#markoftheangel

She sighed again and stuffed her hands into her pockets.  She desperately wanted to reach for him.  The brief moment they’d shared inside had done nothing to soothe the sharp ache in her chest.  If anything, touching him again had only amplified her need for him.  He was there with her, physically right beside her, and yet so much was missing.

“We met in Arizona almost ten years ago.  I was… well, I was running from this asshole that I’d made the mistake of dating,” she explained, “And I ran into you and Tommy.  Literally.”

She recapped the first few months to him as best that she could.  She teased him for his stalker tendencies and reminded him of how he’d dropped the bomb of being Marked on her.  And the more that she talked, the easier it became.  Oliver listened intently and asked questions when she got ahead of herself and left something out.  It was odd for her, recounting the last ten years of her life to someone who’d been there, someone who had lived it with her.  But it also brought a bit of levity into an otherwise dark moment.

“You left everything behind when I didn’t come back.”

“I had to.”

“What happened to our home? And the cat, did you leave him, too?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know about our house.  Truthfully, I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been raided at least once.  I’d be even more surprised if there weren’t guards posted around the house just waiting for us to come back.  As for Yoda, he’s fine.  He’s with Thea and –“

She bit her tongue hard enough that she drew blood and stopped walking.

“Felicity.  Tell me.  Please.  I know that you’re holding back.  Who’s with Thea?  Where are they?”

He had continued walking without her.  When he realized that she wasn’t beside him, Oliver turned back to her.

“I know you don’t remember. You have no idea who I am or what we have but I – I hoped that you could feel it.”

“I feel a lot of different things right now, Felicity.  Confused and frustrated and – and lost.  It feels like someone blindfolded me and all I can see are shapes and shadows.  I have this hole.  In my head and in my chest.  Because you’re not there!  Because she’s not!”

His eyes widened and Felicity’s breath stuck in her throat.  Something had just happened, something important.  But she didn’t want to break the moment by speaking.  It was clear that something was coming back to him and she needed him to acknowledge whatever it was he remembered.

He took a stumbling step in her direction.

“Where is she? Where’s our daughter, love?”

I can’t believe that she’s a year old today.  Time is going by too fast.  I feel like I’m going to turn around one day and find this beautiful young woman standing in front of me.  I want my baby to stay this way forever.  Sweet and innocent and kind.  It’s inevitable that she’ll grow up but I just wish I could slow time down and savor these moments even more.

Felicity stood on unsteady legs.  She couldn’t lie to him about Artemis.  But it wasn’t only the fact that he had remembered that she existed, he’d also used the pet name she hadn’t heard in almost a year.  Her heart raced.

“She’s safe.  She’s with Thea.”

Oliver expelled a ragged breath and sank down onto the nearest boulder.  It was as if the confirmation of their child’s existence had drained him.  She sat down beside him.

“Wouldn’t she be safer here? With you?  With us?”

She shook her head.

“I wish that that was the case.  I miss her. So much.  But I… I didn’t want Arti and I to be in the same place if they came looking.  I needed her to be with someone who would protect her if anything happened to me.”

“And you trust Thea?”

She nodded, “I do. And so did you.  Leaving Arti with her was your idea.”

He blinked up at her.

“Artemis Grace.”

“She’s four years old. And she’s so beautiful, Oliver. She’s our world,” she said softly, “But she’s safe with Thea.  And Thea adores her.  She has so many people who love her and want to keep her safe.”

Oliver stared at her, his eyes searching, and she knew that he was trying to remember who he was. Who they had been together. Clearly whatever had been done to erase his memories hadn’t been permanent.  He hadn’t needed prodding to remember Arti.  He’d felt incompletely without their little girl and that void had triggered his memory of her.  At least in part.  But she knew that it wouldn’t be so easy to bring everything else back to him.  Ten years of his life had been taken from him.

“I want to see her.”

Felicity swallowed past the lump in her throat and set her hand on top of both of his where they were clutched between his knees.

“I have pictures on a computer back at the cabin.  And a couple of videos.  I check in with Thea twice a week.  She knows when to expect my calls so if I try to call early, she won’t answer.  And she’ll take Arti and run.  We have to wait.”

Oliver nodded, twisting his hand until he was able to link their fingers.  He squeezed.

“What’s the last thing that you remember?  Before you woke up in your apartment?  Before talking to Thea?  What do you remember?”

He shrugged, “I was with John.  On an assignment.  There was an explosion at an office building in San Francisco.  We were pulling our charges out of the rubble.  There were three of them.”

Felicity remembered it clearly.  They’d been cramped in the bathroom, Oliver on the floor while she sat on the countertop, the two of them laughing at their daughter who insisted on giving herself a foam beard with the bubbles from her bath.  Oliver’s phone had gone off mid-conversation.  He’d only had a few moments to say goodbye before John had knocked on their front door.  He’d promised her three days.  He’d disappeared for almost a year.

“It was a Tuesday evening. Arti was in the tub and we were just talking when you got the call.  She – she’s at this stage now where she keeps telling us that she wants a baby brother. I don’t know where she got that from but it became an everyday thing for a while.  You told me you’d be home by the end of the day on Friday.  I fell asleep on the couch waiting for you. When I woke up Saturday morning and you hadn’t come home, I knew that something was wrong.  I checked all of the national news outlets online and found out that the damage from the explosion had been contained and that everyone was accounted for.  There was no reason that you shouldn’t have come home.  I tried your cell a couple of times before I really started to panic. And when you didn’t answer after two hours, I put the plan into motion.  I called Thea first and told her what was going on.  I made arrangements for Arti and I to fly out to her, packed as much as I could carry, and took off.”

“And you haven’t gone back? Either to see Artemis or to our house?”

She shook her head, “No. No, I promised you that I wouldn’t go back without you.  That was the deal that we made.”

He was quiet for a long moment and Felicity watched him, taking in his profile.  

“I’m sorry.  Whatever it is that we’re running from, it’s keeping you from our daughter.  From our home and your life.”

“Oliver, this isn’t your fault.”

“Isn’t it?  If I’d just left you alone then –“

She squeezed his hand hard and he glanced at her.

“Hey.  Don’t do that.  This isn’t your fault.  And even if you hadn’t pursued me, something would’ve brought us together, Oliver. We’re Marked.  One way or another, we would’ve found our way together.  It was inevitable.  And I don’t regret a single moment of the life that we’ve had so far.”

They’re two of a kind, my husband and my daughter.  I see them together and I think that she is his mirror image.  She has my eyes and she’s inherited a propensity for babbling that very clearly came from me but everything else about Artemis is her father.  From her wild, adventurous spirit to her kind, compassionate little soul.  She and Oliver are two peas in a pod and sometimes I can’t believe that they belong to me.

Oliver sighed, “I know that my memories of us aren’t there, but there’s this feeling that comes over me when I look at you.  It’s like a magnet in my chest that’s inexplicably drawn to you.  Is that what it’s like for you?”

“Sort of,” she grinned, “I’ve always described it as an invisible string that tethers me to you. It gets shorter and shorter as the years pass.”

She leaned into him and set her head on his shoulder.

“God, I hope that this is temporary.”

“It has to be.  You remembered Arti.  You’ll remember everything else eventually.  Give it time.”

She could only pray that what she’d said was true.  She needed him to come back to her.  She needed him to stand by her so that they could take down the League.  Because until Malcolm and Ra’s Al Ghul were out of the picture, their family would never be safe.

“I’d like to see the photos you have.”

“Of course.”

Felicity stood and tugged on Oliver’s hand.  He rose to his feet, towering over her, and she was in no way intimidated by the way he imposed on her personal space.  She felt a spike of electricity shoot through her.  Heat flooded her belly, making her shift restlessly.  There was never a lack of attraction between them.

She took a step back, putting distance between them in the hope that it would take the edge off of the longing that she felt being near him.  Her desire for him, for the feel of his fingers on her skin and his lips on hers, ran rampant through her.  

“Felicity, wa –“

Her foot caught on an uplifted root and she stumbled.  She would’ve fallen flat on her ass if Oliver’s arm hadn’t shot out to catch her. She was suddenly pressed against the hard wall of his chest.  Every inch of her body was touching some part of him and that heat she’d felt earlier blossomed into an inferno.  The hand that wasn’t warming the small of her back slid along her neck, tangling in her hair. If she lifted her chin even an inch, she could kiss him.  She bit into her lip hard.

“I can’t wait to remember you, love.”

She flushed, need cascading over her in a powerful wave.

She sighed.

“What’s wrong?”

She shrugged, “Nothing. Everything.  I don’t understand why we’re stilling doing this, Oliver.  I told you we could stop.  That it wasn’t a big deal anymore.  I’m over this whole trying-to-find-out-who-I-am thing.”

“And I know you well enough to know that you don’t mean that, Felicity.  At all.”

She sighed again, leaning out of the window slightly and inhaling the chilly air.  It didn’t help to clear her head as she’d hoped, not entirely.

“Maybe Thea is wrong.  Maybe my mother has nothing to do with the Mark.”

The hand on her knee flexed, his fingers applying gentle pressure to her denim covered flesh, and Felicity glanced at her husband.  Even though his eyes were shielded by dark sunglasses, she knew that they’d convey his concern.  Concern because she’s lost her damn mind, she thought darkly.  She shook her head.

“But it’s too much of a coincidence, right?  Every single one of the Marked that have reached out to me through the site are in the same position.  Each of them lost their mother as she was giving birth to them. That’s over forty people now, Oliver. Forty!  Too many for it to be a coincidence which means that the woman who raised me cannot possibly be my biological mother!”

One corner of his mouth ticked up in amusement and she knew that it wasn’t directed at her minor freak-out, not necessarily. She knew she had developed a tendency to ramble.  She took a deep breath.

“I’m not crazy, am I?  This whole search isn’t fruitless, is it?”

She tugged his hand free of her knee and laced her fingers with his.  Oliver squeezed her hand reassuringly.

“You’re not crazy, baby.  And yes.  Forty people… it’s too many to be a coincidence.  It would make sense that that fact is what connects all of the Marked that you’ve encountered.  Especially given that it’s literally the only commonality between all of us.”

Even after months of listening to her doubt-filled rambles, Oliver’s belief in Thea’s lead had never wavered.  And whenever Felicity decided that she was ready to give up and go home, his words encouraged her to keep searching.  

“I miss Yoda,” she mumbled, “And our house and our bed.”

“Yoda is fine.  Tommy won’t let anything happen to him, Felicity.  Besides, that damn cat has a mind of his own.  He can take care of himself.”

Felicity grinned at that.  It was true.  The little guy was resilient and too curious for his own good.  But as she thought about how much she missed him, an image appeared unbidden in her mind.  It was a memory of the night that she was attacked, one that she had relived over and over with the hope that she would somehow understand what had happened to her. She had seen him tucked away beneath the bed.  She’d seen him watching her with large, round eyes and somewhere in the back of her mind she’d heard a voice calling out to her, urging her to get up.  Urging her to take the object that he’d slid across the floor toward her near-lifeless fingers.  An object that she hadn’t remembered until that moment.

She gasped softly, her free hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“Felicity?  What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Yoda.”

“What about him?  What happened?”

Felicity shook her head as she tried to make sense of the images racing through her mind.

“The night that I was attacked,” she began, “Yoda, he – I –“

Oliver steered the truck to the side of the road.  They were still far enough from town that traffic was light and the particular stretch of blacktop they were traveling along was framed on either side by open fields.  She heard him unbuckle his seatbelt, heard his door open and close, but it wasn’t until he was opening her door and lifting her trembling hands from her lap that she realized he had moved.

“What are we doing?  Why’d we stop?” she asked a little dazedly.

Oliver pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.  His gaze was intent as he gripped both of her hands.  There was a determination in his expression that she rarely saw from him.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t typically a decisive man.  When her husband wanted something, when there was something that he thought that he should have, he went after it with confidence.  Something like the way he had hunted her down simply because they were Marked and he thought – not that she didn’t feel the same way now – that they were destined to be together.  But the look in his eyes at that moment was one of intense resolve and it was something Felicity wasn’t used to seeing.  And certainly not directed at her.

“What do you remember from that night, Felicity?”

Her brain took a moment to play catch up.

Oliver had only once asked her about the night that she’d been attacked.  It had been nearly a year since the night a madman had broken into their home and tried to kill her.  And in that time, he’d only ever brought it up once.  The night she’d finally come to in the hospital.  And when she’d told him that she couldn’t remember much of what had happened, Oliver had assured her that he and Tommy would take care of it.  She realized as she sat there, her hands cradled in Oliver’s while he loomed over her in the open door of the truck, that she had – unbelievably – never brought it up again.  She’d never asked after the man who’d hurt her.  Never questioned whether he and Tommy had found him.  It was like she’d forgotten all about it.

Felicity started to shake her head, to tell Oliver that it was stupid – what she’d thought she heard – but a shot of electricity raced up her arm, making her squeak in surprise.  Her fingers tingled.

“Felicity?”

Her heart jumped in her chest, skipping a handful of beats before slamming into overdrive.  She stared down at their intertwined fingers.

