“Felicity?” a barista called out, placing her drink on the counter

Bringing the phone up to her ear, Felicity grabbed the drink, stepping away from the counter and to the corner of the room. “Hello?”

“Felicity, I’m gonna need some of your magic right about now”

“Oliver, I’m in the middle of the shopping center right now, what do you want?” Felicity sighed into her phone, looking around warily for anyone eavesdropping on her conversation.

“We are in the pursuit of a dangerous meta-human. Do you have a computer near you?” he asked.

“Do you have a computer near you? You work for the police, doesn’t the precinct have people who do this… professionally?”

Oliver paused. “Well, yes, but the system takes hours to get official documents, and I need something…”

“More illegal?”

“Faster.”

She cracked a smile, readjusting the bags on her wrist. “oh, my dear, you are so lucky I love you.” Felicity pressed the phone against her chest, rushing to the nearest table, home to a studying college student. “Hi, ‘scuse me,” she said, waiting until the confused brunette looked up from his laptop. “Can I use this? Thanks.”

Felicity rotated the computer around, sitting across from the dazed man. She brought her phone back up to her ear, resting it between her shoulder and cheek.

“Alright, I'm ready, lay it on me,” she announced into the phone, vigorously typing at the keys.

“We’re looking for a meta-human who goes o a murderous rampage only during solstices and equinoxes, I need you to pull up any correlation between-”

“Yeah, yeah got it. Might take a while to process, this guy’s computer is slow as hell,” Felicity said, glancing at the person opposite to her, whose mouth was still agape.

“Hey- why are you shopping? I thought you weren’t celebrating Christmas?” Oliver asked on the other line to fill the time.

“Well, considering William is coming home, I thought it was about time I conform to the common tradition of gift giving.”

“Yeah… about that,” the hesitation in his voice said it all. Felicity groaned. “The dean called, the school is snowed in, and even if they get out, it's more than likely that the flight will be delayed anyway.”

“Aww, but I already bought him a portable spectrogram with infrared frequencies as an additive,” she whined

“A what?”

“Got it! You're looking for Rodrigo Danielson, current address is 583 South Holly Street, but his last credit card purchase was less than half an hour ago at the gas station on Washington and 23rd.”

“On it.  See you tonight.”

“Oh, about that,” Felicity exited the system on the laptop, turning it back around and dropping a 20 dollar bill with it. “Don’t bother getting dinner.”

“Why?”

“I’m making a turkey.”

“Felicity…” his irresolute tone suggested she mustn’t have told him.

“What? Its completely safe, I did have to learn to cook while you were gone. Otherwise, William would have eaten only Lunchables and Kraft mac & cheese. Don't worry, I even ordered it off of one of those catering websites- well technically not catering since you make it yourself, but it comes with instructions and ingredients. I got a good deal on-”

“Felicity, honey, I’d love to chat more about this, but I'm kind of busy and you're making it a bit difficult to focus.”

“Oh, right, sorry. Bye, love you… be safe!” she wasn’t even nervous, yet her sentence fragments prevailed.

Felicity pressed the end call button, rising from her seat and stepping out of the cafe. 7:13. She had 45 minutes before dinner needed to come out of the oven. She walked along the sidewalk, watching as others enjoyed their outing. It was around time for her to put an end on the shopping spree. Most of the stuff was for herself anyways. It didn’t pay to have a vigilante husband, and not a lot of places were too keen on hiring the ex-mayor’s wife.

She looked over to the crowd surrounded in front of a television store. Watching the breaking news, its title being ‘Star City Killer on the loose’. No doubt about the meta-human the police were currently in pursuit of.

Felicity kept walking. She placed her phone into the pocket of her coat, replacing it with her car keys. The bustle of people began to fade as she stepped into the parking lot under a skyscraper. She found herself relaxed by the peace and quiet, only interrupted by the sound of her heels on the concrete. After unlocking the door to her car, Felicity opened the back door to place her bags. She struggled to slide them off her wrists.

