Author's Notes: This is a sequel to 'Actions Speak Louder Than Words (and other true sayings).' If you haven't read that, I highly recommend reading it first. There are also some one-shots I've written (and will continue to write) set in this universe. While those are less necessary, I'd recommend at least reading 'Lines' as this is set immediately after it. This is going to be a long fic... not sure how long yet. I aim to keep every chapter 4-8k and I'm hoping to update every weekend. I hope. Thank you for reading!

Tags: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak, Nyssa al Ghul/Sara Lance, Thea Queen/Roy Harper, Oliver Queen, Felicity Smoak, Sara Lance, Nyssa al Ghul, Thea Queen, John Diggle, Roy Harper, Laurel Lance, Malcolm Merlyn, Captain Lance, Ra's al Ghul, OCs, established Olicity, sequel to another fic you should really read first, plot, kidnapping, because of course there's kidnapping this is Arrow, League of Assassins, Warning: Malcolm Merlyn, really horrible things happening to people who really don't deserve it, there are things and people I'm intentionally not tagging for reasons, but nothing triggery, alternate season 3, violence, angst, sex, your author has half a plan, which is better than no plan

Before, when she'd run off with Malcolm Merlyn, it had mostly been anger and desperation that had fueled Thea's choices. She hadn't hated it. Not then. Because, questionable as it might have been, it had still been her choice.

That's not true this time.

She's not here because she decided to be. Not really. She's here because her life is in danger. She's here because Oliver and Malcolm have declared that she should be. And the more time that passes, the less it all seems worth it. She doesn't have a death wish, but after eight months in hiding she's tired of pretending this is living.

"Seasick?" Malcolm asks her, leaning against the railing next to her.

"You know, it takes a special kind of jackass to make me hide out on a boat, all things considered," Thea points out darkly.

Malcolm concedes her point with an indulgent nod and too much amusement in his eyes. Like he wasn't the one who sank the Queen's Gambit. Like he didn't kill her father and condemn her brother to five years in isolation fighting for his own survival. Father or not, savior or not, she's slowly learning to hate Malcolm.

"I want to go home," she tells him, folding her arms across her chest in petulant defiance.

"I know," Malcolm admits. "As… delightful as this bonding experience has been, you're a beautiful, intelligent young woman. You deserve more than a life in hiding with your father."

"But…?" She asks, because she knows it's coming.

"But things are taking longer than I'd expected," he allows. "I have things in motion. Plans that will set us free, give us the upper hand. But these things take time, Thea. You need to be patient."

"I'm done being patient," she tells him, chin jutting out proudly. "It's been eight months and I've missed everything because I'm stuck hiding out here with you."

"You aren't looking at the big picture," he accuses, disappointment coloring his face.

"I'm looking at my picture," she counters. "I'm looking at missing out on Roy's recovery when he needed me and reestablishing my club and helping my brother hang on to my family's company and getting to know the girl that I'm pretty sure is going to be my sister-in-law some day. So, yeah, I'm ignoring this 'big picture' you're talking about because your big picture isn't the same as mine."

"These are shallow concerns, Thea," he tells her with a pitying shake of his head. "You're smarter than this. Missing out on playing nurse with Roy and coffee dates with your brother's secretary are blips, barely noteworthy details of your life."

"Sometimes that's the important stuff," she tells him defiantly.

"So's being alive," he points out.

She's about to respond when the distinctive noise of a jet ski draws her attention. It's closing in on them from the north, the shoreline vaguely discernible behind it. She can't make out the figure driving it yet, but she can see it's only one person.

"Get below deck," Malcolm orders, gripping her elbow.

"No," Thea says petulantly, yanking her arm from his grasp.

Malcolm's face hardens, twists into something darker, something more honest than the mask he's been wearing these past few months. Disturbing as that is, it's also something of a victory for Thea. She's tired of playing by his rules.

"What happens next is on you," he tells her gravely.

He's armed. She knows he is. He always is. And, besides, she's pretty sure Malcolm can be termed a weapon all on his own.

"I make my own mistakes. I'm not taking responsibilities for yours, too," Thea informs him. "I refuse to hold myself accountable for your actions just because I won't hide anymore."

"I wish I'd known about you sooner, Thea," Malcolm tells her. "You have too much of your mother in you."

She's seething at that. Her mother… her dead mother who he had an affair with, dumped his son on, turned into a widow and blackmailed into a conspiracy designed to kill thousands. And he has the nerve…

"Given my genetic options, I think that was probably for the best," she snaps.

The figure in the distance is closer now. Close enough that Thea can make out that it's a woman with blonde hair. She squints, blinks against the glare of the sunshine reflecting off of the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Recognition hits right as she's aware of Malcolm raising his bow.

"It's Sara," Thea shouts, placing a hand on Malcolm's arm.

