Chapter Sixty

As the elevator drew upwards towards the penthouse, Felicity felt an all too familiar emotion clutching at the pit of her stomach. If she had to describe it, it was this sick, dirty feeling grinding in her gut that felt like sandpaper against an open wound. It was a physical pain fueled by an emotional one; a mix of anger, confusion, and guilt.

Yes; guilt. Even though she had no reason whatsoever to feel guilty, she assured herself. Bruce was being an ass—again. He went way too far—again. And if anyone should be feeling guilty here, it's him.

Only, according to him, Bruce didn't do guilt; that was Felicity's job apparently.

"Shithead," she muttered under her breath.

The door opened to the study and she stepped out reluctantly, her emotions drawing her in two different directions simultaneously. Part of her, a larger part than she cared to admit, wanted to go back down to the cave, like some sad, pathetic thing, and apologize for losing her temper like that.

"Which is frankly ridiculous," she said huffily. "*He's* the one in the wrong here, not me!"

Why should she apologize when he's the one who spent the entire day attempting to manipulate her, first with the crap that morning about how she wasn't qualified to run the Birds, then with the thing at the doctor's office even though he knew Oliver's mother hid his son from him for years? And what about her feelings on the subject? He knew she was sensitive about that stuff! The whole reason they were doing genetic testing in the first place is because she had no idea of who she was, or where she came from, and yet he wanted her to agree to keep her child from knowing his or her biological father? For God's sake, he even sent out feelers to eliminate Ducard as her biological father, so he knew exactly how sore a subject that was for her!

"Oh wait," she said out loud, "That's right; it was just a big joke, right Bruce? Just a ploy to minimize the emotional fallout later on? Well, I've got news for you," she growled, "even *if* Oliver pulled a runner, it was still way the hell over the line, you—you—asshole!" She looked over towards the hidden cameras on the off-chance he'd turned them back on (which, knowing him, he probably had) and gestured toward it angrily, "Yes, you! You're a complete and utter asshole, you know that? And I mean *asshole*- the bad kind-not the one you seem to think is meant to be a term of affection, because I am *so* not feeling affectionate right now!"

She wasn't stupid or naive; she knew better than anyone that Oliver could face down an army without blinking but when it came to dealing with his feelings? Yeah, to say that he was somewhat unreliable when it came to facing an emotional crisis was an understatement. Oliver ran, it's what he did. He ran when Tommy died, he ran from his responsibilities to his family's company when Moira was in prison, he never even showed up to her funeral after Slade killed her, he ran from being a father to Conner, and he ran from his feelings for her, but none of that mattered! While she would like to think he'd want to be part of their (imaginary—as in DOES NOT EXIST) child's life, even if he ran at least the truth would still be out in the open; no secrets, and no lies. She may have to lie and hide the truth about a lot of things in order to protect the ones she loved, but the burden of carrying that particular secret would not be hers to bear, not if she had any say in it! If he ran then that would be his choice, a choice he made for himself, not one made by someone else for him. For better or for worse, the least she could do as a mother is make sure that her child would never have to struggle with their identity the way she'd been forced to.

…even though she wasn't actually pregnant nor was she planning on being pregnant anytime soon, but still.

"Yeah, buddy, you'll be lucky if I even let you close to my cookie jar ever again after what you pulled this morning," she said turning to the camera once again.

The kicker was that Bruce didn't even do it out of jealousy either. It's not like he was afraid that she'd up and leave him for Oliver if he was the father. No; in fact, he was absolutely confident in the fact that she would ultimately choose him and that they would be raising that child together, no matter what. All he was trying to do, according to him, was avoid drawing things out because he's a busy guy who didn't have time to deal with her emotional nonsense.

"Emotional nonsense," Felicity spat out. "Overwrought?" She huffed as she paced back and forth in agitation before glaring at the hidden camera in the clock face, "That was the word you used, right? Overwrought?" She asked with more than a hint of bitterness. "You manipulated my emotions in order to 'spare me' from 'mentally torturing myself' later. Yeah, like you pissing me off here and now is so much better!"

But no, as usual Bruce just conveniently dismissed everything she had told him, everything she'd experienced, because he knew better, right? Because, like Tim said, Bruce was relentless and he would keep pushing, and pushing, until he finally got his way.

"Well, not this time," she promised. "And then—and then!" She pointed another accusing finger at the clock, "You had the *gall* to just, you know, act like it was no big deal! No apology; just that smug, self-satisfied, 'I'm the father, not Queen, so it doesn't matter anymore', before offering to buy me a *burger*!" Felicity said as she got good and wound up. "Well, let me tell you what, Mr. High and Mighty 'I'm Batman and I Know Everything blah blah blah'; it matters and you can't buy your way out of that with a goddamn hamburger, no matter how good it is! It could be the goddamn epitome of cheeseburger-dom on an edible gold bun with edible diamond sesame seeds on top and you'd still be fucked in the head for what you tried to pull on me!" She glared at the clock face, her voice dropping to an icy registry, "And don't you even think about bringing up the fact that I'm not pregnant because it's still the principle of the thing, you—you-*jerk*!"

And what's worse, he didn't even think he'd done anything wrong! In fact, he made her feel like she was the one who was out of line and that was bullshit! Okay, yeah, she lost her temper, yes, and yes she walked away and told him to not even speak to her, but she was perfectly justified in doing that!

"He probably thinks this is all funny, right now, you know that?" She walked up to the statuette of the Maltese Falcon and glowered as her fingers began to absently trip over the bronzed feathers, "He's probably watching this and laughing his ass off because he thinks making me look like a crazy person who talks to themselves is amusing. And you know what's worse? He called me 'Baby' in that tone afterwards, you know?" She told the statuette. "Not in that sexy, sweet, melty Bruce way, but in that smugly patronizing *Batman* way. Like, 'Baby, just be a good little girl and let me handle everything because I'm the Bat and I know what's best for you'. Shithead," Felicity muttered darkly. "I mean, he just *frustrates* me so much. One minute he's pouring his heart out and being so great, really seeming to make an effort, then the next thing you know, out comes his inner Bathole."

She glared at the clock face again, "You're just-!" She made an angry noise and stomped her feet, her hands balled into fists at her side, "You're the one turning me into a crazy person, you know that?! I am not this person, Bruce! I will not let you turn me into the kind of person who—!" she paused, her brain searching for the right words, "Okay, yeah, so I always talk to myself, but still, you're not—you—just shut up!"

She turned back to the statuette, "I mean why…?" She shook her head, tilting her head back in aggravation, "It would be *so nice* to have just one day—just *one* day—where I could relax and enjoy a nice, normal relationship with him, you know? Not all the time, not every day, mind you, but just a day without drama and vigilante relationship angst. No Batman, no world-ending crisis; just us minus the intimacy and control issues that come along with the cape and cowl. Maybe go on a picnic or a walk in the park, maybe head to the movies for some stale buttered popcorn and overpriced gummy bears. Just go somewhere where I didn't have to deal with manpain or vigilantes who devolve into spoiled little boys when they don't get their way. But no," she said, her mouth turning down in a scowl, "No, I can't have that because I'm in a relationship with stupid Batman and his stupid boy penis-ugh!" She growled in frustration, her fingers still gently stroking over the bird's face, tracing its beak and eyes then wandering down its breast in a calming meditation. "I should've just listened to Sara and just tried being a lesbian instead."

"Yes!" She turned to see Sara grinning at her from the doorway as she did a fist pump. "Talk about great timing on my part, huh?

"Fantastic timing," Felicity agreed wryly, the anger slowly draining out of her at the sight of her friend.

"I thought so," the other woman said with a smirk. "So does this mean you're finally going to give up on stupid boy penises so that I can *finally* rock your world, or what?"

"I'll think about it. What are you doing here anyway?" Felicity asked in confusion, her own troubles temporarily forgotten. "I'd have thought you and Laurel would want to stick close to your dad today?"

"Yeah," she said ruefully as she entered the room, "I love my dad, don't get me wrong, but only in small doses."

Felicity raised her eyebrow at that, "So you bailed and dumped him on Laurel instead?"

She shook her head, "Laurel's in the living room watching the show with the rest of the girls. Meanwhile, dad is at Bruce's place bonding with Alfred and torturing pretty much everyone else. They've got this whole bromance developing, it's actually kind of adorable," she said with a crooked smile, "It started with Dad pwning Ollie and Bruce and, by the time we were leaving, they were exchanging recipes and coming up with some kind of Thai/French/Italian fusion thing in between zingers. Dinner should be interesting." She entered the room further and nodded at the statuette, "So is this a private conversation or will any Bird do?"

"Conversation?" She asked, avoiding her gaze.

"You know; manpain and stupid boy penises," she said with a smirk. "Because, between you and me, he doesn't exactly strike me as the talkative type and, also, Mordred told us how you guys got into it downstairs. You actually had him worried about Bruce's safety which, when you think of it, is pretty impressive seeing as he is Batman and all."

"First off, I've decided that the bird is a girl because reasons," Felicity said smartly. "Secondly, thanks for the offer, but I'd rather not talk about it," she said as her hand stilled over the falcon's artfully crossed wings, then sighed, "Not right now, anyway. And third…" she sighed, "I'd really like to avoid the 'B' word for the rest of the day, if possible, thanks."

"Which one?" She asked with an amused purse of her lips, "Bruce or Batman?"

"Both."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she said, taking another deep breath and blowing it out slowly as she gave the statuette one last pat before straightening so she could look the other woman in the eye. "I'm just so sick of every single conversation any of us ever have these days being about the men in our lives and all the stupid crap they pull even though we're the ones who put up with it. I just want to hang out with the Birds and forget all about men in masks for a while, you know? No pressure, no talk about stupid boy penises, or even the mission—I want to just be with my girls and leave the rest of that bullshit where it belongs which is *not here*. *This*," she said gesturing around her, "is officially an angst-free zone, starting now."

"Preaching to the choir," Sara grinned. She reached out and touched the statuette as well, "Is this the real…?"

"Yup."

"Awesome," she said, her smile broadening. "You know, dad loves this stuff," she touched the bent tail feather from where it had been dropped on the set during the filming of the original movie. "Every time that movie would come on cable, he'd watch it with us and say he should have been born seventy years sooner." Her features softened into a fond expression, "I think that's what got Laurel started on becoming a lawyer, too. We'd spend whole weekends watching old black and white movies like The Thin Man and crime drama's like Anatomy of a Murder and those hilarious Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple movies from the sixties."

"I *loved* those movies," Felicity said, her mood lifting as her lips curled into a grin despite the lingering heaviness from her earlier confrontation with Bruce pulling at her. "Oh, and Tony Randall as Poirot in The Alphabet Murders?" She sighed, "He's my second favorite Poirot after Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express."

"What about David Suchet?" The other woman chuckled, "Or did you make me watch all those DVR'd episodes for nothing?"

"I like him, too, but he's no Albert Finney," she said, wrinkling her nose slightly.

"True," Sara agreed as she shot her another amused look. "I swear, I think that sometimes you and dad share a brain, seriously. I've said it before, but you should have been his third kid; you both have this weird love/hate thing with mysteries. Growing up, the only thing we ever saw him read other than case files were old detective novels by guys like Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane. I think he always saw himself as a modern day mix of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer; all fast talk and hardboiled attitude, you know?" Her fingers began to trip over the statuette just as Felicity's had done and her eyes lit up as she turned to her, a mischievous expression on her face, "We have got to invite him over here to see this thing; he'll totally flip his lid. He might even try to take it home with him."

"I seriously doubt your dad would do that," she laughed.

"You obviously don't know how much he loves Bogey then. Mom said that when they first moved in together the only two things he brought with him from his old apartment were his dart board and his framed poster of Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. No matter what she did she could never get him to give them up. He wanted to hang it over the mantle in the family room instead of their wedding portrait but she wouldn't let him. I think half the reason he didn't mind spending so much time at your place was because of that Errol Flynn poster you have hanging up on your wall; if you had a dart board, too, he probably would've moved in with us. You two are birds of a feather, seriously," she said wryly as she examined the bronze more closely then glanced up at her, "Hey, I just realized, we have an actual Bird of Prey in the Bird's Nest!" She paused, "Well, we have a famous statue of a Bird of Prey in the Bird's Nest, but you've got to admit, that's still pretty damn cool."

Felicity's eyebrows lifted slightly at that, "Huh, never thought of it like that but, yeah, I guess it is."

"If you and Bruce ever break up and he kicks us out, we are totally stealing this thing," Sara said in a deadpan. "He can just go buy another one or something."

"Why not?" She said off-handedly, playing along. "I mean, sure, he paid millions of dollars for it but he can afford it. Besides, they made like four of them."

"Exactly. Also, we should name her 'Samantha'. You know, after Sam Spade."

"Oh yeah; definitely. And she can be our official Birds of Prey mascot. We can even get 'Samantha, the Maltese Falcon' stitched on our softball jerseys," she agreed with a perfectly straight face.

"Damn right, and we are totally going to kick all those other vigilante teams' asses. Oh, and we should start a basketball team, too, that way that Big Barda chick could be our ringer," Sara smirked then hitched her head towards the door. "Now c'mon before we miss the rest of the show."

"What show? There isn't even a TV out there," she asked wrinkling her nose in confusion as they headed out together. "Which, when you think about it, is kind of weird," she added. "I mean, all the bedrooms have them but not the main sitting area or the kitchen. We should totally talk to Zander about that then do a movie night after all this Orbital crap is settled."

"It's not a TV show," Sara told her.

"What is it then?"

"You'll see."

"Just tell me," Felicity demanded impatiently as she followed her out.

"It's a surprise," Sara said with a naughty grin.

She gave her companion a dubious look, "Yeah, I no longer trust your surprises, not after last night anyway. I want you to know I didn't even get a bite of turducken, thank you very much."

"Patience is a virtue," the other woman said with a snicker.

An evil snicker.

"Just tell me," she whined. "Is it bad? Is Isabel tied up on the pool table while you guys take turns bouncing the eight ball off her face?"

Sara halted suddenly to gaze thoughtfully up at the ceiling, "No, but that's a good idea. In fact, first chance I get, I am so doing that." She shook her head then sighed before continuing on, "It's nothing bad, trust me. Like I said, it's just a show," the other woman told her as she nodded towards the seating area.

Felicity followed her gaze and the first thing she noticed was that most of the Birds were present and seated on one of the couches staring at Creote in rapt fascination as he tidied up.

The other thing she noticed was Creote.

All of him.

"A gun show," Sara said slowly with a smirk.

"Wow."

If Felicity were to describe the scene before her, she'd have to start with the 6'8" wall of pure muscle that was dressed in a ruffled apron he got from God knows where, bearing the words 'Bless This Mess', a skin tight black muscle shirt, and red and black lycra bicycle shorts that were pulled taut over his…

His…

She tilted her head to the side to get a better look.

"That's…" Felicity said faintly. "Wow."

"Yeah," Sara nodded slowly. "If you think that's impressive, you should see the view from the other side." As they watched the ex-Spetsnaz officer turned housekeeper effortlessly lifted a couch with one hand as he vacuumed while humming along to whatever was playing on his iPod. "I mean, I'd like to think that I'm a fairly adventurous kind of person, been around the block five, six, seventeen times, but…" she shook her head and looked at her from the corner of her eye, "I gotta tell you, if I turned the corner and saw…" she glanced pointedly at his lower torso, "*that* coming at me, even I'd be tempted to throw a rock at it before running in the opposite direction."

She glanced back at the huge Russian, "And then I'd probably turn *back* around after buying myself a heating pad and a monster sized bottle of Tylenol, because some mountains just gotta be climbed and damn the consequences."

"Why is he dressed like that?" Felicity asked as he bent and…flexed.

And then he turned toward them after setting down the couch, placed his hands on his hips, and stretched his back giving her a full frontal view of what it was that even the great Sara Lance showed a reluctance to take on.

"Whoa mama…" she breathed. "That's…"

"Huh? What'd you say?" Sara grunted faintly as all her attention was on the bouncing, um…

"I can't remember," Felicity said honestly as her mind completely blanked.

Yeah, if something like that came at her with intent, she'd probably be lobbing some rocks, too. Hell, if that's what he was packing in his down time…

Despite her propensity for innuendo, Felicity did not consider herself to be a particularly dirty-minded person. That said…

Damn. Just damn.

She must have said it out loud because Sara murmured, "We've even been naming it."

"What?" She asked in confusion.

The other woman nodded, "So far your sister is winning with 'The Russian Roto-Rooter', because if that doesn't clear the pipes, nothing will." Sara looked back at him with a frown, "Actually, after taking that on you'd probably have to replace the plumbing altogether."

"Ouch," she winced just thinking about it.

"Ready to go grab a seat and objectify your house guest with the rest of us?"

"Yeah, sounds good," Felicity said. "I meant, 'sitting on the couch was a good idea', not the objectifying part." She paused, "And also assuming by 'grab a seat' you meant the couch, otherwise that probably wouldn't be good at all."

"Although, that's a thought," Sara said faintly as she reached for her, pulling her towards the others as the Russian picked up a duster and began to wander around the room. "A very, very intriguing thought…" Her mouth fell open slightly as he flexed his massive bicep. "Is it a little hot in here or is it just me?"

"It is getting a bit warm-ish…" Felicity said dumbly, eyes firmly fixed on the large-really, really *large*-man, her mind filling with all sorts of interesting yet mildly disturbing images as she stumbled after her friend.

Soon they were settled amongst the others whose eyes were also locked on the man in front of them in rapt fascination. Tam and Thea were seated to her right, while Sara, Lyla, and Gypsy occupied the other half of the couch, a bowl of popcorn being passed between them. Helena and Laurel were seated on the floor in front of Lyla, occasionally snatching up a handful of popcorn while Renee passed the time by playing on her tablet with a mildly bored expression on her face over on the chaise.

"What were you asking earlier?" Sara whispered as they watched Creote do this sort of half shimmy to whatever was playing over his earphones as he sprayed some furniture polish onto a dust cloth.

Felicity glanced at her, "Huh? Oh, um, why…why is he dressed like—" Creote dropped the cloth and bent over to pick it up causing all the women to crane their necks in order to follow his movements, "—that?"

"Tam," Sara said in a hush. "She bought him clothes."

"Your sister is a freaking genius, by the way," Thea told her faintly.

"Thank you," Tam said without ever taking her eyes off Creote's incredibly fit form. "You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find clothes in his size. Not that they're actually his size," she admitted.

"Yeah," Helena said leaning forward. "They're a bit…"

"Tight," Laurel finished for her with emphasis on the hard 'T' in 'tight' so that it erupted from her lips with a crisp yet somehow lascivious sound as in 'tigh-TAH'.

Actually, 'tight' was an understatement, she thought to herself. Those shorts were clinging so close to his skin she swore she could see every vein and muscle, so much so that she was surprised that parts of him weren't turning purple.

Felicity winced slightly. Yeah, again with the uncomfortable and highly inappropriate mental images.

"Bike shorts," Lyla hummed, obviously more comfortable with her filthy thoughts than Felicity was with her own. "I'm with Thea; that's just freaking genius.

Laurel tilted her head slightly and squinted, "Is he wearing, um…?"

"No!" Lyla snorted, "I mean look at him," she said gesturing towards him with a sweep of her hand. "Hell, I can tell the man's religion from here, can't you?"

"Looks like a good Jewish boy to me," Sara agreed.

Felicity adjusted her vision upwards as there were some mysteries that she really, really didn't feel comfortable solving at the moment.

