burn the world to ash - r - olicity - part 3 of 3 [a]
title: light a match, burn the world to ash (I will watch it die, and hold your hand as I fly)
category: arrow
genre: tragedy/romance
ship: felicity/oliver
rating: r
prompt: olicity + revenge + happy ending optional - anonymous (Tumblr)
warning(s): multiple major character deaths, coarse language, sexual content, explicit violence
word count: 14,738
overall status: complete
summary: When Slade comes for Team Arrow, he is unforgiving in his relentless pursuit for revenge. In the end, however, he shouldn't have underestimated Felicity.
[music]
previous: part one, part two,
dhfreak
-3/3-
III.
It would probably surprise people to learn that Felicity wasn't really a fan of happy endings. At least, not the ones that were so falsely bright after a truly horrific story. Why sugar-coat it? Sometimes life didn't get better, people didn't miraculously live through disease and misfortune, falling in love didn't always end in marriage, and the hero didn't always come out triumphant. She preferred the realistic endings. The ones where people said, "Hey, I don't know what's going to happen now, but I really hope it's better than what happened before."
In real life, she always hoped for the happy ending. She cheered for the underdog and believed truth and justice would always prevail. She tried to be honest in her life, to be a good person who gave back and did what she could to make the world a better place. Prior to Oliver, that mostly meant recycling and not using her hacking abilities to make a few crooked politicians eat their ill-advised actions through pain of empty bank accounts. With Oliver, she found a new way to help the world, and also a new way to view it. The rose-tinted glasses were damaged by the time the earthquake machine knocked down half of the Glades. They were all but gone by the time Slade destroyed three-quarters of her team.
It was easy to believe that a happy ending could still prevail when, despite all odds, the protagonist continued to stand up, to fight back, to raise their head high and say, "No more," against the injustice that faced them. It wasn't as easy when the reality was that she didn't see herself as that protagonist. She was the quirky sidekick that somehow managed to snag the hero.
So, what was a sidekick supposed to do when faced with a super-villain like Slade Wilson?
In the movie that ends happy, she would find some clever (if slightly over-the-top) way to defeat him before finding peace in the world she was left with, rebuilding it bit by bit. Maybe she would meet someone new, years down the line, someone who would silently (because love interests never got as much screen time or dialogue) represent rebirth, and she would ride off into the sunset with him, toward a happily ever after that she deserved but never expected to have.
The problem she had with those happy endings was that they weren't really endings. They were beginnings that left the audience with the option of wondering where it all went or assuming that it ended with marriage and babies and dying of old age, warm in their beds. The truth was much more complicated than that. And, really, there was only one man she wanted to do any of that with.
So, what then was the real ending to her tragic story of love and loss?
When Felicity woke, she expected to still be in that club. She expected the overwhelming heat, her hair damp with sweat, her legs dripping with the blood seeping from Oliver's back. She expected the weight of his head in her lap and the firm, unmoving press of the doors at her back. Instead, she blinked bleary eyes open to see an off-white ceiling, a steady beeping noise irritating her ears. Her eyes were so dry they stung, her throat even more so, making it painful when she tried to swallow.
Her eyes darted around in confusion until she saw Quentin Lance sitting in a chair beside her, his head rested on a fist, eyes closed.
She blinked at him, registering the oxygen mask she was wearing, and she looked up and to her right to the see the machine there, monitoring her heart.
She was alive. Lance had come to get them out of the club.
Her heart started racing.
How soon?
Did he get there in time? Were they able to revive Oliver? Was that a pointless hope when she'd felt him die there in her arms?
Her rising heartbeat must've tipped Lance off because he woke suddenly, his eyes shooting open. He stood from his chair and moved toward her, a hand finding hers and squeezing.
His concerned and weary face stared down at her and Felicity felt tears bite at her eyes. Her brows hiked in a silent question.
Hoarsely, he told her, "I'm so sorry."
She squeezed her eyes shut, tears slipping out from beneath, and shook her head.
His hand squeezed tighter around hers. "We got there… They're guessing minutes after you passed out. I… There was a-a sword or something, it was shoved through the door handles. We got it out, opened it up, and there you two were. We… They tried to get Oliver. They tried to resuscitate him, but… It was too late." He swallowed thickly. "I'm sorry. I… I know how much he meant to you."
