…”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to hear it.

“You don’t have to leave,” he says. “You should go enjoy the party. There are plenty of guys here who would be more than willing to help you forget for a night.”

One night stands have never been her thing. She’s never seen the appeal of them. Even if they could help her forget about Oliver for the night, she’d just wake up to realize that all that rejection was still there and she’d feel nothing but dirty. No thanks. She feels dirty enough as it is.

She’d gotten dressed up for him. What a joke.

“I just want to leave,” she says. He looks like he’s about to protest again so she holds up her hand to stop him. “I feel ridiculous. I’m standing in this dress, half naked, upset over a boy. I’m not that girl and the fact that I let myself become that girl makes me feel dirty. I want to go home, shower, eat ice cream in bed, and fall asleep to Doctor Who.”

He doesn’t look happy about it, but he hands over his keys.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She leans in to give him a goodbye kiss on the cheek. “Please don’t do anything stupid tonight.��

Tommy laughs, but it sounds hollow. “I make no promises.”

“Fine. Then promise me no drugs and nothing that will get you longer than a night in jail,” she says.

He smiles and gives her a wink. “Drive safe, Smoak.”

She waves goodbye and heads for the exit, eager to get home so that she can take these shoes off. They are cute, but she’s not entirely sure they were worth the pain. The second the cool night air hits her, she regrets not bringing a jacket. Any alcohol that was in her system keeping her warm wore off a little over an hour ago and now she’s just cold.

She’s walking towards the parking garage when she notices several police cars on the street, including a SWAT team.

“What the hell?” she says to herself. She looks around, trying to figure out what is going on.

It’s not that she would have been surprised to see a few cop cars outside of the party. After all, it wouldn’t be an Oliver Queen/Tommy Merlyn event if the cops didn’t make an appearance. With the amount of drugs flying around freely and the sheer volume, the cops would have been well within their rights to pay them a visit. But SWAT?

She realizes that they are all rushing into Hunt Multinational and she breathes a sigh of relief. She’s really too tired to bail Tommy out of jail tonight.

She’s about to continue walking to the car when she hears gunfire. She looks up, trying to see where it’s coming from, nervous about getting caught up in the crossfire. She tries to figure out if she’s better off going back inside or rushing to the car.

She hears the sound of glass breaking and watches in shock as a man dressed in green literally ziplines from one of the top floors of Hunt Multinational to the rooftop of the convention center. She can’t see his face. With how far away he is, she can’t make out much of anything, except that whoever he is clearly has a Robin Hood fetish. And the way he easily went between buildings, holding himself up with only one arm like he is some kind of Tarzan is impressive. His arms must be massive. Maybe he really is Tarzan. Raised by monkeys or something. A jungle baby that somehow found his way to Starling City—

“Oh my god,” she whispers as it all hits her at once.

It's Oliver. Her Oliver.

Tommy had thought it was weird that Oliver was so insistent that the party be here, despite the fact that they’d never done an event here before and there were far more places with sentimental value he could have chosen. The convention center that just happens to be next to Hunt’s building. Who conveniently was attacked by the Hood yesterday and again just now.

The mysterious hood saved Oliver and Tommy from their kidnappers, but Tommy never saw him. It was Oliver that gave the description of the man in green to the police. He'd been the only one to see him.

The Hood who just happens to show up at the same time Oliver returned from the island.

The deserted island where he somehow taught himself Russian.

“Oh my god,” she whispers again, not knowing what to do.

The longer she thinks about it the more positive she is that she's right. Oliver’s the vigilante.

What do you do when you find out that your best friend is some arrow loving Robin Hood?

What do you do when you find out the boy you’ve known since first grade, the one who didn’t have an angry bone in his body, suddenly comes back from 5 years away and decides to become a vigilante? She’s watched enough Criminal Minds. She can do a profile. Nobody decides to forgo the aid of law enforcement and fight crime themselves if there isn’t a lot of built up rage inside of them.

What the hell happened to Oliver on that island?

****

Felicity lays in bed that night for hours, unable to shut her mind off. She can’t reconcile the Oliver that she used to know with the Oliver who ziplines between buildings to escape a literal SWAT team. But there is no doubt in her mind, the longer she thinks about it, that Oliver is the vigilante.

Felicity has had the Moscow Rules memorized since she was 7.

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. Or an enemy action, depending on who you ask, but the theory still stands.

Once meant nothing. The fact that Oliver has been so tight lipped about what happened to him on the island isn’t a surprise. He’s never been the guy to share his feelings with many people. She’s always been an exception, but he was gone for 5 years. That kind of isolation breeds introversion and distrust.

Twice was odd but nothing to look too closely at. The Hood rescued Oliver and Tommy from the warehouse where they were being held. Only Oliver described the Hood. Tommy hadn’t seen him, but then again, he’d been drugged. Oliver had been drugged as well, however due his size, the drugs probably didn’t have as drastic an effect on Oliver as they did Tommy. Either way, it makes sense that a vigilante would rescue two men from kidnappers. The fact that the vigilante showed up the same time that Oliver returned was nothing more than a coincidence. After all, nobody that knew Oliver before would ever mistake him for Robin Hood.

The third time, she’d been stupid not to make the connection. Oliver was insistent about the party being at the convention center. The convention center that just happened to be next to Hunt Multinational, where the Hood had broken into tonight.

God. Felicity still can’t wrap her mind around it.

Men died.

Oliver murdered them.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

The Oliver she knew was far from perfect. He drank too much resulting in a fair share of DUIs, stole a taxi, urinated on a police officer, assaulted a paparazzi, and in general made incredibly reckless decisions. However, Oliver hadn’t been a violent guy. He’d been acquitted of the assault charges because Oliver’s lawyer had been able to prove that the paparazzi in question had been stalking Oliver for a few weeks and had been harassing the girl he was with that night.

It was rare for Oliver to ever resort to violence. For the most part, his recklessness involved doing something for a laugh. He never set out to hurt anybody.

So it’s hard for her to comprehend the fact that 5 years away has turned her best friend into a murderer. She didn’t even know that Oliver knew how to fight. He’d always been a gym rat. He was a jock in high school and kept up his workouts after he graduated because he wanted to impress women. But there’s a big difference between lifting weights and becoming a bow wielding ninja.

Felicity hacked into SCPD’s servers as soon as she got home tonight to find out everything she could on the vigilante. The things that witnesses are saying Oliver can do aren’t skills you learn while deserted on an island. They just aren’t.

The archery she’ll buy. He needed to eat and that meant hunting. So somehow he built himself a bow. It isn’t something she would have thought him capable of, but desperation tends to make the impossible possible and Oliver’s always been smarter than he lets on.

So cool. He became an expert archer by hunting wild animals. That doesn’t explain his fighting skills. It’s not like he was going to be playing fisticuffs with a boar. He probably didn’t encounter a mutant rat that trained him in the ways of ninjutsu. She doubts he was bitten by some radioactive insect that gifted him suddenly with superpowers.

Just because Felicity reads a lot of comic books doesn’t mean she actually thinks it’s possible that the accident triggered Oliver’s X-gene. Superpowers aren’t real. This isn’t Oliver’s origin story.

Felicity sits up in bed and throws the covers off of her violently. She’s not going to be able to sleep tonight until she can make these puzzle pieces fit together in a picture that doesn’t sound absolutely insane.

She grabs her laptop off of the nightstand and begins hacking into his hospital records. She’s hacked into everything she can think of to get information on the Hood, but maybe what she should be doing is looking into Oliver directly.

She quickly accesses his file at Starling General. It talks of fractures that never healed properly. They estimate 20% of his body is covered in scar tissue. There are old burns, cuts, and bite marks on him. It’s not overly surprising. Living on an island without any shelter from the elements or proper equipment can’t be easy. Injuries are bound to happen often. But somehow, she doubts it’s as simple as that.

Oliver had been rescued by fishermen who brought Oliver back to China. He’d been there for a week before he came back to Starling, and in that time he’d been held under quarantine. She hacks into his file at the hospital there. It’s all in Chinese so she can’t read it, but there are pictures attached.

She opens the file and gasps at the sight.

It’s one thing to hear that Oliver’s body is littered with scars, it’s another thing entirely to see them.

“What happened to you?” she whispers, holding back tears as she reaches out to stroke Oliver’s photo on the screen. As if that’s somehow going to do anything to comfort him.

Her guilt for not getting on the Gambit with him intensifies as she stares at the evidence of his trauma. She should have prevented this. She should have made sure that none of this happened to him. He’s always protected her and the one time she could have returned the favor she failed him.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, continuing to trace over his scars on the screen, wishing that she could somehow erase their existence.

It’s four in the morning, so her brain isn’t firing at full capacity. Which is the only explanation for why it takes her so long to realize that something more than scars is seriously wrong with his body.

“When did you get a tattoo?” she asks, zooming in on the images to get a closer look at the 3 tattoos on his body.

The one on his back looks like a dragon and it’s obvious that it wasn’t done by a professional. The lines are blurred and there is scar tissue from where the needle had been pressed into his skin in various places too hard.

There are Chinese characters on his side. She spends the next thirty minutes trying to figure out their meaning. Individually the characters read mouse, ginger, Yao, and pig. It doesn’t make any sense.

However, it’s the star on his chest that pulls her attention the most. It’s a star, but it’s not a symbol obviously recognizable. It’s not the Star of David nor is it the typical 5-point star. It’s got 8-points to it. She watched a documentary recently about the prison systems in which they described how prisoners used their tattoos to symbolize various crimes they’d committed, sentences they’d served, or ranks they hold. She doesn’t know why Oliver would have a prison tattoo, but she has a feeling and she’s learned to trust her gut.

Felicity starts out cross referencing Oliver’s tattoo against the catalog of tattoos the SCPD has on file and comes up empty. On one hand, she’s relieved. She doesn’t want Oliver to have a prison or gang tattoo. That would only raise a million more questions. However, does want to know what the tattoo means or how he’d gotten tattoos on the island.

She knows for certain that he was tattoo free when he left. She’d mentioned to him that she wanted to get a tattoo to remember Cooper by and he’d talked her out of it. He didn’t like tattoos. Obviously something changed his mind if he has 3 now.

She widens her search to the national level. Hacking the FBI is a little more difficult than the SCPD, but it’s not beyond her capabilities. She just needs to be more careful about covering her tracks because she doesn’t need the FBI finding her like they had Cooper.

She cross references thousands of images before she finally finds a match.

“This can’t be right,” she says to herself, before double and triple checking the image.

Oliver’s tattoo has the most unlikely meaning. It’s a symbol of the Russian Mafia. It means he’s a captain. Which solves one mystery. If Oliver is a member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, it explains how he knows Russian. It also possibly explains why he murdered Adam Hunt’s men. She wouldn’t be surprised if Adam Hunt ended up mixed up in mafia business.

But how? And why?

Is this why the Gambit went down? Were the Queens members of the mafia and Robert got Oliver involved when they went out together? She can’t believe… she won’t believe that Oliver was involved prior to the Gambit. He would have told her. They told each other everything.

But what if he didn’t?

Is it even possible that he’d kept this a secret from her all these years?

She doesn’t think so. Hadn’t everyone at that dinner table been just as surprised as she was that Oliver knew Russian?

So what the hell? How does a man get shipwrecked in the middle of the North China Sea and come back a member of the Bratva? A captain of the Bratva?

For every question she answers, five more pop up in their place.

This is one rabbit hole she’s not sure that she wants to go down anymore. Every secret she uncovers just makes her more and more terrified.

She doesn’t know who came back from that island, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Oliver Queen she grew up with.

****

For the rest of the weekend, Felicity shuts herself in her room and ignores the outside world, stopping only long enough to allow Tommy to bring her food at mealtimes. He asks her numerous times if she’s okay. He thinks she’s upset because of Oliver and Laurel. He has no idea and Felicity doesn’t know how to tell him.