"Wow," Thea breathed, making a fist with her small hand and then looking from it to his lower torso pointedly. "Look at that thing! That's…that's got to be a record or something, right? I mean, seriously."

"I always did want to break a world's record," Sara said with a smirk.

"You'd be breaking something but I don't think it would be a record," Helena tossed back.

"Oh my God," she cringed. 'Why me?' she thought. All she wanted to do was hang out with the girls and forget about men for a while and, instead, she wound up getting treated to the male version of a Russian French maid bopping his ass to techno in the middle of the living room while wearing pants so tight you could see his circumcision scar.

Allegedly, she added mentally. She wasn't going to look to make sure. There were some things she did *not* need to see. No way, uh uh.

She was not going to look, keep it above the waistline!

Not…going…to…

…look.

Her eyes drifted downward of their own volition.

"I'll be damned," she muttered to herself, her eyebrows shooting towards her hairline as she took it all in. All of it.

Every. Single. Inch.

"That can't be comfortable," she said with a slight head shake. "You'd think that would…chafe what with all the, um…" she made a helpless gesture, "rubbing."

Helena snorted at that but, surprisingly, didn't say anything.

"You know how they say size doesn't matter?" Thea mused looking towards her. "That matters. That's some pretty significant 'mattering' right there."

"That shit looks like an elephant holding an apple in its trunk," Lyla agreed.

"Think about it," Laurel said in quiet reverence. "Really think about it."

"Think about what?" Gypsy muttered.

"It's a little cold in here, he's in shorts, and that's still…" Laurel blinked slowly, "Like that."

"I don't get it," the younger woman said in confusion.

Lyla handed her the bowl, "Shrinkage, more importantly, the lack of it."

"What's that?" Gypsy asked, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

"Virgin," Helena said with a sneer.

"I'm not a virgin!"

"Okay then, how many of those," Huntress nodded towards the man as he said something in Russian to the large dog trailing behind him curiously, "have you seen?"

"I don't think anybody's ever seen one of those," Thea snorted. "Seriously, if they had then don't you think they would have written an article about it in the paper like they do when somebody catches a record sized fish or something? Talk about Moby Dick, I mean, look at that thing!" She said gesturing towards him. "That's front page above the fold kind of big right there, boy!"

"They probably did, only by the time they finished reeling him in, they wound up having to print it in the obituary section instead," Lyla said dryly.

"So?" Helena prompted the younger girl, "How many of the regular sized 'those' have you seen, Little Miss 'Not a Virgin'?"

Gypsy flushed, "By those, if you mean…*those*, um, one. Almost."

Everyone turned towards her.

"Almost?" Thea asked in amusement.

"It was dark," she said defensively.

Laurel's eyebrows rose in surprise, "So, wait, Mordred is your first then?"

"Not…quite," she said reluctantly before scowling, "Can we just, you know-" she gestured towards the large Russian who was now murmuring something as he patted the dog on the head causing his tail to thump on the floor in excitement.

There was a click from beside her and Felicity turned to see Tam holding out her cell as she snapped a picture of Creote, "Please tell me you aren't Instagramming this. You do know these guys are wanted by practically everybody, right?"

"Yeah," Tam said sarcastically as she began to tap on her phone. "I'm not stupid you know, I'm just sending it to Zander." Less than a couple of seconds later her phone beeped, "He said he'll be here in less than five minutes."

Three and a half minutes later…

"We're going to need more popcorn," Zander said wide-eyed as he settled in and automatically reached for the bowl that was handed to him. "I skipped lunch and I plan on being here awhile."

"How did you get here this fast anyway?" Renee asked with a grin.

"I was downstairs running my ass off between the art gallery and Carousel trying to get two weeks' worth of stuff done in time for the Gala tomorrow," he answered without taking his eyes off the other man. "They're not shutting the rest of the building down until after five, and then we still have to wait until it clears before we can get the lobby done, so we're probably going to be here half the night just putting up decorations, and that doesn't include the awning outside or the red carpet line. Those we have to work on tomorrow because the cops have to block off the street for us first. Oh, *and*, lucky me, Sabine took off leaving me to do all the work with a bunch of idiot interns who can't even figure out how to hang twinkle lights." He let out an irritated puff of air even though his eyes never left Creote, "If one more person asks me how to fold a napkin into a rosette, I will cut a bitch, I swear to God."

Felicity turned to him, "Is it okay that you're up here then?"

"Nope," he said. "I'll probably get fired but this is totally worth it," he breathed out reverently. "So incredibly worth it." He let out a sigh of longing before shaking his head with a grimace, "Besides, I'm probably getting fired anyway. Sabine told our bosses that since Mr. Wayne and the Foundation's board members have such faith in my vision that I should take lead which is why she took off like she did."

"Who's Sabine?" Gypsy asked curiously.

"My former boss turned nightmare," Zander said grumpily. "Although she was always a nightmare, now she's just a really inconvenient pain in my ass."

"Think Cruella De Vil, only with less charm," Felicity offered. "She even wears a dog coat with the head attached and everything."

The younger woman wrinkled her nose at that, "Yuck." She shuddered then turned to him, "At least she's not your boss anymore though, right?"

"Yeah, except now she keeps saying things to the people I work with along the lines of me being 'promoted to the highest level of incompetence, and how much she's looking forward to seeing me go down in flames," he said grimly. "'Flames' as in 'fired', not as in the homophobic slur," he added. "Sabine is a bitch but she's not a homophobe. In fact, she kind of prides herself on the fact that husbands one and four were both gay. She's like the Liza Minnelli of Interior Design."

"What a cunt," Thea said in sympathy. "Of course, if you pull it off, that'll totally piss her off, so there's that."

"*If* being the keyword there."

"You'll do great," Tam said waving him off. "After you told me what you wanted to do instead of that same old tired Great Gatsby theme Sabine trots out every year, I was the one who went to the board to get you put in charge, remember? If I didn't think you could handle it then I wouldn't have gone to bat for you in the first place."

"I know, and thank you," he said with a grateful smile. "I just hope I don't mess it up otherwise Gannon and I are going to be eating Ramen noodles and frozen pizza every night while I try to figure out how to fit our sectional in a cardboard box."

Tam rolled her eyes at him, "You're not going to wind up living in a cardboard box!"

"That's true," Renee said, not looking up from her tablet. "Worst case scenario, you guys can move in with Felicity; everyone else has."

"True," Felicity agreed.

"Well, I suppose since the dining room isn't really being used anyway…" he mused.

"So what's this theme that has Cruella's panties in a twist?" Thea asked curiously.

"High Fashion," Tam answered for him. "It's going to be gorgeous! Plus, it's brilliant since these things are basically fashion shows anyway. Instead of the usual black and white theme with rose centerpieces, the whole room is going to be filled with color. Think Paul Poiret, with swinging lanterns, colorful cushions in designer prints, and mismatched floral centerpieces. Oh, speaking of which, Zander had the brilliant idea of using the place cards with the names of the corporate sponsors as miniature lampshades on the electric candles we used in the table arrangements because all anyone ever does with those things is toss them out anyway."

"So, it's a murder mystery theme?" Renee asked looking up from her tablet with a frown. "And I thought his name was 'Hercule Poirot', not 'Paul Poiret'."

"No; Paul Poiret was a French Courtier from the early 1900's," Felicity explained. "Think Coco Chanel only more colorful."

"Or don't," Tam interjected. "They hated each other. Poiret thought Chanel was boring and she thought he was tacky. There's this famous story about how they met at a party where she was wearing one of her famous little black dresses. Poiret asked," her voice dropped to a husky timbre with a heavy French accent, "'For whom, madame, do you mourn?', to which she replied, 'For you, monsieur.'"

"Fascinating," Renee said wryly. "Makes me want to run right out and buy a flapper dress."

"Actually, I was planning on wearing a flapper dress tomorrow night," Thea said reluctantly.

"Really? What color is it and who's the designer?" Tam asked, suddenly distracted.

Thea opened her mouth to tell her when Helena interrupted, "Are you guys seriously talking about dresses right now when you could be looking at that" She asked, gesturing towards Creote.

"If you were into fashion, you'd totally get it," Thea shot back.

"Exactly," Tam agreed before looking at Renee, "Anyway, just think of Poiret as like the Picasso of fashion and Chanel as Marcel Duchamp or Poiret as, say, John Galliano and Chanel as Dolce & Gabbana, only without the self-hating gay attitude and Anti-Semitism."

"To be fair, Galliano never really apologized for the thing he said about Hitler but Dolce & Gabbana did take back the thing they said about gay marriage," Thea told her. "Plus their clothes are a lot better than Galliano's."

"I still have no clue what you're talking about," she said shaking her head. "Sorry, doll, but I was a former cop, remember? I studied Criminal Justice in college, not Fashion or Art Appreciation."

"Yeah, you would have been better off comparing them to Glock versus Walther or an AK-47 to a M16; we're not exactly a artsy kind of crowd, if you know what I mean," Lyla said distractedly.

"See, now that I would have gotten," Renee agreed, hitching her thumb at the other woman with a nod.

"Whatever," Tam said disgruntledly as she accepted the popcorn from Thea and continued to stare at Creote with the rest of them.

"That's not…that can't be…" Thea tilted her head and narrowed her eyes slightly, "Naw, that can't be natural, can it? He's got to be wearing a cup or something, right?"

"That or a whole drawer full of penis-shaped socks," Helena said with a shrug.

"I always thought steroids had the opposite effect though," Laurel said with a frown.

"I don't think he uses steroids," Lyla offered. "I just think he's some kind of mutant or something."

"I don't know but, if it is 100% natural, then I'm defecting and moving to Russia," Zander told her, tossing a few more pieces of popcorn into his mouth. "Hell, even if it isn't, I might move there anyway. People still do that, right?"

Renee snorted, "Aren't you supposed to be happily married?"

"Yes, but I have an opening on my list now that Clooney got remarried and is officially sticking to the whole heterosexual line," he shrugged.

"I'm not touching that 'opening' comment with a ten foot pole," Thea murmured to Tam.

"Ten foot pole is right," the other woman smirked as she bobbed her head towards the Russian.

"What do you mean by your 'list'?" Gypsy asked. "What's a list?"

Helena rolled her eyes, "What are you; two?"

"No," the younger woman said with a slight pout, "I'm almost nineteen."

Helena shook her head at that, "Nineteen; Jesus fucking Christ."

"A 'list' refers to a list of five people you're allowed to do even if you're in a relationship," Lyla informed her. "When I was with Johnny, my list was Brad Pitt-before he got all shaggy and started looking like Robert Redford. You know, the old man version, not the Barefoot in the Park or really hot All the President's Men one. Matthew McConaughey—"

Thea wrinkled her nose at that, "Matthew McConaughey? Really? He's always half-naked and sweaty in public, and while I have no problem with either of those things, he also looks like the kind of guy who has an objection to using deodorant for some reason. That's why stopped liking Benjamin Bratt," she said, her face screwing up in disgust. "Ever since I found out that he made Julia Roberts stop using deodorant and shaving her pits while they were dating…" she shuddered, "Forget it; no guy is worth furry, smelly armpits."

"Exactly," Tam agreed. "In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why his career took a nose dive. That and his refusal to come back for the Miss Congeniality sequel. I mean, what kind of moron dumps Sandra Bullock, seriously?" She asked, shaking her head incredulously. "Granted, that movie sucked compared to the first one, but still."

"I actually liked that movie," Renee told them. "I was totally waiting for the mean FBI chick to slip Sandra the tongue at the end."

"Me, too!" Thea said, looking at her with a grin. "I thought I was the only one seeing the sexual tension but they were totally into each other, am I right?"

"Looked like it from where I was sitting," Renee agreed.

"They totally had heat," Tam nodded. "It's like in that movie Stepmom with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon. After the screen faded to black because Susan was dying, I used to pretend that she went into remission and that Julia dumped Ed Harris and they became lesbian moms together. I keep lobbying the people I work with to enter into negotiations for the film rights so we can do a remake with that as the alternate ending then cast Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and either ScarJo or Halle Berry in the lead roles. That or Kerry Washington," she added. "She'd so rock the Susan Sarandon role and, even though Rosie may not be the best actress in the world, she is smoking hot, know what I mean?"

"Or you could do a totally lesbian version of Stepmom, put ScarJo in as Julia with Kerry as Susan, then have Rosie in Ed's role since he didn't have all that many lines to begin with," Gypsy suggested.

"Ooh, that could work," Tam said, her eyebrows lifting slightly at that idea.

"Yeah, I agree. I may be straight but I'd still put any of those ladies on my list long before I'd put McConaughey on there," Thea said pursing her lips in consideration. "Not that I have a list," she muttered. "Right now I don't even have a boyfriend, so…"

"I know what you mean, but I still like him," Lyla shrugged, "He's from Texas like me and he enjoys being naked which is a bonus, so what can I say? Moving on; Idris Elba…"

"Yes, to Idris Elba," Tam said firmly.

"Hello!" Zander said, raising his hand in solidarity.

"Idris Elba is hot," Thea agreed. "He reminds me of my stepdad in a weird way. Not that they look anything alike aside from both being from England and black, mind you. I'm pretty sure it's just a combination of the accent and the fact that they're both stone cold foxes, you know? They've got this whole dangerous yet polite James Bond British guy vibe going for them. Not that Walter would hurt a fly, but still, he is pretty built under those Saville Row suits of his."

"I know what you mean," Felicity chimed in with a low hum of approval. "They both look like they're completely trustworthy, yet fully capable of destroying someone before politely asking for a cup of tea."

"Exactly," the other woman agreed.

"You have a crush on your own stepfather?" Renee asked dubiously.

Thea shrugged, "Ex-stepfather, and kind of. I would never act on it in a million years and it's not a sexual attraction per se, but it's definitely edging into crush territory. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my lingering daddy issues."

"Yeah, well, I have mommy issues but I have no desire whatsoever to make a move on my stepmom." Renee shuddered, "She'd probably spend the whole time criticizing my technique before telling me that if I spent half as much time going down on dick as I do on pussy I'd probably be married by now just like my 'good' brother, Benny, and my step-cousin, Rosemarie." Her lips twisted in a look of disgust, "I can hear her now," she took a deep breath before speaking in a high nasally voice, "'You know, Renee; your cousin was all about the lesbianism in college but then she got highlights and now she's married to a periodontist with three kids and a Dutch Colonial in Great Neck.' After that she'll usually go on and on about how Edge News said Julie Andrews and Disney are part of some left-wing homosexual conspiracy to turn 'normal' little girls in lesbians through subliminal messages or something. I mean, gimme a break; like Mary Poppin's pixie cut and comfortable shoes are to blame for the way I turned out."

"Well, she is kind of the reason I turned out the way I did," Zander said wryly. "Her and Maxwell Caulfield," he sighed. "Say what you will about Grease 2, but between that movie and The Princess Bride, my pre-teen hormones had me saying 'As you wish' anytime and anywhere he wanted it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's where my fetish for tall blonds originated," he mused.

Renee shrugged, "Yeah, well, I was too busy staring at Michelle Pfeiffer to notice and I know for fact that's where my *my* fetish for blondes originated. That and brunettes, redheads, and women in black leather."

"Black leather, huh?" Laurel said with a smirk.

She shot her a bawdy wink, "Red leather's nice, too."

At that, Sara shot her sister a pointed look causing the other woman to roll her eyes in exasperation.

"I'm surprised you weren't putting on a pink lady neckerchief and singing 'Cool Rider' all summer long, instead," Lyla grinned, turning to Zander.

"That, too," he told her. "Plus I had a little 'Genie in the Bottle' Christina Aguilera thing to go with it."

"I loved that song," Thea said grinning happily from ear to ear.

"I was never allowed to listen to stuff like that when I was a teenager," Renee said with a shrug. "Why, I have no idea. I guess my stepmom thought they would turn me into some kind of dick-hungry slut or something." She snorted, "Talk about irony, huh? Should have made me listen to Lolita Pop when she had the chance."

Thea narrowed her eyes at that, "You know, your stepmom sounds like a total nightmare."

"She was," the other woman said wryly. "A chain smoking nightmare in a pink muumuu who liked to collect poodle figurines. It was like living in hell."

"Why didn't your dad tell her to back the hell off?" Gypsy asked with a frown.

"Because he agreed with her," Renee shrugged. "It's this whole machismo pride thing. My mom left him to be with another woman and, ever since then, he's gotten a little militant with that stuff. Which, when you think about it, was pretty hypocritical of him seeing as he cheated on her constantly when they were married," she told them. "In fact, my stepmom started out as the other woman who got promoted to second wife the minute the divorce went through, probably because she was the only one willing to put up with his crap and because he needed to show that he was the more stable influence during the custody hearing." She looked at them, "I found out about that later after overhearing some of my aunts talking about it. It explained a lot, let me tell you."

"That's rough," Laurel said with a sympathetic look.

"It is what it is. At least I no longer have to listen to it any more since they officially disowned me a few years back." She paused, "Well, not directly anyway, but every once in a while they send me messages through Benny about how they'd be willing to welcome me back as long as I agreed to stop being a dyke and repent to Jesus." She sighed, "My brother can be a dick, too, but at least he still talks to me like a human being when he's not reminding me about the fact that I'm killing our parents with my whole 'being gay thing'."

"He has a problem with you being a lesbian, too?" Thea asked with a sympathetic look.

"Not really," she said with a shrug. "Actually, he's pretty cool with gay people for the most part, it's just that he suffers from middle child syndrome and is too busy begging for their approval to think for himself most of the time. My youngest brother, Nando, is cool though," she said on a more positive note. "He got a full-ride scholarship to NYU through the Wayne Grant and splits most of his free time between the dorms and my place so he doesn't really give a shit what they think. As for my 'perfect' step-cousin…" Renee rolled her eyes, "First off, Dutch Colonials suck, and she put this busy cabbage rose chintz wallpaper up in all the rooms along with wall to wall pink carpets. Frankly, it looks like Laura Ashley farted and died in there if you ask me. Plus, she collects these truly disturbing porcelain dolls that are everywhere including the bathroom. They look like something out of a horror movie, I swear to God." Her eyebrows drew together in a pained expression, "Their creepy dead eyes stare at you even when you're on the can trying to take a shit. I'm pretty sure her husband has a nanny cam stuffed in one of them, too." Renee shot all of them a look, "He just seems the type. I mean, he puts his hands in people's *mouths* for a living," she said in emphasis. "Secondly, the only reason they could even afford that place is because it was in foreclosure and his dad knew a guy. And he's not even a periodontist, he's a dentist! She says it's the same thing but it's not. It just isn't." She grumbled, "Not that I'm bitter or anything."

"'Course not," Lyla said with a snort.

Tam shook her head with a pained expression, "Cabbage roses and Laura Ashley? Really? Talk about being stuck in the bad part of the eighties."

"That's what you took from that?" Lyla asked her. "Not the part about the perverted dentist and the creepy dolls in the bathroom?"

"Really creepy," Renee said with a shudder. "She has a thing about dolls with teeth so they're all just staring at you with their mouths wide open like this." She twisted her mouth into a grotesque open-mouthed grin, her eyes bugging out in a pantomime of some kind of death mask. "Ow, that hurt." Her expression relaxed and she wriggled her jaw from side to side as she rubbed it, "Anyway, I'm pretty sure there's some kind of underlying dental fetish going on there."

Tam shrugged, "I try not to judge people based on their sexual proclivities and kinks. Their interior design choices though? Completely fair game."