"I know," Malcolm replies, his focus unwavering.

"You aren't going to shoot Sara!" Thea demands, stepping in front of his nocked arrow.

"Get out of the way," he orders.

"No!" Thea says, planting her hands on her hips. "This is Sara. I've known her nearly my whole life. She's my friend."

"She's the lover of the Heir to the Demon," Macolm tells her. "You need to rethink her place in your life and you need to move out of the way."

"No," Thea says again with determination and grit.

Malcolm pushes her out of the way, shoving her to the side and letting loose an arrow in the direction of the jet ski. Sara swerves, anticipating the shot and avoiding it with practised ease. Malcolm grabs another arrow almost instantly, though. An explosive one this time, Thea can tell. Malcolm is an excellent shot and even a near miss at this point could kill Sara if the gasoline on her jet ski ignites.

Thea isn't going to take that risk.

She charges Malcolm, gripping his bow and pulling it down. He can't aim with her tugging on the bow and he can't hurt her. Not really. But he's livid. Fury boiling in his gaze as he looks at her.

"SARA!" Thea shouts as loud as she can, her concern entirely for the other woman and not at all for herself.

Messed up as Malcolm might be - and he really, really is - he's not about to hurt Thea. And she knows it. And that gives her power, gives her control. No wonder he's so mad, she realizes, Malcolm has never done well with control resting in the hands of others.

Sara speeds up at Thea's cry, reaches the boat faster than Thea would have thought possible and boards in short order.

"I'm here to help," the blonde says, her hands up in a gesture of goodwill. "I'm not here for the League."

"Forgive me if I don't take you at your word," Malcolm replies coldly.

"You're going to have to," Sara tells them earnestly. "Because you need my help."

"Why?" Malcolm asks, his tone sharp.

"Because they know where you are. And they're coming," Sara says gravely.

"Is Ollie-?" Thea starts.

"He's fine," Sara says reassuringly. "Everyone back home is fine. It's you we need to worry about right now."

"Does he know you're here? Is he coming, too?" Thea asks, looking hopefully back out toward the ocean as if her brother might appear out of the blue.

"No," Sara says, lips pressed together thinly as she shakes her head. "I came straight from Bucharest and they're probably watching Ollie. There wasn't time to call him or a way to warn him without them finding out. The League is right behind me. We need to go. Now."

"It's too late for that," Malcolm says, eyes on the horizon as his grip tightens on his bow.

It takes a moment for Thea to see what he sees, a dark speck in the sky off in the distance, closing in quickly.

"Is that a helicopter?" Thea asks, blinking at it.

"It's the League," Sara says in frustration. "We're going to have to fight."

"You're going to fight the League? Beside me?" Merlyn asks skeptically.

"If this were just about you, I wouldn't. But it's not. The League isn't going to be satisfied until they make you suffer and I will fight to keep Thea safe, even if it means having to fight at your side," Sara says, pulling a staff off of her back. "I have enough blood on my hands. I refuse to add hers."

"How very noble," Malcolm says with clear distaste.

"I understand that might be a foreign notion to you, Malcolm, but some of us have a sense of honor," Sara tells him.

"I find your newly grown sense of morality confusing, but since it benefits me for now I'll accept it as a strange and nonsensical quirk."

"Get below deck," Sara tells Thea, ignoring Malcolm's barbs.

"I can help. I can fight," Thea insists, stance firm.

"Not against the League, you can't," Sara tells her levelly. "I'm sure Malcolm's worked with you. I will, too, if you let me. But you aren't ready for this and if you're on deck, Malcolm and I will both be distracted trying to keep you safe. Get below deck, lock the door and arm yourself."

Thea hesitates for a moment, looks toward Malcolm who nods almost imperceptibly, before sighing in resignation.

"Fine. But if you two die or one of you kills the other I'm going to be really pissed," Thea announces before turning on her heel and heading below deck.

There's quiet for a second, adversarial and thick. The helicopter is still too far away for Malcolm to shoot arrows or the League to shoot them. And it's strange, Malcolm and Sara standing side-by-side. They are opposites in so many ways. He who ran to the League to escape the helplessness and rage of his own life, her who was saved by the League when she couldn't find her way back to her own life, as much as she wanted to. He who left the League to chase his own vendettas, her who once left because she'd had enough of vendettas to last her a lifetime. They are not allies. Not really. But in this - in keeping Thea safe - their interests align.

"How do I know you won't just turn around and hand me over to Nyssa?" Malcolm asks.

"You don't," Sara tells him. "But the League doesn't just want your head on a platter at this point. You've kept them running after you for nearly a year, now. They want you to suffer. That means using Thea against you. I won't let that happen. She's been through too much already and I have a real problem with women suffering for the sake of punishing men."

