Would you tell Mia that I love her every day? And I know that she will grow up to be as smart  and as beautiful as her mom.

Storenvy | Redbubble |Ko-Fi | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Storenvy | Redbubble |Ko-Fi | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Just out here living my best AU future Smoak-Queen family life 

What I’m Really Sad About 🏹👓❤️

It’s taken me awhile to sort through my feelings over this last couple of weeks. After all, it’s not like we thought the show would run forever. It’s not Days of our Lives. And I think we all can agree Arrow’s best years are behind it, and have been for several seasons. So we can’t expect to get an about-face and the perfection of Season 2 this late in the game.

And it’s not like the show as it has already been created will disappear with 8.10; I already watch all my favorite episodes any time I want on Netflix. I can see entire seasons of nothing but Olicity clips via YouTube if I want, easy peasy, and AO3 isn’t going anywhere (home to the best Olicity content anyway). So why am I sad?

What I’m going to miss is the Christmas-like anticipation of that Monday in July when filming for the new season begins. The behind the scenes sneak peeks, the cryptic tweets and Instagram photos from the cast. SDCC, though I’ve never been. The run-up to that October premiere; the fandom discussions, the speculation fan fics. The Crossover anticipation, and inevitable eye rolling. The big splashy finish of the winter finale. Olicity Secret Santa (can we still do that please??) Those hellacious breaks throughout the early spring. And every finale. Then it’s summer again, another hiatus for fans to spend reading and writing fics, both fix-it’s and AUs, and yes, more speculations.

I worry SA will abandon the fan base he’s worked really hard to build up over these past seven years. I don’t need daily updates on the guy’s personal life, don’t get me wrong, but I’m used to seeing him pop up on Facebook periodically to leave a video chat and I’m gonna miss him. I don’t like thinking about these actors who’ve formed a kind of family most likely scattered to the four winds.

Mostly I’m mourning the part of my life that’s about to go away. When you’re the grown up who’s in charge of everyone else’s birthday surprises and Christmas presents, when vacations are only changes of scenery because you’re still busy taking care of a family, there aren’t many things to really look forward to. But Arrow was that surprise for me. So I’ll keep writing my fics, for awhile at least, and I’ll probably re-watch it forever, but the thrill…the thrill will be gone.

@allimariexf @jules85 @hope-for-olicity @smoaking-greenarrow @olicityotp-always @lucyyh @msbeccieboo @mel-loves-all @memcjo @miriam1779 @geneshaven @dmichellewrites @leuska @1106angel @bandanab310 @icannotbelieveiamhere @smoakmonster @laurabelle2930 @callistawolf @scu11y22 @missyriver @by-mintsea @ruwithmeguys @supersillyanddorky06 @stephswims @dettiot @befitandchase @tdgal1 @coal000 @almondblossomme @babblingblondegenius @turtlejustice @austencello @machawicket @blondeeoneexox

stream doodle! my girl felicity smoak

quick doodle of my first DC love, Oliver Queen! (◕‿  ◕✿)

Happy Fan Art Friday! 

I had to add in the Season 7 coat Oliver keeps wearing.

Oliver’s Journal (Thoughts In Moonlight)

I’m laying here in the quiet of darkness with my pen in hand again. There is enough light from the full moon outside, enough silver luminescence coming through the windows in our bedroom to write by.

Felicity is asleep next to me. She told me again earlier tonight that she really misses William. There is an emptiness in both of our lives, one that reaches out across a continent and looks for the face of our son. Felicity and I are a bit at odds on bringing him home. Now that Diaz is out again, (and my god, working with John and Lyla) I don’t feel that it’s safe enough for him to come back yet. As long as that monster is loose, the possibility of him going rogue and coming after my family again is not a chance I want to take when it comes to Felicity and William’s safety. I have complete faith in Felicity, and I know she can protect herself. But with William, I can’t sanction him coming back to the threat that lingers over us.

Felicity, on the other hand, wants William home. She argues that both of us can keep him safe. Even with the new spotlight glaring on our lives, she is willing to take the risk of William being with us. We can shelter him, she says. She is completely sure that as a family, we can face anything that comes our way, as parents, as unmasked heroes and as the freedom fighters we have become now that the mission is out in the open.

Since I’ve come back from Slabside, and after the secret deal I made with the Monitor, it hasn’t felt like anything has changed, at least not for me. I’m feeling guilty again. I suspect it’s a feeling I will always have inside my heart. I acknowledge that I’ve grown away from the hard man I was before my life was graced by being a husband and a father, but I am always going to do whatever it takes to keep my loved ones safe, with or without the Green Arrow persona.

But there is one constant I recognize when it comes to me, Felicity and William. We are a family of survivors. Everyone knows my story, but do they know how much Felicity has had to endure and sacrifice during my evolution? Do they know what William is really having to endure as he languishes back East, wondering if he will ever have a real family again? Does the world know that we are stronger when we are together? I don’t know if it does, but what I do know is that I cannot put either of them in the kind of danger I let into their lives when I went to prison.

But what about the Monitor? There is another sacrifice ahead, one that will hopefully ensure my family’s path forward without the threat of death and separation. Has this been my calling all along? I remember telling Felicity so many years ago that dying to save others is what a true hero is all about. She didn’t buy it then, and I know she won’t buy it now. Yet, I can’t help my nature. Felicity has always known what lengths I will go to, to take away the need for her and William to keep looking over their shoulders, waiting for some danger to claim them and make my mission a failure. But she is not that person anymore from all those years ago. She has become so much stronger. And the ironic thing about it is our lives as vigilantes is what gave her that strength. She was right. She is no longer that woman he met chewing on that red pen. She is a force in her own right. I’m still not comfortable with that gun of hers, but maybe it’s only an extension of her own willingness, her own lengths she will go to in keeping those she loves from harm.

I will take my place in the scheme of things. If I must die to keep all those I love from suffering the same fate—then it’s a no-brainer for me to make that ultimate sacrifice. Felicity and William will suffer; there is no doubt of that. But they will also come together as mother and son. They will be the outcome of my sacrifice and my legacy. William is still young enough to adapt his life to such changes. He is not as innocent as some might think, not after what happened to Samantha on Lian Yu. Not after being pulled into my life of danger and violence, with the possibility of death around every corner. He is strong. He is not impervious to the pain of loss, but he has engrained himself into this lifestyle and all that comes with it. Felicity will be a huge asset to him when and if I step out of this life. She will give him what he needs to survive—love and strength.

When I watch her sleep beside me, it’s like I have another secret, a wonderful secret, one that is not smothered in darkness. She has been the only person in my life that brings peace to me. I have learned from her how powerful love can be. Maybe it is eternal. Maybe if I do have to die, I can still protect her, if only as a specter hovering over her life like an ethereal reminder of perseverance.

Dr. Turner tried to force on me the fear of having William follow his own cycle of violence because of what I became. That is bullshit. William has more sense than I had when I was his age. And as he grows into the exceptional man he will become, Felicity will be his role model. She will shape his life, and maybe instead of violence, William will find the same kind of peace in her that I did. Maybe that is what will save both of them. I have no doubt about this. Being together, both will face the future together as one. This gives me comfort when I lay here in the dark and listen to the voices in my head and heart.