"I agree. I mean, save me from housewives who think they have taste," Zander intoned grimly. "Every time I see a reproduction Duncan Phyfe dining set I just want to weep at the senseless tragedy of it all. That and it gives me flashbacks of my childhood when my mom would make us go to my Nana's house for Thanksgiving." He rolled his eyes, "My Aunt Kissy's second husband, 'Uncle Bob'-who was a dick, by the way," he gave a disgusted noise. "I was so happy when she left him for their marriage counselor. Anyway, he would always try to goad me into playing touch football with him and my step-cousins, Little Robert and Bill, because he said I was too 'girly'." He snorted, "It was hell; sheer, pure, hell. I hated every minute of it." He paused, "Until I turned fifteen and Little Robert started inviting his college roommate to spend the holidays with us. Craig Dickerson," he said with a slightly naughty twinkle in his eye. "They were on the football team at Loyola together; Craig was the quarterback," he told them with a fond look. "He taught me everything I know about football. In fact, we hit it off so well that he asked me if I wanted to sneak out to the treehouse after dinner so we could continue playing with each other in private." Again that mischievous grin lit up his face, "Afterwards, he told me he wouldn't mind using me as a tight end anytime, if you know what I mean. I started liking Thanksgiving at Nana's a lot more after that."

"How utterly romantic," Laurel said dryly.

"It really was," Zander agreed. "God bless good Catholic boys. I still smile to this day whenever I see the maroon and gold. Gannon doesn't know this but it's the whole reason I didn't fight him over adding the NCAA package to our cable bill." He hummed a bar of the 'Hail Loyola' fight song under his breath before adding, "Of course, after that weekend I wasn't as much of a tight end as I used to be."

"So, in other words, you went from a tight end to a wide receiver?" Lyla chuckled.

"Oh honey, you have no idea, but I've never gotten any complaints so..." he said with a smirk then mused, "Gosh, that does bring back memories though. I wonder if he's on Facebook?"

Tam made a gimme gesture for the popcorn, "Speaking of Idris Elba—and getting as far the hell away from that other subject as possible because if we start talking about looking up our former hook ups on Facebook…" she lifted her eyebrows slightly, "Let's just say that social media takes up way too much of my time as it is. Anyway, I saw a movie where he was completely naked once; we're talking the full Monty," she sighed. "It was a terrible movie but still completely worth the price of admission."

"How much of the Monty?" Felicity asked curiously.

"What do you mean, 'How much of the Monty'?" Thea turned to her in confusion, "What's more than the full Monty?"

"Well, I saw this Ewan McGregor movie once where he was completely naked—I mean, *completely* naked," Felicity told her. "You saw everything; the front, the back, the really, really… back."

"Like how back?" Sara asked her curiously.

"Like *back* back," Felicity emphasized. "As in, I not only saw the full moon and the low hanging fruit, I saw the, um…" She held out her hand, her fingers splayed wide, "'star'."

"The star," Thea snickered, "I'm keeping that one! Along with the hand gesture because that's what really sold it," she said repeating the action in emphasis, "Star!"

"You're welcome," Felicity told her.

"What movie was this?" Lyla asked with a grin.

"I don't know," she shrugged. "The Pillow Book, Trainspotting, Velvet Goldmine—to tell you the truth, the only movie I can think of offhand where Ewan McGregor wasn't naked at some point is probably the Star Wars prequels."

Gypsy frowned, "It would have made those movies so much better if he had been naked though. I always thought he and Amidala should have gotten it on, if only to make up for the travesty known as Jar Jar Binks."

"True," Felicity agreed.

"God, I'm surrounded by nerds," Helena muttered.

"In that case, it was the Monty Python then, okay; happy now?" Tam offered sarcastically.

"The Monty Python," Renee repeated, shaking her head. "Have I told you guys how much I'm enjoying being part of this whole group dynamic yet? You people can come up with some shit, I'm tellin' ya."

"We try," Felicity said wryly.

"Speaking of pythons, I also wouldn't mind doing Omari Hardwick," Lyla added.

"Bitch, then you're going to be fighting me because that's my man," Tam said flatly, her neck snaking back and forth as she lifted her finger in warning and waggled it in the other woman's direction threateningly.

"Mmm hmm," Zander hummed giving her a high five.

"Who the hell is Omari Hardwick?" Helena asked with a frown. Tam pulled up something on her phone then handed it to her. "Oh. Okay. I don't know who he is or what he does, but count me in."

"And," Lyla said, giving a dramatic pause, "just to be fair; Angelina Jolie. I'm not really into women but, still, it's Angelina freaking Jolie, you know? Who wouldn't do her, am I right? I mean, Gia? Her body was ridiculous in that. Original Sin with naked Angie *and* Antonio Banderas? Terrible movie but, holy fuck that was hot. Can I hear an 'amen'?"

"Amen," Sara said roundly.

"I'll second that," Tam said holding up her hand. "Believe me, ever since I caught that movie on late night cable when I was thirteen, taking a big bite out of an Antonio/Angelina sandwich became my new goal in life."

"What about you?" Lyla asked, turning to Zander.

"Pretty much the same as yours only swap out Matthew McConaughey for George Clooney and make it pre-Jennifer Aniston 90's Brad from Thelma and Louise," he told her.

"What about Angelina?" Gypsy asked with a frown.

"What about her? Like she said it's Angelina freaking Jolie," he said emphatically. "I'm gay, honey, but I'm not that gay. In fact, I don't even think it's possible to be gay enough not to like Angelina Jolie. She's part of the gay millennial Holy Trinity; Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Saint Angelina of the Mick Jagger swagger and the redonk badonk-a-donk."

Tam frowned at that, "I thought the Gay Holy Trinity was Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Saint Beyoncé the Bootylicious?"

"Holy foursome, then; I'd figure something out, trust me. Hell, *my* goal in life is to get adopted by the Jolie-Pitts just so that I can be breastfed by Brad." He slanted his eyes towards her, "And yes, I meant to say it like that. Vivi and Knox and just lump it and get in line as far as I'm concerned."

"Actually, I wouldn't mind being breastfed by Brad myself," Lyla offered. "Better yet, I wouldn't mind breastfeeding Brad."

Renee curled her lips up in disgust, "There are just so many disturbing images running through my head now…ugh. Thank you very much for that; now I won't be able to eat cereal or look a baby in the eye for like a month."

"I don't care what you say," Lyla told her. "Even with him being all old and shaggy, that man's ass still makes my thighs sweat."

Tam gave a wistful sigh, "Speaking of that, when I handed him his new clothes, Creote thanked me because he apparently, at least according to him, 'hadn't done it in a while' and after he got through dusting the tchotchkes he was planning on, and I quote, 'working up a sweat before taking a shower'."

All eyes swiveled her way.

"Where?" Laurel demanded.

"And with who?" Lyla added.

"And does he need someone to hand him the soap?" Sara asked, joining in.

"I don't know, but wherever or whoever, I'm planning on being there just in case he needs a work out partner or someone to help reach the really dirty places, if you know what I mean," Tam replied.

"I knew I should have ordered a salmon ladder when Oliver mentioned it," Felicity said dryly causing both Sara and Thea to snicker.

"You know," Laurel said slowly, "if we jacked the thermostat up really, really high and put a fire in the fire place, maybe we could convince him to join us in a little hot yoga?"

Felicity pursed her lips in amusement, "I thought you hated hot yoga."

"I'm willing to give it a second chance," she said giving Creote a sultry look. "Especially if we can get it hot enough in here that he takes off his shirt."

"I second that motion," Tam said immediately. "All in favor?"

"Aye," said several voices at once.

"Not me," Felicity said with a sigh. "I need to work on some stuff in the, um, office instead," she said, giving Zander a sideways look, "Oh, and Alfred arranged for the salon downstairs to stay open for us after the building shuts down so not really feeling the need to rock frizzy workout hair in front of people I don't know."

"Count me out, too," Renee said shaking her head at their antics, "I'm not even interested in the fun size much less the jumbo version. Besides, I was under the impression that there was some debate as to whose team it was he played on?"

"Halleluiah and all praise the goddess Madonna and her little Baby Gaga," Zander said lighting up.

"You're still married," Renee reminded him.

He shot her a dirty look, "I lost Clooney, okay; give me this at least."

"Hear that? Even Renee thinks he's hot for Draco; pay up," Sara demanded, turning to Helena.

"That's not the bet," the other woman told her.

"Yes, it is," Sara said firmly.

"No, Helena's right; that's only part of the bet," Lyla corrected her.

"Okay, so what is the whole bet?" Zander asked them.

"That he's gay—" Lyla began.

"Or bi," Sara interjected.

The other woman nodded, "That Savant is gay or bi."

"Who's Savant?" He asked curiously.

"I'm with him; who's Savant?" Thea asked as well.

"This totally hot but completely obnoxious British guy who looks like the lovechild of True Blood Season One with the hair and the cheekbones, Alexander Skarsgård, and 'Legolas' Orlando Bloom," Tam told them.

"Oh, he's definitely gay," the other man said, nodding confidently.

"How do you know, you've never even met him?" Lyla asked.

"She's right," Gypsy said with a shrug. "Besides, he's British so even if you had met him, who can tell?"

"Really?" Renee said, throwing her a dirty look.

"Eh, hate to admit it, but she has a point," Tam told her. "It's kind of a lesbian or German woman in comfortable shoes thing."

The other woman paused at that, "Okay, I'll give you that one but only because I was once thrown for a loop by some tourists in Birkenstocks once who happened to stop by the girl bar I hang out at for directions." She smirked, "Still got laid though."

"Of course you did," Laurel said wryly.

"Okay, British men and women with questionable fashion taste who happen to be fans of David Hasselhoff aside; how do you know he's gay?" Lyla asked Zander once again.

"I know because there is a God and He loves me," he told her. "Now where is this gorgeous bad boy who is absolutely no good for me so that I can stare at him while I name our imaginary children in my head?"

"He's still in his room," Gypsy said dryly. "Apparently he has jet lag so Creote said he'd bring him in a tray later because 'Mr. Savant likes it when he 'serves him in the bedroom.'"

"Who wouldn't?" Zander snorted. "So what's the rest of the bet? I assume there's more to it, right?"

"Wait, not to be a party pooper here, but isn't this kind of in bad taste?" Felicity asked. "I mean, should you guys really be betting on their sexual orientation like this?"

"Yes," several voices spoke up at once.

"Look, it's not like we're caving into stereotypes or homophobia here," Sara said in a reasonable tone. "Other than the whole joke about British guys and lesbians in comfortable shoes thing."

"That was no joke," Renee told her. "I really did get laid and, afterwards, she made me Wiener Schnitzel." Her eyebrows drew together at that, "I never knew what that was before but, turns out, it's just another way of saying 'deep fried veal cutlet' only in German." She shrugged, "Until she actually handed it to me I wasn't sure if she wanted us to go out for hotdogs afterwards or if she was asking if I would be open to using a strap-on." Her eyes glittered naughtily and she grinned, "In case any of you ladies are wondering, for the record, the answer to that would have been 'yes'."

"I call TMI," Thea said holding up her hand in protest.

"Seconded," Zander said, holding his up as well.

"Ignore that slightly disturbing and possibly offensive foray into international cuisine. Anyway, as to what I was trying to say," Sara began to point to each of them in turn, "Lesbian, bi, bi, bi-curious, at least in the case of Angelina," she said moving from Renee, to Tam, herself, and Lyla, "gay guy," Zander, "college bi…and possibly in denial now," she pointed to her sister who glared at her in response, "and the rest of you guys who I'm assuming are all straight, although I still have hopes for you, Cutie," she said to Felicity with a wink, "And then there's Nutsy here, but who knows what the hell she is?"

"Watch it, Tweety," Helena warned.

"Plus black, Jewish, Latina, male, female-the point is that the spectrum is well represented here," she said, ignoring the other woman. "We aren't making fun or judging anyone; we're just trying to make sense of the confusing social cues…while maybe making a few bucks and possibly using the Jolly Red Giant for sex later if he's into that, okay?"

"Out of curiosity, what are these confusing social cues, anyway?" Thea asked. "Besides, of course, the fact that the big guy has been shaking his frankly amazing ass to techno since I got here but, then again, that could just be an Eastern European thing."

"She has a point," Tam interjected. "Russians do like their techno and discotheques. Germans do, too, for that matter and I'm pretty sure Legolas had a hint of German mixed in with that British upper-crust accent of his."

"What about the way Red waits on his nibs hand and foot?" Sara pointed out. "Or do I need to remind you guys about the whole, 'I bring you tiny sandwiches so you don't get a tummy ache' thing, not to mention how he brings him breakfast in bed? Oh! And what about how he insisted they share a bed last night because 'he likes to be close in case he *needs* him'?"

"He's his butler, or nursemaid, or whatever," Helena said wryly. "It's his job!"

"No, no wait; Sara's right," Tam chimed in. "Have you seen the way Big Red looks at him?" She asked pointedly. "Even though, if you ask me, blondie doesn't deserve him, he's obviously head over heels for the guy. I mean, look at him!" She said, waving in his general direction, "For god's sake, he even cleans under the couch! I'm pretty sure my cleaning lady just shoves all the dirt under mine, *and* he even trims the crusts on his sandwiches. I mean, who does that? Tim's lucky if I even order take out for him! I'm telling you, that's true love right there."

"So that's what you're basing this entire thing on?" Felicity asked them. "The fact that he listens to club music, looks at him occasionally, and made him finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off?"

"No," Sara denied, "There's more to it than that."

"Like what?"

She sputtered slightly before answering, "Uh, my infallible gaydar, for one."

"Infallible gaydar my ass," Helena huffed under her breath.

"Why, do you think I'm wrong?" Sara asked Felicity while, once again, pointedly ignoring Helena. "I mean, you have to see that there is something there, right?"

Felicity shrugged noncommittally, "Why do you care if there is?"

"I don't know, because I'm a romantic," Sara said off-handedly.

"A romantic?" Helena scoffed.

"Yes," she said, finally acknowledging her. "I'm a romantic who lives to see that true love finds it's home in the hearts of those two crazy kids, what can I say? Now answer the question," she said looking back to Felicity, "You usually have good instincts about this stuff; do you think they're a couple or what?"

All eyes turned towards her. "Okay, fine," she said taking a deep breath, "I think…" she pursed her lips, "I think, from what little I've seen so far, that Creote cares very deeply for Savant, that he's worried about him, and that it obviously goes beyond just a professional relationship; I just don't know if it's reciprocated."

"Okay, but do you think he's in love with him?" Sara demanded.

She paused. "Honestly? Yeah, okay; from what I saw I'd say that Creote might have feelings for Savant and that those feelings leaned towards love."

"Hah!" Sara said triumphantly. "I win!"

"No way!" Helena objected.

"She's right," Lyla said firmly.

"How do you figure?" Sara shot back. "The bet was that they were gay or bi."

"But the rest of it was that they also have to be a couple," Helena said while eyeing Sara smugly. "Neither of which you have proven and, until you do, all bets are off."

"My gaydar is never wrong and Felicity agrees with me," Sara shot back.

"Wait—hold on! I never-" Felicity objected.

"I don't know about your gaydar but mine is pointing true north and saying that it wouldn't mind getting a taste of whatever he's got cooking, and I don't care if he leaves the crusts on or off," Zander said in low tones as Creote tucked the feather duster under his arm causing his bicep to flex. "Mmm mmm good."

"All I know is that if they aren't together, then I call dibs on the mountain," Lyla said firmly. "The rest of you can have sloppy seconds."

"Hang on," Sara said quickly, "Why do you get first go at him? I say we should at least flip for it."

"So you guys aren't just objectifying him while speculating on his sexual orientation, but you're also planning passing him around like your sexual plaything?" Renee asked in a disapproving tone.

"Wait, didn't you try to pick up Felicity at a girl bar while she was on a date with somebody else? Not to mention the whole 'strap-ons versus German cuisine' discussion," Thea asked pointedly.

The other woman shrugged, "I never said I was above all that, I was just, you know, mentioning it."

"Right," Thea drawled.

Sara gave Creote the once over, her eyes glittering naughtily, "I'm really starting to like Laurel's hot yoga idea and I don't care if it counts as objectifying him or not. In fact, right now I'm wondering how hot it would have to be to get him to take off his pants, too. Ooh, think maybe he'd be into naked Greek wrestling? I think I have some baby lotion in my carry-on or maybe we can raid the kitchen for some olive oil." At Felicity's pointed look, she shrugged, "Hey, like I said, sometimes you see a mountain and you just gotta ride it."

"I think you mean 'climb it'," she said dryly.

"Climb it, ride it; same difference."

"Still not batting for your league, sweetie," Renee said absently as she continued to play her game.

"Hey, I bat for all the leagues," Sara shot back.

"Let's hear it for the bisexuals in the house," Tam said, giving her a high five. "Sliding scale, baby!"

"Yeah, well, just because you've got some wiggle room on your slide doesn't mean he'll be slipping you his," Renee pointed out.

"Besides, we have yet to get confirmation on just how slippery his slide is to begin with," Helena reminded her. "Bet's still on, remember?"

"Please. I know all I need to know, trust me," Sara threw back. "As for how slippery his slide is, that's what the baby lotion's for."

"Gonna need something to get that sucker up in there, that's for sure," Thea snickered.

"That might not be such a good idea, and neither is the thing with the olive oil. I'm pretty sure they said in health class that using stuff like that as lube can cause infections," Gypsy said with a furrowed brow.

"First off, you shut up," Helena told the younger woman before turning to Sara, "As for you, until I see proof, I'm not paying up."

"Me neither, but speaking of slip and slides," Lyla said with a far off look as the Russian did a low squat in order to pick up a rubber toy that had fallen under a side table and handed it to Ace who began squeaking it happily. "You know, something that big could completely wreck you, but it would be so worth the extra Kegels you'd have to do just to get back into fighting form afterwards."

"Not to mention the reconstructive surgery you'd need when all is said and done," Laurel agreed.

"Designer vagina!" Tam said with relish. "I'm so getting one of those after I have kids—that and Botox because I do not plan on spending the rest of my twenties and thirties on poopy diapers. I'm doing like my mom did and waiting until I'm forty so I have a good excuse to give up my gym membership and then, when the kids are old enough, go for a tummy tuck and facelift instead."

"I think I could manage it without the surgery afterwards," Sara shrugged. "Not the kids part, the other thing. After all, I think experience has proven I'm nothing if not flexible."

"It's not about flexibility as much as it is elasticity," Thea said pointedly. "I mean, I know the human body is capable of handling a lot but that would be like taking something the size of a small garden shed and turning it into a four car garage."

Renee's face screwed up in disgust, "Oh, I did not need to hear that shit."

"You'd be surprised at how much you can take before the elastic goes bad," Tam told her. "Remind me to tell you about my adventures through Europe sometime."

"Europe?" Thea asked, her interest peaked.

She nodded, "I went to Le Fémis after Sarah Lawrence and, let's just say, I received quite the education."

Lyla's eyebrows shot up at that, "Really?"

Tam hummed, "If you want to talk four car garages then you definitely need to head to Italy and check out the size of the salami they're packing down there."

"I knew there was a reason you were so stuck on that Italian guy," Felicity said wryly.

"What Italian guy?"

"That guy Alessandro or Alfonso? You know, the one that gave Dad angina," she told her.

"Oh! You mean Jean Arnaud; he wasn't Italian, he was French!" Tam hummed happily, "Haven't thought of him in a while. Word of advice; always go to a Frenchmen if you want to learn how to give and get great oral. I mean, seriously: wine, smelly cheese, rudeness, kissing, and oral sex. That's what really put France on the map."

