Archive of Our Own ^beta

One day, one day very soon, she’s going to find her husband and she’s going to kill him.

Slowly.

Very slowly. He’s going to beg for death by the time she’s done with him.

Her children are gone.

Her marriage is non-existent.

Her accomplishments, her inventions, her company, everything is gone.

Because 22-year-old Felicity Smoak has just started her career with Queen Consolidated under Walter Steele’s leadership. This Felicity is nothing but a new start, a no-name grunt lost in the masses of the IT department.

Her former husband – a man who does not yet know her in this time – is currently either on the hellish island of Lian Yu or under ARGUS’, or more specifically Amanda Wallers’, thumb. This timeline’s Oliver Queen is, anyway, if it follows her own.

Her real husband has become the Spectre and become the epitome of everything he’s always denied being and yet always tried to do.

A hero.

He’s sacrificed himself and so many have returned to life because her husband hasn’t, because he became the Spectre, watching over timelines and worlds. Including this one.

Which also means this predicament is uniquely of his making – because Felicity remembers following the Monitor, remembers the pocket dimension one moment, one moment stretching across an eternity, and waking up in her small, rented accommodation in Starling City the next, her home not yet a home and barely furnished.

Felicity doesn’t know if her younger self got memories shoved at her, or somehow experienced it through time or if she erased her younger self, supplanted her – but the body is her own, albeit younger. No scars, no age lines, no laughter lines or bullet wounds.

Her first few weeks back pass in a daze, half-convinced Oliver as the Spectre will see reason, will take her back to that pocket dimension, or back to their children.

But a week passes. Then two. Then a month has gone by and she has to acknowledge that this is it.

She doesn’t know his reasons. Doesn’t know why he wants her here, now, or what happened to the person she used to be. Why this was necessary.

But she’s always trusted him. Even when he didn’t explain his plans, when she plays along with a new strategy or plan, he’s concocted merely because he’s given her a glance and a smile. Because she has faith. Because she trusts him – and he has earned her trust ten times over by now. Felicity understands that sometimes things need to happen quickly or that they’re under watch and he can’t tell her what she needs to know.

But she knows that if she could have come home, back to him – any version of him – or their children, that’s where she would be. Staying here this long, it changes things. Too many things by the time the month is over.

So she mourns. Because she knows this is it. Her new forever.

She screams and rages. She cries. Her hard-earned money for that month is not spent on her favourite sofa or a bed for the crappy little mattress she’s sleeping on, but rather on eating her weight in mint-chocolate chip ice cream. And dollar-store red wine which tastes more like acid than wine.

Felicity doesn’t work overtime. Doesn’t challenge herself at work. Her skills are far beyond cleaning up laptops from porn-site viruses or fixing projectors. She does her job and no more.

Not now, not when she’s still struggling to put one foot in front of the other, when she’s lost the love of her life, the children she adored and all her friends and family. People she’s been through hell with and come out the other side. Most times, at least.

Not this time, apparently.

She’d thought it was the end, but not like this – not all over again, not without support, not without love.

More weeks pass before she cleans the alcohol out of her apartment. The ice cream stays in the freezer for weeks rather than being re-bought every few weeks.

Felicity knows that her time for mourning is over, knows she needs to move on. Her family, her friends, extended or otherwise, need her.

Queen Consolidated needs her, whether they know it or not, before Rochev gets her grubby little paws all over it.

It’s funny – it’s not the sight of Thea or Laurel, not the sight of Moira or Walter, or any of the many familiar faces in Starling City which rip her out of her funk.

No, it’s the face of a man she’s only met a handful of times, but a man her husband had mourned over for years later. His best friend’s death which had sent her husband back to Purgatory in a fit of self-inflicted punishment after less than a year back home. And it’s the face of that man breezing unknowingly past her when she walks home past one of Oliver’s favourite restaurants that has her taking a second and third glance at the bottle in her shopping bag, at the state of her flat and her life.

Because for a moment she’s forgotten something, lost in mourning everything she’d lost – that there are people out there, people she can still save. People who didn’t make it last time.

She’s too late for Helena Bertinelli’s fiancé, but she can still save Tommy. Can still save Ray’s fiancée. Can help Thea so she’s less of a party girl into drugs or alcohol when Oliver returns. Can try and help the Lances. Maybe she can even help Oliver. The earthquake machines need to be destroyed. Malcolm needs to be stopped. Walter doesn’t need to be kidnapped. So many small things she can change.

Felicity knows this well enough, has lived and worked along her husband for long enough – and with Barry – to understand that any changes she makes will affect everything else.

The Oliver who returns will not be her husband. Will not the man she lived with, the man she loves, father of her children, the man who trusted her, the man she believed in. The man who returns will be more ruthless, more suicidal and hasn’t encountered his limits the way the man she loves has. A man who believes there is no future for him, not past the list. There will be an Oliver Queen who will be rescued from that island – but there’s no guarantee he will fall for her. This one may find his peace with Laurel. Or Sara. Or McKenna. Or someone else entirely.

But that’s what her life has been all about any way since the day she met him.

Neither Felicity nor Oliver ever accepted what life handed them. She’s a world away from all she loves, but that doesn’t mean that this is not a world worth fighting for.

Felicity’s never been one to dip her toes in. She is someone who jumps in, headfirst. Who signs up to a vigilante’s crusade mere hours after helping resuscitate him.

Life is there to be taken, to be grasped with both hands and to be fought for. It won’t ever be what she lost, what she loved. But it could be something just as good; without those who know her, who love her, but with so many more alive. Happy.

So that’s what she will do.

Integrating herself in Thea’s life is the easier part – she’s failing classes, not because of a lack of cleverness but rather due to truancy, uncompleted homework, lack of studiousness and more interest in drugs and alcohol as coping mechanisms. Understandable given Moira’s absenteeism and preoccupation and Walter’s off-hands approach to parenting. Still regrettable - but easily remedied.

And with her frivolous spending over the last few months since her arrival, it’s not like Felicity couldn’t use the extra cash – so she advertises her services as a tutor in the evenings. It’s easy enough to hack the advertising to both Moira and Walter so it comes up as a frequent advertisement and ensure her own profile is in the top three highlighted for them when they search the website. She’s also added her services to the notice board at work and offered them to the school Thea’s at.

The Lance’s get targeted advertisements for grief counselling and anger management. There may also be a few groups for women who found their boyfriend cheating on them in there for Laurel. Tommy gets ads for grief counselling, for support and as she doesn’t know him well enough, she leaves off there. But the more worrying aspect is that she finds the young billionaire in Hong Kong – where Oliver had gotten the order to kill his best friend.

Hacking into Hong Kong’s cameras is no harder than Starling’s but there is a lot more square footage involved. Still, she finds him and then finds out the information that led him there in the first place. It’s easy enough to create fake footage and then disprove it as a hoax online and manipulate Tommy’s search results enough it is one of the first ones he looks at and he makes his way back home.

Her work at Queen Consolidated passes in a blur of mind-numbingly tedious tasks but they are what afford her enough money to spend time chasing and checking up on her friends.

Such as finding Emiko Adachi Queen. Because Oliver’s other half-sister needs help just as much – if not much more so – than Thea Queen. Her husband’s life really is a Shakespearean play some days.

And finding William and making sure they have enough cash and are safe and happy as Felicity can make them without having much physical interactions with them. She’s already hacked into their computer and upgraded the security, hidden his birth certificate and paid the super so their security system is state of the art. And may or may not have done the installation herself and improved them further with a fail-safe notification sent to her. Other than playing against or with William in the occasional online children’s game. Which is of course where it goes wrong – she’d never really had the chance to interact much with Samantha before – William’s mother – but had been impressed with the sheer amount of guts it must have taken to stand up to Moira Queen and tell her she wouldn’t be seeing or hearing about her grandson when you were so young and found yourself pregnant.

The woman had taken less than five minutes to suss out Felicity – well, kind of. She thought she was a PI hired by Moira, but close enough.

It took the better part of two days, research, and a plethora of other information Felicity definitely shouldn’t have for Samantha to believe her and allow her to finish installing the security system. Felicity couldn’t help but admire the headstrong woman, the woman who had done what her own had and raised her child as a single mother, working hard and still raising such an incredible child. Someone she could see Oliver with. Not her husband-Oliver. She didn’t doubt that the man she loved had eyes for anyone but her – but this one, this post-island Oliver? He might just want to cling onto anything good in his life. In a woman who raised his son. Who was strong enough to not accept a million dollars in bribes and stand against Moira Queen.

But it didn’t stop Felicity from still liking this woman. Samantha had no idea what Felicity was doing in the background – or the lengths she was going to – but she knew something which was more than literally everyone else. She was a confidante, a friend, of sorts. A friend she had to cut all contact with after one short week, but it was a good week. Felicity managed to install the security, hand over a secure phone number and secure phone, and hide her identity from the Queens by ensuring every little detail on Moira’s computer about Samantha Clayton and William were changed to Savanah Leighton and her son Liam. Then planted a trail for them to follow which ended up with the woman having supposedly perished with her son en route to the hospital three years ago when a wave of pneumonia swept through Central City. Death certificates were issued and gravestones existed by the time Felicity left the city and her son’s birth certificate was amended, the real one hidden.

When Felicity left, she’d managed to arrange an interview for higher-paying position for Samantha by hacking the HR’s recruitment team’s computer and prioritising Samantha. She’d also managed to arrange weekly child support payments from the interest garnered by Oliver’s trust fund, including amending bank records to show the payments having been made for years leaving Samantha with a nice buffer in her account, assuring her that even as a playboy, Oliver would have wanted to take care of them, that this money was not hush money, but rather contributing his half to the expenses.

It's a short friendship, but it’s a new one, and hopefully Felicity can ensure that Samantha remains alive for long, long time. With any luck, Oliver will be able to share in his son’s younger years on his return.

Her computer is built while she’s still sleeping on a mattress on the floor – built from all the spare parts she can find and, when that fails, buy. She writes her own operating system – a beautiful work of art in the future, but now has only got the most rudimentary functions she needs built to make sure her computer is hers, and hers alone, and the most secure, unhackable machine an MIT graduate with her skills and knowledge of the future can build.