Her entire world has been shaken to the core with the knowledge that Oliver is a captain in the Bratva as well as the Hood. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to tell Tommy any of this. He’s so excited to have his best friend back that she doesn’t have the heart to tell him the man that’s walking around claiming to be Oliver Queen isn’t their Oliver.

So she locks herself in her bedroom and researches. She hacks into every known database and even several unknown databases looking for information on the Bratva. What she finds out is horrifying. Felicity lived in Vegas, so she’s not naive about organized crime. In fact, the casino her mother still works at is owned by the mob. However, what she’s seeing is beyond the expected drug and money laundering. They specialize in human trafficking. She’s connected them to an auction site on the darknet. There are women from all over the world, many of which are young, barely teenagers. A recent raid in Russia intercepted a cargo ship headed stateside full of women who had been tortured and shoved in tiny boxes, many of the women suffocated to death because there hadn't been enough breathing holes.

She’s horrified. It’s one thing to know that these organizations exist out there in the world. It’s another thing entirely to know that a man she’s known nearly her entire life is a leader within this organization.

Felicity continues to dig. She wants to uncover everything. She needs answers. She needs to understand how this came to be. She needs to understand why.

As she continues to research, she comes across a picture of the Hood in Russia. She looks into the metadata on the photo and figures out that it was taken less than a year ago in Krasnoyarsk.

“So much for being marooned on an island,” she says. “What else have you lied about?”

Felicity looks into Lian Yu, the name of the island that Oliver was found on. She tries to learn everything she can about it to see if she can figure out if Oliver was ever really on that island. From what she can tell, the Chinese government used it as a prison of sorts. They banished prisoners to the island up until 1999 when they abandoned the island — and she assumes everyone currently residing there. After that, she can’t find any information on Lian Yu anywhere else.

If Oliver ever was on that island, it’s possible that he wasn’t alone. The island could have still held Chinese prisoners. Which could explain where he’d learned to fight, but it doesn’t explain the Bratva.

By Monday morning, Felicity has gotten barely any sleep and has way more questions than she has answers. She’s on her way to work, downing her fourth cup of coffee, trying to figure out how she’s going to make it through the day, when she realizes that it’s pointless to even try. There is no way she’s going to be able to focus on budget meetings and quarterly evaluations when her mind is still on Oliver and his life of crime.

She hasn’t spoken to him since Friday, though Tommy did go out to dinner with him the night before and extended the invitation. Felicity hadn’t wanted to see him. She’s terrified of it, actually, but she has questions and after days of research she’s come to the unfortunate conclusion that there’s only one way she’s going to get her answers.

She needs to go directly to the source.

Felicity flips a U-Turn at the next light and heads out to Queen Manor.

When she arrives at the mansion, Raisa lets her in. Seeing her makes her wonder if the Bratva really is a family business. She’s been with the Queens for as long as Felicity has known Oliver and she’s from Russia. It’s possible that she was brought here illegally as part of their human trafficking business. She read online that they didn’t only kidnap people for the sex trade. She doesn’t think that Raisa acts like a woman being held against her will, but then again what does she really know?

“Hey,” Oliver says, walking into the room wearing a surprised smile. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

Felicity watches him carefully, looking for any sign of his true identity as both a Bratva captain and the Hood, but all she can see is the boy she used to know. She can’t get her mind to reconcile the fact that the man standing before her is the same one that tortured a man last night.His smile is the same one he’s always given her. The hug he pulls her into feels just as safe as it always has. Even his cologne is the same one he’s worn since college. Nothing about him screams danger, but that’s what makes him so threatening. If the face he’s wearing now is an act, how long has he been pretending with her?

“Felicity,” Oliver says, squeezing her arm to get her attention.

“What?” she asks, realizing that he must have been talking to her and she’d missed it.

“I asked what you’re doing here?”

Felicity takes a deep breath to settle her nerves and nods her head as she tells herself that she can do this. She can confront a mob boss.

Or is it the mafia? She doesn’t understand the difference. She thought that the mafia was only for groups from Sicily and the mob was a generic term for all organized crime, but her research last night referred to the Bratva as the Russian Mafia. So who knows.

What she does know is that she is brave enough to confront a captain of the Bratva. This is something that she can do. After all, it’s not like Oliver will actually kill her, right? Sure, movies always used that ‘If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you line,’ but that’s fiction. Oliver is her friend. Surely he wouldn’t actually hurt her. Right?

Images of the news last night flash through her head. Nick Major had looked pretty beat up in the video of him leaving the hospital after being confronted by the Hood, and Nick had been a friend of the family as well.

“Felicity?”

“We need to talk,” she says, sounding much braver than she feels.

She grabs his arm and pulls him up the stairs and storms towards his room. She’s not sure how much of Oliver’s secret the Queens are in on or not, but either way she wants this to be a private conversation. If the Bratva is the family business, she thinks Oliver may be more inclined to tell her the truth if there aren’t listening ears all around.

“What’s wrong?” Oliver asks the second she closes the door behind him.

Felicity pushes on his incredibly muscular chest — not that she’s taking the time to notice right now because that would be inappropriate – until he sits down on the sofa. He moves aside to make room for him, but she decides to stand in front of him and crosses her arms to appear more imposing.

“You’re going to tell me everything,” she demands.

“Um… What?” he says looking adorably confused, but she knows it has to be an act.

“You’re going to tell me everything,” she says again and he shakes his head and opens his mouth to make up what she’s sure would be a lie but she puts her finger to his lips to stop him. “No. You’re going to tell me everything. You’re going to give me the truth. Because right now, all I know is that my best friend is part of the Russian mob and is running around town swinging from buildings like he’s Tarzan and playing Robin Hood. And none of it makes any sense. So you’re going to tell me everything because right now all I know is that you’re wanted by the police for murder and none of it makes any sense.”

She takes a deep breath as she finishes her rant to get airflow to her brain because she’s feeling a little light headed and definitely thinks the world may be spinning. Though the world spinning is probably just a side effect of realizing your best friend is some kind of jungle ninja.

Oliver reaches up to remove her finger from her lips and uses his grip to pull her down to sit on the couch with her.

“Okay,” he says looking like he’s trying not to laugh. “I don’t know how much coffee you’ve had to drink, but clearly you need to make the switch to decaf.”

“Don’t,” she warns him. She’s not an idiot and if he treats her like she is, she’s going to be incredibly pissed.

“Felicity,” he says softly. “What on Earth makes you think that I’m… what was it you said? A part of the Russian mob?”

“Well that tattoo on your chest for one,” she says, raising her eyebrow in challenge.

“That?” he says with a chuckle. “I got that when I was drunk.”

She eyes him carefully, looking for any sign that he’s lying. He’s not, but that doesn’t mean he’s telling her the truth either. Just because he had been drunk when he got it, didn’t mean he didn’t get it from the Bratva.

“You didn’t have it in Boston,” she says. “So are you telling me there was booze on the island? And a tattoo artist willing to wave how dangerous it is to get tattooed while drunk?”

Oliver just shrugs, like it’s nothing to be concerned about.

“And the fact that you’re fluent in Russian? What you just picked that up when you were on a deserted island did you?” she says with a snort.

“You honestly believe this, don’t you?” he says.

Felicity stands up and pulls her arm out of his grip. “Don’t,” she says sharply.

“I don’t know where this is coming from,” he says. “Where did you get this idea that I’m some kind of crime lord? You know me, do you really think I’d join the mob? How could I? In case you forgot, I’ve been out of town for awhile.”

“Oliver Queen,” she says, pulling out the voice she always used when she needed him to do something. He called it her Mom Voice. She puts her hands on her hips and tries her best to look threatening, though she’s sure, to a mobster, she’s hardly intimidating. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t take everything I’ve found out about you and you’re little green hobby and go straight to the police.”

When Oliver doesn’t say anything right away, she throws her hands up in the air in frustration.

“Fine,” she says and moves to storm out of the room.

Faster than should be humanly possible, Oliver is out of his seat and slamming the door closed as she opens it.

“Let me go,” she says firmly, trying her best not to be afraid. After all, she’s still fairly confident that he won’t hurt her. But that knowledge somehow doesn’t stop her heart from beating fast and her blood from pounding in her ears.

“Felicity, please,” Oliver says, sounding broken.

It’s odd. For somebody that tortures and murders people at night, she wouldn’t have expected him to demonstrate any weakness.

She doesn’t turn around to face him, but she doesn’t make a move to leave again. He sighs deeply and drops his hands so that he’s no longer blocking her against the door.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“I can’t tell you,” he whispers. “Please just trust me.”

“How can I trust you when I feel like I don’t even know you anymore?” she asks.

“Because you always have,” he says. “You know me. You know that I would never hurt you. So please don’t be scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you, I’m scared for you.”

The moment the words leave her mouth, she realizes how true they really are. It’s not her own life that has her breathing heavily and panicking. Her heart is pounding in fear of what’s happening to Oliver. Of what’s clearly already happened to Oliver.

“I can take care of myself,” he says.

“Can you?” she asks, finally turning around to look at him.

“I know what I’m doing,” he says.

“Well at least that makes one of us,” she says.

She waits for him to say something else. Anything else. But no explanation comes. She opens the door again and this time he doesn’t stop her.

The entire way out of the house, she keeps expecting him to come running after her and beg her not to tell anyone. She keeps expecting one of the servants to pop out at her and drag her into the basement and lock her away from threatening to expose the family secret. At the very least, she expects Moira to meet her at the door with a threat.

None of that happens. The only response she gets is a text from Oliver as she gets into her car.

Please don’t tell anyone.

Part 2 of 2 to be posted next week ;)

Tagged/Untagged? Let me know!

@acheaptrickandacheesyoneline // @almondblossomme // @arrowandolicity // @bifelicitys // @bushlaboo // @canadianheartgirl // @cinfos // @dettiot // @dyedblondefelicity // @emisfritish // @emmaamelia95 // @eternal-olicity // @eunaosoumodelo // @evil-limace // @felicity-said–yes// @geniewithwifi // @goliverfelicity // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @hope-for-olicity // @it-was-a-red-heeler // @itsakatemus// @itsthatwallflower // @just-arrow // @karenanderson32 // @loveyoubeyondhope // @memcjo // @miriam1779 // @missyriver // @morganashimi83 // @mtb1002 // @olicitylovemaking // @oliverfel4 // @pleasantfanandstudent // @pottercastleminds // @puddintan3 // @realityisoverrated-fic // @relativelyobsessedfangirl // @scu11y22 // @somewhatinvisible // @sonrisaentejas // @sovvannight // @spaztronautwriter // @speakandseethetruth // @sweetdawn129// @sweettooth5 // @tennesseeyouaregoodtome// @wetsuiton

#arrow fic #olicity fic #childhood best friends trope #friends to lovers #home verse #arrow fanfiction #Olicity Smut

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theshipsfirstmate · 7 years

Text

Arrow Fic: I Have Been Homesick For You Since We Met

post-5x21, Felicity watches Oliver’s press conference and has a talk with Thea.

“It's not time. Not just yet. But maybe soon. They're not planets in orbit around each other, they’re comets scorching through constellations, alternating near misses on an inevitable collision course.”

Title from “A Father’s First Spring” by The Avett Brothers.

I Have Been Homesick For You Since We Met (AO3)

Oliver texts to tell her about the press conference, and somewhere in between reading his message and replying, Felicity's slipped her heels back on and buzzed the doorman to hail a car. Next thing she knows, she's at City Hall.