"I love French men," Lyla mused. "For that matter, I love Italian men. Hell, I'd settle for the Dominoes delivery guy's sausage at this point. I haven't had sex in almost a year, thank you very much," she griped. "Honestly, it's gotten so bad that I get turned on from just opening a fresh pack of batteries."

"It's been almost a year for me, too," Thea commiserated. "I finally broke down and bought one of those nubby things that go on the end of an electric toothbrush." She grimaced as the others began to snicker, "You laugh, but Lyla has a point. I mean, this is the longest I ever gone without sex in my life. I've been using my little bathroom buddy so much that the other day I felt myself getting excited during a toothpaste commercial."

"At least now you're all minty fresh down there, right?" Helena said with a shrug.

"I can shoot you with an arrow, you know that, right?" Thea shot back.

"Go for it, Speedy," Helena drawled. "You shoot me and I'll take away your toothbrush and replace it with a box of Efferdent."

Gypsy wrinkled her nose, "What would that do besides fizz up?"

Helena turned to the younger woman slowly as the others tried to hide their snickers unsuccessfully. "I will hit you if you keep it up. Just don't talk to me anymore."

"What did I say?" The other woman blinked, as Helena rolled her eyes in response.

"I haven't had sex in…what? Seven months? Maybe more?" Laurel frowned. "The worst part is that, unlike you guys who are actually doing something constructive and sexually reaffirming like going the battery-powered route, I decided that maybe it was time to get a cat instead." She paused, "God, that's just depressing."

"It's not…that depressing," Felicity said reluctantly then frowned, "Wait, weren't you and Oliver together right before you went into rehab?"

"We were in a cooling off period," Laurel said ruefully. "I mean, first we broke up because I found out about him and Sandra and then, well, the," she glanced at Zander, "motorcycle accident happened and we couldn't have sex while he was recuperating, so..."

"As I recall that particular bone wasn't the one that was broken," Lyla pointed out causing Thea to shudder with disgust and Gypsy to snicker.

"Yeah, well, let's just say that, by then, he was already interested in someone else," she said glancing at Felicity who flushed slightly.

"It wasn't like that—" Felicity began.

"I know," Laurel said waving her off. "But, for the record, it was like that; for Oliver anyway. Besides, it's just as well; I was starting to use again and going off the rails; adding sex to that would have been a disaster. Then again, every serious relationship I've ever had has been a disaster."

"Put me down for that one, too," Lyla said clucking her tongue. "My track record is so bad, I wound up divorcing the same guy twice." She shrugged, "Well, divorced once, then…whatever," she said with a slightly haunted look before seeming to cheer up again, "Anyway, the worst part is that Johnny's still the only guy I'd ever consider going down the aisle with and, since I don't exactly have time in my busy schedule to troll the bar scene…"

"Wait, why would you even consider going back to this Johnny guy if you've already left him twice?" Zander asked with a frown. "I mean, honey, take a lesson from La Liz, get the diamonds, kick Dick to the curb, and run like hell."

"Yeah, well, I was Burton in this equation, not him," she said somberly. "Both times we broke up it was totally my fault. I just couldn't figure out that whole work/life balance thing, you know? I was always on the road, always going from one assignment to the next, wound up losing our baby, more stuff happened." She closed her eyes and grimaced, "In the end, I wound up losing the job, the guy; everything."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Zander said with a sympathetic look.

She nodded, "Thanks. Still, even if we had the baby, who knows if we'd still be together or not? I mean, I want to think we'd have found a way to make it work, but we were always playing catch up it seemed like. Both of us were always on the roll, know what I mean?" She exhaled roughly, "Our daughter probably would have seen the nanny more than she saw either of us."

"You would have made it work," Felicity said confidently. "Dig would have made time, I'm sure."

"Maybe, but the job stress still would've been a strain on our relationship even without all that."

"Yeah, but you guys looked like you were handling it fine, at least for a while there," Felicity offered. "Now that you're not working for ARGUS anymore, who knows? Maybe you and Dig will get back together someday?"

"Yeah, what Felicity said," Thea said, rubbing her arm supportively.

"Maybe," Lyla said with a melancholy smile. "We do have a habit of getting re-married after we get divorced, so who knows?"

"What line of work are you guys in anyway?" Zander asked. "I mean, I know Tam works for Wayne Entertainment but I have no idea what the rest of you do, and no one ever said."

"We work for a charity—all of us," Felicity told him.

"What kind of charity?"

"It's an anti-trafficking charity called the Orbital Organization," she answered smoothly as that cover was practically ingrained in her by then. "We work mostly with law enforcement agencies to provide support and technology as well as relief efforts for victims of human trafficking all over the globe."

He gave them a curious look, "That's really admirable, but I had no idea that working for a charity could be that hard on a relationship."

"We travel a lot, so that takes a toll," Lyla told him.

"How much traveling do you guys do?" He asked with a frown.

"A lot. I rarely even have time to unpack before I'm being called back to fly a team to Russia, China, Africa," she told him. "Like Felicity said, we travel all over the world to some pretty remote places, delivering food, blankets…"

"The occasional psychopath to an ARGUS Supermax that happens to be located on a deserted island where they always seem to escape anyway…" Thea said under her breath.

Zander turned to her in confusion, "What?"

"She said we sometimes drop off relief aid workers to some pretty dangerous areas," Felicity cut in smoothly. "Things can get pretty stressful."

"Wow, I'll bet," he said with a furrowed brow before turning to look at all three ladies "So do you all think your inability to find someone has something to do with your jobs? Because, I don't know you girls that well, but I'm sure we can find you somebody if we put our minds to it. My husband knows lots of single guys on the force, a few ladies, too-"

"No cops," Lyla, Laurel, and Thea said at the same time.

"Oh, um, why not? What's wrong with dating a cop?" He asked, taken slightly aback.

"Nothing," Lyla assured him. "It's just that I'm former military and every guy I've ever been with has either been military or law enforcement and I'm trying to break the pattern so no cops, no soldiers, and absolutely no spooks. The next guy I get involved with will be something boring like a…a…I don't know; an accountant maybe, something like that." She wrinkled her nose, "On second thought, no bean counters either. There's dull and then there's too dull."

"You could always try dating a billionaire," Laurel offered wryly.

"That's true," Renee said with a smirk. "In my experience, they tend to be a pretty staid bunch and Felicity just so happens to know a few. I hear she even has Daniel Garret's personal cell and, according to People's 100 Most Eligible Bachelors list, he's still single."

"You read People?" Thea asked her curiously.

"Just for the articles and then only when I'm on the john," she told her. "I also read Playboy but that I read for the pictures."

Thea shook her head in amusement, before turning back to Lyla, "What do you say? Feel like wrangling yourself a boring billionaire type like Bruce or Ollie?"

"Hell no," the other woman said firmly. "No billionaire 'playboys' for me either. I was thinking maybe a dog groomer or a vet or something, that way I can get laid and keep Ace in kibble and worming medicine all at the same time."

"Plus, Daniel was an ass," Felicity offered. "A good looking ass, but an ass."

"Then again, so are Ollie and Bruce," Laurel said ruefully.

"That's another habit I'm trying to break," Lyla said ruefully. "No more assholes or adrenaline junkies for me; just nice normal guys with boring jobs who happen to be fantastic in bed, thanks."

"Well, good luck with that, honey," Zander smirked. "What about you two then?"

"I'm with Lyla," Thea told him. "No cops, no military, and definitely no more 'charity aid workers'! No sirree, no more adrenaline junkies for me either. Just give me humdrum and hung like a horse and I'll be happy."

"Charity aid workers are adrenaline junkies?" He asked dubiously.

"The worst," she assured him.

"Good to know," he said with a sigh. "Okay, so what about you?" He asked turning to Laurel last. "Because, I hate to tell you this, but the supply of relatively young, hot, and straight men in this city, who have real jobs that pay actual money, is pretty limited and you girls are giving me absolutely nothing to work with here."

"What does that mean; 'real jobs that pay actual money'?" Gypsy asked in confusion. "What kind of job doesn't pay money?"

"Actors," Tam and Zander both said at the same time.

"Although, to be fair, actors do make money," Tam added. "Only most of it comes from waiting tables. Same thing goes for screenwriters, aspiring novelists, and musicians."

"And the ones in Gotham that do make money at it, aren't usually interested in what you girls got going on," Zander said half-heartedly. "I hate to bring up that old cliché about people in musical theatre, but there you go. Finding a straight boy on the Great White Way is like looking for a needle in a haystack; they turn up occasionally, but you gotta do a whole lot of digging to find them."

"Yeah, well, we're from the West Coast so I know what you mean. Although, there are a lot more straight actors out there then you'd think," she shrugged. "I've actually had the opportunity to date a few of them but I'm planning on saving the role of 'sugar mama' for my cougar years that way we can hit our sexual peaks together and I can afford to keep him in thongs and suntan lotion between auditions."

"Good plan," Tam commended.

"I thought so. Anyway, while I appreciate the offer, my dad's a cop and…just no. Sorry, but no," Laurel told him. "As for if my bad streak is connected to my job? Maybe. Then again, it could be because most of them were also connected to my ex; first him, then his best friend, then I tried dating another guy I thought was his friend that turned out to be a psycho, then him again-" she screwed her face up in a grimace, "I'm pretty sure Oliver's penis is cursed."

"It's like Voldemort's magic wand," Helena agreed. "Can you say 'Accio Asshole'?"

"Hey, watch it; the Harry Potter shtick is mine," Renee griped. "You know, if you guys would just date women you wouldn't have this problem," she pointed out as she presumably continued to save her garden against zombies. "Plus, I guarantee you'll get three times the sex with less than half of the bullshit."

"Three times the sex?" Thea asked dubiously.

"No refractory period," Renee said smartly. "Girls can go on and on and on, honey bunny. Now, I've known a few women who get theirs then they're done, but they are few and far between. After all, women are natural nurturers and most of the ladies I know," she winked at Laurel pointedly, "myself in particular, think the only thing better than introducing their partners to the concept of 'multiple orgasms' is introducing them to the concept of the 'full body marathon orgasm'."

"Marathon orgasm, huh?" Laurel asked wryly.

"Yup," she said proudly. "It's my own invention; twenty-six hours' worth of orgasms with regularly scheduled rest breaks so that the participants can refuel and rehydrate." She gave her a smug look, "Most people only do the bare minimum when it comes to a one night stand; an hour or two, maybe eight if it's a weekend-and that includes sleep time, mind you. I, however," Renee hitched her thumb toward her chest and paused for dramatic effect, "give my hook-ups the full twenty-four hours plus a couple extra because I'm all about treating my ladies right. Plus, I'm self-employed so I can afford the occasional Monday morning, post-weekend straggler."

"I haven't known you long but I can already tell that you're completely full of shit," Lyla said, shaking her head with a grin.

"No, I'm not," the other woman denied. "When it comes to getting laid right, and making sure my ladies leave my bed happy and smiling, I don't play around. That's why I get so much repeat business, if you know what I'm sayin'. I take pride on a job well done," she said firmly. "Besides, there's nothing a gay woman loves more than to show a straight girl the error of her ways." She made a slightly disgruntled noise, "Of course, nine times out of ten, you'll wind up breaking our fucking hearts before going back to your shitty excuse for a boyfriend who refuses to go down on you and forgets your birthday—see my next to the last girlfriend-*but*, while you're into it, you straight girls are nothing if not enthusiastic. Just ask Ellen the next time someone brings up the whole Anne Heche thing."

"I never liked Anne," Tam said with a scowl. "She gives bi-girls a bad name. Plus, she had the crazy eyes and then she tried explaining away the whole 'temporarily gay' thing by saying she was possessed by some guy from Atlantis who apparently had a thing for semi-butch lesbians turned lipstick-lite." She shook her head, "Portia de Rossi was a definite step up for her if you ask me. Not only did she get Ellen the whole Covergirl deal by teaching her that you can rock sneakers and pantsuits and still know how to use moisturizer properly, but she's a lot hotter and a better actress. And, by the way, Arrested Development never should have been cancelled. Anybody who didn't like that show is a fucking asshole."

"I agree," Thea told her. "I tried to get Ollie to marathon it with me on Netflix but he said he more important things to do with his weekend then watch a stupid sitcom."

"Did you tell him it wasn't really a sitcom?" Tam asked. "I mean it is but it isn't. Plus it won six Emmys and a Golden Globe, for Pete's sake!"

"I tried telling him that but then he argued that if it got cancelled then it doesn't matter how many awards it got because people weren't watching it so it couldn't have been that good of a show in the first place."

"He didn't," Tam said flatly.

"He did," she scowled. "He said, 'If it was such an amazing show, then people would have watched it.' Then he said, 'I'm so sick of people telling me that I need to 'catch up' on all these supposedly wonderful TV shows like Arrested Development and Entourage,' and that the people pushing that 'crap' on him were 'the most annoying, oppressive, and myopic people he'd ever met,' and that they needed to get their butts off the couch and get a life."

"Fucker," Renee said with a disgruntled expression. "Entourage was my jam."

"He said people were myopic?" Laurel said with a frown. "I didn't even know he knew how to use that word correctly in a sentence."

"Oliver knows what 'myopic' means," Felicity defended.

"Are you sure?" She asked.

She paused, "Mostly sure…"

"Yeah, well, then he went on a tear about how he was also tired of 'the media' telling him to watch a show that they probably never watched either." She let out a frustrated breath, "I mean, I get that he's busy—we're all busy—but he was laid up and recovering from surgery so it's not like he had anywhere to go, you know? What's worse is that he claimed people just said they liked shows like that because 'hipsters' do that sort of thing and that they were just fads like gluten-free diets or Twitter."

Even Helena raised her eyebrow at that one, "Oliver said 'Twitter' is a fad?"

"He still thinks Facebook is a thing," Felicity confirmed. "In fact, he still talks about his MySpace page even though I've begged him not to repeatedly."

"That's so sad," Zander said shaking his head.

"Yeah, well, when he said 'hipster' like that, I felt like going out and buying him a pair of those old man pants they wear pulled up to their chests with the built in belt and a big jug of prune juice," Thea snorted. "I don't know why I expected anything different from him. The one time I made him watch 'Girls' with me, he said it was overrated and that he preferred the 'nostalgia' of shows like MadMen and Downton Abbey instead. I'm pretty sure the only reason he liked Downton Abbey in the first place is because it was my turn to pick the show and he fell asleep the minute it started. Said it was one of the best naps he'd ever had."

"What about Madmen then?" Gypsy asked.

"That one he liked because of the tight dresses and Cristina Hendricks' tits," she rolled her eyes. "I love my brother, but sometimes…"

Laurel turned towards Renee, "Told you he was an asshole."

"Doesn't surprise me," Renee told her wryly. "I kind of thought he'd be more into Peggy though given his taste in women."

"She has a point," Thea said looking at Felicity pointedly. At the other woman's chastising look, she said leadingly, "I'm just saying, fuck around boss, secretary turned partner who covers him at work and is constantly bailing him out even though he doesn't appreciate her…"

"Funny," she told her.

"But true," the other woman shrugged.

"Yeah, well, not a MadMen fan," she told her. "If I wanted to see women passed up for promotions and told that men were more qualified based on the fact that they had the right genitalia, I would have stayed in IT." She paused, "Although I actually liked it down in IT, I just would have liked it more if my supervisor wasn't an idiot who kept giving my office away to other people because he kept forgetting I worked there."

"I never watched that show," Gypsy told them. "In fact, between working at Orbital and going to school, I don't get to watch much of anything really. I do watch Ellen though because I can sometimes catch it between classes when I'm hanging out in the student lounge. I always thought that if they ever made an American version of Doctor Who, she'd make a really cool female Doctor." She turned to all of them. "She has this whole Doctor Ten vibe going for her. I'm pretty sure it's the shoes and the dancing. That and the really great hair."

"Huh," Felicity frowned, mulling that over. "You know, she kind of does actually."

"Like I said, I'm surrounded by nerds," Helena said grumpily. "And who the hell is 'Doctor Ten'?"

"That's it," Felicity said turning to Zander. "As soon as you can get to it, we need to install a big screen with surround sound because we are having a Netflix and Pajamas weekend ASAP."

"I'll talk to the head electrician and the foreman about maybe installing a hidden drop down in front of the fireplace or something," he agreed.

"Why would you want that?" Lyla asked her pointedly. "You're probably one of the only people here getting laid on the regular! If I were you, I'd be spending all my free time having marathon sex with the Greek god I was engaged to, not surrounded by women in my jammies while watching Doctor Who and shoveling pizza in my face."

"Actually, I was thinking about ordering Chinese food instead…" Felicity muttered. "It's healthier than pizza, plus eggrolls."

"Speaking of which," Lyla said, ignoring her and turning to Renee, "getting back to what you were saying about women being better in bed than men; how would you know that if you've never been with one? Unless that gold star of yours isn't as shiny as you claim it is?"

"She's got a point," Laurel agreed with a smirk. "If you want to tempt us towards the forbidden fruit then you gotta back that shit up."

Renee offered her an amused look, "That so?"

"That's so," Laurel agreed.

"If you really want to know I could just show you," she said raising one eyebrow and offering her a filthy grin. "You know what they say; actions speak louder than words."

She shook her head, "Thanks, but I think I'll just settle for the words, for now."

"For now, huh? Meaning that you might be willing to get to the 'action' part later? Nope, you guys aren't flirting with each other *at all*," Sara said quietly then grinned unapologetically after her sister shot her a censuring look.

"I know," Renee said with a low, sexy drawl, "because simple logic dictates that anything a man can do, a woman can do better…and if she can't, then there's an app for that," she told her with a superior look before setting aside her tablet.

"An app?" Lyla said dubiously.

"The age of Wi-Fi, my friend," Renee answered smoothly. "Remind me to show you my collection someday when you're feeling 'adventurous'. Not only can I fully satisfy my partner in every way but, and I don't care what your guy is packing, science has progressed to the point where I don't even have to be in the same room to get the job done. Makes those out of town trips a little less stressful; one tap on my phone and it's all silicon plug and play. Lesbians are truly God's chosen people."

"I've been telling them the same thing for years but no one believes me," Sara said wryly.

"She's right," Tam agreed. "If it weren't for Tim I would so go back to girls fulltime."

"Huh, I really need to get that app," Thea said ruefully. "I'm starting to wear out my toothbrush and it's my third one in six months."

"Remind me when we go on our Fred and Ginger Girl's Night to take you by my favorite toy shop; Babeland on Mercer in the West Village," Renee told her. "It sells toys and stuff but it's run by women and caters mostly to a lesbian clientele so it doesn't have a bunch of creepy guys milling around the joint in trench coats. They also have an online store but if you go in you get to play with them before you buy."

Thea's eyebrows shot up in surprise, "Play?"

"Not 'play' as in *play*, but they have a display table set up so you can hold them and test the power output plus they do demos and classes and stuff," she told her. "I'm friends with the owners. Some asshole was hassling them and I put a stop to it by flashing my badge and told him that if he didn't like the idea of his girlfriend preferring plastic to his ugly ass then he needed to take it up with her. Just tell me when you want to do it and I'll let them know so they can set up something special for us."

"Yeah, why not?" Laurel said dryly, "Dildos, dinner, and dancing; sounds like a night out with the girls to me."

"It is in my case anyway," she agreed causing Thea to snicker in response.

"I'm sorry, but there are some things you just need a man for and no amount of silicon and smart phones can take the place of the real deal," Lyla said firmly. "Believe me, I've tried."

