AN: I wrote this several weeks ago and shared it on tumblr, but forgot to put it up over here.

Spoilers: speculation for upcoming episodes (3x19 on) and the latest promos.

Between Worlds

Boxers and professional fighters at least have the advantage of being taught how to take a punch. Felicity doesn't have that benefit; she's nothing close to a fighter and the punches just keep coming. Every time she takes a breath she can feel the bruises left in their wake.

Felicity isn't a fighter and she's tired – so tired of always feeling like she's down for the count.

The idea of Oliver being the new Ra's Al Ghul is a livid bruise on her chest, a mark over fractured ribs; the knowledge that his new title comes at the price of a marriage to a woman of the current Ra's' choosing isn't just a wound, it's a blow that cracks open her chest and offers her heart to the beasts nipping at her heels.

Felicity braces her elbows on her knees and drops her head into her hands. Thea is resting in a back room somewhere that Felicity probably couldn't find again on her own if someone paid her – she's resting now, but she was as good as dead not twenty-four hours ago. Roy is in prison; Detective Lance despises them and all but ran them out of town; and it's hard now, in the silence of a stone room in Nanda Parbat with only her thoughts for company, not to feel like it's all been for nothing. Everything that they've done and sacrificed, and all of the people they've lost … all the good that they've done – what does it matter now?

Distant voices too soft to be understood pull Felicity from the spiral of her thoughts. The murmur that carries through the halls is too lyrical to be English. Oddly, the sound makes her think of Thea, and that makes her think of Oliver.

She goes in search of him because she has to see him. She has to make sure that he's holding together in the face of everything, and maybe she has to see him for her own sanity. One more time, she thinks, one more stolen moment where it's just her and Oliver. Her and her Oliver: not the Arrow or the billionaire or any other variation of the man she loves, but the one that he so seldom allows himself to be.

Felicity can't find him on her own because this stupid complex is like a freaking maze on crack. No, scratch that – it's like all thirteen iterations of the TARDIS meshed into one gigantic disaster of stone halls.

She asks for help from someone passing by. Felicity can't tell if it's a man or a woman, but they're dressed like an honest-to-goodness ninja and they don't say a word to answer when she asks where Oliver is. The genderless ninja just points to a door not far from them as if she's ridiculous for not knowing and then disappears. The whole thing is very formal and leaves her with a sour taste at the back of her throat.

Felicity makes the mistake of not fortifying herself before she opens that door. She's raw and bruised and she wants to give comfort as much as take it so she just pushes the door open. The sight of him makes her ache.

Oliver is surrounded by candlelight. It's the warmest room she's seen in this place; there's a bed behind him and the candlelight folds into the red linens scattered throughout the room like secrets.

He doesn't move when she opens the door. Felicity leans against the doorframe and imagines that she can see the weight of too many worlds on his shoulders.

"You don't have to do this."

Oliver drops his hands away from his mouth and looks up at her slowly. The weight of worlds is on his shoulders, but there are entire lifetimes in his eyes.

Entire lifetimes, and he's about to embark on a new one that doesn't include her. Her, or his friends, or the life that they've spent the last two years building.

"Yes, I do."

Felicity expected that answer. She hates it anyway.

Oliver raises his head as Felicity's footsteps ring out over the stone floor. She drops into the space across from him and he sees her argument moments before he hears it.

"Why?" she queries.

Oliver sighs. "Everything I did, everything that happened, has led me right here to this moment."

"You really believe that?"

"I have to. Because if I don't – if it's not true, then what has it all been for? I can't let everything that's happened be in vain."

"Oliver, if you stay here – if you do this -." She can't finish the sentence. The words stick in her throat like cement, like gravel that expands on a hot day and cuts off her air. He knows what happens if he goes through with this, and he's going to do it anyway. She knows him well enough to know that.

"Go home," Oliver tells her quietly. "Spend time with your mother. Build a life. A real life."