The information she’s looking up is too dangerous, the servers and people she’s researching too vulnerable, to leave these things to chance.

Oliver- well, Oliver’s the more complicated variable.

In the end she hacks the phone he’s using on one of his missions, watches as he hesitates and reads her message. Watches as he only takes a moment to think before rejecting her offer.

I can blackmail Amanda Waller into releasing you. Or I can publish what she’s doing. If you say yes to either, I can get you home to your family. For free, no obligations, no reciprocity. What do you say?

Your friend.

No.

She doesn’t know if he just doesn’t trust her of if he thinks it’s a trap. Either way – at least she offered him the chance, gave him a choice he hasn’t been offered in a while. She’ll contact him again when he’s with the Bratva, see if he wants out. If he wants a rescue. A helping hand.

Alright. If you ever need anything, contact me. Memorise this number. It’s secure. No one will ever be able to see or trace anything I send you. Remember, you are missed and you are mourned. I will watch over your family until your return. Stay safe.

Your friend.

She follows this by sending him candid shots of his family – most of them grabbed from cameras at school and at Queen Consolidated, including the engagement announcement from several months ago in the newspaper for Walter and his mother. She also includes a picture of Tommy, one of Laurel and one of Quentin. She tries for happier shots of them laughing, of them enjoying life. She hopes it allows him to be a little bit stronger, a little bit happier, a little bit less full of guilt for all the people he loves.

The photos disappear off his phone and the internet five minutes after he’s seen them, but she can spot the sheen in his eyes over the camera and Felicity presses a kiss to her phone, closing her eyes.

“Always,” she promises him quietly.

Tommy becomes her friend through Thea, unexpectedly. He’d dropped by to cheer his best friend’s sister up and found them together in pajamas on the couch watching The Princess Bride. He hadn’t hesitated to join them. They bond over helping Thea. Over the state of the Queen family. Over coping with grief and loss when there’s so much uncertainty. It also is the easiest thing in the world for a computer genius of Felicity’s calibre to program Tommy’s phone so the next time he’s at his father’s company, she can access their system and get all the information she needs this time.

In no time at all, Felicity’s ploys come to fruition. She’s Thea’s tutor and occasional babysitter – which means she’s somewhere between friend, sister and mum for the girl. It doesn’t help that she sometimes reminds her of Mia; it’s easy to fall into the pattern, of arguing through logic, of movie nights, pyjama cuddles and popcorn fights. Felicity has always liked sharing her affections openly and this Thea is craving the easy hugs, forehead kisses, the tucking in and the arms around each other when they go to cafés or movies. Future-Thea is much more locked-up, much angrier at the world, at her family, feeling lost and betrayed before she found herself again. It’s easy to mother the girl despite the fact that Felicity in this time is a mere six years older.

It takes about two months before Thea opens up to Felicity the first time, before she becomes a friend to the girl – the moment she brings up that she feels like her brother is still alive. That she talks to his grave but feels like he’s still out there. Somewhere.

Everyone is telling Thea she needs closure, needs to give up – even Tommy, the man who hasn’t given up the search himself, doesn’t want to encourage what they all see as a hopeless endeavour. So, when Felicity reaches back, when she tells the girl they can look into it, Thea is desperate, yearning, and only too eager to have someone finally believe her.

Felicity hacks emails, computer systems, the coast guard, Chinese intelligence and everyone else they can think of. The first thing they stumble over – other than the missing Queen’s Gambit which could not be recovered, apparently – is that there are eleven oceanologists and meteorologists who were consulted. Nine of them say they should be searching in the opposite direction of where they looked for any escaped boats based on currents and weather. However, the search was instead concentrated in the opposite direction. Additionally, the coordinates are off from the last transmission point recovered by the coast guard and found online by Felicity. The reports from Chinese Intelligence require translation and while Felicity has learned some Japanese in her youth and some Chinese when her husband taught William and Mia, it’s nowhere near enough to help with any of this. So they send small bits, fragments, to different people for translation – people vetted and well-paid and there may or may not have been a Trojan in the initial document for translation which monitors their phone for outgoing communication which would impact on them.

The issue quickly becomes how to stop Thea from bringing the information of the falsified data and search to her mother’s attention, but luck is with her and Tommy has had one of his rare meetings with his father at the office and finally – finally – Felicity has access to the Merlyn servers without being present herself. She’s gotten better at workarounds in the years working with Oliver – and technology has improved – allowing her to do what she couldn’t at the time by making her own time-appropriate workarounds. No Trojans in his system for him to find this time.

But the more important information she finds there is an audio recording made by Moira where Malcolm warns her off, for Thea’s sake, from pursuing any inquiries into the matter. Ninth circle doesn’t come up, but it’s at least enough to highlight to the young girl that her mother is aware and that being anything less than careful will have dire consequences for those she loves.

Thea is a teenager, emotional and running on hormones and fumes, feeling neglected by her family, Tommy having been the only rock in the last few years since the Gambit went down – but she’s also a Queen.

She grew up under the ever-watchful eye of the paparazzi, attended business dinners and parties, learned how to smile when all she wanted to do was scream. It’s a mask, but a very useful one, and so her wariness, her doubt, her hurt, she all hides it and slides beneath the radar of Moira’s attention.

On Friday nights, they volunteer for one of the soup kitchens in the Glades and every Monday afternoon at the homeless shelter. Thea had followed Felicity the first time when she learned what she was doing and then decided she was going to join her; instead of rotating among the different shelters and soup kitchens, Felicity decides on the safest one and takes Thea to that one only.

Thea learns about the people who were let go under her father’s direction, the people who lost their jobs, their pensions and any pay-outs they should have legitimately received but were denied by clever legal machinations. The first few weeks are iffy; some are furious at the young girl and Felicity defends her – but most of them are glad to see her. Remember the young girl running and hiding on the factory floors. Remember playing with her. Remember her greeting them, her laughter and the rather apt nickname Speedy. Thea lights up with every snippet she learns and the anger, at least the overt expressions of it, die down. As Felicity and Thea become closer, the girl drags her to Yoga, and Felicity retaliates by dragging her to self-defence classes and they settle on Krav Maga and Tai Chi in the end instead after attending a number of one day taster courses. Drugs drop by the wayside, Thea focusses on not drawing attention to herself at school and at home as they dig deeper. There are a few dangerous nights, a few evenings spent shaking, rambling, emotional and angry – but they pass and become more sparing as Thea puts her all into their research.

It's how she ends up semi-officially investigating the Queen family under Thea’s direction.

And unfortunately for them, if there is information to be found and with months of time – rather than just having hours to spare – Felicity has time to find anything and everything there is to be found.

She finds Isabel Rochev; emails between her and Robert, him denying her the position of CEO for his son and tracks the actions taken by the woman afterwards – she’s not yet ready for a final confrontation and her secrets are still hidden rather sloppily compared to where she will be in two years’ time, when she’s ready to make her move. There’s still information online to be found. Still people she’s wronged, people betrayed only too willing to share her secrets.

One dalliance down, she comes to the next one. Emiko.

The frequent visits, the money provided, the flight plans filed with airports and countries for Robert’s visits and bank transfers are easily traced with enough skill – of which Felicity has plenty. The birth certificate is a bit more difficult. Robert abandoning them for his family here, leaving his daughter behind without second thought – although the letter would likely disprove that, it’s not on the internet and Felicity has no intention of doing any physical searches which could alert someone to their investigation – and convinces Thea of the same.

Then comes Thea’s own. Moira’s sidestep with the man who killed her father. Malcolm. That she’s Oliver’s half-sister. And Tommy’s half-sister.

Felicity drags Thea away to Las Vegas for a week during school holidays – far away from the Queen family. There’s enough gossip in the magazines about the touchy-feely nature of Felicity’s and Thea’s friendship that this elicits some speculation about wedding chapels and elopement, making both of them cringe and roll their eyes, neither of them pointing out the obvious fallacies, only one of which is the clearly underage Queen heiress.

But it’s the perfect distraction.

Felicity tells Thea what she’s found, including the stored footage of the arrival of the Queen’s Gambit and its storage at the harbour under her mother’s direction and money. About her siblings. About their indiscretions and her very-alive siblings.

William remains secreted away – but Felicity tells Thea that she has found out one more secret, but that it was her brother’s and that her mother had hidden it from him, but that he ought to be the one to first find out and determine whom he wants to entrust the secret to. Thea, already struggling with the onslaught of information and alive-siblings, can read between the lines easily enough but agrees that she doesn’t want to find out like this. Not before her own brother knows – just makes sure they are safe and secure and doesn’t need them. Felicity reassures her that everyone is happy and well-kept.

The week in Las Vegas is spent partying hard, raging at the world even louder and meeting Donna Smoak; a woman who is happy-go-lucky but very people-savvy and had carried Felicity through her own goth-phase. Two days are spent crying in Donna’s welcoming arms, her mother not even hesitating at opening her small apartment to the billionaire’s heiress, doesn’t ask questions or pressure but just unquestioningly provides, encourages, and shows them the best places to party (and what casinos have the mob in them and should be avoided). Thea tries her hand at card-counting, and, finally, at the end of the seven days, exhausted and tired, runs out of the steam and clings onto Felicity, exchanging contact information with Donna Smoak, telling her completely forthrightly how proud she should be of Felicity, and how envious Thea is of how amazing a mother the woman is, undoubtedly thinking of the failures in her own family.

Thea’s a lot more in touch with the destitute now, with those her family have wronged and knows her father’s death was no accident. Yet she still holds strong, still attends family breakfast without breaking the façade, without confronting her mother because she knows now that getting her family together has to have a higher priority. That finding and getting her siblings into her life will require Moira unaware.