“Yoda was under the bed that night.  I was lying on the floor, he’d pinned me there and – and he’d hit my head a couple of times… and I looked over and Yoda was just sitting there, staring.  Like – like he was waiting for me to do something.  But I couldn’t move.  That man he – his hands were twisted in my hair and it was like he was trying to crush my skull.”

She shuddered.  Oliver shifted closer in response, his large body shielding her from the world outside of the truck, and the warmth that radiated off of him soothed her racing heart.

“I heard someone.  In my head.  At least, I thought I did.  It was like Yoda was talking to me.”

Oliver frowned, “What did he say?”

It didn’t escape her notice that Oliver didn’t bat an eye at the fact that she was convinced that their cat had actually been communicating with her.  She’d come back to that.

“He… he wanted me to get up.  And he pushed something into my hand.  A weapon.”

Oliver drew a sharp breath, his hold on her fingers becoming suddenly painful, and she tried to pull away.

“What kind of weapon?”

Felicity pulled against his hold.  She wasn’t sure where the desperation in Oliver’s tone was coming from but it sent her into a panic.  She struggled.

“I don’t know!  I don’t know what it was, Oliver, but it worked!  You’re hurting me!”

He released her immediately, disgust with himself coloring his expression, and he stumbled away.  He shoved his hands into his hair, pacing the length of the truck.

Felicity climbed out and took a step toward him, waiting until he turned back to her until she closed the distance between them.  She placed her hand on his chest, over his heart, and felt the muscle hammering beneath her palm.

“Oliver, what’s going on?”

He laid his hand over hers where it remained on his chest.

“I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to hurt you.  Are you alright?”

She nodded, “I’m fine.  But you’re scaring me.  What’s going on?  Does this have something to do with your work?  I thought you couldn’t tell me anything, I thought –“

“Ask me about the weapon,” he breathed suddenly, leaning in until his forehead touched hers.  He closed his eyes.

“What?”

“I won’t lie to you.  Ask me about the weapon.”

Confusion spiked hot in her gut, mixed with a hell of a lot of curiosity, but she didn’t get the chance to do as Oliver requested.  The sound of his ringing phone cut through the otherwise silent space around them and the pounding bass of some rock song told her exactly who was calling.  Felicity sighed.

“It’s Tommy.  You should answer that.  You know he won’t stop calling.”

She stepped away, not getting far before Oliver’s hand caught her by the elbow.

“I won’t lie to you.”

She stood for a long moment, rooted to the spot on the side of the road, and watched as he drew his phone from his pocket.  Whatever it was that had happened the night she was attacked, Oliver knew more than he’d ever let on.  And he was promising her the truth.  He was promising her answers.  But that meant she had to find the right questions to ask.

*          *          *

“I almost told her!” he growled, whirling on his brother and aiming a well-timed right hook at his head.

Tommy ducked and weaved, avoiding taking a blow with practiced ease.

“You wanted to?”

“More than anything.”

Oliver struck out again, his fist ghosting just past the side of his brother’s head, before he danced around him. 

“You can’t tell her, Ollie,” Sara called from the side of the ring, “You’re going to get her killed.  And, not that I’ve actually met your wife or anything, but I like her.  She keeps you sane.  More than that, if she dies, well… you know, you do, too.”

Oliver grunted and dodged a return blow from Tommy.

“Thank you, Sara, I know that.”

She sighed, stepping onto the mat and coming between the two of them.

“I’m just saying that she’s in enough danger as it is.  They attacked her in your house, Oliver.  It was obviously planned.  They waited until you were called away and they attacked while she was vulnerable.  You’re lucky she survived at all.  You can’t tell her what you are, you can’t tell her any of it.  Besides, it’s against the rules.”

He dropped his stance and looked down at the petite blonde who – in a way he had never really considered – looked a little like his wife.

“Again, I’m well aware.”

Sara’s fists landed on her hips as she glared at him challengingly.

“Okay, so what the hell are you going to do about it?”

His growl of frustration echoed in the dimly lit space where they trained.  He tore the gloves from his hands with his teeth, tossing them to the mat.  He turned his back on his brother and his friend.

“I don’t know!  I promised Felicity that I wouldn’t lie to her.  If she asks about my cosaint, hell if she asks about that damned cat, I’ll tell her whatever she wants to know.  I can’t keep hiding things from her,” he shouted, “She is my wife, my match, she knows me better than anyone and I can’t keep hiding from her.  She knows that something’s wrong.  She remembers part of the attack.  The more it comes back to her, the more pieces she starts stringing together, the more questions she’ll have.  Felicity is inquisitive by nature, always has been, and if she gets her head wrapped around finding out what happened to her, I’ll have to tell her everything.”

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder.  Tommy was at his back, supporting him without a word, and Oliver knew that no matter where things went with Felicity, his brother would always be there.

*          *          *

Felicity sat at the small table in their hotel room with her laptop propped open and her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear.

“Yes, hi.  I’m trying to reach Meredith Walker.  This is the last known address that I have for her and –“

The woman on the other end cut her off before she could finish.  She wasn’t surprised.  It was the fourth call in a row and she was having no luck.

She sighed, “No, no, that’s okay, I understand.  Thank you.  Sorry to bother you.”

Felicity disconnected the call.

She’d been holed up in the modest hotel room for nearly forty-eight hours.  Oliver had taken Tommy’s call and, after getting her checked in to the nearest (cleanest) hotel they could find, he’d gone off to another assignment.  She hadn’t argued or complained.  She never did.   But there had been something different in the way that they had said goodbye.  There’d been a niggling of fear bouncing around in her skull as she’d held onto Oliver just a little longer than normal.  And she’d made him promise.  She’d made him promise that he would come back to her.  And even though he’d promised that he would, she still couldn’t fight the worry that churned her stomach.

She glanced at the face of her watch again.  He’d said he’d be gone for two days, max, and he only had three hours to go in order to meet the deadline.

Felicity picked up her phone again and dialed Thea.

“Hey, there you are!  I was expecting a call a few hours ago!  Didn’t you get my email?” her friend asked by way of greeting.

“No, sorry, I’ve been researching something else and I must’ve missed it.  Another one?”

“Haslett and Monte Carlo.”

“Monte Carlo, really?  Huh.  Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have a match in some exotic locale.  Good excuse for a vacation, right?”

Thea laughed, “Absolutely.  But hey, I wouldn’t want to be Marked if all I got out of it was a cool vacation spot.”

“How many does that put us at this week?” Felicity asked, moving from the table to the bed, computer resting in her lap as she sat cross-legged in the middle of the mattress.

Thea confirmed the number for her, a staggering six matches in just four days, and Felicity shook her head in amazement.  In the three years since they’d built the website and began monitoring the submissions, they’d never had so many Marked pairs find one another in such a short amount of time.  The total number of the Marked that they’d been able to connect had jumped from forty-four to fifty-six in under a week. 

“How are you?  How’s the trip?”

Thea’s question drew her back to the moment and Felicity found herself shrugging.

“It’s okay.  It’s been kind of… kind of pointless, I guess.  A lot of searching and gallivanting and we haven’t really gotten anywhere.”

She hadn’t actually told Thea what it was that she and Oliver were searching for.  As far as her friend knew, they were on the hunt for someone from Oliver’s past and they had very little to go off of.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?  I can do some online digging, make some calls for you,” Thea offered.

“I appreciate the offer, but no.  Oliver doesn’t want to get anyone else involved.  Besides, he’s off working at the moment so I’ve got plenty of time on my hands to research.  He should be getting back any minute now, actually, so we’ll be heading out first thing in the morning.”

She’d barely gotten the words out when the door swung open and Oliver and Tommy came stumbling in. 

She forced herself to stay calm even as she caught sight of the blood on Oliver’s shirt and the ashen color of his face.

“Speak of.  Oliver just walked in.  I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?  Text me if anything comes up.”

“Sure thing.  Have a good one, Felicity.”

“You, too.”

Felicity threw the phone down on her bed and scrambled across the room, barely catching Oliver’s weight against her as Tommy kicked the door closed.  She slipped an arm around her husband’s waist and together, she and Tommy managed to get him into the small bathroom.

“Oliver, what happened?” she asked, blinking back sudden tears.

“I’m fine.”

She shook her head and cast an angry glare at Tommy.

“What the hell happened to him?  And why didn’t you take him to a doctor?” she snapped.

Tommy opened his mouth to argue but Oliver stopped him.

“I’m fine, Felicity, really.”

His voice was strained, no doubt a result of the pain she was sure he felt and Felicity sighed, reaching for the hem of his t-shirt and helping to pull it over his head.  Her fingers skimmed over his abdomen, over the exact patch of skin that his blood-stained shirt had been covering, and she froze.  There was barely a scratch marring his already scarred flesh.

“I don’t – I don’t get it.  Are you okay?  You were bleeding.  A lot. And – and it’s still warm, Oliver. The blood on your t-shirt is still warm.”

He leaned against the bathroom sink.  The look he exchanged with Tommy sent a cold chill skittering up her spine and when she turned to face her brother-in-law, he backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Felicity.”

Oliver’s hand touched her hip, tugging her gently toward him.  She braced herself against his chest.  He looked down at her, his expression guarded, and she knew that there was something he wasn’t telling her.  Something that he seemed to be having trouble with.  They’d been here before.  There’d always been one secret between them, one thing that Oliver had never been able to talk to her about, and that same thing was what had brought him home to her injured yet again.

“Let me guess?  You can’t tell me, right?  It’s work related so we can’t talk about it.”

He sighed heavily and held her tighter when she tried to back away.

“Felicity, don’t.  Don’t run.  I – I want to –“

He choked on the words and swallowed hard, his fingers flexing against her hip.

“I’ll tell you.  I’ll tell you everything.”

“When, Oliver?”

Oliver chuckled, shaking his head, and dug into his breakfast.

She sat across from him, coffee mug clutched in between both hands, and let her own food grow cold as she watched him.

The vice that had been clamped around her heart for nearly a year hadn’t lessened.  The man across from her was most definitely her husband.  In appearance, in mood, in manner.  He was her Oliver but at the same time, he wasn’t.  Because he couldn’t remember her.  He couldn’t remember their years together, the words they’d spoken, the vows they’d exchanged, the family that they’d had.

A new pain clutched her heart and Felicity blinked tears from her eyes.

 Their little girl was safe with Thea.  She would be protected by her aunt.  But Oliver didn’t know that she existed, he didn’t know that he was a father.  He had no idea that their daughter had been the catalyst for the battle that they were currently embedded in.  The daughter of an angel and a human with angelic origins, Artemis Queen was destined for greatness before she was even born.

 We got married today.  I am officially Felicity Meghan Queen and it feels… incredible.  For the first time in my life, I feel free.  I’ve tied myself to this man, this man who bears my Mark, and instead of being tethered, I’m free.  I don’t know how to explain it.  It just is.

 She left Oliver for just a moment to take a quick shower and dress in the cabin’s small bathroom.  When she returned, he was where she’d left him at the table.  Bás sat on the smooth wooden surface.  It vibrated with barely restrained energy.

 “How did you end up with this?”

 He asked the question before she’d even stepped fully into the room.

 “You left it with me.  To protect me.  Just like you left me Yoda.”

 He blinked up at her when she was beside him.

 “Yoda?”

 “Little orange furball?  Oddly… intuitive for a cat?”

 A corner of his mouth ticked up in a grin and a flutter of excitement danced around in her stomach.  Felicity squashed it, sitting back down across from him.  She ran her finger over the length of the weapon and its power settled.

 “You named him Yoda?  Man, I’d love to be able to remember how he reacted to that.”

 Felicity canted her head, waiting for Oliver to say more.  He didn’t.

 “Does Tommy know about you?”

 For some reason, the question caught her off-guard.

 “Of course he does.  He’s your brother.”

 Oliver shrugged, “And?”

 “And he’s your best friend.  You don’t keep secrets from Tommy.  We don’t.  He’s family.”

 He stared at her, his expression blank.  His electric blue eyes stayed glued to her face and Felicity stared right back.  She willed him to see something in her that would help him remember.

 “Does he know you’re here?”

 “Yes.”

 “When was the last time that he checked on you?”

She shrugged, “He hasn’t.  He isn’t supposed to know where I am.  He’s feigning ignorance to keep me safe.”

“Safe from what, exactly?” Oliver asked, “Who are you running from?”

Felicity sighed, thinking back to their first meeting.  To a time when she was always running.  When she’d run from Cooper and straight into Oliver.  Things had been so much easier then.  At least then she’d understood the threat.

“If I knew, I’d be happy to tell you.  But, sadly, I have no idea.  I told you, I ran because you didn’t come home.  You – you always come home, Oliver, and when you didn’t… I knew that I had to go.  I had to get out.”

 “So you just disappeared?  All on your own?”

 Her gaze dropped to the table top that separated them as a knot formed in her chest.  She clasped her hands together where they rested in her lap.

 “I have a lot of experience being on my own.  I know how to run.  How to protect myself.”

