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She was six when he left and she hadn’t understood it. Because he was there at breakfast, helping her pour over the algebra book she’d checked out from the library. He said he’d be home early. They were going to have tuna casserole, which was really the only thing her dad could make that was remotely edible (and that was leagues ahead of anything her mom could do). But when she got off the bus she found her door locked, and her neighbor Mrs. Glaston outside smoking.
The woman said she saw her father leave around noon in a frenzied rush, but he hadn’t returned. And offered to call her mother. Felicity agreed and waited just out of the smoke cloud that followed the old woman around. She may have been nice, but asthma was not something Felicity planned on tacking on to her already growing list of nerdy qualities.
Donna came home pretty quick after the call, grumbling about how her father knows she has to work. And it’s just like him to neglect his responsibilities. How she puts food on the table so the least he could do was be there after school. And Felicity can’t help but apologize.
“Nugget, I am not mad at you,” She replies, bending down to place a kiss to the top of her head, and they go inside.
She went to her room to read, sure her dad would be home soon. But she knew she’d still have to stay in there. Her parents always fought when her dad forgot to do something. Whether it was getting her from school or remembering to pay the electric bill. So she’d wait until he came in to get her to help with dinner. When he’d sit on the edge of her bed, and swipe his finger down her nose, calling her his mini me. She’d smile and know that things would be fine. But her dad never came to her room, and now it was getting dark.
She’d slipped out of her room, looking for her mom. Donna was seated at the kitchen table, holding a piece of paper in her hands. But it didn’t look like she was reading it. It looked like she was trying to set the thing on fire. So she walked up quietly, because she still wanted to know when her dad would be home. She thought she’d figured out how he embedded the code into her Barbie CD, and she wanted to show him.
“He’s not coming home,” her mom said, as she tried to hid wipe her tears. But even if Felicity hadn’t seen them, her mom’s face was red and splotchy. So she knew something was wrong. She’d only seen her mom like this once before, last year at her Baba’s funeral.
So she did the only thing she could think of, she climbed into her mom’s lap, and wrapped her arms around the woman, crying with her.
It wasn’t until a few days later she realized her dad was fine. He hadn’t died like Baba had. He’d just left. She found the note her mother had shoved into the bottom of the trash bin. And even at six she knew what the words meant. Both on their own and collectively. Her father hadn’t been hurt or sick. He just couldn’t live with them anymore.
---
She was fifteen when she ran away.
Okay that was an extreme way to look at it. Technically she hadn’t run away from anything, she’d taken a plane. On a very cheap, round trip ticket that her mom’s friend Ronda hooked her up with. But Felicity hadn’t planned on using the return ticket. Not when everything she’d been longing for was in California.
It took her years to find him . So many failed attempts, and so many long hours teaching herself ways to hack into things. She knew it wasn’t legal. She knew the same kind of stuff was the reason her father bailed on them nine years earlier. But she couldn’t help it. She had to find him.
And now it looked like she had. In a small apartment, just east of Caltech. Her dream school. It was like fate was pulling her and her father back together. She knew it. But she had to see him first to be sure.
It just worked out that she was up for early graduation. Felicity wouldn’t call it a miracle. She’d worked her ass off in school to graduate this early. And most of her guidance counselors still didn’t think she was ready for such a change in venue. But she couldn’t be in high school another minute. It wasn’t the place for her. She never fit in with the kids her own age, and it only got worse the older she got. The only person she had ever been able to be herself around was her father. And it was time she see him again.
Caltech was hosting a student week for prospective freshman. And Felicity had scrounged and saved for months to be able to afford going. She’d even made sure her mother saw how much she wanted this. Because there was no way she’d go through another space camp fiasco. No way. Felicity was headed to California. And she was going to see her dad.
She had already planned her tours around a four hour gap in the middle of the day, the time she was sure her dad would actually be home. She could hardly wait. Bouncing her leg up and down as the bus took her past the Santa Anita park. She kept pushing her light brown locks from her eyes, wishing she’d done something other than soft curls. But it was the way she wore her hair the last time she’d seen him. And for some reason this felt more important than anything else.
Felicity got off just outside her dad’s apartment, but noticed the flaw in a second. You had to be buzzed in, or have a key. She was confident she could hack the lock in no time. But she was on the street in broad daylight. It probably wasn’t the best idea.
