burn the world to ash - r - olicity - part 3 of 3 [c]
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.
[return.]
After nearly four years away, Felicity returned to Starling City to find it looked both familiar and foreign.
Verdant had been rebuilt, returned to its former glory and continuing on in the same grand fashion it had before. Felicity made the trek over with a heavy heart.
She found Thea at the bar, going over the books, her head bent, and reading glasses perched on her nose.
"This place looks just like I remember it when it first opened," Felicity called out in greeting. "Talk about a nostalgia rush."
Thea went still, slowly lifting her head, and turned in her seat to finally set eyes on her. She stared at her searchingly, hesitantly, as if she thought she was looking at a ghost.
"You're back," she said, flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Do I want to know where you've been?"
"Probably not." Felicity walked toward her slowly, a weird sort of nervousness filling her that she hadn't felt in so long. "Weird question, but is the basement fixed up too, or only the upper levels?"
Thea tipped her head, staring at her curiously. "You mean the basement that had a suspiciously powerful computer set-up and an insane amount of arrows, bows, guns, and bullets in supply? That basement."
Whoops, so in the insanity of everything, she'd kind of forgotten to take care of the Arrow cave when she'd gone on her little vendetta. And, apparently, Lance hadn't been able to keep it from Thea. Then again, maybe it was time she knew.
"Plus the medical equipment. Although, last I checked, we definitely needed a new set of paddles for the defibrillator." Felicity shrugged. "Old wiring, comes loose sometimes."
Thea pursed her lips. "He was the Arrow, wasn't he? This whole time. My own brother…" her voice caught. She shook her head and she swallowed back the pain of her newfound knowledge, replacing it with anger. "He was the one who shot Roy. The one who got Roy killed."
"Hey!" she snapped, stepping forward, a finger raised. "Slade Wilson killed Roy. I watched it first-hand. Your brother did everything in his power to keep Roy safe. He wasn't… He wasn't supposed to be there." She waved her hands. "That's not the point. The point is that yes, your brother was the vigilante. Oliver… He was different after the island. He had a mission. He… He needed to do this and I know it's confusing and probably really hard for you to accept, but… I'll tell you everything, if that's what you want. I'll tell you how he died that night. How hard he fought to keep this city safe. How-How desperately he just wanted you to be okay. Anything you want, Thea. Just ask me and I'll tell you."
She stared at Felicity for a long moment, looking unsure, looking angry and exhausted and not a little sad. "Slade Wilson killed Oliver."
It wasn't a question, not really, but she answered it. "Yes. And Roy and Sara and John Diggle."
"And he…"
"He's dead now." Felicity stood a little taller then, her chin raised, not in pride, no, but as a shield, as a point of holding herself up when she felt like what she did was not completely something honorable.
"H-How? Did you…?" Thea shook her head. "I mean, no offense, but you've always been my brother's kind of geeky girlfriend. You tripped over your feet almost as much as you tripped over your own tongue. So, how did you…? How could you possibly…?"
Felicity nodded. "I found someone I knew could train me and I made sure that when I found him, I'd win." She stared at Thea seriously. "I know it's not much. It doesn't bring him back. I… I wish I could. I…" Her lips trembled. "I miss him every day."
Thea blinked back tears. "Me too," she whispered.
Felicity wanted to reach for her, to hug her like she had after those meetings they used to go to, but it felt wrong now. She wasn't who she used to be. She was someone else, someone darker, someone devoid of the light she'd once had, the kind of light that might offer comfort to Thea.
"Will you tell me about him?" Thea wondered.
Felicity's brows furrowed.
"Not- Not about how he died. I don't… think I want to know. But… Who he was, with you. The Oliver that wasn't pretending to be who he used to be. The real Oliver. The one you knew."
"He was real with you too, Thea. I know it didn't always feel that way. But he tried to be what you needed. He just wanted to keep you safe."
She nodded. "I know. I mean, it's stupid and completely misogynistic of him, but… I know." She shrugged. "I just… I want to know him the way you did. I-I want to know all of him. The Arrow side too, so… Tell me about him. Please."
Felicity swallowed tightly. "Okay. I can do that."
Together, they walked to the bar, and Felicity started from the beginning. Not Oliver's, not exactly, but her beginning with him. From his lame stories about spilling a latte on his bullet-riddled laptop. She told Thea as much as she could, leaving out the more intimate parts of their relationship. Sometimes they laughed, sometimes they rolled their eyes, and sometimes they cried. They talked for hours, until stories about Arrow became stories about Oliver and Ollie, a brother and a friend and a man with a good heart.