Felicity's free hand rose to her throat as she choked on a sob. Her shoulders stabbed with pain, but she ignored it. Clawing at the wires and the tubing, she yanked her oxygen mask off and out of her way. She sucked in air desperately, suddenly feeling too surrounded by the blankets and the machines and the closed curtains around her bed. She needed the mask off and the IV out and the scratchy hospital-issue gown she was wearing replaced.
Lance hit a button to raise the bed for her and helped her get the oxygen mask out of the way. "Okay, okay," he soothed, rubbing her arm as she cried.
He was awkward for a long moment, not sure how to help her, but he stayed and he waited and he held her hand.
It took a long few minutes before she could get herself to stop, before the numbness began to seep into her and spread over her body, making her feel hollow and separated from her body. She stared at the blanket over her lap, a pale blue, and picked at a loose thread.
Lance offered her a pair of glasses. Not the ones she'd been wearing that night, but a spare pair. Thea? She wondered. Maybe she'd gone to her apartment to get her things.
A cup of ice chips was offered to her next. "You, uh… You had to have surgery on your shoulder. Stitches on the one, surgery on the stab wound. Looked like you pulled a few things… Maybe from, uh, trying to drag Oliver out…?"
She took the cup and held it in her lap. Slowly, she brought ice chips up to her mouth, letting them melt on her tongue as she stared aimlessly in front of her. "Are you asking me for my statement, Detective Lance?"
He didn't correct her like he used to. It's Officer now, remember? This time he let it pass.
"If you're up to it, I'd like to hear the story. On or off the record's up to you. I, uh… I'm here as a friend, Miss Smoak, not as a police officer."
She turned her eyes to look at him a moment.
A friend.
What a funny concept since all of her friends were dead.
Weren't they?
What did that make Thea then?
An image of Slade suddenly ran through her head and the answer to that was clear.
She was a loose end.
Or maybe a casualty. Not a dead one, obviously, but one who had suffered as much, if not more, by having to survive and bury the rest.
Still, the fact remained, Felicity's friends tended to die, and she didn't want that for the man sitting beside her.
See, without friends, being the last one standing, that made Felicity one thing.
A cockroach at the end of a nuclear war.
And maybe that was better.
"You found a duffle bag with the suit in it, didn't you?" she asked.
He was quiet for a moment before clearing his throat. "Yeah. I did."
She didn't have to ask, "Then you know?" because what was the point? All of his suspicions had finally been confirmed. Hooray for him. It wasn't as if it changed anything. He couldn't bring Oliver back to prosecute him for his crimes. He couldn't yell at Oliver for all that he'd done, all the mistakes he'd made, whether he'd managed to turn Lance's opinion of him around or not. The hood had been unmasked, but now he was dead.
So instead, she said, "I want it. It's mine now."
And Lance sighed, that long, heavy sigh that reminded her that he'd buried a daughter twice, his family had fallen apart only to reunite and fall apart again, and he had every reason to be weary.
"You want the swords too?" he asked, in that kind of snorting, 'what the hell's a matter with people' way of his.
She turned to look at him, her eyes dark and empty. "I do."
He stared back at her, his mouth a grim line, and gave a short nod.
There wasn't much to say after that.
She wondered if, when he'd sat down beside her, he'd expected someone else to wake up. Someone still hopeful. Still sweet and naïve and eager to believe that there was something good left in the world.
She wondered if he was disappointed with who he found instead.
She wondered, but she wasn't sure she cared.
Felicity checked herself out against doctor's orders two days after she woke up in the hospital. Lance wheeled her outside in her wheel chair to his cop car and drove her back to her apartment. He didn't ask if she was all right. She could see the question poised there at the end of his tongue, desperate to ask what he already knew the answer to, but he didn't. When they pulled up out front, she didn't let him get out to walk her upstairs.
"I'll be fine from here," she lied, picking up the plastic bag with her belongings inside; the clothes she'd been wearing, her jewelry, and a battered pair of glasses. She'd wanted Oliver's too, but the police had confiscated it all for their investigation.
As she was climbing out of the car, Lance's hand on her arm made her pause. "Here. What, uh, what we talked about before… I got the swords out of the evidence locker, too." He dug the duffle bag out from the back seat and handed it to her. "Nobody else saw the suit. After I found it, I had the place locked down, nobody in or out. There was a lot of stuff downstairs I didn't think you wanted people finding out about. Not sure you know what you want done with it. I can only pull so many strings for so long, y'know?"
