#ep312

“I can’t do this without you.” - Lauren Bloom to Casey

As I continue my rewatch of Season 3 (they should have subtitled it the Season of Angst) I landed in ep312 and the high drama of Oliver coming back from the dead. This picks up after Felicity basically tells Oliver she doesn’t want him to be in love with her and walks away...

When he watched Felicity turn away from him and walk out of the alley, Oliver wanted to go after her, wanted to pull her close against him, to surrender to her and the passion that kept him alive. He wanted to tell her his last thought before he fell was of her.

But Oliver couldn’t move. Her words were still ringing in his head like an unanswered call.  Everything Felicity said to him was truth. He shouldn’t have made her live with a fantasy when it came to her feelings for him. If he truly loved her like he told her, if he wanted to share his life, all of his life with her, he wouldn’t have let her walk away. Oliver told Malcolm that if he wanted Thea to trust him, he should start giving her reasons to. The same advice applied to Oliver. But his instincts were still too strong in him. If he allowed anything to happen to Felicity, if she was made to suffer or even die because of the choices he makes, Oliver would lose the only person in his life that can save him, the only person who can show him that love is more than pain.

Oliver still could not move. He was locked in place, a solitary figure who had become larger than life, who had shaped in his mind the idea of saving his city, of giving hope to people who were hopeless. Thea and John and Roy had strengthened his conviction to stand up and fight against evil, but it was Felicity who gave him the light to see his way forward. He told her before he left that he was the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to save those he loves. Even in the dark clutches of death, Oliver will never alter from that path.

But what Felicity said to him seemed to derail that train of thought. Over the past months, ever since their explosive first date, Oliver had done nothing but bring pain to Felicity’s life. He took the vibrancy of what love should be and pushed her away. Love shouldn’t only be a painful memory of someone once they’re gone from your life. It shouldn’t be regret or something to be afraid of because it can hurt you. When he let Felicity walk away, he was letting his love for her fade like a mournful cry disappearing in the distance, a distance that kept widening because of the chains he still weighed himself down with, a weight he’s been carrying since his father killed himself, since Yao Fe sacrificed himself and Shadoe died as the result of an impossible decision. It was Tommy and Sara and his mother---all gone because Oliver didn’t know how to save them. There was a part of him that believed his love for all of them was not salvation and grace---it was Armageddon.

Oliver finally broke free from his immobility and turned back to go inside. He could not risk losing anyone else in his life that was important to him. If losing their love and trust and belief in him meant keeping them alive, Oliver was willing to make that sacrifice, even at the cost of his own life. Yes, he loved Felicity with everything that made him who he was, but not enough to have her taken from him, either by tragedy or simply getting in his own way of happiness.

And maybe that’s why he let her walk away.

**

When Felicity walked into her apartment, her pain and anger was emphasized by slamming the door behind her. She started to turn on a light but then stopped herself and moved deeper into the darkness.

Outside, the sounds of the city drifted in on her---a siren ringing out an alarm, the squealing of car brakes, a random voice yelling in anger or desperation. All of it brought to Felicity a sense of turmoil, a cacophony of noise mimicking her own need to scream. She took her coat off and tossed it on the back of her couch. She still did not turn on any lights. Felicity stood in the dark and the anger and anguish that consumed her was not something she wanted exposed in light.

The frustration she felt over Oliver keeping her away from him was a slow draining in her heart. When she saw him tonight, alive and whole, her world became a big smile of relief and yearning. She ran to him out of pure instinct, and when she wrapped her arms around him, that brief moment felt like an eternity.  The last time she was with him, just before he left to die, Oliver told her he loved her. Yet, at the same time, it didn’t seem as if he did. It made her feel torn, between saying it back to him and raging at him for leaving her. But she could only stand there, terrified that she would never see him again.

Felicity moved around from the back of her couch and sat down on it.  The darkness of her apartment seemed to deepen and her frustration turned to sadness and loss. Over the past two years of being a part of Oliver’s journey, Felicity had moments of joy, of desire and certainty and expectation. She was pulled into his world by excitement and purpose, by his strengths and his weaknesses. She admired his convictions and the dedication that he exuded into his crusade. Was that hero-worship? Maybe at first it was. But over time, Felicity began to know him, not just the fierce warrior under the hood, but his inner drives, his needs and wants and his inability at times to articulate them. He had denied to himself for so long the nuances of love and trust and being happy. Maybe he thought that love was just another kind of pain, that any hope of finding it and feeling it was an illusion. Felicity still did not know a large percentage of what he went through before she met him. But when she witnessed him losing those he loved---Tommy and Sara and his mother; it was like watching parts of him die with them. And seeing that pain in him, it broke off pieces of her own heart, it made her want to just hold him and cry with the weeping of his soul.

Damn him! When Oliver said he was working with Merlyn, her heart broke even more. That brief moment seeing him alive shattered and Felicity realized his brush with death did nothing to change him. He was still living on his island. She told herself that island would someday be the death of them. Well, not death-death---more metaphorically. The longer he stayed there, the further away he would be from being happy. With her.

Felicity told him in the alley that while he was gone, she had a fantasy about a happy ending. When Oliver denied her that, the reality of his life, maybe for the last time, brought home to her he really didn’t come back for her---he came back to finish the complete destruction of her heart. But the hardest truth in all this for Felicity, a truth that dulled the new shine she might have found with Ray, or in the reborn conviction in her to keep her city safe, to follow in the footsteps of Oliver’s path---was that she did love him; still and quite possibly, forever.

Felicity continued sitting in the dark and the complexity of her feelings moved through her with painful abandon. The disenchantment of loss mixed with her anger it made Felicity unsure if she could ever be able to reconcile the two.

After a time, she fell asleep on the couch and did not have any dreams.