A Shoulder to Lean On

By Bre (dust2dust34)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Arrow.
Rating: Teen
Author's Notes: Part of my Questions You Can't Ask Olicity ficlet collection. I received this prompt this morning, and I wanted to get it out before 3x20 airs. Partly based on speculation about why this is the Captain's favorite scene, and what they share...

Summary: Spec fic for the jet scene in 3x20. Oliver leans on Felicity when he needs her most…

Based on a prompt from dobeyonek: "Prompt request with some dialogue added: on the jet 3x20...Oliver: "I don't want to do this, but I..." Felicity: "You'll do whatever it takes to save your sister."

Oliver hadn't moved since they'd boarded. He hadn't done anything past watching the paramedics wheel her onto the plane, setting her up in the basic bed in the far private cabin, moving silently, nobody speaking. They'd brought special equipment, things that bolted into holes he had never noticed before in the floor to make sure her IV didn't roll away, the machine keeping track of her heartbeat didn't move; making sure shedidn't move. They'd fashioned rails that hooked onto the sides of the bed, just in case.

Just in case what, though... what else could possibly happen to her?

His sister had been run through with a sword. She'd been gutted, with no other purpose than to be a pawn on a monster's chess board. Another bloody move in a game that had been going on for far too long.

She'd bled out, too much, so much so that she should have been declared legally dead five times over, until they'd jump-started her heart each time.

Five. Times.

Oliver hadn't been able to breathe since he found her. Everything was a blur in his memory - he remembered coming home, seeing the shattered wine glass, the scuff marks from a harsh fight on the floor, and… and Thea, laying in the broken glass of the table she'd been thrown through, a pool of blood much too big surrounding her in a morbid celebration of life.

He didn't remember reacting, although there was evidence: slices from the glass through his jeans at his knees and shins said he'd landed next to her; the cuts in his palms from crawling over the glass; the dried blood still stained in his fingernails, deeply embedded in the cracks of his skin, from holding her.

He did remember lifting her, feeling how cold she was, how lifeless she had been… before some semblance of sanity had him grabbing his phone.

But when he'd moved to pull it out of his pocket, she'd slipped from his grasp - she was soaked through with her blood, their blood - and she'd landed on the edge of the broken coffee table with a sickening thud that made everything inside him revolt.

He didn't remember the call, or the paramedics arriving, but he did remember every excruciating minute of waiting for a heartbeat. The first time it came back, the relief had walloped him, before they lost her again.

And then a second time.

When it happened for a third time, he'd turned and vomited.

On the fourth, he'd let out an inhuman noise that he hadn't thought he'd been capable of.

On the fifth, though, they'd managed to keep her and Oliver had grabbed her hand, holding her so tightly the paramedics had had to pry him off to get her into the ambulance.

At the hospital, after calling Digg, calling Felicity… he'd been told Thea was in a coma, that the sword had sliced through her sternum, lancing her liver, stomach and gallbladder, that they'd had to remove portions of the organs because they'd been too shredded, and the gutting had cut cleanly through the side of three of her vertebrae.

Even if she did wake up, which it was a miracle she had survived at all, she'd be paralyzed.

He'd known the instant he saw her who had done it, why he had done, and what he had to do. He knew what Ra's planned to gain from this, knew what he held over Oliver's head: the Lazarus Pit.

And he knew that Oliver would do anything to save his sister.

Anything.

The plane rumbled around him as he sat, staring at his sister's prone body. She was pale, ashen even, her skin sunken in, barely managing to sustain herself.

Emotion choked him, filling his chest until it was ready to explode, tears burning his eyes. He wanted to reach out, touch her, hold her hand and tell her how sorry he was, that this never should have happened to her. It should have been him, it should always have been him...

But he also wanted to tell her how proud of her he was.

For fighting.

For surviving.

Now it was time for him to carry her the rest of the way, and he damn well would.

Oliver scrubbed his face, rubbing his eyes until they were raw before he took a shaky breath.

Thea didn't move, didn't change. But she would.

She would survive.

But he didn't let himself think about any of it. He couldn't think about it, what it meant, what he was going to have to become, what he was giving up, because when he did, he felt doubt. A tiny niggle of doubt in the back of his mind that was asking, "Why him?"

He knew why, he absolutely knew why him.

It was his fate, it had always been his fate, from the moment he took his first step into a lifestyle of lies, deceit and debauchery. From the first person he betrayed, to the first person he killed, to the first step towards fixing someone else's life mistakes, because his own were irreparable.

He'd always known he was going to drown in the evils he'd trailed behind him his entire life; it only made all the things he'd been pushing off, pushing away, sit like a gravestone in his stomach, a bitter pill that slowly grew tentacles, sneaking through his insides until he was suffocating.

Oliver Queen didn't get a happy ending.

A soft knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts and he sat up straighter, looking over as Felicity opened the door, popping her head in.

"Hi," she said softly, her eyes darting to Thea.

Oliver followed them to his sister, and his throat shut before he could get any words out. Instead he gave her a tearful smile, blinking to get rid of the tears as he swallowed past the lump.

She gave him a small, sad smile, one also full of warmth and understanding, She stepped into the small room, closing the door behind her.

"Is she…"

"The same," he said, his voice coming out in a croak and he cleared his throat, wiping his face. He gave her an appraising look, remembering the state she'd arrived at the airport in. "Are you okay?"

Felicity gave him a small eye roll, moving around him to sit on the other side of the tiny sofa he was perched on. She patted his knee as she passed him, saying, "I'm pretty much the least of your concerns right now, Oliver."

The words, 'No, you are right at the top,' nearly left his mouth before he bit his tongue to stop them.

"I meant with… Ray."

