Oliver and Chloe stood transfixed. "I want that." Oliver whispered, afraid if he spoke too loud he'd break the bubble they seemed to find themselves in. He turned to Chloe the longing in his eyes so powerful it made her catch her breath. "I want that."

"You can have that." Mark said.

"We can?" Chloe spoke for the first time.

"Yeah sure, it might not play out exactly like that, down to the last syllable but barring any dramatic life altering decisions or, you know, bad sushi, you'll get that." Mark nodded.

"I can't do it without you." He told Chloe. "I want that and I'll work my whole life to make sure I have it, but I can't have it unless you're on my side." He smiled at her. "I know I've been sort of a jackass the past couple of days but please tell me you're still on my side."

"You know for such a smart guy, you can be so thick sometimes." Chloe laughed then turned to Mark. "Can I show him something?" Mark nodded and Chloe closed her eyes and thought really hard.

Oliver looked around confused as the background faded and they were transported somewhere else. "This is Star City." He looked over at Chloe. She just nodded her head.

Chloe walked down the street mumbling to herself. "Arrogant, pig headed, selfish little…" She cut herself off when she bumped into someone and looked up. It was a crowd and they were in an uproar. Somehow she'd made it to the courthouse steps where it seemed Brian Jacobs, Star City's answer to sleaze reporting, was up at the podium.

"So we say to you Mr. Mayor it's time you did something about this so called Superhero the Green Arrow." Brian said and the crowd cheered. "You were content to sit idly by and allow him to run your city for you when he was a vigilante but now he's gone too far." The crowd roared again.

"This can't be good." Chloe whispered. She watched the crowd, unable to believe her eyes. She'd read about this kind of crowd mentality before, she just never thought she'd see one in person. They were chanting now, that couldn't be a good thing. The Salem witch trials probably started that way, the lynching's in the south too.

"He lulled us into a false sense of security, made us believe he wanted to help us and now this." He held up that day's paper and with his very own headline. "Green Arrow: Vigilante turned Murderer" The crowd erupted again. "So we challenge you now Mr. Mayor, get serious about the Green Arrow, bring him to justice or we will."

Chloe was worried, they seemed only seconds away from swarming the streets with pitchforks and torches. Then worry subsided and she got pissed as they chanted again. She pushed through reporters, news crews, and angry citizens until she reached the podium. She spared an angry glare for Brian Jacobs and then pulled her cell phone out and held it up next to the microphones creating a horrifying screech that effectively shut everyone up.

"What is wrong with you people?" Chloe asked, trying to make eye contact with as many in the crowd as she could. "You're standing in front of the court house demanding the bloody severed head of a man who has done so much for you, for this city in the past five years that I can't even…you should be ashamed of yourselves."

"And who are you?" Brian asked.

She scoffed at him as the crowd hung their heads. "Who cleaned up the parks?" Chloe asked. "Who made them safe for your kids? Ran out the drug dealers and the gangs?" A murmur went through the crowds. "Not the police that's for sure, not the Star City Gazette." Chloe glared at Brian Jacobs. "He loves this city, would do anything for it, and for the people in it and you don't even know." She shook her head. "Just think for a minute if any of this makes any sense? The Green Arrow, the one you know, wouldn't do this. He wouldn't steal from you, he would never kill. You know this, you have to." Chloe said.

"What about the witness?" Someone screamed.

"Exactly." Brian said smugly. "There was a man that said he saw the Green Arrow kill that man with his own two eyes."

"Did you even talk to him?" Chloe shook her head in exasperation. "I did. He said he saw someone in a Green Arrow costume kill that man." She shrugged. "He said he'd seen the Green Arrow before and this guy looked shorter and kind of chunkier than the real thing." She laughed. "I could go two blocks over and buy enough green leather to make my own costume, does that make me the killer?"

Brian laughed. "So you're saying he was framed?"