I need to put down this journal and lay next to Felicity. I have made this long journey to know that whatever happens to me, she will always be that person who can quiet my nightmares. She will always be the one who soothes me and makes it possible for me to be here next to her now. When I’m with her, when I take her in my arms and cradle her own troubled dreams, I know that she is the one who keeps me safe.

But that emptiness is still there, for both of us. Without William here to complete our Trinity, I cannot accept being without the other person in my life who keeps me centered. It’s family that keeps me in the fight today. Knowing that, I am privileged to have both of them in my life—it’s what keeps my heart beating, alive and strong.

Felicity is so beautiful here in the moonlight. Awake or asleep, she is an angel that I believe in. I don’t know if I will ever pick up this journal again, but if I do, she and William will always be the headline, the content of what I put in these pages.

Maybe tomorrow, I will talk to Felicity about bringing William home. I will be afraid for him. I will be protective of him. But I will also be proud of him, and of Felicity, for what they have given me.

A home.

@memcjo @it-was-a-red-heeler @swordandarrow @icannotbelieveiamhere @hope-for-olicity @olicityotp-always @lageniuswannabe

Shades

1.

A bitter December wind blew through the streets of Star City with gusts of up to 50mph, pushing its citizens down the sidewalks as they went out to brave the storm to buy Christmas presents, to sit in coffee shops and sip steaming java in defiance of the weather. A  misty rain hung over all of it, putting a damper on the holiday spirit.

Felicity pushed her way out the door of the city’s premier department store, balancing two bags of presents she had picked out for Oliver and William. The big day was only three weeks away, and after the surreal experiences they had gone through with the Monitor and his impossible ultimatums, with losing Oliver again to the mad swapping of bodies between him and Barry and after his declaration and understanding of how both she and him had changed and that he would always love her no matter what—they had decided to leave town and spend Christmas with William in Cambridge. Felicity had called William and brought him up to speed on everything that has happened since Oliver came home from Slabside. Oliver had the idea of teaching her and William how to ski, and they would more than likely have enough snow in the area to feel more of a traditional holiday setting, a family vacation in the mountains of Massachusetts, a Dickens kind of Christmas with goose and bread pudding and a glowing fire in the hearth. All three of them agreed that a little time alone as a family would be the best present they could receive at the end of this nightmare they lived through in 2018.

Felicity made her way down the sidewalk towards the public parking garage she left her car in. The gusting wind made it a challenge, but she had fought against stronger forces and moved confidently ahead. Their flight leaves tomorrow and Felicity still could not believe that she and Oliver and William would be together again. When Oliver went to prison, that reality seemed to have vanished from their lives, like shades of loneliness and fear and the uncertainty of a future that would never be the same again.

She could feel the aura that had been surrounding her over the past few days, the feeling of happiness and love that was like a new promise in her life. The impossible things Oliver went through and what he shared with her when he was alone  with the Monitor and the sacrifice he had made—Felicity finally felt that Oliver had grasped the most important change in him, one that transformed him into the hero he was always meant to be…he would never be without her, without her love and her constant presence by his side as they navigated their way towards whatever they might discover outside the storms in their lives. She had to admit though that Oliver’s decision to leave Diaz alive was not one she would have made. But she also understood that Oliver leaving him alive was part of his hero identity, not as the Green Arrow, but as Oliver Queen. The true reality for her when it came to Diaz and the kind of restraint and compassion Oliver had shown that monster was not as noble as Oliver’s. The hardened, ruthless echo Diaz set loose inside her would not let her be as magnanimous as Oliver was. That person wanted the monster vanquished. She wanted the shades he created in her to swallow him up, to feed her need for justice and perhaps quiet that echo in her head.

But she was going to be with her family. Felicity focused on that. She and Oliver were still adapting to the changes in each other, but she, and him, did not feel alone anymore. Life and death are interchangeable. Both of them had learned this in the years they spent fighting against and for such failures and triumphs. They would face everything together, good and bad.

The parking garage was one more block ahead. Felicity walked past a small alley splitting apart two old brick buildings. She shifted one of her bags in her hand and began to reach into her pants pockets with the other for her car keys when a sudden sharp sting erupted in her arm. A suffocating wave of warmth flowed through her bloodstream and into her veins. Blurry images shimmered her reality and Felicity was about to fall into an abyss that suddenly opened in her mind.

She dropped her bags and melted to the sidewalk as consciousness left her. The rain fell indifferently down on her still body. Nobody saw the shade of a man materialize out of the alley and plunge the syringe he held into Felicity. He quickly reached down after her and pulled her into the alley with him, away from the safety of the city that she had helped secure and save.

“Felicity, it is so good to see you again,” Stan spoke aloud as he looked down at her sleeping body.

@memcjo @swordandarrow @it-was-a-red-heeler @blondeeoneexox @hope-for-olicity @olicityotp-always 

Shades

2.

The one good thing about the drug Stan injected Felicity with was that it let her dream. Yet, the images that came to her as she continued to sleep under Stan’s influence were not ones she wanted to relive. When it came to her and Oliver, there were a lot of dark, negative instances between them. There were also just as many positive, loving ones as well.  But under the sedation she floated on, her subconscious dredged up her most painful memories. The sequence of her dreams seemed to jump randomly in and out of her mind and heart…

…Oliver was sitting at the table in the Loft. He just finished recording his message to William. Felicity was still trying to wrap her head around the existence of William. Marriage is about inclusion, she thought to herself, and then she said it out loud to him. She also told him that he didn’t know or understand how to be inclusive. A flush of emotions surged through her as the implant Curtis invented came alive and brought her out of that damned wheelchair. She rose up and turned away from Oliver, walking towards the front door, taking with her feelings so powerful they temporarily blinded her. Then she was at the door and walked through it…

…and was in the Bunker. Oliver had just returned from his confrontation with Prometheus and his attempt to rescue Billy. She looked up from her laptop and saw him standing there, his head hung down as if there was an impossible burden around his neck. She walked over to him and asked where Billy was. Oliver finally looked up and into her eyes. The weight of the life he has chosen filled his stare as he opened up to her. He told her he had killed Billy, a ruse created by Prometheus. Felicity felt herself crash inward as his words echoed in the Bunker. For a brief second, Felicity blamed Oliver. Then she gathered herself enough to tell the truth—it was all Prometheus. Oliver suggested everyone get as far away from him as possible. Felicity could feel their connection then, that force that always broke through whatever was going on between them, keeping them together for all these years. Felicity started to go to him…

…and was suddenly hovering over a wintery, snow-capped mountaintop. Her view of the two men combating one another was from above the scene, as if she were a bird riding the currents of cold air. Oliver and Ra’s Al Gul were both shirtless and they had swords in their hands. She tried to steady herself as the winds blowing across the mountaintop kept jostling her, distorting her vision of the battle below. Ra’s got the best of Oliver, and as Oliver knelt before the leader of the League of Assassins, she could feel time stop. Ra’s thrust the sword Oliver had been using into his chest. Blood bubbled out of Oliver’s mouth, and he became a figure of inevitability as the wound in his chest brought him to the brink of yet another brutal reality in his life. Then Ra’s kicked him off the cliff edge and down into a deep ravine, down into the mists of certain death…

Felicity’s eyes came open and her dreams shattered as if they were made of glass. Disorientation made her head spin and she let her mind come clean from the images that filled it. After a few minutes, Felicity was able to look around at her surroundings. The first thing she noticed as her eyes opened was a dirty ceiling. Strips of plaster hung down and large water stains blotted the surface like running sores. There was a musty smell in the air and Felicity found it hard to take a breath of it. The second thing she noticed was that she was lying on her back on a lumpy mattress. Her arms were zip-tied to iron bars at the head of the bed. Looking down, she could see that her legs were free of bindings. They were spread out on the bed as if they were offering her a way out of this nightmare.