"They see her as a tool to get to me," Malcolm agrees.

"Their vision is limited. She's more than that," Sara says firmly. "Everyone is more than that. I'm not going to let her be a sacrificial pawn in a struggle between two men who want to play at being king."

Malcolm's eyebrows raise at that, more at her obvious distaste for Ra's al Ghul than her distaste for him. She has, perhaps, said more than she ought to have. But that matters little at the moment because the League is closing in fast and Nyssa is visible, standing with her bow already aimed out the side of the helicopter's open door.

"I don't need pawns to declare checkmate," Malcolm smirks, raising his bow to aim at the helicopter.

Sara's eyes widen a little as she sees the arrow he's using. She starts, gasps in protest but doesn't make any sudden movements to stop him before he lets loose the arrow toward the League helicopter. Instead, she turns to look at Nyssa, fear and desperation in her eyes as the explosive arrow heads in her lover's direction. Nyssa sees it too, though. And she's clever. One doesn't live their entire life as an assassin without honing a fine sense of self-preservation.

Nyssa lets loose an arrow, too, a grappling hook that sinks into the side of the boat. And then she jumps to the water. She breaks the surface of the ocean just as Merlyn's arrow hits her helicopter. The rest of the League members on board are not so lucky. Merlyn's aim is true, as it usually is, and the explosion that follows sends chunks of twisted, fiery metal that used to be a helicopter into the ocean below. A rotor blade misses Nyssa by inches, as she retracts the grappling hook line and zips toward the boat, escaping the fiery debris crumbling into the ocean around her.

It takes a moment for Sara to breathe normally again. She might be dedicated to helping save Thea, but she's not willing to sacrifice Nyssa in the process. That hadn't even seemed like a possibility until just now. Nyssa is vibrant, powerful, larger-than-life. The notion that Malcolm Merlyn might be able to kill her is simply wrong.

"No," Sara says sharply as Malcolm raises his bow again, eyes on Nyssa in the water.

"How did you think this would end?" Malcolm asks her. "She's hunting me. She's hunting my daughter."

"And if you kill Ra's' daughter, what is it that you think he'll do?" Sara asks defiantly. "You know him as well as anyone. How would he take that kind of betrayal?"

Malcolm actually pauses at that, considers her words.

"He would burn Starling City to the ground," Malcolm decides.

"In case it's occurring to you about now that that was more or less your goal, I'm gonna point out that you're not entirely right. He would destroy the city, but only to destroy you. To destroy the memory of you, to erase you from existence before he locks you away to die a slow, painful, pitiful death," Sara asserts.

She's not wrong. They both know this. And of Malcolm Merlyn's weaknesses, ego is the greatest. He will not settle for being forgotten by history.

Nyssa is aboard the boat a moment later, anger burning in her eyes even as her soaking wet form creates puddles on the deck.

"You would aid him?" Nyssa asks darkly, hurt slicing through her gaze as she looks to Sara.

"I would protect Thea," Sara emphasizes. "Nyssa… I don't want to fight you."

"Then I suggest you get out of my way," Nyssa announces, eyes flitting toward Merlyn.

"I can't do that. Nyssa, you know why I can't do that. This is wrong," Sara implores.

"It is the will of the Demon's Head," she replies, as if that excuses everything, but there is apology in her tone.

"That doesn't make it right," Sara counters.

"It is neither right nor wrong," Nyssa responds. "It merely is."

"Whatever the League's faults, it has a code," Sara points out. "We don't hunt the innocent."

"The blood of my enemy is my enemy," Nyssa recites. "Examples must be made. And if we cannot get to Malcolm Merlyn through Thea Queen, we will get to Thea Queen through her blood. The longer this goes on, the more the punishment spreads."

"Are you threatening Oliver?" Sara asks, blinking in surprise.

"After a fashion," Nyssa replies, offering no further clarification. "I do not wish this, beloved. But my will in this is immaterial."

"Only because you let it be, Nyssa," Sara implores, taking a stilted step forward. "Forget your father's will. Walk away. With me. Please. We can do this."

It's obvious that Sara's words pain her. Nyssa's face is all longing and regret. But she is a child of the League. She has known no other life and her entire existence has been spent under her father's thumb. There is never a question as to her response. Not for Sara.

"Dreams are for when we sleep. It does not do to dwell on them in the light of day, my love," Nyssa tells her. "I must do as my father commands. His will is absolute."

"There will come a day, I think, when you will regret that," Sara says sadly.

"Such a day is not only in the future, beloved," Nyssa tells her, rueful smile curling at her lips.

"Touching," Merlyn says dryly.

"You would do well not to mock me," Nyssa growls in his direction.

"And you'd do well not to fight me, but it looks like neither one of us is going to do that, doesn't it?" He counters.