"Impersonated." Chloe shook her head. "Copied and badly. You're a self proclaimed Green Arrow expert Mr. Jacobs. Has he ever been seen with a knife?"

Brian frowned and shook his head. "No, he's always seen with a bow and arrow."

"And how was Frank Rubio killed." Chloe asked.

"Stabbed." Brian acquiesced, his own conviction wavering.

"Does that sound right to you?" Chloe asked the crowd. They all shook their heads. "The Green Arrow is secretive yes but for good reasons. He's operating around the law because the law isn't operating. He can be…" She shook her head. "Stubborn and cocky and completely infuriating at times but he's also got conviction and a sense of justice and a heart that wants nothing more than to keep his people, his town safe."

"You speak as if you know him." Brian said.

Chloe turned to him and smiled. "Better than you could imagine." Chloe sighed. "But not as good as I thought I did." She turned to walk away.

"Miss." Brian ran after her. "Hold on, wait just a second. If you know the Green Arrow and you know he didn't do this why didn't you come forward? I could have your story on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning."

"No thank you." Chloe shook her head.

"Come on, I can pay you for the story, what do you want?" He asked.

"You're the one who writes all the Green Arrow stories aren't you?" Chloe asked him. He nodded. "You know what I want?" Chloe asked. "I want you to buy a dictionary or at least use your spell check." Chloe told him.

"I'm sorry?" Brian asked confused.

"Yes you are." Chloe nodded. "Look, I've read your column. I check in on it once in a while hoping that somehow your writing has gotten better. I want you to buy a globe. Iran is bordered on two sides by water, not just one. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are not interchangeable countries so don't treat them like that. A Thesaurus wouldn't go amiss either because in your article yesterday you used the word good twelve times; do you know how many different words with more than two syllables there are for good? Come on, you went to UCLA, did they not make you take a few writing classes?"

"Excuse me…" He tried to interrupt her.

"It's not just your vocabulary and sentence structure and bad grammar that bothers me, that's really your editor's fault. It's the complete lack of quality of your writing. You'll print anything whether it's from a reliable source or whether you heard it from a wino on the street outside your apartment. It's like you forgot about that "investigative" part of investigative reporter. Seriously do you just sit at your desk and make up stories just to fill print space? You've written over seventy stories in the past three years on the Green Arrow and not only have they been boring, which is something that's hard to do when you're writing about a masked vigilante, but I haven't been able to find a single thing in a single article that has any facts to back it up."

He glared at her and she softened slightly. "It took me two minutes to unravel your whole story back there and I wasn't even trying. Dig into the story, try actually taking to witnesses, do some background. Write better." Chloe sighed. "So to answer your question, even if I was to tell my story, it would not be to you." She walked away leaving Brian there his jaw grinding, his hands clenched into fists.

Oliver smiled at the scene when everything started to fade, it was like his vision was going black. "What's happening?" He asked in a panic.

"You're done." Mark said. "You've seen what you needed to see. It's time to go back to the real world."

"Where's Chloe?" He looked around but couldn't see her.

"She'll be waiting for you." Mark assured him.

Chloe gasped sitting up on the bed and looked around confused. Two seconds ago she'd been on the street in Star City and now she was lying on Oliver's bed in his apartment. "She's awake." Bart screamed jumping out of his chair as Victor ran into the room. "Chloe, are you ok? What the hell happened?"

"I got sucked in." Chloe said. "I got to see…I got to see the most amazing things, and the most horrible things." She frowned.

"But you're ok?" Victor asked.

"I'm fine." She assured him then remembered something. "Oliver, I never finished healing him, is he ok?" She jumped up and smiled when she heard him screaming from the other room.

"I'm fine you need to stop touching me. Someone better pick up those nacho's and the beer." Oliver warned. "Where the hell is Chloe?"

She ran out of the bedroom and paused when she saw him straightening his shirt. He looked up at her and smiled. "Hey." He said sheepishly.