“Ah…” a voice spoke above her, out of her eyesight. “You’re awake. Good. I’m sorry about drugging you, but I didn’t think you’d come willingly. We have a few things to talk about, mainly about your husband, the Green Arrow. Oliver Queen. The Betrayer.”

Felicity tried to move her head up to get a look at the man who stood behind her. She almost recognized the voice speaking to her. Then, as she tried to put a face to the voice, Felicity suddenly knew who it was.  It was the man she spoke with at Slabside, the man who told her about Level 2 and that Oliver was sent there. She remembered when Oliver came home, he had told her about this person. Stan was his name.

“Stan,” she spoke to him. “What is going on? Why did you…whatever you’ve done.”

Stan moved from around the headboard and into Felicity’s sight. There were scars covering his face, and Felicity felt a part of herself hoping that some of them were put there by Oliver. But she also felt that wishing harm on this lunatic was not the right way to confront him, not if she had any chance of getting away.

“Hello Felicity,” Stan said to her as he looked down on her prone body. “It seems like it’s been a long time since I last saw you. How is Oliver? Is he still flying around the city saving innocent people?”

“Stan, what are you doing?” Felicity tried to fill her eyes with indifference, as if what he was doing was something normal. She kept a neutral tone in her voice like they were just having a friendly conversation. But her senses were almost fully restored and she began to envision escape.

“Felicity, your husband used that ploy on me. I’m not buying the whole let’s-be-friends angle again. I don’t know what Oliver told you about me, but I tried to tell him I was innocent and he turned out just like all the others. He turned his back on me, after all the things I did with and for him during our Green Arrow mission inside Slabside. He tricked me and got away. You can’t trick me.”

Oliver did tell her some of what Stan was talking about. But his final assessment of the man was that he did belong in prison and that he was far from innocent. He was just another bump in the road to Oliver’s release. But Stan was right. Oliver refused to help him get out. “Stan, Oliver hasn’t really had the time to talk much about what happened at Slabside. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Stan stared down at Felicity and a vacant look filled his broken eyes. He shook his head and reached into a pocket of the jacket he was wearing. He pulled out a syringe. “Felicity, you need to sleep some more. I have one more task that needs to be done. Then we can all talk about what happened.”

“What do you mean,” Felicity started to ask. Then Stan’s arm shot out and he put the needle into her arm. “Shh…” he whispered to her. “I’m going to go get Oliver and then we’ll figure everything out.”

As the drug entered her bloodstream again, Felicity could only think about Oliver and how he was going to kill this little man and stop his psychotic actions. Then darkness took her away from everything and she was again at the mercy of her dreams.

@memcjo @it-was-a-red-heeler @hope-for-olicity @jaspertown @mammashof @keabbs @icannotbelieveiamhere @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl @cainc3 @coal000

Shades

3.

“Alright, now I’m worried,” Oliver spoke to the empty room.

The sun was going down outside, not that anyone could see it as it sunk into the west behind the storm clouds covering Star City. Oliver was pacing in their apartment, occasionally looking at the front door as if Felicity would be walking through it any minute now. She had left some six hours ago to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, leaving Oliver hunched over the kitchen table studying portfolios of some of the current criminal activity happening in Star City. Dinah had given them to him, asking Oliver to utilize his superior tactical skills and give the SCPD an edge on catching the bad guys.

When Felicity left, kissing him goodbye and telling him she would be back in a couple hours, Oliver returned her kiss and wished her good shopping. Now, as the sky outside began to darken, he finally admitted to himself that something was wrong. If anything came up that would have detained her, Felicity would have called him to say so. Six hours. Unless she was buying everything in the store, she should have been home by now, lugging in her packages and sitting down to rest her weary feet.

As Oliver made another passage across their living room floor, the cell phone he had clutched in his hand suddenly began to ring. He had ignored the impulse to simply call her after his worrying became prevalent, not wanting to make her think that she couldn’t take care of anything that may have come up. He quickly brought his hand up and saw that it was Felicity calling, perhaps to tell him she had some car problems or some such thing, asking if he would come and help her. He answered the phone.

“Felicity…what is going on?”

“Oliver,” a man’s voice answered him. “Are you at home?”

Oliver instantly recognized the voice. It was Stan. Oliver never found out what happened to the psychotic man after he left Slabside. Apparently, he had found his way out of the prison. That sense of something being wrong kicked into light speed as Oliver’s body suddenly went cold.

“Stan, what the hell is going on? What are you doing with Felicity’s phone? Why aren’t you in your cell, where you belong?” Oliver guessed what was going on—somehow, he had taken Felicity and was about to play some kind of demented game of revenge. The last time Oliver saw Stan, he was unconscious on the floor of that supply room, left there and locked in after Oliver disarmed his attempt to convince Oliver that they would be a good team-up.

“Oliver…GA…you don’t get to ask those questions. You lost your faith in our friendship, in our teamwork.” Stan paused for a couple of seconds and then went on; a new ominous tone replaced the sickening sidekick voice he used when they were in Slabside. “Now you need to listen to me. I have Felicity. Right now, she is comfortably sleeping, depending on you to come rescue her. You will never find her without my help, even with all the fancy technology you have at your fingertips. I am willing, however, to meet you somewhere and talk about what comes next.”

Oliver had his doubts that Felicity was just waiting for him to come and save her. He almost felt pity for Stan that he didn’t know what she was capable of. She had survived Diaz and his attack on her and William.  She had masterminded his capture. In a way, she had sent Diaz to Oliver and started the final confrontation between the three of them. She had morphed into a different person, the kind who had taken her fears and turned them into weapons.

Oliver couldn’t help letting some of his own darkness come through as he answered Stan. “Stan, you need to stop this before someone gets hurt. You know that if I meet you, I am going to capture you and have you returned to Slabside.”

“Shut up!” Stan screamed in Oliver’s ear. “You are not going to do anything. You don’t know where I’m holding your wife. If anything happens to me, she will die. If you don’t come and talk to me, she will die. I gave her something to make her sleep, but I also gave her a slow poison to go with that sedative. If I don’t get back to give her the antidote in three hours, she will die. Do you understand?”