Nyssa snarls before lunging. She is fury given form, a storm of anger and brutality directed wholly at Malcolm Merlyn. And she might have beaten him easily, had Sara not been a part of the equation as well.

When Nyssa fights, she fights to kill. This has been ingrained in her from the time she could scarcely walk. When you fight, you fight to take a life. You fight to the end. But Nyssa has no desire to see the life fade from Sara's eyes. She doesn't want Sara's end. She would fight against that. And it makes battling her lover a foreign kind of thing. She doesn't know what winning looks like if it doesn't mean standing over another person's body.

Malcolm Merlyn has no such reservations, though.

The battle is fairly short-lived and entirely absent of weapons, if one ignores that Nyssa, Sara and Malcolm are their own weapons. Nyssa is an incredible fighter, but she cannot hold off both Merlyn and Sara. Not when she's unwilling to kill one of her assailants. And, in the end, she is bloodied and on her knees on the deck of the boat with Sara and Malcolm both standing over her, each of them worse for wear but obviously victorious.

So, apparently this is what winning looks like when one isn't standing over another person's body.

At least, they aren't yet.

"Kill me and you will never escape the Demon. He will hunt you to the ends of the earth and beyond. He will desecrate your bones and spread a plague of death and destruction upon everything you have ever touched until it is nothing but a memory of ash and ruin," Nyssa says pridefully, a stark contrast to her position disarmed and forced to her knees in front of Malcolm Merlyn.

"I think you overestimate your father's affections for you," Malcolm says with condescending sympathy.

"You aren't killing her," Sara insists, whole body tense as she stands on edge facing Malcolm.

"And you're going to stop me?" Malcolm asks skeptically.

"If you're going to kill her, you'll have to kill me first. If you even can," Sara announces. "I can't imagine that would go over terribly well with Thea, would it?"

Malcolm's frustration is palpable and he hisses through his teeth in Sara's direction, giving her a warning look.

"You need to figure out whose side you're on," he informs her.

"I'm on my side, the side that means no one I care about dies," Sara tells him. "Not Nyssa, not Thea. You… well, you I care less about, but your death would hurt Thea, so…"

"Charming," Malcolm sneers. "So it appears we're at an impasse."

"Nyssa will leave. Without you and without Thea," Sara declares.

"I will not," Nyssa declares hotly.

"You will," Sara tells her with defiance. "We'll leave together on the jet ski. Tomorrow, when Malcolm and Thea have had a chance to disappear, you will be free to go. But until then, you will not leave my sight."

"You're taking her prisoner?" Malcolm asks with surprise.

"I'm giving you cover for a getaway," Sara responds.

"You honestly think you can control her? We are talking about the daughter of the Demon," Malcolm points out. "She trained both of us. We barely subdued her together. What chance do you have alone?"

"I'll drug her if I have to," Sara says. "But I don't think I'll have to. Will I, Nyssa? This is that weekend in Dawei all over again."

"Sara…" Nyssa says with great hesitance and entirely too much longing as she looks up at the blonde. "My father-"

"Will never know you weren't taken captive and drugged," Sara tells her.

"Stolen moments with you are a betrayal to him, my love," Nyssa tells her.

"And ordering you to kidnap or murder a blameless teenager isn't a betrayal of you?" Sara questions. "I understand why you stay. I do. The League is all you've ever had."

"And yet you try to seduce me away from it?" Nyssa asks with a dry laugh.

"If you'll let me," Sara replies. "But either way, we're getting on that jet ski together and leaving Thea and Malcolm alone."

"You are aware that this is why my father objects to you?" She asks, as Sara reaches for her hand and helps her to stand. "You make me weak, vulnerable. Human."

"He objects to me because he doesn't see women as equals to men and he surely doesn't take seriously the idea of a woman loving another woman. Just goes to show how fallible he really is, doesn't it?" Sara asks with a little smile, wiping some blood away from Nyssa's lips.

"I have no desire to harm Thea Queen," Nyssa says. "But… Sara if the League does not get to her, things will be so much worse. There are horrors he has planned that even you can scarcely begin to imagine."

"Will you tell me?" Sara asks curiously, clearly unsure of what answer to expect.

"I… Sara... " Nyssa says, her voice pained.

"We don't need to be enemies in this, Nyssa," Sara says. "We don't need to be enemies in anything."

"I will consider your words. And your request," Nyssa says after a moment of hesitance.

"Contact Oliver," Sara says, directing her words back toward Malcolm who continues to watch them cautiously. "He needs to know what's going on. And, frankly, if the League can find you here, I'm not sure you're able to protect Thea anymore."

"And he can?" Malcolm asks, distaste coloring his words.

"I think the two of you can. Sometimes home turf is an advantage," Sara tells him.