"What about oral?" Sara asked her.

"Plus there's…" Tam wiggled her fingers pointedly.

"Yeah, but that's mostly just foreplay," she told them. "Still doesn't take the place of a good hard you-know-what, know what I'm saying?"

"It does if you do it right," Renee disagreed. "Especially if you use more than *just* your fingers."

Gypsy looked to Thea, "Is she saying what I think she's saying?"

"Yup," the other girl said slowly.

"Huh," she frowned. "So, all things being equal, that means Renee's even more hung than Creote."

Renee grinned at their byplay, "Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

"Fine, I'll give you that one," Lyla conceded. "Even so, flesh and blood beats anything you can buy off the shelf because if I had someone to do that with, then I wouldn't have to spend a fortune on batteries every time I go to grocery store to pick up my Lean Cuisines and tub of 'So what if my ass gets fat because I'm going to die alone anyway', because there'd be a live body in my bed instead."

"I'm not gonna argue with you on that one, sweetness. In fact, if you ever need to save a few bucks, just let me know and I'll be right over to show you my version of the real deal," Renee told her with a wink.

"Appreciate that, thanks," Lyla said dryly.

"That would be a cool idea though," Gypsy mused out loud.

"What would be a cool idea; having sex with Renee?" Laurel asked with a snort.

"The girl's not wrong," the woman in question said blithely.

"No," Gypsy said flushing slightly, "the idea of creating a phone app that could…you know," she said pointedly. "I mean, if you could invent an app that could turn a phone into a sex toy, you'd make a fortune because everyone would be downloading that thing. Plus, you'd save a ton of money on batteries and you wouldn't have to worry about hiding them in the bottom drawer of your nightstand whenever people came over to your apartment, or going into one of those stores with the creepy guys Renee was talking about."

"It would be more convenient," Renee admitted. "Have phone will travel, know what I mean?"

"Yeah, but even if you did invent a phone app that could do it all, then you'd still have to spend a ton of money. After all, those waterproof phone cases don't exactly come cheap," Thea joked.

"She's right," Felicity said with a frown. "You'd need it, too; electronics and moisture don't mix."

"Unless, of course, you invented phone condoms, too," Gypsy argued.

"You could make money coming and going," Thea snickered.

"Not to mention hand over fist," Sara tossed back.

"Phone condoms?" Helena broke in incredulously. "Who the hell would walk around with 'phone condoms' in their pockets? What if you got a call while your cell was all gloved up? You'd have to rip the thing off and risk damaging your phone. That, or you'd wind up frying the thing because they'd probably come lubricated and…" She stilled, "And I can't believe I'm actually taking part in this conversation. How did this become my life?"

"It would give a whole new meaning to phone sex though," Lyla mused. "And people would be better about putting their phones on vibrate rather than making you listen to their annoying ass ringtones all the time."

"Unless, of course, their asses are where they put it," Helena suggested. "And, again, I can't believe I actually said that out loud without the benefit of either copious amounts of alcohol or weed."

"Then you'd not only be redefining the term 'phone sex' but 'butt dialing', too," Felicity said with a pained expression.

"Don't forget about 'sexting'," Laurel reminded her.

"True," she nodded. "I wonder what kind of emojis that would spawn?"

Gypsy turned to her with a furrowed brow, "Is it wrong that I kind of wish I had a keyboard in front of me so I could figure that out?"

"No," she told her, "Especially since I was pretty much thinking the same thing."

"I don't think so," Tam said with a frown. "Not to the emoji idea, because I'd probably use a 'shove it up your ass' happy face a lot; I meant 'no' to the thing with the butt phones. Trust me, from a marketing standpoint, it would be a disaster. Even if your initial sales proved profitable, once people get the idea to shove their cells up in there, things could get really messy, really fast, and who wants to clean that off their phone much less put it up to their faces afterwards?"

"Gross," Gypsy said with a shudder.

"And besides, think of the liability issues," Laurel added. "Depending on how popular they are, if they aren't wearing pants or at least some really absorbent underwear, then someone could potentially slip and fall. We're talking about a monster amount of widespread class action lawsuits especially after you take into account how many people use their phones while out in public."

"'Wide spread'," Renee repeated with a snicker.

"I just love the fact that I am surrounded by people mature enough to have a serious discussion about the potential merits and liabilities of phones you put up your asshole," Lyla said wryly.

"I love girl talk," Thea agreed. "You can't get this kind of stimulating conversation back in Starling, nosirree."

Zander gave them a disgusted look, "Ugh. Okay, as nice as it was catching up with all of you girls, I need to go because this is getting a little too graphic even for me," he said getting up from the couch. He paused for a moment, looking from Creote to Tam, "But while we're on the subject of phone sex, if he takes off his shirt send me the video," he told her.

"Already on it," Tam said, waving her phone.

Zander headed for the door then stopped to tap the much taller man as close to his shoulder as he could reach which, as it turned out, was more like his scapula.

"Yes?" Creote asked politely as he removed the ear buds from his ears.

"I just wanted to say, I think you're doing a fabulous job," Zander said with a toothy grin. "Here," he said handing him his business card.

The other man accepted it with a look of confusion, "Um, thank you?"

"I don't know if you clean houses on the side, but if you're ever available, call me," he told him.

"I don't, um…" the Russian looked down at the card and arched his eyebrow, "Have any pockets," he said in heavily accented English.

"Ah," Zander breathed as his eyes dipped lower. "Here," he said, reaching into his jacket for another card, "take two then in case that one gets lost."

"Thank you," Creote said reluctantly taking the second card, "I do not know if my schedule will allow for it, however."

"I'm sure you can find ten, fifteen minutes, maybe an hour or two. I mean, I live practically right around the corner from here. In fact, here's another card just in case you change your mind," he said handing him another one. Then pointed to it, "That's my cell phone, my voicemail, office, email, landline, twitter. Hashtag #call me," he said brightly as he held his hand up to his ear. "It's a really small apartment. You don't even have to do windows," he assured him. "Or floors. Or much of anything really. Just…" he took a deep breath, waving his hand in a vague gesture towards the other man's very broad chest, "come as you are." Zander's eyes swept over him with one last look of longing before he turned to leave, "Are you sure you don't need another card?" He asked, turning back suddenly. "Because I can draw you a map on the back…?"

"Three should be enough," he said, looking at him strangely.

"Just in case," he said pulling another one out of his jacket along with a pen and writing something on the back before setting it down on a side table. "There you go! Feel free to call or come by anytime, day or night. In fact, nighttime works great for us. My partner and I have been throwing around the idea of bringing someone else into our home for a while now. Bringing someone in to help us with the cleaning," he said quickly. "Just cleaning the apartment; nothing else," he clarified.

"I understand," Creote said slowly even though it was fairly obvious that he didn't.

"I mean, we wouldn't need you to move in or anything," he assured him. "Not right away anyway. I mean, I'd have to discuss it with Gannon first but he probably wouldn't go for it," he said with a moue of disappointment. "Then again, once he sees you in action, anything's possible…" His eyes took on a far-off cast for a moment before shaking it off. "Still, it's unlikely. He can be a real stick in the mud about that stuff, and gay divorce is a bitch, you know?" He grumbled.

"No, I do not," the other man said with a perplexed expression. "But in any case, I am happy where I am for now, but thank you."

"Okay then," he said cheerily, taking one last look at him before letting out a soft sigh and walking out the door, "Happily, happily married," he muttered just before the door closed behind him.

The Russian looked at the business cards in his hand before turning towards the women with a frown, "Your friend is very nice, but very odd."

"You just said a mouthful, buster," Thea agreed.

"Yeah," Lyla nodded. "Say, Creote; how do you feel about hot yoga?"

"Hot yoga?" He blinked, "What is hot yoga?"

*\?/*\?/*\?/*

While the others tried to explain the concept of 'hot yoga' to their Russian houseguest in hopes of seeing him bend, flex, and sweat in as few clothes as possible, Felicity and Renee retrieved Mordred from where he was hiding in the kitchen and made their way down to the Cave instead. After a quick confab, the two of them took off down the tunnels on Renee's motorcycle promising to return after their mission to take Bruce and Oliver on a tour of Orbital, leaving Felicity able to work on Watchtower in private.

If the other woman was curious as to why she wasn't joining them, she didn't say anything, nor did she question why Felicity wanted them to keep her informed as to how it went rather than just asking Bruce directly or joining them herself, a fact for which she was heartily grateful. Having spent the majority of her vigilante career working with masks who would question whether or not the sky was blue if for no other reason than to be contrary, it was nice to finally work with people who understood that when you told them you didn't want to talk about it, you meant it. Even better were people like Renee who understood that without even having to be told; she just accepted her request to be kept in the loop, offered her a flirty wink, then took off with Mordred who was grinning from ear to ear on the back of her Harley, his expression reminding her of a kid about to meet his favorite superheroes brought to life...which, in this case, he was.

Poor guy, she thought. He was in for a real disappointment once he realized that most masks, even though they were, by nature, noble and self-sacrificing heroes who deserved both admiration and respect, were also complete and utter assholes when you got them good and riled up about something. And Oliver and Bruce together in the middle of Orbital while on a tear? Yeah, he was in for a fun afternoon all right.

Even if she weren't currently avoiding them, Orbital was the last place she'd want to be right now. Actually, the only place she wanted to be at the moment was right where she was; alone and working quietly by herself with no distractions, with no one there to try to coax her out of her funk.

Although she trusted the Birds implicitly, and while she knew she could probably benefit from talking things out, she also knew that particular discussion needed to be between her and Bruce and no one else. She might be on an emotional rollercoaster when it came to her personal relationships but, no matter how many times Bruce was going to put her through the same loop the loop, she knew better than to talk about it with anyone, including her closest friends. Like Peggy always said, 'A relationship is between two people, not three or more, and once you invite someone else into your private business, it's hard to show them the door.'

"Peggy always was fond of giving out advice that rhymed," she said to herself with a grimace as she began checking the firewalls while running code.

Another thing she used to say is, 'Follow your heart but always take your brain along for the ride,' and lately it felt like her brain was on permanent stand-by.

For instance, now that she'd had time to cool off, she could see that *maybe* she could have handled things better. After all, it's not like his behavior that morning came out of left field, and he was stressed out, not just from the whole Talia thing, but from having his territory and home invaded by all of Team Arrow. She could even understand how the prospect of having Oliver become a permanent fixture in their lives would make him go a little man-stupid.

"Then again, if him being man-stupid was a one-time thing, then maybe I wouldn't have gone off at him in the first place," she argued aloud. "Seriously, I think I've earned the right to lose my shit at least once. God knows he never hesitates to fly off the handle every damn time something comes up, now does he?"

Maybe later, when she was ready to deal with him again, she'd try putting herself in his place and take a moment to imagine what it would be like to have one of his hostile and still very interested ex-lovers that he admitted to still have feelings for as a perpetual third wheel in their relationship while helping to raise their child. She was pretty sure that with role models like Lucius and Mama T, she could figure it out-in time. It might take a while, but she could do it. Still, she wasn't quite ready to be all reasonable and sympathetic to his feelings; not right now. At the moment she was still processing *her* feelings, and if that made her selfish then so be it, but talking to him right now would just lead to more problems. Especially if he decided to have it out with her in the middle of Orbital. She knew him well enough to know that, despite his insistence that he'd behave in a professional manner when they were in 'mission mode', Bruce was far too fond of blurring those lines when it suited him.

"That's half the problem right there," she muttered, hitting the keyboard with slightly more force than was necessary.

Besides, she probably didn't need to be there. She was fairly certain they wouldn't find anything of value at the facility even if Mordred did manage to hack into the protected files. Chances are Talia knew her cover was burned, or soon would be, and she was smart enough not to keep anything that sensitive on the Gotham facility's mainframe. After all, she was practically begging Felicity to invite Bruce to tour the facility, probably if for no other reason than to be able rub it in later when she did her big reveal.

"Bad Guy rule number one; they always have to make a big production out of everything," she said shaking her head in annoyance. "Can't just shut up and kill you; no, they have to dress you like a doll and pour plastic down your throat, or hold syringes filled with Vertigo to your neck. Or, oh yeah, swords while they go on and on about how they should have been the ones to get the girl." She harrumphed at that, "Right, because what girl doesn't dream of landing a delusional psychopath of her very own?" She rolled her eyes, "And let's not even talk about the Poo Pirate with the alligators and his 'I'll make you my Queen of the Underworld' spiel while ranting about how his 'beloved minions of the deep' will 'rend his enemies to shreds' and 'feast on their bones'," she scoffed. "I mean, yeah, the puppet guy pissed me off when he tried to stick his hand up my skirt, but at least the dummy did all the talking for him."

No, if Talia was going to make her move it would be tomorrow before or during the Gala. Bruce would be at his most vulnerable since all eyes would be on him as he walked the red carpet and for the duration of the event, and thereby couldn't act as the Bat without outing himself. It was the perfect moment to strike.

In fact, none of them could suit up, Felicity thought with a frown. Dick and Tim, now that they were back in town, would have to attend the event as guests otherwise rumors would start back up in the tabloids about their strained relationship with Bruce. The papers were already having a field day with the Miller thing, adding that to the fire would only serve to further erode the public's faith in Bruce and in Wayne Enterprises as a whole. After all, if your own kids refuse to support you, then why should they?

Luke would have to show up to support their parents, as would Tam since she was on the board-not that she was ready to patrol the city on her own despite her advanced martial arts training and limited experience as Tim's sidekick/girlfriend. Laurel had been in the suit for almost two years and she was still treated like a rookie by most of Team Arrow.

And speaking of…

Oliver and the rest of his team were going to be there mainly to keep an eye on Isabel so they wouldn't be patrolling at all until after the event. She'd already gotten word from Tatsu that she'd be joining them there (or rather Tam had when she got her size so that she could supply her with an evening gown for the event), and the rest of the Birds would be attending as well.

A fission of unease came over her as she contemplated that. She didn't like the idea of putting all their proverbial eggs in one basket but it was pretty much their only play. After all, if Isabel asked why her team were all there, she could say that she got them tickets to the event in order to foster a spirit of teamwork. Not only that, but having them there made it appear as if she didn't suspect anything was amiss.

Isabel and Talia knew that in order to enter the building or the main dining area, all attendants had to pass through security checkpoints and metal detectors so she and the rest of her team would be unarmed. While they were a lethal enough group without them, it would still add to the illusion that they were still in the dark about her real identity as Talia al Ghul. She also wasn't all that concerned about them sneaking in their own men. The only ones with firearms or weapons of any kind would be members of Wayne Security, the vast majority of whom had military or law enforcement backgrounds and who had been vetted better than most Secret Service agents before being hired on.

These guys were the best of the best, that's why Bruce hired them in the first place. The men DioGuardi would have assigned to the event would know to keep track of all wait staff and attendants. They wouldn't just be relying on nametags with pictures. The company Bruce used for his events were used to catering for high profile events, celebrities, even the President, so every man on duty that night knew who was and was not supposed to be there and if any strange men in waiter uniforms showed up, the rest of the staff knew to alert them immediately.

She had no idea what Talia was planning or how she thought she was going to get to Bruce so she could have her revenge, but it wasn't going to be by using the same old dime a dozen badguy strategy of mixing with the crowd and sneaking in guns or toxic gas, that's for sure.

"Amazons crashing through the windows maybe? Or a full-on air assault with armed helicopters?" She asked out loud.

Doubtful, she decided. The Wayne Foundation building was the largest structure in Gotham and even Amazons would have a hard time scaling a building with that much wind shear to fight against. Plus, according to the news, there was a storm front coming in which would make it even harder to get to from the outside.

In fact, the storm coming in was probably the reason why Zander was so frazzled. It wasn't supposed to hit until after the Gala started but she already knew from years past that when they came up against inclement weather, they would put up a hard plastic 'tent' at the entrance in addition to the awning and have 'Umbrella Attendants' to lead everyone from their cars so they wouldn't get wet.

"Snipers?" She offered up.

No. The 'tent' Bruce used wasn't just some thin plastic sheeting, it was a high composite bullet resistant polycarbonate like they used on the Pope-mobile because the Foundation Events were attended by a lot of people who tended to attract a lot of attention, himself included. Bruce may be a control freak, but he was thorough. Even the Umbrella Attendants would be members of Wayne Security and would be wearing body armor under their tuxedos. They would be instructed to use a flanking procedure for each guest with a minimum of three security officers on Umbrella escort; one at the car, and two to the tent, after which one officer would remain at the start of the receiving line with his umbrella at the ready for the next guest while the other stayed with them until the entered the building. The guards would also be lined up on both sides of the red carpet, both for crowd control as well as to minimize the risk of bodily harm to the guest in case someone did pull a weapon.

The Foundation Gala wasn't just as well attended as the Oscars, it was better protected; Bruce prided himself on that. After all, he was a businessman as well as the Bat and the Gala wasn't just a charity event, it was an advertising campaign. People tuned in to watch the show as it played out and when they saw how everything ran like a well-oiled machine, business went up. It was the reason she wasn't worried about an air assault either. That had been tried before as well.

One of Batman's rogues thought he would 'kidnap' Bruce Wayne so he tried using a helicopter and machine gun to get through the clear barrier surrounding the penthouse. Not only didn't he get through it, but the penthouse was built with a reinforced steel 'shell' that was designed to automatically come down over all the windows and doors in case of potential breach, turning the whole thing into a safe room. The minute the first bullet hit the sensors on the glass or walls, it was automatically tripped. If not, then it could be activated manually, or simply by stating the password out loud since the penthouse was fitted with state of the art cameras and audio sensors. Even though Felicity disabled those sensors from running full-time for obvious reasons, she couldn't disable the underlying security program which was on failsafe for that very reason. It might not be actively recording, but it was always on. That was one of the reasons why Felicity felt so safe there when she first got back into town.

Whatever Talia and Isabel had in mind, their plan was to have J'onn babysit the Wonder Twins (aka Creote and Savant), while Big Barda, Sonja, Booster, and Ted all remained on duty at Orbital. As far as she knew, neither of them were aware of the fact that the two women were still in town and they'd both managed to keep a low profile since coming to Gotham. If anything happened at the facility, they could put it on lockdown until the Calvary arrived. The Foundation Building sat on the very edge of the East End and, even running along rooftops, her team would be on top of it in a matter of minutes,

That said, she still thought of the Orbital facility as a low priority target. Granted, it was less secure than the Foundation because it was her building and she knew all of its vulnerabilities, but that was also what made it a far less likely target. Why attack a building you already own, especially when it's supposed to be empty? No, if her instincts were right (and they probably were because even smart villains were fairly predictable), if anything went down it would happen at the Foundation, so having the teams together made sense.

She would have to go over the plan with everyone later once Bruce and Oliver got back from their field trip, but she wasn't going to worry about that until she absolutely had to. All she wanted to do for now was clear her head while avoiding the subject of her increasingly messy love life for a few more hours at least.

The first thing she did was finish running the scans for any viruses or back doors into Watchtower's programming. Although there had been a few attempts, presumably by ARGUS, they held but she strengthened the firewalls anyway and left a message for Barbara about it so she could do the same for LAIR.