Oliver’s hold on his phone tightened. He had to fight against the darkness rising inside of him. “Okay Stan, I’ll come. But if she dies, you will never be safe for the rest of your life. I will make it my only purpose in life to hunt you down and end you.”

“Well, that kind of depends on what happens after our meeting. Come on GA, you are much smarter than just threatening me. We are alike. I am like another half of you. I can see danger coming and I know how to get away from it. Just ask Brick. He found out how dangerous I am. You just need to calm down and do what I tell you.”

Oliver had no idea what Stan was talking about, and he didn’t care. “Okay Stan, where do you want to meet.”

“That’s better,” Stan answered. “I’m sure you remember where your sister’s nightclub is. Verdant, right? I’ll meet you there. I don’t have to tell you not to bring your police buddies with you. Of course I don’t. This is just between you and me, right?” Stan went silent again for a few more seconds and Oliver became aware of the time slipping by; that is if the poison inside Felicity was real. “In an hour,” Stan continued. “And Oliver…you better hurry. The clock is ticking. I can save your wife’s life, but only if we can come to an agreement that you and I would make a good team. Deal?”

Oliver savagely hung up on Stan and felt the darkness in him began to shade his tactical awareness. He became solely focused on getting to Felicity and taking her away from the mechanisms of Stan’s insanity.

However, Oliver did have a plan. As he once told Barry during his training, don’t run into anything blind. Use your senses and your skills. Use what you’ve been taught. Oliver was counting on Felicity to be a part of his disrupting Stan’s plans. She would be his wild card, his ace in the hole. Stan had no idea what a true partnership was all about. Oliver didn’t need his Green Arrow outfit or his bow and arrows. He only needed his, and Felicity’s, sense of survival to defeat this threat. Besides, he was eager to get a firsthand account of the changes in her. He knew she would do them proud.

Oliver’s face broke out in a dangerous grin as he left their apartment and headed west, following the path of darkness that the sun painted on the city after leaving the sky.

@it-was-a-red-heeler @memcjo @swordandarrow @hope-for-olicity @keabbs @biermank @cruzrogue @coal000 @icannotbelieveiamhere @lageniuswannabe

Shades

4.

Ten minutes after Stan left to go meet Oliver, Felicity’s consciousness swam up from the darkness Stan’s drug put her in. She sped up towards a small circle of light, as if she was rising from the bottom of a deep well. Cobblestone walls flashed past her during her ascent, and as she passed, images from her life began to appear in the stones—her mother tied to a chair, Oliver taking her into his arms as the possibility of a nuclear bomb was about to detonate, Laurel dying on hospital gurney. There seemed to be hundreds of these murky images swirling around her as she made her way to the light above.

Then her eyes fluttered open and she was back in the small room Stan had put her in.  As her senses began to clear, Felicity could see a thin light illuminating her surroundings. The first time she had come back from Stan’s administered sedative, she did not have enough time to get a really good look around. Now, with the shallow light cast from a single floor lamp, she saw everything.

As her senses returned, Felicity noticed three things that were different from the first time she came back from Stan’s darkness. The first thing was that her arms were no longer zip-tied to the metal headboard above her. They were now lying across her chest, folded over each other as if she were hugging herself. The second thing she noticed was nausea swirling in her stomach and a slow buzzing in her head. There was also a light sheen of sweat on her brow.

She turned her head to the left and saw the third thing that was different. There was a wooden chair sitting in the middle of room. On the chair, Felicity saw four items. She saw three syringes lined next to one another. There was clear liquid in each of them. Were those more sedatives? Did Stan plan on injecting her three more times? The other item on the chair was Felicity’s gun, the one that Anatoly had given her to use on Diaz, the one she always carried with her now.

Felicity swung her legs off the bed and shakily stood up. There were no windows in the room, and the only apparent way in was a door at the foot of the bed she had been in. The weak light from the floor lamp threw molted shadows on the gray walls. Next to the door, Felicity spotted the coat she had been wearing when Stan abducted her, hanging from a nail. On the floor beneath the coat were the bags of presents she had bought for Oliver and William. A mystery, Felicity thought. She hated mysteries.

She began to notice how cold it was in the room and moved over to retrieve her coat. She put it on and then moved back over to the chair. She bent and scooped up the syringes and stuffed them into one of the pockets in her coat. Then she took the gun into her hands, suddenly feeling comforted by its weight. She ejected the clip and saw that it was fully loaded. What the strange kind of hell was Stan playing at here? He unbound her from the bed, put the syringes containing his control over her on the chair and left a fully loaded gun. This mystery just kept becoming more and more complex.

Felicity went back to the door and pulled on it. It opened about three inches then stopped. Okay, it was locked from the outside, which so far is the only thing that made sense to her since she woke up. Well, whatever he was up to, Felicity was going to be ready when he returned. She hefted the gun in her hand. He knocked her out two times now. There will not be a third.

She backed herself up against the wall next to the door and waited to see what comes next. Felicity had no idea that she had just an hour before the poison in her system finished its infiltration and killed her.

Oliver approached the remains of Verdant, abandoned and forgotten for over three years now. There was one streetlamp parked in front of the club, spilling a weak illumination onto the sidewalk  below. Oliver moved over to it and stepped into light. There was no  more hiding in the shadows for Oliver. He had taken off his mask and decided to face the world as Oliver Queen. As he made his way to the old nightclub, Oliver began to work out his part in the coming confrontation. Stan was nuts. That was really all he needed to know.

Yet, after interacting with the man back at Slabside, Oliver felt as if he had learned something vital about the little psycho. He had hero envy. He had latched onto Oliver like a stray dog that had been fed and couldn’t get rid of. But Oliver also discovered that Stan was not entirely without guile. In the end, he had manipulated everyone. He killed that guard, set up Turner and found enough inventiveness to escape. He was no sidekick. He was a dangerous killer, the kind who always seemed to find a way out of the spotlight of capture. Except for Slabside. Oliver didn’t know how he got there, but it was the right assumption that he belonged there.

Oliver’s anger towards Stan for kidnapping Felicity tried to force its way into his heart and bring out his own killer in him. But that was not the right play in this scenario. The only thing that mattered to Oliver was getting to Felicity. Stan was the means to that end. So, Oliver would play his game, and maybe even find a way to gain Stan’s trust enough to have him take them to where he was holding his wife.

“Oliver,” a familiar voice spoke from behind him, coming from the shadows at the perimeter of the streetlight. “I knew you would come.”

Then Stan moved into the small circle of light and reunited with Oliver.

“Where is Felicity,” Oliver growled at him.

A small smile touched Stan’s face. “She is closer than you think. Don’t worry GA, she is safe…for now.”

“What do you want,” Oliver asked him, already knowing the answer.

The smile fell from Stan’s face and he looked at Oliver with calculating menace. “You know what I want,” answered. “I want us to be partners. I told you on the phone. We are so much alike. I want to take the fight to those out there who have it coming. I think together, we can clean up this city and make it safe.”