The temptation of the drugs is high, so she makes a deal with Thea – the same one she had with her mum during her teenage years. Felicity will go with her – teach her how to make sure her drink is untampered, drink with her so she learns the difference between tipsy and drunk and is still safe. And if she’s that keen on drugs? Well, she will need to spend time with Felicity, researching, watching videos, understanding the drug itself, the addictive properties, what it will do to her body, her brain and all repercussion and eventualities. And if she still wants to try, Felicity will get her a sample, one she can make sure is safe to use and not cut with harmful substances (or more harmful substances) and will be there with her the entire time, so she can try and experience, can experiment without being unsafe, without being in danger and without doing harm to herself. Naturally, some drugs are off-limits, but Felicity takes the time to explain and after spending three days researching heroin, Thea has changed her mind and doesn’t want to experiment anymore. Prefers to spend her time looking for her brother.

But Donna and Felicity both understood the need to rebel, so they have an agreement that if Thea ever sneaks out, goes to parties or anything, just in case something happens, she needs to write it down for Felicity. Felicity in return promises only to check if Thea is kidnapped or disappears. It works for them – especially when Thea escapes to a party in the Glades she heard about at the homeless shelter and is kidnapped. Amateurs, luckily, and quickly retrieved, but the younger Queen becomes more conscientious of the risks she’s taking and while she still needs the escape, she also makes sure Felicity is always aware as a backup.

She clings onto Felicity as the only other one in the know.

But Felicity knows it’s not healthy. Thea has cut out her friends at school – they’re too interested in the drugs, the alcohol, the parties – not in Thea. And that was okay and fun, something she needed at the time – the superficiality. But now she needs something different, something more – something deeper. And all she has is Felicity and Tommy.

Felicity researches and finds a therapist for Thea after extensive (and illegal) background checks and with appropriate computer and phone monitoring set up to ensure no details on Thea’s visits will be released or ever leave the office. It’s only after three months of successful therapy visits that Felicity manages to get Thea to attend an addiction group – one different from the one attended by Quentin.

Every little bit helps Thea find balance again. And if Felicity had to hack the phone of every person attending and give two of them warnings – well, only one person ended with their phone malfunctioning, their bank account drained, and fired from their job until they ceased their efforts and their fortune miraculously reversed. To be fair, she should never have ignored the first warning on her phone.

The pressure to find her brother is back on and Felicity doesn’t tell Thea about how her brother is once again off the island and in Russia with the Bratva. She does tell Thea that she’s found her brother, that she’s been in touch and that he’s not currently able to come home but is working on it. It’s not enough and Thea doesn’t understand – money has usually solved all her problems, but Felicity reminds her of the plotting, the undercurrents in her family and the Starling City elite and Thea acknowledges that she can give him whatever time he needs. Understands that her brother has always been protective of little Speedy and would never put her at risk.

Felicity doesn’t tell her that she’s hacked his phone and occasionally makes photos of Thea appear on his phone, taking over his screen when she finds him alone and awake (tucked in, asleep; crying and slumped over her brother’s gravestone; at the café – every inch Thea Queen – and in the soup kitchen, smiling genuinely. Learning cooking from Raisa, splatters of sauce decorating her expensive clothing, a streak of flour on her face, having refused the apron the first few times. Laughing so hard she’s got tears in the corner of her eyes). She adds in pictures of Tommy and, lately, pictures of Tommy and Laurel together, dating tentatively, managing to catch the besotted expression on his face perfectly, pictures of him with Thea on movie nights (her burgeoning crush on the only person here for her with her brother away fell quickly away with a shudder of disgust when she realised he’s her half-brother).

Wedding pictures of Moira and Walter.

Of the mansion. Of Raisa. Of his room.

It’s all waiting for you when you get home.

Your friend.

This time he returns with questions – who are they? Why are they doing this? Are they with ARGUS? Is this a threat? There’s anger and panic in every line of his body as he stares at his phone and Felicity responds immediately.

A friend. I promise. Always. If you want to get back, I can extract you. If not, you will still be home in less than a year; you will be retrieved from Lian Yu. I promise. But if you ever need an out, if you want to come home immediately, let me know. I’m watching over all of them, they are healing, I promise no harm will come to them. I am aware of the dangers your father warned you about and I’m watching out. Please. Trust me.

Your friend.

She starts helping him out when she can, when she’s aware of one of his missions, letting her voice, mechanically modified, echo from his phone loudly telling him two are approaching from behind when all chances of stealth are long-lost. She finds him and pings him blueprints when he’s infiltrating. One day, at a Queen Consolidated party Thea invited her to, she gets an alert on her normal phone – Oliver caught on camera at a hotel in Russia. Felicity takes her time, sneaking out to one of the smaller side rooms for just a second, thinking she can do clean-up later – but instead finds him in a dangerous situation on the seventh floor, with him injured and more en route. Felicity panics, hacking cameras and his phone, shouting at him to duck just before the first gunshot echoes from behind him. She manages to guide him out, but her heart is in her throat and her smile fragile when she rejoins the party. That was risky; she will need to do a lot of cleanup on her phone later to make sure everything stays secure.

On days where he is hiding in his room, in the dark, looking so damn lost, so empty of hope, she sends him new pictures.

Be brave, she tells him some days. Be strong.

You’re a good man, Oliver Queen. I believe in you. Even on days where you lose faith, where you don’t think you can ever be any good, believe in that – I will always believe in you. Not long now. Soon you’ll be home.

Your friend.

He doesn’t respond – but she can see his hand tighten around the phone, the way his jaw clenches and she hopes she helped. Maybe not now, but maybe it will give him something to hold onto in the future.

The day before he’s being taken back to the island she contacts him once more.

I know you’re intending to work on the list when you go back and play-act as the party-animal and playboy Ollie Queen for the public – but I would like to ask you to rethink. Please. I am still working on dismantling things going on in the underground here in Starling City – one of which is someone trying to infiltrate and take Queen Consolidated out from under you. Another is working on becoming a high-ranking official – possibly Mayor himself – and furthering the decline of the city that way. Your mother is involved in some criminal undertakings which could see her in prison and court; your sister is too young to take over. Walter is already under scrutiny and too easily disposed of. The shares would be on sale and could be snapped up cheaply, and the Board could appoint someone better-suited with more experience to the CEO position. I’m trying to prevent all the eventualities, but returning from five years on the island as a new man is easy to understand. It’s more difficult if you do a complete 180 a year in. Please consider it for your family. For the thirty thousand employees relying on you. The person who’s trying to become CEO of your company wants to tear it apart and will let most of them go. Please.

Your friend.

How can you possibly know all of this? Is his immediate response, brow furrowed.

I’m in the computer systems. All of the major ones, including the Police and the City Council. I’ve got control of the traffic cameras and a large amount of the private ones. I’ve got systems set up to watch and find pertinent information and looking into a few things on behalf of a friend let me stumble upon a number of the conspiracies. And a lot of them center around your family. If it helps, Moira is only involved because she was trying to protect Thea. Walter and herself are secondary – her primary motivation is always to protect her family. Your loss only drove her to protect Thea harder. I will tell you everything when you are in Starling City. Until then, please consider it. And stay strong. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, Oliver. Just hold on a little longer.

Your friend.

His eyes snap up to the camera in his room and she can see realisation set in. He nods curtly and Felicity can feel relief washing through her.

Thank you.

The message appears on his phone thanks to her hacking and she wipes all her trails afterwards. She hopes Oliver decides to follow her suggestion even with the minimal amount of information she provided – without any proof, to boot – but even if he won’t, she’s got a number of contingencies in play already.

She’s wiped the bank accounts clean of some of the richer people who had done nothing but steal from their tenants or used sub-par building materials, or done any other number of despicable things, leaving them with only their minimal honest earnings. She gives the money to the people affected or stolen from – but not directly, and not immediately. It would be rather suspicious if all affected parties suddenly received the same amount stolen from them the day the billionaire lost it. Instead, she hacks the banking records and some received the money supposedly weeks ago, and some won’t for a few weeks still. Everyone gets a different day and different reasons for the transfer – some in smaller segments, others in larger lump sums. It’s harder to track that way, especially if all the bank account records insist they’ve had the money for over a month before it was taken. There couldn’t possibly be any connection.

It’s fun – it’s different, more difficult in some ways but also a much more inventive approach than she’s been able to apply in years.

But some of the parties affected have passed away without living relatives. Felicity fully intends for that money to go to the right charity, but until then she can really use that money. So, it gets invested – because Felicity knows who will do well. It’s guaranteed, practically, given her knowledge. The interest is then used to build herself a safe house – safe apartment, really. A place she can keep information securely and separately. She sets up shell corporation after shell corporation, runs the trails through some real companies until there is no way to trace it back as it all circles back to the first shell corporation. And that’s how she ends up owning an apartment block and one floor, the one closest to the roof, is all hers and will not be rented out. She has walls knocked out and hires eight separate companies to build part of a complete safe room – walls of steel, titanium and Kevlar, retractable doors interlocking with the wall at the press of a button to prevent weak hinges as a downfall. There is a hexagonal interweave to strengthen the construction and each part is grounded – she makes sure of this, so she has a secure faraday cage in the safe room, blocking any EMP from taking out her computer and allowing her to keep information secure, safe and separate.

She builds the security system for her flat from scratch – well, not really. She takes components from the top-of-the-class security system, overrides and improves it, only installing it once any and all trace of their own work on it is gone – it serves multiple purposes. The first – hers is miles better, clearly. But the more important one, same as the system she installed at William’s, it looks stock-standard, but if they disable it the way one would do for one of that brand, she gets informed. She has installed an additional three fail-safes to ensure she gets informed the moment tampering appears and has also installed radio transmission so it is not solely reliant on wifi. There are double-and triple security measures – she’s paranoid, but given all that’s come, Felicity likes to think she’s right to be paranoid.