She enters the building, and knows the route to the briefing room by heart, but when she hits the lobby, her feet turn to lead and won't carry her any further. She’s genuinely contemplating walking right back out the way she came when she catches sight of one of the wall-mounted TVs. Oliver is taking the podium and something in her chest still swells at the sight of him standing in front of the cameras, speaking to the city he’s given everything to protect.

The volume icon on the screen ticks up until she can hear his voice and after holding her breath for a long, heartbreaking moment when he admits that “the allegations made against Robert Queen are true,” she turns around to see the friendly security guard at the front desk watching either her or the TV.

“Thanks, Lito.” The uniformed man gives her a familiar smile and a mock salute with the remote control.

“You going up, Ms. Smoak?” he asks. “I can print you a visitor pass.”

The question shouldn't throw her for a loop, but it does. Oliver's given dozens of these press conferences since taking office. Felicity used to love being in the room as he commanded it, watching him lead the city the way he was meant to, and feeling her heart take a stutter step every time he met her eyes on a particularly meaningful turn of phrase.

She hasn't been to one since they split, and she's almost certain it would be too much. She's glad to have trusted that instinct when she hears Oliver continue.

“It’s time to leave the past in the past, so that our children may inherit the Star City we’ve always dreamed of.”

Felicity hears her words about his father echoed back in that line, but she can’t help but picture the school photo of William that she uncovered during her dark web deep dive to try and find where Oliver’s son and his mother had dropped off the grid. She’s spent the days since their harrowing entrapment in the bunker waiting for the other shoe to drop and avoiding the sting that comes when she thinks about how he’s chosen to trust her now that the dust has settled around the ruins of their life together, now that she’s apologized for walking out, now that he’s out of other options.

But that’s not the only thing that hurts.

She hadn't been ready for kids, of that much she’s certain. She still isn’t. This work they do is only conducive to heartbreak, and she's spent more than a few sleepless nights weighing the ethics of bringing more life into a world fraught with pain and destruction. Even still, in the face of every logical argument, Felicity’s come to realize that some subconscious part of her had believed that eventually, the two of them would hand down a legacy together.

There’s a hurricane raging inside her, but she still finds herself waiting in the lobby after the press have finished their questions and the local station switches back to regularly-scheduled programming. Mercifully, it’s not Oliver who happens upon her first in the exiting current of reporters, it’s Thea.

“Hey!” Felicity reaches out to hug the younger Queen, who relents after slightly longer pause than normal. “How are you?”

Thea feels like next to nothing in her arms, and when they pull back, Felicity can see that her time away hasn't done anything to lighten the worrisome smudges underneath her eyes. She's got that haunted look that creeps up on Oliver sometimes, and Felicity’s heart aches because she knows even less about how to fix this Queen.

“Feels like I should be asking you the same thing.” Thea replies, avoiding the question and Felicity's eyeline. “Ollie told me about your bunker death trap lockdown. The chip’s OK?”

“Oh yeah, Curtis fixed me up in no time.” Oliver's sister's gaze returns to her with sharp focus then, and Felicity wonders if she'll go as far as to press her on what she really wants to be asking. She’s slyer than Curtis, but often delights in pushing the two of them into awkward circumstances or making them answer for the longing looks that even Felicity’s growing weary of denying.

But today, Thea seems like she’s a million miles away. “You came for the speech?”

“Yeah.” It’s more of a breath than an answer as Felicity wrestles with the hot burn of embarrassment that stains her cheeks. She had come for the speech, she just hadn’t quite made it there. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

“There's nothing to apologize for,” Thea says with false levity and an even more fraudulent pursed-lip smirk. “At least he's not as sinister as my biological father, right? Not nearly.”

Rage like an adrenaline rush floods Felicity’s veins at the mere mention of Malcolm Merlyn.

“You’re nothing like him.” The words press through clenched teeth and her jaw only relaxes when she remembers someone who might be more convincing. “Did Oliver show you the video?”

“Yeah, he did. We talked about…a lot.” She heaves a sigh that tells Felicity that's not an exaggeration. “About our dad, and… mostly about leaving the past in the past.”

This time, the reference tugs a hint of a smile at the corner of Felicity's mouth and Thea must catch it. “That was one of yours, huh?”

“Not specifically,” she lies in the face of the other woman’s knowing grin. “We just had another one of those conversations about how maybe his burdens aren’t his alone to carry.”

It’s the same talk they’ve been having for years, Felicity thinks to herself. She tries to chip away at his walls with whatever tools she has handy, while Oliver stockpiles bricks and mortar on the other side.

“Talked him back into the suit and back up on that podium,” Thea muses. “Feels familiar. Might as well get that ring back on your finger.”

“Thea, come on.” Felicity’s shocked by both her sharp, immediate response and her visceral reaction to the suggestion. It's agonizing, thinking of what was, and what could have been. Even the flippant possibility of getting that happiness back sends an unwanted flash of hope through her that’s more lightning bolt than static spark.

“Come on, what?” Thea’s tone is less playful than her eye roll would indicate. “You're being goddamn idiots, both of you.”

But Felicity’s still got electrical current running through her, and she stays quiet for a long enough moment that Thea heaves a sympathetic sigh. “Sorry.”

“It's OK.” Felicity hates how small her voice can sound around members of this family. “I know you didn't mean it.”

“No, I meant it,” Thea cuts back, with a tone that leaves no doubt about whether or not she’s Moira Queen’s daughter. “But I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I just… you guys are only wasting time, you know? Life is short, and if you have even a chance to be happy…”

“We’re not the same people.” Now it's Felicity's turn for a sharp interruption. “We're so different from who we were when we were together, when he…”

The tears in her throat muck up the explanation she’s recited in her head countless times, and she clears it before articulating the most important point: “Too much has changed.”

“Some things are the same, though.” Thea Queen is the perfect storm of smart and stubborn, and it’s only fun when it’s not your boat that’s getting tossed through the whitecaps. “The most important thing is the same, and isn't that all that matters?”

That's the question Felicity's been asking herself since she saw Oliver lying in an ARGUS medical bed, smiling at her after pulling them both from the jaws of certain death, and realized it was futile to pretend that her heart wasn't beating the same cadence it has been for five long, agonizing, wonderful years.

But there's still no perfect answer to their biggest problems, and there never has been. They've tried once already, and failed so spectacularly that Felicity’s not sure she'd survive the drop again.

Then, just as her heart is turning itself over on nothing more than a memory, Oliver’s standing in front of her, and there isn't an excuse in this world or any other that can measure up to the feeling in her chest when their eyes meet. His are rimmed with red and shiny with a mess of emotions that she’d be able to pick through one by one if she stared for long enough. She’s not certain what he sees in hers, but she has a pretty good guess.

He hugs his sister first, murmuring a few words in her ear -- and Felicity tries not to notice how his figure makes Thea look impossibly thinner still -- then turns to her almost on instinct, like he might wrap his arms around her too. He settles for cupping her elbow with a warm, calloused hand, and she says a silent prayer that her sigh isn't embarrassingly audible.

“Felicity.” He's saying her name like that again, like it’s a complete sentence. It seems to have started back up after their moment in the ARGUS facility, but she hadn’t realized just how long it had been until earlier in the bunker, when he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for coming.”

His name in return, and all her excuses, get stuck in her throat at the feeling of his thumb grazing her upper arm. So she says the next best thing that comes to mind: “It was a good speech.”

He gives her a little smile, like he knows what she's trying to tell him. But before she finds out if that’s true, her phone buzzes with an alert from the new security system. “Someone’s in the bunker.”

A few more taps reveals the surveillance feed, and she breathes a sigh of relief upon seeing the familiar face. “It’s just Rene.”

“I told everyone we were laying low tonight.” Oliver says with a frown, which almost, almost covers Felicity's slip of the tongue.

“Speaking of fathers...” She trails off, but both Queen siblings turn to her with a genetically-resemblant furrowed brow, and wait with that infuriatingly practiced patience until she explains.

“I just… Quentin said he missed his custody hearing earlier.”

She turns her focus towards Oliver, anticipating the layers of his disappointed reaction. But they're both taken aback when Thea vocalizes her own. “He what?”

Felicity's genuinely not sure if she's asking her to repeat herself. “Yeah, he just... didn't show.”

“That idiot,” Thea’s seething, and it’s the most extreme emotion Felicity’s seen from her in months. “I'll go.”

The confusion must be visible on their faces, because she offers a feeble excuse as she turns for the door. “I have to stop by anyway, I left the USB down there.”

She's up to something, and Felicity hasn’t the faintest idea what. Thea’s always been the best of all of them at keeping secrets and this one sees to have come out of nowhere. “What was that?”

“I have no clue,” Oliver breathes, and she talks herself back into believing that she knows what he sounds like when he's telling the truth. “Thea's always been the mysterious one.”

She nods and he does too, quirking an eyebrow when the corners of her mouth twitch unconsciously.

And then it’s just the two of them. Again. They've been careful to avoid this kind of interaction since their night in the bunker loosened the cap on everything they’ve been keeping sealed up, but now it’s like someone’s shaking the bottle.

Felicity speaks first, almost as a reflex. “It was a good speech.”

Oliver grins, and she notices that the red in his eyes only makes the blue shine more brilliantly. “You said that already.” It’s hard to know what to do when he smiles at her like that, like things are easy and attainable, like the undeniable pull between them is enough. It’s hard to remember how to breathe, let alone control her rampant thoughts.

“Yeah, but I meant something different this time,” she admits, almost breathlessly, like she’s run a mile just to tell him the truth. “You're a good son.”

Felicity can’t remember when they moved so close, but he takes her hands in his then, and the whole world freezes. “Can I tell you something?”

She should say no, even though it is his turn. She should take a step back. She should remind him that they’re standing in the lobby of City Hall and almost every member of the Star City press is milling through the public space. But instead, she just nods.

“I was standing up there just now, looking out at all the faces... looking for you.” The catch in her throat is audible and he squeezes her hands gently. “And I realized that speech might be the best thing I ever do in my father's name.”

And it could be one of the last, she mentally adds, knowing there's a good chance he's thinking the same thing.

“But,” Oliver continues, and she can’t look away, hope looks so good on him, “it doesn’t have to be the best thing I ever do.”

It reminds Felicity of his words in the bunker, the confession that had spilled from his lips as the life seemed to drain out of him, and she’s hit with a sudden rush of blissful relief for the mere fact that, if nothing else, they’ve made it to today.

“You're a good son, Oliver.” She tells him again because it’s true more than one time over, and because she knows he needs to hear it as much as possible. But she surprises even herself with the next part. “And you're a good father.”

Her eyes have gone glossy with unshed tears, so much so that she can't really tell if his are shimmering back. But he squeezes her hands again, and tugs her just that much closer and it forces out her most painful truth.

“I always knew you would be.”

Even in a perfect world, where the danger is conquerable and their secrets aren’t life-changing and there are more good days than bad, Felicity can admit that she’s still not sure she’d ever be ready for kids. But the thing is, she hadn’t been sure about marriage either, until Oliver Queen was holding out a diamond with a question in his eyes.

He’s standing in front of her now, just like he has been for years. But he doesn’t have anything to ask her, and she doesn’t have any answers.

“I should go.” She says that instead of a thousand other things. “It was a good speech.”

The tears trip down her cheeks then, and when he comes into focus, he’s looking at her like he used to. Just like he's saying her name like he used to, just like he's touching her like he used to. He's looking at like he does when he wants to tell her that he loves her.

But when he opens his mouth to speak, she can't let him.

“I know.” It's not time. Not just yet. But maybe soon. They're not planets in orbit around each other, they’re comets scorching through constellations, alternating near misses on an inevitable collision course.

“Felicity.” There it is again. She has to go before the last vestiges of her willpower give out and she succumbs to something neither of them are ready for.

“It's OK,” she tells him. For now, it's enough. “I know.”