Oliver put on his psychological hat and followed Stan down the rabbit hole. “I agree,” he replied.

Sudden suspicion filled Stan’s eyes. “You agree…I don’t think…I mean why…”

“Stan, forget that you kidnapped my wife. By the way, the old me would not have hesitated in snapping your neck the second you walked up here. You have made it plain that we need each other, for the moment. I need you to take me to Felicity and you need me to help you become a hero. I get it. So okay, let’s do it.”

Stan shook his head, as if he had awakened from a long nightmare. His suspicion seemed to drain from his eyes and was replaced with hope. “Really,” he breathed. “You really mean that?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’ve shown some real fortitude and promise by escaping from Slabside. That is not easily done. I’ve killed quite a few people myself over the years. I understand your rage. I might have found a different way then your methods, but at the end of the day, both of us have looked the devil in the eye and survived.”

Stan was beaming as Oliver’s words penetrated through his insanity. “Oliver, you are right on the money. I didn’t want to kill all those people, but they didn’t  understand that I was only trying to help them. Like you help the people of this city.”

Oliver nodded. Just keep him off-balance, he thought. Let him lead you to Felicity. Call him a hero or a deranged psychotic—just keep him in front of you.

“Stan, if we’re going to team up, we are going to need Felicity. We’re going to need her skills on the computer to track down all the people who have it coming.”

Stan nodded. “Right. Okay.” He turned and pointed back up the street Oliver came down. “Do you remember passing an old abandoned apartment building about four blocks that way?”

“Sure,” Oliver answered. “It was called the Barony Suites when I was a kid. Is that where Felicity is?”

Stan smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I told you she was close by. Oliver, I wasn’t ever going to hurt her. The poison I gave was only an incentive to get your attention.” He looked at the watch on his left wrist. “We still have twenty minutes to reach her and give her the antidote.”

“Okay, well let’s not stand here and flap our gums. Lead the way Stan.”

Felicity heard movement outside the door and was ready for anything. She also heard voices, but they were muffled and not recognizable. A rattling sound scratched at the door and Felicity held her breath. Then the door swung open and Stan was the first one through it.

Felicity raised her hand and pointed her gun at the lunatic’s head.

Oliver came in behind Stan and saw movement to his right. Then he saw what was about to happen. “Felicity…no…” he called out.

It was too late. She pulled the trigger.

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Shades

5.

The blast from Felicity’s gun was deafening in the small room. Her heart seized up when she sighted in on Stan and pulled the trigger. Her newly anointed sense of survival surged through that heart, that sense she had found within herself and made a part of who she is—it was the person Oliver talked about when he told her no matter who she is or what she becomes. Felicity felt only strength when her gun went off.

Oliver stared at Felicity as if she had metamorphosed into a wonderful and terrible shade of the person he fell in love with. He could feel a distinctive part of his life click into place like an interlocking combination, and even though what Felicity had done was ruthless and life-changing, Oliver still felt an admiration now that he had seen what he created when he left her and William. Still, he told her that no matter what comes at them, he would always love her and support her new identity. But he still winced as she shot Stan. Only a few seconds had passed since the demon roar of the gun filled the room. Time seemed to hold still, and Oliver was only a spectator, a witness to a butterfly transforming into a hawk, a predator out to survive.

Stan did not even wince. He did jump a little when the gun went off. A small smile highlighted his insanity as he turned to face Felicity. “I didn’t think you would do that,” he told her. He pointed at the gun she still aimed at him. “Blanks,” he said with self-admiration. “I just wanted to see how far you would go. You are like your husband. Strong and sure and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. Oliver was right. We need you on our team.”

Felicity could still hear the sound of her gun echoing in her ears. She barely heard what Stan said to her. But she did see his damn smile as he patted himself on the back. She lowered her gun and it dangled at her side. She turned to look at Oliver and knew by the look in his eyes that he had already accepted what she had just done. She could also see some of his darkness begin to swirl in them as well. He was on the verge of violence.

Felicity beat him to it. She lunged forward at Stan, aiming her fingers like claws at his face.

Oliver moved with liquid speed and stepped in front of Felicity, blocking her from doing serious harm to Stan. “Hey, hey,” he said to her. “He’s not going anywhere except back to Slabside. Please baby, stand down.”

Felicity looked into his face like looking into her own. She recognized his own survival instincts. She felt her rage begin to abate and nodded. “Okay Oliver, but he is not a nice person. He keeps playing his games with us. He doesn’t really look all that dangerous. I mean he is dangerous. He kidnapped and drugged me and stuffed me into this horrible room. Why do you always attract the crazy ones?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Stan yelled out. He turned to Oliver. “You said we needed her. She thinks I’m crazy.”

Oliver ignored Stan and focused on Felicity. “Felicity, I’m so sorry.” He nodded over at Stan. “I created this whole thing the first time Stan sat down at my table in the cafeteria. I…well, I felt sorry for him. He was so small next to the other giant inmates and I couldn’t deny that part of me that helps the weak. You taught me that, from the first day I met you.”

“Hey,” Stan yelled out again. “What the hell are you doing? Our deal is not done.” He looked at his watch. “She only has ten more minutes before the poison kills her. I told her, and you, that I will not be tricked again.”

Oliver reached out and grabbed Stan by his throat. He lifted the little man off the ground. “No more game, Stan. Where is the antidote?”

Stan struggled in Oliver’s grip. He could not breathe, but he found enough breath left to respond. “Oliver…I…can’t…breathe…”

“Stan, if you don’t tell me where the antidote is, and if Felicity dies, I’m going to choke you to death. The last thing you will see is my wife dying, and then right after, you will too. Tell me where it is.”

Tears began to leak out of Stan’s eyes. He ceased struggling in Oliver’s hold. He nodded just moments before he was going to pass out.

Oliver let him go and Stan dropped to the floor with a hard thud. He started to cough and spasm as air found its way down his windpipe. Finally, he was able to speak. “Your wife already has the antidote. I put it on the chair before I left to meet you.”

Felicity reached into her coat pocket where she stuffed the syringes and brought them out. “Uh…Oliver, what poison is he talking about? What’s going on?” Then she fell silent. The nausea, she thought to herself. That is why I feel sick and why I’m sweating in a room that is freezing. This man Stan is a son of a bitch. Suddenly, she started to feel dizzy. The need to vomit became a very possible reality. Felicity fell back against the wall behind her. “Oliver…”

Oliver reached down and hauled Stan to his feet. “Which one is it,” he asked him?

Stan looked dejected and beaten, but Oliver didn’t believe it for a minute. “All three of them,” he told Oliver.

“What?”

“The antidote is in all three syringes.” Stan started rubbing his damaged throat. “I told you I never intended to hurt her. I was only trying to get your attention. Isn’t it exciting when danger brings out people’s…”

Oliver flicked his fist out and put Stan to sleep.

He turned back to Felicity. “Do you trust me,” he asked her?