The hair on the back of her neck started to tingle, but before she could decipher her senses, her mouth was covered by a cloth. Her attacker held her shoulders firmly, pressing the sweet-smelling substance into her nose. Felicity struggled to get away. Kicking at his shins, stomping at his feet. Her vision began to blur as the chloroform kicked in, and hopelessly, Felicity drifted into the darkness of her assailant, his greasy blond hair hovering above her slumped body as his fingers stroked her cheek

They sit in silence for a moment. Oliver’s eyes scan her, just as she had stared at him a moment ago. He takes in the bright pink hair, the gash across her forehead, and the bruises on her knuckles. She feels his gaze on every inch of her face.

Then the Arrow enters his eyes. “What the hell happened?” he growls softly. “You were supposed to be safe. They promised me—”

“Turns out not even the FBI can keep every promise,” she replies. She’s not trying to make it an accusation—right now, anyway; it’s what she’s been thinking for five months—but he bows his head again. “Oliver.”

He shakes his head, the hand still resting across from hers trembling. “This isn’t what I wanted, Felicity. You and William were supposed to be okay, and I was supposed to be in here for a few weeks at the most. Not five months.”

Felicity shrugs helplessly. John’s told her what Oliver’s brain has been doing to him in supermax, and it’s not been pretty to hear. But now she’s seeing it—and her heart breaks for the thousandth time in the past five months. “You told John you were lying low. Staying out of trouble. Avoiding conflict.”

Oliver’s laugh is biting and harsh. “You knew better.”

“Of course,” Felicity bites back, shifting to clutch the phone with both hands. “You told the world you were the Arrow before entering a prison full of people who’d love nothing more than to see the Arrow dead. Of course you’d end up in as many fights as on the outside. If not more, Oliver!”

Oliver clutches the phone a little tighter and his muscles clench, his other hand forming a fist on the table. The past few months flash across his face, and she wants nothing more than to hug him.

“William’s doing fine,” she finally whispers, when Oliver’s face manages to calm down again. “He’s in summer school for fun.” Oliver lets out a breathy of a laugh. “I’ve kept him safe, Oliver. He’s not happy all of the time, but he’s okay.”

“I’m glad,” Oliver smiles. It’s almost a real smile. “I knew you could do it.”

“I shouldn’t have had to, Oliver.”

“There’s so much you’ve done that you never should have had to do,” he retorts. “You’ve been everything to me, the only thing that keeps me alive. You don’t know, you can’t possibly know, what all of it means to me.”

Felicity tries to smile, fails again, changes the subject. If this were a longer visit, this would probably be where she’d yell at him. Cry. Curse him for leaving her, for leaving his son. Sacrificing everything they’d ever wanted just to catch a second-rate mobster. Abandoning them for the good of a city that hated them.

But they only have a few more minutes. And they’re precious seconds, after all.

“Watson says they’re close to finding him. But the Hunters are coming, and it is not my job to fight them off.” She remembers the coffee shop, and her hands clench around the phone. Oliver’s face tightens briefly, guessing the story without her having to say a word. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

Oliver presses his hand against the glass again, his eyes pleading. Then Felicity hears the door behind her open, and she wonders how Oliver knew it was coming. “Visitation is over,” a security guard intones. The father throws the phone on the table without another word, stepping to the door, and the woman steps away, sobbing. She presses her hand to Oliver’s on the other side of the glass. “Mrs. Queen, it’s time to go.”

“I love you,” Oliver says urgently. “I love you and William so much, Felicity. I’ll never stop fighting to get back to you.”

“I love you too,” she chokes out. The guard is standing right behind her. She stands, mirroring Oliver’s movements. “I’ll see you soon.”

Oliver’s smile is sad as he hangs up the phone. There’s one tear moving down his cheek, and she turns away before her own tears fall.

She opened her eyes and stared at the line of script again. His handwriting was pretty nice. It didn’t really match the happy-go-lucky multi-college dropout she’d seen in the papers for years. The Queen name was infamous in the western USA for more than just Queen Consolidated and the elder Queens. She was one of the few girls in her high school who didn’t absolutely swoon over the escapades of Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn. She’d grown up hearing horror stories about trust fund babies like Oliver Queen.