She thought of buzzing his place, even let her gaze rest heavy on his name sitting next to a little white button. But she really didn’t want the first words she said to her dad to be over an intercom. What was she gonna do?
“Oh hon, you need in the building?” an woman was walking up, carrying a bag of groceries, with a small child tugging on her arm. She smiled at Felicity, “Let you sneak in if you grab ‘em.”
Felicity returned the smile, helping the woman get the door open. She set the keys in the woman’s bag and waved as she chased after the kid.
She blew out a long breath as she turned to the bank of elevators. She knew she was being insane. There was no reason to be this nervous. Not about her own father. The man loved her. No matter how he left her mother, that didn’t change the way she knew he felt about him.
So she pushed the button calling the elevator down. It opened soon after, but Felicity was caught off guard when the man stepped out.
It was her father. There was no doubt in her mind. She looked at his picture every night before bed. Everytime she made a breakthrough in a code or hacked a new firewall.
“Hi,” she squeaked out, cringing at the way her voice sounded.
“Hello,” he said, not really looking up from his PDA. He had to be working on something really important. She recognized that look on his face. She’d seen the same one in the mirror every time she was stumped (not that that happened often).
“You should look away from it for a bit,” she offered in a meek attempt to keep conversing with him. “It’s always best to come back to a project with fresh eyes.”
“You know that’s always been my motto,” he replied giving her a smile. “If I had any kids I would have probably drilled that into them.”
Her face fell as she looked into his eyes. But he didn’t seem to notice. Not her pained look or anything else about her. He didn’t recognize her at all.
“Best be going now,” he said as he walked away. His PDA still firmly in his hand.
But Felicity felt like the world was crumbling below her. He looked right at her, right past her, and he didn’t see. He had always seen her, always no matter what was going on in his life. But now? Now it was like she didn’t even exist.
Felicity barely remembered the bus ride back to Caltech. Or crying to the campus advisor about wanting to go home. She remember the plane ride home, but only because she spent the whole thing scolding herself for being stupid.
He had abandoned her. Abandoned her mother. What made her so sure that she’d ever meant anything to him at all? If he had cared about them he would have stayed. He would have found a way. He wouldn’t have acted like she didn’t exist at all.
When Donna picked her up, Felicity insisted they stop at the drugstore on the way. She picked up two bottles of black hair dye. If Noah didn’t want to recognize his own daughter that was fine. She didn’t want him to either.
She spent the next couple of hours making sure every carmel lock, was coated jet black. Her mother came in just after she finished. A look of concern etched on her face, but Felicity just steeled her own.
“I don’t want any piece of him,” she replied taking a deep breath. “Not anymore.”
Donna pulled her into a hug, smoothing down her still wet hair. That day Felicity shed every bit of her father she could. Starting with her hair, and then her name. Because she couldn’t be Felicity Kuttler anymore. She wouldn’t let herself be that naive kid again. Instead she took her mother’s last name. She had always liked Smoak better anyway.
After her paperwork came in she promptly applied to every tech school that was far from California. She no longer wanted to go to Caltech. Her father had wanted that, wanted her to follow in his footsteps, and be his brilliant shining star there. But she was done living her life for someone else.
Instead she got accepted to MIT, ecstatic that not only did they offer her the best scholarship program, but they also wanted her to start classes that summer too.
So when May came she left Vegas, vowing to do everything in her power to be better than the man who forgot her.
---
She’d met Cooper her first semester. Glad she wasn’t the only early admissions student. He was older than her (by like eight months, but still), and she fell for him hard. He was different from the guys at her old school. Smart and dangerous. Or as dangerous as anyone with a full academic load at MIT, could be. But their connection with instantaneous. And they were pretty inseparable from the moment they met onwards.
Cooper was the first one to say ‘I love you’ about a year and a half after they started hanging out, and Felicity was surprised when the words caught in her throat.
She had never said that to another person, other than her mother. And she’d heard it said to even less. In fact she couldn’t even recall a time she’d heard her own parents say it to each other. And the realization seemed to burn into her.
Cooper shrugged it off, kissing her cheek, before he went back to his coding. But she could tell he was annoyed. She could read Cooper’s moods better than her own at times. And for a few days he was real closed off.
She couldn’t tell him why she didn’t say it back, even though she tried. She’d tried to explain about her dad, but she never got far. And when Cooper would look at her for more information, she’d calm up. Because there was still things she didn’t feel like she could tell anyone. No matter how much she cared for him.