“You know I do,” she responded. “But you are going to tell me about this poison thing, right? I’m pretty pissed off about it.” Then she smiled.

“Felicity, use one of the syringes. Go ahead.”

She took one out of her hand and dropped the other two to the dirty floor. She took off her coat and dropped that as well. Then Felicity pulled off the orange plastic guard covering the needle and didn’t hesitate. It went into her arm and then she looked back up at Oliver. “I love you,” she told him.

“Well, at least that will never change,” he reminded her. Oliver went over and put his arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s sit down for a few minutes and see what this antidote does.” Oliver still felt some fear in him that this ‘antidote’ was just another ruse and manipulation by Stan. But his love for his wife was stronger than him giving in to that fear.

Felicity let him lead her over to the bed. He sat down with him and leaned against her husband. “Okay Oliver, tell me about it.”

Oliver tightened his arm around her. “I was standing in the prison yard at Slabside,” he began, “when this little guy came up and told me he was my biggest fan.”

“Well, your second biggest fan,” Felicity added. “Sorry, go on”

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Shades

6.

Felicity opened her eyes and all she saw was darkness. It was complete. Disorientation buzzed in her head, the way someone might feel after a major surgery, struggling up from a drugged sleep to find reality again. There were no sounds around her, only her own breathing as she lay in the black and tried to reel in her thoughts from the swirling unknown in her mind.

After a few minutes, Felicity started to notice psychical sensations. Her back was pressed against a hard surface, cold and smooth. There was a chill in the air, but she ignored it and let her body shiver uncontrollably. She could also sense that she was stretched out in a tight space as if unseen walls on each side of her had pushed in to touch her. She still could not move, but those phantom walls were there, nevertheless.

Finally, Felicity’s breathing evened out and she could feel her full senses returning. She opened her mind, and at first, she could only remember herself leaving the department store and making her way back to her car three blocks away. And now she was in this darkness. She tried to remember anything else that might have happened to her between then and now, but only that one image of her carrying shopping bags seemed to get through.

Then a surging wave of memories broke through from her subconscious and Felicity remembered it all: her and Oliver sitting on a depleted bed in a small gray room with strips of plaster hanging from the ceiling, a chair in the middle of the room with three syringes and a gun sitting on it, a face she knew that hovered over her and told her everything was Oliver’s fault, her back pressed against the wall of the room she was in with her gun gripped in her hand, then that familiar face (Stan) coming into her sights and her pulling the trigger of her gun. It was all a collage of wavering images and static feelings.

It was all a hallucination.

Felicity tried to make it real, but it was like a dream that kept her safe from what was really going on. The only problem was, she didn’t know what was going on. She lay there in the darkness of confinement and did not know what was real and what was not.

Then a bright light pierced the darkness and Felicity was pulled out into its glare. She moved horizontally into it, as the stainless-steel table she was lying on was pulled out of the coffin-like space she had been put in. The chill she felt deepened. Felicity closed her eyes against the sudden light, until a voice, one she was able to attach to the familiar face she remembered, began to speak to her…

After Stan left Brick’s body dead on the morgue floor, and after he crawled down that hole to freedom, a bloodlust settled into his psyche, fueling him with a zeal paramount to overkill. He found his way off the grotto that Slabside was built on and made his way to the only place he had left to go. Star City. It was the only place his disturbed mind could focus on. The blood on his face from where Oliver had put his mark was a motivation for Stan to seek and find revenge. Oliver had turned out to be just another person who had it coming. Outside the city limits, Stan had taken a car from an old man who became collateral damage in Stan’s rampage. He left the man’s body lying on the road bleeding, leaving behind the first of many more to come.

He drove to an abandoned lot in the Glades, not really knowing what to expect or where to start. But as he was moving towards Star City from Slabside, Stan had a sudden image of Oliver’s wife, Felicity, sitting on the other side of the glass window in visitation as he told her about Level 2. She was a beauty. Stan remembered thinking that Oliver did not deserve someone as beautiful as she was. What Oliver did deserve was to suffer the way he made Stan suffer. At the prospect of this, Felicity’s image began to shine brighter in his mind as he finally discovered what he was going to do. It began to fill him with purpose.

The first of many breaks to come his way over the next few days was the money he found on that old man he killed. Three-hundred dollars. It would be enough to finance his mission. He made another kill outside the abandoned lot he parked in. Stan traded his prison clothes with the dead transient whose throat he had slit, and Stan stood up afterwards like he was a new man, in baggy trousers and a dirty, grey sweater.

Stan began to wander deeper into the Glades, now looking for the weapon his new-found mission called for. After an hour of walking, Stan finally found what he was looking for. On a shadowed street corner not too far from the old nightclub Verdant, a place Oliver used to launch his crusade against the city from, Stan saw a couple of guys standing on the sidewalk, looking like they had something someone needed to keep the drag of addiction going. Stan smiled and moved towards them.

Twenty minutes after purchasing a couple of bags of Vertigo, Stan was back in his car, a place he would live in for the next couple days, until a chance of fate crossed his path. He had ambled down into Star City’s shopping district, and as he turned his stolen ride onto the main thoroughfare, he saw a flash of blonde hair reach out to him. Stan recognized Mrs. Queen right away. She was exiting a parking garage and moving towards the shops. Stan saw the entrance to an alley about three blocks from the parking garage and pulled into it. He turned off the engine and left the car at the back of the alley, covered in shadows. Then he walked back to the main street. And waited. In his left hand, Stan rolled one of the syringes of Vertigo he had bought, back and forth, back and forth. A sly grin spread out on his face as the innocence of Christmas shopping moved up and down the sidewalks around him.

An hour and a half later, Felicity came out of a department store and began to walk toward him. Stan’s bloodlust narrowed his focus and his body was wired and ready to release like a coiled spring. Felicity walked by, carrying her bags, lost in whatever thoughts a woman like her might have. Stan let her pass by the alley, and then he moved. He came up from behind her and quickly jabbed the Vertigo into her. Its action was immediate. Felicity dropped and seemed to melt towards the sidewalk. Stan went to her and took her back into the alley and to his car. He began to whistle as he loaded her into the backseat.

And in Felicity’s mind, the power and potency of Vertigo sent her down the rabbit hole.

Stan drove himself deeper into his crusade as he left downtown and went back to the Glades, a place he vowed to protect from the elite of Star City, people who had put him on the path he chose in life to take, people who had it coming. So, in a way, he was down his own rabbit hole too. Except, his was as real as it gets. Felicity’s was just a Vertigo-fueled fantasy of protection and safety and a happy ending. She remained motionless in the backseat while Stan took her further away from her life…

Stan stood next to the drawer he had put Felicity in, a drawer that led her into a coffin-like space. If Felicity had been off the influence of the drug running through her bloodstream, she would have fought Stan with everything she had to keep from being put into that drawer. So, Stan had no problem and no resistance when he parked his car outside the abandoned morgue, a building with a patina of death emanating from it. He had found the place a couple days ago and thought it would be the perfect arena to start his mission against Oliver. Stan lugged Felicity’s prone body inside and put her on the stainless-steel slab inside the drawer. Then he shut the door and brought her darkness.