#first mate fic #olicity fic #post-5x21 fic #olicity angst #oliver x felicity #arrow fic #olicity fanfiction #felicity smoak fic #arrow fanfic #arrow fanfiction #olicity fanfic

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ladywolfmd · 7 years

Text

Ad Curare Interdum

Summary:

“Ad curare interdum, saepe tractare, ut consolarer semper… To cure sometimes, to treat often, to comfort always." - Hippocrates

"And then there’s only one more thing you can do – must do. First, you take your hands off.Next, you call it." - Dr. Snow

Part 2 of Medicus:

Dr. Jon Snow is a Trauma surgeon at EVMMC on Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, while Dr. Sansa Stark, is the new Neurosurgeon on board as well as the newly appointed deputy chief of surgery, and also, his girlfriend of three months. An unfortunate loss, a teaching moment, and realizations in and outside the hospital life with all the drama and controversy in between work, brings the couple closer, with Dr. Jon Snow teaching us that being a doctor is so much more than knowing how to save a life - all while trying to build one for Sansa and himself - all while trying to build one for Sansa and himself.

Jon

Esplanade, The Gift

12:30pm

I placed my keys in the fishbowl, hung my coat, dropped my duffel bag near the couch, and kicked off my shoes, my eyes seeking out any sign of Sansa.

Seeing her keys, coat, bag, and shoes, I let out a sigh of relief and felt a smile reach my face, knowing that she would be staying the night.

It's only been three months since we started going out and already I've been burning for her to move in.

Well, at least she accepted the keys though it's only been these past two weeks that she's been using them, but that counts like a real victory for me.

One drawer at a time then Jon.

I'm probably the biggest sap in the world but I wanted her around all the time. Not like we had that much time together anyway. Though I’ve had my share of work load, it was nothing compared to hers. I frowned, recalling yet another of the countless arguments we’ve had about her cutting off some work but she could be as stubborn as the Wall itself so I haven’t had that much victory on that part.

I scanned my apartment then and from the quiet and the lights being off, she was likely sleeping on my bed. I couldn’t help but swallow a groan at the thought of her sprawled peacefully on my sheets, her beautiful red hair spread over my pillows. Shaking my head, I carried on as quiet as possible so as not to wake her. I wanted nothing but to sneak inside and crawl beside her but I needed to stow away the food I brought as well as shower and change out of my work clothes, cursing that I should’ve done that before I left but I was too eager to come home. Ghost and Lady, our Siberian Huskies, were probably at her apartment which meant I really do have her to myself tonight. I grinned. I'll make sure to check on them later though.

I walked towards my kitchen then, and placed the casserole, Gilly, the wife of my Cardiologist friend made, on top of the island counter beside something that easily made me smile.

On top of the counter, under a glass cover were an assortment of cookies with a small note on heating instructions (because she knew I liked them hot and moist), as well as a short message that made my heart skip a beat, written in her elegant script that was far mythical a skill for us doctors.

Dr. Snow,

In case I'm still asleep by the time you come in, help yourself to these and wake me.

Also, I might’ve missed you a bit today. Just a little bit. ;)

Dr. Stark

I couldn’t help but shake my head and laugh. On top of being this gifted neurosurgeon that Eastwatch Med did not deserve, she bakes. And quite deliciously too. She probably baked these right after she came in from the hospital around eleven last night after her shift. I learned that most nights after her midday shifts, her mind was too buzzed to sleep right away despite her protesting body, so she would usually bake to relax before she turns in.

Slipping the note inside my pocket, I lifted the cover and went to heat up a couple of the cookies.

As I set the timer and waited, my mind drifted from thinking of getting a nicer oven and buying baking tools and ingredients with the hope that maybe she’d want to come over more and bake here instead (and what a vision it would be to watch her bake –or eat, or drink, or – anything. She was just so fascinating to watch and I don’t even get the privilege enough to see her as much as I wanted to. Which is pretty much every damned second). But I knew that she’d frown and look at me like I had the mistake to call out an abdominal mass as cancerous and not the swell of a pregnant womb.

I can just hear it now.

“Why? My kitchen is across the hall from yours. You don’t need all those stuff. You don’t even bake! If you want more cookies, you can just say so and I’ll make them and bring them over.”

She’d say and then poke me while rolling her eyes as if it was something as obvious. I sighed.

Both of us could be damn dense at times.

I jumped when I heard a yawn behind me. Whipping my head back quickly, I saw Sansa leaning on the kitchen entrance, rubbing her eyes and yawning once more, looking all adorable and sexy in nothing but an oversized sweatshirt that probably belonged to her brother as it had Winterfell Wolves on it, her long white legs on display.

I walked over to her and brought her to me at once, depositing a kiss on the crown of her head and breathing her in. I held her to me a little longer and she let me, as she always did, her own arms wrapping themselves around my middle.

She wasn't overtly affectionate, preferring to be reserved with hers in public, but she lets me. She always lets me hold her for as long as I want.

I pulled away reluctantly, smiled at ccher, studying her sleepy form and tucking strands of her mussed up hair away from her face before giving her a chaste kiss.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you sweetheart?” I caressed her cheek before letting go and settling my hands on her waist.

She smiled at me and shook her head. “Not really. Well… kind of?” She blushed and smiled at me sheepishly.

I kissed her again, just once and quickly. “Sorry. I wanted to crawl to you right away but I kinda have to shower…then I saw these,” I nodded at the cookies. “I had to have some right away. Thank you, by the way.”

She blushed again and ducked her head. “It’s fine. And you’re welcome. But it’s not a big deal. You know I do that all the time when my mind’s too busy to heed sleep,” she smirked at me.

I kissed her nose. “I know. But it’s still nice. You’re nice. And you look nice,” I started saying in between tiny kisses across her face.

She snorted then giggled as she tilted her head to give me more access. “This old thing? It’s Robb’s. Don’t tell him I have it though. It’s his favorite but it’s just so soft and warm I had to nick it off him after he lent it to me once.”

I began kissing behind her ear as I tugged at the mentioned sweater. “You can always wear one of mine if he takes it back,” I offered, downplaying how much I wanted nothing but for her to wear anything of mine (she hasn’t yet, not even a shirt), most of all, I wanted her to wear my name for gods’ sake. Keep it together, Jon. Or you'll scare her away!

She just laughed then pushed me off so she could give me that playful look of hers. “Or…I could just… get rid off it and never wear it back. To seven hells with the sweater. What do you think, Snow?”

I groaned and pressed my forehead against hers while pulling her flush to me. I wanted nothing more but to ravage her but despite her playful…mood, I knew she was doing this more for my benefit than hers.

She had shadows under her eyes and I felt her catch herself from yawning again. She was still tired and we don’t need to rush today.

“As tempting as that would be, Stark. You need to sleep some more,” I pulled away slightly but kept my hands on her waist.

She sighed and bit her lip, but I could see that she was grateful. “Are you sure? I don’t mind…” she smiled again.

Gods, just marry me already.

I let out a breath dramatically and pushed her lightly towards the bedroom. “Go, before I change my mind. Anyway, I need you well rested, Stark. We have all night.”

She dug in her heels and turned around, smiling at me wickedly, “Oh, do we, now?”

“Just go, Stark. At least, lie down while I heat up the casserole Gilly made for us. I’ll wake you up, feed you, and put you back to sleep.”

She arched a brow but didn’t protest. “Will that be all, Dr. Snow?” she batted her eye lashes at me.

I should be getting a damned medal for this.

I nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. Doctor’s orders.”

She pouted then. Oh no. “Don’t I get another dose of you? Preferably given per orem?”

I groaned. “Later. Go.”

She laughed then. “Fine.”

OR 5, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea Veterans Memorial Medical Center

1:30pm

I carefully dropped the ligated appendix on the basin while Olly, my intern, started irrigating the wound.

Grasping the peritoneum with two straight clamps, I shifted my hold so Daeron could hand me a 3-0 poly so I could start closing. After I sutured the peritoneum, I approximated the first layer of muscle and turned to look at Olly while I started stitching.

“Is this your first time to see an appendectomy?”

He shook his head. “No sir. But it’s only the third I’ve seen and I have to say, sir, it’s the fastest I’ve witnessed for an open one.”

I smiled at him though I knew he couldn’t see with my mask on, and nodded. “I see. Dr. Cerwyn usually does a lap. But can you tell me why we didn’t opt for that?” Eastwatch Med was certainly no training hospital because we don’t reach the case quota for most departments, but we do accept interns on their last year of medschool for their emergency medicine rotations, and the occasional moonlighters. And I make it a point to teach them somehow. We’re relatively more benign than other hospitals so there was time for this. Well, except Sansa’s department of course.

“Based on the history sir, our patient had two previous abdominal surgeries prior to this. First was an emergency cholecystectomy, another was a mesh repair for hernia,” he answered a little nervously as he adjusted the retractors and suctioned to clear my field better.

“Very good. Why is having previous surgeries a contraindication for using a lap?” I asked him next.

“Because we’d expect anatomical changes as well as adhesions, sir,” he answered more confidently.

“Good,” I nodded at him as I did the last stitch then nodded at Daeron to hand the next 3-0 to Olly who looked at me with complete surprise.

“Sir?”

I took the retractors from him and the suction, nodding at him to take over the stitching. “You’ve earned the right to close from here. It’s not much but every little new participation is always a step closer to being a surgeon. If that’s what you were planning, that is.”

I could tell he was grinning from the excited gleam in his eyes. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Go on. And maybe I’ll let you ligate the next time, if you’re up for it,” I nodded at him.

“I’ll do my best. Thank you Dr. Snow,” he said happily before starting his suture.

I watched him carefully, instructing him when needed, praising when appropriate, and reinstructing him when warranted. Olly reminded me of myself. He was quiet, too serious, but eager to learn and prove himself. Though the difference was that, he had a hard life, and he barely scraped through school but despite that he was certainly passionate. Sansa often gushed about this intern from The Gift who was respectful, hardworking, and showed great promise.

“Nonsense. You’re the hardest working intern here. A hardworking intern deserves more opportunities. At least, that’s what Dr. Stark says.”

The tips of his ears and the back of his neck were suddenly flushed red.

Oh.

“What specialty do you see yourself in?”

He thought for a while before answering shyly, the red on his ears darkening. “Neurosurgery, sir.”

I couldn’t help the chuckle then. I can’t wait to tell Sansa about this. “Well, then I best tell Dr. Stark to take you under her wing some more. She’ll be happy to hear this.”

I heard a snort and I just knew it came with an eye roll from Daeron. Things have been easier for Sansa somehow, finding friends with Gilly, Sam, Satin, and my Trauma team, of course. But for the others… apparently dating me only made them hate her more and, yes, they were starting to hate me as well. It was only by Sansa’s grace that I kept silent, otherwise they’d be hearing a lot from me.

“I don’t want to trouble Dr. Stark. She’s so busy as it is. I don’t want to burden her.”

I sighed. “She is busy, but she always tries to repay dedication and hard work where it’s warranted. Just show her that you’re willing to learn and she’ll gladly help you.”

He simply nodded while working but after a pause he asked. “Sir?”

“Yes, Olly?”

“I – I tried giving her coffee once. She took it and smiled at me but… I don’t think she particularly liked the brew I gave her. Do you… know how she likes it?”

I laughed again. “Are you hitting on my girlfriend, Dr. Marsh?” Castle Black’s First Steward, Bowen Marsh’s brother was the one who adopted him when Olly’s parents died.

He looked up at me then with a frantic look on his eyes and shook his head vehemently. “No sir, I just – Dr. Stark must be tired all the time even if she hides it well. I just want to help.”

“I’m just jesting, Olly. Don’t take it personally, Dr. Stark usually times her caffeine intake when it’s best for her. She probably had a surgery scheduled soon that time and she purposefully held out on anything that would compromise her dexterity,” I explained.