She nodded, taking the duffle bag from him. "I'll take care of it," she said simply, glancing at him briefly before pushing the door open.
As she stepped out, he called to her, "Hey…"
She looked back.
"The funeral… They're having it at Queen Manor. You need a ride, you want someone to stand with you, I can do that, just call, all right?"
She stared at him, the kind man that knew too much and helped so many. "All right." With that, she closed the door and turned, making her way up the cement stairs leading into her building. It wasn't until she was standing in front of it that she realized she didn't have her keys, not to the building or to the apartment. She had a spare with her neighbor, but that didn't help her to get into her building. For just a moment, she felt overwhelmed, frustrated to the point of tears. Swallowing it back, she blinked her eyes closed, took in a deep breath, and walked over to the panel on the side, dressed in tenant's names. She pressed the button to her neighbor, old Miss Craigflower, and asked her if she could please let her in. She'd lost her keys and would need the ones she had as well to get inside her apartment.
"Oh, of course dear, of course," Miss Craigflower said.
The door buzzed and Felicity pulled it open, wincing as her shoulder twinged. She had pain medication for that, but sometimes she liked it, accepting the pain as penance for living when Oliver didn't. When Digg, Sara, and Roy had all died.
She took the elevator to her floor and offered Miss Craigflower a tired smile as she prattled on about how often she lost her own keys and could understood Felicity's predicament. She gave Felicity back her spare key and patted her on the shoulder, telling her to get some sleep, she looked like the living dead. And then she shuffled off to her apartment and Felicity made her way inside her own, closing the door behind her with a thud.
It felt wrong, being there when he wasn't. It had felt wrong since she woke up and didn't have him there beside her. She kept reaching out to her side, searching for his hand, and coming up with air.
She dropped her spare key into the little bowl on the table, where her and Oliver's keys used to rest together at the end of the day. She kicked off her shoes, a pair of flats Thea had brought her, though she'd yet to see her since waking. She imagined Thea had other things on her mind, others to be with, her mother namely. Truthfully, Felicity wasn't sure she could bear to sit down with Thea and explain what had happened, to spin some tale about how her brother died that wouldn't immediately bring Thea back to the truth.
Felicity made her way through the apartment, feeling, for once, like it was too large for her. She remembered, more times than she could count, Oliver complaining that her apartment was too small, they should get something bigger, a nice condo or a penthouse with a view. Her rebuttal was that it was home and it was cozy and it only seemed small because he was so big, and he would laugh and kiss her and tell her he'd live in the gutter as long as she lived with him.
Tears bit at her eyes as she closed them.
"3… 2… 1," she whispered to herself, trying to tamp down on the emotions that swirled inside her with such intensity that she could barely breathe.
Making her way to the bedroom, she unrolled the plastic bag and pulled the contents out. An arrow shaped cartilage bar, a pair of dangly silver earrings, her charm bracelet, her glasses, and, finally, the stiff clothing she'd been wearing, dried with blood. She shoved her clothes back in the bag and tossed it toward the garbage can beside her dresser.
Her jewelry was dirty, some of it with blood, others with soot. She took it all to the bathroom to rinse off, focusing on the task for a long few minutes.
When she returned to her bedroom, she felt lost.
The bed was unmade. Or, at least, Oliver's side was. That was a habit of his.
Sighing, she started undressing from the clothes she'd changed into only an hour ago. She stripped it all away and put them in the laundry hamper alongside her and Oliver's clothes from earlier in the week before she made her way back to her bathroom for a shower. She turned the handles to as hot as they would go, nearly scalding her skin as she stood under the steady beat of the water hammering at her back. She scrubbed away the smell of hospital, using the frilly yellow loofah that Oliver always told her was bright enough to burn his retinas, though that never stopped him from plucking it up to clean her back when they showered together.
The shower seemed so big and empty without him.
When the water began to cool down, she finally shut it off and climbed out. Mechanically, she brushed her teeth and combed her hair before toweling herself off and making her way back to her bedroom.
Standing in front of her closet, she pulled out one of Oliver's dress shirts and wrapped herself in it, buttoning the front and moving to her dresser to grab out a pair of wool socks.
"Your feet are like ice," he always told her, flinching when her toes rubbed up against his calves.