 He let the subject drop, for which she was grateful, and got up from the table.

 Her eyes followed him as he navigated the cramped space she’d been calling home.  His gaze was critical as he looked around and Felicity was thankful that there wasn’t anything personal for him to find.  Everything of importance was stored on an encrypted laptop that was tucked between stacks of clothing in the wardrobe.  That laptop was the only place that housed any evidence of their daughter, of the life that they’d brought into the world, and just thinking of Artemis caused a lump to form in her throat.

The house is secluded, set back on a long gravel drive, surrounded by tall pine trees.  It’s small inside but not too small.  It’s perfect for Oliver and I.  And the view… the view from the backyard is the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen. When he told me he wanted to live so far north, I laughed at him.  Massachusetts was the furthest north of the Mason-Dixon that I’d ever lived, the furthest east, of the Mississippi.  I’d been happy in the southwest.  As far from my shitty past as possible.

They were at a standstill.  Oliver was on the other side of the room, arms crossed over his broad chest, standing silently as he watched her.  She remained in her chair at the table, posture mirroring his with her arms crossed over her chest.  He hadn’t said anything after he’d finished surveying her space and Felicity couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad.

She didn’t know what the next step was.  She couldn’t work through how much she could tell him.  He wouldn’t hurt her, he wouldn’t hurt Arti, but she had no way of knowing if he’d leave her again.  

The heat and humidity of the late afternoon filled their small cabin.  They were stretched out on their sofa, Oliver’s head resting in her lap, both of them in a state of semi-undress.  She’d barely forced herself to don a thin tank-top and cotton panties as the day’s temperature had risen.  Two days after being discharged from the hospital and they’d hardly left the house. Now, after doing nothing beyond reading and checking on the website and playing with Yoda, she sat with her bare feet propped on the coffee table while Oliver dozed next to her.

“Babe?”

“Hmm?”

“Why wings?”

It was a question she had wanted to ask for as long as she’d known him.  And she had. Repeatedly.  But he had always found a way to avoid answering.  It was always, she thought, the same tactic used to distract her.  She smirked, her face heating further as she remembered the last time she’d thought to ask about the tattoo.  She’d ended up naked and sweaty and too damn tired to remember what they’d been talking about or to protest at his ploy.  Not that she would’ve.  Sex with her husband was her favorite kind of distraction.

He sighed, “It doesn’t matter, Felicity. They’re just… they don’t mean anything.”

She felt the lie as deeply as she heard it. The muscles in his back tensed beneath her fingers and she paused in her ministrations.

If he hadn’t had her pinned in place with the weight of his body, she would’ve shoved to her feet and strode away from him. Instead, she slid her hand to his shoulder and pinched a little harder than necessary.  

She had had so many questions in the hospital, questions that had been left unanswered.  She knew that it was partly her fault.  He had returned to her room with anger pouring off of him and she had let it sway her.  He had collapsed into the chair at her bedside that night, clasped both of her hands in his, and rested his forehead against them where they lay near her hip. Whatever was bothering him, she could sense that it was serious and what she needed him to tell her could wait. At least for a little while.  At least until she was home.

She had given him enough time.

“You’re hiding something.  I want to know what it is.  I want you to tell me.”

He shifted around until he was lying on his back and she was looking down into his captivating blue eyes.  They were haunted as he stared up at her.

“I heard you, you know,” she confessed, “You and Tommy.  I heard you talking about the attack.  You sounded like you know him, Oliver.  Like the man who attacked me was familiar to you.  So what the hell aren’t you telling me?  Does this have something to do with your work?  Is he – is he… I don’t know because I don’t even know what you do!”

He sat up and tried to draw her into his side but she pulled away.

“I want the truth, Oliver.  Now.”

“Felicity…”

“No, Oliver.  The truth. And you know that I’ll know if you’re lying.”

He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face.  Felicity forced herself to keep her eyes above his shoulders.  They’d been married long enough that she shouldn’t still melt a little at the sight of his bare chest.  She shouldn’t, but she did.

“I have an idea of who it was,” he told her, “I don’t know for sure.  Tommy is – Tommy is looking into it.”

“Who do you think he is?”

“A criminal.  That’s all you need to know.”

She bit the inside of her cheek.

“Quit being evasive, Oliver.  Tell me what you know.”

He shook his head, frustrated, and turned away from her.  

Her heart was in her throat as she waited for his explanation.  Over the course of their relationship they’d never really had secrets.  She was an open book, her mind and her heart trusting him from the first moment without question.  Before Oliver, she had locked her secrets in a dark corner of her soul, unwilling to give anyone even a glimpse of who she really was.  But Oliver knew.  He saw her and from the very beginning, she had felt compelled to be completely honest with him.

Felicity understood that there were things that he couldn’t tell her, things about his job that he hadn’t been willing to share. She had assumed that it was dangerous, the work that he and Tommy did, and that that was his reason for keeping it from her.  And she had been willing to accept that – she had accepted it for years – but that had been before.

His work had always been the one topic that he deviated from, the one thing he kept her separate from, and she’d allowed it. She’d allowed it because the rest of him – his thoughts and emotions, his hidden desires – had all been laid open for her.  She’d given him leeway with the topic of his assignments for a long time.  Too long, it seemed.  And while she had always wondered here and there about what exactly he did, she’d never been overcome with a need to ask him about it.  At least until she’d felt him holding back, until her husband had lied outright to her.

“Tell me about your job.”

He hesitated.

“Oliver, please, tell me.”

He made a noise, something between a groan and a growl, and to Felicity, it sounded pained.  He shoved to his feet and paced away from her.  He didn’t go far and she drew her knees to her chest, watching him prowl the length of their small living space.

“We protect people.  Tommy and I.  Our team.”

“Like a security detail?  Bodyguards?”

He shrugged, “In a way.”

“Who do you work for?”

She watched as he took a breath, saw the way his chest rose and fell, and the next words he spoke seemed to be wrenched from his throat.

“I can’t.  I can’t, love.”

Felicity didn’t understand.  From where she sat, it looked as if every breath that Oliver took pained him.  His mouth was set in a hard line, his hands fisted at his sides.  It was as if something inside of him was trying to stem the flow of his words and she unfurled from her place on the sofa, padding across the room until she was standing right in front of him.  Oliver eyed her warily as she approached.

“You can, Oliver.  You can tell me anything.  What’s going on?”

She placed her open palm against his chest and she felt his muscles jump under her touch.  He sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes wide, and shook his head.

“Felicity, please, don’t.  I – I can’t.”

He was struggling, fighting his urge to tell her the truth, knowing that he should.  She had never seen him so distressed.  It was clear that withholding information from her was not what he wanted, that it was physically hurting him, but something was stopping him.

“Why?  Why can’t you tell me?”

“It’s too dangerous.  Please.”

She slid her hand from his chest to his waist, winding both arms around him, and rested her forehead against his too-warm skin.

“Okay, okay,” she whispered, feeling him relax slowly in her embrace, “But I don’t like this.  I don’t like being lied to.”

“I’m sorry.  I hate that I can’t tell you but I –“

He ground his teeth together in a way that made Felicity’s jaw ache.  She brushed her fingertips soothingly along his spine.

“Just promise me that - when it’s safe - you’ll tell me.”

His chest expanded on a sigh and his chin settled on top of her head.  His arms came around her, gathering her close.

“I’ll tell you, Felicity.  When the time comes, I’ll tell you.”

*          *          *

She sat on the small porch that Oliver had built on the back of their cabin the first summer they’d lived there.  She had fallen in love with the place the moment she’d stepped foot through the door but the wilderness around her had called to her and the house hadn’t had anything in the way of outdoor living space when they’d moved in.  It hadn’t taken much prodding on her part for Oliver to bestow her with the porch and the comfortable patio chairs.

“Yeah, Thea, I got the file.”

She was saying, only half-listening to her friend and colleague as she spoke.  Oliver was out in the backyard, dragging the lawnmower from the shed and rummaging around for a can of gasoline.  They hadn’t talked much since their conversation earlier in the day.  Tension still ran thickly between them and she hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that he was withdrawn and quiet.  She needed to know the truth.  She needed to know why Oliver’s job had put her life in danger. But she wasn’t willing to damage him to get answers.  He’d clearly been shaken by her prodding.

“Felicity?  Hey, are you listening?”

She shook her head, forcing her eyes away from her husband.

“I’m sorry, Thea.  What were you saying?”

Thea sighed, “Oliver’s there isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Is he shirtless?”’

Felicity glanced up at him again.  He was most definitely shirtless.  But that hadn’t been why she was distracted.  It was why she was now, she thought, eyeing him as he bent to pull the choke for the lawnmower.

“Maybe.”

Thea laughed.

“Do I need to let you go?” she teased, “I can call back later.  Or you can call me.  When you’re a little less… distracted.”

Felicity rolled her eyes, “It’s fine, Thea.  What were you saying?”

She got to her feet and made her way inside, taking in the new information that Thea was giving her.  Her colleague had tracked down three more of the Marked and had been able to get enough information from them to determine that they fit the pattern.  They’d each lost their biological mother in childbirth.  

“I was thinking, most of the people on the site are more comfortable talking to you than anyone else.  You’ve been the mediator since day one.  I wonder how many of them would be willing to at least confirm for us if their mothers died when they were born.  You could post a master comment and just ask people to contact you personally if they didn’t want the information in a public post on the site.  It would give us more to go on.”

Felicity nodded, pouring a glass of orange juice for herself and carrying it to the living room.  She settled in her desk chair and shooed Yoda from his spot on top of her closed laptop.  He gave her his usually attitude at being dismissed but she ran her hand across his back, making his tail swish before he hopped to the floor.

“It’s a good idea.  I’ll see what I can find out.”

She was met with silence from Thea and for some reason, the lack of follow-up caused a knot to form in her stomach.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Felicity?”

She nodded, “Sure.”

“You’ve never really told me about your sister.  I know you’re doing all of this for her, because you feel like the Mark is the reason that she died… but what happened to her, Felicity?”

Felicity sighed, sipping her juice, and tucked her feet beneath her.  She had lied to Thea the first time she’d met her.  It had been a lie she’d built on, one she hadn’t intended to tell but that she couldn’t back out of.  Telling Thea the truth had crossed her mind.  She’d mulled it over a dozen times in the two years that they’d been friends. And it wasn’t that she didn’t trust her, she did.  But admitting that she and Oliver were Marked would open the door for more questions than Felicity was willing to answer.

“She – she died after her match killed himself. It was like… it was like she couldn’t live without him.  Like it wasn’t physically possible for her to go on with her life after he was gone.”

It was a story that Felicity had heard over and over, words she’d read on her computer screen, testimonials from others who had lost someone close to them.  Someone who was Marked.  It was another mystery that they’d yet to unravel.  What was it about being Marked that tied two people together so severely that they literally couldn’t live without each other?  Is that what would happen to her if she lost Oliver?  If he died, would she find a way to take her own life or would some mysterious illness take her?  The thought caused goose bumps to erupt along her arms and she shuddered.

“How old was she?”

Felicity worried her lip between her teeth and spit out yet another lie.

“Seventeen.  She was – she was beside herself when she lost him.”

It couldn’t be helped.  Her eyes wandered to the French doors at the back of the house. She could see Oliver out in the yard, the late evening sun beginning to set behind the trees, sweat coating his naked chest and arms.  Her heart thudded rapidly against her sternum as she plagued herself with thoughts of losing him.

“I’m sorry, Felicity,” Thea said softly, “It must’ve been horrible.  But I… you’ve never told me, did your mom die during childbirth?”

Felicity started, cursing internally, and let her head fall against the back of the couch.  She closed her eyes.  The lie she’d built was getting out of control.

“Yes.”

She should’ve told her no.  She should’ve let Thea know that her theory about the birth mothers was wrong, that it couldn’t possibly be true, but there was a small, niggling thought at the back of Felicity’s mind that pushed her to lie about this. Because that feeling was telling her that it wasn’t a lie.  Her mother must have died, her biological mother, but that thought left her with a million questions.  Had the life she’d known really been a lie?  And if so, who was the woman who raised her?

“Listen, Thea, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

She said a quick goodbye before she dropped her phone on the coffee table.  Padding out to the porch again, she leaned against the rail and waited for Oliver to notice her there.  When he did, he stopped, cutting the motor on the lawnmower and crossed the yard to reach her.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

He took her into his arms and she didn’t protest at the dampness of his skin.

“What’s wrong?”

She sighed, looking up into the deep blue eyes she fell headlong into the first time they met.  She hadn’t yet told him about Thea’s discovery.  She hadn’t had the chance before she was attacked and after – after she had been more concerned with finding out what he knew about the man who had nearly killed her.

“Oliver, how did your mother die?”

He wasn’t fazed by the question.  He shrugged and gave her an honest answer, “When I was born.  Complications of some kind.  Why?”

She dropped her forehead against his chest and sucked air sharply into her lungs.

“Thea… Thea thinks she’s figured out a common denominator for the Marked.  Almost every person that we’ve discovered with the Mark has lost their mother during childbirth.  We haven’t confirmed it with everyone but there’s a good percentage of the group that we know fit in that category.”