"Hey." Chloe nodded at him then couldn't hold it any longer. She ran full pelt straight for him and he pulled her up into his arms, spinning her around as he laughed. When he set her down again she reached up and kissed him.

"Whoa." Bart stared at the two of them. "What the hell did they see in there?"

Mark just smiled and clapped him on the back.

"The last thing I showed you, it was four hours ago." Chloe told him. "Right after I left your apartment. And yeah I was pissed at you and I thought you were being an enormous Jackass, but seriously, I'm always on your side." She assured him. "We can do this, we can have that." Chloe promised him and then paused. She turned to Mark. "Will we remember everything? Because I'm not sure I want to know."

"It'll fade in time, soon all you'll be left with is the feeling, the knowledge of what you should do and what should be." Mark assured her.

Chloe nodded and turned back to Oliver. "Oh!" She grabbed his shirt and pulled it out of his pants. "I almost forgot! Your stab wound. I never finished healing you."

"I'm thinking maybe we should wait until we're in private before the undressing starts don't you?" Oliver smiled down at her.

"It's very faint." Victor told her. "I think you did just enough before you passed out."

Chloe ran her finger across the very faint scratch along Oliver's abs. "Ok, really you keep doing that and I'm going to have to be rude and kick everyone out." He whispered pulling her hand from his chest as she blushed.

"So are we still fired?" Bart spoke up.

Oliver pulled Chloe against his chest into a hug as she laughed. "No one's fired."

"Yes." Bart jumped in happiness. They all turned to look at him. "I have to be able to support the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed and I just don't think that getting a job as Starbucks would have cut it."

"No more midlife crisis or whatever it was you were going through?" AC asked.

"Almost." Oliver said. "There's just one thing I need to do before I can put that all behind me." Chloe looked up at him confused. The last time she'd heard that from Oliver, he went on to kill Lex. "I'm going to need your help."

"Yeah sure, anything you need." Chloe said to him.

"And this…" Victor pointed between the two of them. "This is new, I'm assuming we're just gonna have to get used to it."

"Pretty much." Oliver nodded.

"Ok, then." Victor smiled. "I can work with that."

Chloe looked over at her team and felt a sigh of relief that everything was back to normal. "What's the plan?" Victor asked. "Do we have a plan? Are we actually going to get him tonight?"

"We're hoping." Oliver strapped his bow to his back.

"You'll call me when you know something?" Chloe asked as they headed out of the apartment.

"You'll be the first." He assured her. "Are you sure about your end of all this?"

"Positive." Chloe nodded. "Trust me."

"With my life." Oliver smiled, kissing her softly.

"Ok, ok." Bart walked right through Chloe and Oliver pushing them apart. "I'm not as cool as everybody else with this whole thing just yet so why don't we cool it on the PDA for a while huh?"

Oliver groaned as Bart walked past them to the car. "I got it." Chloe assured Oliver and walked over to Bart. "I get this was sort of sprung on you."

"So you really saw something in there that made you sure he's the one?" Bart asked her.

"Without a doubt." Chloe nodded.

"That's he's going to make you happy?" Bart asked and Chloe looked over at Oliver and nodded. "Ok." Bart conceded, and with that one word he told Chloe he was going to be ok with it. "You mind if I give him a hard time for a few more days about it though?"

"Be my guest." Chloe laughed.

"So what did you see about me?" Bart asked. "Obviously I'm a pretty big part of your life, so I had to be in your future right."

"You were there." Chloe assured him.

"I was awesome huh?" Bart puffed up his chest.

"You were…" Chloe paused. Over the past few days she had slowly been forgetting the details of what happened, just like Mark said she would, she remembered most of it still but some things were slipping away. Something nagged at Chloe's memory. "Bart, in the future, should we ever expand the JLA into an orbiting satellite space station, and should you ever be left in charge of it, do me a favor, don't bring girls up there to impress them and whatever you do, don't push any buttons that could accidently start a nuclear war with Russia." Bart raised his eyebrows at her as if not fully believing what she'd just said.

