Time stuttered. It was too fast and then it all just stopped.

Or maybe it wasn't the time at all, but rather her heartbeat.

"Felicity, come back to me." He gasped, his lungs on white hot fire, aching for air.

"Mr. Queen, we're sorry. We tried—"

"Felicity, no.

No.

You can't.

Felicity, breathe."

He stood paralyzed, his hands frantically gripping the edges of the cold, porcelain sink.

His breathing quickened.

Oliver looked up at the mirror in front of him with stains decorating the dirty edges. He saw his eyes, bloodshot from leashing the tears that threatened to fall.

Blood.

Blood settling in the crevices of his hands.

Hot Blood.

Staining her red lips.

Blood.

Tracing haunting lanes down her pale neck.

Just so much blood.

His fingers fumbling on her stilling pulse.

A strange icy sensation hummed in his veins and ice begins encase his heart.

"Felicity, Felicity breathe."

His throat was scorched with fire and his head pounded. The heart monitor showed those lines. Those lines that just didn't make sense, but vaguely somewhere in his clouding mind, they acted like the strings which pulled at his heart as he waited for them to climb so he could know she'd live.

So they'd live.

So close.

They were just so damn close.

He had almost made it.

She had almost lived.

They had almost won.

Oliver, I love you. I love you.

She had stretched her last breaths in that gas chamber to tell him she loved him. He had thought he would watch the light drain out of her clear, azure eyes in front of him.

And then she had made it. They had made it.

No, almost, a wicked voice reminded him.

He was just so angry. She had deserved this. They had deserved this. They had fought for so long, always pulled towards each other and then violently thrown back the opposite direction. For so long, there was always that aspect of protection; selfless protection, which had blinded him to waste so many beats of their lives so that often he wondered if only life-threatening situations could ever make him see things clearly. He often laughed, for he thought that, for not for the persistence of his blonde hurricane which kept colliding and repeatedly, relentlessly, colliding, into the immovable structure which was the Arrow, he would still be encased in that hollow mask. Or worse, perhaps. He didn't know what it felt to be without her, because he'd never truly lived without her shadow lingering in some aspect of his life, whether he'd been acknowledged it at the time or not. She was just so eager, and so strong and so adamant to be with his side, whether he was wielding a sword or an arrow. She was always here, and he was always hers.

He had been reborn, in a way. We found ourselves in each other. She washed that darkness away, cleansed every corner and surface till he was pure and he was new and he was hers.

But she was laying lifeless in that empty room, and now he had trouble breathing because oh no, Felicity, not you. Never you.

There was this vacuum in his head, this white noise, with a hot ring which formed itself inside his throat. An invisible hand closed steadily and slowly around his sweating neck. There was a mirror in front of him. And then there were two and then there were more; until there was darkness and he punched it. Oliver tried to punch the darkness away, physically. It laughed at him, really, because the man had never really known how to do it himself. He relied on that bud of sunshine which he'd sown to his hip since day one and he'd shielded himself with her against the shadows and the chaos, without realizing it. They all called her "Felicity."

His head buzzed.

It was a little cruel, he thought, the way "felicity" meant immense happiness and the moment he'd asked the woman he loved if she'd make him the happiest man on the planet, if she'd grant him pure felicity, she'd been taken from him. It's like he jinxed it. His tongue wasn't ever meant to utter that word. Happy. What did it mean to be happy?

To be by her side, it was an instant reflex of an answer. And it was such a cliché idea, but that's what they were, he guessed. A cliche fairytale, in which the princess saves the hopeless peasant with a kiss. But she was nothing less of extraordinary, so much more than a fairytale princess in every aspect he could imagine. Except for that part where her prince could awaken her with a kiss.

As far as he knew, Felicity lay lifeless on that cold, hard bed. And he had tried, with too much passion and too many times, to try to wake her up with a kiss. He would've tried till his lips went raw, were it not for the nurse that pulled him away from her.

Mr. Queen, I'm sorry. The nurse's voice was nothing more than the buzzing of a housefly in his ear that he annoyingly tried to swat away. They pushed him out of that ugly glass room and he felt himself falling, slowly disappearing.

He fell against the harsh wall, his legs giving away under the cold realization that someone was taking her away, taking Felicity away. From him. And he was returning to that cave in his mind, the one which she'd sealed when she'd told him she loved him, the one where that mask lay.

The ring. He saw the ring sitting on the sink. Her ring. Oliver screamed. His breathing quickened, his eyes let the tears fall and then his heart thrummed in his ears. It was so loud, just so loud. He put his hands to his ears to just push it all out, to just wake up from this nightmare. His bloody knuckles left imprints on his face when he tried to wipe his face but it didn't work, like it never worked. His breaths were audible now, really loud. He felt water entering his lungs and his knees began to jerk but the worst of all was how heavy his heart felt. It physically hurt, and deep inside his darkening head, Oliver thought that this was a panic attack.

That he was getting a panic attack after so many years and the last time had been a little after his mother's death and Felicity had found him in the foundry and helped him breath. She had wiped away the cold sweat that lined his forehead just now, and then she had told him to focus on her voice. She had taken his face in her beautiful, warm hands and looked at him with those steady, focused eyes. He clenched his eyes shut now, because he didn't know what to do without her. He quite literally didn't know how to breathe without her at this instant. That ring around his throat tightened one last time and Oliver's heart was beating too rapidly, his thoughts were all just slurs, and he was too cold, his fingers were just too numb. He tried to pull a breath in, but it was just too much pain in his throat and there was just no word to sum up what he felt but he was a little thankful that the door to the bathroom opened at that instant and someone came inside when everything darkened and he fell.