“But you don’t.”

She nodded, “I know.”

“Felicity, if that’s true, if being Marked is a birthright only of those whose mothers died giving birth to them, then why would you –“

He slipped his finger beneath her chin and lifted her face away from his chest.  She saw the understanding in his eyes, saw the truth register there.

“Your mother –“

“Apparently isn’t my actual mother.”

His hold on her tightened and he lifted her off of her feet, settling her on the porch rail, and stepped between her knees.

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know.  I was adopted, maybe?  But she never… no one ever said anything.  And my grandmother was around a lot when I was really young.  Why wouldn’t they have told me?”

“Where is your mother now?”

“Boston, I guess.  I don’t know.  It’s been years since I’ve talked to her.  Since I – since I ran.”

Oliver’s hands were on her waist, his fingers skimming across the soft skin beneath the hem of her tank-top.  She focused on the little twinges of electricity that seemed to emanate between them, allowing the rhythm he’d chosen to calm her nerves.

“We can go looking for her,” he told her, “If that’s what you need.  If you need to know what happened, who she is, we can find her.”

Felicity wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him closer.  She set her chin on his shoulder, pressing her face into his neck.  She let the warmth of his body blanket her.

“I think… I need to know, Oliver.  I need to know where I came from.”

She had spent years wondering about her mother, about how the woman who had given birth to her could stand by while her daughter was treated as if she was worthless.  As if her life meant nothing.  Because that was what it had been like.  Her mom had kept a rotation of men in her life, none of them any better than the last, and they had treated Felicity like a stray.  And as she had gotten older, it had only gotten worse. Which was why she’d run.

“Felicity, look at me.”

She did as he requested, her heart beating out an uneven staccato in her chest.  Just thinking about her childhood made her stomach roil.

“You got yourself out,” he reminded her, “You saved yourself.  You are the strongest person that I know, love.  Your mom can’t hurt you anymore.”

She scoffed.

“That woman isn’t my mother, apparently, so who knows what kind of damage she’ll inflict when she finally tells me the truth. Because like it or not, she’s going to. And I don’t know how strong I am. I mean, whoever attacked me the other day proved that I’m not as strong as you think I am.”

He tangled his fingers in her hair, careful of her injuries, and brushed his lips across her forehead.

“He could’ve killed you.  He almost did.  But you got away.”

She wasn’t exactly sure how that had happened actually.  Her memory of that night was still fuzzy.  She had a vague recollection of the fear she’d felt and the bruises on her throat were proof that her life had certainly been threatened.  But how she’d managed to escape her attacker, she didn’t know.

A vivid image of Yoda sitting beneath their bed, his large eyes bright in the darkness, struck her suddenly.  He had looked at her as if to say, what are you waiting for, Mom?  Get up.  But the image didn’t clarify anything.  Her brain was too muddled.  She did remember something else, another detail that she wondered if she’d made up.  She remembered an odd tingling sensation that had burst in her palm, like she’d grabbed a live wire, and the phantom feeling caused her fingers to flex against Oliver’s chest.  She shook her head, dislodging the headache she’d given herself trying to bring the memories back, and looked up at her husband.

“Are you done out here?”

He was still shirtless – something she always appreciated – and a thin layer of sweat coated his skin.  Her thighs where warm where he stood between them.  The athletic shorts he wore hung low on his hips, giving her a glimpse of the trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband. Heat spiked inside of her.  She let her fingers slid over his skin, down the smooth planes of his chest and over the ridges of his abdomen, and peppered kisses across his collarbone.

The hand on her hip flexed, fingers digging into her flesh, and he sighed heavily.

Their argument from that morning, all talk of her mother and the man who had attacked her where pushed aside.  She didn’t want to think about anything anymore.  The man she’d married was utterly distracting and, at that very moment, a distraction was exactly what Felicity needed.  She wrapped her legs around his waist and he lifted her into his arms.

“We can start looking tomorrow.”

She nuzzled her nose into the crook of his neck and nipped at his Adam’s apple.  Her mind was focused on one thing and one thing only.

“Looking for what?” she muttered.

Oliver chuckled, hoisting her higher, and sealed his mouth to hers.

A/N: I feel like I might be losing everyone with this story … But I promise you that answers are coming!  Bear with me! All those questions about Oliver and what he does (if it isn’t sort of obvious) will be answered soon, both for you as the reader and for Felicity!  She isn’t in the dark forever, I swear.

He sighed, “You know I can’t tell you.  Felicity, I –“

“I know,” she shook her head, “I know.  It’s fine.”

He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.  The stubble along his jaw abraded her skin.

“It isn’t.  You know I don’t want to leave you.”

For a year they had struggled to adapt to their new life together.  His job, his calling, continuously took him away from her and while she had told him repeatedly that she understood, she still dreaded every one of Tommy’s calls.  She hadn’t asked him exactly what it was that he did for a living.  She had made assumptions.  But she had never asked.  And Oliver had never been compelled to tell her.  At least, not in great detail.  She knew enough.  She knew that what he and Tommy did was legal and that they protected people.  That was where her knowledge of her partner’s career ended.

“I don’t want you to go.  But work is work, I understand that.  I’ve always understood, Oliver.  I’m not asking you to stay with me.  I wouldn’t.  But…”

“I know.  I just came home.  I’ll be back in a couple of days.  Three, tops.  I’m sorry, love.”

She smiled softly at the endearment and stretched across the table to kiss him.

“I love you.”

He grinned, a flicker of heat lighting his already luminous blue eyes, and her face flushed.  It felt as if they had been together for a lifetime, as if her world had come alive the moment he’d come into it, and even though she had been fearful of the intensity between them, she had learned to accept what fate had dealt her.  She was Marked and Oliver was her match.

“And I you, Felicity.”

She smirked, “When are you leaving?”

“A few hours.”

“Good.  Let’s go home.”

They had moved back east only weeks after they’d first met.  When Oliver had returned from an assignment to find her in a panic because her friends had vanished and the bar where she’d worked had been shut down overnight.  She’d explained to him what she’d learned about the Marked.  The deaths she had discovered.  The importance of the connection that they shared.  And he had assured her that she was safe.  That he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.  It hadn’t taken any more than that for her to know that Oliver was not only her match, he was her mate.  He was her destiny.

His arm was around her shoulders.  She tucked herself into his side, absorbing his warmth, and watched her breath mist in front of her.  The walk to the small home they shared was quiet.  Felicity had learned long ago to appreciate the quiet when he was with her.  Oliver wasn’t a talker.  Not like she was.  And more often than not, their time together was filled with a comfortable silence.

“You’ll stay inside while I’m gone?”

She shrugged out of her coat, hanging it in the closet in the entryway.  Turning to find him leaning against the closed front door, head down, hands tucked safely away in his pockets.

She sighed, “You know that I don’t like being a prisoner here, Oliver.”

“I know.”

“And I can take care of myself.  You’ve taught me enough to manage.”

“I know.”

She stepped up to him and slid her arms around his waist.  With her chin propped in the center of his chest, she looked up at him and sighed.

“But it worries the hell out of you, doesn’t it?  Leaving me behind?”

“You know that it does.”

She pressed up on her toes and found his mouth with hers.  She kissed him softly.

“I’ll stay inside.  But only because you asked nicely.  And because I know you’ll make it up to me later.”

The breath he released confirmed for her how anxious he was about leaving her.  It wasn’t the first time and she knew it wouldn’t be the last but as the months passed, she realized that Oliver was letting more of his worry for her show.  She wasn’t sure that she understood it, not entirely, because nothing had happened to her.  Nothing even remotely dangerous.  So she couldn’t be sure what spurred his concern.

She climbed into their bed, slipping beneath the soft grey and yellow quilt he’d bought for her all those months ago, and waited for him to join her.  When the bathroom light was extinguished and the door to the room securely shut, she stretched out on her side to face him.  He slid into his place beside her.  She let him pull her into his arms, throwing her leg across both of his and pillowing her head on his chest.  His fingers combed through the loose waves of her hair.

“You’ll tell me someday, won’t you?”

He needed no clarification, no further probing.  He knew what she was asking.

“When I can, Felicity.  When it’s safe.”

“That could be a long time from now.  It could be never.  There’s no way to know for sure.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t need to know, I guess.  I just – It’s a part of you.  Your job.  And it’s one of the few parts that I don’t know.  And you know I don’t like mysteries.  They bug me.”

She angled her face into his bare chest, her lips brushing the warm skin there.  Oliver’s hold on her tightened as he chuckled and she closed her eyes.

“Goodnight, Oliver.”

She felt the gentle kiss he pressed to the top of her head just as sleep threatened to pull her under.  He would be gone in the morning.

“Goodnight, love.”

*          *          *

When she woke the second morning without Oliver by her side it was to discover a thick layer of snow coating the world outside of her window.  She stood with a warm mug of coffee gripped tightly in both hands.  Fluffy white flakes continued to fall, obscuring her view of the street, and Yoda wound his way between her ankles.

Oliver had gifted her with the little tabby with the hope that she wouldn’t feel so alone when he was away.

“One more day, Yoda.”

She knew that it wasn’t a guarantee that he would be home but Oliver was good at trying to get back to her quickly.

Felicity crossed the room to sit at the desk she’d set up.  The cat followed, making himself comfortable atop a stack of books.  She powered up her laptop, sipping her coffee, and examined the corkboard that was mounted over her workstation.  There were dozens of photos pinned among the clutter of scrap paper.  Her search of the last few months.  Every piece of information she had been able to find online about the Marked.  Everything she’d been able to find to help the others.

She’d left Texas with a determination to unravel the mystery of the Marked.

She logged into her site and before she had a chance to scroll through any new posts, a message popped up in the corner of her screen.

Felicity dug her phone from beneath the piles of books and cat and dialed Thea’s number.

“Morning.  Everything okay?  What’s up?”

“A new post came in last night,” her friend explained quickly, the excitement in her voice evident, “I think we’ve found a match for Orlando.”

“Who?”

“Listed as Saint Louis.”

“Pictures?”

“Three.  Want me to send them to Orlando?”

“No, thanks, Thea.  I’ll take care of it.  How’s everything going there?”

She listened as her friend caught her up on the day to day, pulling up the post from Saint Louis at the same time.  Her printer came to life and she grabbed the sheet of paper it spit out.  The photo clearly showed a patch of dark skin – a foot from what she could tell – and an almost white scar vaguely shaped like an sunburst.  She pulled the photo of Orlando’s Mark from the board.  They were almost identical.

“Did you check, Felicity?”

She started at the sound of her name and nearly dropped her phone.  She’d all but forgotten Thea on the other end of the line.

“I’m looking at it right now.  Let me reach out to both of them and I’ll get back to you.”

She disconnected and pulled up her email.  Attaching the photos Saint Louis had provided, she shot off a quick email to Orlando.  When she had a response, she’d send Orlando’s photos to Saint Louis.  Hopefully, if they were right, another match would be made.  That would make ten.  Ten in as many months.  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

She did another quick scan of the site, finding a handful of additional posts that had come in overnight.  She clicked through the photos attached, printing them off and adding them to her board.  It was crowded with images of the Marked.  She received new ones almost daily.

“Felicity?”

She was up and out of her chair the moment she heard him speak her name.  She found Oliver and Tommy coming through the front door.  They were both moving on their own but Oliver’s boots where muddy and she was almost certain that the stains spattered across his t-shirt were blood.  It wasn’t the first time he’d returned from an assignment looking the worse for wear.        

He caught her to his chest when she threw herself into his arms.  She ignored the dampness of his coat and the moisture clinging to his hair.  Relief washed over her as it did every time he returned.  She worried about him when he was away but what she had told him before he’d left stood.  Work was work.  She understood that what he did was important, even if she didn’t know the details, and she wouldn’t ask him to stop.  Not for her.

“You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“What, I don’t get a hug, too, kid?”

She stepped away from Oliver to roll her eyes at his brother.

“Not until you stop with the ‘kid’ shit.”

Tommy smirked, shrugging out of his coat, and she noticed that he was somehow drier than Oliver.

“I’ll put a pot of coffee on.”

Felicity made her way into the kitchen – Yoda hot on her heels – and it wasn’t until she began measuring grounds into the filter that she realized her hands were trembling.

In the year since they’d met, Oliver had gone on dozens of assignments, some of them taking him away from her for a week or more, but as time passed, she found that she worried about him more and more.  She’d thought that it would become easier.  She’d thought she’d be used to the worry by now, that she’d learn to ignore it and simply live her life.  But sleep was becoming more and more elusive every time he was gone.  She found it difficult to eat.  The only thing she’d found to distract herself in his absence was her work and – anymore – that could only hold her attention for so long.

The little that she knew about Oliver’s job concerned her.  He’d come home more than once with serious bruises and minor injuries, none of which he ever chose to explain.  His clothes would often be bloodstained.  His first few hours home would more or less be spent in silence.  He’d shower and shave and pull her into his arms on the sofa while she described to him the work that she’d managed to get done while he’d been away.  It disturbed him, she thought, the things that he saw.  And while he never told her about his experiences, she knew him well enough to see how he was affected.

