Work Text:
Prologue
If only we could be strangers again
She was an urban siren.
Mysterious, dazzling, a mythological creature who glided through the streets of Starling City drawing attention, as if everything, the people, the nature, the city, was a mere stage and this entire story was about her.
She exuded light, mesmerizing sunrays that escaped through the cracks on a cloudy day, spilling gold and covering everything in an ethereal honey-colored film. She was a fragment of that light, although there were drops of darkness that blurred her edges, giving her a melancholy look that sometimes leaked into her expression, distorting her delicate features.
Oliver Queen had been seeing the siren for a few days. Since then, he had never spoken to her, he could only feel the pull towards her, something he had to fight against, and he tried with herculean effort, but in the end it didn't work. There was no way to fight this alluring calling.
And, deep down, he never wanted to. He was drawn from the first moment he laid eyes on her.
Her life seemed to take place in the same part of town as his. His whole being was strangely attuned to her. A thread seemed to connect their souls, and every time she came around, he knew. He didn't need to look, just feel. The air molecules rearranged themselves, the sensations around them heightened. This unusual identification he had never felt before. His heart leapt in his chest, turning the rough, calculating man into a teenager with his first crush.
The depth of these sensations should frighten him, and at times they even did, but he also welcomed them.
He wanted to meet her, wrap himself in her light, erase the sadness from her face and destroy whatever put it there.
There she was again this afternoon. Even several meters away from him, walking the trail that traced the edges of the park just like him. Even under the drizzle that fell over the city and the gray color of the day, she was easily identifiable by her golden hair under the red umbrella. The wavy locks swung like a pendulum, from side to side, a simple but mesmerizing movement.
The siren liked red. She owned it.
The siren also hunched her shoulders, perhaps against the rain to avoid getting wet, perhaps against some deeper reason.
She stopped at a café right next to the park, which offered a great view of the bay, closed her umbrella, and went inside. Oliver made up his mind out of the blue, and the moment he did, a flush of nervousness, something so unusual for a man as serious as he was, hit him.
He needed to meet her.
Needed to see her face.
Needed to talk to her.
The distance was killing him.
This yearning made no sense and had no explanation. Still, Oliver Queen, the most skeptical and distrustful of men, accepted and received this singularity.
Minutes later, he was the one who walked through the door. He didn't look at her right away, but he knew he would find her. Instead, he went straight to the counter and placed his order. It didn't take long for the barista to deposit the travel cup in front of him. Oliver took it at his searching eyes looked around. No empty tables available. Lucky for him.
There was only one table with empty seats and only one person sitting at it. His gaze fell on the blonde alone at the table. Her back turned to him, no longer wearing her coat, the cascade of long hair hiding the cleavage at the back of her long-sleeved navy-blue dress, tight enough to accentuate her beautiful curves. Over-the-knee boots covered her legs, one crossed over the other.
The overwhelming yet familiar identification hit him like a refreshing wave that energized his body. He walked over to her and went around the table to look at her face.
Pink lips, alabaster skin, piercing blue eyes behind rectangular glasses. He never forgot that beauty but still seeing her so close in person always surprised him.
“Hi. Is this chair taken?” he asked, trying hard to ignore the lump in his throat.
The urban siren tilted her head slightly to the side. A simple, small gesture that made his chest tighten.
She shook her head slightly, the ghost of a genuine smile appearing, making her always vivid eyes shine even brighter. “No, you can take it. Or join me. Not me, just… share the table.” She waved a hand toward the chair.
Taking a deep breath, Oliver sat down facing her. All his focus became her. “Thank you. My name is Oliver.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Queen. I mean, there's no way anyone in this town doesn't know who you are. The new mayor.” Her hands fluttered in the air along with the words that came out at a hundred per hour, and Oliver was assaulted by warmth and sorrow at the same time.
He cracked a smile that still came out comforting even with the whirlwind inside. “Did you by any chance vote for me, Miss...?”
“Oh yes, of course, how rude of me,” she murmured adorably with another nod. The soft curls swayed on her shoulders. “Smoak. But call me Felicity.”
Felicity. Happiness. Happiness that existed even under melancholy and sorrow. That could not be destroyed when that was its essence.
“And then... Felicity?”
His voice always came out soft when he said the name. Not something he could control or avoid. It was respect laced with admiration. Aphrodisiac in the form of a name.