Now, after an hour or so, Stan began to sense that Felicity might be returning from her trip down the rabbit hole and he opened the door to the slab she was on. He pulled her back into the real world and decided to have another chat with her, one that would be more informative than the one they had in visitation. After pulling the drawer out, he looked down at Felicity as she squinted her eyes shut against the glare of the portable arc light he had bought, his answer to the building having no power. The thing ran on batteries and it was the only illumination in the room. It was pointed directly at the table Felicity was laying on.

Stan put another item he had bought up against Felicity’s neck. It was a straight razor. It felt so familiar in his hands.

“Felicity, open your eyes” Stan whispered down at her. “I’m going to help you. But first, please tell me where I can find your husband. I have a few things to discuss with him.”

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Shades

7.

“Hi, this is Felicity. Well, it’s not really me; it’s a recording on my voicemail. But it is really me because I will listen to your message and call back. Anyway, leave whatever you have to say and I will reach out later and answer all your questions.”

Oliver already left a  message three calls ago, but he could not resist Felicity’s voice. After the beep, he left another one. “Felicity honey, I can’t believe you haven’t answered your phone. I’m getting a little worried here. I’m thinking of sending out the National Guard and have them bring you back home. Just kidding. But please, when you get this and the other one I left, call me. I love you.”

Oliver clicked off and looked over at Felicity’s computer station she had set up in their living room. He could easily go over there and ping her phone and the GPS software in it, but he didn’t want to come off as some kind of overbearing, protective husband. Felicity was more than capable of taking care of herself and he knew how distracted she sometimes gets when she’s out shopping. He was still unsure himself what he was going to get her and William for the holidays. He unconsciously began to rub his right forefinger and thumb together. His gaze focused in harder on the computer station and he could no longer fight against his instincts.

He went over to the computers and brought up the GPS tracker to Felicity’s phone. On the middle screen a grid appeared, showing an area of the Glades, an area that had not fully recovered from the Undertaking six years ago. Oliver could see abandoned buildings as he zeroed in closer to the ping. According to what he was seeing, Felicity’s phone looked like it was inside a parked vehicle outside a large, gray building.

Okay, Oliver said to himself. That is not a shopping mall. His inner alarm went off. Something’s happened. He sat down in Felicity’s chair and brought up a thermal imaging satellite she used to track movement inside a structure. The schematics of the large, gray building came up and Oliver immediately saw two heat signatures. Two? Now his protective instinct kicked in to overload. Felicity was in trouble. And she needed his help, whether she wanted it or not.

Oliver raised his phone and speed-dialed a man he had in mind for backup.

“Oliver,” John’s voice answered. “Hey, what’s up?”

“John, I need you help. Can you come over? I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“Yeah, give me a half hour. Oliver, what’s going on?”

“John, please. Just get here as quick as you can.” Oliver paused for a handful of seconds then added, “It’s Felicity. I think she might be in trouble.”

“I’m on my way,” John told him.

The straight razor at Felicity’s throat felt like a cold assurance that her life would end if she didn’t cooperate with whoever had kidnapped her and brought her to this terrible place. Blinking through the sudden light after being pulled out of that drawer, Felicity tried to keep her wits about the situation she found herself in.

“Who…” Felicity started to ask.

Stan pressed the razor tighter against her throat. “Felicity, no questions, okay? Just…where is Oliver? He and I really need to have a conversation. I’m usually a forgiving person, but after what’s happened, after what he did to me at Slabside, I’m not feeling that forgiveness.” Stan lowered himself closer and his face hovered over Felicity’s.

Felicity was a little surprised to recognize Oliver’s self-proclaimed sidekick back at Slabside. She could remember from her Vertigo hallucinations seeing him and even talking with him, but now the  man looked a bit more menacing, and not because he held a razor to her throat. The man had a dark aura to him, the kind that always seems to hover over crazy people. But she also remembered him calling her over in visitation and telling her about Level 2 and how Oliver was sent there because he was the worst of the worst.

“Stan…”Felicity started say. She made a conscious effort not to form her answer into a question, as if she was playing a demented game of Jeopardy. “Oliver is probably at home,” she told him. “He was when I left to go shopping.”

Stan nodded down at her. “Good. That’s good. Home.” He looked closer into Felicity’s eyes. “How did you feel when he came home to you?”

This nut wanted to have a conversation with her. Felicity shuddered at that thought. It wasn’t one she wanted to have, because Stan was making the conditions by not letting her ask any questions. But she did anyway. “Stan, are you going to kill me?”

He seemed to have forgotten the rules he established by putting the razor against her throat. “Well, I should. But I don’t think I will…right now. If I know Oliver, he is  probably already on his way to rescue you. None of this is random, Felicity.  Oliver is going to get what he deserves. I’ll be doing the city a favor by killing him.”

Felicity almost laughed in the man’s face. If she did, it would be a fatal reaction. The thought of this little man killing Oliver was a cosmic joke. The man would not see Oliver coming. Her husband would be in full protective mode and his only aim, besides putting an arrow in Stan’s heart, would be to take her away from this place and away from this psycho who was threatening her, and through her, Oliver.

“Give me your address,” Stan told her. “I’m going to meet him there before he tries anything stupid. After he realizes I have you on ice…” he chuckled at the image of her lying on a slab in a morgue. “After he realizes I’m holding all the cards, he’ll give up any ideas of being a hero.”

“Okay Stan, I’ll give you the address.” If she could get him to leave her and go off on some foolhardy quest, Felicity might be able to escape and take the fight to him, creating a war on two fronts, with certain death from Oliver on one side, and some serious hurt from her on the other. Felicity told Stan where she and Oliver lived. “I really feel sorry for,” she went on. “Oliver is going to end you. You know that, don’t you? It doesn’t matter what you do to me. You’ve crossed a line that you can never come back from. Oliver is going to kill you.”

Stan removed the razor from Felicity’s throat. “Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” He brought out his other hand from behind him and reached down towards Felicity. He made a quick move and penetrated her arm with a syringe. Instant warmth surged through her as a wave of heat began to travel through her veins.

“It’s only a sedative this time,” Stan told her. Felicity’s eyes began to flutter as the effects of the Demoral moved through her. “No more Vertigo, no more hallucinations or fantasies this time. Just regular old sleep. I need you to wait here while I’m gone. I guess your fate depends on how cooperative Oliver is, right?

Felicity fell down a deep well as Stan’s drug had its way with her. The remaining shreds of her consciousness tried to keep Oliver’s face planted in her mind’s eye; then her husband fell away and all that was left was darkness.

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Shades

8.

“The phone is moving,” Oliver told John as they stood on top of the old, gray morgue building; Green Arrow and Spartan fully suited up. “It’s heading towards the city,” he finished.

The portable GPS tracker in Oliver’s hand continued to beep the location of Felicity’s phone. He and John arrived in the Glades a few minutes ago, a short time after Stan left to go kill Oliver. He switched over to the thermal imaging software in his phone and confirmed that one of the two heat signatures he had seen earlier was still inside the building.