Strong arms suddenly wound around her waist and she blinked the haze from her eyes.  She fell back against his chest.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

His chin was propped on her shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

She shrugged, “I’m fine.  I’m just happy you’re here.  You are, right?  Here for a while, I mean.  You aren’t leaving with Tommy again, are you?”

“No.”

She relaxed and turned her head in invitation.  Oliver kissed her softly.

“Do I need to step outside for a minute?”

The sound of Tommy’s voice from the other room pulled them apart and she rolled her eyes.

“Go home, Tommy,” Oliver ordered half-heartedly.

His brother laughed and Oliver stepped away from her.  They both turned to find him standing just inside the kitchen, his hip propped against the counter.  He had his coat on again.

“I’ll leave you two alone.  Just wanted to make sure my little bro made it home safe and sound.”

Felicity smiled, “Stay for coffee, Tommy.”

He shook his head, “No thanks, kid.  I’m gonna head out.  I know if I had a girl like you waiting for me, I sure as hell wouldn’t be happy with my brother hanging around.”

She flushed at the off-handed compliment and Oliver scoffed.

“You’ll never find a girl like mine, Tommy.  Give it up.”

They laughed, Tommy shaking his head, and she remained in the kitchen while Oliver saw his brother to the door.  When he returned a few moments later, she handed him a cup of coffee and picked up Yoda.  The cat purred loudly as she scratched at his head.

“How’d the assignment go?”

He shrugged, “Technically it was a success.”

“But?”

He shrugged again and sipped from his mug.

“You can talk to me, Oliver.  I don’t need to know the details.  The classified stuff.  But you can tell me whatever you want to.  I’m here for you.  I’m willing to listen.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t want to talk, right?” she sighed and set the cat on the counter, “I feel like I’m living with a spy.  Or worse, in some bad movie.  I’m scared, Oliver.  I’m worried every time you leave that you won’t come home.  And you know what that means.  If you die – if something happens to you –“

He placed his coffee on the counter and caught her wrist.  She stumbled forward into the circle of his arms.  Her forehead fell to rest in between his pectorals.

“Where is this coming from, Felicity?  You’ve never asked before.  It never seemed to matter.  Did something happen while I was away?”

She shook her head, “No, nothing happened.  I was just here.  Alone.  Just me and Yoda.  Waiting.”

Felicity suddenly wondered where the intense unease she felt was coming from.  She always worried about him, and probably always would when they were separated, but she’d never reacted so strongly before.  Something was changing.  Everything about their relationship always seemed to be changing.

She felt the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed.  Felt the way his breath ruffled her hair and the heat that his body naturally gave off.  Her heart sped up, her breath faltering.  It had only been two days since she had fallen asleep in his arms but the worry she’d felt had left her vulnerable and needy.  Both of which she was unaccustomed to.

“Oliver…”

His finger was under her chin then, guiding her head back as he captured her lips with his.

Heat flooded her as Oliver’s hands settled low on her hips.  She pressed up onto her toes, deepening the kiss, and he took the opportunity to nip at her lower lip.  She whimpered in response, fisting the material of his t-shirt in both hands.  She tugged at the garment with a sudden determination.

“Off.”

The command was spoken softly against his lips and Oliver complied with a smirk, stepping away from her just long enough to draw the shirt over his head before tugging her back to him.  His lips slanted over hers again, his tongue tasting her, and Felicity’s hands explored the hard planes of his chest.  Not for the first time, she marveled at the breadth of his shoulders, at the sheer size of the man who could so easily consume her.  The physical connection that they shared was almost as intense as the emotional one that tied them.  It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced and she knew that she would never find it with anyone else.  There would never be anyone but him.

His calloused fingers skimmed across the skin of her lower back beneath the hem of her sweatshirt and she shivered.  He worked the offending garment off and her hair cascaded in a wave over her bare shoulders.

A flame flickered in his heavily lidded eyes.  The look was familiar and it had the same effect on her every time she faced it.  Warmth spread outward from her chest, staining her skin a soft pink that he’d expressed a fondness for, and caused her limbs to tingle.  It was anticipation racing through her, readying her for what came next.  It was unhindered lust and uncontrollable need and love that remained unmatched.  It was everything she had feared for most of her life, everything that she had run from.  Until she had met Oliver.  For the first time in her twenty years, she was running to the unhinged idea of real love.  She’d finally decided to stop running away from it.

*          *          *

She sat at her desk and read through her email.

Orlando had responded.  He was more than sure that Saint Louis was his match.  She’d been sure when she’d forwarded him the photos Saint Louis had provided.  Their Marks were identical.  Orlando seemed eager to hear from Saint Louis so Felicity sent photos of Orlando’s Mark to Saint Louis, providing what little information she had on Orlando himself, and moved on to check the site again.

It was just after one in the morning.  Oliver was still in their bed and when she’d left him there, she’d stood at the door for a long minute admiring the smooth expanse of his muscled back.  The sheet wrapped around his waist had hindered her view of the rest of him but she didn’t need to see it, the image of his naked form was burned into her brain.  She’d had enough experience with it.  She’d tiptoed out of the room, knowing full well that it was unnecessary because he slept like the dead, and had fixed herself a cup of cocoa before dropping into her computer chair.

Yoda slunk from the bedroom, yowling in annoyance at finding her gone from the bed, and rubbed against her bare legs.  She picked him up and cuddled him to her chest.

“You’re awfully needy, you know,” she murmured, “Oliver was still there.  You could’ve just curled up with him.  He gives off way more heat than me, anyway.”

The cat butted his head into her shoulder, snuggling closer, and she grinned.

“I know, I know.  You boys don’t get along too well.  Well, you’ll have to get used to each other because I’m not letting either of you go.”

Yoda gave a loud purr in response and she rubbed him under the chin.

She read through a handful of new posts that had appeared on the website in the last few hours and stopped short when she came across one titled Buffalo.  She clicked on the attached photo and her eyes widened.

“Well shit.”

The Mark in the photo was larger than most of the ones she’d seen in the past few months.  It was clearly visible on the side of the subject’s neck and stood out starkly against the darkest skin she’d ever seen.  A strong jawline was the only portion of the face that was visible and she examined it for a long moment.  Male, she guessed, mid-to-late twenties.  She’d discovered she had a knack for identifying people from just a simple glimpse of a part of them.

But it was the actual shape of the Mark that surprised her.  If she tipped her head just so, it was pretty obvious that it was a fleur-de-lis.

She did a quick scan of the corkboard above her desk, eyes searching for a photo she knew to be pinned there.  She found it quickly and stood, snatching it from the board and holding it up beside the image on her screen.  The Marks were identical.  And not only that, they were in the exact same location on each subject.  Buffalo and Madera were a match.

“Felicity?”

She jumped, the photo in her hand fluttering to the floor, and Yoda hissed in protest as she nearly dropped him, too.

“Jesus, Oliver.  You scared the hell out of me!”

He smirked as she glared at him.  He’d slipped on a pair of sweatpants but his chest was bare, as were his feet.  His hair was disheveled, his eyes heavy with sleep.  She felt a flutter of desire stir in her stomach.

“Sorry, baby.  What are you doing out here?  Come back to bed.”

She deposited a disgruntled Yoda onto her desk as Oliver padded across the room to her.  He pulled her up, sitting in her chair before settling her back into his lap.  His left hand settled at her waist while his right was warm on her naked thigh.  The shirt she wore – one of his – barely covered her behind when she sat.

“I couldn’t sleep.  Thought I’d check the site and see if there was any new traffic.  I think we’ve found another match.”

She nodded toward the monitor and the hand on her waist tightened as he looked at the screen.

“Where?”

“This one is Buffalo.  I’ve been looking for a match for Madera for almost three months.  She’s been on my board for a while.”

Oliver pressed his lips to her jawline, lingering just below her ear.

“How many does that make?”

“Eleven.  And it’s weird because we just found the tenth yesterday.  It doesn’t happen so quickly, finding them back to back.”

“Never happened before?”

She shook her head, “Not so far.  Usually weeks go by between matches, months sometimes.  The one we found yesterday was the first we’d seen in almost two months.”

He hummed in acknowledgement of her words but he didn’t comment.  She closed down the window she’d had open before shutting down the computer all together.  Oliver’s arms wrapped around her waist, anchoring her to him, and she rested her temple against his.

It still amazed her how quickly she’d grown to love him.  And the intensity with which she loved him had frightened her.

She had never had a relationship as good as the one that they’d created.  Love had never been a factor.  She’d always been drawn to the bad ones, the ones that left her broken and miserable.  Men who treated her like she had no worth, no value.  She’d tried to avoid them.  She’d known better in most instances but she’d never had the strength to say no before things got bad.  It wasn’t until she was pushed to her limit that she chose to leave.  And when she left, she ran.

But she knew that it wouldn’t happen with Oliver.  She wouldn’t run.  She wouldn’t leave.  Because she loved him.  Because he was her match.  Because he wouldn’t let her.

“Felicity?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

She smiled, turning to press her lips to his cheek.

“I love you, too.”

For a moment they sat in silence.  The feel of his breath warm on the exposed skin of her throat calmed her, the feel of his heat making her sleepy again.  But she couldn’t have prepared herself for what he said next.  His words shocked her.

“I want to marry you, love.”

She blinked dazedly, leaning away from him enough that she had a clear view of his vivid blue eyes, of the earnestness in them.  Her heart stuttered to life in her chest.

“Oliver…”

He shook his head, drawing her against him once more, and took her lips with his.  The kiss was gentle and warm but she felt the importance of the moment, of his statement, all exemplified in the gesture.

She had known that things were changing, had felt it in the way he’d worried over her and the way she’d feared for him.  She felt it the moment he’d told her that he was leaving and the same feeling had exploded inside of her the moment he’d returned.

It wasn’t the change that she had expected but she accepted it happily.

“You’re sure?”

He sighed, “I have known from the moment that you appeared in my dreams that this was our destiny, Felicity.  This is the path that fate has laid out for us.  I want you to be my wife.  Would you do me the honor?”

Chapter Three

For three days she didn’t see him.  Dreams of him plagued her, ones that she couldn’t explain and that she didn’t understand.  She’d woken the morning after their last encounter with an image of him burned into her brain.  And what an image it was.  Just the thought of it was enough to send a chill racing down her spine.  The man in her dreams was passionate and fierce and that passion and ferocity had been directed toward her.  He had ignited a fire within her that had followed her from her dreams into the waking world.  And it was serving as a damned good distraction.

She shook all thought of Oliver from her mind as she swiped a rag across the counter yet again.  The afternoon rush was gone and she rested a hip against the bar where she stood next to Rosa.

“Rosa?”

“Hmm?”

“Is there a decent secondhand store in town? I’d like to find a couple of things for the apartment.  Just knickknacks and stuff to make it feel more like home.”

Rosa beamed at her and Felicity forced herself to smile back at the older woman.  There was still something about Rosa that was bothering her.  She hadn’t mentioned Oliver again, hadn’t asked about him since she’d witnessed Felicity getting out of his truck, but there was an odd shift in her attitude that Felicity couldn’t identify.  Something had shifted but she couldn’t quite determine what had caused it.

“Oh, Felicity, I am so happy that you’re getting settled in here,” the other woman told her, “And, as a matter of fact, there’s a great little place on the other side of town.  They’ve got a nice selection and decent prices.  I think you’ll find plenty of things there you can use.”

Felicity bit back a sigh.  She had known before Rosa had given her response that there were no stores nearby that would suit her.  She’d looked.  Repeatedly. But the location of the store meant that she would have to secure a ride, either with Rosa or with Oliver. If he ever chose to come back.

The sudden sounds of a car backfiring outside of the restaurant burst in her ears and Felicity jumped.  Rosa clapped a hand over her heart.

“Dios mío!” she exclaimed, “I swear, one day I’ll have a heart attack over nothing.”

Felicity laughed nervously, her adrenaline suddenly spiked, and cast a weary glance at the window that looked out over the road. She wasn’t sure why she’d been so frightened by the noise but something had set her on edge.  Her hands were trembling.  

Shoving them into her pockets, she turned back to Rosa.

In her startled state, Rosa had pushed her thick black hair away from her face and in doing so, had exposed her right temple. And the tiny white pattern of flesh that was stamped there.  It stood out starkly against her olive complexion and Felicity recognized it for what it was almost immediately.  It was difficult not to notice given her own status as Marked.  That, she realized, and she’d seen the mark before.On Rosa’s husband, Jorge.

A curtain of hair suddenly fell and covered the Mark.  When their eyes met, Felicity was aware that she’d been caught staring.  A flicker of concern shown in Rosa’s eyes.  It was a feeling that Felicity understood.  She had taken to covering her own Mark in the days since discovering what it was.  A heavy watch that she’d found at a pawn shop adorned her wrist.  The thick metal band concealed the star that bound her to Oliver.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off,” Rosa suggested hurriedly, “It’s slow enough.  I think I can manage.”