"You're serious?" Bart asked her and Chloe nodded.

"Ok, first of all." Bart smiled at her. "I don't need an orbiting satellite space station, coolest idea ever by the way, to impress girls. Second of all you should know me well enough by now to know that you should never put me in charge of anything that has buttons that could start a nuclear war. Come on now Chloe."

"Point taken." Chloe smiled.

"Ok, girls are we done with the tender moment? We've got business to attend to." Oliver called from across the room.

Bart nodded at Chloe and ran to catch up.

"Eyes and ears open guys, I think we've got a live one." Bart's voice came over the comms. "Heading south down Prime Street at Seventh Avenue."

"We're on our way." Oliver called back. The guys had been spreading themselves across the city night after night and finally they had a sighting. They converged on the corner of Prime and Seventh and Oliver saw Bart watching something a few blocks ahead.

"Straight ahead." Bart nodded at Oliver and passed his binoculars over. "Badly constructed Green Arrow costume and all."

"That's our guy." Oliver passed the binoculars down the row, staring down the street at the Green Arrow imposter.

"What do you want to do?" Victor asked. "Follow him home, figure out who he is?"

"I don't think we're going to get that luxury." AC said calling everyone's attention to the imposter. He'd spotted an old lady coming down the street and if he stuck to pattern, he wasn't going to let her pass without incident.

"Let's go." Oliver said.

The old woman reached him before Oliver could and just as they assumed he couldn't let her pass. He lunged for her purse but she wasn't going to give it up so easily. She held on tight to the purse straps and had no intention of letting go. When Oliver and the guys reached the mouth of the alleyway they watched for a minute as the old woman gave the imposter what for. She managed to pull the purse out of his hands and then attacked him with it, voicing her distaste with every blow. "You should be ashamed of yourself." She was screaming. "Stealing an old ladies purse, an old defenseless lady."

"I'm not sure I would call you defenseless." Oliver called out.

She stopped hitting the man long enough to look up into the mouth of the alley. "Well." She breathed out. "Are you just going to stand there or are you going to do your job?" She put her hands on her hips.

"You heard the lady." Oliver nodded and AC, Victor, and Bart took a step forward. The Green Arrow imposter realized what was happening and took off down the alley. Oliver held out his hand as Victor started after him. "Let him run a bit, it's more fun that way." After a minute he nodded and Victor and AC took off. "Impulse, try a normal speed huh, give him a fighting chance?"

"Can't make any promises Boss." Bart smiled then sped out of the alley.

"Ma'am." Oliver nodded his head at the old woman. "May I walk you home?"

"Thank you." She smiled up at him and pulled her purse higher on her shoulder. Oliver let her lead the way and she turned out of the alley and down Prime Street. "I knew it wasn't you." She said, turning to look over at Oliver. "I knew you didn't kill that guy."

"Thanks." Oliver said.

"Don't get me wrong, I think you're all a little weird you know." She shrugged. "Running around town in leather costumes playing cops and robbers like children who never bothered to grow up, but you can't argue about what you've done for this city."

Oliver didn't say anything for a while and they walked in silence. "How did you know?" Oliver asked her. "That it wasn't me?"

"This guy was an armature." She explained.

"How so?" Oliver chuckled.

"He broke into jewelry stores and people's houses." She scoffed. "That's not your style."

"You know what my style is?" Oliver asked her surprised.

"I'm an old lady, there's not many hobbies to do at my age unless you want to learn to knit or play Gin. I don't wear sweaters and I'm rubbish at cards so instead I followed your career. The first heist you ever did was the Museum in Russia where you stole that samurai sword that was returned three days later to its rightful owner in Japan. There were the Swiss crowned jewels, the original manuscript of Beowolf, and then all the stolen items that miraculously appeared back at the museums where they were stolen from, the Met, the Tate."

"You have followed my work." Oliver said impressed.