"And sometimes it's a homing beacon," Malcolm counters pointedly. "There are problems in Starling City beyond just the League's reach and there's a reason we've been frequenting countries without extradition treaties."

"Regardless, running isn't working anymore. It was a stopgap measure at best and it's usefulness is over," Sara tells him.

"On that, at least, we agree," Malcolm concedes.

"When next I see you, Malcolm Merlyn..." Nyssa says warningly.

"Save your threats," Malcolm tells her. "You're nothing but an arrow. You aren't aiming the bow. You aren't even pulling back the string. You're an instrument of destruction with no choices to call your own. Your threats mean nothing."

"Nyssa," Sara says, tugging the other woman by the arm to hold her back even as she starts toward Merlyn. "Drop it. Nyssa, let it go."

The assassin listens, even as fury burns in her eyes. Her eyes drift down to Sara's grip on her forearm and something softens in her gaze, shifts and morphs from frustration and ire to longing and pain. And love. Always love. Even when Nyssa had been sent to kill her, she'd not been able to keep that out of the equation.

"We'll be in touch," Sara tells Malcolm, tugging Nyssa toward the jet ski.

"You'll forgive me if that isn't exactly reassuring," Malcolm tells her dryly.

Sara smiles back, toothy and unsettlingly.

"Good," she tells him. "It wasn't meant to be."

"Don't forget you've got that thing at that place with those people today," Felicity says, slipping on a pair of truly awesome electric green strappy high heels as she sits perched on the edge of their bed.

Oliver pauses from where he's knotting his tie and catches her eye in the mirror.

"Should I be concerned that I actually understood that?"

"I dunno. Are you?" She asks curiously, head tilted to the side as she looks up at him.

"Not even a little," he replies with a laugh.

"Well good, then," she grins back, cheeks dimpling and eyes alight. "Me either."

"You call your mom back yet?" He asks, finishing with his tie and taking a couple of steps over towards her.

"Ugh, no," she says, wrinkling her nose. "She wants me to set her up with Walter. Walter, Oliver. I mean can you imagine that? He's the most British to ever British and she's just… so Vegas."

"I can't see him being interested, no offense to your mom," Oliver smiles back.

"Thank goodness! Can you imagine if he was? My mother and your ex-step-father?" She asks pointedly. "Just a little incesty, there. More Clueless levels than Game of Thrones, but still."

"There are days I wish you hadn't caught me up quite so much on pop culture references," he counters with a wince. "This is one of them."

"Sorry," she replies, though her smile suggests otherwise. "But my mom… I just can't believe she wants me to set her up with Walter."

"I'm pretty sure she's made her way through most of the board members, so I'm not actually that surprised," he shrugs.

"Oh God, there's a mental image I didn't need. Thank you for that," she replies with a shudder as he takes her hand and helps her to her feet. "I'm not even going to be able to look at the board next month, you realize?"

"We should just tell them she'll be there. Then most of them will beg off, we'll have to reschedule and you and I can go on vacation instead," he suggests with a horribly rakish grin that makes him look entirely too self-satisfied.

"Vacation, huh?" She asks indulgently, because he's adorable like this and she cares far more about that then the fact that they're going to be late for his morning meeting with the director of human resources.

"Someplace warm. Sunny. Where I can get you into a bikini," he declares, skimming a hand up her bare arm.

"You say 'into' and yet I'm fairly sure you mean 'out of,'" she smirks, shivering a little as his calloused fingers work their way up the back of her upper arm to drift along her shoulder and trace the curve of her collarbone.

"Details."

Yeah, they're totally in danger of missing that meeting all together if they aren't careful.

"You're usually really good with details," she murmurs, leaning in a little.

Forget the meeting. It's just HR. She can reschedule it for Oliver for anytime that isn't now. Or he can be late. It's not like he's known for his timeliness anyhow.

She'd known, even before they'd really gotten together, that she'd probably always find him attractive; she'd probably always be drawn to him physically. What she hadn't anticipated was the sense of rightness that washes over her whenever they have a chance to just be them.

His lips against hers are familiar at this point, but something about it feels new every time. There's still that sense of anticipation and excitement at his touch and, after eight months together, she's thinking that might not be a thing that ever goes away.

She hopes it doesn't.

Because this is perfect. This is home.

She sighs against his lips and twines her fingers in the short hairs at the nape of his neck, scritching her nails against his scalp in a way that always makes him go just a little boneless against her. One of his hands spans her back, bracing against it and holding her tightly against him. The other has slid down and is palming her ass.

It's the second hand that tells her definitively that he has no intention of leaving their apartment anytime soon.

"You should call Ortiz," Felicity murmurs as they part, her lips a hairsbreadth away from his.

"If you were thinking about Ortiz while we were kissing, it's going to be a little bit of a hit to my ego," Oliver tells her with an amused look. "I might have to kiss you again just to make a point."