Blinking back tears, she walked to her bed, climbing in on her side and reaching across to where the covers were messy, the blanket half tossed over to her side. She rested her hand there, where he used to lay, and closed her eyes.
She turned her head down to her pillow as she began to cry and fell asleep just like that. For two days, she wandered in and out of sleep, stumbling off to use the bathroom here or there before returning to her previous place on her bed. Sometimes she would dream that Slade came for her, that he slipped in through the window like Oliver always feared, and plunged one or both of his swords through her heart. The pain of it would hurt less than how she felt now. But he didn't. So she was left there to fall apart, reaching for someone who wasn't, and would never be, there.
On the third day, she got out of bed.
She showered and ate something and dressed in a black sheath dress and the blandest of her flats. She tied her hair back in a ponytail and didn't bother with make-up or jewelry. When she was finished getting ready, she called for a cab and gave the driver directions to Queen Manor. While the mob of paparazzi and news outlets were not allowed permission to enter the property, clustering outside the gates, security waved her through, recognizing her immediately. Felicity gave little mind to the flashbulbs going off as they caught sight of her arrival. She didn't answer the questions being shouted at her through the closed taxi window. They were aware of who she was, though she was sure they didn't know she was there the night that Oliver died. It seemed the only detail never mentioned on the news during her stay in the hospital, when she'd torturously watched every bit of media coverage they had on what had happened.
The taxi stopped in front of Queen Manor and one of the staff hurried to get the door open for her. Felicity paid the driver and climbed out, steadied by the staff's hand under her elbow. She was expecting Raisa, but found Orlando instead, one of the security guards that had been recommended by John.
"They haven't started yet. Everyone is in the parlour," he informed her.
She nodded, but instead of moving inside, she asked, "Has Detective Lance arrived yet?"
He shook his head. "I don't think so. I know Miss Queen is hiding in the kitchen."
"Thank you."
She hesitated for a moment. Did she go to Thea or wait for Lance?
Eventually, Felicity found herself wandering around the grounds instead, making her way around the back, to where she knew the funeral would be held. They already had a headstone for him, why waste it?
Was his casket here? She wondered. Had they buried him early or was was Oliver just sitting in wait while the guests ate hors d' oeuvres and talked about what little they knew of Oliver Queen? Because his best friends, the closest people in his life, the people that really knew him, most of them were dead, and the remaining few she could count on one hand. Though she hesitated to call Lance a friend of his, or maybe she thought Lance would hesitate in calling himself a friend of Oliver's. Regardless, he was the only one besides herself that knew Oliver's true identity. The remaining three people that mattered in Oliver's life were in the dark on that particular matter. She wondered if Laurel had come. If she was driven to drinking again. She hadn't seen much of her since Sara's death; she wasn't sure how Laurel had coped with the loss of her sister a second time. And now she was losing someone else she cared about.
Felicity walked silently toward the two graves, the grounds already dressed with wreaths of flowers and a picture of Oliver's grinning face. She was both relieved and saddened to see that it was a fairly recent picture, meaning his smile wasn't that cocky, shit-eating grin he'd once worn for all the paparazzi. This one was genuine; she knew because he was laughing at something John had said, the wrinkles around his eyes showing. A moment captured when the grief and loss of Sara and Roy was beginning to ebb just a little, when he had started to laugh and smile again. It was a week before John died and then those smiles became much rarer.
She walked to the picture, her head tipped to the side, and reached for it, her fingers delicately tracing the arch of his cheeks and the lines around his eyes. God, but he was handsome. Her fingers fell to his smiling lips and she let out a tiny, shuddering sigh.
"Feels like a lie, doesn't it?"
Her head swiveled to find Thea standing a few short feet away.
"She tried to pick a happy picture. Because that's how we like to remember people. Not as who they are but who we want them to be… Or who we wish they still were." Thea wandered closer, hugging her arms around herself, looking small and willowy and like a harsh wind might blow her away at any second. "He didn't smile like that a lot, though. I mean, sometimes you could surprise him, catch him off guard, and he'd slip up and he'd laugh or grin and… just for a second, you'd feel that dark cloud lift. But… It always came back."
Felicity stared at her staring at Oliver's blown up face on a piece of cardboard, waiting by a headstone that had to have the date of his death fixed to fit current circumstances.
"I should probably be polite and ask you how you're doing and coping and all of that empty shit but, I think we both know the answer." Thea's gaze shifted up to meet Felicity's. "You were there with him, you saw it happen. They said you held him while he died, so… I mean, what's the point in asking, right?"
