Spoilers: MAJOR SPOILERS for "Sacrifice," 1.23.

Disclaimer: Arrow isn't mine, but I'll take Felicity and Oliver if no one wants them.

A/N: I'm honestly not sure where this fic came from. I was playing with ideas, and thinking about Arrow's season finale, and suddenly, I had a fic. :)

As always, I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace, and his many blessings.

I hope you enjoy this, and please let me know what you think!

Carry On

She's staying. It's not even a question anymore.

The minute Malcolm Merlyn's second device set off an earthquake, that decision was made for her.

She's staying…for the foreseeable future. Because Walter is safe, but the city needs her. Well, Oliver needs her and her computer skills, and the city needs him.

He's a hero, like she'd told Detective Lance. Even if Oliver can't see that for himself right now. He hasn't said anything yet. But she knows what he must be feeling, because she can hear it over the comm, the way he's prowling around wherever he is…probably on a roof, insisting that she keep monitoring the police band.

Four times now, he's rushed off to try to save people the other rescuers hadn't been able to reach.

Three times, he had managed to do exactly that, and once, it had already been too late.

That one life probably weighs on him so heavily that the three lives he saved don't seem to matter. But they do matter. They matter a lot.

She'll have to remind him of that…as soon as she feels like she can say it without crying, because the ache in her chest isn't going away, and there's a loop of what ifs playing in her head…what if she'd been better? Smarter? Faster?

What if she could have stopped all of this? All the loss and destruction…all the grief.

She's the tech girl. That's her job, and she's supposed to be good at. But, this time, she wasn't good enough, and the whole city is paying for it. Oliver is paying for it.

Tommy Merlyn is dead.

Oliver hasn't said anything to her about that either, but Felicity saw the other billionaire's name on one of the early casualty lists. She can guess where he was and how it happened, and she knows that Oliver must have been right there with him. She's not sure if that makes it better or worse…worse, maybe, judging by the thick, strained sound of Oliver's voice when he'd first demanded that she tell him if there was anyone the rescuers couldn't get to.

Diggle had filled her in when she'd called to check on him, so she knows that Oliver is hurt on top of everything else, and the idea of him running around with a self-inflicted stab wound terrifies her, especially because he's probably not thinking very clearly right now.

But, somehow she knows that he needs this, just like she needs to be in the basement of an old factory-turned-night-club that may or may not still be structurally sound. She has to do this. She has to do this because this is all she can do right now, and maybe it's not much, but it's something, and if she doesn't do it, she'll go crazy.

"Felicity?" Oliver voice carries over the comm, a sharp edge to it, and she shakes herself from her thoughts, realizing it's probably not the first time he's said her name. "You still there?"

"Yeah," she tells him, putting her hands back on the keyboard, forcing herself to focus again. "Yeah, sorry, I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere."

And she means it.

Fin

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the fic and please let me know what you think!

Take care and God bless!

Ani-maniac494 :)