He looked quite impressed and I couldn’t blame him. I was too when I tried giving her coffee like he did and she politely declined. “Wow. She’s so smart. I’d never think about something like that.”

“Well, if you really want to help her, just make sure you do your pre-rounds and impress her by giving her pertinent summaries of her patients. That and give her lemon cakes and I promise she’ll eat that at one point in the day,” I winked.

“Thanks sir, I’ll remember that,” he said happily.

After a while, I decided to ask. “Olly? What’s it like to work with Dr. Stark? Does she work you like a mule or does she hardly make you touch anything?”

“Oh! Dr. Stark is very kind. She follows a strict system though and has a standard and a methodology that I’m still trying to learn by heart so I won’t delay her time during rounds, but she does this too. Tries to squeeze in teaching rounds. And explain. She frowns a bit when her orders aren’t met or were delayed, but she never makes a big deal out of it and just troubleshoots. Though… I know she’s always been hands on, but she doesn’t have to do some of the scut work,” he confessed.

That bothered me. “Scut work?”

He nodded and I saw Daeron fidget uncomfortably. “Yes. Sometimes, they page her for an IV insertion, for a Mannitol push, an urgent abstract… things that I think us interns or some nurses could do for her.”

Now that angered me. “Is that so?” I said in a low voice, trying to muster all the calmness as possible while trying not to look at Daeron.

Dr. Larence Hornwood, the anesthesiologist exchanged a look with me though. He wasn’t exactly close with any of us, but he was one of the good guys who took our side. He did his best to assist Sansa as much as possible.

“I tried asking the staff nurses to give me the scut work when I’m under her service, but they kept telling me that Dr. Stark was very specific, that she hardly wants anyone to touch her patients. But when I bit the bullet and did some of them anyway, I was ready for Dr. Stark to get mad at me but she only looked at me with surprise and thanked me with chocolate muffins the next day, so I try to help as much as I could and I urge the other interns to do the same,” he continued.

I counted to ten before answering. My anger abating somewhat at Olly’s thoughtfulness. He really was a good kid and I've always wanted a younger brother. Instead I had two older nosy siblings with varied tempers but fierce loyalties. I smirked. “That’s very nice of you, Olly. I’m sure Dr. Stark appreciates it. Thank you. So…Dr. Stark… isn’t… cold? Or easily crossed?”

He shook his head. “Oh no, sir. Sure, Dr. Stark is serious all the time but she’s gentle and polite, and she does smile at us from time to time. I reckon she’s just really busy, sir. But I’ve never seen her get mad. Displeased, yes. But I’ve never heard her raise her voice.”

“I see. Hey, you’re done.”

He looked up at me then. “Wow. I still can’t believe it.”

He was about to clean up and put the bandages when I stopped him. “Go write up the OR tech and I’ll check. I’ll let you sign beside my name if you get it right. I’m sure sir Daeron can take it from here.”

He nodded an ungloved. “Thank you sir.”

I nodded and finally met Daeron with a glare.

He squirmed then sighed. “Hey, I may not like her still but I do my job – all of it. And I do respect her. But I can only speak for myself.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Larence shook his head. “Not here. I know how you must be feeling. It’s sick. But this is the North, Jon. They’ll warm up eventually. And Sansa is a tough girl. I’ll help her out where I can but you can’t just beat up everyone no matter how much I want to do it too.” Larence knew what it felt like, being a prisoner to his name and family too, having recently been elevated as the Hornwood heir following the death of his half-brother, Daryn. Hells, the three of us should start a club.

I let out a frustrated breath. “Fine.”

After scrubbing out, I was met by a very incensed Gilly who has apparently, been waiting for me.

And let me tell you, I’ve never seen an incensed Gilly, more so a very incensed one.

“Oh thank gods!” She exclaimed while grabbing my arm and dragging me to the empty stairwell. For someone so petite, she had a fairly strong grip. The outcome of lifting patients at the OBGYN/ORTHO ward where she was the charge nurse of.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

She placed her hands on her hips and glared at me furiously. “You need to do something!” She poked at my chest. “It’s gone far enough!”

“First of all, ouch. Second, can you calm down for a bloody second and tell me what you’re talking about?” I said while rubbing at my chest and blocking her hands.

She took a deep breath then and looked at me sadly, but her eyes still blazed. “Have you seen Sansa yet? Or heard anything?”

I was filled at once with worry and rage the moment Sansa left her mouth. “What is it? What happened? Is she okay? Is she hurt?”

She frowned then and I almost tore out the room, promising bloody murder regardless of the sentence, praying that whoever wronged Sansa this time, deserved it after I dump their bodies on the bay. But before I could get a foot out, Gilly grabbed me again.

“What happened?”

“It was awful, Jon. I was pulled out to assist in Sansa’s surgery. She…lost a patient today and everyone kept rubbing it in her face that it was her fault, that she didn’t try enough, that she wasn’t perfect after all. And bloody fuck, Jon, I’ve never seen Sansa cry. Ever. But after she finished the order, talked to the relatives, and signed the paper works, her eyes were all watery but she thanked the bloody arseholes and left without another word. After I finished my work, I rushed to see her, and found her inside her office, crying. Like, really crying, like sobbing. I went inside and she stopped immediately and tried to regain composure but I hugged her and told her to let it all out and she finally did,” she recalled sadly.

I couldn’t speak or move. Letting it all sink, still not believing that Sansa was crying.

“When she was calm, she begged me not to tell anyone, most of all you. I didn’t promise anything, but I helped her fix herself before she went back to work again. I made sure she didn’t look like she cried. I don’t want to give the arses the satisfaction but seriously, Jon. This has to stop,” she huffed in frustration. “I know she doesn’t want to do anything but she so doesn’t deserve this.”

“Where – where is she?” I demanded.

She sighed. “Last I checked, she had a craniotomy scheduled. She’s probably two hours in. What are we going to do, Jon?”

I looked at her then, very grateful that there was someone else who worried over Sansa. I smiled tightly at her. “Thank you for telling me Gilly. And thank you for being there for Sansa. Leave it to me.”

She smiled back. “Of course. She’s my friend too.” Then her face fell and she was clearly debating on something.

“Gilly, what is it? There’s more, isn’t there?”

She frowned and sighed. “Yes… what really pushed her over the edge… was that… well, you guys are dating right?”

I shut up at once and nodded grimly knowing where this was headed.

“And well… everyone knows your…father…had a hand in, well, you know,” she struggled.

“What did they say, exactly?” I said, hoping it didn’t come off as too snappy.

She studied me before hesitantly asking. “Are you sure you don’t want…an edited version?”

I shook my head. “Just tell me, please.”

She sighed before looking me in the eye. “Wait, just so you know, this has been apparently going on for some time now, only they were very careful not to mention it to me or anyone close to you. I was able to get Sansa to admit to me that this wasn’t the first time she’s heard it.”

“Well, what is it? Please! I’m going out of my mind!”

“It’s not enough for her to mount the biggest dragon in King’s Landing, she has to mount another here too? But only the best for Dr. Sansa Stark, right? But who could blame the Targaryens? They have a particular fondness for Stark girls after all.”

I saw red.

I pulled my fist and started to nock my arm and hit the wall then storm off seeking blood when Gilly grabbed at me.

“Let me go! Let me go so help me! I’ll kill them all!”

“Jon, don’t! First of all, you won’t help anyone by destroying your hands! Second, think of Sansa –

“I am thinking of her!” I growled.

“I meant, think of what this will do to her. Come on, be rational. You can set things right but not through violence,” she said more forcefully. “And if you destroy your hands, damn it, you’d be out of work.”

I took deep breaths and settled on kicking the wall, embracing the pain, bracing my palms on the wall as I calmed myself. Suddenly all the snide remarks I’ve been getting about how I was a bloody fool for falling under her spell and being whipped as hell were more double-ended than I thought they were.

“I can’t take it anymore, Gilly. I can take whatever they say to me, and I do my best not to interfere when they talk about her – not when she asked me not to. And she never asks, Gilly. Except for this. It’s the only thing she asked. Only just for this. How can I refuse? I respect how hard she tries but this is the last straw. I can’t take them using me to hurt her. They’re sick fucks! Vile! To even think that they thought she slept with my father – Gods, what a fucking low blow! He made a mistake, I know. But that’s all in the past. We’ve all moved on a long time ago. And he’d never – and Sansa’d never - ” I choked. I was incredibly mad and frustrated, feeling near tears as well.

Gilly patted my back and rubbed soothingly. “I’m sorry, Jon. For what it’s worth, Sam and I, and the others, we don’t believe in all this bullshit. I even saw Val making some of the staff cry because she heard them whispering about her for less. We’re all doing our best to help her. But this time, it’s too much. I haven’t even talked to Sam, yet. Though I had to talk to Val because I ran into her and she wanted to rip their tongues off like you but I talked her out of it and promised to tell you. We both agreed that you had to know. I know Sansa’s been very careful not to let you know.”

I took a deep breath and was calm enough to face her. “Thank you. Gilly. I’ll take care of it. And I’ll take care of Sansa. Go on and go home to Sam and little Sam, Gilly. Sorry for making you wait.”

She shook her head. “No problem. I’ll see you, Jon. Hug Sansa for me again. If anyone can help her, it’s you.”

I slid down the wall once Gilly left, fighting the urge to punch it, cradling my head in my hands. I’ve never seen Sansa cry either. But I imagine it would be even more heart breaking and would surely end me. I was aware of course that she was masking what she truly felt about her situation in the hospital. She made it clear to me that she cared. But she still wore the mask for the sake of her patients. She was used to this to some extent owing in part to her cutthroat residency at Old Town. I get that. Neurosurgery training was one of the most brutal ones with the highest drop out rate – forced and voluntary. It’ll harden you up some but I knew Sansa. She could be tough as nails, but her heart was at its core, so very gentle. And there was only so much she could take. And the accusations? They were too fucking much.

So congratulations, Eastwatch. You finally broke her. But I swear to the old gods and the new that she was going to rise above this and the shit heads will get their due.

I tried to think about what to do. She’ll surely do her best to keep this from me and I knew her enough that I wouldn’t confront her on this. The best was just to act normally around her and do something special tonight. And maybe she’ll tell me. Maybe not. Maybe someday she’ll be comfortable enough to be truly vulnerable with me. But until then, I’ll just do what I can.

But for now, there was only one thing I can do.

I have to call my father.

I don’t really have a bad relationship with him. In fact, I respect the prime minister a lot. But I prided myself in working apart from the family name and never called in any favors. But this time, I was willing to swallow my pride and call.

With a deep breath, I tapped on my phone, hovered over his name, and pressed call.

He answered on the second ring.

“Jon, what a pleasant surprise.”

“Good afternoon, sir. I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” I said politely. Months of not calling, this was awkward as hell.

He sighed at the other line. “Nonsense, son. And drop the ‘sir’ business. I always have time for my family. But I’m sensing this isn’t a social call.”

“Well, not exactly,” I answered, rubbing the back of my neck. This was so awkward. I didn’t know how to proceed. Luckily, father decided to ease it in. If there was one thing Rhaegar Targaryen was known for, it was being intuitive and another was knowing how to put people at ease. “

“How is the lovely Dr. Stark? I’ve heard nothing but praise for her from Lord Commander Mormont, Dr. Wyllis, and my uncle,” he said in a pleasant but knowing voice. Lord Commander Mormont was the head official for the corps here at The Wall, Dr. Wyllis was our medical director, while the uncle referred, was Dr. Aemon Targaryen, our semi-retired Neuropsychiatrist.

I sighed. “I called because of her, actually. Father…why did you send Sansa here?” I decided to just go for it.