Thea laughed then; a choked, angry, anguished noise lifting from her throat. "I want to be angry at you and ask you why you couldn't save him… Because you did before. You brought him back from that edge, over and over again, and I… I saw him falling apart, I saw him after Sara died and Diggle died and he-he clung to you. You were like, his lifesaver, you know? So part of me is really, really angry because I thought that, whatever happened, you'd bring him back. I know that it's illogical and stupid and you couldn't save him..." She blinked her tears back quickly.
"I mean, I have no idea what happened that night. The club was basically blown up and you were stuck inside and… and Oliver, his phone went off at dinner, and he ran out of the house so quickly that we never got an answer why, and that… that was the last time I saw him. He just… He said he had to go and he kissed my cheek and then we was gone…" She hugged herself tighter, her voice getting thicker. "And the next thing I know, Officer Lance is telling me that my brother is dead and you're in the hospital and I don't… I don't know what to do anymore because it feels like everybody is just always leaving me and dying on me and I… I'm so an-angry."
Felicity didn't have words for her. She didn't have platitudes or excuses or anything. So she reached out and she hugged Thea, gathering her close and wrapping her arms around her tightly. There was no alcohol for them to drown their sorrows in, no stories to share that would make it right; they just clung to one another, holding each other up as the world seemed so eager to knock them down.
It wouldn't be long later that people began to come out to the field, to say goodbye to a man they hardly knew. Felicity let go of Thea so she could stand with her mother, the two Queens standing tall against their loss, raising those chins up high as a man of God spoke of a man who had seen purgatory and survived, only to die in an act of sacrifice.
Felicity stepped back, away from the crowd. She watched with a sort of distorted, disconnected understanding that nearly none of them, none of the people crying into their handkerchiefs or grieving for Oliver, had any idea who he truly was underneath that smile plastered for them to see. She watched as they laid flowers at his grave and paused to say farewell to his picture before eventually moving on back to the house.
When she was left alone once more, she walked back to the grave and knelt in the damp grass, tracing the letter of his name with the tip of her finger. And the pain, the loss, the agony that had been swamping her for days lifted, replaced with a numb, detached acceptance of what had to be done.
When Felicity rose, she was a different person.
She had a mission.
When she walked away with the face of a grinning Oliver at her back, she felt nothing but vengeance burning in her heart.
She wondered, briefly, if this was what Slade felt. If this was what had consumed him to the point that he had wanted nothing more than to destroy Oliver and everyone he loved.
She looked up as she passed the parlour and found Thea staring at her from the window. Whether the younger woman knew what she was going to do or had any idea of the change that had occurred, Felicity didn't know. But Thea raised her hand up and pressed it to the glass. Felicity wasn't sure if she was reaching out or waving, but Felicity lifted her hand in answer.
To her, it was goodbye.
Finding Nyssa hadn't been easy.
She supposed it wasn't meant to be, her being an assassin and all.
But find her, Felicity did.
Or, well, maybe Nyssa found her.
"I was prepared to give you leniency for all of your searching, but this… is unacceptable."
Felicity whirled around, gripping a gun John had given her in her hand as she stared down the beautiful, poised woman who stood, an eyebrow raised, giving Felicity a cursive, dismissive look-over.
"I will commend you for your skills, though. There are few that could have come this far, or this close, and lived to tell the tale."
Felicity pursed her lips. "We have… We had a common friend, once."
"Friend." Nyssa gave a faint scoff. "I have none of those."
Felicity nearly reconsidered for a moment, but then said, "Sara. Sara Lance. She was… She mattered to you. Once."
For an assassin who had likely spent a great deal of time learning how to hide her true emotions, Nyssa did not hide her flinch in that moment. She inhaled deeply through her nose and then narrowed her eyes at Felicity. "You have ten seconds to convince me why I shouldn't slit your pretty throat right here."
"I know who killed her. And I want you to teach me how to kill him."
A second passed, and then another, and Nyssa finally took a step closer. Just as Felicity though perhaps she'd made an error in judgement and Nyssa would kill her long before she'd have a chance to get anywhere close to Slade, the dragging noise of a chair being pulled across the floor snapped her to attention.
Nyssa took a seat, her hands braced on her knees, her back impossibly straight, and said, "Go on."
[continue.]