As soon as everyone has done their part, she wipes all the information on it from their systems even though each company never had anything more than a partial blueprint. Then she finally turns to decorating. To lights and heaters, air conditioning and making sure not a single corner of her apartment is dark enough to hide in. Felicity had never liked it when she found people – even Oliver – entering her apartment without her knowledge and hiding in the dark. This way she’ll see them, at least. And part of her hopes, still, that, maybe, some day Oliver will find his way here. That she can make this a safe place to retreat to for him as well. Being able to see everything at a glance is really the most important thing. Blackout blinds and curtains are installed so she can decide what she wants each day. The blinds are linked up electronically and she installs cameras. The windows are double-locked and secured and made of plexi-glass but she has a special breaker next to each one. She even has a rope with a hook so she can escape to the roof easily should the stairs be compromised. Or use the rope to get down to the footpath outside the building.

In short, while her flat still only has the bare minimum, the safety apartment has become her home. It has pictures of Donna, of her years at MIT, one even with her dad when she was younger. One of the drawers on her makeup table in her bedroom has a small booklet with things her husband had told her, things she wants to be able to remember, always, wants to be able to cling onto when days are tough. One of the more important ones were his kind of fake wedding vows to get Carrie Cutter. Of their last moments together, years later. Of moments, snapshots in between the fighting, the violence, moments she could remember and hold onto. She remembers the way he’d smiled when he’d held Mia. Of the many times he’d told her he loved her over the years, of times he reassured her. Even back when he saved her from the Count, told her that there was no choice to make. When he told she was the first one he saw as a person. How he remembered her red pen. That she’s his better half, inspires him to be better. Moments, words, she wants to remember.

She’s got photo albums, stolen pictures of William from their phone and computer, printed and developed, assembled into a small album in her safe room – some of them even relinquished willingly by Samantha.

For Oliver.

If they ever get there, if she ever tells him she knows of his son, she wants him to have something to hold onto. She’s got another album of snapshots over the last few years, of his family and friends – that one she hides in his room on one her visits to the mansion to hang out with Thea. She’s no longer being paid as babysitter, or tutor, but just takes the time to hang out with the younger girl and be the occasional female confidante for Tommy Merlyn. A man who wants to change but is afraid of trying – because for years he was the playboy and party guy, the trust fund kid right alongside his best friend… and if he lets go of that, he feels like he’s letting go and giving up on Oliver, too. Turning away from him. Abandoning him. His best friend, the friend he grew up with. He wants to be better, be different, wants something new with Laurel – but he doesn’t dare try because it would mean giving up on his almost-brother, and that’s something he can’t stomach.

Or that’s what Felicity has rationalised is happening – Tommy is still a lot more unclear in his thoughts, unsure and hesitant. He doesn’t think he’s good enough for the lawyer, doesn’t want to betray his friend by dating his ex-girlfriend, doesn’t want either of them to be a stand-in.

It’s Thea who pushes him to see a therapist, assures him of Felicity’s ability to find a good one and shares the warning one of the people in her group therapy received when they tried to contact a newspaper and sell them what Thea had shared, told him about how he lost access to his bank account for a day, his alarm on his phone stopped working, his clock on his phone changed and emails were sent to random people with small private information – nothing scandalous or criminal, just small embarrassing tidbits. How everyone backed off, but most stayed in the group, secure in the knowledge that truly nothing would – or could – be shared and they opened up more.

But somehow Tommy still drops by Felicity’s cubicle sporadically, asking for advice on Laurel, on dating, on do’s and don’t’s and anything she’s willing to share. Felicity becomes his only female friend who is not also his sister (though Tommy doesn’t quite know that yet) and he relies on her, listens to her when she moans about the coffee machine breaking, about her inability to cook, about inconsequential little things. He doesn’t know her secrets, doesn’t know much about her at all, about future her – but he knows past-Felicity, about her goth phase and years at MIT. He’s a good friend (and he often brings by some rather excellent red wine which excuses a lot of the nonsense she has to suffer through about his thoughts and actual dates with Laurel).

She’s nearing the time for Oliver’s return before she finally has the money she… misappropriated momentarily, back together after all the investment into her safe flat which obviously doesn’t generate any returns. But her other investments and the other flats still offer enough of a return she can finally rely on only her own money – she distributes the amounts anonymously to the right charities and feels a weight off her shoulders that the theft – however temporarily – is finally done.

Thea’s already been shown how to access her secure flat – safety measures explained through the stalker she had, and why it’s not in her name – and shown to the spare bedroom she keeps. It gives the girl a place to escape to when living with all the lies at the Queen mansion becomes too difficult, when she needs an escape, a break. When she needs to not feel under threat, but safe. Even if just for a moment.

At least once a week, Felicity will get an alert on her phone that Oliver’s younger sister has made her way there. Only rarely does Thea use the actual panic room, but sometimes the girl drinks a little too much, looks a little too long at Oliver’s room, or his grave, and gets paranoid, that’s where she hides. Those are the days when Felicity makes her way over and joins the younger Queen sibling and offers her some company – she knows how difficult and hard those lonely nights are, the nights when you feel the world rests on your shoulders and there’s no one there to support you. Felicity tries, at least, to be that support for her.

Felicity runs on pretty much the same amount of sleep she used to get working overtime as Oliver’s EA, as CEO, and with evenings spent working with the Arrow and the others. The main reason is, of course, that Felicity doesn’t just spend her time looking after Oliver’s loved ones. She does her hours at work, suggests improvement which her stupid, misogynistic pig of a boss in IT dutifully ignores or claims as his own insights until she stops giving them, keeping her own notes of improvements on the server but refusing to implement them – not until Oliver is back. He’ll need a boost, when (if) he becomes CEO and Felicity has hundreds of improvements lined up which will propel Queen Consolidated forward past their competitors, has programs written and ready to go. She could start up her own company now, she knows, but for the moment her working at Queen Consolidated will give her a leg up with the board and Isabel waiting in the wings to swoop in.

She’s been fudging things with the trustees, so Oliver’s and Thea’s trusts are gainfully invested with companies she knows will do well and uses some of Oliver’s interest to buy up more shares in Queen Consolidated, trying to make sure the Isabel debacle won’t occur the way it did.

She creates separate bank accounts for them, divorced from the family, from the company. So if anything happens, these are ones which cannot be touched – or at least not easily.

But aside from his family, she’s chasing down criminals. Not just their bank accounts, not dressed up in a hood or with a bow and arrow, but with cameras and digital tracing, slipping the information to Quentin Lance, setting up an untraceable phone and voice changer – a memento to Oliver’s first year as the Arrow – to communicate with him and let him know when she finds the drug dealers, the gangbangers, when she finds people like the Count – the names of the homeless people he killed, the ones she can trace back, anyway. Her computers are far beyond the SCPD’s capacities, her skills beyond their technicians, and she has access to FBI, CIA and other, international, databases they cannot access. It’s easy to find information they cannot, to correlate pictures and dimensions from videos, to trail them through private and public cameras until she finds the right person and double-checks, before she routes the information Quentin’s way. His case closure rate skyrockets and, well, while the Count’s arrest was definitely more revenge than anything else, the rest is more because that’s who she wants to be now. But it helps him – he’s closing cases but still needs to do a lot of the investigative footwork to get the evidence together on days when she can provide only a name and address and none of the paperwork online. It means he has less time to go to the pubs, to get drunk – he needs to be awake the next day. He starts grief counselling.

That’s how she ends up, somehow, meeting him. And how she becomes his official consultant – not for the hacking, but for legal avenues which are beyond his normal IT technicians. She’d been on her way home from a visit to Big Belly Burger (still the best burgers around) when someone slices her handbag and tries to grab her wallet. Unfortunately for him, it’s just when Quentin is coming around the corner and Felicity has been in far too many dangerous situations to freeze, and taught far too well by her husband, by Sara, by Dig. Her elbow finds the soft spot in his side and her wrist easily applies pressure to the nerve running to his wrist, forcing his hands to release the knife and letting the contents of her bag to fall to the ground. Quentin is there a moment later, handcuffing the man and reading him his rights, asking her if she is alright. She explains what happened, holding her belongings in her arm and glad that she’d gone for the burger straight from work and barely had anything in her purse and for once nothing illegal – which is even better.

Still, she finds herself at the police station where she gets a small bag to keep her things in and while waiting for Quentin to get her statement printed so she can sign it (making the printer actually print, however, seems to be an entirely different problem). So, while Quentin is low-key swearing, squinting at the printer, Felicity is watching over the shoulder of one of the people from IT as they’re trying to get data off a laptop but failing to get past the encryption. Snorting aloud, however, draws Quentin’s attention – and when he presses her, Felicity descends into a babble and ends up taking over, easily breaking the encryption and finding the files they were trying to retrieve. And whenever the IT department of Quentin’s branch of the SCPD is out of their depth, he contacts her. When he needs information which cannot be legally obtained, he also contacts her, of course, except he doesn’t know that. It’s fun. He takes her out for coffees, checks in on her, makes sure she eats and is careful. Occasionally he even gets her to come with him to the Police’s training room and teaches her different ways to break out of holds and grips, how to handle weaponry.

Felicity is glad that at least one relationship is very close to what it was before – if not even better. And it gives her another way of being Oliver’s Felicity. The person he brought out in her – the best version of Felicity Smoak. Someone who doesn’t turn a blind eye. Someone who uses her skills and knowledge to help.

She hopes he sees her. The Spectre him. That he’s watching and that he’s proud of her.

She misses him fiercely, misses waking up next to him, misses the feeling of safety she always had when he hugged her to him – no matter the danger they were in, Oliver had always made her feel safe in a way she had not found with anyone else. She can’t relax the same way, feels the threads of all the people she’s watching over hanging over her head, how Oliver is relying on her to keep her word, to keep track of them, to make sure they’re safe and sound when he gets here.

But then he’s here.

Finally.

Two long, hopelessly long years and he’s finally here.

Home.

She follows him on the cameras and when one of the nurses leaves her phone nearby she hacks it immediately – already knowing the woman is on her way back to fetch it according to the hospital’s cameras – and lets her voice, run through a voice changer, come out from the phone with only two words before she wipes any and all traces of herself from the system.

“Welcome Home,” she tells him and watches him smile softly, giving a quick nod to the camera in the corner before turning his gaze back on Starling City lying beyond the window.

The nurse retrieves her phone and a quarter an hour later, Moira enters his hospital room.