She didn't call her directly, just dropped her a quick text. Even though it was early afternoon in Gotham it was barely mid-morning in Starling and she didn't want to risk waking her up after she'd been manning coms for Roy and Sin all night long. As a rule, vigilantes were not early risers, nor were they morning people, Barbara being no exception. If she really thought her LAIR system was vulnerable, she might have but, again, her targets were here, not in Starling, so why go after them? The system would be inactive since they shut it down when they left the foundry for the night, the only things probably running were some background programs and nothing else. The most they could do long distance is blow her system up ala the Clock King. But, as much as the idea of her babies getting fried pained her, she also knew that Barbara kept a mobile version of Watchtower in the form of an encrypted laptop. Even if she lost it, she could go to any public terminal or, now that she had her LAIR coding, a smart phone, and still access Watchtower along with everything else. They'd be fine, at least as far as tech was concerned.

As for the stuff not covered by virus software and firewalls, Dig let them know over breakfast that morning that he'd talked to Barry before he left just in case they needed his help, but that he and his team were to be on stand-by only. He also let them know that he'd briefed Barry and Team Flash on what was happening in Gotham, as well as the connection Team Arrow had made with Batman and his associates. Lance, seeing a chance to goad Oliver a bit, took special delight in letting Bruce know that the Flash's tech guy, Cisco, was a huge fan and wondered if he would be willing to call him sometime just to talk…or at the very least, give him his autograph. He then repeated the remark Barry had made about how now that they had all dated the same woman, it sort of made them friends (a joke that did not go over well with either man, but Bruce especially).

Also, while Oliver considered Barry an ally (except when he was reminded of his and Felicity's brief flirtation, even though it never went anywhere), he didn't like handing off his territory to anyone. When he objected to the fact that Barry had been called in without him being consulted about it beforehand, Diggle reminded him that he could just as easily have called in Daniel instead, especially since the possibility of League involvement was a very real threat. Besides, these days he and Ray spent most of their time traveling between Hub City and Ivy Town, neither of which were all that far from Starling when you considered the fact that Daniel liked to fly around in a jet tricked out to look like a flying blue scarab, and Ray apparently had a super suit ala Iron Man.

That shut him up fairly quickly.

It also managed to aggravate Bruce to no end, after which Alfred added to the stress by mentioning that Mr. Garret probably would not have been able to assist them in any case since he was on the Foundation Gala's guest list, although he had no way of knowing if he was planning to attend as he never sent an RSVP.

No one cared for that bit of news, Felicity especially, but she doubted Daniel would show. Unlike Bruce and Oliver, he'd never been interested in maintaining the whole 'playboy billionaire' shtick and preferred to spend his free time adventuring instead. The most he'd do is send a check as he didn't even bother sticking around for business meetings half the time, choosing to leave the running of the day to day operations to Ray while he scoured the Amazon for rare herbs that might prove to someday cure cancer, or repelling into a live volcano so he could gather samples of Thermophilic eubacteria like lithotrophs that oxidize sulfur to sulfuric acid and that could someday unlock new energy sources while cutting down on air and waste pollution.

That was one of the things that first attracted her to Daniel actually; his hands-on spirit of adventure combined with his lack of guile…or so she thought. The way he had initially presented himself to her was as a tragic hero of another kind; one who had redirected his pain and grief in such a way that he didn't need to wear a mask in order to save the world.

…And then she found out that, not only did he wear a mask, but that he and Ray were the ones actively trying to take down Oliver along with his team which, coincidentally, included her.

"Jerk."

She made a disgruntled noise as she allowed the patches and scans to continue to run as she moved onto another, more enjoyable project. Oliver and Bruce used sticks and training dummies to relax, Felicity used hacking and forgery. In fact, the only thing she enjoyed doing more than hacking was creating a new identity for someone from scratch, and, since she ordered herself lots of toys for the FelicityCave she hadn't yet gotten to play with yet including a top of the line digital card printer complete with an embosser, laminator, and strip magnetizer, this should be fun.

Of course, forgery required a certain amount of hacking and cyber-vigilantism as well. Oliver would often make fun of her when she tossed around her threats about draining people's accounts and tanking their credit scores, but it was in actuality a very effective tool in her arsenal. Guys like Bruce and Oliver who fought for justice with their fists, and pointy hurty things like batarangs and green-tipped arrows, often forgot about the fact that Al Capone got taken off the streets, not by masked vigilantes and tough as nail hardboiled cops, but by a government bean counter who, when you think about it, was kind of a hacker of sorts from back in the days before computers. It was the exact same mindset a hacker had; take them down by shutting them down. Kill the machine and everything else dies with it.

"Case in point," she said aloud as she started her hack in the place where most identity builds began; the money. The money was the machine that ran the beast. It wasn't exactly original or creative, but like Lance had once told her, "Every cop worth his salt knows to always follow the money trail right to the bad guy's door."

The way he told her, whenever investigating a crime the first thing a good cop asks is 'Where does the money come from?' and 'Where does it go afterwards?' because, 99% of the time, there are five main motives (not the only motives, but the most likely ones) for any given crime: money, power, heat of passion, sex, and revenge. And, of all of them, money took the lion's share which was probably where the old axiom, 'money is the root of all evil', came from. It was certainly Lance's favorite go to saying…that and, 'You're a dumb ass," although that was usually leveled at the male members of Team Arrow, not her.

Of course, according to him, stupidity could be considered a motive, too, but that was pretty much a given. As for the other one percent, their motive for doing what they did was due to the fact that they were simply batshit crazy.

He also made sure to tell them that vigilantism fell under that category as well, hence the third favorite saying, 'You're a bunch of batshit crazy dumb asses!'

Again, it was an insult usually reserved for the male members of their team, not her.

Every time Lance said that though, Felicity was always tempted to point out that, technically, he was just as much a vigilante as any of them. She didn't though because, even though his heart was doing a lot better since he'd had the valve replacement, there was still a chance his head might explode. If anyone was going to clue him in the fact that the only thing he was missing was a mask and a cool handle, it was going to be either Sara or Laurel; not her. He was their father, not hers, so they had first dibs when it came to killing him.

When it came to her version of cyber-vigilantism, Felicity liked to mix things up just make it interesting so, taking Lance's 'advice', she began to hack her way into a few not-so-well-hidden bank accounts belonging to a couple of big name mobsters she knew Helena would be familiar with as they were closely associated to the Bertinelli Crime Family, then drained them into an off-shore account but not before laundering the money by bouncing it from one mob-run bank to the other just in case these particular scumbags had someone on the payroll that was smarter than the average bear. She didn't want to start a mob war (well, maybe a tiny one, a war against one mobster maybe), she just wanted to confuse the hell out of them. and having everyone pointing fingers worked for her so she made sure to also drain a few Triad accounts, along with the accounts of some of the more temperamental higher-ups within Bratva, then passed all of them through one Bratva member's account in particular so that, on the off chance someone managed to follow the breadcrumbs, that's where they'd all be piled up.

She didn't completely wipe out every Bratva account though, tempting as it might be. While she wasn't particularly fond of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, she didn't mind Anatoly that much so she left him and his guys alone for the most part. Not entirely, she had to make it look good so she only selected his most vulnerable accounts, the ones not entrusted to the banks held by the Brother's Circle or Grisha Mikhilov, mostly because she's the one who strengthened those firewalls for him as a show of good faith. Instead she made a couple of deliberately clumsy attempts to get past their firewalls but it was just for show. If she really wanted to get past them she could since she wrote the code, but that would have made things too obvious.

Even though she was technically stealing from him, albeit only a token amount considering the billions she was taking from everyone else, she doubted Anatoly would mind. Knowing him, he'd say a few million dollars was worth seeing her take down one of their mutual enemies, even if it led to a few suspicious rumblings by some of Ivan the Terrible's crew. Even if she hadn't lobbed a few gimmes at his firewalls, he probably wouldn't have minded taking on a little heat as, these days, he could probably weather it fairly easily since he was in good graces with the Circle once more. However, it wasn't that big of a deal and she had the time so she figured, 'might as well'. She was already logging in on another screen to send him a nice case of his favorite Stolichnaya vodka, several tins of Strottarga Bianco caviar, and some Tula Gingerbreads and Turkish delight with the money she'd taken as a wink and a nudge to let him know what she did in their own special code they'd worked out together over his favorite hangover remedy; a huge plate of warm chak-chak smothered in hot honey sauce.

The morning after he and Oliver had been cleared of the charges against them, he introduced her to the sticky sweet confection that reminded her of a cross between homemade pretzels and funnel cakes. Just thinking about them made her wish she'd done like Mordred and gone straight into the kitchen for a sandwich after she'd first arrived.

Chak-chak was made from soft dough and raw eggs, then molded into short delicate sticks that looked similar to homemade vermicelli or marbles. They were then deep-fried and placed in an elegant pile before the nearly boiling hot honey was poured over them. He then told her to slowly sip at her tea that he'd fortified with the same vodka that bit her on the ass the night before until it cooled enough to harden.

Before being they tucked in, he thanked her for all she'd done and told her that he would get his revenge for the insult Ivan Pajari paid her during his and Oliver's 'trial'. In order for her and Sara to be allowed to stay within the compound, Anatoly had to declare them pochetnyy doch', his honorary daughters. As such they were entitled to certain courtesies as a sign of respect for Anatoly's place as a high ranking Pahkan despite the charges being leveled at him. That Pajari had accused both her and Sara of being his American whores was bad enough, but when he further insulted Felicity in particular by calling her his 'second-best bitch', along with a few comments about her physical appearance, even the other members of the Council were enraged by his lack of respect.

Anatoly had kept silent at the time, making sure to calm Oliver down as they allowed the other Pahkan's to address his breach in etiquette, but he told her that that he had not forgotten the words spoken that day, nor would he forget all she had done to save them. He told her he was a patient man and would lie in wait until the day came when he would have her honor avenged and he would send her a plate of chak-chak as a sign along with a bottle of '45 Château Mouton-Rothschild since Oliver never did give her the '82 he promised her.

Knowing his kind of revenge was likely to be fairly bloody, she steered the conversation towards a more playful note and asked, "And what happens if I get to him first? What do you want me to send you?"

He sat back in his chair, the stern and serious expression he wore replaced by his more usual mischievous grin, and said, "Ah, moy milyy angelochek, if that should happen then you can send me a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka fit for a czar, caviar made of gold, gingerbread like moya mama made me as a boy, and some Turkish delight from the little shop I would go to back when I was stationed in Istanbul, for that is something I would greatly enjoy tasting once more." He gave her another flirtatious wink and leaned close to her, speaking in a near whisper, "Even though I am certain it could never taste as sweet as whatever revenge I suspect that you, with your innocent face but demonically clever mind, could conceive of."

After that, their companions finally came down the stairs to join them, and he continued to celebrate his good mood by regaling them with stories that were half-fact, half-fish tale, but all very entertaining.

Besides, once they saw that her firewalls held while the others controlled by 'Ivan the Terrible' failed, it would increase their value as assets to the Bratva…although Bruce would have a cow if he ever heard her admit she did a favor for one of the most powerful Pahkans in the world or that she had a fondness towards a man rumored to have been responsible for an assassination attempt against Anwar El Sadat.

She had no idea if he really did it or not, chances are 'not' since Anatoly was fond of playing the role of harmless old man who enjoyed telling tall tales to pretty young girls, but she liked him anyway. She didn't underestimate him however because Anatoly, despite his beatific smile and old-world manners, was a very dangerous man and he didn't earn the name 'the KGBeast' for nothing.

He was a character though, despite being scary as hell. According to what Oliver told them (even though finding out about his past was like pulling teeth), Anatoly was both a CIA and KGBtrained assassin who worked very closely with Putin's FSB while running the Mechanics division, 'Mechanics' being another word for 'assassins' within Bratva. They mostly dealt in murder for hire, as well as off-book government contracted black bag ops like political assassinations, hence the Anwar El Sadat rumors.

She only heard that rumor herself after Oliver had been forced to give them a brief history of the Bratva last year. He also revealed that he got that star his chest (along with the rank of Bratva Captain or, more accurately, Brigadier) because he served as Anatoly's Avtoritet ('Authority') while in Russia under the codename 'the Solntsevo Demon'.

They found *that* out, because a corrupt Russian cop with a grudge against the Brotherhood named Gregor Dosynski had taken up the mantle of the Demon that Oliver had left behind and was using it to target members of the Brotherhood in his name. He was angry because he'd been accused of colluding with their rivals, the Tambovskaya Bratva, resulting in the slaughter of a high ranking and well-liked Captain, along with his family and most of his men. Oliver was ordered to torture the truth out of him. As a result, Dosynski lost an arm and nearly died.

Oliver still felt a lot of shame for his part in that, even though Dosynski really was responsible for all of those deaths in a way. He didn't sell anyone out for money, but he did make the mistake of bragging about his connections and about how important he was to Bratva, so much so that he was even in charge of protecting the secret location where this guy was hiding out. The person he said it to during pillow talk happened to be a high-end prostitute…who also just so happened to work for the Captain of the Tambov Gang and who was, in turn, the one gunning for the other guy to begin with.

Apparently, by Bratva law, stupidity erections and their resulting consequences put you in just as bad a position with the Brotherhood as selling out for a bank full of cash, if not more so.

"Let's face it," Felicity said wryly, "even greed's a better excuse than not knowing whose mistress you were schtupping before spilling the beans over a blowjob."

The thought occurred to her then that if Bruce did play back audio from the Cave, he would have a lot of questions in reference to the things he heard her say while talking to herself.

Anyway, Anatoly's men tossed him in the river thinking he was dead but, as was often the case with people Oliver thought he killed in the past, he came back as a complete and utter pain in their asses.

"Because no one ever stays dead for long in Vigilante World, do they?" Felicity muttered.

To his credit, once he figured out how to reign in his libido, Dosynski bided his time until the perfect moment presented itself. When that time came, it led to Anatoly being accused of trying to make a power play by taking out his fellow Pakhans and thereby increasing his chances to become Krestnii Otets or 'Godfather that controls everything' over the most elite group within Bratva known to only a very few as the 'Bratsky Krug', or 'Brothers' Circle'. They were the council within the vorovskoi mir, the traditional Soviet/Russian underworld, that ruled over all 9000 members of Bratva.

Also known as the Family of Eleven, it was overseen by a 12-person council made up of eleven representatives from each of the 'brigades' and one arbiter, the Krestnii Otets, who acted as the final authority in all things within the proceedings. The Brother's Circle was such a well-kept secret, even among the Bratva, that not even the authorities knew if it was real or just another mass conspiracy myth being tossed around in chatrooms.

The group would meet regularly in different parts of the world, often disguising their meetings as festive occasions, and no one but the other members of the Brother's Circle knew who was who, or where and when the meeting would take place. When the members of that secret cabal started dying it at first appeared random but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't when the last presiding Krestnii Otets, a man named Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov, was murdered in Starling City just before he was expected to announce who he had chosen to take over as his replacement.

Anatoly had been called in to meet with the rest of the Circle members and, as soon as Raikov was found with an arrow through his chest, he was arrested and Oliver was accused of being behind the assassinations under Anatoly's orders. They immediately sent out a squad of men to kidnap him from outside the club in order to ship him back to Moscow where he and Anatoly would be forced to submit to a 'court' that was presided over by three Pahkan of the Bratva known as the Sovet Vorov, or the Council of Thieves.

Once she found the footage and traced where it was they were taking him, she, Dig, and Sara had no other choice but to go there in order to act as Anatoly and Oliver's 'ochevidetz', (or 'beholders'), then help them hunt down Dosynski so they could clear their names and bring him to whatever justice the Sovet Vorov chose to dish out.

As for why they were called the Council of Thieves, being referred to as a 'thief' in Bratva wasn't considered an insult, instead it was a status symbol as the founder of Bratva, Sergei Mikhailov, a former waiter who'd served a prison term for fraud, coined the term vory v zakone, or 'thief-in-law', in order to create a sense of brotherhood and to establish their street cred as they recruited foot soldiers among the various gangs and criminals both in the prison system and outside of it.

Not that 'thief-in-law' was the same as, say, 'brother-in-law', as she first assumed. The term 'thief-in-law' meant 'thief who follows the law.' In other words, a criminal who obeyed the Thieves' Code or 'Ponyatiya', was one who swore to obey the rules of conduct within the Bratva that governed them all. Therefore the Sovet Vorov, or Council of Thieves, represented the highest court among the Bratva and their word was law.

Felicity was familiar with similar codes of conduct within Cosa Nostra, or the Sicilian Mafia that Helena's dad belonged to. The Mafiosi were known among themselves, not as thieves, but as 'men of honor' or 'men of respect', and followed their own version of laws known as the Ten Commandments-not to be confused with the ones from the Torah. Instead they were merely guidelines on good, respectful, and honorable conduct that men entering the organization were expected to follow like 'Don't sleep with your friend's wife', 'Wives must be treated with respect,' and 'Don't steal from other men of honor'.

However, the Bratva laws were far more complex and carried much more weight than even the rules of conduct among the Italians and Sicilians. It was a set of rules that held within it an almost mystical weightiness that included its own language and esoteric symbolism. That's where the significance of the tattoo Oliver wore came in.

She'd always wondered about the eight point star with the rosette in the center that Oliver had tattooed high on his chest and above his heart. She'd always assumed it just meant 'Captain' until she saw another man with similar tattoos, only on his knees. They were watching as the men sparred in the courtyard and she asked if he was a double captain or a major or something before she could stop herself even though she'd been warned that the Vory consider talking to 'protected women' was taboo within the confines of the Council of Thieves.

To the Bratva, there were 'good' women, who were to never be touched or even looked at as they were considered 'pure', and then there were whores who were used for sex but that's all. They even had to wear scarves over their hair whenever they were outside their private rooms at the compound to show that they were 'pure women' or 'women of status'. As Sara explained it, once a Bratva man had sex with a woman who wasn't their wife, she no longer held value, and no Bratva man would ever consider having a real relationship with a whore.

Frankly, it rankled as it was the most blatant Madonna/whore paradigm Felicity had ever been a firsthand witness to.

"And when I found that out, oh boy did that explain a lot about Viva las Isabel and Oliver's lost weekend in Moscow," she muttered under her breath.

Still, within the grounds of the Council of Thieves, she and Sara were treated as the honorary daughters of Anatoly and, even though he was accused of a crime, the Vory would not harm them but they also wouldn't be allowed to look or speak to them either unless it was to address them during the proceedings.

To her surprise though, the young foot soldier laughed and told her that the stars on his knees (that looked nothing like Oliver's on closer inspection as they were more of a nautical star without the rosette center) meant he was Vor and that he 'bent his knees for no man'; in other words, he recognized no authority but Bratva.

Since he seemed friendly and talkative, she then asked him why his stars looked different than Oliver's and why his didn't have the rosette design in the center. The man got very quiet then and what he told her explained so much about why Oliver was there and why, whenever he revealed that mark, people gave him such a wide berth.

The star high on his chest and above his heart meant he was a Captain, but the rosette in the center meant he was one of Anatoly's as it symbolized death, meaning he was a Captain of Bratva who carried Death within his heart. The fuzzy indigo linework of the tattoo had significance as well as it meant he received it in prison. After he told her that part, she covered up her reaction to that bit of news by saying she was surprised they let prisoners have tattoo machines in prison as she'd heard that gulags didn't have a whole lot of creature comforts. He laughed again and explained it like this (albeit in stilted and broken English):

The ink used in making the tattoo was slightly blurred as it would have been extracted from a ballpoint pen and mixed with rubber from burning the heel of a shoe. After which, they combined the soot with urine to prevent infection, and injected it into the skin utilizing a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver. If they didn't have a machine they would've drawn the picture they'd chosen on a wooden plank, placed needles along the lines of the design, then covered the needles with the ink mixture and stamped the whole tableau on the person's body, or they could simply slice the image onto the skin with a razor, then daub the cut with indelible ink.