She nodded, untying her apron even as Rosa continued to talk.  She needed to get out of the cantina.  She needed to find Oliver.  She had yet to find all of the answers that she was looking for and – even though she was sure he wouldn’t have them all – she knew he’d be able to help her.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

Rosa responded with a slight wave as one of the men at the nearest table called out to her.  Felicity left her apron in the bin beneath the bar and grabbed her satchel.

She crossed the street quickly, practically jogging up the sidewalk to the building that housed the Robertson’s salon and her small apartment.  She took the stairs two at a time, jamming her key into the lock as soon as she reached the door.  Once safely inside, she leaned back against it and closed her eyes.  Her heart thundered in her chest.

Rosa and Jorge were Marked.

She hadn’t seen it before, hadn’t thought anything of the faint scar-like mark on the inside of Jorge’s forearm.  She had assumed it was a burn scar courtesy of being a line cook for all of the years he’d been in the business.  No part of her had assumed it was a Mark.  And, she guessed, that was how most people viewed the mark.  If they noticed it at all.  To anyone who wasn’t gifted with a mark of their own, they’d take no notice to those of the people around them.  Why would they?  While she’d heard murmurings of the Marked over the years, the legends weren’t exactly common knowledge.  And, as she’d told Oliver, the internet search she’d done hadn’t provided much in the way of answers or explanation.

Breathing heavily through her nose in the hopes of getting her heart rate under control, she couldn’t help wondering why the realization of another Marked couple had frightened her as much as it did.  Rosa and Jorge were no threat to her.  They’d welcomed her into their restaurant, into their lives, with open arms.  So why couldn’t she breathe?

“Felicity?”

Her head slammed into the door at her back as the sound of his voice startled her yet again.  The constriction in her chest was a sign that his presence in her apartment had kick-started her heart with a vengeance.

“Holy shit,” she gasped, eyes flying open to find him just inches in front of her face, crouched down slightly so that they were at eye level.

“Are you alright?”

Her hands found their way to his chest and she shoved him away.  He took a step back, putting enough space between them that she felt she could breathe again, and she glared at him incredulously.

“What the hell are you doing here?  And how did you get into my apartment?”

He hesitated and – miraculously – looked contrite. She felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders slightly.

“I’m sorry.  I needed to see you.  Figured I’d wait here.  I knew you wouldn’t want me to show up at the bar so I thought –“

“That breaking into my apartment was a better alternative?  Damn it, Oliver, what the hell is wrong with you?  You’re in serious stalker territory here and it’s really freaking me out!”

A long moment stretched between them and when one corner of his mouth pulled up in a smirk, she itched to reach out and smack him. But the desire was overpowered by another much more disturbing one.  She shook her head in the hopes of clearing the image of him from her mind.

“I should’ve considered how it would seem to you,” he conceded.

“You mean how it would seem to any normal, sane, human being?”

Oliver sighed, “I’ve already said I’m sorry. Can you just forgive me and move on?”

She huffed in disbelief and stepped around him. She tossed her bag on the small counter that served as her breakfast bar before sinking down onto the sofa in her living room.  Oliver followed her into the room, leaning in the doorway.  His eyes were steady as he watched her.

“You and I may be … attached because of these stupid Marks, but we’re not even friends.  You have no right to just come into my home and –“

Her breath caught as she suddenly cast a glance around the room.  The sofa, coffee table and entertainment center against the far wall were all new. Pieces that she had never seen before. Certainly things she wouldn’t have been able to afford on her own.  

“Did you do this?” she asked, her voice shaking.

She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or furious.  She settled on overwhelmed.

He nodded, “I did.”

She was on her feet then, crossing to open the door to her bedroom.  A large sleigh bed sat situated against the far wall and a matching dresser was near the door.  The bed was made up with a multitude of pillows and a beautiful grey and yellow patterned quilt.  If she had had the money, if she had had any money, she would’ve purchased everything in the room for herself.  He had somehow gotten everything right.  

She blinked back the tears that suddenly burned in her eyes.

“Why?” she muttered.

He was beside her, closer than she would normally have been comfortable with, and she felt it when he shrugged.

“You were sleeping on the floor.  Living in this cold, empty space.”

“I would’ve found a way to fill it.  I’ve done this before, Oliver.  I’m not a charity case.  I don’t need all of this.”

She couldn’t bring herself to ask him to take it all back.  For the first time in longer than she was willing to admit, she had a place that felt like home.  

“It isn’t charity, Felicity.”

She went back to the sofa and fell into it. Pulling her knees onto the couch, she hugged them to her chest.  She suddenly felt incredibly small and fragile.  It didn’t help that Oliver literally towered over her.

“You bolted the other day.”

There was no need to explain what she was referring to and Oliver didn’t ask for clarification.  Instead he took a seat on the floor across from her, the coffee table between them.  With his legs stretched out in front of him, he leaned against the entertainment center at his back.

“I had something I needed to take care of.”

Her head canted to the side and she shot him a quizzical look.

“You panicked when I touched you, be honest.”

He shrugged, “This isn’t any easier for me than it is for you, Felicity.  I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be your match.  You said that the Mark could mean anything, that we couldn’t know for sure how it would change us.  You want to believe that it doesn’t mean that we’re destined to be lovers and, given what little I know of you, I understand that.  But I don’t believe it for a moment.  I’ve been dreaming of you for months.  Searching for you my entire life.  I think I’m half in love with you already.”

Her gaze remained locked on his and she willed herself not to respond to his statement.

Her life had been one big tangle of bad relationships.  She was always running, never overstaying her welcome, always fighting to find the life that she wanted.  A life in which she was safe and happy.And she’d been searching, too.  Searching for someone that she could share that life with.Someone that made her happy.

“You don’t know me.  You don’t know anything about me.  How can you be in love with me at all?”

He shrugged, “I can’t explain it, Felicity. I just know how I feel.”

She ran a hand through her hair and turned to the window.  Warm afternoon sun filtered in and she watched the dust particles float through the rays of light.  She felt as if she was in a dream.  But only partially, like she was in that place between being asleep and awake, that place where she wasn’t sure what was real.  

She was real.  The furniture that decorated her small living space was real.  The man across from her, he was real, too.  But his love for her?  She couldn’t be sure.  She had never been in love before, had never considered letting herself love any of the boys that she’d dated over the years.  Not that there had been many, but she had never felt anything more than a glimmer of affection for any of them.  She didn’t know what love felt like.  She wasn’t sure she would know if she was in love with someone even when it happened.

She felt something for Oliver.  Something she couldn’t explain.  It had started the moment she’d heard him laugh.  A bubble of warmth had formed in her chest and every time she’d seen him since, it had grown.  Her skin tingled when he was near her, her pulse raced, and she felt things that she had never felt for any man before.  But did those feelings equate to love?  How could she love someone she didn’t know?

“Who are you, Oliver?”

He had asked her the same question just days earlier. She had given him honest answers. She had responded without hesitation, something she had been unable to do with most people.  She’d been hurt too many times, betrayed more than once, and opening herself up to someone was asking for trouble.  But she had known the moment she’d met him that she could trust him. Trust, she knew, wasn’t always earned. Sometimes it was instinctual.  She knew beyond a doubt that she trusted Oliver, stranger or not.  

It was time to see how much he trusted her.

“What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me about yourself.”

He crossed his ankles and made himself more comfortable while Felicity eyed him critically.

“My name is Oliver Queen.  I was born in Starling City.  We left when I was young.  Mom, dad, Tommy and me.  He’s two years older, by the way.  I’ve lived a lot of different places.  Kind of a transient but with steady employment.  My job requires a lot of… travel.”

She waited for him to continue, ignoring the new questions that were ready to jump off of her tongue.

“My parents died a long time ago so it’s just Tommy and I now.  Not sure what else you want me to tell you.”

“You haven’t actually told me much of anything.”

He sighed, “There isn’t much to tell, Felicity.”

“You’re supposed to be my match.  I want to know what I’m getting myself into.  You’ve just given me the basics.  I want to know who you are.  What kind of man are you?  What do you like to do?  To read? To eat?”

He chuckled softly, shaking his head.

“Are we playing twenty questions?”

She shrugged, “If that’s what it takes.”

 *             *             *

He sat across from her as she slept, watching the way her chest rose and fell steadily.  She was stretched out on her stomach, a throw pillow beneath her head, and her unruly blonde hair stirred with every breath that she expelled.

He had been with her for hours.  Talking with her, telling her as much as he could safely reveal about himself.  They had compared their likes and dislikes, had ventured among a range of topics that were – for the most part – mundane.  He had told her of his childhood and his adventures with his brother in the hope that she would do the same. She’d been fascinated with the books that he’d read and the films that he enjoyed.  He had given her more than he had given anyone.  He had wanted to be honest, to make a connection with her on a deeper level, and when she’d been comfortable enough to allow herself to sleep while he remained in her apartment, he’d realized he’d made progress.

Letting himself out, he stood just outside of her door for a long moment, unwilling to leave right away.  But the tell-tale burn that accompanied the surge of his wings told him that he had been called.  He pushed off easily and landed a moment later on the roof of Felicity’s building. His brother was waiting and he was not alone.

“Sara.”

“Hey, Ollie.  How’s it going?”

He gave a non-committal shrug in response to his friend’s question.

“You okay?”

His brother’s question caused him to bristle unexpectedly but he nodded.

“Fine.  What’s going on?”

Sara and Tommy stood opposite him and their eyes where calculating as they examined him.  He knew that Tommy would understand his predicament.  He didn’t want to leave Felicity, not again.  He’d just returned from a three day absence.  He wanted to be there with her, not off with his brother and their colleagues.

“We’ve got another assignment.”

“Damn.”

Sara rolled her eyes and Tommy sighed.

“Can you please choose another term to express your frustration?” his brother questioned, “You’ll be struck down one day if you keep that up.”

“Just tell me where we’re going.”

Tommy explained their assignment with practiced ease and he listened with as much patience as he could manage.  If things worked out the way that they’d been predicted to, he wouldn’t be away for more than a day or two.  He would have to accept the reality that this was the life that he led.  Being separated from Felicity was inevitable.  He didn’t want to think about how it would only grow more difficult as they grew closer.

“She isn’t your charge, Oliver.  You have others to watch over.”

He glared at his brother, “I know that.”

“Then stop acting like I’ve just asked you to cut off your arm.  We’ve got a job to do and I need to know that you can do it objectively.”

He bit back a retort to Tommy’s prodding and pushed off.  Sara and Tommy followed suit and as they made their way to their assignment, he said a silent prayer that Felicity would somehow understand.

 *             *             *

 She sat up in her new bed and stared at the note that she’d discovered propped on her nightstand.  His words were short, crisp, and she read them twice before setting the slip of paper aside and climbing from the bed.

She was almost certain she’d fallen asleep on the sofa he’d purchased for her.  She had no memory of putting herself in bed and the thought of Oliver doing so caused her face to flush.  The feelings that he had stirred in her the evening before still lingered.  She’d allowed herself to relax around him, to find comfort in his presence rather than fear it.  There had been an immediate trust between them and he had proven to her that she wouldn’t regret following her instincts.  

Felicity sighed as she padded across the apartment in day-old clothes and flipped on a light in the kitchen.  The coffee pot was already brewing and another note of Oliver’s was taped to it.

She shook her head, grinning in spite of herself, and made her way into the bathroom.

Emerging fifteen minutes later with a towel wrapped around her torso and her wet hair dripping down her back, she fixed a cup of coffee and took it into her bedroom.

It was still early.  She had the morning to herself, not needing to be at the cantina until later that afternoon, and while she and Oliver had spent the evening getting to know each other, there had been very little discussion between them in regards to being Marked.  She had been so distracted by the man she was slowly learning about that she hadn’t once thought to ask again what he knew of the Marked.  But, she decided, it didn’t matter.  He would come back when he was finished with whatever work emergency had dragged him away and she would have time to ask for more information.

When she was dressed and her hair had been arranged in some semblance of order, she slipped her feet into a pair of well-worn sneakers, slung her bag over her shoulder, and locked up.  There was a library a few blocks away, at least a twenty minute walk, and she would have access to a computer there.  Her first search for anything about the Marked had produced limited results.  The chatroom she’d discovered had proved to be the most informative and she knew that if she could find others like it, she was bound to find more about what she’d been fated for.

The sky overhead was dark with storm clouds as she descended the stairs from her apartment.  She pulled the hood of her jacket up to cover her hair, hoping to shield her face should those clouds choose to open up and dump their contents down on her, and headed up the sidewalk in the general direction of the library.  She glanced over at the cantina as she passed.

Her steps faltered and she barely caught herself mid-stumble.

The decorations that had adorned the front window of the bar where she worked had been stripped and it had been left bare save for the large ‘For Lease’ sign propped there.  Without looking, she darted across the street until she was standing directly in front of The Little Cantina.Or the space that had once housed it.  She tried the front door, unsurprised to find it locked, before peering into the window.  

The place was empty.