"Oh." She sat down, readjusting, inadvertently pressing against him in a way that had him bristling to stop himself from pressing closer as well as stopping himself from standing up to get away from the temptation. "He, uh… well, he said I wouldn't offer you hospital jello."

Hospital jello? He gave her an incomprehensible look, not following that line of logic, or what Ray would ever have to say about him that might concern hospital jello.

"What?"

She glanced over at him. "It's nothing. Well, it wasn't nothing, but it wasn't… anything, either. And he kind of... knew that." She waved her hand, not looking at him as he watched her. She kept her eyes on Thea. "It's not important. I'm here, that's all that matters."

Oliver felt the overwhelming desire to reach out and take her hand but he stopped himself. Instead he gave the side of her face a smile, his eyes tracing her features and he looked away just as she looked at him.

"Thank you," he said softly, his eyes on Thea.

He caught her smile out the corner of his eye, but he didn't look at her again. Instead, he watched her watch him, his lungs starting to burn from not breathing until she finally looked away.

A heavy moment passed. His mind raced from all the things that hospital jello could possibly mean, to Thea's condition, to what the entire thing was reminding him of, to what waited for him in Nanda Parbat.

Felicity reached over and tapped his temple.

"I can hear the wheels in your head working way overtime, mister," she said, and he looked at her. She cocked her head. "I'm here. I mean, to talk. You know I'm here, you have eyes, but I mean to talk. If you want to."

Oliver sighed. He turned back to Thea, not saying anything for a second.

"I don't..." His tone affirmed everything he couldn't put into words. "I don't want to do this, but I..."

"Oliver," Felicity said, cutting him off. She grabbed his arm, gripping him tightly. "You'll do whatever it takes to save your sister. There's no shame in that."

He gave her a smile, one of gratitude and amazement at how well she knew him, and instead of looking away, he let his eyes linger on her.

After a moment, a light blush filled her cheeks and she raised her eyebrows in question.

"But... what I'm giving up," he said, and her entire demeanor shifted at the weight in his words. "Felicity, it's not..."

"Oliver, stop." Felicity wound her arm through his, her fingers tangling with his. She squeezed his hand tightly, reassuringly, as she smiled at him. "You need to save Thea. That's all that matters."

A flood of tears made his eyes burn again as he stared at her, using his eyes to show her everything he'd been burying as deep as he possibly could since their ill-fated dinner.

She opened her mouth, like she wanted to say something, but she changed her mind, shaking her head instead. Now wasn't the time. And she was right.

The time had passed.

Oliver nodded, looking away.

Felicity didn't say anything.

Instead she squeezed his hand again and leaned back on the sofa, pulling him with her. He held fast for a second, and she huffed, grabbing his shoulder until he relented, settling back with her.

Oliver held onto her tightly, staring at Thea, feeling like he was holding onto two different worlds: in one hand was Thea, in the other was Felicity. He didn't like the dichotomy of it. They should be one.

The words were coming out before he could stop them.

"When I was in Hong Kong, I wasn't fast enough to save someone," he said, his voice cracking as he watched Thea's chest rise and fall in shallow breaths. "His name was Akio. It's a... it's a long story, but there was a virus, and an antidote, and..."

He paused, and after a moment, Felicity squeezed his hand, silently urging him on.

"He was just a kid, he had no business being there. It was because of me that they were there at all." He knew he wasn't making sense, that Felicity had no idea who he was talking about, what he was talking about, but she didn't make a sound. She just sat there, silent, letting him talk, being there for him, a shoulder to lean on, to help hold him up. "His metabolism was too fast." He let out a humorless laugh. "Of all the things that could go wrong."

His voice cracked again and he closed his eyes, feeling a flash of guilt when he saw Thea in his arms instead of Akio in the memory.

"The virus went airborne before I could get him back to the lab, to another antidote. His parents were waiting for me to bring him back. Tatsu had been wounded, and Maseo... he trusted me to bring Akio back. Because I had before, although that had just been blind luck, really. I wasn't... I couldn't..."

Oliver opened his eyes, and instead of Thea on the bed, he saw Akio.

"He died. In my arms, right outside the lab. We were right there, so close, but... there wasn't enough in his system to protect him, and... and he..." Oliver took a deep breath, closing his eyes as a hot tear slipped down his cheek. He brushed it away, rubbing his eyes roughly with his free hand, giving voice to his fears. "Felicity, If I couldn't..."

"No, Oliver," Felicity said, stopping him in his tracks.

He opened his eyes, looking over at her.

She stared up at him, eyes drifting over his tired face, his sunken cheeks; bloodshot eyes full of tears that spoke more volumes about pain and grief and anguish than any one person had the right to be privy to.

She held his hand tighter in hers and reached over.

Oliver's heart skipped a couple dozen beats in anticipation, his cheek tingling with the ghostly feel of her touch before it even happened, but she suddenly stopped short, her hand falling.

She gave him a small smile.

"You are the most amazing man I have ever known," she said softly, staring into his eyes, and for a split second, he believed her.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

And then Felicity sighed, her eyes dropping down to his lips before looking away.

Oliver watched her take a breath, letting it out slowly, and then she turned back to Thea, resting her head on Oliver's shoulder. She curled in closer to him, holding him as much as he was holding her, their fingers still intertwined, her arm wrapped around his.

Oliver looked back at Thea, listening to the reassuring beep of her heartbeat, the even breaths of the woman he loved beside him... he let himself rest his head on Felicity's as they leaned on each other, taking solace, gathering strength and comfort in the final hours before the darkness.

The End

Reviews literally feed my soul and muse.

Hospital Jell-o line was too good for me - blatantly "borrowed" from Jenny Raftery's review of 3x19.