Note: First of all, I wanna go ahead and say that this story has been one hell of a ride! Phew, seriously! You guys can't imagine how wonderful it's been for me to wake up every morning after I've posted a chapter, only to see all the beautiful comments. You guys are amazing and I love each and every one of you- which means that I won't be making a long thank you list with everyone, but I will be saying THANK YOU for all the reviews and kind words and all the support you've given me throughout this story!

This was my first official Olicity fic and the fact that it passed 400 reviews here on fanfiction still amazes me, no matter how many times you guys tell me that I deserve it! :)

I just wanted to sort of discretely dedicate this story to someone... Ehm, my mom, who passed away two and a half years ago. A lot of the things you've read in this story have been inspired by her journey. She wasn't just my mom, she was my best friend too and she'll always be in my heart. She never got the chance to watch Arrow with me, but I know that if she had, she would have been fangirling as much as me over it. Really, I miss her and the fact that this story- which sorta indirectly is her story too- got this kind of praise, truly means a lot. I can never express how thankful I am.

So, I just wanted to mention that I listened to the "Little Things" acoustic tribute of One Direction's song in the beginning of this chapter and then moved on to the acoustic tribute of "You and I". If you've heard the tributes, feel free to listen to them on repeat while reading.

And now, I'm sorry for the long note, but things needed to be said! ^^

Please enjoy this final chapter of Crumbled Papers!

"Crumbled Papers"

Epilogue: The End

Word Count: 2,309

Four months later...

The walk felt a lot longer than Oliver would have ever believed it could feel. The autumn winds were blowing softly, making orange, yellowed and red leaves fall from the trees and whirl around his feet as he walked. He wrapped his wool scarf a little tighter around his neck, gloved hands clutching a bouquet of yellow roses that he knew would die in just a couple of days anyway. That didn't stop him though, because he knew he needed this, now more than ever.

The cemetery was quiet and Oliver desperately tried to gather his thoughts that had been scattered since that day Felicity had walked into his office, a crumbled piece of paper in her grip.

It was strange really, how fragile people were.

The thought had hit him last night when he had had trouble sleeping and finally, he had managed to convince himself that he needed to at least give it a try to settle the storm that had been raging inside of him this past year.

When he reached the destination he had had in mind, he stopped in front of the gravestone and simply stared at it for a good while in silence.

"I'm sorry," he whispered quietly, his voice weak, even breaking a little. "I'm sorry for everything that happened to you. It never should have happened to you..." he trailed off as the wind picked up again and he closed his eyes, feeling it's caress against his cheek.

This last year had certainly been a whirlwind of changes in his life, the biggest one being dealing with Felicity and her illness. After he had first found out about her cancer, he had struggled to get on the same page as her. They had argued over her will to survive and their mutual stubbornness to take care of each other. She had gotten better, then worse, then better again and there wasn't a single time that he could remember, where he had been absolutely certain of what would happen to her in the end.

Despite their fights, struggles and other differences, Oliver had been forced to come to terms with the inevitable.

He had fallen in love with his best friend.

His wonderful, amazingly stunning IT-girl. Never would he have imagined that he could fall for someone like her and fall so quickly and hard that it hurt every second that he was apart from her.

How was it possible for one person to grow so much on him? Someone who had been a complete stranger to him at first, someone he had immediately grown to trust more than the people he had know since before the Island...

When he been with her at the hospital for her first treatment, the thought had simply crossed his mind. What if he was in love with her? What if she died, never knowing how his heart actually skipped a beat every time she would give him the look that told him that she knew he was keeping something from her? He was afraid that he would scare her off and when Diggle had told him that he needed to get his emotions sorted before jumping into anything, because she deserved better, he knew that he would have to wait and explore whatever it was that was happening to him.

After coming to terms with the fact that he truly, deeply did love her, he hadn't been able to keep his mouth shut. There was no doubt whatsoever inside of him and he had confessed his love to her. He would never regret that he had told her the truth. Diggle had been right that time. Felicity did deserve the best and he hadn't said anything until he was absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure that he was in love with her.

Oliver knelt down, removing his leather gloves before tracing the letters on the gravestone with his fingers and then inhaled sharply.