“Felicity,” Thea’s voice is high pitched and she can hear noises in the background, like the girl is scrambling around her room, getting dressed and managing to make half the items in her room fall to the floor in the meantime. “He’s home!” Her voice is full of tears, caught in her throat. “I- He’s coming home. Oliver’s coming home.”

“Yes, he is,” Felicity reassures her. “Your mum met him at the hospital and is taking him home. But- please remember, don’t bombard him.”

The clatter comes to a quick stop and she can feel Thea actually pause.

“What do you mean?”

Felicity breathes out sharply.

“Your brother was gone for five years. On the island or not. He’s had to learn how to fend for himself, how to survive. Had to learn how to kill, clean and cook his own food. Having not spoken to him, we can only go off our research. You remember? You did a lot of it into PTSD about half a year ago.”

Thea hums in agreement. “But what’s that got to do with Ollie?”

Felicity winces. She never could get used to that nickname.

“Remember, this is just speculation – but I’ve sent you a list of safe foods – his stomach’s probably shrunk and he won’t be able to stomach a heavy or fatty diet to start with. Small foods, frequently seemed to be the best suggestion on the internet. He might not handle crowds well. Or just a lot of people. Or being cooped up in a house all day long. Being near water. Baths. Pools. Not being able to see where any danger could come from. Thousands of little things. Just- be careful, alright? He’s your brother, but you’re not twelve anymore and he’s been on his own for five years. He’ll have changed just as you have. He might have trouble talking for long times, his throat might hurt from lack of talking over the years. He might not react well to surprises and don’t touch him when he’s having nightmares. Those kinds of things. You’ve done your own research, Thea. I’m not saying don’t be happy, just remember not to overwhelm or pressure him, yeah? He’ll probably struggle seeing you as anything but his kid sister for a while, so don’t expect him to tell you all the bad things straight away, okay?”

Thea huffs out a breath noisily but after a momentary pause finally speaks up, voice shaky.

“I just- I wanted him to come home. Like, somehow, it’ll all be okay and it’ll all go back to the way it was five years ago, when he left. Stupid, am I right?”

“No- No, Thea, never. I’m sure he wants the same thing, but-“

“It’s okay, Fe. It’s just… I just wanted us to have Christmas again, the parties Dad used to organise every year. I wanted him to just sort of magically come back and Mom to stop lying, for all the secrets to just be out. To have Tommy know. To have all my family here – even the ones I don’t know yet. To have this huge Christmas instead of Hanukkah and just have everyone be happy. No fighting, no lying, no silences, or anything. Not that I don’t love Hanukkah with you. I Just – I just wanted my brother back. Because he always made everything be okay again. I know, I’m not twelve anymore, it’s my family too, and I’m an adult, or close enough anyway, I should be sorting this out myself… but I just wanted him to hold me and tell me that it’s not true. None of it. That he’ll make everything okay again.”

Felicity sniffles slightly – she knows the feeling.

“I know, Thea. I promise, I understand. And you’re not being childish, or stupid or whatever you’re thinking. You’re overwhelmed. It’s perfectly understandable. You’re entitled to feeling upset and exhausted and just wanting everything over. I’m not saying Oliver wouldn’t help you. He’s your brother – of course he would. But maybe wait a little bit, gauge how he is first before you drop him into the middle of your Shakespearean family drama.”

A wet laugh echoes down her phone. “It is a little bit like that, isn’t it?”

Felicity grumbles good-naturedly. “I swear your family has more secrets from each other than I have shoes. And that is saying something.”

It isn’t really, actually, given how bare her apartment still is. Most of money goes towards her safe house – her real home. But someday she’ll have a nice collection accumulated again. It just won’t be today. Or this month, actually. Or the next.

“That’s him,” Thea yelps quietly down the phone. “Gotta go, Fe!”

Felicity supposes she should be glad that Thea, at least, doesn’t just hang up and run but actually says goodbye.

Oliver is home at the Queen Mansion. He’s safe for the time being.

Felicity glances over at her mattress, still on the floor, and decides now is as good a time as any to get a nap in.

Quentin is regressing. Laurel and Tommy are being squirelly and hiding their relationship. Thea is struggling to hide away how much she is hiding.

Felicity is trying to keep her surveillance of the Queen mansion to a minimum, but they’re making it rather difficult.

Then Moira orchestrates Tommy’s and Oliver’s kidnapping to prove something to the group involved in the Undertaking and Felicity’s patience reaches a rapid end when three bodies are found at the site. Oliver’s wiped the camera outside – or the kidnappers did. Either way, it’s sloppy. And easy enough to doctor. Green hood and outfit on a man of her husband’s proportions, supposedly escaping in the distance via the roof. Just for a second, a tiny glimpse. Distant enough and her coding is good enough to make it seem part of the actual footage. At least at the calibre the SCPD is operating at. Substantiating Oliver’s claims.

But she’s barely finished it before she has to let Thea into the knowledge that her mother is responsible for the kidnapping. All to pacify Malcolm. Barely an hour later, she gets a phone call from the girl.

“Hey, Fe. You said I could bring someone to the safehouse, if they need it, right?”

Felicity tilts her head, surprised. She’d meant to hint at showing the apartment to Oliver, but she’d never been really explicit on that point, so she can’t really fault Thea for not understanding.

“Well, not one-night stands or anything like that. It’s a safehouse. Do you trust them. Know them?”

Thea snorts down the phone. “Of course, known him since I was a kid. But he needs somewhere away from home to stay.”

Of course, Felicity really should have remembered that. With Oliver back, things between Tommy and Laurel were awkward and he was telling them just the other day that his father was once again talking of cutting Tommy off. He wouldn’t really have any other place to go to. Felicity softens; Thea really is a good younger sister.

“Just make sure he doesn’t tell his father where he’s staying, Thea,” Felicity confirms warmly.

“His father?” The younger girl sounds baffled even though they’ve had a number of conversations about just how deep Malcolm was entrenched in the Undertaking and his involvement in Robert’s death and her brother being stranded away from home for five years.

“Yes,” she reiterates, feeling just as confused. “Just make sure Malcolm doesn’t find out.”

“Oh!” Thea is giggling. “Of course. His father!”

Felicity frowns. “Yes, that’s what I said. Is everything alright, Thea? If something’s wrong and someone’s forcing you to-“

“No- nope. Not a kidnapping or hostage situation or whatever you’re imagining. Anyway, the person staying wants to stay anonymous if that’s alright. I’ve told them alright that you do the cleaning and restocking on Sundays, but could you please scrub the arrival footage and put the current lease of the apartment under a guy’s name? And without looking at it?”

“Phh, who do you think you’re talking to? Of course, I can scrub the footage without looking at it. Just tell me arrival and departure time and I’ll manufacture some footage that has your car stuck in some traffic jam for that time elsewhere. Please. Next time at least give me a challenge.”

Thea’s laughing again. Felicity’s smiling to herself – the younger girl sounds lighter, happier.

“Can you give a quick rundown of the flat if I put you on speaker?”

“Sure,” Felicity confirms and moments later there’s a slight click and rushing sound as she’s put on speaker.

“Hi mysterious stranger whom I absolutely do not know,” Felicity starts, smiling to herself. It’s funny that Tommy really thinks she wouldn’t work it out. She is a real-life genius, after all, and he really should have learned his lesson on that ages ago; Felicity could easily hack and erase his entire life. “Thea will show you the pin and I’ve just authorised the addition for you on the retinal and fingerprint scan for entry into the flat. Thea will walk you through it. This is a safe apartment – plexi glass, bunkers and safety doors and walls. It should survive a bomb blast or cannon going at it. But it also means no dates, one-night stands or other strangers allowed. Not even Laurel. This is not up for discussion.”

“He agrees,” Thea says firmly and Felicity exhales sharply. She trusts Tommy, she really does. He’s good with his friends – and Felicity counts herself among the few in that number. And Thea wouldn’t be offering this if she didn’t trust him too.

“Alright. As Thea said, I do a clean and grocery restock on Sundays. I’ll get an alert if the panic room is in use, just as a safety precaution. I’m not sure if you’ll be needing – or wanting to – use it, but if you, just send me a text beforehand so I know there’s no actual assault occurring which would need police intervention. If you get into another bar fight, there’s a small room attached to the gym with an extensive first aid collection, a safety shower and essentially everything you could possibly need to play Doctor and then some.”

Felicity winces closing her eyes at the faux pas and hears Thea’s muffled laughter echo down the phone line.

“I swear, my brain just thinks of the worst way to phrase things. Just- Ignore that. Never happened. Just restock what you use or let me know and I’ll restock. Oh, yeah, there’s a gym in there. Feel free to use it whenever. There’s two bedrooms. Mine’s the one with makeup and everything in it. Yours should be fairly empty. Thea’s clothing is in my bedroom, I think. There’s a laundry room, kitchen, dining table and anything you should need. Lights activate automatically on motion. There’s blackout blinds and normal curtains, depending on your wants and needs. There’s a secure laptop in the living room you can use and the ones in the panic room are secured but inaccessible by anyone but me.” Felicity blows out a breath. That should be... everything, right?

“Anyway,” Felicity rattles off her phone number. “If you need anything more, just text me. There should be about ten or so burner phones in the drawer in the panic room if you need one not associated with anyone. Explore. Thea can probably help with any questions – remember to let me know when you leave, so I can scrub the footage, but otherwise just come and leave whenever. The laptop in the living room has access to it and a specifically created program which ought to be easy enough to use to wipe your own arrivals and departures out of it whenever you need or want. Otherwise, I should be the only one with access to the footage. The lease is now under your name. I’ve put it down as James Collins. I’ve created an entire identity around it; age is twenty-six and you’re the CFO of Noaki Inc. Explains why you’re in the company-leased apartments. No driver’s licence so no need for pictures.”

“Thanks, Fe, you’re the best!”

“Uh-huh. Just remember that next time you try and sneak something past me, Thea.”

“Who? Moi?”

Felicity laughs.