Felicity can do that. She can, but it won't be the same; she'll still be singing but the chorus won't be the same, and no matter how many times her mouth forms the new words she knows that she'll always be haunted by the old ones.

She can do that, but not yet.

"I love you."

This can't end without him knowing; this can't be all, this conglomeration of "almost" and "maybe" and "too late".

They need this moment.

"I love you, Oliver."

He's waited so long to hear those words. They wind their way around his vocal chords and swallow his words before he can give voice to them; they travel down and dig deep into the parts of him that only exist for her.

Oliver slides forward on instinct. He's told her that he loves her; this isn't about words now.

Slowly, carefully, he pulls Felicity's glasses away from her face. The honey waves of her hair gleam golden in the soft light of the room. Oliver sets her glasses aside without looking and slips a hand along the length of her jaw until his thumb brushes over her ear.

No, this is about words; it's about everything, about words and actions and all those tiny moments that have brought them here. With his lips close enough that the formation of every word makes them brush over hers, Oliver says, "I love you, too."

Truth, Felicity thinks, I know the truth. This is all there is: you and me at the apex of all that is or ever will be.

Slow and sweet is what she's aiming for, but before she knows it they're rising to their feet in an uncoordinated dance that aims only to allow them to continue kissing. The butterflies swimming up her throat are fierce and a little desperate.

They can have this if they take it.

Felicity's hands find the hem of Oliver's shirt and delve past it without hesitation. His skin is warm and puckered beneath her hands as she sweeps them over his hips and up his back; she can feel the press of his fingers splayed over her hipbones. Up and down her hands travel until they once again find the hem of his shirt, and Felicity has had enough barriers to last forever. She latches onto the edge and breaks away from Oliver's kiss to pull it up. She rises onto her tiptoes but she's still too short to pull it off all the way, so Oliver takes the hint and whisks it off over his head for her.

The way his eyes fixate on her makes Felicity's heart stutter. When Oliver takes the hem of her shirt in his hands the movement is deliberate and graceful; nothing like her choppy attempt. She'd be embarrassed if he gave her the time, but he doesn't. His fingers flutter down her sides and he leans down to recapture her lips just as they trace the skin above the hem of her pants.

Felicity jumps and Oliver lifts, and the next thing she knows her feet have left the ground. They're moving and her mind recalls an image of a bed somewhere against the wall.

Felicity breaks for breath. "Turn around," she tells him. A wild thrill goes through her when Oliver listens. "Lay down."

"Hold on tight."

A moment of breathless weightlessness follows as Oliver does a controlled fall onto the bed. Their bodies rock together to absorb the impact and Felicity lets slip a gasp of surprise at the friction. Her eyes are already tracing Oliver's chest, however, so the friction is ignored. She's seen these scars so many times and even heard the stories behind some of them, but she's never been this close.

Felicity brushes her hands over Oliver's skin in mindless patterns. Some of the scars have puckered edges but others are nothing more than stretches of smooth skin that slide differently beneath her hands. She braces a hand lightly on a thick patchwork of them near the bottom of his ribs and lets the fingers of her other hand move up to cover his Bratva star. These scars are his, but maybe she can make them hers as well; maybe she can press her imprint into the thick tissue of them and leave an echo of herself for Oliver to find in dark times.

Maybe they can stretch this moment out into an eternity, into a world of their choosing that moves between the ones that hurtle around them with inexorable purpose.

They cannot live between worlds, though. Felicity knows that. They cannot hang suspended in hidden spaces while life passes them by, or continue to give away pieces of themselves and then lament the emptiness left in their wake; they must choose where to place their feet and make their stand, as they have always done. Oliver will become Ra's; they'll break Roy out of prison; they'll right everything that went wrong in Starling City; and they'll find some way to get around that stupid marriage clause, but if they don't, then they'll figure that out too – because Felicity is staying. She'll figure out this stupid stone palace and learn to stay away from the eerie ninjas and do whatever else it takes, because this is it.

This is their world.