“Son…” he started.

“No, I know why she did it. But was it really necessary? I mean, I don’t want to imply anything, but I do work here too,” I cut him off.

I heard him take a deep breath after a few seconds of silence. “I think it’s better I explain in person. I'm actually in Last Hearth. Why don’t you meet me here? It’s not that far.”

I breathed out of my nose. “Fine. See you there in thirty minutes. I’m using the chopper. I have to get back quickly.”

“Have a safe flight then.”

Last Hearth

I was escorted to the presidential suite of Last Hearth’s castle which had a whole floor dedicated to guests of noble blood, in this case, my father, Prime Minister Rhaegar Targaryen. My escort was no other than the mayor’s son, Jon ‘Smalljon’ Umber who left me alone with my father the moment I stepped into the room. Well, as alone as can be with his security detail.

My father and I didn’t waste time on pleasantries and I was grateful for it. We nodded at each other and he immediately beckoned me to sit down across him on the long conference table outfitted for occasions such as this, a pot of black tea ready.

“Please tell me, father. I need to know,” I started.

His indigo eyes, a shade lighter than my own, regarded me before he spoke with the same grace and calm that Sansa mastered. The perfect blend to comfort and still be straight without a stitch of patronizing the listener.

“First of all, I don’t want you to think that I didn’t take the time to consider that a son of mine was working on a hospital that was on its way for closure. I did son. I know you didn’t want any of my influence when you decided to build a name for you there and I promise I kept my word but I have been keeping an eye out, and that’s never been a secret. But son, I did try. But the numbers were really bad. And I know you know that. Before you ask, in the event that the hospital closes, all staff will have ample severance pay a transition time. The neighboring hospitals are also willing to absorb most, if not, all of the employees. And I know you’ve been offered jobs in different hospitals to help you just in case. I really did give it that much thought, son. Ned and I talked a great deal about this,” he explained.

He did. He really did. Those were all very reasonable. “But then…how?”

He leant closer and gestured with his hands from time to time as he carefully explained. “I invited Ned for dinner with Elia and I to discuss it further when he almost cancelled, saying that he was meeting with his daughter, so I just told him to bring her along. I asked your sister to come as well since I knew they worked together in Visenya Hill Medical,” he gave a half-smile then and his eyes lit up as he regarded me again before he continued.

“Charming girl, your Sansa. Ned was clearly very proud of his daughter and Rhaenys has only good things to say about her,” he grinned before sighing and shaking his head, “But she is quite the force to be reckoned with. When we started talking about Eastwatch, the poor girl was heartbroken – even brought to tears from the news. It was, after all, the hospital that miraculously saved her younger brother, Bran. And has thus served as a great influence on her pursuing medicine. We explained everything to her while she listened carefully, not knowing that she was already at work in coming up with a plan,” he paused.

“Go on,” I urged though I already knew what it was. I knew that they offered this job and position to her. I didn’t know that it was her idea.

“Apparently, she’s been scouting hospitals in the North once she found out that there were only five board certified neurologists and only two neurosurgeons who were both on the eastern North and a very grim statistic – morbidity and mortality alike, with most patients having to cross South to consult or be treated as one of the neurosurgeons is a paediatric one, and the other, was mostly in Essos finishing up a fellowship. After showing us the numbers and convincing us that we should conduct studies on specialities that were lacking in different regions so we could plan on a strategy on making career opportunities to entice specialists to start practice on them. She then volunteered to work in Eastwatch,” he smiled slightly while he shook his head, his eyes not even hiding how impressed he was.

“But,” I prompted but couldn't continue.

He sighed. “Ah. Of course there was a round of protests from everyone at the table. Elia, Rhaenys, and of course, Ned Stark. I tried to diffuse it as best I could and offered for Ned and Sansa to talk in private but Sansa held her own. Rhaenys was, of course, very vocal about Sansa ‘throwing away her career’.” He paused again and looked at me. “No offense meant.”

I shook my head impatiently. “None taken, continue.”

“Sansa Stark certainly had a great run in Visenya Hill with great potential for many opportunities. But she insisted that she was always going to go back to the North to work anyway. And if there was even the smallest thing she could do to save the hospital that meant a great deal to her, she would do it. She urged us to at least, give her a year there to consider.”

That explained a lot. The long hours, the back to back surgeries, her insistence of taking shifts, why she hesitates to get too close to people, why she doesn’t move in with me…

“And if she doesn’t make a difference, we could do, in her own words, ‘what we must.’ Ned then asked her if she was sure, she looked her father in the eye and said yes without a trace of hesitation. So, we had to consider it. Afterwards, Ned and I talked and of course, Catelyn, when she found out, was furious,” he sighed and shook his head again. I haven’t met Mrs. Stark yet, but I knew about the former senator who fought tooth and nail for women’s rights.

“I’d be too. But I know enough not to try and change the minds of my strong-willed children once they set out their minds on something,” he looked at me then and raised a brow.

I sighed. It was true. My father was a very convincing man, but he always respected our decisions. He never imposed on us, merely suggests and comments, but he leaves us be and instructs when needed but always let us decide in the end. I remember he didn’t even bat an eye when I decided to change my name, just asked me what it changed to so he could adjust all the legal documents he had of me – especially his will.

“But this doesn’t make sense. Sansa told me that this was asked of her. That this was a duty. Did she lie?”

Father shook his head. “Oh, you misunderstood. Ned clearly didn’t want her to. And I never would’ve asked his daughter to do this. We certainly tried convincing Sansa, telling her our plans but she asked to try, so if I agreed, I’d have to give her something,” he looked at me straight then, his eyes saying what he didn’t. Now do you understand?

I swallowed. “So that’s why you made her deputy chief.” That was what she meant by duty.

He nodded once and leant his chin on top of his closed hand. “I would’ve offered better but I couldn’t. I knew she didn’t want it. She didn’t say anything, but I’m guessing she doesn’t like any career bypass. So, I made sure that the position was justified based on her merits as best as my legal and ethics committee could. It would just make sense that there was something for her there and leaving Visenya Hill abruptly." I could sense there was more to that statement but I didn't press.

"But I’m guessing… they don’t see it that way over there. Ned did warn me of how the Northerners would take it. And his wife swore to take down that hospital, stone by stone if they ever mistreat her or prevent her from taking better opportunities. But I’m guessing once more… that Sansa Stark has an iron will, stronger than her mother’s threats.”

I let out a snort at that. “Well, it’s true. She’s so stubborn, alright. But it’s also true that they’ve been treating her like hell there. I mean, come on, father. The only reason they started to respect me was when I turned down being chief and changed my name. What did you expect?” It took near a year for them to warm up to me. But even then, I didn’t get it as bad as Sansa did. Not even close.

His mouth was a grim line. “I know son. But what’s done is done and it was the only way I could show my good will to the Starks for their daughter’s good intentions. I had hoped that Eastwatch would accept her as she is their governor’s daughter and she is a brilliant addition. But,” he sighed and shrugged. “At least I told the Starks you were there and that my boy will look out for their girl surely,” he smiled proudly at me then. “And you certainly improved her stay there. Ned even started to forgive me.”

I huffed angrily and drank the tea that cooled untouched at the side hastily. “Fat lot that did. Did you know why I finally called?”

“Tell me.”

“They started a rumor that she slept with both of us. You, to get there, me, to stay there – as if she needed any string pulling to get to the top. As if it was even worth the effort to get there. And there's more - that we’re not doing anything about the rumors because such scandal would affect us so we never set that fact straight, choosing to ignore it as a nonissue.” I slammed the cup on the table and saw my father’s usually calm expression, twist into disgust and anger. Good. “Oh and it gets good. You sent her all the way there to avoid the press. And in case she’s already pregnant with your child, we’ll pass it off as mine.” I continued remembering how Val found me just before I left and told me all of this.

My fists were clenching tightly on top of the table as I leant forward. “Please tell me you can end this. One of the staff nurse – probably the closest she could call friend found her crying today. And she never cries.” I told him all about what happened as well as the conversation we had before we got together regarding her stand on her maltreatment.

“She can leave anytime she wants, son. I’ll make sure she gets hired in any hospital she wishes. Most would take her in on her merits alone, I’ll hardly meddle. But I know it’s not that easy to convince her,” he said.

I felt my gut drop at the thought of her leaving but if that’s what it took, I’d let her. Father saw this.

“You can too, son. Both of you don’t have to stay in a place that hasn’t been welcoming,” he offered quickly.

“We could. I know. With or without your help, we could. But she’ll never leave. Not when she thinks the hospital will close if she does. And face it, we all know it will. And despite everything, she has friends now. We’re a small group but she won’t betray their loyalty,” I pointed out exasperatedly.

“I’ll think of something. I promise. And I’d offer to send someone to talk to your HR, but I take it that any threat to their jobs that links to her or us would only make it worse for her. They’d follow because there’s no choice but you know what’s going to happen. I don't like bullying. And we are all professionals for goodness' sake! Frankly, if it was up to me, I’d fire them all and replace them but…” he looked at me knowingly. “It's not fully up to me, son. Or you. It's ultimately up to her. You know how one gets passionate about something, it becomes the priority above all. Sometimes the principle simply weighs more than the rational alternatives. That’s honor, son. And she’s a Stark.”

I let out a disgruntled breath. I hate politics. And as much as I admire and respect Sansa Stark’s sense of honor, I hate it. I was part Stark too but gods be good!

“Just tell me the word, though and I’d do all that anyway. If you think that we should. Let's do it. I really don't want to tolerate unnecessary maltreatment. But I’m sure your Sansa wouldn’t want this on her conscience, not that it has a place there anyway, but she’ll still feel some sense of responsibility for this. People will lose jobs - jobs they don't deserve from what they're doing, but jobs that pay for their families, but still,” he gave me a look while he said all that so sincerely that I had no choice but to believe him when he said he’d do it, he’d do it. “We could even charge slander, for my name, yours, and hers. But again, I don’t think she’d like the media to sniff this out. But if she agrees to press chargers, we’ll do it.”

“What do we do then?” I said helplessly after a minute, sinking lower on my seat.

He stood up, went to my side, and placed a warm, comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’ll think of something. I promise. But for now, there are some things you can do while waiting. One, you keep trying to convince her that she doesn’t have to stay there, doesn’t have to save Eastwatch. Two, convince her to go on a fellowship. Rhaenys told me that she had offers in Essos with grant for research,” I was about to say something as that was something big that I didn’t know, and probably something Sansa and I should talk about, but father cut me off.

He looked at me then softly and said, “Three, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

I blinked. “What’s that?”

He smiled. “Just love her.”

I swallowed. I’ve known it for a while now, even told her once, a month ago. But though I see it in her eyes too, she wasn’t ready to declare anything yet. So I tried to hold back from saying it again until she was comfortable.

“She’s not…”

He squeezed my shoulder. “I know son. But you should tell her anyway. Tell her all the time. And not just with your actions which I know you've been doing, but really say it. Especially now with the rumors. She might not say anything, but she’ll need you to. Just be there for her, support her, and love her.”

I bowed my head and clenched my fists. “I just feel like such a failure. I want to commit murder whenever I hear things,” I confessed. “I don’t think I’m worthy enough for her.”

“And that’s why she keeps them from you. Because she doesn’t see you as a failure. Because she knows how much you try and the lengths you’re willing to go. Son, she knows that,” he squeezed my shoulder with each point and it was comforting. “And that last thing you said is bullshit. You are worthy.”

I sighed. Ignoring the fact that my well-mannered father swore. “At least have another neurosurgeon near enough to call on and some neurologists too so she could concentrate on her specialty. I managed to make her give up her twenty-four hours to twelve while I’m working on getting her to agree to just be on call. She’s too overworked. That, I won’t stand for any longer.”