But now he was dead. That was the funny—and tragic—thing about soulmarks, her grandma always said. They never showed up until one partner was dead. In the years in between their death and yours, you got to live your life knowing one of two things. That you chose correctly and your other half was gone—or that you missed your chance and now you’d never have the chance to find that perfect person.

It was all ridiculous, really. It still was, even as Felicity accidentally memorized the curves of the O and the Q.

Now what to do about the whole thing.

She couldn’t really mourn for something she never, ever wanted or someone she thought was dead already. She was only eighteen—too much of a life ahead of her to mourn for the famous Oliver Queen. Felicity shook her head and stared at the wall of her dorm room. She wouldn’t do that.

She couldn’t really tell anyone, either. She pictured walking up to Moira Queen, showing her the newly marked arm and proof that it wasn’t Sharpie… “Hi, I just found out I’m your son’s soulmate. Although of course, in order for me to know that, that means that he’s dead. Yeah, he just died, not when you and the rest of the world thought he did about a year ago. Have fun with that knowledge!”

Yeah, no. That wouldn’t work either. Mrs. Queen would either kill her—as any mother would probably be tempted to do in that moment—or—if she felt generous and Felicity managed to not say inappropriate things—adopt her. Neither of which would be conducive to finishing her degrees.

Felicity glanced down at her arm again. Only one thing to do—cover it up. If she ever got a boyfriend, she could pretend she had a really wild night in Vegas before she hasta la vista-ed her way out of there. Or something like that.

She halfway fell off her bed in her haste to get to her dresser, tore off her short-sleeved pajama shirt—Mathletics Champion 2007, whoo—and tugged on a loose long-sleeved black t-shirt. Not nearly as comfortable, but much better for hiding the problematic words. Which was apparently what she was going to have to do from now on.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was all over the place and she apparently hadn’t gotten all of her mascara off. Whatever fates were out there—they’d decided that she, Felicity Megan Smoak, was now doomed to be alone slash freed at the age of eighteen. It was a peculiar feeling. She was tied to no one.

Felicity turned the light back off and allowed herself one tear—or five—for Oliver Queen. He was her soulmate, after all. That kind of thing was okay.

--

Apparently, it’s impossible were to be the first words that would come to Felicity’s mind whenever she thought about Oliver Queen. Admittedly, she hadn’t really thought about him since the mark appeared—after that, it had just been a groan or a sigh whenever she saw the words written in her skin, cursing the lie she kept from the rest of the world and the fact that she had this guy’s name on her arm forever—but she was staring at the TV screen and thinking IT’S IMPOSSIBLE HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE.

Because Oliver Queen was alive. Completely alive and breathing and not dead in the middle of nowhere.

At least all of the major TV networks were saying so. They were screaming it, really: Billionaire Oliver Queen Found in North China Sea after Being Shipwrecked for Five Years and other variations of that. There were pictures of him pre- and post-island and… was it really that terrible to think “Oliver, good sir, the island has done you good”? Because that was what she first thought when she saw the newest picture, and she kept thinking it every time she saw a new picture.

There were many coming in as the man was escorted out of the hospital on the way toward the Queen mansion. And they were all beautiful.

His arms were bare of any Felicity Smoak in her handwriting, so apparently it was just her soulmark that had gone kerflooey. Not that it made any sense, of course. And it wasn’t like she was going to have the opportunity to track him down and ask him if he’d died at any point in his Castaway excursion.

Probably not the polite thing to do, and also he was alive, and there’d have been no way to come back to life on an abandoned island in the middle of the ocean. Or come back to life at all, no matter the location or situation. Not logical.

Also she was just an IT girl, even if she was working at Queen Consolidated. She would never meet Oliver Queen at all unless the fates had a really twisted sense of humor. She frowned suddenly. That would be the height of irony—if she’d only gotten this job so she could meet Oliver Queen.

Felicity pulled up the sleeve of her cardigan and stared at the cursive. She glanced back up at Oliver’s face. And back down at her arm. They did have a twisted idea of humorous.

--

Oliver saw the mark on Felicity’s arm for the first time in Nanda Parbat. He had no idea how he’d missed it over the three years of them spending most of their time together, but he’d never really thought to study her arm. Apparently she wore long-sleeved shirts more than he realized or had found some really good cover up.