It took her a long time to say it back. Hoping that when she did she’d feel a weight lift off of her. One she was sure had been placed there by her father. But it hadn’t. And every time she repeated the words, it felt like stones would settle into her stomach.
When Cooper was arrested and sent to prison, she finally understood why she’d been so reluctant to tell him how she felt. Because she knew in the end he’d be gone. Just like her father. Only this time she didn’t think she’d ever recover from the pain.
---
“Ready to surrender?” Oliver’s voice called out from the other side of the loft. And she could just picture the smile that was probably etched on his face.
“Oh you’d love that wouldn’t you,” she peeked her head out from behind the couch, seeing just the tip of his nerf gun over the top of the counter. “But I don’t surrender. You should know that by now.” And she fired a warning shot, that missed, bouncing off the fridge.
“I think it would be safer for our stuff if you did,” he teased, as he ninja rolled across the floor.
“I call foul! No vigilante moves in nerf wars,” she scolded, but it gave him enough time to hit her twice in the shoulder. She retaliated, firing off two of her own. Happy at least one connected with the top of his head.
She couldn’t help laughing at the bewildered look on his face when the foam dart, dropped into his lap.
“Ha, see when I’m determined I can do anything I set my mind to.”
She was kneeling on the couch as Oliver pulled himself off the ground, striding over to her.
“Look,” he said, his hands in front of him as a sign of good faith. “Clearly we could be at this all night. Neither one of us is likely to give up anytime soon.”
“Damn straight.”
He laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and pulling her closer to him. “Why don’t we call a cease fire? At least until after we’ve eaten,” he dropped an open mouth kiss to her collar bone. “And had some dessert.”
“We’re totally going to end up being those gross parents who embarrass their kids with PDA,” she mused.
Oliver gave her a look, one she’d seen in his eyes a hundred times. When they’d play with Sara or walked past a couple with a baby on the street. That wistful desire for a future together. She’d always been terrified to talk about kids. Convinced that the second she would say the words out loud it would set something in stone. Something she wasn’t ready for. But looking into Oliver’s eyes in that moment she wasn’t scared of what they might have one day.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, but the smile wouldn’t diminish on her face. Oliver only grinned more. “Seriously, stop. So I used the ‘k’ word.”
“I’m just proud you know a ‘k’ word that isn’t Keurig,” he joked, wrapping his other arm around her. “But I agree.” He kissed her. “One day we’re going to be so embarrassing. But we should practice first.”
“On the embarrassing part of the baby making part?”
Within seconds Oliver had lifted her into his arms, eliciting a shrieking from her. “I was really hoping both.”
She placed a hand to his cheek, drawing his lips to hers. Where she kept them as he carried her up the stairs.
---
She thought the further she got from her decision the better she’d feel. But instead of peace, she found herself wide awake late into the night just staring up at the ceiling. She replayed the short time she’d spent with her father. Every word echoing through her head.
Why now?
He hadn’t given her a straight answer. Not really. He’d talked about the job. The web nuke, that she had stopped him from using. But she didn’t need him to say the words to know what he wanted.
She’d only become valuable to him, when he realized she had something to offer him. Talent and tech. The only levels they had ever connected on. Other girls her age remembered tea parties or car races with their dad’s, Felicity recalled taking computer towers apart for afternoons on end, her father quizzing her on how the things fit back together.
At the time it felt magical and fun, learning how a computer ticked. Now she saw it differently. Like Noah had been training her to be exactly what he wanted to put out into the world. And that thought alone made her stomach clench.
“What’s wrong?” Oliver’s tired voice cut into her thoughts as he shifted to face her. His eyes were barely open, but his tired smile seemed to light up his face. And it almost made her forget her worries. Almost.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” She countered, lacing her fingers with his.
“Because I know you, and I know when something’s bothering you,” he pushed himself up on his elbow, making sure he met her eyes. “Talk to me.”
“It’s stupid,” she whispered shaking her head. “I don’t even know why I’m letting it get to me this much.”
“Is this about your dad?”
“Can we please not call him that,” she said, surprising both Oliver and herself by the anger in her words. “A dad isn’t someone who just leaves. They don’t walk out of your life and then back in when they want something. They’re supposed to be there. When you fall off your bike or when you’re scared of something that you can’t explain. They’re supposed to make you feel better. They aren’t supposed to make you feel like this.”
Oliver was running his fingers along her arm, but he stopped, and looked at her. “Like what?”