And not simply devoid of customers, but completely empty.  Even the tables, chairs and booths had been removed.

Felicity stumbled back, stunned, and rubbed a hand over her chest where her heart was pounding at an uncomfortable rate.  

She’d been inside the restaurant less than twenty-four hours ago.  She’d said goodbye to Rosa.  There had been customers occupying at least two different tables.  And she had seen Rosa’s mark.  She had recognized it for what it was and at the same time, she had recognized the fear in Rosa’s eyes.  For some reason, being discovered as Marked had frightened the other woman enough that she and Jorge had abandoned their restaurant, more than likely their home also, and disappeared in the wind.

And Felicity thought she was good at running.

Turning on her heel, she continued on down the sidewalk, her pace quick.  She kept her head down as she went, feeling cool moist air whip across her face, and tried to soothe her racing mind and pulse.

What was it about being Marked – and having someone else know it – that had frightened Rosa so much that they’d fled? She’d read enough to know that there were others who considered the Mark dangerous.  But the information she’d found hadn’t indicated that being discovered would put a Marked pair in harm’s way.  No one had mentioned keeping the Mark a secret.  No one had said why they were so afraid.

She arrived at the library just as the sky roared to life and lightening lit the world around her.  She ducked inside, listening for a moment to the howling window and the patter of rain against the windows.  The chill of the air-conditioned room caused her to shiver.

“Can I help you?”

The young woman at the small desk smiled up at her and Felicity forced herself to smile in return.  She had no reason to let this woman see how disturbed she suddenly was.

“Yes, hi.  I’d like to get a library card,” she said softly, barely able to hide the tremble in her voice, “And I was wondering if you have computers available.  I’d like to do some research online.”

The pretty brunette nodded.  She was, Felicity realized, close to her age and stature. Even sitting, she could tell the other woman was just as petite as she was.  

“Sure thing.  Computers are around back, just past the mysteries.  You’re free to use them anytime,” she explained kindly, “And I’ll just need an ID to issue you a card.”

Felicity dug a state-issued ID from her bag.  It was brand new.  Another thing she was sure to do each time she relocated. Especially if she moved from state to state.  Once she’d secured an address to provide for the ID, she obtained a new one.

“Felicity.  What a beautiful name.  I’m Thea. Just let me know if you need anything.”

She thanked the young librarian and headed off in the direction of the computers.  She was grateful to discover that the library was relatively empty but even so, she checked over her shoulder before logging on to the internet and typing a few key phrases into a search engine.

The results of her search this time were much different than when she’d been fumbling around in the dark.  She had a base knowledge of the Marked and that seemed to be the key in uncovering more information.  The first website she found was buried under pages of ads and pointless blog entries but when she found it, her eyes locked on the first few sentences.

No one knew where it came from.  No one could explain to me what all it entailed.  But I knew that the Mark will change me.  It has changed me in ways I could not have imagined.  

I was fourteen when we found each other.  He is my soul mate.  Scoff all you want, there is no better way to explain it.  No simpler way to explain the sudden pull that I felt towards him. A man that I had never met before.A complete stranger.Someone who literally held my life in his hands.Because my life is his life.  And no, I promise you, I’m not being dramatic.  

Evan died yesterday.  I won’t live to see the sun rise tomorrow.  

Felicity held her breath and she scrolled the page to read the comments below the final entry.  The author’s last post had been more than six months ago but the last comment had been only days earlier.

My sister was sixteen when she died.  Evan was her match.  He killed himself and he took her with him.  Don’t underestimate what it means.  What it will do to you.

There were more posts, older, many of them proclaiming similar situations to that of the author.  People died because of their marks.  They were so tightly bound to their match that when one died, the other did, too.  She wondered if it was a compulsion.  If, when one have of the pair died, the other felt desperate enough to be with them that they took their own life.  But as she continued to read, she realized that that was not the case.  In many of the testimonials she read, the second half of the Marked died in an accident or, in some cases, of natural causes.  Illnesses that appeared suddenly and took life quickly.

She shut down the page after thirty minutes of reading, her head pounding.  Tears burned her eyes.  

So many people who had been hurt by their Marks. So many lives that had ended.  Not one of the posts that she had read had boasted anything good about the match.

She continued searching and discovered at least two more sites with messages from people who had discovered their Marks but they’d yielded little information of any use.  Frustrated, she scrubbed a hand over her face and shut down the computer.

“Did you need help finding something?”

Thea’s voice startled her and Felicity sat up abruptly.  The librarian stood just inside the small alcove that housed the computer stations.

“I – I’m trying to find information on the Marked,” she muttered, a cover story brewing in her head as Thea’s eyes widened, “My sister, she was Marked.  And she – she died a few months ago.  I just want to know what happened to her.  I want to know why.”

The other woman gasped softly, her expression falling, and she nodded.

“There isn’t much to find,” she explained, turning and heading off toward the other side of the library.

Felicity followed.

“But you’re in luck because I happen to be interested in the subject myself,” she called over her shoulder.

She added quickly, “Not because I’m Marked or anything.  I’ve just heard stories, you know?  Anyway, there are a couple of books that make reference to the Marked.  They were hard to come by and I don’t keep them out where anyone can grab them.  They’re kept in the special collection.  I won’t even put them in the catalog.  But you can certainly look them over.”

“Could I – Am I able to check them out?  I’d like to take them home.  Really delve into the subject matter.”

Thea hesitated as they weaved their way through the stacks.  She glanced at Felicity with compassion in her eyes and nodded.

“Sure.  But I’ll need them back as soon as possible.  In a day or two, okay?”

“Of course.”

They arrived at a door in the far corner of the library.  Thea produced a set of keys and unlocked the door.  As she flipped on the light and stepped inside, Felicity took a step back. She didn’t follow the other woman into the windowless room.  Instead, she watched from the doorway as she retrieved a box from a metal shelf along the far wall.  She handed the entire box to Felicity.

“There are a few in here that might help you,” she explained, “But really, there isn’t much.”

Felicity nodded, “Thank you, Thea, really.  You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

The librarian smiled gently and touched Felicity’s arm.  She tried not to flinch.

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed this!  Glad everyone seems to be enjoying it so far!  Also, to my awesome beta westernbeauty, thanks so much for all your support!!

Chapter Two

When she exited her hotel the next morning, Felicity was not as surprised as she should’ve been to find Oliver leaning against the black truck she’d seen him climb into a few days prior.  He was parked near the entrance and it was clear that he had been waiting for her.  She approached him with her chin up, her posture stiff.

“You know, I’m pretty sure I’d have a good case against you for stalking,” she snapped.

Oliver’s eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses but one corner of his mouth ticked in response to her statement.

“We need to talk.”

She sighed, shaking her head.  She hadn’t slept.  As exhausted as she had been when she’d left the cantina the evening before, his revelation about their Marked status had kept her up.  She’d used one of the guest computers in the hotel to research what she could about the Marked.  There wasn’t much information available to the public, at least not on the surface, and it had been close to dawn when she’d stumbled on an underground message board for the Marked.  Most of the posts had been from people looking for their matches.  People posting descriptions and even photos of their own Marks, hoping that their other halves were out there somewhere.

But the board had contained other information, too. She’d had to read between the lines on some of the posts, but what she’d been able to glean from the messages was that being Marked wasn’t at all the romantic notion that people believed it to be. From what people were saying, it held its share of danger.

That Felicity could understand.  To be bound by a Mark she’d been born with to a man she had only just met certainly felt dangerous.  But not – she’d realized – because she didn’t trust him.  In the moments that she had been with him, she hadn’t once feared Oliver. It wasn’t his physical presence that she’d been irked by.  It was her immediate attraction to him.  It was the way her heart had sped up and her skin had come alive at just the slightest contact.  She hadn’t even thought about those responses until after he’d assured her that they were Marked.  She hadn’t recognized the unnatural way she’d been drawn to him back in Phoenix.  But as she’d sat in front of the monitor, her eyes blurry from staring so long at the small print on the screen, she’d remembered the way she’d felt the first time she’d heard him laugh.  It had awoken something within her.  And whatever that thing was, it was becoming more evident every time she saw him.  Even then, standing across from him in the parking lot of the hotel, she felt her pulse quicken.  She was finding it difficult to breathe properly.

She sighed, “Shit.”

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” Oliver offered, taking a step toward her.

She resisted her immediate instinct to step away, to keep a safe distance between them.  One large hand touched her bare forearm, squeezing her gently, and then he took a step back.  When he opened the passenger side door of his truck, she climbed in without hesitation.

She watched through the windshield as he moved around the front of the vehicle to slide behind the wheel.  

Simply being Marked – and matched because of the Mark – didn’t mean that she would be romantically involved with Oliver, she knew that.  There were plenty of Marked couples that were not in any way romantically involved.  It was believed that siblings could be Marked, other family members.  Sometimes your match just turned out to be your closest friend.  But that person was always, always, a key player in your life. Once a Marked pair had been joined, it was like a different world for each of them.  Some of the stories that she had read claimed that, once together, Marked pairs were happier than they had ever been prior to finding one another. It was believed that, if you were Marked, your partner would be the one true source of happiness in your life. They would be your lifeline from the moment that you met until the day that you died.

And that, she had discovered, was the frightening part.  

“How did you find me?” she asked when they turned onto the main road.

Oliver shrugged, “It wasn’t that difficult.  I followed the bus you’d hopped out of town.”

She tried not to let that unsettling fact disturb her.  Or the easy way in which he’d admitted it.  Instead, she chose to remain silent until they were parked in front of a small diner where she’d had breakfast twice before.

“What do you know about the Marked?”

They were seated across from one another at a table in the back corner of the dining room.  She hadn’t heard him request something private so she was surprised to find that they were the only ones in that little section of the room.

In response to his question, she said, “Not as much as I’d like to know.  You?”

“Probably more than I should.”

His evasive answer was a direct retort to hers and she knew it.  Sighing, she kept her gaze locked on his vibrant blue eyes and told him what she’d found in her research.

“How much of that did you know prior to last night?” he questioned.

She shrugged, “Just bits and pieces.  I’ve never actually met anyone who was Marked so I never had anyone to ask.  There wasn’t as much available online as I’d hoped.  And a lot of what I did find was really vague.  What about you?  What else can you tell me?”

Their waitress arrived then with coffee and Felicity ordered breakfast.  Oliver didn’t ask for anything beyond his coffee and she didn’t question him.

“If you think you’re going to intimidate me by watching me eat, think again.”

He shook his head, a small grin making his eyes shine a little brighter.  She felt heat settle in her cheeks.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, “Who are you, Felicity?”

She didn’t answer right away because she didn’t know how.  She couldn’t be sure how far she could go, how well she really could trust him, because she knew nothing about him beyond his name.  He claimed they were Marked but she hadn’t seen his mark yet.  While hers was clearly visible, Oliver’s was not.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything.  Where are you from?  What’s your last name?”

She smiled slightly, “Boston, originally. And it’s Smoak.  Felicity Smoak.”

Oliver sipped at his coffee in an introspective silence and she took the time to watch him across the table.  His dark blonde hair was thick and just long enough that it stuck up stylishly, like someone had been dragging their fingers through the strands.  She found herself immediately imagining what it would be like to be so privileged. The thought made her choke on the hot coffee in her mouth.  She set her cup down roughly and stared at its contents.  She was not supposed to be thinking about him that way and – if anything about their situation had been normal – she wouldn’t have.  When she typically met a man, even one she was physically attracted to right off the bat, she wasn’t normally so imaginative. But what she’d thought about Oliver’s hair had felt so real that her fingers were tingling.

“The guy in Phoenix, who was he?”

She answered his question easily, the words rolling off of her tongue as if she hadn’t even considered telling him it wasn’t any of his business.  And, she realized, she hadn’t.  The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.

“Cooper?  A mistake. Some guy that I let myself get close to but it turned out he was a possessive asshole who thinks that hitting a girl is how you make her want to stay with you.”

He didn’t flinch at her confession but she saw the way his expression hardened.

Her food arrived then and she was grateful for the interruption.  She had no idea why she’d been so forthcoming with him.  Lying was second nature to her.  She’d learned to be evasive, to keep specific details of her past to herself, but she hadn’t felt the need to do that with Oliver.  It had been easy to offer up the truth when he’d asked for it.

“You’re used to this, aren’t you?” he pressed, “Jumping from place to place?  Running?”

She shrugged, “It’s what I’m good at.”

She shoveled a bite of food into her mouth and avoided looking at him.  His gaze was hot where it touched her but she didn’t feel as if he was judging her or even if he was accusing her of anything.  He was curious.

“How long has it gone on?”

She shrugged again.  It was becoming a nervous tick.

“I was fourteen the first time I took off.”

“Your dad?”

She shook her head, “Mom’s boyfriend.  My dad left when I was four.”

He fell quiet for a moment and when she glanced up from her plate, she found him staring into his cup.  

“What about you, Oliver?  I know nothing about you beyond the fact that you possess amazing stalker capabilities and you drive a big truck.  Where are you from?  I know it isn’t Phoenix,” she asked.