“Oliver,” John responded. “Is Felicity with her phone? Do you think she managed to escape and is now driving home?”

Oliver shook his head, relying on his battle-hardened intuition to make quick calculations and decisions. “No, I think whoever is driving that car left her here, probably tied up somewhere, possibly drugged.” Oliver began to look for a way into the building, scanning the rooftop for an air vent or something of that nature. “C’mon,” he told John. “We have to get inside.”

After looking for a couple minutes, they found their way in. Climbing down through an air shaft, Oliver let his phone take him to the heat signature down below.

Stan was nearing the city limits of Star City when he heard the beeping behind him. He looked in the rearview mirror and could not see what it was. It was electronic and it was driving him nuts. Finally, he pulled his car over and put it in park. Then he hoisted himself up over the front seat and began to look for the source of that maddening sound. On the backseat floor of the passenger side, he saw a flashing red light coming from a phone.

“Crap,” Stan whispered to himself. “Stan, you’re getting sloppy,” he told himself. He reached down and picked up Felicity’s phone, where it had dropped when he was loading her in the car earlier. The beeping noise was syncopated with the flashing light. Stan wasn’t too bright or experienced when it came to tactics, but he wasn’t entirely dense about modern technology. The phone was being tracked by some kind of GPS thingy. That meant he was being tracked. Oliver was being a nuisance again. Stan’s resolve to take Oliver out grew in his mind. He sat down behind the wheel of his stolen car and put it in reverse.

Stan turned around and began to drive back to the Glades and the morgue, where he had an insurance policy waiting inside a drawer.

Felicity was having a dream about that time in the Bunker, when Oliver returned after Chase tortured him for six days. The image in her head was crystal clear. Oliver stood bare-chested in front of her, bleeding and broken, giving up in defeat as he told her to go away from him. Felicity felt an urgency to ignore him and wrap her arms around the man she loved, the man she had always loved. They were still apart during this moment, but she still felt that desire to go to him and soothe his body and mind.

Then the dream began to shimmer and waver, as if a channel on a TV was being interfered with by static. Darkness swirled in its place and Felicity began to feel a chill move through her. It stayed dark inside her mind for another few seconds, then the dream fell apart and she began to open her eyes

As they came open, a soft glow of light greeted her inside the drawer. Stan had left the door open and the arc light outside drifted in, giving Felicity a light to navigate her sluggish thoughts in as she came back up from the drug she was given.

At the same time, a voice called to her from outside the drawer. It was Oliver. “Felicity, where are you? Can you hear me?”

Felicity tried to respond, but her voice was still weak. Instead, she found the power of movement and began to rap her knuckles against the narrow walls beside her.

Oliver heard her response and went over to the drawer and the slab Felicity was lying on. He pulled the drawer out and relief surged through him as he saw his wife stretched out on the stainless-steel table, alive and aware of her surroundings.

‘Felicity, you’re okay.”

She turned her head and looked up at Oliver. “Yeah,” she squeaked out. “What’s going on?”

“Well, whoever left you here is coming back.” Oliver looked at his phone again. “Uh…he’s coming back our way.”

Felicity began to move her legs over the side of the slab she was on. Oliver immediately went to her and tried to help. She shooed him away and was finally able to stand on her own.

“What are we going to do,” she asked? Felicity’s mind instinctively began to shift towards survival mode. Her fear of being kidnapped and threatened with death left her and she put herself on the same page as Oliver. “How long before he gets back?”

Then John moved into their circle, coming into the room after doing a perimeter check, making sure they were indeed alone in the morgue. “Hey,” he greeted Felicity as he came in. “Are you okay?”

She gave him a weak smile. “Yeah,” she replied. “What are you doing here?”

John smiled back. “I’m Oliver’s backup, of course.” He moved closer to them. “Where’s our perp,” he asked Oliver?

“Oliver, it’s Stan,” Felicity spoke out. “He’s completely nuts. He wants to kill you. He should have killed me, but he’s playing some kind of cat and mouse game with us. He thinks he’s a hero, saving the Glades buy taking you out.”

Oliver shook his head. “Damn it,” he said. “Stan…that little weasel. What else did he say?”

“Not much,” Felicity told him. “He injected Vertigo into me. That’s how he got me. I didn’t see him coming.”

“Yeah,” Oliver recounted. “I’ve had some experience with that. I completely underestimated the man. How the hell did he get out of Slabside?”

“Oliver, does it really matter? He’s out. And he’s pissed. He said you did something to him. What…”

“Felicity, it doesn’t  matter. We need to get you out of here.” He turned to John. “Get her out of here,” he told him. “Get her home. I’ll take care of Stan.”

“Oliver,” Felicity interjected. “I’m not going anywhere. Besides, home feels like it’s a thousand miles away.” She pointed at the phone in his hand. “How close is he?”

Oliver held the phone out to her so she could get a better look. “About ten minutes. Felicity, I’m serious. I want you out of here.”

“Oliver, forget it. I’m not leaving you. I’m your backup too. Stan doesn’t know if you’re here or on your way here. We have the drop on him.”

“She’s right,” John added. “Besides, we have always been stronger when we work together, right?”

“Felicity, I don’t want to have to worry about you…” Then he fell silent. What am I thinking, he thought to himself? She was not going to leave without a fight. It was the new her…well, not really new. She has always been a strong person. She had to be to follow him into the lifestyle he brought to her life. So, he gave up trying to convince her to leave with John and put a small smile of pride on his face. He was simply outnumbered.

“Okay you guys,” he told John and Felicity. “Stay for the party if you like.”

Felicity looked in Oliver’s eyes as a sheen of excitement filled hers. “You already have a plan, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.” He told them what it was. But before he put it into motion, Oliver gave his phone to Felicity. “Here, you’re way better with this than I am.” Then he reached down into a side pocket of his suit and pulled out a gun. Felicity’s eyes lit up even more when she recognized it as her own, the one Anatoly had given to her.

Oliver handed her the weapon. “What…why…” Felicity tried to ask him.

“Just in case,” Oliver told her. “I will feel better knowing you have it, Felicity.”

She moved in and put a light kiss on her husband’s lips. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Be careful,” she told him. “I’m not kidding. Stan is looney tunes. He is capable of anything.”

Oliver smiled at his wife. “Yeah, well I’ve been known to go off the rails from time to time. I got this.”

John cleared his throat. “Uh…guys, do you think we can save the heart eyes until later? Stan is moments away.”

Oliver and Felicity gave each other one more look of love and then she moved away from him and headed to the door of the room. Before John went to join her, Oliver stretched himself out on the stainless-steel slab. It was a tight fit, but it would work long enough for what he had in mind. Once on the slab, John rolled it back inside the drawer.

Then John and Felicity left the room to position themselves in their part of Oliver’s plan. They were right. If did feel good to be working together again. Oliver continued to lay in semi-darkness as he waited for Stan to return, waited to tie up this one last string left dangling from Slabside.

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