“Look, since I’ve got you both on speaker anyway, I’m happy to continue pretending it’s not Tommy with you, but I haven’t had a chance to chat with you in the last fortnight anyway and you’re not responding to my texts or calls. I understand you’re busy, and with Laurel and Oliver back now, everything’s chaotic.”

“Err, Fe-“

“Nope, sorry, Thea. I just need to address this now so I’m hijacking this conversation just for a moment longer. You keep trying to get back to the younger you and the younger-him. But neither of you is that person anymore. Look, I haven’t met Oliver, but I imagine five years away from civilisation, from people changes a person. Don’t force him into huge crowds, loud noises, parties. Can you imagine that? Living for five years in the open air, hunting your own food, cooking your own food, no one else with you but open air and suddenly you’re indoors, there’s huge amounts of loud noises, flashing lights, people draping themselves all over you, crowding you in, everyone wanting something from you, no way to escape easily. I imagine for five years all Oliver had was noises meant something was coming for him. Anything nearby was a possible threat. I don’t know if there were wolves or bears or what. But just- don’t push all this on him. Be respectful. Let him come to you, yeah? Be kind. You’ve changed – so has he. He’s not had anything familiar for five years. He might not be the person you remember, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t spent five years imagining coming back to this, to you, to Thea and his family. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you both. But he might not know how to show it anymore. How to say it, other than go along with everything you say.”

It had taken Felicity a lot longer to catch on than it had Dig – Oliver could be a master of words when he wanted to, but he rarely did. Instead it was his actions you had to look to.

“It’s when he listens to Thea go on for the umpteenth time about her crush or her boring teacher. When he attends parties he may or may not be into because it’s you asking. When he tries to make time for you. Listens to you. Gets or makes your favourite drink or food. Just- be patient. Be kind. With him and yourselves. Alright?”

There’s a sniffle on the other end. “Yeah,” Thea finally says, her voice catching slightly. “Promise. Thanks, Fe. You’re the best.”

“Remember to tell that to Walter when he asks why I took nearly an hour’s lunch break instead of a half hour one.”

There’s a wet laugh on the other end. “Will do, Fe. See you later.”

Felicity hums agreeingly, hoping she’s managed to get Tommy to not be so nervous and be more himself around Oliver. Stupid block-headed boys and their allergy to talking about feelings – although Tommy’s miles better at it than Oliver ever was.

“Have fun exploring, you two.” Felicity hangs up and devotes herself to work; she’s not putting in the longer hours she used to, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t finish her work.

What Felicity is not expecting is for Oliver to appear just beside her cubicle the next day stealthily and without noise – as he so often does – before clearing his throat.

“Felicity Smoak?” He asks, blue eyes focussing intensely on her, half-smile playing around his lips. “Hi. I’m Oliver Queen.”

Naturally he comes in just when she was distractedly chewing on yet another pen, trying to figure out how to get Emiko safely to Starling City, having completed her tasks for the day and waiting for the CFO to finally go on his lunch with his mistress so she can fix his laptop while he’s away. And then she can finally have her own lunch. He clearly doesn’t know that you should never stop the person who will fix your computer and is privy to all your personal information from going hungry.

She’s very used to being professional with Oliver outside of their personal lives – although at some point Mr. Queen and Mrs. Queen definitely became a flirtation – so Felicity isn’t quite so surprised that on seeing a younger version of her husband she blurts that out instead of his first name.

“Mr. Queen,” she exclaims, wide-eyed, quickly removing the pen from her mouth. Of course this would remain the same somehow. Then stumbles on somehow. “Of course. I know who you are.” Felicity’s brother. Tommy’s friend. William’s father. Her maybe-kinda-sorta-not? Husband.

Yep, in retrospect, Felicity isn’t quite so surprised that Samantha made her. Super-spy Felicity is not. Although her lies have definitely become worse since she met Oliver, she thinks. The one about the blood on Oliver’s face in front of Isabel Rochev still flusters her. That was- yeah. Not her finest moment. Not quite at the level of sports drinks in syringes, but not too far off either.

“No,” Oliver objects quickly. “Mr. Queen was my father.”

“Right, but he’s dead.” Shit, she wasn’t meant to know that he’d shot himself in the head! That he escaped onto the lifeboat. Quick, divert suspicion, Felicity! “I mean, he drowned,” There, that was better… right? She winced, watching Oliver’s eyes widen before he relaxed somewhat, looking amused as Felicity babbled on.

“But you didn’t!” Oh god, that was worse. How come that was worse? How did she always manage to get herself here in the end?

“Which means you could come down to the IT department. And listen to me babble. Which will stop in three. Two. one.”

There’s a slight snort of laughter and he’s looking at her, smiling softly.

“You’re not what I thought you’d be like.”

“Me? Who? Why? I mean, why have you been thinking about me?” She winces pre-emptively before her sentence is even finished. “I’m sorry – I’m not implying anything when I say you’ve been thinking about me. Or that you were thinking about me. Or that there is anything to think about- you know what, this is just not going anywhere positive. I’m going to stop myself here.” She counts down under her breath, a blush already working its way up her neck.

This is worse than her first meeting with him last time. At least then she’d been able to show off her technical skills – at the moment she just looks like an idiot. An idiot who has no working brain-mouth filter.

He’s actually chuckling this time, eyes softening slightly as he pulls a chair down to sit down next to her. Every part of her wants to relax in his proximity, lean into his warmth, his voice, his body – which means she’s more uptight than ever, all but scrambling backwards in her own chair so she doesn’t do something even more stupid, like actually reach out.

“Tommy mentioned you. Then Thea. And Mother. Walter. It’s like you slipped into my life while I was away.”

Felicity’s eyes widen. “No- I mean, I wasn’t replacing you – I can’t. Wouldn’t even want to try. I just- Thea’s a friend. So’s Tommy. And Laurel – well, by proxy, through Tommy. And Walter’s my boss. I just- there’s no slipping into your life. You were- are missed. Desperately. By all of them. According to Thea you’re like the bestest, awesomest big brother to ever live – so don’t worry. No one is replacing you. Not that they could. Or were trying.”

“Wow. You really can’t help it, can you?” There’s another amused grin thrown her way and the blush crawls all the way up to her cheeks as she looks at him, feeling some part of her inside relax now that she’s not just seeing him through cameras, but has him right in front of her. Warm. Real. Alive. And happy. Smiling.

“I’m sorry,” she offers absent-mindedly, her eyes still fixed on the intense blue gaze not even a meter away from her. He looks less tired, less worn and yet somehow sadder and more hopeless than she remembers him being. Not even when he walked to his death had he looked like this.

“I just wanted to meet you. And maybe get a bit of a leg up with all this technology development whilst I was away – using my phone and everything. And apparently, you’re the tech guru. And my family swears by your discretion.” He shrugged. “So here I am.”

But that’s not just curiosity in his eyes, it’s analytical, calculating. Looking for weak spots. For masks. For motives and truths.

“Of course. I’m your girl.” With a bright smile Felicity makes grabby hands for the smart phone he’s holding out to her, only to freeze when she touches him.

“I mean- I’m not your girl,” she explains in a rush, flustered. “I wasn’t coming onto you. I mean, not that I wouldn’t, I mean you’re you and all that,” she gestures to, well, all of him, blush deepening. “I mean, you know you’re, you know, good-looking, classically handsome with that face and the- Not what I meant. What I mean is, I’m happy to help. Not saying that I’m your girl or your anything. Just purely platonically helpful. That’s me.”

There’s a flash of teeth and Oliver is shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Platonically helpful?” He repeats and Felicity offers a grimace.

“Yep,” she draws out, flustered. Finally, she adds after a slight pause, feeling bad for putting him on the spot time and again, “I really hope either Tommy or Thea warned you, but in case they didn’t, you should probably know I babble. And I have no filter. And a tendency to embarrass myself and everyone around me at, you know, every opportunity. Or every not so opportune moment. Just feel free to stop me at any point. Because I really can and will go on.”

He laughs, loudly. She stares – part-mystified, partly admiring. When’s the last time she’s seen him this loose? This relaxed? Laughing? Not the fake one in the Bratva, not the one offered his family where he still tries to pretend, but this one? In this timeline? She feels herself soften, feels her stomach flutter and wants nothing more than to reach out to him and feels those warm, soft lips under hers.

“Alright, definitely not what I expected,” he concedes with a charming grin and Felicity blinks back to reality – and to her not-husband Oliver.

“So, what did you need help with?” She says, pulling on her professional persona, CEO, EA Felicity Smoak, who can work face to face with Isabel Rochev even after what-happens-in-Russia-stays-there happened without flinching. This is not her husband, she reminds herself. Not the man she loves.

He looks surprised at the emotional distance, but more intrigued than upset as he places the phone into her hands.

“Well, my last phone before I set sail was a flip phone. And Thea told me it takes hours to set up a new phone with apps and settings I prefer? Honestly, I just want to make calls and send texts. I’m not sure how complicated that can be that’s why I figured I’d ask a discrete tech guru for an assist and my family never needs to know how awful I am with modern tech.”

Felicity blinks at him – she knows very well that Waller had given him coaching for tech and that he’s pretty up-to-date on how to use phones. But she also can’t say that.

“Well, at least that means when I get officially introduced to you, we can pretend this embarrassing first meeting never happened.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I can do that. It was pretty memorable.” He winks at her and Felicity feels herself blush. She really should have chosen someone less appealing as the love of her life. She’s never been able to disguise just how attractive she finds the man. But at least this will give her an opportunity to make his phone secure.

“Just give me a half an hour and you can come back and I’ll walk you through your phone.”

There’s a flash of caution across his face before he sinks back into the borrowed chair.

“Oh, that’s alright. I’ll just sit here and wait, if that’s alright with you?” The right corner of his lips curls up as he looks at her, amused and with a hint of mischief. “Or am I making you nervous?”