“I’ll do what I can. I promise. Give me a month. I’ll even get Rhaenys to help me. And you know, Elia will too. I assume you don’t want to involve the other Starks in this?”

I thought for a while and shook my head. “No dad. Not yet. Let’s help them out on our own first. You do owe my mother this.”

He sighed. “I do. Well, if there’s one thing the rumors got right. We do carry fondness for Stark girls. Don’t we?” he smiled wryly at me.

I rolled my eyes but nodded. “Yes, but dad. Sansa’s mine,” I shot him a look.

He laughed then. “I prefer brunettes.” He winked smoothly. “Though it’s really your brother you have to warn," he said, raising a brow.

I grimaced but then looked at my father gratefully. “Thanks father.”

He smiled at me then. “Don’t thank me yet.”

I grabbed his arm then when he withdrew his hand. “Father?”

His brows drew in confusion and surprise. “Yes, son?”

“Please do something. I never ask, you know that. Please do all that you can,” I pleaded.

“Son – “

I shook my head and looked at him half-mad, half-serious. “You don’t understand. This is Sansa. I’m going to marry her one day.”

He looked taken aback for a second before breaking into a grin, clapping my back. “Believe me, son. I do understand, more than you think. And I know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here and asking me of all things,” he raised his brows at me and smirked.

That was true. I felt guilty all of a sudden for keeping my father at arm’s length. I was telling the truth though that I’ve already forgiven him for loving my mother when he wasn’t free to do so. And I know it wasn’t anyone’s fault I never knew my mother who drew her last breath, as I drew my first.

The only mother I’ve ever known was Elia, who loved me as she did Aegon and Rhaenys. She was the one who inspired and encouraged me to be a doctor. Even as a young boy, she somehow knew I would come to love the medical world – Rhaenys too. While Aegon was as much father’s shadow as was his mirror, mother would take Rhaenys and I to work. She was a Paediatric Surgeon, specializing in Neonatal cases. Rhaenys told me that we lost siblings before Aegon as well as a year after, and our grandmother had a history of miscarrying as well, thus was mother’s driving force. She was, after all, married before starting medical school so she had time to choose yet, and well after three years of training in general surgery, she decided to focus on paediatrics.

Rhaenys, in turn, wanted something in line with mother’s work. Thus, she worked to become an OBGYN with a subspecialty in Perinatology which was perfect for the two of them. I already knew I wanted something in the surgical field. And after mandatory military training as a medic, I knew I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. And that was that.

I love my family and I hardly felt like an interloper despite some of the backlash of my controversial origin. And now I realize that I haven’t been spending some time with them. I may have changed my name as a career move, one I don’t regret, but I was still part of a family. I would always be a Targaryen.

“Father, I’m sorry I haven’t been…” I started, staring up at him awkwardly.

He sat down again across from me and smiled warmly. “It’s fine, son. We all understand. Come home, some time. Bring Dr. Stark with you. Rhaenys and your mother would love to see her again. I’m sure Aegon will welcome her too.”

“Well, we have to make sure she’s free to do that, don’t we?”

He grinned wider and nodded. “I’ll make sure of it. Again, I’ll need a month.”

“Thanks. I hope you find a way for her to have the option to leave without her worrying that you’re closing the hospital after, or something,” I pressed.

“Yes, yes. Now don’t you have a flight to catch?”

I stood up then after I nodded. Father did too and we stood facing each other awkwardly until finally we hugged it out however brief.

“Trust me on this, son.”

“I do. I just – I just wish I could do something more for her now,” I ran a hand through my hair.

“Well, sometimes… flowers help,” He smiled cheekily at me. “And I seem to recall Ned telling me once that Sansa loved blue winter roses.”

“Flowers? Would it really be that simple?” I arched a brow at him.

His eyes had a gleam in them then as he smirked playfully, masking his age with that same look that charmed a nation. “Oh, son. You have no idea.”

He turned me around then, placed both hands on my shoulders before he pushed me out the door. “A little goes a long way, Jon. Now go. No time to waste.”

EVMMC

I went up to Sansa at once when I saw her walking out the hospital, freshly showered and beautiful in dark blue dress and black thermal tights, that brought out her eyes and complemented her red hair and fair skin.

I loved her even more when she smiled at once the moment she spotted me. She immediately went over and kissed my cheek. I cupped her face and kissed her soundly in turn making her giggle once she pulled away too soon. I studied her as discreetly as I could and noted that there were faint signs that she had indeed been crying.

Before she could figure me out, I stepped back and offered her three long stemmed winter roses I was hiding behind my back.

And from the expression on her face, I grinned ridiculously and vowed not to doubt my father again on how to woo women. Which, in hindsight, was actually ridiculous thing to doubt in the first place.

"Oh Snow, this is… you know you shouldn’t – ..."

"If you say I shouldn't do it, you know what I’m going to say and we’re back to the first conversation we’ve ever had. So how about a ‘thank you Jon; instead, Stark? That and a promise of nice...or naughty things later?" I attempted to wink.

She cracked up then, a hand covering her mouth once more, before she shook her head and smoothed her face into that coquettish smile, as she looked up from under her long lashes, and bit her bottom lip. "Thank you, Jon. These are lovely. I don't know how you knew they were my favorite, but I love them so much. It's so sweet of you. Certainly, made my day,” she blushed while smiling brightly.

Please marry me. I almost blurted out at how damn adorable she was. She rarely said my name and to hear her say the word love... Gods.

I kissed her again and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "I'm glad. Though, rough day?" I tested.

She sighed and shook her head as she wound an arm around my back while she held the roses with her arm. "You have no idea."

Oh sweetheart, I do.

"Well, when its particularly trying I usually take a walk along the pier then maybe grab a drink and some food,” I tried to say brightly.

She looked up at me then and her eyes twinkled. "Can we?"

I laughed. "I was going to take you anyway, Stark. No need to ask."

"Sneaky,” she nudged me. “Well, let’s go Snow and show me this amazing escape of yours. You might get lucky tonight."

"I already am,” I answered straight without looking at her.

I didn’t need to see her to know that she caught what I was trying to say. I was waiting for a rebuttal but it never came. I glanced down at her then and saw her blushing.

I couldn’t help the smirk that came out.

Wrapping her tighter to my side, I kissed her head and led her to my car.

Eastwatch Port, Bay of Seals

I could tell she loved the sea as we walked along the pier facing the Bay of Seals. We paused near the docks and stood there watching with our hands clasped.

"Back in King's Landing, I used to do the same thing. If I wanted to take a breather, I go down the docks and watch the ships. In my mind, I would play a game, imagining where each ship came from and where the others would go to. I'd imagine their voyage, the people, the things they see..." she paused and looked up at me tentatively. "Sorry, I'm babbling."

"No, no. I find it fascinating. Go on,” I urged.

She gave a deep sigh. “Sometimes, I just, watch, you know? Just the image of the water lapping against the shore, the waves forming and crashing… the sight of that, the sound… it’s soothing. And when I see the sunset, it’s beautiful. Like sad, beautiful. It’s an end of something… but what an end. It’s just really beautiful when you see the sun painting one glorious picture before making way for the night.”

She paused then and I let the silence envelope us as we watched the sun start to set. Knowing that when she rambles and it catches a tone, it was her way of segueing up to what she really wanted to say.

“I lost a life today,” she stated suddenly.

I looked down at her and saw something shimmer –my mind on overdrive when I realized what it was.

Whipping around to face her confirmed it.

Sansa Stark was crying.

It was the most heartbreaking sight I’ve ever seen, rendering me helpless as fuck.

She hardly moved, nor made a sound. Just stood there, looking straight away while tears ran down her face. Even in melancholy, Sansa still manages to look hauntingly beautiful that I froze for a minute, not believing for a moment, and certainly not knowing what to do but when one sob escaped, it was like something broke in me and I immediately framed her face with my hands, stroking her cheek until she met my eyes.

“Sansa… it happens. It happens to the best of us.”

She stepped away from my touch and started wiping off her tears from embarrassment. “I know, I know. I’m being silly –

I brought her to me then, cradling the back of her head as it rested against my chest, while my other hand wrapped around her back and began to rub soothing circles on it as her hands clutched at my shirt.

“You’re not. It’s never easy. But it happens, sweetheart. We can’t save them all, we can only try,” I crooned.

“I know. But I tried so hard. I did my best,” her muffled voice against my chest felt like tiny sharp stabs at how laced with emotion her words came.

“I’m sure the family knows you did.”

“He was nine.”

“He got the best care…it just…it happens. And it’s okay to feel bad about it. It makes you human. But it’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”

She didn’t say anything, just clutched at me tighter as she finally let herself go.

With all that she’d endured this day, this was the one thing that bothered her the most. Patients, above all.

I'm not even surprised anymore.

I stroked her hair and rubbed her back and just held her.

“You did everything you could,” I repeated.

“We’re so sorry to have to tell you.”

“There was an unfortunate complication.”

“His body couldn't take the stress.”

“We deeply regret to inform you.”

“Despite our best efforts, we couldn't…”

“We've talked about the risks..”

“It was always a possibility.”

“We did everything we could.”

These were the words we say to the next of kin.

It's hardest the first time. The death stays with you for days and either breaks or makes you. You remember, refusing to give up. You remember lining up yourself and do just that one more round of compression. You remember ordering just that one more shot of adrenaline. You remember giving just that one more jolt of shock. You remember just that one more try of holding on to the heart, massaging it to eventually squeezing it back to life as your eyes glue themselves to the monitor for any sign of your effort.

And then there’s only one more thing you can do – must do.

First, you take your hands off.

Next, you call it.

“Time of death…”

It gets easier but not really. In some ways it does. For some ways, never.

H-how?

Why?

It's okay doc. You did your best.

You did all you could.

And it’s all we and they could say to ourselves to make it better.

You did all you could.

They'd say and though it doesn't alleviate the guilt – needless or not, We do try and cling to those words.

We have to believe we did our best. and we need someone to tell us. Because we’d lose our minds, rationalizing every little thing because we know there will always be something you could've done differently. Something others could’ve done differently. No matter how small or insignificant, there is.

But this is the reality of our profession.

We save lives.

But we're not gods.

Contrary to what we are perceived to be or how we consciously or unconsciously present ourselves.

We’re not gods.

Trust me when I say doctors know humility the most.

Not only humility, we know failure. We know mistakes. We know.

We’re not gods.

We can only do so much.

We can only try our best.

And no one tries the most than Sansa. This wasn’t her first rodeo, I’m sure. But as I’ve said, she loves her patients too much above all, and add the stakes she put on herself to save this damned hospital, this loss was in no way, easy for her. And for people to throw all of these in her face just for this one setback of her stay here was just too cruel.

I just kept on holding her while she cried. Finding the right time and method to comfort her.

"That ship over there carries the flag of the Martells. There’s that red sun and spear. Probably a cargo ship. Probably carries fine Dornish wine," I said softly.

She stilled but didn’t look up. "Hm?"

I shrugged and continued. "I imagine it’s going to Skagos next before it makes its way back to Sunspear…” I tried to think of something that Sansa might like to hear. “There's probably a wedding. They're going to celebrate with Arbor Gold that the groomsmen and the bridesmaids would guzzle drinking their singleness..."

I chuckled. Sansa was still quiet but she wasn’t sobbing anymore. It was working.

"Oh but they are a miserable bunch, especially when they see that the groom follows the bride with his eyes like a moon orbiting its planet, seeing nothing else but his whole world in front of him."

"And the bride?" she asked softly, her voice slightly strained.

"The bride would be a vision, having spent the whole day needlessly, looking perfect when she already is to the groom. More so without a stitch of clothing," I grinned.

