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If anyone had told her that she would fall in love with a guy like Oliver Queen, she would have laughed in their face. Trust fund babies had never been her type, especially not ones with beautiful faces and charming words. Oh, but she had. She hadn’t even noticed when or how it had happened. He had appeared out of nowhere. One moment she was spilling coffee on a too hungover Oliver Queen and the next she was on her third date with him. Oliver Queen was a pleasant surprise in her life that she hadn’t seen coming.
A month into their relationship he had confessed that he was on the verge of being kicked out from his fourth Ivy League school and for once in his academic life he didn’t actually want to leave. It hadn’t hit her until much later that she had been the reason why he had wanted to stay. It had taken them lots of sleepless nights, but they somehow had been able to get his grades high enough that he had passed all his classes that term. They hadn’t been the greatest grades but all he wanted was a passing grade, not top marks.
They made the oddest couple. She was going through what some called her "Gothic Phase," while he looked like the stereotypical frat boy with a bad haircut. She spoke too much when she got excited or nervous, while he was more quiet than she had expected. They both slowly changed. Her wardrobe became more colorful, as did her hair until she finally settled for blonde, while Oliver one day appeared with a shaved head claiming it had been time to cut off his “baby hair.”
Five months. That’s how long it took him to move in with her. She once again hadn’t realized how it had happened, but when she had brought it up, all he had said was, “Look at that, we’re roomies. I’ll have my part of the rent by the end of the month.” That was all he said and life went on. She should have said more on the subject, like how it was too soon to move in together, but she didn’t. Later on, she would learn that Oliver Queen moving in with someone he was dating went against everything everyone knew about him, especially after dating for only a couple of months. Oddly enough, living together hadn't been hard. He was actually a considerate roommate. He usually picked after himself and, out of the two, she was a bit messier so he sometimes had to pick up after her too, especially during the days when she was stressing over a project she needed to finish. The one thing he was absolutely hopeless about was doing laundry. He just never managed to get it right. Overall, she loved living with Oliver.
Two years. They had two years of happiness before everything came crashing down. Those two years hadn’t been the easiest, but they had been the happiest of her life. They had both worked hard to graduate from college, Oliver a little harder than her, especially when he found out she was going to graduate early, which meant no winter or summer breaks for him.
Even when life got hard, she never felt that they would not be able to overcome whatever rough patch they were going through. If she was honest with herself, she knew that what they thought were hard times, for them meant not being able to spend time together because they were busy with either schoolwork or work. She could recall with extreme clarity their last moments together. They would forever stay with her.
“Stop pouting, you’ll be back before you know it.” She told him as she brushed his hair away from his forehead.
“I don’t pout. I’m Oliver Queen. Oliver Queen doesn’t pout.” Oliver said to her as he lowered his head and gently rubbed his nose against hers.
“You really need to stop that third person thing you do,” She answer him wrinkling her nose at him.
“Who would've had thought that Oliver Queen would be trying to be an adult before the age of thirty?” He told her as he went in for another hug. He had said he wouldn’t be getting any for a few weeks and he was trying to get as many as he could before he left.
“You’re hopeless, you know that right?” She had told him pressing her face into his chest.
“I am hopeless. Hopelessly in love with you.”
“You’re such a sap,” She had said to him before giving him a small kiss.
“But I’m your sap.” He told her giving her what felt like the millionth kiss of the day.
After breaking the kiss, she pulled out the locket her mother had given her and said, “I know it’s a little girly for your taste but look, I put a picture of us. For those days you have a crappy signal."
"And you say I'm the sap," He told her as he took the necklace and gave her a kiss that she would keep with her for a lifetime.
“Shut up,” She said as she slapped his arm.
“Are you going to miss me?” He asked her as his arms rounded her waist.
“Maybe,” She shrugged at him, “but who knows considering I'm going to be busy-”
“Aw, come on, don’t say that. I’ll be with you in spirit,” He cut her off. She knew what he was doing.
“Sure, ‘cause that will help me with-” She told him, trying to get back to the subject but once again she was interrupted by him.
“I promise I’ll take double shifts when I come back and you get the weekend for your pleasure without any interruptions. ” He told her. She knew he felt guilty for leaving her alone for the next couple of weeks. His father had asked him to shadow him for a few weeks in order to persuade him to eventually take up the role of CEO, even though he knew he didn’t want the title and responsibilities that being the CEO entitled. He had told her that he wasn’t sure in what division he wanted to work in or even if he wanted to work for his family’s company, but that he was willing to consider his father’s offer, at least until he decided what he wanted to do with his life, and of course she had told him that she would support whatever he decided to do.
“Promises, promises” She teased him.
“Oliver, we have to go, son,” Robert called him from aboard the Gambit.
“One more for the road,” Oliver told her as he kissed her once more before heading towards the Gambit.
Loving can hurt. When she first started dating Oliver Queen, she knew that one day he would break her heart. She just didn't know the way it would happen. Out of all the possible scenarios that could have gone through her head, him dying had never been one. She always thought that when he died, it would be after a long life together, when he was eighty-six years old and with her at his side. Not when they were just starting their lives together and had a million future plans for their lives.
The day the news broke that The Gambit was lost at sea, she didn’t believe anything she was told. Denial. That’s how she survived that day and the days that followed. She had cried the days after the search had been called off and the days leading to the funeral, but she refused to cry to an empty casket. By the time the day of the funeral came, she didn’t allow herself to feel anything, she became numb. The numbness didn’t go away easily because not feeling anything was better than feeling the pain of losing him. Realistically she knew she couldn’t keep that way and it took all her strength to move with her life. She couldn’t say the phrase “move on” and she forbid anyone from saying that. She knew she would never move on from having him and losing him.
She carried on. It took her months to stop thinking about how she would never see him again. How she would never get to see that stupid grin he had whenever he thought he was being extremely clever. How she would never get to see her favorite smile where both his dimples appeared. She stopped thinking that way the day she realized she was thinking of him in past tense, it was then that she realized that she was an empty shell of who she used to be. She knew she would never be the same person she was, but she couldn’t be the sad shell of a person she had been.
It was his love that brought her back and reminded her that she needed to actually live her life and not just go through the motions. She thought about how it would upset him to know how she had been living for the past few months. He had always said that out of the two of them she was the strongest and she needed to prove him right. It was their shared love that reminded her that she had too much to live for and she just couldn’t quit and give up.
Life went on after that, even if it meant going on without him.
It was Oliver’s best-friend, Tommy, that helped her when the world got too much. But he was also there when she just needed someone to have her back. Sometimes she felt that she was asking too much from him, especially his time, but he always replied that it was the least he could do for Oliver. Surprisingly enough another person she saw a lot of was Thea Queen, Oliver’s little sister. Thea would spend countless hours at her apartment “helping” her with whatever she needed. Many times she wondered if Moira Queen ever wondered where her teenage daughter went after school or if she asked where she disappeared almost every weekend, but Thea assured her that she did know and whenever Felicity tried to call her, Moira didn’t answer. At some point, she just gave up and took Thea’s word about Moira knowing what her daughter was doing.
They say that hope is the thing that dies last. Her hope came three years after Oliver was declared dead. Hope came in the form of someone accessing his email from somewhere in Japan. Tommy had volunteered to go investigate, he had come back with a black eye and a cryptic message that scared both of them, but it also filled her with more hope than she had ever since The Gambit had gone down. Now that she knew that there was a chance he was still alive, she would cling to that with all her might, even if she didn’t know how to bring him back to her.
It took two more years after that. The day she had not stopped hoping for. The day that Oliver Queen had been found alive.