"Oh, my favorite, the heist at the Israel Museum. 80 works of art taken from the Jews by the Nazi's all eighty stolen in one night and brought back where they belonged." She smiled at him.

"That one was tricky. It's not easy to steal 80 pieces of art in one night." Oliver assured her. "I don't always steal to give back you know."

"Yeah but it's not just the altruistic nature of your thievery." She told him. "It's the class with which you do it. Every place this guy's broken into, the cops have swarmed it five minutes later. He brakes windows, he sets off alarms." She shook her head. "Three years ago the Louvre announced that it created the most invulnerable security system known to man, you broke in, signed your name to the glass display case with glow in the dark paint, just because you could and they didn't even notice for three days."

Oliver smiled and puffed out his chest a little. "That one was pretty fun actually, you know what the trick was?" He was about to tell her when he heard a voice in his ear.

"We've got him." Victor said.

"Wait for instructions from Watchtower." Oliver said back.

"This is my stop." The old woman smiled. "Thanks for walking me home. Keep doing what your doing, no matter what they say."

"Yes ma'am." Oliver nodded before walking away and pulling out his phone. "You're on Watchtower."

Brian Jacobs paced in front of the courthouse steps checking his watch while he mumbled. "Courthouse, 15 minutes, be there, come alone." He sighed then yawned.

"Did I wake you?" Chloe looked at her watch. It was two a.m.

Brian spun around quickly. "You know, I was wishing it would be you." He put his hands in his pockets.

"Well if wishes were horses, something would…" Chloe shook her head. "I never learned the end of that."

"Beggars would ride." Brian told her.

"Really?" Chloe sighed. "You learn something new every day."

"You do." Brian nodded at her. "I learned something today. I tried some of that investigating that you were talking about earlier. You know your old column at the Daily Planet ran your by-line with a photo. Chloe Sullivan."

"Nice to meet you." She shook his hand.

"Editor of your high school paper, actually pretty much everything of your high school paper." He continued.

"Oh we're doing the bio now?" Chloe asked confused.

"Internship at the Daily Planet, then your own column when you were just fifteen years old. It didn't last long from what I hear, got yourself on the wrong side of Lionel Luther. You did a brief stint at the Met U paper before rejoining the Daily Planet and then one day you just, disappeared."

"I've been a pretty busy girl in case you couldn't tell. Wanted a vacation." Chloe shrugged.

"You hid yourself very well for a vacation." Brian said. "Texas, Oregon, Washington and more. Six different apartments under six different names over the past few years."

Chloe glared at him this time. "Color me impressed."

"Great, I can die happy now." Brian scoffed at her. "You want to tell me why you called me out here in the middle of the night."

"It's hardly the middle of the night." Chloe shook her head. "What do you go to bed at like eight?" He stared at her. "You'll see in just a minute." Chloe shrugged. "Let's talk about you now. I was a little hard on you earlier."

"A little?" Brian asked. "You're over five years younger than me and you basically compared my entire career to nothing more than the badly written journal entries of a barely literate teenager."

"I wouldn't say barely literate." Chloe said. "Maybe mostly literate."

"You know I was thinking about pitching a story to my editor." Brian smiled at her. "About a semi-talented, albeit much less than she believes herself to be, reporter who disappears off the face of the earth only to pop up in the middle of Star City."

Chloe frowned. "Ok, but I'm failing to see how anyone would want to read that story."

"Oh, I'm sure knowing the pains you went through to keep yourself hidden, that someone, somewhere would want to read it." Brian told her.

Chloe stared at him for a second, almost as if him threatening her, rose him in her esteem. "I see what you're doing here. We're playing hardball now. That's fine, it just so happens I came to the table with something to offer."

"Is that so?" Brian sat down on the bottom step and patted the seat next to him and Chloe sat down.

"How about you don't print that story and I take you under my wing, show the ropes, make you into the reporter I'm sure is hiding in there somewhere." Chloe smirked at him.