She chuckled and smacked my chest, then she turned her head slightly to follow my line of vision, her hands still clutching my shirt. I wrapped my arms tighter around her, dropping my chin on top of her head while I freed a hand briefly to point at the ship.

"The groom would be one big nervous wreck but the moment he sees his radiant bride, everything will be as it should be,” I continued, catching myself from sounding too wistful. I found myself getting into this… narrative more than I thought to be. “It may be selfish but for the groom, the bride probably never looked better for him, as the moment she wears his cloak and his name.” Now I don’t know if I’m talking about a lucky fictional bastard from Skagos anymore.

I cleared my throat, looked down at her and gave an eyeroll. “And of course being in Skagos, they'd likely have some wrestling type of entertainment.”

She laughed then and shook her head. Yes!

She leaned into me and sighed against my neck. "That sounds lovely."

I shrugged. "Eh, I'm sure you can come up with something better."

"Maybe... though not today. Right now, all I can come up with is that one,” she pointed at one of the ships with an orange sail, “The one there came from the Summer Isles, a traveller having returned after trying to seek something but deciding to come back to ice and frost where she saw that she never needed to go away for find that something. It was already there all along,” she said in a hushed tone, her eyes suddenly meeting mine and somewhere in the back of my mind, I don’t think she’s talking about a Summer islander either.

We held our look for a moment before the sound of a horn startled us, causing us both to blush and look away.

I cleared my throat again and tried. "Well, damn. That's still beautiful."

“Jon?”

My heart raced as I looked down at her and she was looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen before.

“Y-yes?” I manage, coughing after to clear my suddenly dry throat.

A slow smile formed its way on her face while I felt a hand press against mine. She blinked once before speaking. "Let’s go home."

My jaw dropped as I searched her eyes.

"Home?"

She tilted her head and started fixing my collar. "Yeah... if Ghost wouldn't mind squeezing in with Lady and me..." she blushed and looked at me knowingly.

"I'll buy a house,” I blurted out, still trying to process the fact that she was finally agreeing to move in with me. I'd have bought her a zoo if she wanted at this point.

She smacked my arm.

I held her arms then and leaned down to level with her eyes. "But seriously... are you sure? You don't -"

She cut me off with a too quick peck and nodded. "I want to."

I picked her up at once, despite her protests and swung her around before dipping her and kissing her like a man possessed.

"We could use your apartment as an extra closet,” I offered dumbly, once we pulled away for breath.

"I don't need an extra closet, or a big house, silly. I just want you."

I groaned and pressed my forehead against hers. "Gods, what you do to me."

She giggled then before arching an elegant brow and smirking. "Come on, Dr. Snow. If we don't hurry someone might fall, hit his head really hard, and then where would we be?"

I hoisted her up in my arms then, earning a cute yelp. "Then by all means, Dr. Stark, let’s go home - stat!"

I watched as she laughed once more while wrapping her arms around my neck, making my heart melt once more. Gods, I’m the one whose supposed to make her feel better too.

"Sansa?"

She blinked up at me and smiled as she tilted her head. "Yeah?"

"I love you."

Her mouth fell for a moment from surprise as another blush crept on her face. And after a hundred thoughts probably flitted in those baby blues, she finally leaned up to kiss me once, gently, closing her eyes after as she leant against my chest and sighed, but didn't say anything back.

But from that final look in her eye, it was enough for now.

I looked back and saw the sun completely setting.

I glanced back down at Sansa who was starting to nod off, the events of today finally catching up to her once she finally allowed herself to relax in my arms.

I couldn’t help but let out sigh of my own and a grin before I started walking.

“Sansa?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you sure you don’t have anything more to tell me?”

She stiffened.

“You’re not cheating on my with our blonde intern, right?” I said in my most deadpan voice.

Her eyes flew open then as her mouth. “What?”

I laughed then. “Dr. Olly Marsh.”

She snorted. “Ridiculous.”

“Just kidding. But he does have a crush on the hot neurosurgeon.”

She shook her head. “He’s interested in the specialty, not me.”

I chuckled. “Oh he is. But he is about you too.”

She frowned but her eyes softened. “No way.”

“Oh, yes way. He asked me how you liked your coffee,” I pointed out.

She shook her head again. “And what did you say?” Her eyes looked up at me in challenge.

“I asked him if he was hitting on my girlfriend,” that was honest anyway.

I could tell she wanted to tell me off but shifted to a wicked grin. “Well, he is cute.”

I snorted then and pressed my nose against her. “Stop. I won’t tolerate any straying thought even if it's a joke. You’re mine, Stark.”

She giggled then and shrugged. “So possessive. You want me around your life, that much, Snow?”

I smirked at her and borrowed my father's words from earlier, “Oh, you have no idea.”

She shook her head in disbelief before she sighed.

“One day, I’m going to make you believe me when I say I like having you in my life,” and maybe one day, you’ll be comfortable enough for me to change saying ‘like’ to ‘love’ or ‘want’ to ‘need.��

“You are certainly free to do so, Snow,” she grinned. “Now, can I please sleep? Pretty please while you carry me to your castle, my sweet, sweet, prince?” she cracked a laugh at the end.

I chuckled. “Go ahead, Princess. I’ll carry you to our castle.”

“My hero,” she rolled her eyes but her smile never left.

I winked at her.

“You know, you always wink but did you know you never really do?”

I laughed again and let out a contented breath. “Seven hells. You do notice everything.”

“Yes, and the sunset here is so beautiful. The breeze isn't warm like in King's Landing, but I like the crispness of the cold.”

I looked down at her, and her eyes were so impossibly soft in their gaze. “Still think it’s a sad beautiful thing?”

She studied me a bit before smiling sweetly, shaking her head. “Not for our first.”

“Have I told you, I love you yet?” I blurted once more.

She looked at me and smiled knowingly. “You tell me all the time,” she whispered.

My heart was again, racing once more. “But you never seem to believe me.”

She simply hummed as she closed her eyes and rested her head once more under my chin and placed a hand above my heart.

She didn’t need to say anything, even if it would’ve been nice to hear. My heart felt so full at this moment anyway.

I leaned down and whispered. “Ad curare interdum, saepe tractare, ut consolarer semper…”

I watched as another smile graced her half-asleep form, knowing she heard and understood my words.

Dr. Tyrion Lannister often ended his bioethics lecture with this: “Remember, doctors. As Hippocrates said, ‘to cure sometimes, to treat often, and to comfort, always.’ And that’s another medical dictum we take to heart.”

There were still many things we need to talk about but I wasn't about to ruin this moment for us. And she likely knows, I know. But now wasn't the time.

Slowly, I turned our backs from the view of the sun disappearing seemingly from the bay, watching as lights began to open across the docks while I walked us a step closer back to our temporary home.

I wasn’t kidding about wanting to buy a house.

Some day.

One day.

But for now, this was enough.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/10404822

#jonsa #fanfiction #jon snow #sansa stark #ladymdfic

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twilights-angel · 7 years

Text

Believer

// So me and @l1nkp1t had made two children for Link and pit, Nim first and a little later on we created Ollie. We started to make up his personality and what he looked like. We made him the spitting image of Link but with his hair up in a pony tail, then came his love of cooking. Just recently I started to realize something an I told l1nkp1t about it... Ollie is basically BOTW Link... so that’s how this fanfic came to be. Hope you enjoy. //

Chapter. 1

First things first I'ma say all the words inside my head I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been, oh ooh The way that things have been, oh ooh

It was cool cool night in Hyrule, Link was currently riding throw a forest by the Great Plateau on his horse Epona, trying to find any more Sheika shrines he might have missed. His blue Hylian hood was pulled up to keep his ears warm from the cold breeze blowing throw the forest. He let out a breath seeing it fog up in the air in front of him. Link reached down and pulled the Sheika Slate off his belt and looked down at it to see if the Shrine sensor was picking up anything but wasn’t.

He placed it back on his belt and let out a shiver and rubbed his arms to warm up a bit and ultimately decided to stop for the night and make camp to warm up and eat. He pulled Epona to stop and hopped off and tied her reign to a tree. He pulled his bag off the saddle and walked over to a cooking pot and fire and set it down, pulling out some flint and started to light it. It didn’t take long for the wood to ignite and set the wood ablaze. He then pulled out some vegetables he found and some chicken he had traded at the last outpost he stopped at. He placed it in the pot with some herbs and waited for it to cook. Link leaned back against the log and looked up at the sky, the stars shining brightly in an almost familiar way. His brows frowned in confusion and then started to look around, the area looking somewhat familiar. Had he walked throw this place before? Was it after or before he woke from his 100 year slumber? He didn’t know.

Second thing Second, don't you tell me what you think that I can be I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea, oh ooh The master of my sea, oh ooh

His food was soon ready and he ate it quietly while still looking around his surroundings trying to remember. Over the corse of his journey he was getting his memory back bit by bit but nothing about his early past, like his childhood for instance. His first memory went back only so far and he hated it. Who were his parents, did he have any siblings, what about other friends he might have forgotten about. Those are the questions he asked himself everyday. The blond set his bole down once he was finished eating and curled up in a blanket about to go to sleep when he heard the sound of rustling in the bushes and one of his sky blue eye’s cracked open to see some Moblins sneaking up on his.

He let out a light chuckle before grabbing his swords and jumping up, scaring the enemies and making them run off but Link still went after them because one had grabbed his bag. He chased after them a couple of feet before attacking. Once the small battle was over he picked up his bag and throw it over his shoulder. Then he saw something in the corner of his eye’s. He turned around and saw some ruins of a house in the distance. He raised a brow and walked over to it and from the looks of it, it seemed it was burned down. He set his pack down before careful moving about the rubble of the old house. As he looked around a strange tugging sensation pulled at his heart and he didn’t understand, he only felt like this when it was something he remembered. As Link stepped over a piece of rubble he tripped and fell to the ground. He let out a light grunt and picked himself up but the fall had moved the dirt to reveal a picture frame. He picked it up and took out the picture from the broken glass and looked at it curiously.

On the picture was what looked to be a small family. A young Hylian girl with brown hair and Sky blue eye’s, a young man that also had brown hair but with darker blue eye’s and he looked just like the girl but a bit older and had wings, but the other two people he couldn’t believe his eye’s. In the brunette males arms was what looked like a younger version of Link and the adult Hylian looked just like him almost exactly but with shorter blond hair and he wore green instead of blue. Then he felt his head start to ache and his eye’s went wide as a memoire returned to him.

I was broken from a young age Taking my soul into the masses Write down my poems for the few That looked at me took to me, shook to me, feeling me Singing from heart ache from the pain Take up my message from the veins Speaking my lesson from the brain Seeing the beauty through the...

He could smell smoke, it was almost suffocating. He opened his eye’s coughing but his vision was horribly blurry and wouldn’t clear. “Ollie!” He heard the sound of a girls voice shout in worry and the door swung open and he saw the two brunettes run into what must have been his room. The winged male picked him up and held both him and the girl close. He could see the light of the fire peeking around the corner of his door, quickly coming for them. “Link!” The male screamed in fear and not soon after that a blond Hylian came running in coughing. “Come on!”

He urged and took both of their hands. “Don’t try to look son, bury your face away in your mothers shoulder.” He told the child and he did, yet he could still hear everything so clearly. The crackling of the fire, the horrible creaking of the wood, coughing coming from his family, and yells of pain coming from his father. Then cool air hit him and he looked up from his mothers shoulder to find they had gotten out just as the house collapsed. “Link!” “Father!”’ He heard the the two brunette’s yell as he heard a thunk and turned to see the blurry image of his father badly burnt on the ground… dead. He felt tears prickle at the corner of his eye’s as the other two burst into sobs of sorrow and grief as they fell to their knees next to the motionless Hylian man. He felt his mother hug him tightly.