Many more interesting things to look at on the woman he loved, like her eyes and her hair and everything else.

They were lying in the bed, shirts scattered across the room. She was sprawled halfway across his chest, fingers tracing the scars gently, her left arm thrown carelessly over his chest. Oliver Queen was written on her arm in his handwriting.

“Is that…” he couldn’t get all of the syllables out. He’d heard stories, of course, heard tales in Hong Kong and Starling, even seen the word on Slade’s arm that made him think that Shado was his. But he hadn’t really believed it.

Felicity glanced down at her arm. “Oh, yeah,” she murmured, cuddling into his side a little more. “Showed up about three years before you returned alive. Three and a half, actually. I was still at MIT.” He could hear it in her voice, the struggle to sound completely casual. Problem: it was Felicity, and  nonchalance was really not her strong suit.

He tried to follow her example. “So, soulmarks are real, then. That’s cool.”

“Yep.”

Oliver then tried to forget about the whole thing, but every time they moved in the slightest—and he should really be getting up to make sure Felicity intended to leave—he remembered the writing on her arm. He opened his mouth to comment on it again, but Felicity beat him to it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you! It’s just—it was really weird, the whole ‘I have a dead guy’s name on my arm’ and then the whole ‘oh yeah everyone thought he died almost two years ago’ and then, well, you were alive. Which was great, and completely surprising. I should have told you, shouldn’t I have? Speaking of, did you die at some point around then? Because if not, then the whole myth about them is completely wrong. And anyway, you didn’t think of me in any sort of way that warranted the great showing of the soulmark that you normally wouldn’t be able to see since—”

He kissed her. It was the only way that he could think of to stop the babbling.

“—you’d be dead,” she whispered. He smiled against her lips, prepared to tell the story.

“About a year and a half into the island part, Slade Wilson and I were fighting on a ship close to the island. The ship exploded soon afterward. Amanda Waller picked me up for training in Hong Kong and claimed to have brought me back once I woke up. I assume that the few minutes of no heartbeat and no breathing were enough to trigger… this.” He brushed his fingers along the mark slowly and carefully.

Felicity lifted her head back from its place on his chest, shifted a little to face him properly, and smiled. “We outsmarted the soulmarks,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he grinned. There was a lot he wanted to say but couldn’t. They weren’t words he wanted to leave her with. They’d only been given this night, after all. After tonight, he couldn’t belong to her anymore.

They kissed one more time, then Felicity pushed herself off of him and stepped over to the bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage, yanking on a robe along the way. It didn’t quite cover up his name on her skin. He smiled before standing, the sudden grimness of his thoughts not nearly enough to smother the glow in his soul that Felicity had given him.

He didn’t know what he would do if Felicity Smoak ever appeared on his arm.

--

Oliver had asked her to marry him. Felicity had said yes, her smile lighting up the night. He’d put the ring on her finger. They were in a limo, happily riding away to wherever. Anywhere. They’d be together—forever. Happily ever after or whatever the fairy tales demanded.

This wasn’t a fairy tale. This wasn’t the kind of story someone should believe in, have to watch, be forced to recognize as life. Life as the fates demanded.

He couldn’t stop seeing it. Feeling it. Watching the bullets race toward them, smelling the blood in the air, holding her in the street, eyes darting all around and wondering what could happen next.

Oliver had felt the burn on his arm in the hospital. He didn’t really pay attention to it, just heard the nurses yelling for oxygen and paddles. He knew what it was, what the pain meant, because he was listening the long beep of Felicity flat lining.

He’d watched her die. He watched his fiancée and love of his life die. His soulmate.

He’d stood by helplessly as they brought her back, but those were the worst twenty-three seconds of his life. He’d thought that he’d already lived more than enough horrible moments to create those terrible twenty-three seconds. They weren’t supposed to be like this. Not about her.

He stood on the rooftop, attacking Darhk’s man. “Where. Is. Darhk?” were the only words he really said aside from the grunts and the yells. He threw the man into the electrical box, watched it spark around him.