"Wow, despite how appealing your condescension is." Brian thought. "I'm going to have to pass."

"Ok, I'll sweeten the pot." Chloe said. "I'll add in the exclusive rights to the story of the capture of the Green Arrow Imposter."

"How are you going to swing that one?" Brian asked. Chloe nodded for him to look ahead and he turned to find Oliver, AC, Bart, and Victor standing in front of him with a man dressed as the Green Arrow, his hands tied behind his back. "Wow, that was good timing."

"We practiced." Chloe shrugged.

"Good job." Brian said turning back to her.

"I want you to meet Sal Parker." Chloe said. "Petty thief, recently turned murderer when his partner, Frank Rubio tried to cheat him out of his share. Frank by the way was the one who came up with the whole Green Arrow impersonator bit."

"I think you owe someone an apology." Victor said pointedly.

"I'm sorry, I was wrong about you." Brian said to Oliver who just nodded at him. "Look this is all very interesting, but I'm still not sure the pot is sweet enough. Maybe I write that story and maybe someone else gives me something better."

"Ok. It was nice almost doing business with you." Chloe held out her hand and Oliver pulled her up to a standing position. She was getting ready to walk away, play hardball, when something clicked in her head. Another bit of memory that was almost forgotten and she turned to Brian. "Your name's Brian, and you're a reporter for the Star City Gazette."

"Are we doing my bio now?" Brian asked confused.

Chloe smiled remembering the Brian that she got a text from in her possible future. "Ok, you drive a hard bargain Brian. You put that story in a drawer and you get access to me and all my infinite reporters wisdom, you also get the exclusive. And you're my first call."

"Your first call?" Brian asked. "What does that mean?"

"When something happens with these guys." She nodded her head to the team behind her. "You get the quote, the only quote, you get their side of the story."

He looked between Chloe and the guys. "You're giving me exclusivity to the Green Arrow and his team? What are you, their PR person?" He scoffed.

"Something like that." Chloe smiled. "What do you say? You can be the official reporter for the Green Arrow, that's a pretty sweet pot right?"

"I'm definitely intrigued." Brian held a hand out to her then pulled it away. "You want to throw in why you worked so hard to keep yourself hidden?"

"Why don't we take this one step at a time." Chloe offered. "Deal?"

"Deal." Brian shook her hand.

"Brian." Chloe put an arm over his shoulder. "I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

The next morning Chloe finished reading her paper long before the others and she waited to see their reactions, she wasn't disappointed. "You have got to be kidding me." AC scoffed tossing his paper to the table. The front page Headline read, "Green Arrow Vindicated, Impersonator Brought To Justice."

"No, he really wrote that." Victor shook his head.

"Hold on, I'm not done yet." Bart scolded them. They waited another few minutes and then he put the paper down. "That jerk."

They all nodded. "It wasn't so bad." Chloe shrugged sipping her coffee.

"It wasn't so bad?" Victor laughed. "Anyone reading this article would assume that Brian caught the guy single handedly. He barely mentions the Green Arrow, there's nothing in there about us."

"Yeah but his sentence structure could finally pass for proper English, and he used the word Perspicacity. He didn't really use it correctly, but it had more than two syllables so that's a good start at least."

"He made half of it up." AC said.

"We'll work on that." Chloe said. "He's a little rough around the edges, but trust me, this guy's gonna be good for us, I just know it." They all looked at her dubiously.

Oliver walked out of his bedroom and stopped when he saw everyone crowded around his table. "You know guys, people start to get suspicious when you hang around my place all the time."

"Yeah well, if you'd set up that home base for us like you keep talking about, we wouldn't have to hang around here." Victor told him.

"I'm working on it." Oliver poured himself a cup of coffee.

"We'll get a home base one day." Bart said. "Maybe something cool like an orbiting satellite space station or something."

"An orbiting satellite?" AC looked at Bart as if he were crazy. "You've been reading comic books again haven't you?"