He laughed, “I wasn’t stalking you.  And why would you assume I’m not from Phoenix?”

“Just this feeling I got.  And yes, by definition, you were stalking.  But I’ll let it slide.  Now answer the question.  Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Coast City.”

She knew the moment that he said it that it wasn’t exactly the truth.  It wasn’t a blatant lie, something in her gut told her that much, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.  

“How long has it been since you’ve been back?”

He shook his head, “Not since I was about ten.”

“How old are you?”

Felicity asked the question simply to keep him talking. She didn’t particularly care if he was twenty-five or thirty-five, age was just a number.  

“Thirty.”

Another lie, she realized, and she immediately wondered when she’d become a human lie detector.  She’d never been so sure of someone else’s honesty or deflection and she couldn’t help wondering if it was a side effect of being Marked.

She let silence settle between them as she took another bite of her meal.  She caught a glimpse of the clock near the front door and took a final drink of her coffee.

“I’ve got to go,” she told him quickly, “I’ve got an appointment to see an apartment this morning.  Two actually.”

Felicity got to her feet and Oliver joined her. He dropped enough cash on the table to cover their coffee and her breakfast before leading her back out to his truck.

“You don’t have to drive me.  I’m perfectly capable of walking,” she assured him.

He simply shrugged and opened the door of the truck for her yet again.  At least he had manners, she thought as she climbed up onto the seat.  If he wanted to play chauffer for the day, who was she to argue?

 *          *          *

Felicity pocketed the key to her new apartment as she stepped into the cantina for her lunch shift.  Oliver had dropped her at the door, not saying when she would see him again, and she’d watched him drive off.  She had had to suppress the surge of disappointment she felt at watching him leave.  She really would have to find out more about what all being Marked entailed.

“Good morning, chica.  Are you ready for a slow afternoon?”

She glanced up at Rosa’s smiling face as she walked into the kitchen.  They wouldn’t open for another half hour but she had come in early to help Jorge and Rosa set up.  Apparently, Sundays were the slowest day of the week and Felicity was looking forward to an easy shift.  The night before had been hectic.  She had no idea how Rosa and Jorge had gone so long without another server on staff.

“Morning.  Yes, after last night, the slower the better.  I won’t even complain about lack of tips.”

Rosa laughed, her warm brown eyes following Felicity around the room.  She felt the older woman prepare herself to ask a question and she held her breath as she waited for it to come.  She knew that Rosa would’ve seen her getting out of Oliver’s truck if she’d been in the dining room at the time.

“How did your apartment search go this morning?”

She smiled, “Great.  I have a small studio above the salon just across the street. Right in my price range.  I won’t need a roommate and its close enough that I can walk over.”

“That’s perfect!  Is it furnished?  You probably don’t have much with you,” Rosa started.

Felicity nodded before the other woman could offer to provide any additional furniture.

“Fully furnished,” she lied, “It’s a steal, really. They could probably get a lot more for the place.”

And if it had been furnished, her statement would’ve been true.  But the truth was, the built in bookshelves and the barstools that fit at the kitchen island were the only furniture provided.  Felicity would have to look at the local thrift store for whatever pieces she could find to fill the space.

What had drawn her to that particular space was its nearness to the bar.  Without a car, she was limited to only a few locations.  But on top of that, the security it offered had been what had really pulled her in.  The salon’s owner had assured her that the new security system was top of the line and the only door into the apartment was secured with two deadbolts.  The precautions had given Felicity peace of mind.

“Well congratulations, mi hija.  I’m happy for you,” Rosa told her, “I don’t like the idea of you spending all of your money on that hotel.  And if you’re going to stay here in town you might as well get comfortable.”

Felicity turned with a container of salt in her hand, ready to head out to the dining room to refill the shakers at each table, only to be stopped by Rosa’s next question.

“And who was that handsome man that dropped you off, this morning?  You didn’t say that you’d come into town with anyone,” her friend pointed out.

She sighed.  She’d thought she’d gotten lucky and that Rosa hadn’t seen Oliver drop her off. It wasn’t that she felt as if she couldn’t confide in the older woman, it was simply that she wasn’t ready to. At least, she didn’t think she was.

“I came here alone,” she assured Rosa, “Oliver arrived yesterday.  He’s a friend.”

Rosa didn’t comment but something in the way that she looked at her made Felicity feel uneasy.  It was the first time since she had walked into the cantina that she’d gotten anything but a good feeling from Rosa and Jorge.

“Well I’m glad you have someone here with you,” Rosa said eventually.

The conversation ended there but as Felicity stepped into the dining room, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more that Rosa had wanted to say.

 *          *          *

 Tommy stood with his back to the side of the building, half hidden in the alleyway, but Oliver knew he was there as he approached. His brother was angry.  He felt it in the air around him, but he didn’t stop until they were standing opposite one another.

“Oliver, please.  Stop this while you can.  This is not going to work out for you,” Tommy cautioned, “It won’t work out for either of you.  If she finds out what you are –“

“I can’t walk away.”

His brother released a frustrated breath and paced away from him.  When he turned back, Oliver could see the familial concern in his brown eyes.  He wanted to eliminate Tommy’s worry but it was pointless to try to deny that what was happening was dangerous.  He knew that Felicity would not be safe.  She would never be safe with him at her side. But leaving her was no longer an option. Not now that he knew.  Now that she knew.

“You’re going to get her killed and you know that what they’ll do to you will be worse than death.”

Fury made his brother’s voice reverberate in the space between the buildings but Oliver did not flinch.  

“She is Marked, Tommy.”

The pacing stopped as Tommy whirled to face him. The confusion in his expression gave way to worry.  Oliver knew that he understood then.  It had taken one simple explanation and Tommy was falling against the brick façade again, shaking his head.  Astonishment replaced the worry.

“Your match?”

“You don’t seem all that surprised.  You knew?”

His brother ran a hand over his close-cropped hair.

“It’s been circulating around.  Someone was Marked.  One of our kind.  Unintentionally, of course.  But no one was sure who it was.”

Oliver felt himself stepping back but he wasn’t conscious of making the decision to do so.  

He had never heard anything of their kind being Marked.  In all of his years, the rumor his brother spoke of had never reached him.  As far as he knew, they were incapable of carrying the Mark.  They were incapable of carrying on any kind of lasting relationship so it would make sense that their kind would be free of the Mark.

“You’ve always seemed like you were looking for someone.  Like you were searching.”

He gazed at his brother across the alley.  

It was true that he had been looking for her. He had searched the earth, for decades he had been looking, but he had never known what it was he was looking for. He had been overcome with a need to find something, someone, but he hadn’t been able to understand why.  He had never been able to explain the need and he had never tried to.  Tommy hadn’t questioned him when he had gallivanted off to parts unknown.  He had never questioned why Oliver chose to search alone.  It was because his brother hadn’t needed to ask.

“You never said.”

Tommy shrugged, “It wasn’t my place.  You needed to discover it for yourself.  And once you started searching, I knew I couldn’t stop you.  You would find her and then there would be no turning back.”

“What do I do?”

“I guess you follow your heart, Ollie.  She practically owns it now.  You can’t let her go.”

 *          *          *

When her shift ended at eight that evening, Felicity exited the cantina through the door in the kitchen that led to the alley. She had offered to take the garbage out for Jorge on her way out and as she dropped the two large bags into the dumpster, she felt the air around her shift and cool.  She knew without turning that Oliver would be at the mouth of the alley waiting for her.

“Are you planning on following me everywhere for the rest of eternity now that you know we’re a matched set?” she called as she turned in his direction.

His truck sat idling, the passenger window lowered. She saw him lean closer to the window. He was smiling.

“Maybe.  Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to the hotel to get your stuff.”

She climbed into the cab of the truck without giving it a second thought.  As they headed back to the hotel, she turned and watched Oliver.

“Where have you been all day?” she questioned.

He shrugged, “Around.  I met up with my brother.”

Her brow lifted.

“Tommy.”

“Wait, Tommy is your brother?  Wow, I don’t know how I missed the similarities.  I mean, you’re not identical or anything, but I see it.”

“Yeah, thank God.  Listen, I know you’ve got keys to your new apartment, but you should stay at the hotel tonight.”

Felicity waited for an explanation for his suggestion but he didn’t give one.  She had planned on remaining at the hotel, given that she was paid up through the following morning, but Oliver didn’t need to know that.  And he had no real right to make suggestions about where she chose to sleep.  He may be her match, but that didn’t give him the right to dictate her life.

“Where’ve you been staying?  With Tommy?  Why is he here, too?”

Oliver sighed, “You’ve got a lot of questions tonight.”

“And I’d like you a little more if you’d stop being evasive and answer a couple of them.”

He laughed, that same rough sound that had drawn her attention to him that first day in Phoenix.  She didn’t think she would tire of the sound any time soon.

“Tommy is here because he thinks I’m insane for following you.  He understands now though.  I told him.”

“Oh.”

She was just getting used to the idea herself and Oliver was already telling people.  She wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with that but there was nothing that could be done about it now.  He had already told Tommy.

He parked near her door and followed her up the stairs to the second floor.  When she flipped on the lights in the small room, he closed the door behind her.

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked, dropping her satchel on the bed she wasn’t using and going to the phone, “I was just going to order a pizza or something.”

Oliver remained by the door.  She wasn’t sure what was keeping him rooted to the spot but she found herself fidgeting uncomfortably.  He was calm, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, and his eyes were gentle as he watched her.  She picked up the phone to keep her hands occupied and called the pizzeria a few blocks from the hotel.  She’d ordered from them before.

“And dinner will be here in twenty.  You can sit down, you know.”

When he dropped into one of the chairs at the small table with the spare bed between them, she found herself relieved. Uneasiness had settled over her as the realization that they were locked away in her hotel room with him blocking the door.  She was pretty sure that he hadn’t meant it to be that way, that he wouldn’t force her to stay in that room if she’d wanted to leave, but the memory of a similar scenario shoved to the forefront of her mind and Felicity wrapped her arms protectively around her middle.

Not for the first time since she’d met him, she’d let her guard down too quickly.  

Marked or not, Oliver was a virtual stranger. He’d answered so few of her questions, giving her nothing to go on, and she’d been uncharacteristically open.  It was a quality she’d learned to tamp down. As a child, she’d always spoken so freely, something her mom had never appreciated, but after too many instances of being too loose with her tongue and paying the price, she’d learned to keep her mouth shut.  Except, it seemed, where her match was concerned.

“I don’t know what this means for us.”

Her head came up at his statement.  She blinked in surprise.

“I don’t know either.  I mean, it could mean anything, right?  Maybe you’re destined to be my best friend.  I don’t really have one at the moment, so that could be it. Or maybe it’ll be something else. The question is, how the hell do we determine which is the right answer?  I don’t know you any more than you know me.  I don’t even know for sure that you have the Mark.”

She hadn’t meant to let the last part slip but the moment that it was out of her mouth, she realized that it had been bothering her.  She’d believed him with absolutely no evidence.  She had taken him at his word, had felt the truth of them in her soul, and she hadn’t once considered questioning his claim.  But she wanted to see his Mark.  She needed to know.

“You don’t believe I have one?”

She shrugged, “I didn’t say that.”

“But you want proof?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Oliver sighed.  When he stood, she got to her feet with a little more eagerness than she’d meant to exhibit.  They met in the middle of the room and when Oliver presented her with his back and began lifting his t-shirt, she swallowed hard.

“Lower right side.”

Her eyes traveled over the patch of mottled, scarred skin that he’d revealed and she felt heat blossom low in her stomach. The small crude arrow was stark white even against a multitude of scars.  There was no way to miss it.  No way to deny that it was identical to hers.  But it wasn’t the scar that caused her sharp intake of breath.  It was the dark edges of a tattoo that took up the expanse of his back and dipped into the waistband of his jeans.  Her hand lifted of its own accord.  He jerked in response to her touch.

“Felicity.”

She heard the warning in his voice and chose to ignore it.  Her fingers slipped beneath the soft cotton of his shirt and as her hands moved higher to stroke along the intricate design etched into his flesh, the material was pushed up and over his shoulders.  The tattoo covered his entire back, shoulder to shoulder, neck to waist.  It was dark and lovely and perfect.

“Wings.”

She was startled by the breathy quality of her own voice.  It was soft and full of wonder.  She’d never heard herself sound so reverent before.

A sudden spark of electricity passed from his flesh to hers like static and she drew her hand away on instinct.  He took a step, righting his shirt as he did so. She was confused when he refused to turn and face her.          

“I should go.”

There was a strain in his words that she didn’t recognize.  She opened her mouth to protest, to ask him to stay, but the request wouldn’t come. Before she could blink, the door was closing behind him.

 *          *          *

He sat with the truck running, the AC on full blast, both windows down.

He felt as if he was on fire, as if he was burning from the inside out.  The path that Felicity had traced along his back ached, a deep throbbing that shook him to his core.  He had hidden his wings for ages.  He had never allowed anyone to glimpse the power that they possessed but when her delicate hands had followed the curves of dark ink, something within him had been awakened.