“Like you’re worthless.”
“You are not worthless, Felicity,” he said, and she could feel the love and the belief he had for her in each word. “You aren’t. Anyone who gets to spend ten seconds with you, is a 100 times luckier for it. I should know.” He paused kissing her forehead. “So if Noah can’t see that you are a beautiful, talented, remarkable person. Then he doesn’t deserve to have you in his life.”
She smiled pulling him down until he nestled into the pillows next to her, pulling her close to his chest.
“I mean it,” he whispered against her ear. “You and your mom are better off. And if he ever gets out, if he ever comes back, say the word and me and my bow will have a talk with him.”
“Thank you,” she replied turning her head to kiss him fully. “I’m lucky too you know. Because I have you.”
He smiled again, wiping a stray tear away from her cheek. “I love you.”
“I know,” she teased, taking a deep breath as she let her eyes slip close. “I love you too.”
That was the thing about her relationship with Oliver. No matter what was weighing on her mind, he always had a way of getting to the roots of it, and making her feel better. Just like she’d done more times than she could count for him too. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
---
“Mommy!” Felicity let out a laugh when the three year old dropped from her father’s arms, rushing across the office floor towards her. She scooped Mona up into her arms, peppering kisses across her face. “I missed you soooo much.”
“Oh you did, did you?” She replied, fixing the girl on her hip. “Well it’s a good thing I missed you too.”
Oliver finally made it over to her, pushing Tommy’s stroller. “Hi beautiful,” he said leaning down to give her a quick kiss. “How was Gotham?”
“Really boring,” Felicity replied as she kneeled in front of the stroller to poke her head in on Tommy. He was sound asleep, but she couldn’t help running a hand across his cheek. She’d missed her kids too much.
She was about to stand again when she noticed the sleeper Tommy was sporting. A little dark green number, with a hood pulled over his head. She looked up, rolling her eyes at her husband. “Really Oliver?”
“What?” He shrugged turning on his smile. “He picked it out himself. If you don’t believe me you can ask him.”
“Yes because I’m sure our six month old with give me a detailed account of this,” she joked, kissing Mona’s cheek as she stood.
“Well he is your son so I wouldn’t put it past him to just start talking one day and never ever stop,” he replied.
“Mommy, can I draw a picture at your desk?” Mona asked, as she tried to get down.
“Yes you can sweetheart,” she gave the girl another kiss before she let her go. “Remember the drawing paper is in the top drawer.”
“Okay, no drawing on the already colored papers again. Got it.”
“Yeah, Uncle Curtis wasn’t too happy when I made him redo all his charts before our meeting,” she turned back to Oliver with a smile. “Which is a totally crock because I saw him framing one of them, saying he wanted a Mona Queen original, before she becomes famous.”
“A famous artist?” Oliver quirked his brow. “Because just yesterday she also proclaimed she was going to own a restaurant that only served PB&J’s.”
“Well I think she has time to decide,” she tossed a look over her shoulder to Mona, who was using a one of her red pens to color on the computer paper she’d pulled out. She looked back to Oliver with a smile. “Besides she can be whatever she wants, as long as she’s happy.”
“Agreed,” he nodded, taking her hand so he could pull her against his side. “How about you Mrs. Queen, you happy?”
She rested her head, in the crook of his shoulder, taking a deep breath in. She remembered how rocky things had gotten between them a few years back. But through every fall and every trial they’d stayed with each other. They had talked and pushed for things to work, because not doing so never felt like an option. Oliver was one of the best things that had ever happened to her life. And she’d never trade the bad, because it would have erased the years of good stacked against it.
She crinkled her nose, smiling up at him, recalling something she’d told him long ago. “As long as you, and our kids, are in my life, I am.”
She hadn’t felt the weight of Noah’s mistakes in years. Not since the day the nurse placed little Mona in her arms.
She had looked down at their daughter with a look of awe and pride. Oliver was next to her, running a hand along their daughter’s light hair. Then she looked at him, seeing the brightness that always seemed to be there when he’d spend time with William, when he had talked to her stomach for countless hours, and she knew. She knew no matter what came next, Oliver would do everything in his power to always be there for their family.
Noah had made his choice, long before Felicity had been able to understand it. But it didn’t matter anymore. Because Oliver was the one to remind her she wasn’t broken, that she wasn’t worthless. And she knew with every fiber of her soul, that he’d never let any of their kids feel that way.