"I'm serious." Bart said glancing at Chloe who just smiled, the others looked dubious. "Ok, I'll bet you five hundred bucks that one day the three of us will be sitting around a table, drinking coffee, inside a satellite that's orbiting the earth."

"I'll take that bet." Victor nodded at him.

"Me too." AC laughed.

"All right, fine. But one day you'll be sorry." Bart sipped his coffee.

Chloe stood up and walked over to Oliver. "He's gonna make a killing." Oliver pointed out. "Then again if I hadn't seen what we saw, I'd take that bet too."

"So what's next?" Chloe asked him.

"Next?" Oliver sighed. "Next I think it's time for you to move again."

"I was just getting used to…where the hell was I living?"

"Portland." Oliver laughed.

"Right Portland." Chloe said. "I had good neighbors, well strange neighbors but strange can be good. Fine where am I moving this time?"

"I was thinking Star City, Queen Tower, Penthouse." Oliver turned to gauge her reaction.

"Rule number one was that I could never come home." Chloe pointed out.

"Well, I'm thinking of doing away with the rules, they didn't really do any good and I think letting you go was where I went wrong the first time around." Oliver told her. "I need you around to keep me on track."

"Ok, but I need to be Chloe Sullivan again, whatever happens with Lex we'll deal with it, together, but I'm ready to be myself." Chloe told him.

"I can work with that." Oliver nodded.

"So we're getting rid of all the rules?" Chloe asked as if it was a really bad idea.

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing it's just there are quite a few rules that were put into place simply because of Bart." Chloe pointed out. "Remember the "Always wear pants even if it's three in the morning and you're only going on a burrito run and you move so fast that no one can see you anyway" rule or the "No eating food in the bathtub" rule and countless others." She paused. "All involving food come to think of it.

"Right." Oliver nodded. "So maybe we just do away with Rule number one."

"Maybe just that one." Chloe agreed.

"So." Oliver sipped his coffee. "I hear Brian Jacobs caught the Green Arrow Impersonator single handedly. Solved the case, all by himself."

"Yeah, we're working on that." Chloe shrugged.

"Do you think I could give you a kiss, or is Bart still being a little girl about everything?" Oliver set his cup down.

"Bart just won a thousand dollars because of me, he can get over it." Chloe reached up and kissed him.

Twenty Years Later

Oliver was having a good dream, a very good dream actually, it involved Chloe, her tongue, lots of whipped cream and…he sniffed, bacon? He opened his eyes and groaned at the very large dog that was currently alternating between licking his neck and breathing his lovely dog food breath right into Oliver's nostrils. "Woodward." Oliver shoved the dog off of his chest and sighed. He heard laughter from the doorway and looked up to see Chloe standing there with two cups of coffee. "You could have pulled him off." Oliver groaned sitting up as she brought the coffee over to him.

"You looked like you were enjoying it." Chloe teased him.

"It's too early for this." He leaned over and kissed her softly. "The kids up?" Chloe tilted her head to the living room and Oliver heard the unmistakably familiar music of some cartoon show getting louder and louder. "It's Saturday, Pancake Day and that's your specialty not mine so rise and shine."

"I'll be there in five." Oliver said.

"That's fine, I've got to run down to the market and pick up some eggs and milk anyway." Chloe kissed him one last time then left as Oliver stood and tried to wake up a little more. "Hey kids, dad's having some trouble waking up this morning, why don't you go help him out."

Oliver barely had time to groan before two small kids came screaming in the room and jumping on him. He laughed as they dragged him down to the mattress. "Come on dad, it's a big day today. I've got soccer and Anna's got dance and Chase is graduating, we need sustenance."

"Sustenance really?" Oliver looked at his ten year old son and smiled.

"Yeah." Ryan faltered slightly. "It means food right?"

"Right." Oliver assured him. "I'm up, I'm up. Come on let's head to the kitchen. Who wants to help today?" Anna raised her hand frantically and Oliver laughed.