She swats at his chest lightly because he's ridiculous and highly distracting and she loves it.

"Oliver he's like a hundred and twenty and you're just going to leave him waiting in your office?"

"Seventy-two," Oliver corrects. "And I'd text him but he refuses to use a cell phone."

"Then call his office and have his assistant go up and get him so we can stay here or you can try to keep your hands to yourself, fix your hair and we can head upstairs to meet him," Felicity says. "Frankly, I'm hoping you choose 'Option A,' even though I'm pretty sure that makes me a terrible employee."

"Makes you a great girlfriend though," he grins, kissing her again.

And… yeah. He's totally going with 'Option A.' If she has a mental fistpump of triumph at that, she figures no one could reasonably blame her. Except maybe Ortiz, but he doesn't need to know.

"Call his assistant," Felicity says as they part again, taking a full step back away from his reach.

The look he gives her is heavy and sends a shudder down her spine just as surely as if he'd been dragging his fingers up it. But he listens. Surprisingly. Oliver can be kind of single-minded sometimes.

His hand is literally on his phone when there's a solid knock at their door. There are very few people who have access to their floor without security clearing it with her or Oliver first and none of them are people Felicity expected to see this morning so the confusion that runs across her face is understandable.

"I've got it. You call Ortiz's assistant," Felicity orders, straightening her dress as she heads to the door.

There's another sharp rap before she gets the door open and when she does, the face that greets Felicity's is a total surprise. Technically, Pamela is one of the handful of people who don't need security clearance to get to their floor. In practice, she's only come up twice and both times she'd been expected. Today, she definitely wasn't

"Hey," Felicity says, her voice phrasing the word more like a question than a statement, really.

"Good morning," Pamela greets.

It's stiff, though, Pamela's words. She looks ill-at-ease in a way that's totally foreign on the brash, confident Public Relations Director. Her eyes are serious and almost anxious and the smile that flits across her face in greeting is both disingenuous and brief.

It's jarring.

"Is everything okay?" Felicity asks warily.

"Can I come in?" Pamela asks, which is not a reply at all and worries Felicity hugely.

"Yeah… yes, of course," Felicity says opening the door further and gesturing for Pamela to come in.

Oliver apparently finished his phone call in near record time and is standing a few paces away looking every bit as confused and vaguely concerned as Felicity feels.

"What's wrong?" Oliver asks immediately.

"We should sit down," Pamela says, fingers drumming against a manilla envelope in her hand.

"Pamela," Oliver says warningly.

"Trust me, Oliver. Sit down," Pamela says a little more firmly.

It's actually slightly comforting, hearing that authoritative tone from Pamela. She seems… strange without it.

"Is the company-" Oliver starts, but Pamela cuts him off with a swift shake of her head.

"This isn't about QC, Oliver," she tells him. "This is about you."

Felicity's heart hammers wildly in her chest at this because oh God who knows about the Arrow now? Are they outted entirely? She hasn't turned on the television today. Is this eight months ago all over again?

Oliver grabs her hand, tangles their fingers together and squeezes. She looks up at him with something close to panic written across her face and he looks back with solidarity and reassurance. She hadn't realized how much she needed that until she got it. They are them. They will deal with this, whatever that means.

She does sit, though. And she pulls Oliver down next to her. Pamela, however, paces the space in front of their coffee table while she tries to form whatever words she needs to get out.

"What do they have, Pamela?" Oliver asks.

"Nothing… yet," Pamela replies. "And if you want this kept out of the press, no matter how you want to deal with this, I will do my very best to make that happen."

"Okay…" Oliver says warily, glancing from Felicity to Pamela and back because this isn't making sense yet.

"I'm not sure you'll want Felicity here for this," Pamela says finally, her pacing stopping as she looks toward Oliver.

"There is no part of my life that Felicity isn't a part of," Oliver says levelly. "Whatever's out there, whatever you know. I promise, she knows it, too."

Pamela laughs at that, dry and humorless.

"No," Pamela counters. "She doesn't. I thought you did. But now… I'm pretty sure I was wrong. And you should know."

"I don't understand," Felicity says. "This isn't about…"

She stops herself before she gets any further. Because Pamela knows about the Arrow, but she doesn't know about the Arrow. And they've been very careful to keep it that way.

"This is about twenty years of secrets I've kept for Oliver's family," Pamela says seriously. "At least it's about one of the secrets I've kept for his family."

"Felicity stays," Oliver says, looking concerned about whatever Pamela's about to say, but holding on to Felicity's hand tightly all the same.

Pamela nods and there's another weird silence like she can't quite get the words out she needs to say. But Oliver is edgy, impatient and he's not all that inclined to give her time to reformulate whatever speech she's figured out in her head.