And when they were finished, Thea poured them each a drink, knocked her glass against Felicity's and said, "We deserve this."
It wasn't shots with Sara, but it was close.
Thea thanked her afterwards, hugging her like she was still a whole, good person, and then she packed up her things and left for home, calling a driver when Felicity insisted that even one drink was too much.
When she was gone, Felicity made her way downstairs to the renovated foundry. Her computers had been replaced with new ones, but Oliver's bows and arrows were the same as they'd been and Digg's guns were safely put away in a rebuilt cabinet. The medical supplies was still there and the salmon ladder stood tall. She looked around and knew that there was a lot of work to do. She would have to rebuild her set-up, reinsert herself into the crime pipeline that was the underworld of Starling City, and figure out if handling Oliver's bows were as familiar to her as the ones Nyssa had her practice with.
It wasn't going to be easy, and, despite being a whole new foundry, familiar ghosts still lingered, but… it was a start.
Weeks later, standing atop a ledge in leather, wearing a mask, and donning a hood with far too much symbolism, Felicity looked out on the city, a bow hanging from her fingers.
"Is this who you are now then?" Lance asked her, standing behind her on the roof of his building, hands on his hips. "You take off for four years, kill Slade Wilson in Belgium, and now what? You show back up here to take on the big green mantle?"
She turned to face him. "Now I do what we were always doing. Fight the corrupt, save the innocent, serve out justice. It's a tried and true tale, don't you think? Maybe over-sung, but still important."
"You're not a killer." His shifted his feet, looking antsy. "Or you weren't, before all this."
"What's the difference between a killer and a hero?" She raised an eyebrow. "I used to ask myself that a lot. What made him different? What made what he did okay? Sometimes I lied to myself and sometimes I didn't. The truth is, Oliver was both. He killed to survive and then he killed because he believed those people deserved death. Was he wrong? Sure. Sometimes. But that's the difficult part, isn't it? We're not supposed to play judge and jury. Or, well, you're not. After all, you've got a badge and a pledge to uphold the law, which is pretty strict about that whole killing thing… Me, though, I wear the hood now. I think it casts a bit of a morally grey shade to everything, don't you?"
He shook his head, lips pursed in that fatherly, disapproving way of his. "It shouldn't. Some things are black and white."
"Maybe they are, or maybe we wish they were." She shrugged. "Here's what I know, you have a problem in the Glades, a problem that can't always be solved with an arrest warrant. So I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to watch over this city and I'll do what I can to keep it safe. I might not be as strong or as fast as Oliver, but I'm stronger and faster than your police force. And I'll do what I have to, even when it doesn't fit into those black and white boxes."
Lance stared at her a long moment, his brow furrowed. "I can't let you kill."
"I don't expect you to. As far as I'm concerned, Slade Wilson was my one and only victim. But things happen and sometimes people surprise you. I won't go looking to kill anybody, but if it happens, I won't be surprised to hear you knocking on my door." She half-smiled. "It might be good, to have a Jiminy Cricket around to keep me in line… I've seen what it does to people when they don't have one, and I don't want to become that."
He sighed, long and heavy. "It's a lot to take on. Heavy burden for one person's shoulders… You sure you can handle that?"
She tipped her head and smiled faintly. "Who said I was alone?"
With that, she fell back over the edge, cutting through the air so swiftly that she could almost convince herself she was flying. And then she wrapped her fingers around the zipline and swung herself back to safety. She'd by lying if she said she didn't, occasionally, think about not grabbing onto that lifeline some days. The grief was still deep, it still bled when she let her mind wander to Oliver or John, Sara or Roy. And maybe she would never truly heal, maybe there would always be that huge, gaping hole where her heart should be. She didn't know. But this was her trying to mend it even just a little bit.
She made her way back to Verdant and went in through the back, unstrapping her bow from her back and flipping her hood off.
"I don't want to point fingers, but somebody got a little melodramatic on a rooftop tonight," Thea said as she spun the chair to face Felicity, an eyebrow raised. "Maybe we should cut back on the speeches, huh?"
"I don't know. They were a favorite of Oliver's."
"Yeah, well, he was a little overdramatic, too." Pushing up from her chair, Thea walked toward her. "So? You think he'll help you?"
"Lance?" She nodded. "I just need to prove to him that I'm worth helping. That I'm not going to go on a killing spree the first chance I get."
Crossing her arms over her chest, Thea nodded. "Speaking of, when exactly are you going to start training me for something other than tech support?"