The man jumped from the roof and entangled himself in some more wires for a crispy death. Oliver looked down at him and turned away from the mess he’d made. His arm ached again, but it was just the memory. Oliver would never forget that sharp burn, comparable to most of his other injuries, but gone sooner. He hadn’t looked at his arm yet; he’d avoided the sight when he changed into his leathers and hood after making sure that Felicity was okay and out of danger.

He had to look, though, to see the miracle that was Felicity, now written into his skin forever. He removed the gauntlet and closed his eyes for a moment before staring.

Felicity Smoak, his arm now read. Would forever read.

He found himself on his knees, and tears finally ran down his cheeks. He’d always known he wouldn’t like the person he’d become when this name appeared on his skin. They both knew he would go off the rails, the deep end.

He had to go back to the hospital and take the ring back to her, the ring that the nurse should never have removed. He stood up and stretched, covering the name on his arm with the glove once more.

That wasn’t even the most important thing right now. Felicity was alive, and Darhk would suffer for hurting the woman the Green Arrow loved.

--

They were lying in bed after getting home from the new base. They were still in fancy dress, except Oliver’s jacket, which was tossed haphazardly on the couch. “How can it have come to this?” Felicity whispered. “It’s a perfectly great day, all dressed up and married and nothing wrong with the world and then I jinx it.”

“You didn’t jinx it,” Oliver murmured, pulling her a little closer. “It’s our life.”

“And now someone on the team is going to testify against you and we’re searching them and suspecting them and that can’t possibly end well and I know we aren’t really planning our honeymoon yet because of work and the team and William but this doesn’t feel like any sort of honeymoon period and that’s actually really depressing and—”

And she was cut off with Oliver’s mouth on hers. She was really glad he’d decided that was the best way to shut the rambles up. It was a really good way, more effective than the counting backwards or anything else in the history of ever. It calmed her brain down very nicely and turned her thoughts to Oliver and happiness and not much else. Presto, no more babbling.

“We’re not thinking about that right now,” he whispered. “Right now, I’m going to relish the fact that you married me and we’re going to sleep.”

She can’t stop thinking about it yet. “They’re going to hate us, Oliver. We’re going to lose them if they figure out what we’re doing.” This kind of background search… she’d have quit the team over it if she was in their shoes. Of course, she had had a background search done on her long before Oliver hauled his bleeding self into her car, but that was different. She wasn’t on the team yet. These three—they’re family.

“We might.” Oliver raised himself up to hover over her a little. “And I know that if it happens I’ll regret it. But right now I need to protect you and William. You two come first.” He kissed her again, softer and slower. Felicity felt her brain slowly reduced to mush and, finally, the whole problem was put on the backburner where it belonged. He pulled away just as slowly and they stared into each other’s eyes for a bit. They were allowed. Married and all.

Oliver stretched over her and grabbed a tissue from her side table. “What are you doing?” Her simple question was quickly answered when he started gently rubbing at her arm, where the soulmark was. Felicity smiled as the words came into view. She sat up once he was done and unbuttoned his shirt and threw it on the floor, revealing her own name on his skin. She turned so that he could unzip her and she tossed the wedding dress to the floor next to his shirt, cuddling back into him the moment she was free.

It was really cool how both of them had died and come back and cheated the whole your partner must die in order for you to see their mark thing. Weird, but cool. She kissed the line of letters and he smiled, a faint phantom of pain entering his eyes. She remembered his face from the hospital when she woke up, and she couldn’t help wishing that those two words weren’t on his forearm. Even though it was really pretty cool.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw you?” he asked. Rather random. Okay.

“I think I was there, I remember,” she said, a bit confused. “You pretended an assaulted laptop had had a run-in with a latte. Which was a lie. I wasn’t very savvy with the bullet holes yet, but that was no latte.”

Oliver smiled, pulling her back down to lie halfway on top of him. “No, you didn’t see me the first time.”

“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”

“Maseo and I were in Starling, looking for Chien Na Wei. She was going to be selling half of the bio weapon in Starling City, of all places. Amanda Waller sent me home.” She stared down at him in no small amount of shock. He’d come home without letting his mother, Thea, and Tommy know he was alive? She couldn’t imagine that amount of self-control.