From what he told her it was an incredibly painful process no matter what method was used, far more painful that the ones you got at the tattoo parlor obviously, and that the bearer of the mark would have to endure the entire procedure without so much as flinching, otherwise he would be thought of as weak. The more tattoos a man had, the more prison time he would have served as that's how you earned your right to a tat, and each tattoo represented both their rankings (depending on where they were placed) and criminal specialties so that their brothers could know their criminal résumé simply by looking at them.

After he said that she looked around the yard at the other Vory, all half-dressed in the frigid cold, some covered in tattoos from head to toe, as they pummeled one another mercilessly without so much as a grunt of pain and realized that, despite the refined furnishings and exquisitely maintained lawns, it was a prison filled with an army of very tough, very dangerous men who had no fear of pain or death and, unless they played their cards right, they were all going to be joining Oliver and Anatoly in front of the Sovet Vorov, and not as their 'beholders', either.

Bratva justice was nothing to scoff at. If you broke with the rules of the Brotherhood, not only would you die, but every member of your family would as well. It helped that Dosynski had no one left that could be targeted but turning him had still been a hard decision for them to make as it was a guaranteed death sentence and they would not show mercy. It would be a painful death that would be drawn out for as long as possible.

Of course, they didn't have to live with their guilt for long since he managed to break free before they could turn him over. Due to the tracker Felicity managed to slip on him, they managed to catch up with him before he took out the Sovet Vorov with a bomb filled with nerve toxin known as Novichok, or 'Newcomer', which was eight times more lethal than even the V-series nerve agent used in the Chechen attack in Moscow back in 2002.

Because the agent was dispersed in an ultra-fine powder instead of a gas or a vapor, and developed from a binary agent that mimicked the same properties as perfectly harmless and legal materials that were undetectable by treaty regime inspections, he managed to sneak it into the country before placing it in a bomb that Felicity managed to disarm while Oliver and Anatoly went after him.

Oliver didn't wind up taking him out though, Anatoly did, proving that the old man still had plenty of juice and that he was still the KGBeast (even though the KGB supposedly disbanded after the attempted coup to seize control of the government back in 1991).

Technically, she supposed he could've updated his handle after the fall of the Iron Curtain by calling himself the FSKBeast or, even better, the FSBeast but, knowing Anatoly, he probably just kept it around for sentimental reasons kind of like Alfred did whenever he trotted out his 'Beagle' handle from back when he was with MI-5.

"Man, I know a lot of former spies," she mused, her fingers pausing on the keyboard. "Actually I know a lot of mobsters, too, not to mention assassins and masked vigilantes…and don't even get me started on the metahumans, aliens, and dangerous psychopaths," she said with a slight grimace then shook her head with a sigh before continuing to type. "Now that's something to put in the 'Notable Accomplishments' section of the MIT newsletter: Felicity Smoak, Class of '09. Most Underworld Connections and Criminal Associations of any graduate in MIT history. First person in her class to make contact with an alien over cookies and milk." She paused again, "Probably. Some of those guys I had classes with seemed a little off themselves, so who knows?"

Still, while she never seemed to get to enjoy their spontaneous 'vacations' to Russia, the history behind the rise of the Bratva and how they applied to their situation was fascinating...as long as you ignored all the crime and rampant bloodshed.

According to what Anatoly told her, back in the 80's when the Brotherhood first officially came into being, they were mostly made up of ex-cons and gang members from the Solntsevo District of Moscow.

They made their money from controlling the traffic coming off the M-KAT highway leading to Ukraine, as well as the Vnukovo International Airport. Controlling these transport hubs allowed the Solntsevo group to muscle in on the high-end stolen car import business. Literally millions of dollars' worth of stolen luxury cars would pass through their hands daily. A Lamborghini stolen off the streets of Beverly Hills would pass through Bratva ports only to wind up in the garage of some Arabian sheik less than a week later.

By the early 1990s, business had gotten so good that the Chechens and the Tambovskaya started muscling in. They were a lot more violent than the Moscow gangs and better trained, as many were former soldiers. They were also better organized and backed up by the FSB. The Solntsevo Bratva weren't exactly pushovers though.

Together with the Orekhovskaya gang and other Slavic mobs, the Brotherhood formed an alliance to drive the Chechens and their buddies out, resulting in a bloody gang war where the Solntsevo Bratva, surprisingly enough, came out on top becoming the biggest and most powerful crime syndicate of the Russian mafias. They also made a point of learning from their enemies and made sure not to repeat their own mistakes.

By the end of the 1990s, the Solntsevskaya gang started moving into things besides importing stolen cars and transporting contraband. They divided the Brotherhood into four main 'kingdoms' or branches headed by the Sovet Vorov. Although, to be honest, they all dabbled in a bit of everything: First was money laundering and cybercrimes, which was currently led by Grisha Mikhilov. While all the 'Godfathers' possessed money men, Mikhilov turned it into an art form by perfecting the science of BCE's and Reverse Money Laundering, putting him in control of literally tens of billions of dollars.

That was why his people were the ones with the most power as they were in charge of most of the Brotherhood's hedge funds and investments. They were also the ones operating under the least amount of risk as they were classified as 'white collar criminals' and rarely served jail time even when they were caught, which wasn't often. They also tended to have friends in high places. Mikhilov, himself, was not only seen by the general public as a respected businessman and philanthropist, but he was also personal friends with the Russian Prime Minister.

Whenever there was some sort of conflict among the other branches, he usually acted as the arbiter. During Oliver and Anatoly's 'trial', he was the one who served as the head judge and who made sure both men were given the benefit of the doubt despite Ivan Pajari, otherwise known as 'Little Ivan' or 'Ivan the Terrible', calling for their heads.

Also working in his favor, Mikhilov, unlike Pajari, had been very polite and respectful towards her when they first met so she had the same reluctant stirrings of fondness towards him as she did for Anatoly. He even offered her a job with his organization before they left and gave her his personal cell phone telling her that, should she ever need anything, to simply call him and he'd do his best to make sure she got it, no questions asked.

She had yet to call that favor in, but she memorized the number just in case.

Next came the Importers, who were run by a man named Nikolai Zolnerowich. They were the old school branch of the Bratva who moved things like cars, guns, exotic animals, and caviar. They were the group Oliver had to negotiate with three years previously when they made their first trip to Moscow in order to break Lyla out of a Russian Gulag. The Importers tended to be tougher and more gun shy than most, especially when dealing with outsiders as their people were often targeted by police investigations. It was why Zolnerowich took great pains to be seen by the general public as a respectable family man who had a special interest in conservation and was a generous contributor to several exotic animal preserves…of course, that was mostly because he enjoyed hunting and eating them.

He also liked using them as enforcers apparently. According to what Anatoly told her, Zolnerowich had a particular fondness for feeding people who pissed him off (for whatever reason) to the hyenas he kept on one of his private reserves.

Yeah, she wasn't as fond of Zolnerowich as she was of Mikhilov and Anatoly. He wasn't rude to her but he wasn't exactly chatty either—not that she was looking to make them Facebook friends any time soon.

However, that and the whole 'eating endangered animals' thing aside, it always struck Felicity as odd that Zolnerowich's branch were the focus of the government's crackdown on organized crime since, in her mind, Ivan Pajari, that asshole who helped run the Vice trade and who tried to get Oliver executed, should be the one catching the lion's share of the heat.

Even if she didn't have a personal grudge against Pajari, her least favorite thing about the Bratva was the fact that a good portion of their business revolved around drugs, gambling, and, most famously, sex slaves–primarily women, but also children and young men. Unfortunately though, the reason slavery was so profitable and low-risk, was the fact that, in many countries, you could get more jail time for selling a stolen car than you could for buying and selling human beings. In some countries, not only was it perfectly legal to buy and sell people, but you could murder them in the middle of the street and get away with it because they were merely property.

It was for that reason and many others that 'human trafficking' had become such a buzzword with the general public, and why it was the focus of so many human rights groups these days. It was one of the fastest-growing activities of trans-national criminal organizations today with an annual income of over $33 billion dollars per year.

To put that into perspective, the first time she heard Mama T give a lecture on the subject, she cited the fact that, according to the 1860 U. S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves. Of that, one-third of Southern families owned slaves before the Civil War, and purchasing a slave between 1809 and 1860 would have cost a plantation owner the equivalent of around $12,000 to $49,000 for a field hand, and as much as $134,000 in today's terms for a skilled artisan, depending on their skill level.

In comparison, according to estimates from the International Labour Organization, there are nearly seven and half times more people living as slaves today than there were at the height of slavery in the US. That's around 29 million people and the global human trafficking industry generates between $32 billion and $91.2 billion annually. The buying and selling of human beings is second only to drug trafficking in terms of global criminal enterprises but, unlike drugs, they can be sold over and over again and cheaply replaced if they die or are lost in some other way.

That was terrifying but the really scary numbers came from seeing the victims as individuals and not just as these massive, incongruous numbers. At least, that's how she felt after hearing Mama T say that the average slave sold for approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves such as manual laborers who worked in fields, sweat shops, and mining operations all over the globe, including the US and Canada.

In simplest terms, slaves were a cheap investment for maximum return. Feeding them, clothing them, seeing that they received proper medical care…why bother if you can just shell out $40 for a new one after the old one dies?

If that didn't terrify you, nothing would.

It was because of that, more than the stealing, more than the killing, more than all the rest put together, that she had difficulty accepting the fact that working with Anatoly meant dealing with Bratva. Some claimed that the laws of the Bratva, the rules of honor that declared all members of the organization 'Thieves-in-law', meant they were more noble and honorable than other criminals. In fact, some like Anatoly who claimed to be a patriot, called themselves heroes.

"How can a man who kills people, who steals from people, who makes his money by buying human beings and selling them for profit, call himself 'noble and honorable'? How can that man ever be a hero as long as he bears that stain on his soul?"

That wasn't her quote, that was Oliver's. It was something he said to her after all of that came out and she told him he was still a hero to her, no matter his past. It had been a heavy moment for both of them.

She couldn't erase his stain, or the memories of his past, but she could get a little justice and payback Felicity style.

Vice was technically run by a Pakhan by the name of Semion Mogilevich based out of Hungary although, due to his advanced age and poor health, most of the real day to day running of the organization was handled by his second-in-command and Sovietnik, or 'Consigliere', the aforementioned Ivan Pajari. Even though, technically, the Solntsevskaya Bratva don't involve themselves in human trafficking as dealers, they do buy its victims in order to put them to work in their casinos, restaurants, and brothels making Vice an absolute cash cow for the organization.

It was this branch of the Bratva that likely ran the mining operation where Isabel was used as slave labor and where Oliver's dad 'found' her, yet another reason why Felicity was doing a mental fist pump as she made sure all roads led straight to 'Ivan the Terrible's' door. Her only regret was that she couldn't do the same to his boss, although she wasn't exactly letting him go scot-free either.

Mogilevich was unique among the Brotherhood for several reasons, the main one being that he was the only true 'public' face of Bratva. He also didn't limit himself to just controlling Vice even though technically that was the 'kingdom' in which he supposedly ruled as Boss of Bosses. He was currently on just about every Most Wanted list in the world for his crimes which ranged from murder and extortion, to selling nuclear material, to slavery, but he also had connections to the highest branches of the Russian government including the office of the Prime Minister.

The closest he ever came to being arrested was in Moscow in 2008, for suspected tax evasion. Despite being on the FBI's Most Wanted List and the US threatening sanctions if he wasn't turned over to them for his part in a five billion dollar fraud case, his bail was placed and, upon his release, the Russian Interior Minister stated that the charges against him were 'not of a particularly grave nature' and let him go with a slap on the wrist. Shortly thereafter he was seen canoodling at the club with Putin and his cronies, adopting an attitude with the press along the lines of, 'no harm, no foul'.

For that and many other reasons, whenever Team Arrow would target Bratva it was usually ops associated with the vice trade and today would be no exception. She smiled triumphantly as she entered the final keystroke and watched as the money in Mogilevich's secret and not-so secret accounts dwindled and faded to nothing, along with several of Pajari's and their clients.

She didn't completely bankrupt Pajari though—not technically, she thought with wicked relish. She actually bulked up several of the ones he held that his boss did know about, and only depleted the accounts he received from 'skimming of the top', the ones that Pajari obviously thought only he knew about. She also added a few lines of code making his pocketing from the company till more noticeable and made sure that when people came looking, the Italians, the Triads, and the Bratva, that it would be for Pajari's head on a spike and no one else's.

However, she had no doubt that his boss would have to do a lot of explaining to do before The Council of Thieves as well despite his current state of 'semi-retirement', and she imagined (even though she'd never met him) that Mogilevich was not the kind of guy who enjoyed explaining himself to anyone so Pajari was going to have to do a lot of running very, very soon.

"That's what you get for referring to me as Anatoly's 'second-best bitch', asshole," she said with particular relish. "For your information, I'm number one at being Head Bitch in Charge and you just got pwned!"

While she didn't choose him as a target *just* because he insulted her (along with the even nastier things to Sara), it did add a certain something to her usual sense of a job well done, she had to admit. She's waited almost a year to take down Ivan, her plan in place, just biding her time until she needed the money for something special. Until the Birds happened she thought about buying her own satellite but that seemed like such a waste considering she could just jack ARGUS's any time she wanted. Felicity didn't know what she would have eventually bought with the money, put she saw all her patience and hard work as sitting on her piggy bank, just letting Pajari's ill-gotten gains accrue plenty of interest, as the perfect tack to take until the right moment presented itself. All that hard work and delayed gratification was one of the reasons she chose to break with Team Arrow tradition and keep the spoils of war for herself instead of donating them to some other good cause.

Usually when she would bankrupt crooks, she would divert the funds to a legitimate charity like the Moira Queen Glades Fund in Starling or her brother's African mission, but today she was going to celebrate her blow for women everywhere by officially kicking off the Birds of Prey with a 'charity' of their own. Technically she supposed she should feel a little bit guilty for stealing the money, but she didn't. Once they took down Orbital and Talia, they'd need the money to keep the mission going and she didn't want to have to ask Bruce for it.

"And, boy howdy, that much money should keep us in black leather and pointy things for a while," she whistled lowly as she saw the many, many zeroes scroll by before diverting some of it into an account for Helena. She then hacked various credit card companies in order to establish a long term credit history, and printed those off as well. The rest of the funds she split into two separate accounts; one for the mission in order to buy things like weapons and take care of their overhead, and one for more personal incidentals for things like bills or clothes that any one of them could access if they needed to.

Designing Helena's bank cards were easy, she just copied the design the bank would have issued her, then embossed the card with the account numbers, before programming in her account information. They looked absolutely real because, despite being made in the FelicityCave, they were real and they were attached to accounts with real money in them.

Also, she wasn't handing Helena all that money as a gift. As far as she was concerned, despite the crimes Helena committed as Huntress, this was money owed to her for the losses she suffered. Also, in order to back up the identity she created for her, Helena would need those funds in order to appear legit.

But for the Birds as a whole? There she got to be creative.

The nicest part of the card printer (besides being able to make up her own credit cards) was the fact that she could design them with pictures of anything she wanted. It felt a little like impulse buying a kid's coloring book and crayons as an adult, then spending Sunday in bed scribbling away like a kid again.

Did she ever do that?

…no comment, except to say that she really, really liked coloring books as a kid and the apparently made them for adults now.

Not that she owned any…

…not since Bruce and Oliver wrecked her house anyway.

It didn't even take her a minute to decide on the design she wanted either. Taking Sara's suggestion of making 'Samantha Spade' their team mascot, she found an art deco-stylized picture of a Peregrine falcon then used the same layout as the Centurion on Bruce's AmEx Black by darkening it to a silhouette before placing it against a bright metallic gold 'moon'. The last thing she did was choose a glossy black background in order to make the gold 'pop'. Maybe it was a little obvious, especially after Lance's 'Zorro' comments to Bruce, but it did look very professional if she did say so herself (not to mention flipping cool), and this way her people could get whatever they needed without having to ask her or use their own resources since 'vigilante expenses' weren't exactly tax delectable.

"If only," she sighed.

Besides, while she had no doubt that she and Bruce would work things out sooner rather than later (once she got over being pissed), there was something to be said for financial independence. After all, 'He who has the gold, makes the rules,' and if Bruce was the one funding the Birds then he would want to be the one making the decisions for them. She didn't want that and she knew the other members of her team wouldn't want that either, so stealing from the mob and using that money to take on missions they felt needed taking on rather than risk becoming the Bat's B-Squad seemed to her like a no brainer. While neither Bruce or Oliver would be happy with how she chose to fund her mission, at least this way justice was served and she had a good time doing it.

"Besides, I'm not exactly planning on telling them, am I?" She said to herself with a smirk.

As she systematically drained the last of Mogilevich and Zolnerowich's accounts in the background (according to what she'd learned last year, Zolnerowich and Pajari had a particularly unpleasant personal history so this should be extra fun to watch as it played out)—

"Hope the hyenas don't get a belly ache," she muttered.

-she started to work on the 'identity' part of her little project.

Felicity was particularly good at finding and planting new identities. It was one of the first 'fun' things Barbara taught her when she became her Padawan, even though it did have a bit of a grim side to it.

Bruce used several aliases as the Bat, all of them more than capable of withstanding even NSA scrutiny, so Barbara knew all of the tricks and then some and she taught them all to her.

The most obvious and common way to build a new identity was to take over an old one but that was also the easiest way to get caught. It left a paper trail and two people using the same social security number tended to get noticed eventually. A lot of low-level forgers would use the birth records of a still-born child or infant in order to build a history but that was also so common a practice that it was the first thing most cops looked at during an investigation.

The way Barbara taught her was a bit more complicated but far superior to those other methods, especially since she'd spent the last several years building backdoors into various high-level government agencies like ARGUS who always kept lots of lovely brand new Social Security numbers around, just ripe for the picking, and that always checked out as 100% legitimate no matter who was looking or how hard they dug.

Amanda tended not to play well with others, especially the NSA, and she didn't like relying on other agencies for favors, or sharing her assets and info with anyone.

"Speaking of…" she muttered as she slipped past their firewalls in order to 'borrow' a few things, before shutting the virtual door behind her. "Hate to say it, Amanda, but Mordred was right," she said with a cluck of her tongue. "Next time you hire a hacker you should be more worried about their skill level than their haircut."

The next bit of her Build-A-Bird Workshop was the hard part, at least it was for her. Hacking into several different police databases simultaneously by using an algorithm which filtered the results based on the physical description and blood type she was looking for, she began the arduous task of manually going through the pictures of homicide victims that had been officially listed by the authorities as 'Jane Doe's' and whose remains had already been disposed of.

There were a lot but not as many as you'd suppose. Still…

Five years and I'll never get used to this part of the job, she thought as her eyes took in the battered and abused autopsy photos of those poor unknown women. All of them so young, so beautiful, and gone much too soon.

How many of those women were sex slaves; victims of human trafficking bought and sold by men like Pajari for less than, what? Delivery from her favorite Italian place?

That was chilling; this woman was made a slave and lost her life because she had less value as a human being than pizza and cheesy breadsticks.

Her stomach lurched at the thought so, pushing that to the back of her mind, she began to type.

She took a deep breath, Barbara's words echoing in her mind:

"The first step to building a rock solid new identity, Chickie, begins with killing the old one."

