Hey there! Long time, no see. If anyone is still out there... This is your official notice that I am posting the sequel to this story. Yes, I know, I'm FINALLY doing this. I don't want to try offering excuses, but this past year has been absolutely horrendous for me on a personal level. Plus, the back half of season 3 obliterated my desire to write anything Arrow-related. I still get that nasty knot of disgust in my stomach thinking about the stupidity of that whole string of episodes. Thankfully, my faith in this show has been (mostly) restored, and I am back!

In regards to SATC, I got a lot of great reviews, some of which were anonymous and thus prevented me from replying. I do want to say a few things before we close out the SATC chapter and move on to Chasing the Sunlight.

I did want to keep as much of the final chapter of SATC in Oliver's POV as possible, so Felicity didn't get a whole lot of closure. We didn't get to see much of her side of the decision. I made the choice to save that for the flashbacks and such in the sequel. The main point I wanted to get across in this one was that she felt she had no other option than to go. Ra's wants her, and as Nyssa said, the League always collects. Sara hinted that Ra's didn't want just any assassin. He wanted Felicity in particular, and I feel that the Felicity I presented looked at things very logically. She tried to find another way, but eventually she just gave in and decided to go see what Ra's wanted her for. If he wanted her badly enough, he'd find a way to get her regardless.

Now, that probably did come off as a bit cold and taking Oliver for granted, and that won't be disregarded. I think not having Felicity's POV in there kind of hurt that a bit, but the chapter was getting super long. Oliver will by no means just welcome her back with open arms and a kiss. He's going to be seriously hurt. Not only did she tell him they'd find a way, but she then left a day early, when he wasn't expecting it. There are other things that will come into play when we pick back up that amp up his hurt and anger as well. So they'll have a lot to work through if they're going to get back to stable ground, especially after they went through the whole "holding back" thing with her plan to infiltrate Isabel's plot earlier on.

So yes, this was a bit of a regression for Felicity in just up and leaving, but in her mind she's doing the right thing. The honourable thing. To her, Ra's wants her and there's no avoiding that. She doesn't want to hide or have Oliver save her. She wants to take care of herself and fight her own battles.

We saw some of her struggle to avoid becoming her father after his death, but the flashbacks in particular will sort of deal with her trying to avoid that darkness when she's right in the thick of it. We saw Felicity really struggle when she became a part of Oliver's world, with the darkness around the edges that she didn't have pre-Oliver, and how it brought her father out of his little mental box. But what's going to happen when she's surrounded by it? In this story, she realized that she can't just shove her memories aside. She has to embrace who she was in order to fully heal and move past it. Now, part of the struggle is not losing herself to the darkness when it consumes her. She has to resist it on her own, without Oliver there to pull her back from the edge. Oliver was her safety net, in a way, allowing her to feel secure in exploring a side of herself she'd long tucked away, but once he's gone does that change? She said she drinks to prove to herself she won't let it control her life, and now she has to make a similar choice with the physical aspect. Can Sara train her without it taking over her life, or will she lose herself to it? Does she turn off the emotion to survive? Or can Sara keep her from losing it? Can she keep hold of herself even if the easier option is to give up?

And really, what about Oliver? He finally let his guard down and trusted her, and she left. He opened his heart to her and she essentially stomped on it. So he's going to have his own turmoil going. He talked a lot about not being able to handle losing her and how he wouldn't be the same without her, so we'll see that loss take a bit of a toll on him emotionally. But when she comes back, can he really trust her again? Should he? Should he trust anyone in that capacity?

I'm getting off track now, so the short answer is yes, there will be a lot of hurt and anger on Oliver's part, and Felicity will be just as hurt because leaving broke her heart, too. But ultimately, she's the one who messed up here, and she's the one who now has an uphill battle to win Oliver's trust back. She's the one who has to put in the effort. She has to stay.

Anyways, I'll stop rambling now and let you go look for the sequel! Chasing the Sunlight.