“When did you see me?” was the appropriate next question.

His smile was soft, so fond and happy. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling back. “I was in my mom’s office, since it had the computers for the job, and I stalled because I found the video my dad left for me.” He had told her about that, the video that told him to follow the list. “And you came in Mom’s office.”

Felicity suddenly remembered that night, when she went in to return some files to Moira’s desk. She pushed herself up slightly, putting some distance between them so she could see his face clearly. “You heard me talking to your picture.”

“I’d seen Thea and Tommy earlier in the day, watched them as Thea’s life began to crash down around her and Tommy tried to save her. I’d followed them around a bit, but they weren’t really happy. You were a light among all the darkness I’d seen in the past two years. Beautiful,” he breathed. His eyes shone.

“And I called you cute, that couldn’t have hurt,” she said drily. “Please don’t go back to the shaving thing, though. It’s better this way.” She scratched her fingernails through his scruff lightly and he made that purring sound she loved so much.

He got back on topic. “You talked to the picture of me, wished I wasn’t dead—”

“The words had shown up like a year before that! Of course I wished you weren’t dead even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like you at all!”

Oliver settled deeper into the pillows and pulled her back down. “You wouldn’t have, I don’t think. Really, the accidental international trip was good for my character.” He brushed his fingers back across his name on her skin, caressing her arm. “Although I wish I’d seen this then.”

“What would you have done?” she whispered.

“Amanda threatened to kill Akio, Maseo and Tatsu’s son, if I disappeared. So I would have gone back to Hong Kong and seen the mission out. But the moment I could have, I would’ve come back. Not just for Thea and Mom and Tommy and Laurel.” He kissed the side of her head, lingered.

Felicity grinned into his chest. “You would have come back for me?” She couldn’t stop it from being a question. He’d still loved Laurel at the time, and the losses of Shado and Sara would have still been fresh. She wasn’t that kind of epic love, just the boring destined kind of soulmate.

“Nothing could have kept me from you. Even with everything else going on, whatever else happened, I would have come for you.” No matter what was unspoken, but she heard it anyway.

She moved so that she could see his face. There was determination, seriousness, sincerity in his eyes. A look that the island had given him. But there was something else—love. She saw it in his eyes, chasing away the demons. His mouth was tipped up at the very corners, smiling in that real way she loved so much. God, she loved him so much. Every part of him.

Either way, my point is that I have been thinking about having a Q&A in relation to the fic on my Twitter (Sugar_Pepper666). I have been trying to figure out the live-feed feature, where you would be able to directly post questions in relation to Hunted and I would be able to reply instantly. For me, that would be the most interesting option on how to do this, since whatever I say would be entirely spontaneous (I curse like a sailor from time to time, so I’m sorry in advance in case someone gets easily offended!).

The other option would be that some of you send in starting questions here on Tumblr, I prepare the questions and some of my main points on the topic and then film the entire thing on my phone and post it here on Tumblr and on my Twitter. The thing I’m mostly nervous about is that people I know will somehow find the video, which would basically out my identity on the Internet... My baby cousin always tells me that if I want to be someone someday, I can’t keep hiding behind a screen and I kind of feel like after writing this story for so long, you kind of deserve to see the “Master” behind it (Haha, see what I did there? ;) That wasn’t me trying to be a pretentious asshat, but rather me trying to be funny.).

I do, however, have one bigger problem: The time differences! I know that there are lots of readers from all over the world both on ff.net and AO3. I would love to have as many readers as possible involved in this, because it would be more fun. That’s why I think the option of you guys sending in questions here on Tumblr and on Twitter would be the easiest way to get more people involved.

I am open to any suggestions you guys have, but I would very much appreciate it if you shared your thoughts on this. It feels like I’m kind of pushing this on you guys, but I promise, if you don’t want to do this, then I won’t either! I just feel like it would be a fun thing to do, especially since this story has been going for over two years (because I was awful at updating for a while). So, feel free to tell me what you think on the matter and I’ll start up a poll on Twitter where you can vote on me either live-sending or filming myself (in my natural habitat, away from my apartment where my siblings might disturb me) and then posting the video of me answering your questions! :)