"Will it ever hurt less?" he asked out loud. "Or will I just get used to the pain, eventually?" He placed the yellow roses in front of the stone and closed his eyes again. "I failed you," he said, "but I know that we both did everything we could."

The pain in his chest wasn't subsiding though. The loss he felt had been weighting down on him every single day since it had happened. He was consumed in his own thoughts, when he felt a small, warm hand come to rest on his shoulder.

Despite everything, a smile made its way onto his face as he looked up to see his beautiful friend looking down at him. Her glasses were a little fogged and her other hand was holding her coat together tightly. The hat she was wearing, the same one she had worn at the airport when they had traveled to Russia, covered most of her head, but her dirty blonde curls that had grown quickly after the chemo had ended were visible and now they almost reached her shoulders. Around her neck, her dark green scarf- his scarf- was secured, keeping the cold out.

Oliver smiled at her as he stood up, reaching for her hand. She took it without hesitation and took a step forward.

"Is this weird?" he asked her, but she shook her head.

"No, it's not weird," she replied softly, looking at the tombstone. "Hi, Tommy," she spoke aloud. "I'm Felicity, Oliver's friend."

Oliver looked at the stone again front of him, Tommy's name carved into it. Most people would probably find it strange that they were talking to a dead person, but when he had told Felicity last night that he wanted to visit Tommy's grave because he was in need to talk to him, she had told him she would come to him right after her scheduled appointment.

"She's more than my friend, Tommy," Oliver whispered, barely audible. She's the love of my life, he thought, hoping that wherever Tommy was, he could hear his thoughts.

"You didn't fail Tommy, Oliver," Felicity told him after a while. "You did everything you could to help him, but it just wasn't written. He's in a better place."

"Do you really believe so?" Oliver questioned, his eyes leaving the stone to meet hers. "That he's in a better place?"

"I do," she nodded. "With all my heart." She squeezed his hand lightly.

"I know there wasn't anything else I could have done," he said. "That doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt."

"And it will probably always hurt, Oliver," Felicity acknowledged, "but you just have to keep fighting and keep going forward. If anything, you should do it for Tommy."

He contemplated her words for a while before nodding. "You're right, as usual," he said, a hint of amusement making its way into his tone.

"We just need to stay positive, right?" she wondered. "I mean, good things come to those who think positively, don't they?"

Oliver smiled lightly at her. "Felicity, I'm happy that I didn't lose you too," he told her as the wind once again picked up around them. Her healthy hair whirled around a little in the process, framing her face as she closed her eyes, unknowingly taking Oliver's breath away.

She was beautiful.

A smile adorned her face and she opened her eyes to look at him again. "Are you ready to leave?" she asked. "We can come back again next week if you want? Make it an annual thing? Like, visiting him once every week? Twice if you need it," she quickly added.

"I'm ready," he replied with a small grin.

They glanced at Tommy's grave once more.

"He would be proud of you," Felicity noted.

"I hope so," Oliver responded. "He would have liked you, if he had ever gotten to know you."

"I hope so," she mimicked him before they began walking back.

As they made their way out of the cemetery and toward the car where Diggle was waiting, Felicity suddenly pulled him to a stop.

"Everything okay?" he asked, his eyes searching hers momentarily.

"I got the results from last week's check up," she told him.

"Oh?" Oliver swallowed. "Is everything...?"

"You won't be losing me anytime soon, Oliver," she beamed at him. "Dr. Applebeam has officially declared me cancer-free."

The weight that had been settled in his chest all day finally lifted as his heart swelled with pride and love.

"I'll have to keep coming in for monthly checkups though," Felicity continued. "At least for a year before we start increasing the time between them and hopefully, in five years, they won't be mandatory anymore."

Oliver just reacted, stepping forward and embracing her tightly. He could literally feel her smiling against his chest as her arms wrapped around him too. They held on to each other for so long, that neither knew how much time had actually passed when Felicity finally pulled away a little, looking up at him with teary eyes.

"Tell me again," she whispered, her voice so low that her words were almost lost in the wind. She must have seen the confusion in his face, so she quickly clarified, "Tell me what you told me that day, when we got home. Tell me what you told me before I went into surgery."