“Nervous?” She giggles shakily. “Nooo, who is nervous? Not me. Clearly. The epitome of calm and centered and- you know, that’s actually probably your mother. If there’s anyone who is the epitome of unflustered and implacable, it’s probably her. They’ve probably got her picture next to the definition in the dictionary.” Felicity pauses. “What was I saying again? Oh, yes- I’m not at all nervous. Feeling very calm and safe here with you.”

Naturally, the man had damn well picked up on her attraction to him. Not that she’d hidden it very well with her babbling. And her admiring stares. “You can sit there – that won’t bother me one iota. Enjoy watching.”

She fishes for a cable from the box stuck underneath her desk and plugs the phone into the computer only to freeze, glancing back at him cautiously.

“I didn’t mean that you enjoy watching. Or that there’s anything to watch. Or that it’s something you’d be into. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

His warm hand lands on her shoulder, cutting her off before she can go into yet another babble on his sexual preferences this time of all things.

“I’ll just sit here quietly, Felicity.” He winks at her. “Watching. Don’t worry about me.”

She puffs out a loud breath, feeling the warmth of his hand leave her after squeezing her shoulder gently, stroking across the fabric before he situates himself off to the side and slightly behind her, sitting back and for all intents and purposes completely relaxed.

“Right,” she mutters quietly to herself. “Nothing to worry about at all. I just keep making sexual innuendos to my boss’ boss’ boss. But no worries. Happens to everyone. And by everyone, I mean just me. Thea is going to kill me. Or laugh in my face. I can never quite tell. Tommy will definitely laugh.” She exhales again, intertwines her fingers, stretches her arms and focusses on the keyboard, ignoring Oliver.

She’s good at getting into the zone. Within moments the man behind her is forgotten as she makes her way into his operating system and reconfigures what she needs, shoulders relaxing.

He really does make her feel safe. Investigating Merlyn, the League, the Ghosts – trying to track Slade Wilson and hindering his ventures, finding Sara and basically trying to pin down all her worst nightmares and investigate them securely? Yeah, she’s been on a knife’s edge for a while. Having him sit behind her, knowing he’d protect her, that he has her back, figuratively and literally, it’s her first time feeling actually safe, actually allowing herself to get completely lost. Because Oliver, no matter the version of him she’s with, will always keep her safe. She believes in that.

She blinks back to reality twenty minutes later and gives him his phone back, allowing him to set his log-in password while she’s facing the other direction, before walking him through the apps and how to use them.

“Alright,” he says, standing up. “Can I give you a call if I have any questions?”

Bemused, Felicity tilts her head. “Of course, you can. Just ask for me when you call the IT department.”

He huffs out a breath, scratches the back of his neck, leaning against the divider slightly as he turns to make eye contact.

“No- I mean, can I call you?”

Felicity frowns, puzzled at his emphasis, before realisation dawns.

“Oh, yes, of course, sorry.” She leans over her desk phone, reading the number of the end. “My extension is 3614. That way you can reach me directly,” she offers him with a bright smile.

Oliver stares before turning for a moment, taking to steps to the exit before turning back around to her and stepping right back into her space.

“Look, I’ve been gone for five years and I’m clearly bad at this. But I’m not sure you’re getting this. Because if you don’t want to, you can just say so. But just to be clear, here. I’m asking for your personal number, here. I want to have lunch with you, to thank you. Or maybe dinner.”

“Oh,” she finds herself asking, a blush dusting her cheeks pink. “I mean- you don’t have to. To thank me, that is. I’m a friend of the family. And your friends – and yourself by extension. So, you know, anytime. You don’t need to do anything special for me. I’ll do this for free any time.”

He huffs out a breath, looking at her incredulously.

“Alright, really, really bad,” he says with a clear eye roll, sounding exasperated. “A date, Felicity. I’m trying to ask you out on a date. And your phone number so I can ask you out. Although that’s clearly not working well for me. Just- only say yes if you want to, not because of some relationship I have to Walter or anything.”

Her eyes widen and she stands up rapidly. “I- yes. I mean, of course. Not- not of course. But, if you really wanted me, my phone number, a date with me- then yes. To all of it.”

She means it- not that he has any idea what she means by all of it, but still. She quickly writes down her phone number on one of her panda post-its and finds him having walked around her cubicle partition to stand right beside her. He’s looking slightly flustered, eyes soft as he watches her, a light blush covering his cheeks. His hands cover her own smaller ones easily as he takes the slip of paper from her, never once taking his eyes off her.

It's been just over two years. Two years without seeing his beautiful blue eyes, longer still since she’s seen this haircut, this facial hair. She reaches out with her left hand carefully, touching his cheek, brushing her thumb over the coarse hair gently, finally letting out a long-held breath when she feels his warmth underneath her hand, when she feels him lean ever-so gently into her hand, blue eyes steadfast on her own, refusing to look away for even a second.

“I would love to go on a date with you, Oliver,” she tells him warmly, voice soft and quiet, intimate, watching as a full smile blooms under her fingers, feeling his cheek crinkle before letting her hand drop.

“How does lunch tomorrow sound?” He asks quickly.

“Perfect,” she reassures him, her voice just a tiny bit breathy. He laughs, pulls her in for a quick hug, presses a kiss to her cheek – lingering just slightly too long.

“It has been a pleasure to meet you, Felicity. And thank you- for saying yes.”

Felicity doesn’t hesitate this time, beaming at him. “Always,” she reassures him, knowing he won’t quite understand but as long as she knows what she means, it’s enough. Because he is her always.

He disappears beyond the door, after another too-long lingering glance and Felicity smiles to herself as she sinks back into her chair.

She wonders what’s different, what’s changed, why he’s interested in her now, but not enough to actually question him.

A week of daily lunches passes – and one dinner, this time without any kind of attack. To her surprise, the Hood has yet to make an appearance.

But then, on a Saturday night while she’s in her Panda-print Pajamas in front of the Telly with a glass of red wine – a small break before her night-time vigilante hacking starts – there’s a knock on her door.

Felicity, still not quite used to separating her husband and this Oliver, doesn’t stop to think about changing before answering the door as is.

“Hi, come in,” she tells him, easily letting him step inside. He looks around, surprised at the barren room – only a cushion on the floor and her laptop propped up to watch. Felicity winces, having forgotten just how little she spent on decoration in her own flat.

“Yeah, sorry, it’s-“ She breaks off, unsure how to explain, before shrugging slightly, just letting her sentence trail off.

Oliver shakes his surprise off and turns to her.

“I wanted to wait,” he tells her, “but I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“Oh,” Felicity says quietly, her hand shaking as she tries to place her wineglass down without spilling. She’d thought it had been going well, too. More fool her, it appears. She’d been too busy ignoring the Laurel- and Sara-shaped elephants in the room when she really shouldn’t have.

“I- I’m sorry. I- can I ask why?”

He frowns at her, looking confused of all things, before understanding dawns and he laughs slightly.

“No, not this-this,” he gestures between them, “but that this.” He gestures around her like it’s supposed to mean something to her.

“Usually I’m the one babbling unintelligibly. And I’m a certified genius, but I’m not following this-this or that-this at all.”

He looks around them, sighing deeply before looking her firmly in the eyes, determination hardening his shoulders, jaw tight.

“I know that the text messages, the photos, that was you.”

“Me? What, no. How could it- I mean, what photos?”

He snorts, relaxing slightly, looking amused of all things.

“Do you want to talk here or in your safe house?” He asks easily, as if he hadn’t just dropped the world on top of her.

Thing is, Felicity knows this is not her Oliver. He likes her, he’s having fun on their dates, she can see him warming up to her, softening his edges around her – but it’s not the all-encompassing love and adoration written into every inch of her husband around her.

But how could he possibly know about – any of this?

“Here is fine,” she assures him finally. “It’s safe.”

He just nods.

“I figured you didn’t realise how many hints you let slip over the years. The biggest one was when I was at that hotel about a year ago and you warned me about the attack coming from behind. Not sure if you remember that?”

She nods easily – there’s no dissuading him, not at this point, she knows. Besides, she wouldn’t even know how to divert his suspicions, not without outright lying. And Oliver wouldn’t have confronted her if he didn’t trust her and didn’t have a lot of evidence to back him up.

“You used a different phone. When you got me out, I saw your phone number – it was different. Plus, well, your voice was rather clear without the distortion. You were actually worried about me – panicked, actually. I didn’t recognise your voice then but later I realised I’d heard it before when I infiltrated QC for Waller. I saw you in Walter’s office, talking to yourself. And other than that I’m still sure we’ve never met… but you cared about me. Care for me. I could hear it then. And then when Thea showed me the safe house and you talked to me – thinking I was Tommy, by the way – it was the same voice. Your voice.”

He exhales sharply.

“I didn’t understand it then – still don’t, actually. Another clue was the pictures you sent; I caught your reflection a number of times in pictures. But more than that – I came home and found pictures from those same nights, often, but with you in them. I wasn’t sure when or how we met… but you don’t act like I’m still Ollie, you act like you know the person I am now, like you know everything that’s happened, know who I am – and you still care. And I thought I could wait for you to tell me – but I can’t. I don’t want this, whatever this is, however you know, hanging between us. I don’t know you – barely know you at all. It’s not even been a week, in person – but I feel like I’m finally home. I try and look at you and assess you as a threat, but you babble and wear Panda Pajamas and all I can see is a person. I don’t- I don’t understand.”

Felicity winces.

“I am not sure how to explain it without sounding like I belong in an asylum,” she says warily.

He shrugs.

“Look, I don’t understand it, but I trust you. More than I rightly should given how little I know, but I do. I trust my gut, and I believe I can trust you. Somehow. I promise no calls to any asylum.”

Felicity hesitates for another second, but finally acknowledges that she doesn’t have very many options anyway.

“Alright, but please bear with me. I’m from about, well, about a decade in the future of an alternate dimension, an alternate Earth. My husband sacrificed himself to save the multiverse.”

Her hands automatically grasp at where her empty ring finger is, biting her lip as a sob gets caught in her throat. These are not words she’s ever had to say out loud, to anyone – but especially to him.

“He sounds like a hero,” he tells her hesitantly, softly, a warm, supporting hand resting on her shoulder and Felicity can’t help but gasp out a laugh.