"Don't knock it," Felicity warned. "That seat holds a lot of meaning, and for good reason."
Rolling her eyes, Thea held her hands up in surrender. "Not complaining about my current role, just hoping I'll get a chance to kick a little bad guy ass. So? A general time frame, maybe."
Felicity gave a short nod. "Sure. We'll start with slapping water and see where that gets you." With a grin, she walked off to shower.
"Slapping what?" she heard Thea mutter behind her.
She wondered how pissed Oliver would be that she brought Thea into the fold.
But, the dead don't speak.
She missed his voice enough that just hearing him yell at her would be a blessing.
Felicity lasted much longer than she expected.
Long enough to train Thea to become 'Speedy,' her sidekick in some respects, but her partner in most. They held each other up when the grief seemed to swamp them, they guarded each other's backs when the enemy got close, and they stood against adversity when everyone seemed to bend to it.
But, as all stories do, Felicity's eventually found its end.
She didn't die on the battlefield, she made it home first.
The foundry was where she spent most of her time. There was a makeshift room in the back that she put to good use. Her apartment had been there when she returned, courtesy of Thea, though she thought it was probably in an effort to preserve as much of Oliver's stuff as she could rather than because she expected Felicity to come back. Still, Felicity couldn't stay there, and her life revolved so much around being Green Arrow that she didn't see the point in separating anything anymore. Oh, she worked, freelance tech work when she needed money, but, for the most part, she lived in the foundry. Oliver had left her his trust find in his will, but Felicity rarely used it. Her freelance work paid for the electricity she burned up downstairs, making sure Thea didn't have to foot the bill, and bought her what food she needed. But there wasn't much more in terms of expenses.
Felicity could admit, when drunk on tequila and only in the presence of Thea, that her life had spiralled out of control some time ago and was now far too focused on crime fighting and not enough on actually living. It was hard, though. The only real loss she'd known before her team was when her father had walked out on her. Her mother was no peach, keeping her distance from Felicity after her husband packed up and left, as if waiting for the day her daughter too would abandon her. Sometimes Felicity wondered if her mother even noticed her nearly four year absence from the world. But comparing the voluntary disappearance of her father to the loss of her team was like comparing apples and oranges, both fruit, most generally round, but still very different.
When Roy had died, it had hurt. He was a friend and a teammate and he hadn't deserved to die like that. There was still so much life left in him, so much more he could have done, so much he deserved to do and see and have.
When Sara had been killed, that hurt became an ache. It burrowed under her heart and squeezed every time she felt the distinct lack of her fellow female in the lair. She missed having a girlfriend, having someone who understood, having a buddy she could get drinks with and talk honestly to about life alongside Oliver Queen.
When she lost John, she lost a part of herself. She lost the friend that held her up on her worst days and the confidant who told her she was more than she knew. She lost the voice in her ear and the hand steadying her in a world that always seemed a little uneven where her mouth was unfiltered. He was her rock. He was her best friend. And when she lost him, she lost one very strong tether to what she saw as good and right in the world.
When Oliver died in her arms, her heart leaked out of her chest and painted itself in the hollow smile that stared back at her. She had loved before, but never like that. Loss might have brought them together, finally, but it was love that bound them. There were mornings that she woke and she looked at him and she believed the world could be better. Nights when hearing his heart under her ear was like a promise that they would be okay, they would survive, they would triumph. And holding his hand, feelings his fingers tangle with hers, she knew she was home. Sometimes she wondered what it might have been like if Oliver had won. If Slade had died that night at the club, as it crumbled all around them. If she had been able to kill him with that sword he gave her, so certain that she would never be able to truly win against him. Would they have found peace eventually? Would they have gotten married like they wanted to? Would they have had beautiful blond babies with her brains and his courage? Would they have stood, as partners, against everything and everyone that stepped up to fill Slade Wilson's hollow shoes?
She thought they would.
She hoped so.
All she really knew was that five years after avenging her team and building a new one with Thea and a driven Laurel Lance taking on the mantle of her fallen sister, Felicity still loved him with every breath left in her body.
Laurel got her back to the foundry and laid her out on the steel table she'd become all too familiar with over the years.
Delirious from blood loss and the pain, Felicity looked up at Thea's concerned face and swore she saw John for a moment, pulling on a pair of latex gloves before he got started. When she turned her head, her bleary eyes found Laurel, only she was still in her blonde wig, and Felicity blindly reached a hand out. "Sara?"
