She didn't think his GPS would come back on. If he shut it off, he would keep it off. So she hadn't kept her tablet looking for his signal. She wasn't expecting him to send her a message either. So she hadn't checked her phone for one. He must have felt guilty for going full steam ahead with his suicide mission when he typed that text. He must have disabled his device before it left his outbox. Once someone found it and started searching through it for information the text finished sending. Technology always finds a way to get the job done, unless of course there is human interference.

She reached for her phone to search for his alias through another database. She felt sick when his message from 37 minutes ago popped up on her screen: 'Love, I have unfinished buisness. I will meet you later at our favorite place. Pack the essentials for both of us... If it turns out that I stand you up, I am truly sorry. Don't waste time. You are the only girl who has my Heart.'She knew what that meant, they were going to be on the run. She hurried to grab the necessary items, their go bags and stashes of money. That text meant they would never be able to come back here. At least she had four days before anyone at work noticed she was missing. If he stood her up she would hunt him down and save him herself or die trying.

She concluded at this point that Oliver must have gotten some lead on Slade, maybe he was baiting him. Or maybe he had just gotten sloppy. He must have Realized the threat this posed, and set out to remedy it. Of course something like this would happen. He was reckless. He was was going to put himself in harms way. He was planning this along.

He Was Planning this. All along. That explained his resistance to her advances. He was afraid that loving her would weaken his resolve. So this was his endgame?

She should have known. The last two years were the calm before the storm. He had finally started telling her how much he loved her, it was all so different from that night. . .

...

She loved Oliver, she really did. After all here she was putting her self in harms way to save him, with the four words she had longed to hear him spoke replaying in her mind. The feigned emotion of them burning into her. It was all wrong. It wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't real. He had asked her if she understood. Oh, she understood. He needed her. That was always why she stayed. He needed her, but not to help him heal. Not as a partner a lover or friend, he needed her as a tool. She was a distraction. An arrow for him to aim at an enemy. She was willing to put her life in jeopardy. Maybe one day he would need her as more.

She nervously gripped the syringe in her pocket. Waiting at Queen manor for swift death to arrive by the name of Slade Wilson.

She expected him to be ruthless with her from the get go. She assumed he would knock her unconscious but Slade had kidnapped her without a fight. Shocking as that was, she knew what needed to be done. So she played along with this handsome madman.

Oliver warned her that he was a cunning man. He never warned her that he was clever, a gentleman, and a man of honor. When he told Felicity his reasons for revenge, what he wanted to accomplish, she almost understood. ALMOST. Still she felt pity for Slade. For who he had become. Not wholly at the hands of an inexperienced Oliver Queen, but he did carry some of the blame for what His brother went through. Oliver was a man of many hurtful secrets. She knew this firsthand. She defended him right away, his actions as the Arrow even. But Slade had a way with words, a way to make her want to know the whole story. By the time the uprising was over she was asking him the questions. Trying to reason with him. Slade told her all she asked, and more than she bargained for.

After her time with Slade she couldn't make the two worlds that she knew meet. The Oliver that she thought she loved could not coexist with the Oliver that had lied to His brother. A brother that saved his life and taught him all he needed to know as a vigilante. They were both so broken. With a heavy heart He had tried to kill that man before he could hurt anyone else. It was for the greater good in his mind. Obsolving the man, his once brother, of his sins. All the while intending to carry the burden of them himself. Adding to the growing mountain of his nightmares.

They were two sides of the same coin placed on a railroad track. Both struggling with guilt and loss, both betrayed by the people closest to them. Both without hope of ever returning home. Even if time stopped, and the whole world was actually waiting with baited breath for their homecoming, they would come home changed. Empty. Hollow. Beaten. Desperate. Forced to change into someone they no longer recognized.

Oliver could never know she had thought this. He would lose faith in himself.

The cure in her pocket felt like the weight of the world. She needed to inject Slade with the cure, not just for Oliver's plan. But as a mercy. He was tortured by visions of Shadow.

She had to decide based on instinct. He had a plan. So did she. She would leave on her own terms.

...

In the car she started a GPS tracker again. Three cell towers picked up his phones signal.

'No.' she breathed. He was in star city. 'No no, no No no, NO.' she pleaded out loud as she dialed his cell. It rang twice before she hears the click that means he answered. Frantic and not thinking it through she begs him to stop. Begs him to change his mind, to just live a life on the run with her. She lost count of how long she had been begging him by name to say something. To prove that he loved her by leaving this all behind. 'I never asked you to change, but I am begging you now.' she groveled. Hearing no response nor a dial tone that signaled him ending the call, she continued: 'I choose you because I thought you needed me more than anyone else did. Well now I know I was wrong, I need YOU more. Baby you don't have to do this.' Hearing a familiar gasp of surprise on the other line that did not belong to him shook her to her core. She was too late.

She knew she made a mistake as soon as she breathed his name.

His real name: Slade.