A/N: The purpose of this fic is twofold. First, to resolve Felicity's feelings about Oliver's declaration of love to my own satisfaction - and hopefully to the satisfaction of anyone else who had issues with it. Second, to write fic in which these two work through their issues and get together. Because the internet needed more.

"I love you," Oliver Queen says, and for a heartbeat, Felicity Smoak believes him.

I love you, too tastes bittersweet on her tongue as she swallows it down, holds it back. Oliver confessing his love for her sounds entirely too good to be true.

That's because it is.

A moment later he's pressing a syringe into her hand, and her fingers are numbly wrapping around it even though as the full weight of his words feels like a knife in her chest.

Do you understand?

She understands. She understands that she's destined to love boys who get struck by lightning and keep breathing and who are never ever going to belong with her. She understands that this ruse of Oliver's, this brilliant ruse, is going to work not because he loves her - but because sheloves him.

And she's glad his back is turned because there are tears on her cheeks and she doesn't want him to ask why she's crying.

She closes her fingers tightly around the syringe in her pocket and tries to ignore the pain of her heart breaking.

Loving Oliver Queen is dangerous in more ways than one.

"I didn't realize," Laurel says, after, while she and Felicity sit side-by-side on the tailgate of an ARGUS SUV. "That he loved you. Not until tonight."

Felicity tries to stay numb. It's how she's managed this far. "He doesn't," she says, even as she watches Laurel's attention swerve to the silhouette of Det. Lance running towards them.

She pulls the empty syringe from her pocket and twirls it between her fingers, watching as Laurel's dad holds his daughter tightly.

She thinks about the last time she heard the words 'I love you', thinks about how her dad whispered them to her the night before he left for who-knows-where. Her mother never did like to say them.

No one has told her they love her in a very long time.

All things considered, that's probably still true.

Eventually she makes it back to her townhouse, but she's so tired she can't sleep, so she grabs a tub of mint chip, sits on her front steps and watches the sun rise.

And she cries.

Because she's tired and her head hurts and her heart hurts and she's not exactly sure which one hurts more but she suspects it's her heart.

So she needs to cry it all out, get it all out of her system so she can go back to the foundry in the morning without wanted to stab Oliver through the eye with one of his own arrows.

If only Oliver had told her. Why couldn't he just have told her?

The words wouldn't have been such a shock. They knowledge that he didn't mean them - that he doesn't love her like that - would have still hurt, but it wouldn't have hurt so fucking much.

So she cries until her eyes are read and puffy and she has completely finished the box of tissues she brought with her.

Then she goes inside, makes some tea, and starts working on her resume again.

By the time the three of them are transporting Slade to Lian Yu on one of ARGUS's jets, Felicity's managed to fortify the walls she's building around her heart. She doesn't say much to Oliver, and she knows that both he and Diggle notice. But everything about him rubs against her wounded heart like sandpaper, and she struggles to hide her hurt.

And while he seems able to keep on pretending that what happened changed nothing between them, Felicity finds that she's incapable of that. Things changed. Everything shifted. And now she hates him and loves him in nearly equal measure.

She closes her eyes and rests her head against Diggle's shoulder while the three of them take the turbulent flight to Lian Yu. Oliver and Dig are talking quietly, and she's just starting to nod off when Diggle says, "You should talk to Felicity?"

There's a pause, and Felicity imagines Oliver drawing his lips into a frown.

"Talk to Felicity about what?"

Dig sighs. "C'mon, Oliver. The fact that you played her."

"She knew."

"Did she?"

Another pause, longer this time. "It needed to look real."

Felicity feels Dig exhale. "And that's why you didn't tell her? Because she would believe it was real? How's she supposed to react now that it's not?"

"I didn't plan that far, Dig."

"Might I suggest starting with an apology?"

There's nothing but silence from Oliver in response.

Felicity might be deluding herself, but she could swear that Diggle's arm tightens around her just a little bit.

A week of futile job searching later, Felicity gets a call from Amanda Waller.

Waller offers her a job, and Felicity only hesitates a second before accepting. The position is contingent on her also taking care of her extra-curricular crime-fighting activities, for which Felicity is grateful. Waller is even willing to let her use ARGUS resources to help Oliver, so long as it's cleared.

It means less time in the "new" lair (that Felicity doesn't have the heart to help rebuild), and that fills Felicity with an unbelievable amount of relief. She can spend her days at ARGUS headquarters, and she can spend her nights there with her computers if she wants. As long as she puts equal efforts into both jobs, Waller doesn't care.

Felicity is aware that Waller also wants an inside track into what Oliver is doing, but Felicity wants her space back. She wants the opportunity to breathe freely again. This will give her that. It's an exchange, but Felicity takes comfort knowing that it's an exchange she's aware she's making.

And if Oliver has a problem with her making decisions about his life for him, well, she learned it from him, didn't she?

It ends up working out rather well. At first she tells Oliver that she's helping him from work because her old system isn't up to speed.

That lasts for about a week.

He's huffy and impatient, and he practically orders her back to the lair-that-she-can't-bring-herself-to-think-of-as-the-Foundry.