The memory flooded back to him and suddenly, it was perfectly clear what she meant. She had told him that she would tell him once she was better, and even though Dr. Applebeam had told them after her surgery that her cancer hadn't spread and that they had managed to remove the tumors completely, she had still been too afraid to say it.

One of her small hands was clutching his jacket tightly while the other rested on his shoulder. He covered the hand that was holding onto him tightly with his own before reaching up with his other hand to cup her cheek. Instantly, her grip relaxed a bit as their eyes met.

"I love you, Felicity," he said, the words he had said so many times slipping easily from his lips. This time, it felt a lot different though, because for the first time, he knew what was going to happen. He knew what she was going to say and this would change everything for them.

Lifting the hand she had rested on his shoulder, she moved to trace her fingers slowly across his stubbled jaw before settling on his cheek, mirroring him perfectly. He automatically moved into her touch, closing his eyes before pressing his lips first to her open palm and then to her wrist. He didn't dare to open his eyes, his heart beating crazily in his chest.

"I love you too, Oliver."

His eyes shot open at her words and he turned to face her again. There were still tears in her eyes, but happiness was written clearly on her face. There was no hesitation as they moved forward together, in complete sync, closing the distance between them.

Both her hands were on his cheeks as she drew him into her while one of his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer to him, desperate to feel the heat that she radiated. Their lips moved together as they tried to show each other just how true their words were, but they knew that after everything, they really didn't have anything to prove.

He had stayed with her, through everything that she had gone through, just as he had promised her. Every time she had felt awful, he had been there, trying to cheer her up. He had agreed to her silly requests for adrenaline rushes and he had held her hand through every appointment, reassuring her that he wouldn't leave her side, whatever anyone threw at them.

She had made it through the hardship. She was alive, against all odds and for the first time in years, Oliver felt complete.

They pulled apart slowly, savoring each other as they once again wrapped their arms around each other.

"Let's go home," Felicity said and he nodded, lacing their fingers together as they walked back to the car where Diggle stood, waiting for them as he leaned against the hood. There was a smile on his face and they all knew that they would be okay.

After everything that had happened, they were finally together. He might have been the one to have stayed by her side through her illness, but truthfully, she had been his own savior in every way since his return from Lian Yu and he would be forever grateful for having been directed to her office when he had needed help with the bullet-ridden computer.

Later that night, when they laid on their bed together, Felicity moved to open a drawer, taking out a paper that looked like it had been folded and unfolded a hundred times, at least. She reached for her red sharpie that rested on her nightstand and opened the paper so that Oliver could see it. It was the same paper she had shown him that day. It was her letter from the hospital that had told her that she had been headed for certain death.

Felicity quickly scribbled down a couple of words on the paper with her red sharpie.

Another enemy defeated.

Oliver looked at her and smiled. "Are we getting that framed?" he asked.

"Maybe we could hang it in the Foundry? To remind ourselves that nothing is impossible when it comes to us," she nodded. He bent down, kissing her exposed shoulder before pulling her closer to himself. She let out a joyous laugh as Oliver peppered her neck with kisses, causing her to drop the crumbled piece of paper to the floor before she turned her full attention to him.

They were happy and together.

As they should be.

Note: Did I trick any of you? ;) I'm a sucker for romance, so OF COURSE you guys broke me and managed to convince me to let Felicity live! That didn't however mean that I needed to give you guys a straight answer in the first sentence of the epilogue, right? ;)

Once again: It's been a wonderful journey and it's been hard letting go of this story just because it's so close to my heart, but everything needs an ending! :) As I might have mentioned, I've been planning on writing an alternative ending (angst-fest because Felicity dies in that one), but at the moment I don't have time to write it. I also want to give you guys a couple of one-shots that never made it into the real story, but I'll most likely write those when I have time (I start working today, so that is also a part of why I updated so early today!). I have other projects going on too, so for now this story will be over, but whenever I decide to pick up writing those one-shots, you'll know! ;) I think someone mentioned in a review that they wanted a wedding... Maybe?

So, since this is the final note: THANK YOU for all the support and I love you guys!

You'll be seeing more from me in the future... ;)

But for now, have a wonderful day! xx