"Pamela," he says sharply and she nods again.

"I thought you knew," she says again. "Really, I did. But after the conversation we had last week when Felicity was sick… it became pretty clear you didn't."

"What don't I know?" Oliver asks, quickly losing patience.

"Your parents relied on me for a lot," Pamela reminds him, fidgeting awkwardly while she speaks. "I never knew about the plan to destroy the Glades, obviously. I would never have gone along with anything designed to murder people. But other things… I covered up a lot of sins for the sake of the company - your parents' affairs, Thea's parentage, some of your pre-island escapades, some of Thea's wilder party days. Protecting the Queen family image is an integral part of protecting Queen Consolidated's image. And even when it didn't sit well with me, it was obviously necessary so I went along with it."

"You're telling me there's something you covered up for my family that I don't know about?" Oliver asks.

"I'm telling you there's something I covered up for you that you don't know about," Pamela clarifies.

"What?" Oliver demands gruffly.

"A little more than ten years ago, your mother called me to come out to Queen Manor," Pamela says slowly. "She needed my help to keep in press in the dark and to funnel a fairly sizable amount of money to a girl named Sandra Hawke."

Oliver utterly freezes at that, his whole body tensing in an instant. The only movement from him at all is the widening of his eyes. He gets what this is. Obviously he does. But the dots haven't quite connected for Felicity yet.

"Who is Sandra Hawke?" Felicity asks after a moment, taking in the silent communication between Pamela and Oliver.

"She's…" Oliver starts, but he doesn't seem to quite know where to go with it. "There was a… brief relationship between me and her at one point. She's the one I almost had a kid with."

Pieces start clicking into place in Felicity's head with that information and she desperately hopes she's wrong about the picture that's forming because Oliver will not handle it well if she's right.

"Are you telling me…" Oliver starts, looking up at Pamela as he speaks before breaking off his train of thought as he stands and starts to pace, all nervous energy with nowhere to go. "Are you telling me that my mother paid off a girl to keep quiet about miscarrying my child or…"

He can't finish his question. It's too much. And from the look on Pamela's face, Felicity knows the answer before the other woman even opens her mouth. What she doesn't know is how to support Oliver while he hears the truth.

"I'm telling you that your mother paid off a pregnant young woman to disappear," Pamela says, no small amount of sympathy in her voice.

Oliver crumbles at this, head in his hands and shoulders hunched protectively as he faces away from both of them. This will eat at him from the inside out. He will blame himself. Felicity knows this as surely as she knows her own name.

"Hey," she says, getting up and going to him, wrapping her arms around his middle and hugging him fiercely, cheek pressed against his chest. "This isn't your fault. We'll deal with this. I love you. Okay?"

He doesn't respond, either verbally or physically. But he doesn't push her away either and she counts that as a win.

"Moira said you knew," Pamela tells him. "She said you knew and you weren't ready for that kind of responsibility so she was doing what was best for everyone. And I'm sorry, Oliver. Had I realized what was actually going on…"

"I have a ten year old?" Oliver asks, blinking back toward Pamela as if he hasn't heard anything anyone has said since the bit about paying off a pregnant woman to disappear.

"His name's Connor," Pamela says.

"I have a son," Oliver says blankly, like the words aren't quite making sense in his head.

"I have pictures… if you want them," Pamela tells him, gesturing with the envelope she's been holding the whole time before putting it down on the coffee table.

Oliver's eyes can't seem to break away from that sealed envelope, but he makes no move to open it.

"I wasn't ready," he admits. "Neither was Sandra, I'm sure. But I would have never… I would have found a way. For a kid… for my son to grow up without a dad is just… With how distant my father was when I was growing up, I always swore…"

He can't seem to fully finish a thought and Felicity can't blame him for that in the least. He's overwhelmed, which is fair. This is overwhelming. And unexpected. And, yeah, she might have to take some time to process what this might mean for her life too, in the next few days, since she's just found out that her live-in-boyfriend has a ten-year-old. But that's for later. Now is about Oliver. And the soothing hand she keeps running up and down his back doesn't seem to be offering him the comfort she wishes it would.

"When I realized you didn't know about him… I wasn't going to let that stand," Pamela tells him. "If you want to keep this quiet, we will. If you want to be a part of his life and keep it out of the press, I'll find a way because I owe you that much at the very least. If you want this to go full-court press, I'll manage that, too."

"Is he… is he happy?" Oliver asks, looking at Pamela like she has all the answers.

It kills Felicity a little that that's his first question. He doesn't ask what he looks like, doesn't ask if Sandra ever got married and gave him a step-father, doesn't want to know if he has legal grounds to take Connor since Sandra lied to him about the boy's very existence. No. Oliver's very first thought about his son is to ask if he's happy.