She snaps back at him, grateful that no one is around to hear her. She yells at him about how he's the one who screwed up her resume, he's the reason she wasn't able to find a job anywhere else.

She finishes her tirade with, "If my valiant efforts to pay rent and keep food in my fridge are inconveniencing you, well then you can go find some other impressionable IT darling to help you save the city."

There is a long, drawn out pause, and then Oliver says softly, "I don't want anybody else."

Sighing, Felicity buries her head in her hands. "You can't say things like that to me, Oliver."

"Why not? They're true."

"Because every time I hear your voice I hear you telling me that you love me and my heart breaks all over again. I can't take that anymore, Oliver. And I won't." The words just flow out of her mouth before she can stop them, spilling out feelings that she's been holding inside her for the past year and feelings she lost all control over a few weeks ago, when Oliver Queen opened his mouth and said, he took the wrong woman.

He's quiet, and then he says, almost brokenly, "Felici-"

And with tears streaming down her face, she hangs up on him.

And then Oliver breaks into ARGUS for her.

Well, not really for her and not really because of her. He breaks into ARGUS because he wants to talk to her, she's not at home, not answering her cell, and Oliver has never really adjusted to the idea of giving her space, even though when he needs his own space he takes it by force.

It ends with Oliver getting Tased by three guards and a very very livid Amanda Waller dragging Felicity to the holding cell they've thrown Oliver in and telling her, "You and your erstwhile boss better settle your damn domestic dispute before I settle it for you."

So Felicity plucks up her courage, picks up her tablet, and steps inside.

Oliver is conscious, handcuffed to the table, and thankfully dressed as Oliver Queen instead of the Arrow. Felicity isn't sure how on earth she would live down the Arrow bursting into ARGUS to see her.

"What are you doing here, Oliver?"

"You're not talking to me."

"So you decided to just...I don't even know. Break in? You can't have possibly seen that ending well."

He doesn't seem to have a response to that, so she asks, "What are you doing here, Oliver?"

He looks past her, and she realizes that she absolutely hates when he does that because she has no idea which Oliver she's dealing with or where his head is. She swears he goes back to the island in those moments, and as much as it made him the person he is now, she doesn't like Island-Oliver very much.

"Nothing was supposed to change," he says, eyes still on the wall behind her.

"But it did," she says, and his eyes finally snap back to hers. "It did. We changed it. And we can't just go back to that time when I loved you and didn't say anything and you knew and didn't say anything because you don't feel the same way. I can't do it anymore."

The expression on Oliver's face is one Felicity can only define as 'stricken' and she's not sure she's ever seen him look so completely and utterly startled before.

"You think I don't -" He tries to stand, forgets that he's handcuffed, and lets out a quiet yelp when the action forces him to bend over because the chain holding his hands to the table isn't quite long enough for him to stand up all the way. "You think I don't love you?"

"It's pretty obvious."

"I wasn't even going to say it, Felicity," he yells. "Because I was doing enough, hurting you enough. I wasn't going to say it. And you -" he tries to move again and rattles off a string of curses in Chinese when he can't.

"You just stood there," he says, "and you looked at me. And I told you I loved you because it was true, and I have regretted it ever since because you are someone that I cannot bear to lose." He grimaces, like every word out of his mouth is causing him pain, "And I'm sorry I put you in that position without telling you, and I'm sorry I hurt you, and I'm sorry that can't be with you. I'm sorry. You can go ahead and hate me, but you won't ever hate me more than I hate myself for doing that to you."

Felicity looks down at her tablet, and with a few taps of her finger, she pulls up the electronic settings on Oliver's cuffs. She sets her tablet down on the table, and uses her fingerprint to authorize their release. They break away from Oliver's wrists and fall to the metal table with a clatter.

"I don't hate you."

Oliver's around the table before she can blink, hands on her shoulders, and his forehead pressing against hers.

"I can't be with you," he says, "Not like that. Not now. I need you to understand," he whispers.

And with a still-shattered heart, Felicity replies, "I understand."

She keeps her day job at ARGUS, but she returns to the foundry at night. It's not so bad. The Salmon Ladder is there, so it feels enough like home.

Oliver puts Arrows in bad guys, and Felicity starts casually dating, nothing super serious, because she never promised to wait for him, after all.

And then, months and months and months later, Felicity performs one of her everyday feats of computer hacking greatness, and Oliver Queen says, "I love you."

It's not a teasing I love you, or a sarcastic I love you, there are no cameras in the lair, so the odds that he's putting on another ruse are pretty slim. Besides, there's an intensity in his voice that makes it sound so much like when he said it the first time.

Felicity looks up at him with wide, amazed eyes and says softly, "I'm sorry, were you confessing your love for me, or were you talking to your quiver?"

Kneeling down in front of her chair, Oliver takes her hand in his and says, "I'm not in love with my quiver."

Through the thick emotion caught in her throat, Felicity manages to whisper, "Can you say it again?"

And he smiles, leaning forward, slowly inching his way into her personal space, making her heart race and her head spin as he presses a kiss to her hand, her forehead, her right cheek, her left cheek, and her lips, letting one word punctuate each kiss.

"I. Love. You. Felicity. Smoak."

And for the rest of her life, Felicity believes him.

end.