“That’s what I’ve always been telling him,” she reassures him, a wicked grin curling at the edges of her mouth as she wipes the tears away from the corner of her eyes.

His brow furrows for a second before clearing as realisation dawns and his eyes widen, ears and cheeks flushing with a dark blush as he stares at her, as if expecting her dispute it.

“Husband?” He repeats, wide-eyed. She hums affirmingly, watching as he swallows hard, looking at her with new eyes.

“I- We got married?” He asks and she laughs.

“Yes, we certainly did. And we had children together. You- I mean, Oliver, my Oliver, was a wonderful husband and father. We’ve had our disagreements, fights and separations, but you both are heroes. I will always believe in you, so please believe in that. You are, you can be a hero. An exceptional one. And, one day, you will make someone an amazing and considerate husband and a loving father.”

“I- I don’t know what to say,” he confesses hesitantly, still looking like she just up-ended his world.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But my Oliver, what he did saved a lot of people and brought back even more; people who never should have died, back alive. But one moment I’m with him, the next I’m ten years back in time and you’re still away under Waller’s controlling grip. There’s no way back, not really, because I changed things from the moment I was here. And I trust that something in this world was going bad – that’s the only reason my husband would do this. And, well, you needed me. I wanted this world to have an easier time of it than we did. I wanted you to not have to lose as much as you did. To have your full family, or as many of them as we can, together and keep them that way. I- There’s a lot you have to know, that I have to tell you. About what’s coming. About your family. It’s – not all of it is good. In fact, a lot of it isn’t.”

Oliver stares at her before nodding, sitting down on the floor and gesturing for her to sit on the pillow in front of him. Felicity plops herself down with her usual lack of grace, adjusting her glasses as she sighs slightly.

“You know this sounds insane, right? Time travel, future husband and children?”

Felicity heaves out another sigh.

“I did warn you,” she tells him, “but for the record, yes. I’m completely aware that it sounds fracking insane. And slightly stalker-ish.”

He snorts, but his smile is wide and real.

“But you believe me,” she says under her breath, surprised, as she reads him.

He shrugs. “Yeah. Like I said, I trust you. I – I haven’t been able to do that in a long time. But with you? It’s easy. It’s natural. I don’t get it – but meeting you? You changed everything. I had a plan, a way I was going to be. And then you warned me. I wasn’t going to listen, you know, despite everything. But then Thea told me about you. Tommy talked about you. And then I saw the safe house and that second bedroom – you made that for me, didn’t you? Thea always looked confused, but she said she never could sleep in that room because it reminded her too much of me. But that’s because it is, isn’t it? You made that for me. The lights to make sure I can see every corner. The exit and escape routes. The security. The salmon ladder. Knowing that you know me – any version of me, it all suddenly makes sense. I couldn’t understand how you could understand me without ever having met me, but you did, didn’t you. A version of me, at least.”

Felicity nods.

“Yes. I didn’t expect anyone to pick up on that, by the way. And I’m sorry for all the things I said – I didn’t want to give away what I knew, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t have to walk on eggshells around your family either. Or avoided them because it’s easier.”

“You know I’m not your husband, though, right? I’m not him.”

Felicity breaths out sharply. It hurts, despite her own agreement with the sentiment.

“Yes, I know. You are different already. When he returned… well, he was circling around Laurel. Wanting her forgiveness. Not feeling like he deserved it. Wanting to love her. Wanting his friend and her happy. A lot of push and pull and huge amounts of confusion. Which is why I was so confused when you asked me out.”

There’s a wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips and he shuffles slightly in his position, obviously uncomfortable.

“Yeah, I had her picture on me. One of the few things I still had. It- I projected a lot of things onto Laurel, or at least my imaginary version of her. But then, when I felt at my lowest, you got in touch, you showed me pictures of my family, you tried to keep me safe and you reached out time and again. Laurel wasn’t the woman or the mystery I was turning over in mind over the last few years,” he finishes meaningfully.

“I- Me?” She asks redundantly and he nods.

“You,” he confirms softly.

“But- you didn’t know a thing about me.”

“I knew you babbled, talked to pictures when you think you’re by yourself, you’re beautiful and adorable and I knew that you knew what I had done, what I was doing – for Waller, for Bratva… and yet you cared for me. It’s more than I could say for… well, anyone. And all of it meant that the moment I was back here, I wanted to meet you, face to face. I had no intention of asking you out that first day – it’s just. You were so charming and perfect and I couldn’t not take that chance with you.”

She reaches out tentatively, letting his larger hand swallow her own, smaller one.

“Were you ever gonna tell me?” He asks after a small pause and looks disappointed when she shakes her head mutely.

“You said we were married. Had children. Was really none of that worth fighting for?”

“No,” she quickly rejects his explanation, “I would have fought the world for you. For our children. But that was his choice – not yours. You and I, we got together after a lot of fights, a lot of loss and misunderstandings, and some rather terrible choices and words and secrets. It took us a lot to get there. To be partners, to rely on each other, trust and believe in each other the way we did. But I changed all of that for you – we would never got through the things we did. I didn’t want you to have those hardships, experience those losses – not if I could stop it. But I also knew that you’d be different. You might not love me the way I love you. That you might find happiness with Laurel. Or Sara. Or Samantha. Or McKenna.”

His eyebrows rise higher at each name, before furrowing again. “Hold on- Sara? As in Sara Lance?”

“Oh, yes, forgot you didn’t know that yet. Yes, she’s alive. She will come to Starling City in about a year or so. I- there’s a lot of people you think dead who aren’t. And not all of them are good news. We’ll need to work our way through everything at some point, but not tonight, I don’t think.”

He looks hesitant, mouth ever so slightly open like there are questions at the tip of his tongue, before he nods sharply, shaking them off.

“Then why didn’t you seduce me? Try and start a relationship with me? You didn’t make any move on me.”

Felicity feels herself flush under his scrutiny.

“Look, Oliver, I don’t know how to make a move on you. I mean you’re all,… well, you. You’re hot and handsome and perfect. I’m the girl in IT. Your sister’s friend. I’m not even sure how I seduced my Oliver and I knew he loved me more than anything. Look, I’m a genius, great with computers. People? Not so much. And the people he- you- the people both of you dated were usually dark-haired, long-legged, model-like people. I’m more the ice-cream eating, burger-eating girl. I like good food. I’m cute, adorable and, occasionally, beautiful. Not sexy. Not elegant. I don’t know how to cook. Or wink. I babble and make unintentional innuendos. I’m not saying these are bad things, I am just saying I’m, well, me. We worked together pretty much twenty-four seven. I was around you all the time, knew your private life and your life as the vigilante. We were in dangerous, as in lethally dangerous, situations at least once every few weeks. I understand how a bond formed, because we trusted each other, had each other’s back and all that. But I know how to seduce my husband, because, well, it’s not like it takes much for either of us. But you’re different. We don’t have the same history. I’m just the cute girl in IT. You go for sexy. For dangerous. That’s not me – well, not unless you mean the kind of danger of someone erasing your entire online identity. Then I’m your girl – but that’s not what we were talking about. I just, I didn’t want to influence you, or coerce you or something. You’re your own person, you’re different, but I know so much about you – things you haven’t told me. It’s unfair and unequal and I didn’t want to take advantage. It- Us, I had to be your choice.”

Oliver stares at her, head tilted, looking confused.

“How can you see yourself so clearly and yet not at all?”

Felicity opens her mouth to protest but he shakes his head and silently cuts her off.

“That’s ludicrous. You knowing me is not taking advantage. It’s taking the time to get to know me, to listen and care. That’s like saying Laurel would be taking advantage of me if we started a relationship just because she’s been with younger me and knows me. It’s not coercion, you’re not pushing yourself on me – you’re just telling me you would be open to it- to us.”

Oliver looks baffled as he shakes his head. “And the other thing is even more incomprehensible. Just being you is enough. You’re in PJs with panda’s on them and yet I’m attracted to you, which is not something I thought I would ever say before today. But you look happy, relaxed, comfortable and it’s so very you – and I want nothing more than to take you to bed and,” he looks flustered, clears his throat, “well, kiss you.”

Oliver rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment before turning back to her, serious once more.

“Look, I only just met you, yet I knew the moment that I saw you, chewing on that red pen in your skirt and pink blouse behind the computer, I knew that the moment I talked to you, all my plans, everything changed. I met you and I felt like I had finally come home. I wanted to hug you and I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to talk to you. And not about my phone – but about Liang Yu. About Waller. About Bratva. About Sara and Shado and Yao Fei. I don’t share, but you made me want to. I wanted to hold your hand and just walk with you – just go anywhere. I wanted to see you in my bed at the mansion and wake up with you beside me when the sun rises. All you needed to do was let me know that you were interested. That you would be open to dating me. To being in a relationship with me. Looking at me like you do, like there’s nowhere else in the world you’d rather be, like me and you, like we’re the only thing that matters. Everything you do is attractive – the way you smile, the way you gesticulate all exuberantly when you talk about technology or you babble. I have known you for less than a week and yet everything you do makes me want to kiss you, to hold you. I just- please tell me you’re in this with me.”

“Yes, god, yes, always” Felicity says quickly and, unable to stop herself, leans forward and presses her lips to his, intending only to share a small, sweet kiss – a promise – only to feel him come alive under her, pull her closer, deepening the kiss and following her when she moves away, prolonging their contact. She ends up pecking him on the lips a few times and then across his right cheek before she hides her face in his neck, curling herself into him and allowing Oliver’s broader frame to encircle her as she burrows herself into his hug.

There will be a lot more talking tomorrow. They’ll need to talk to Thea. Diggle. Tommy. She will need to warn him about Malcolm and Slade. About his mother. About his siblings and his son.

But all of that can wait.

Because this? It’s enough. It’s perfect and new yet so achingly familiar. For just tonight, it’s enough and Starling City can survive on its own without the hooded or the cyber vigilante.

Tonight is just for them.

Tomorrow they can face the world.

Together. As they always have and always will.