He could have sworn he saw her react with that voice. He couldn't help the deep, slightly husky tone, almost flirtatious, the caress of a lover.
She might think he was crazy. Who in their right mind would act that way with someone they had just met?
But Felicity recovered in the blink of an eye, so fast that it made him doubt whether the glimpse he saw on her face was real. “Ah, Mr. Queen-”
“Oliver,” he promptly interrupted her.
“Oliver.” Her expression softened, a small smile danced shyly at the corner of her lips, making her even more incredibly beautiful. She also had a unique way of pronouncing his name.
Felicity picked up the coffee cup, brought it to her lips in a gulp, and his gaze inevitably settled on lips closing around the opening, staining the white material bright pink. He stared at her as she swallowed, the image casting a wave of heat over him, warming him on that rainy, windy day. The ever-present intensity, filling the air between them.
She leaned forward slightly. “I like to think personal voting choices are a secret, so... you'll never know,” she said in a provocative tone then gave a crooked wink that had no right to be so cute.
“Fair enough,” he returned, barely concealing a smile as he opened the top of his cup to cool the liquid. Baristas seemed to make their drinks with lava.
Felicity didn't even disguise it and looked straight at her drink. “Pure black coffee.”
“And no sugar.”
She let out a surprised sound. “How do you do it?” she asked incredulously.
He held back a laugh. “I like the strong taste.”
“You must be the only one,” she said with that sassy tongue of hers. “You should add just a little bit of sugar, just to cut the extreme bitterness, so it's just... bitter.”
Oliver's heart warmed. “Occasionally that's what I do.” And to illustrate, he pulled the holder closer and picked up a tiny sugar package, only daring to break eye contact to pour sugar into the dark liquid. Meeting her eyes again, Oliver took a sip. It was still too hot for his taste, but the flavor was just right. Perfect.
Just like that moment.
“And what do you drink, Felicity?”
“A mocha.”
“Chocolate and coffee. Sweet and strong at the same time.”
Felicity stared at him for a long moment from behind her drinking cup, her eyes vivid and shrewd.
“What is it?” he asked somewhat bashfully.
“I thought there was more to this line, some cheesy piece of bad flirtation like Sweet and strong at the same time, just like you.” She made a poor imitation of a masculine tone that inevitably made him laugh.
Oliver couldn't remember the last time he gave a genuine laugh. And of course she had to be the one to pull it out of him after so long. “Were you expecting me to flirt with you?” he asked, his voice deepening as he raised an eyebrow, meeting her gaze and locking it with his own.
Bashfulness filled Felicity’s features in the most adorable way, a shade of pink coloring her cheeks. Triumph pumped through his blood.
“No, that would be too presumptuous of me.”
“I don't see why. I can't imagine a man who doesn't turn his head to look at you when you enter a room and who doesn't want to flirt with you.”
He heard her low gasp of surprise. But she quickly recovered. “Ah, now I understand why they call you Mayor Handsome,” she said still keeping her tone relaxed. “Your reputation as the town's conqueror precedes you, Mr. Queen.”
The deep way in which she said his name made him wriggle uncomfortably in his chair, a spark of desire invading him. With the twinkle of her eyes and the ghost of a smile peeking from behind her cup she lifted to take another ship along with the tone, he couldn't help but think that she was flirting with him now.
Amazing.
God, it felt amazing to simply allow himself to feel again after long, excruciating months.
“By the way, did the madness of preparing for the inauguration of the new term catch up with you and you decided to take a coffee break to clear your head? Or whatever new mayors do before they start.”
“Something like that.”
“Also, isn’t it kinda dangerous for the mayor to wander alone? Don’t you have like a security detail?”
“I ditched them.” The corner of his lips tilted upwards again in a smirk.
“Bad boy.” There she was again with her Monalisa smile from behind the cup. He noticed the purple-colored nails.
Huh. It had been a while.
“What about you, Felicity?”
She opened a sad smile that made him regret his question. “You mean professionally? My position in my company is rocky and uncertain. The board has questioned my conduct because of the last few months.” Melancholy dulled her color and her light. Oliver wanted to destroy it. “I’ve been through a… difficult situation and didn't handle well.”
A sharp dagger poked at Oliver's heart. “As if there’s a way to deal well with difficult moments.”