With just the press of a button, Helena Bertinelli would be officially declared dead, her body mutilated and found floating off the coast of Sicily. According to the Sicilian authorities, Helena's mob hunting activities finally caught up to her as she was killed execution style with two bullets to the back of the head. Her fingerprints and dental records could not be used to identify her due to advanced decomposition and predation, along with perimortem trauma consistent with torture. Due to a backlog of DNA samples along with interagency red tape, the body could not be identified before cremation.

"However, as of right now—" she hit the key, sending the file to the FBI, Interpol, and every other law enforcement agency in the world with an open case against her, along with a Trojan that would slowly gobble up her personal information every time someone tried to access it, starting with her fingerprints and mugshot "-may she rest in peace."

She took another moment to silently contemplate the girl who now bore Helena's name, before beginning step two of the process; building a new human from the ground up.

She chose to start with a clean identity, one of her own making, while using the ARGUS certified Social they had no idea didn't belong to them anymore.

Nor would they ever know, Felicity thought. She made sure to clean up after herself afterwards so, unless ARGUS had a guy who remembered every single number and checked on them constantly, they'd never even miss it.

She was so used to stopping by ARGUS to borrow a cup of information that by now she had pretty much developed the attitude of, 'What's yours is mine', be it a satellite, a Social Security Number, and on one very memorable occasion, she made them buy her new shoes by hacking into Amanda's expense account. Actually, it wasn't just shoes, it was a whole new outfit and the shoes were Manalo's. She felt it was completely justified since, in her opinion, it was her fault they got ruined in the first place.

"I really loved those shoes," she murmured.

Sara and Barbara both had their theories on how to build a solid cover story, but she preferred the sage advice Alfred gave her long ago.

It happened when she asked once about his time in MI-5 and why he would choose a handle like 'Beagle'. He told her that he wasn't the one who chose it, his handler did, and the reason they picked it was because they thought he looked like their childhood pet, all floppy ears and an earnest expression. He'd kept it because it was easy to remember, simple as that.

"If someone used the code word, 'Beagle', I would automatically react to it. However, if I gave in to narcissism and changed it to something more daring like, say, 'Nightstalker', I might be slow to react and that could cause my contact to lose faith in me and possibly endanger my life. It takes approximately twenty-eight days to form a habit," he told her. "That was twenty-eight days I didn't have the luxury of having so why would I risk my life to fix what wasn't broken merely for vanity's sake?"

Habit. We answer to the names we're given because it's habit. It doesn't matter who you are or how down you've got your identity, your first instinct will always be to react when you hear your own name even if you aren't the one being spoken to. It was the reason why so many people wound up breaking cover. If your name was Ben but you were pretending to be Jerry, you would answer to Jerry every time but you'd still instinctively turn to look if someone called out for a guy named 'Ben'.

Her stomach growled at that and she sighed, "Aw man, I really should've made a sandwich before coming down here. Who knew stealing billions of dollars from the mob could work up an appetite," she muttered shaking her head with a frown. "I've really got to order some stuff for the cave if people are going to be using this place regularly. First thing on the list after a coffeepot?" She pointed to the right side of the workstation without looking, "Mini-fridge and microwave." She paused, "Maybe I'll even splurge a little and go ahead and install a whole little kitchenette and lounge. I mean, what the hell? We can afford it now."

In any case, it was for that reason that she decided Helena would be keeping her name. That, and the fact that since she was in the mood for revenge. She was going to get a little payback while completely pissing off both Bruce and Helena, she smirked.

Next on her list was building up a history, one piece of red tape at a time. Switzerland was a good place to start. Not only were the Swiss good with watches, but they were also good at data entry, especially when it came to things like birth and medical records. Even in the States and throughout Canada, some counties still relied on hard copies and file cabinets, but Switzerland was far enough away that people wouldn't want to wait for certified copies to be sent via snail mail and, since everything was already online, most would be satisfied with an email or a PDF file. If not, then hard copies get misfiled every day, even in Switzerland.

Another reason she chose Switzerland is because Helena actually did attend boarding school there, a very exclusive one; Le Rosey. She imagined her parents chose it, not only for the curriculum, but for the security and privacy the school provided. Their firewalls were surprisingly solid for a school (not that they kept her out) in order to protect the identities of their students, and they catered to the wealthy and elite so the campus, while idyllic, was well-guarded and it wasn't unusual for the students to have personal security officers in tow.

Despite her tough talk and streetwise attitude, the other woman really had been raised to be Daddy's Little Princess…although that went really bad, really fast. All she had to do was run a comprehensive search then set things up so that whenever the name 'Bertinelli' was mentioned in conjunction with Helena's picture or records, it would be changed to her new name.

Again, why change every detail when you can change just one?

As she worked, her mind flashed back to the faces of all those poor women whose murders had long gone cold. That, along with the rest of the Gala talk they'd been subjected to that morning, made her think about Daniel again. Actually, it made her think of both Daniel and Ray, along with the two women they'd both loved and lost under the most tragic of circumstances.

It also wasn't one she cared to rehash at the moment. Not only didn't she feel like mentally reliving her disastrous history with Daniel during her Happy Zen Forgery Time, she also didn't want to look too closely at how the story he told her about his girlfriend's death and finding the Blue Beetle connected with some of the information J'onn shared with them.

When he first told her about it, Felicity had been just as clueless as Daniel about how to explain what happened to them, but following her own experience with the Omega Device and combined with the story J'onn had told them the other day, she had her suspicions. If Daniel's scarab was some sort of alien tech then it might account for what he had experienced in the tomb. She'd have to mention it to J'onn later and, if he confirmed that it could have some connection to the Omega Device…well, she might just be calling Daniel on his private cell after all, if only to set up a meet between him and J'onn.

Felicity sighed and ran her hand over her hair before rolling her neck wearily. While she knew that was yet another thing she'd have to deal with sooner rather than later, she just didn't want to—not yet. The last thing she needed right now is to add another handsome bastard who swung from the rooftops to her romantic roster.

"Although, to be fair, he mostly just flies around in that stupid looking blue bug jet thing," she said wryly.

Not that they were all that romantic, truth be told. If she were to be completely honest, while she found him very, very attractive, she was never in any danger of falling in love with him. She liked him, found him sexually intriguing, but a relationship never once even crossed her mind. She didn't know if she would have acted on those feelings if Oliver hadn't barged into their date like that but, for a few minutes anyway, it had been nice to go out on a (almost) date with a guy who wasn't Oliver or Bruce and who was able to smile at her in a way that made her inner thighs tingle.

"And then he drew the asshole card…" she said roundly.

Still, if that experience had taught her one thing, it was that she definitely had a type; she fell for men that were handsome, commanding, heroic, and who had a tragic personal history that led to their heads being perpetually shoved up their own asses.

Her cell buzzed and she glanced at it.

"Speak of the devil."

Great.

"Oh well, at least I got to enjoy a few hours in peace," she said with a sigh as she moved to pick it up then paused. "Wait a minute; nuh uh." She hit ignore, "Tell it to voicemail because I told you not to call me, remember? Not that I ever check my voicemail," she added a little meanly.

Okay, maybe that was a little childish, and yes, she had to talk to Bruce eventually…and Oliver…and Daniel, whether he showed up to the Gala or not, but she was loathe to let her newly created angst-free bubble of calm go just yet, something that would definitely be happening once she had to deal with him.

"Besides," she burst out, "it felt really good today doing my own thing without him or Oliver hanging over my shoulder and looking at me with those broody 'grr' faces they've perfected after years of misery and buttheadedness."

Being with the Birds today had cheered her immensely. No one interrogated her about her relationship, instead they just welcomed her into the conversation and hung out. And it *had* been nice to just hang out with her girls instead of getting mired down in a huge manpain-ridden mess of guilt and frustration. It was also nice to be able to do something constructive with her time without having to deal those hangdog looks of theirs that made it seem like she was in the wrong when they were the ones who screwed up.

Making a quick decision, she decided that procrastination was the better part of valor and turned her phone off entirely after he began sending her rapid fire texts to call him back. Oliver and Bruce would have their drama whether she was there to add to it or not, and she'd put off talking to Daniel this long, she could wait a little longer. If he showed up at the Gala, she'd be polite and to the point, hand him J'onn's information so he could deal with him (yes, cowardice thy name is Felicity), then move on because adding another piece to an already crowded chess game was not something she had any intentions of doing. She'd merely let him know that she had information to share at a later date and then deal with him once Orbital had been taken care of. If he didn't show…

Well then, bully for her because she was overstocked in the assholes in masks department anyway.

With that settled, she decided to finish working on her projects. There were other things she could have been working on, more productive things, things that should have taken precedence perhaps, but this was a stress free zone and she was not going to mess that up.

Although feeling the burn was pretty much unavoidable, she admitted reluctantly. Everything around her reminded her of Bruce. It was, after all, his secondary Cave and his equipment she was using, but it was far enough removed from him that she could lose herself in the rhythm of her work, for a little while at least. Hacking, data mining, running code; they were her meditation in the same way the Wing Chun dummy and Salmon Ladder was Oliver's, or the way the escrima sticks were Diggle's.

She purposefully lost herself in the click-clack of the keys and in the music she was piping through the speakers that had long since become background noise. It didn't even matter what was playing, really. It was just noise filling in the space that would normally be occupied by the rest of her team as they worked out and prepared to go to battle. It wasn't until the sound of the elevator broke her concentration that she even heard the lyrics being sung in gruff, plaintive tones.

/Open it up and let me inside, show me all the proof you hide.

Evidence underneath your skin, the secrets that you keep within.

Stone face but your heart belongs with me.

I ain't gonna tell no one I got your garden and your gun.

Your bitters and your sweets, breathe me out, breathe me in.

I ain't gonna let you down, I ain't gonna let you down/

"That's…yeah, pretty song but definitely not the kind of thing I really need to be listening to right now," she muttered as she turned down the volume. Especially since she was definitely feeling let down, not to mention a bit bitter. She turned her chair towards the elevator just as Laurel stepped out. Forcing a cheerful expression on her face, she asked, "Bored with hot yoga already?"

The other woman snorted, "Yeah, well, hot yoga lasted all of a hot minute before Creote's lord and master got up from his nap and started complaining that we were smothering him with the excessive heat and disturbing his rest with our—how did he put it?" She mused, pursing her lips, "Incessant caterwauling. After that the party pretty much broke up."

Her lips twitched upwards at that, "So you came down here to caterwaul with me instead?"

"Actually, I came down here to let you know that Tam had a ton of gowns brought over for us to go through and to remind you that you might want to go visit your stepmom before we have to head down to the salon."

"But it's only…" she glanced at the time, "crap," she muttered.

"Yeah, you've been down here almost three hours," Laurel said dryly. "What have you been working on anyway?"

"A few things," she said with a sigh. "Which reminds me." She picked up one of the files she'd been working on and handed it to her.

Laurel took it then looked inside curiously, "What's this?"

"I know you said you wanted to do it the hard way, but we might not have time for that so I went ahead and renewed your license and got you certified to practice in this state," Felicity told her. "I also went ahead and cleaned up your records so…"

"Felicity…" She looked up at her with a furrowed brow, "You know you didn't have to do this, right?"

"I know," she told her, "and you don't have to use it if you don't want to, but I knew that getting through all the red tape the old fashioned way might take a while and I figured that sitting idle wasn't really your style. At least if you're working on your down time, even part time, it would give you something to do and help out with your recovery. I'm sure Renee knows some Legal-Aid offices you could help out at or maybe, after we take down Orbital, you guys could share an office or something; you two could be the crusading young attorney and her enterprising investigator by day and a pair of kick ass lady masks by night. Oh, and look at the credit card I made us."

"Credit…?" She sorted through the banded together cards, her eyebrows raising slightly in surprise, "Cool logo; is this for the team?"

"Yup," she said, happily popping her 'p'.

"That's going to look awesome on the jerseys. Is it real?" She asked her.

"Yup," she said again.

"You didn't wipe out Bruce's bank accounts, did you?" She asked carefully. "Because he's called the Nest like three times in the last ten minutes asking to speak to you because you apparently turned off your phone."

"It was tempting, but no," she said with a slight upturn of her lips.

"So where…?" She asked leadingly.

"Stole it from the mob," Felicity said easily. "The Italians, the Triad, a ton of it came from the Bratva," she shrugged. "We are now very, very well-funded. We're talking Batman kind of funded." She grinned toothily, "I was feeling rather motivated."

"I'll just bet! Cool, now we don't have to use Bruce's card for everything." she chuckled, her expression lighting up at that. "Plus, Helena will get a special kick out of the fact that you 'Smoaked' the mob with your patented 'Bitch with Wi-Fi' thing. Thank you," she told her, obviously touched.

"You're welcome. Oh, and you can drive now so we should probably divert some team funds and get you a car of your own," she shrugged.

"Or I could just keep the minivan?" The other woman said slowly.

Felicity looked at her askance, "You really want my minivan that badly?"

"Well, I have driven it more than you have plus it has a built in *vacuum cleaner*," she emphasized. "Back in Starling I kept a mini Dust Buster in my center console so that van is like everything my Type A personality ever wanted in a vehicle and more." She paused, "Plus, on the off-chance I do team up with Renee she can play video games in the back seat."

"Fine," she sighed. "We'll go back to the dealership on Monday to get something else for me and you can keep the van."

"Why not just use one of Bruce's cars?" Laurel asked curiously, "I mean, I know we're mob-rich now but Lord knows he has enough of them, he can afford to spare at least one. When Renee took me over there to pick out a bike I thought we'd made a wrong turn and wound up in a high end car dealership instead."

"I'm not really interested in asking Bruce for any favors right now, thanks," she said dourly.

"Yeah, I got that feeling after he called the third time and told us that somebody better go downstairs to make sure you hadn't hit your head or something," she hummed as she sat down on the corner of the workstation, "Want to talk about it?"

"I thought we needed to head upstairs?" She asked, neatly sidestepping the question.

The other woman pulled a face, "Yeah, well, I'd rather stay down here and hide with you instead."

"I'm not—" she started then sighed, "Okay, fine; I'm hiding, okay? I know why I'm avoiding everybody, why're you?"

"Thea hates me," she said glumly without meeting her eyes.

"Thea doesn't hate you," she immediately denied.

Laurel raised her eyebrows at that, "She hasn't said a word to me since she got here."

"Yes, she did."

"No, she didn't," the other woman said firmly. "She hasn't even looked at me since they got here."

Felicity's eyebrows drew together at that, "She said something to you this morning at breakfast, didn't she?"

"Yeah," Laurel huffed wryly, "she said, 'Please pass the salt'."

"Oh." Felicity bit her lip, "Um, so did you try talking to her?"

"A few times," Laurel said with a sigh. "Every time I said something she either turned to someone else or just looked right through me." Her mouth tightened in consternation, "I mean, I've tried to apologize to her a million times already, I wrote her a note, I even tried cornering her upstairs and assured her that you'd forgiven me, but she won't even look at me! I know I can't make her forgive me, I get that, but…" she let out a ragged breath, her hands tightening where they rested on her knees as she hung her head wearily, "I don't know, I just need to—to put that period of my life behind me and I can't do that until I can get some closure. Even if she never forgives me I at least want her to tell me that and know that she heard me out at least once before she cuts me out of her life forever." She looked up at Felicity with shame filled eyes, "Back when Ollie and I were first together, Thea and I were so close and then the boat happened." Her lips tightened again, "I stopped coming around, obviously, and after Thea got involved in drugs I got her to do her community service at CNRI partly because I felt guilty for just abandoning her like that."

She swung her legs back and forth slightly as she gathered her thoughts, "It wasn't Thea's fault that Ollie cheated on me, she'd lost her brother, too, not to mention her dad, but I was just so angry and my dad started drinking heavily." Laurel cast her eyes towards the floor, "It was a dark time for us. He practically accused me of killing Sara by bringing Ollie into our lives. It got…" her breath hitched slightly and she blew it out slowly, "bad between us."

"Your dad did that?" Felicity asked in surprise.

"Addiction takes you to some pretty dark places," she said with a sad smile. "He said some pretty harsh stuff, called me a 'gold digger' and told me I was a sell out who was so hung up on becoming the wife of a billionaire that I was willing to give up everything I believed in. He wasn't completely wrong," she said with a shrug. "That's the other thing about addiction, it makes it possible to say all the hateful, hurtful stuff that you would normally avoid saying out loud but that you're secretly thinking about." Laurel inhaled again sharply, her spine stiffening, "Which you totally know about since I did the same thing to you."

"Vodka under the bridge, remember?" Felicity told her, waving her off.

"Thanks," she said with a melancholy look before dropping her eyes. "Like I said, he wasn't totally wrong. I did stay with Ollie even though I knew he'd cheated on me time and time again, and it wasn't just because I thought I was in love with him. I wanted to have a meaningful life, I wanted to change the world, and, yeah, being the wife of the grandson of John Jonas Deardon," she shook her head. "It would have been like marrying into the Kennedy's and I wanted to be the next Hilary Clinton someday."

"You were a kid, Laurel," Felicity told her. "You made mistakes, got caught up in your own headspace, did some stupid shit, but that doesn't make you a bad person. When you fell down you got yourself back up and you're fighting to make up for those mistakes every day. Like I heard someone say in a movie once, 'Two tears in a bucket; mother fuck it."

Laurel burst out into a surprised laugh at that then reached out to squeeze her shoulder gratefully, "Again; thanks, and you're right; mother fuck it!" She said with a certain amount of relish, then paused, "But while that might work for mistakes I made with Ollie when I was twenty-one, everything since then is on me and I need to make amends for that. I drank, I used drugs, I made those decisions, no one else, and part of my coming to terms with that is apologizing to Thea but I can't do that if she won't talk to me."

"Making amends doesn't mean just getting people's forgiveness," Felicity told her, "From what your dad used to tell me, it's also about learning to forgive yourself and doing right by the people you hurt whether they forgive you or not."

"I know that," Laurel sighed, "I know that I can't make her talk to me but I just…" She looked at her with pleading eyes, "Could you just talk to her for me? Please? You don't have to argue my case or anything, just tell her I'm sorry and that I'm really trying this time and that, when she's ready, I'd like to apologize to her face to face."

Felicity's brow furrowed as she considered her request, "Okay, I'll talk to her but I can't make her do anything. Thea's pretty stubborn and definitely knows how to hold a grudge. I mean, she once shot Oliver with an arrow, remember."

"Yeah, but she was brainwashed," the other woman said jokingly then shrugged, "Then again, her aim might be better without the drugs. I know mine is." They both laughed at that before Laurel nodded at her gratefully, "I know you hate it when I say 'thank you' every five seconds, but thanks," she told her, then grinned, "And while I'd prefer not to get shot, you can let her know that she's welcome to punch me in the face if that's what it takes."

"I'll let her know," Felicity said dryly then gathered up the second file and the envelope with the cards she'd prepared. "Ready to go upstairs so I can enjoy not calling Bruce back for a little while longer?"

"I could be up for that," Laurel nodded, "Let's go pick out our gowns for the ball, shall we?"

"Gowns for the ball?" Felicity repeated skeptically, "So what does that make me? Belle or Sleeping Beauty?"

"I don't know who it makes you but I'm pretty sure I'm the wicked stepsister, at least according to most people," Laurel joked half-heartedly.

"Naw," she said playfully as she bumped her with her shoulder just as they entered the lift, "That's Helena's job now."

"'Now'," she repeated. "Good to know that 'now' I'm no longer the designated team bitch," she said wryly as she hit the button.

Felicity grinned, "Yeah, I figured that'd cheer you up."

"Totally."