"Alright Anna Banana." He bent down and lifted her up. He turned to walk out of the room when he almost fell forward as something slammed into his back. He caught himself quickly and realized that something was Ryan.

"Piggy back." He said happily and Oliver rearranged Anna so he could carry the both of them.

"What kind of pancakes do you guys want?"

"Chocolate chip." They said in unison.

"Of course." Oliver smiled. It was always chocolate chip. Oliver set Anna on the counter top and Ryan slid down his back to the ground. "Pick up some chocolate chips too?" Oliver asked as Chloe gathered her stuff to go to the store.

"No need." A voice said from the back door of the kitchen as Chase walked in carrying grocery bags. "I knew it was Pancake Day and we were out of milk and eggs so I stopped back on the way from my run." He dropped the bags on the counter and Oliver started unloading them.

"Chocolate chips?" He asked.

"In the bottom." Chase smiled. "I'm gonna shower."

"Wow." Chloe set her bag down. "Have we got the best son or what?"

"I think we just might." Oliver nodded cracking eggs and pouring milk as Anna "helped" him make breakfast. They made a holy mess as Chloe watched on in amusement. "Ok, chocolate chip time." Oliver turned to Anna and suddenly Chloe had the strongest memory of this very day, this very morning, like de ja vu only much, much stronger and then she realized what it was. She'd seen this before, twenty years ago, she and Oliver had seen this day before. She knew in about thirty seconds that Anna was going to knock to the chocolate chips to the ground and spin the morning into chaos. She looked up at Oliver to warn him but by the expression on his face he knew it too, he remembered. She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. That day, the one she remembered, with all the chaos and all the mishaps, was perfect just the way it was, she didn't want to change a thing. She shook her head at Oliver who'd had the same thought she had and they sat back and watched as Anna knocked the chocolate chips to the ground and they scattered all over the floor.

"I'm sorry." Anna jumped off the counter and started scooping chocolate chips up. Oliver and Chloe followed with Ryan but they weren't picking them up fast enough and in came Woodward, attracted by the smell of the chocolate. "No." Anna screamed. "Chocolates bad for dogs."

As they cleaned up the kitchen and waited for the kids to get dressed so they could go to IHOP. Chloe turned to Oliver. "You remembered?" She asked.

"Yeah." Oliver smiled.

"So we don't change anything?" She dumped the ruined pancakes in the trash.

"Nothing I'd want to change." Oliver smiled down at her. They both remembered what the day had in store for them, then almost at the same time their eyes went wide.

"Bart!" Chloe and Oliver said together.

"I'll call him." Chloe wiped her hands and pulled out her cell phone. "I'll call him right now."

"Wait." Oliver grabbed her hand and lowered the phone. "Let's give him the benefit of the doubt." Oliver told her and Chloe looked at him astonished. "You warned him, twenty years ago, he says he's grown up enough to take the responsibility, let's give him the chance."

"So far, the days played out exactly as it did when Mark showed us. Baring any life altering decision or you know, bad sushi, Bart's gonna almost declare nuclear war on Russia tonight."

Oliver shrugged. "Almost is the key word there. Besides, I got a second chance, let's give him one."

"Your call." Chloe shrugged.

"What's taking you guys so long?" Chase ran in the kitchen. "The natives are getting restless."

"Who wants pancakes?" Oliver smiled walking to the door.

"You coming mom?" Chase asked her.

Chloe looked at her eldest son. He'd graduate later tonight, everyone would be there, one of the best nights of her life. Bart may or may not attempt to start WWIII with Russia but in the mean time Ryan had a soccer game, Anna had a dance class, she had a Pulitzer to win and there were Chocolate Chip Pancakes to be eaten. "Yeah I'm coming." She looped her arm in Chases and walked to the door. Life was good.

Author's Note: That's it, hoped you like it. I've got another one that should be coming up pretty soon, it's practically completely finished. Hope you liked it and come back for more soon.