Laurel took her hand and squeezed, blood squishing between their fingers. "It's Laurel, Felicity. Sara… Sara's gone, remember?"
Tears bit at her eyes, her lips wobbling and she turned her head up to stare at the ceiling. A ceiling that had fallen on her one too many times. A laugh bubbled up in her throat and broke on her lips, blood spraying down her chin.
"She's losing too much. I can't staunch it," Thea exclaimed worriedly. "We need to do something. We need to call someone."
"My dad. I'll get him here. He'll bring her to the hospital," Laurel said, already walking away, her phone out.
Thea leaned over the table, her face coming back into Felicity's view. "Hey," she said softly, squeezing Felicity's shoulder. "It's going to be okay, all right?"
But Felicity could see the tears already clinging to Thea's eyelashes, she could feel as her body began to give up on her. Shaking her head, she said, "You're going to be okay." She reached up, searching for Thea's hand, and finally found it, squeezing tight. "I know you will, Thea. You're strong and smart and you shoot a bow better than I do."
"Don't say that," Thea whispered. "Please, Felicity. Don't die on me. I can't lose you, too. Please."
Tears dribbled down from the corners of her eyes as she smiled. "He'd be so, so proud of you… He'd be pissed too and tell you not to do it, it's too dangerous, blah blah, macho brother crap, but he'd be proud. Of who you are and what you do and how brave you are." Felicity shook her hand and nodded. "I'm proud of you, Thea."
Thea's face crumbled, tears streaking down her cheeks. "I can't do this alone," she cried.
"You're not alone." Her breath hitched. "You've got Laurel and you can call Barry, if you need him…" She blinked, trying to focus as her brain started to fritz out on her. She blinked rapidly. "Hey, you were making connections in Metropolis, right? With that guy who likes blue tights?"
"Superman?" she laughed, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah, him. And Bruce will help you, I know he will."
Thea scoffed. "He only helped out because he had a crush on you. He's usually a raging ass with a serious brooding issue."
Felicity snorted. "Sound familiar?"
Thea shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed. "I miss him. I miss him so much. I don't want to miss you too. I'm so tired of missing people."
"So don't… Don't miss me." Felicity pulled Thea's hand up to her face and pressed her cheek to it. "I'm not sad, okay? I'm not. I'm tired. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm ready."
"I'm not," Thea choked.
"Promise me you'll be okay." Felicity stared up at her searchingly. "Promise me that if anything happens, if you ever think it's too much, you'll get out. Save yourself. Hang up the red suit and do something mundane, like run a nightclub."
Thea gave her a watery smile. "I promise."
Felicity nodded, blinking a few times. "Good." God, she was dizzy and so, so tired.
"Felicity," Thea worried. "Just a little longer, please? Stay with me."
She smiled then. "He used to say that… in the mornings… Stay with me, Felicity. Stay home… He never… never wanted to go to work…" Her hand went limp against Thea's, falling back against the table.
"Felicity… Felicity!"
She stared above, a ringing in her ears, and slowly Thea's face faded from her view.
And then a light. A bright light. And suddenly it wasn't Thea she was looking at, it was Digg, and he was grinning at her.
"Hey," he said, or so his lips read, but she didn't hear him, not at first.
She blinked up at him, her brow furrowed, and turned her head to the left.
A smiling Sara and a smirking Roy greeted her, walking toward her in what seemed like slow-motion.
"Hey, sleepyhead. We thought you'd never wake up," Sara said, her voice coming through a filter, like her ears were water-logged.
"I thought we agreed on Sleeping Beauty?" Roy snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Y'know, I think you made us all look bad with that bad-ass chick routine. Nobody's gonna remember me when they've got a hot chick in green leather running around taking out bad guys left, right, and center."
Felicity frowned. What? What was happening?
"Well, I thought the hood looked pretty good on you. But I could be biased. It's not the first time I've seen you in my suit…"
Felicity's heart clenched violently as her head swung to the right to find Oliver grinning down at her. Gently, his hand swept over her forehead, pushing her hair back, before it slid down to cup her cheek. He leaned over her, staring searchingly into her eyes. "Hey…"
Tears burned her eyes, her hand shaking as it raised to cover his. It felt real. It felt warm and heavy on her skin and, God, she could actually smell him. "Oliver?" she choked out.
He leaned down, resting his forehead against hers, and she whimpered, reaching up to drag her fingers through his hair, curving them around his ear, as she sucked in shaky, gasping breaths.
"Shh…" he said soothingly. "Hey, it's okay… I've got you."
Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes and she felt her whole body shake. "Is this a- a fever dream?" she wondered. "Or maybe one of those 'about to die' things where really it's just some chemicals going off in my brain making me think I'm one step closer to heaven."
Oliver drew his head back a little, giving her some space, but he left his hand on her face, his thumb swiping away tears and stroking her cheek.
"You really think any of us were heaven-bound?" Digg scoffed. "Pretty sure the tally we've all racked up says we were headed for the brimstone and fire end of things."
"I'd like to point out that I never actually killed anyone," Roy piped up. "I'm surprisingly the most innocent one here…"
"Innocent isn't the first word I'd use to describe you," Sara dismissed.
"Before those two start bickering…" Digg looked down at her. "What do you think this is?"
Felicity looked around at all of them, at her team, her family, that she'd missed so much, at her best friend who was holding tight to one of her hands, at Oliver, who was staring down at her with that soft, loving look of his, half-smiling as he watched her come to a conclusion.
She turned her head to kiss his palm, just as callused as she remembered it, and let out a soft sigh, before answering simply, "Home."
Thea buried Felicity next to Oliver at the manor, ignoring her mother's protests to the contrary.
Sometimes, when her days were long and trying, she would go and sit between their marble gravestones to vent. She wasn't sure if she believed in heaven or hell or an afterlife or whatever, but she liked to think that they were together. All of them. Roy, Sara, John Diggle, Felicity and Oliver. She wasn't sure and she'd never really have any proof, but she trusted that feeling in her heart that told her maybe they were, somehow. And it could've been a way to sandbag against the grief, it could've been her way of avoiding the harsh reality that too many people she'd loved were gone, but it was better than wallowing in that loss until she was little more than a shell of who she was. She'd seen her brother do that, seen Felicity do the same, and she didn't want to repeat those mistakes.
So, she let herself hope for something more, something happier, and at night, when the city sang with danger and crime, calling out for a hero, she donned her red suit and she went out to meet it. Pausing by the case that commemorated both Arrow and Green Arrow, she would press her fingers to her lips and then to the glass where the infamous green hood lay as a sign of what they stood for, what she wanted to uphold. And together, alongside Laurel, they would fight against the injustice that threatened Starling City.
Wherever her brother was, she hoped he was proud, and she hoped he knew that she loved him and she was proud of him, for both the man he was and the man he became. Maybe in death, he had found his peace and, with it, Felicity.
Seated on a bike as she sped through the Glades, looking for her next adventure, Thea Queen met the world with a free and open heart, gratefully empty of the vengeance and rage that had clouded those of too many before her.
She was the beginning of a new era, and, for that, her brother truly would be proud.
{end.}
author's note: This whole thing ended up being way, way longer than I'd originally written it. But the editing process usually leads to adding in more scenes, hence why there's so much more with Nyssa (orginally, I just had a the bits of her dialogue intermixed with the slade/felicity show down but then I wanted to write more of her). I like the end result though.
I had a number of people hoping for an Olicity baby, but I couldn't honestly write Felicity as someone who went into a fight while pregnant or knew that she had a child at home that she might have to completely abandon if she ended up dying in the fight. It's just not her. And, while I appreciate the symbolism and wanting a piece of Oliver to continue forward, I always knew that, in the end, Felicity would die. She might have seen herself as the sidekick, but she was the protagonist all along. Her happy ending was that, in death, she reunited with her family and left behind a new legacy to carry on her original message of hope. The previous team were marred by too much pain and death and loss, and while Thea has been too, she takes on a different approach when she dons the leather. She saw what holding onto those things did to her brother and then to Felicity. In knowing the truth and having the training to help people and fight back, she becomes a new breed of hero, one that can see hope on the horizon and, instead of avenging the deaths before her, she tries to be someone they would be proud to have stand in their place.
I hope you're satisfied with the ending. I know some people wanted an alternate happy ending, maybe it was all a dream or something to that effect. To be honest, I don't like writing those. Every once in a while, I will. But for the really hard-hitting ones, the ones that ring true to the gritty sincerity that life is not all roses and death is inevitable, I like the impact it leaves behind.
In any case, thank you all for reading what I've written. I hope I did it all justice and that you enjoyed the imagery of it, if nothing else.
I do plan to update a more fluffy Olicity piece soon, in an effort to make up for all this angst!
Thank you all for reading. Please, do leave a review! They're my lifeblood and I'm really very proud of how far this story has come and would love to hear how you felt in reading the final chapter and how it all came together in the end.
- Lee | Fina