Her gaze had laser focus on his. Oliver shivered. “I was going to ask how you know, but I guess a man who was pronounced dead and spent five years away from civilization a understands like no one else.”
Oliver's body stiffened.
“Sorry. I imagine it's something you don't like to discuss,” Felicity said, forehead frowning in a cute way. “I talk too much. Zero mouth-to-brain filter.”
“I could say the same to you, Felicity.”
He also knew that what she had been through was not something she liked to discuss. He knew that was the reason for the agony in her gaze, swimming right beneath the sparkly surface and that she sometimes couldn’t fully contain.
“Why?”
“Because I see part of myself in you.” He enunciated the answer cautiously.
But her expression was inviting. Open. “Agony has a strange way of making people identify with each other.”
He nodded his head, taking another sip of coffee. “I lost what was most important in my life recently. I had a future and the rest of my life certain and then... nothing.” He tried to hide the sadness in his voice, but it leaked into his raw tone.
“And all that was left were demons to exorcise.” Felicity also nodded, her gaze lost, but understanding.
“Do you think it's possible to exorcise them?” he asked, preludes of other moments and other words emerging in low, troubling whispers.
“I always believed that we had to sit down with our demons, face them and learn from them, but after what happened...”
Oliver hated to hear that. The tone of conformity, the resignation. She had always had the unique ability to smile in the dark. She could face a storm eye to eye, gentle and fierce and cunning, and simply destroy it with a smile.
“I once believed that we can go through ordeals and still be able to live and find happiness and love, knowing that the shadows will always exist, but without crippling us as they once did.”
Knowing that Felicity, who had always ventured out with her heart, with her empathetic and courageous personality, was simply... giving in hurt him. To his core. Felicity had a unique gift of finding and seeing the good things when everything was chaos, of finding the spark of light and hope and setting it on fire.
And Oliver wanted to get her out of it, even though he had accumulated trauma for generations and was far from the role model of mental and emotional health. But for her, he was capable of doing anything. “You should continue to believe in that.”
She shrugged, a nonchalant, restrained gesture. The light she had always been flickering, blurred with the shadows. “And what do you believe in?” she asked temptingly.
“In someone cursed, who didn't deserve another life. Until I got a new chance... and blew it. As I predicted. I was never worthy of her, and even if I fixed everything, I know I never will be.”
A hesitant pause.
“Do you still love her?”
“Always. Endlessly.”
“Would you fight for her?”
His eyes locked on hers, spreading an unparalleled intensity between them. “I would tear and burn the world down for her.” His voice came out deep and honest. Felicity lost her breath. “Currently, there is no way to go back to the way things were before. It’s impossible. But... maybe there is something there, that can be rebuilt, a new version, with the same essence as before, but different and stronger. A new normal.”
“A new normal,” Felicity repeated low, drawn to his words. Testing the syllables in her tongue as if they belonged to a foreign language, as if, after everything she’d been through, she wasn’t worthy of even entertaining the idea. Whenever he thought he’d had a glimpse of the depth of her pain, something like this happened and shook him to his core even further.
Again silence fell upon them, heavy with expectation. All around, city life continued to unfold, undisturbed, sounds filling the air, but they acknowledged their surroundings just enough to place themselves here and now.
“Well, I guess... that if there’s a spark of hope, it’s possible. Hope makes its own magic.”
Hope makes its own magic. That was a quote from the woman he knew.
“I just need her to be willing to remember.”
Inside Oliver's pocket, the objects he had been carrying for weeks seemed to weigh much heavier. The note that had been with him since he had received it with a simple sentence written on it, "If only we could be strangers again."
He wondered what would happen if he took it out of his pocket and slid across that table slowly to her. How would she react?
The other thing in his pocket was a necklace with an arrowhead pendant that he had crafted. A gift to crown a moment of pure happiness.
One could argue that carrying the two relics of his darkest moment could bring more pain than anything else. And most of the time, Oliver agreed. But those memories were the only thread of sanity that connected him to this world, to this life. The remnant of humanity that had made him survive five years in hell, and hell came back to haunt him now again.
After all, Oliver always searched for a new way out of chaos, a new way to do things. Relentless and willing to give up his soul. And it had been this woman who, once upon a time, years ago, in another life, in another universe taught him and inspired him to fight, not to give up.
The words were hers.
The note had been written by her.
The necklace belonged to her.
And Felicity knew nothing.