All-in-all, that makes sense, though. Happiness is something that had often proven elusive for Oliver.

"I think so," Pamela replies. "But if you really want to know, I think you'll have to find out for yourself."

Oliver turns away at that, his face thoroughly unreadable. But Felicity knows him. She knows him. If Connor is happy without him, he's thinking, then he's probably better off without Oliver in his life. Felicity knows this is his thought process without him saying a word.

"This is gonna take a while to sink in. You'll need to process. I know. I mean, I would," Felicity says before screwing her face funny as she thinks about her words. "Not that anyone could pop out of the woodwork and tell me I had a kid I didn't know about. Obviously. But that's not the point. And I do have one."

"Which is?" Oliver asks.

"That I'll support you whatever you decide to do. And you aren't in this alone," she tells him, taking his hands in hers and looking him in the eye. "But… Oliver, the decision to be a part of his life was taken away from you. For what it's worth, I don't think you should repeat that mistake by taking the same choice away from him."

Oliver says nothing, but he does look at her, eyes searching hers as he clearly lets her words settle in his mind. Maybe he'll heed her words. Maybe he won't. But at least she knows he's considering them. And, as a girl whose dad chose not to be a part of her life, she knows exactly what she's talking about.

"You can leave now," he says to Pamela.

She nods solemnly.

"I am sorry, Oliver," she says again.

"I know you are," he replies. "And when I'm looking at this more objectively I'll probably even forgive you. But that day isn't today."

"That's fair," she smiles grimly before tapping the manilla envelope on the table twice and turning to leave.

The door clicks shut behind her a moment later, leaving Oliver, Felicity and silence alone in the room. It's stifling. And Felicity's not quite sure how to deal with this. What is the protocol for your boyfriend finding out he has a son in the fifth grade?

"Do you want me to go, too?" She asks, watching him closely.

"Yes," he says immediately before sighing and running his hands through his close-cropped hair. "No. Maybe. I don't know."

"Okay," she says easily. "Because, you know, it's okay if you need to be alone with this for a bit and it's okay if you want to lean on me too. I'm good with that. However you need to deal with this, it's fine."

"How are you coping with this so much better than I am?" He asks with a sharp laugh.

"No one lied to me," she points out, running a hand down his arm. "And I'm your girl, no matter what. This is life-altering, yeah, but I love you and my first concern is how you are so I'm dealing with that first. The rest will sink in later, I'm sure."

"I don't deserve you," he mutters.

"Love isn't about deserving someone," she points out. "And even if it was, you would. Because we deserve each other."

"Even if that means you're practically a stepmother to a ten-year-old?" He asks.

She goes a little breathless at that because… yeah, they haven't talked about marriage but it's always felt like something that's understood between them. It's firmly in the 'someday' category.

"I thought we recently established I'd be okay with kids someday as long as they were your kids?" She points out, leaning her cheek against his shoulder as he stares out the window as the cityscape below. "Admittedly, this isn't quite what I had in mind..."

"Me either," he responds. "I can't believe… ten years. She lied to me. How could she keep this from me? How could my mother keep this from me?"

It makes sense to Felicity, in some ways. It's not a choice she'd ever have made in Sandra's shoes, but the girl had to have been young, scared and wildly intimidated by Moira. Maybe she'd had second thoughts at some point, but pre-island Oliver hadn't exactly been stable or dependable. And then, when Connor was about three, Oliver died… for five years. How do you tell an eight year old that his father isn't actually dead? She must have thought about it at that point, but how could she not have been terrified at the idea of losing her son, either to Oliver or to her own lies. Moira's choices make less sense to Felicity, but then she'd never quite seen eye-to-eye with the Queen matriarch, to put it mildly.

Still, she says none of this to Oliver.

"Maybe you should ask her?" She says instead. "Sandra, obviously… not your mom. Because… well, that reason is obvious, I guess."

It's not quite up there with "He's dead. I mean he drowned" but her penchant for reminding him of his parents' untimely demises still prompts her to wince and makes him raise an eyebrow in her direction. Well… at least she got a reaction anyhow.

"Do you want to look at the pictures Pamela left?" She asks him curiously.

His eyes drift back toward the envelope, practically burning a hole through it with their intensity, really. But he makes no move to open it or even pick it up.

"Actually… I think… I think I'm gonna go for a walk," he says, looking at her like he's expecting her to object, but Felicity knows better.

"Okay," she says easily. "I'll go up to the office, clear your schedule for the day. Call me if… anything."

"I love you too, you know," he says, kissing the top of her head. "I just need…"

"Space, time. You need to process. I get it," she says reassuringly. "Take a walk, ride your bike, beat up a training dummy, go yell at your mom's gravestone. Whatever you need, Oliver. I'll be here when you get back."

And she will be, she vows silently. Always.