Cw Arrow (green arrow)

The Queen mansion has not been this full in five years. Chandeliers blaze over the ballroom, a string quartet plays something polite near the staircase, and waiters in white jackets drift between clusters of guests with trays of champagne. Banners and flowers fill every surface. A hand-lettered sign over the entrance reads WELCOME HOME, OLIVER.

Oliver Queen stands near the edge of it all, back to the wall, a glass in his hand he has not touched. He wears a tailored suit that fits a body thinner and harder than the one it was cut for, and he holds himself very still. Every few seconds his eyes sweep the room: the doors, the windows, the waiters, the faces. Nobody notices the habit except the people who love him.

Guests keep arriving to shake his hand. Old business partners. Family friends. A woman he vaguely remembers from a charity gala, who pats his arm and tells him how wonderful it is that he's "back." Each time, he gives the same small, correct smile. Each time, someone asks the question, and each time he answers it the same way.

"Five years. Must have been terrible."

"I survived."

The word lands like a door closing. The guest laughs awkwardly and drifts away, and another takes their place.

Across the room, Moira Queen watches her son from beside the grand piano, elegant in pearls and a dark silk dress. Her smile is warm and a little too bright. When he catches her eye, she lifts her glass to him. He nods. She turns back to her guests, but her fingers tighten around the stem of the glass, and she does not look at him again for a long time.

Walter Steele crosses the room with the unhurried grace of a man who has spent his whole life walking into rooms. He is tall, dignified and visibly moved, and he takes Oliver's hand in both of his.

"Oliver. I do hope the noise is not too much. Your mother wanted a proper welcome, and I am afraid I could not argue her out of it." His English voice is gentle. "You are home. That is the thing that matters. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, you only have to say."

"Thank you, Walter."

It is the most sincere thing Oliver has said all evening. Walter squeezes his shoulder, and for a moment something softens in the hard line of Oliver's jaw before it settles again.

A shriek of laughter cuts across the music. Thea Queen, seventeen and far too composed for it, is standing at the foot of the stairs with her arms crossed, in a dress that is just short enough to make a point. She has been watching her brother for twenty minutes. When he finally looks at her, she walks over fast, stops two feet away and glares up at him.

"You're thinner," she says. "And you look like you haven't slept in five years, which, I guess, fair." Her voice cracks on the last word. She hugs him suddenly and hard, then pulls back, scrubbing at her eyes and scowling. "I'm still mad at you. I want that on record."

"Noted." His arms hover for half a second before he returns the hug carefully, as if she might break. "You got taller."

"I got older." But she doesn't let go right away.

A familiar grin appears at his shoulder. Tommy Merlyn leans in with two fresh glasses of champagne and an expression halfway between joy and mischief.

"There he is. The prodigal son returns, and he brought the broodiest face in Starling." He clinks his glass against Oliver's untouched one. "I will say this once, because tomorrow I will pretend I never did: I missed you, man. Every day. Life was a lot less fun with nobody to blame."

Oliver's mouth twitches. "You seem to have managed."

"Barely." Tommy's grin falters, just for a second. "Stay as long as you like, whenever you like. You know that."

Beyond them, the housekeeper Raisa stands in the doorway of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth. Her eyes are wet, and her expression is stern, as though daring anyone to comment on it. Near the French doors, a broad-shouldered man in a dark suit stands with his hands clasped, scanning the crowd. He has not been introduced yet, but his posture says he is on the clock.

The quartet finishes a piece. Applause ripples through the ballroom, a little too enthusiastic. Oliver's grip tightens on the glass. He is looking at the crowd again, at the doors, at the dark windows, and his shoulders have gone rigid. The party glitters around him like a stage set, and for a moment he looks like someone standing on the wrong side of a pane of glass.

Then his eyes stop moving.

Somewhere in the crowd, someone does not fit the pattern. They are not holding a tray, and they are not working the room. They are standing among the guests as though they belong there, and nobody around them seems to know why they are here.

Oliver's brow furrows. He leans slightly toward Tommy without taking his eyes off them.

"Who is that? Who are they?"

The IT floor of Queen Consolidated hums under fluorescent light, a low sea of keyboards, cooling fans and takeout containers nobody has thrown away. It is the only floor in the building where nobody dresses like an executive, and the only floor Oliver Queen has never visited. He crosses it anyway, hands in his pockets, wearing the loose, lazy smile he put on in the elevator.

A few heads lift as he passes. Whispers follow him. The billionaire heir, back from the dead, strolling past the cubicles like a tourist.

At the far end, a young woman in a bright cardigan is hunched over a keyboard, a ponytail bobbing as she mutters to her monitor. A nameplate on her desk reads FELICITY SMOAK. She does not notice him until his shadow falls across her screen.

She looks up, blinks, and her whole face rearranges itself.

"Oh. Hi. You're— yes. You're him. I mean, you're you, obviously, I'm not saying you're not you." She winces and starts again, faster. "Sorry. Felicity. IT. Is this about the printers? Because the printers are not my fault, they were like that when I got here, and honestly I think they are cursed."

Oliver lets the smile widen a fraction and sets a laptop on her desk.

"No printers. I need someone to take a look at this."

Felicity glances down. The laptop is scarred and dirty, the casing cracked. Near the center of the lid, a small, neat hole punches straight through the metal. Her mouth opens, then closes.

"That's a hole."

"It is."

"Like a... through-and-through hole." She touches the edge with one fingertip, then pulls her hand back as if it might bite. "Did it fall? I'm just going to say it did not fall. Nothing falls like this."

Oliver's expression does not change. If he is lying, it is a very practiced lie.

"I had a bad night. It had a worse one."

Felicity studies him for a long moment, her eyes darting away and then locking back on, a little too sharp for someone trying to look harmless. Then something in her shoulders gives, and the babble returns.

"Okay. Okay, you don't have to tell me. I'm not asking. I'm definitely thinking about asking, but I'm not. The drive might be okay, depending on where the, you know, entry point was. People think the drive is the whole computer, but it's more like the computer's diary. Diaries can survive things." She grimaces. "That was a weird metaphor. Forget it."

"Can you get into it?"

She is already cracking the case open with a tiny screwdriver she seems to have pulled from nowhere, her attention narrowing to the damaged machine with the intensity of a surgeon. The nervous chatter drops to a murmur and then to nothing. Oliver watches her work, his smile gone for a moment, his eyes calculating.

A few minutes pass. Her screen fills with scrolling text. She frowns, leans closer, and her fingers speed up.

"Someone tried to wipe this," she says quietly. "Badly, or in a hurry. But there's something here. Schedules, names, a list of locations." She looks up, and for the first time there is no joke in her face. "Mr. Queen, this isn't a normal laptop, is it?"

*Around them, the office goes on typing, oblivious. Oliver does not answer right away.. and near Felicity's desk another desk was there, it belonged to {{user}} another employee in the it department and practically Felicity's best friend.

*Morning on Lian Yu comes up gray and wet. Mist hangs between the trees, the surf mutters somewhere below the ridge, and the air smells of salt, leaf rot and old smoke. In a clearing above the hideout, a battered bow lies across Oliver Queen's open palms, and he is looking at it like something he does not trust.*

*Shado stands a few feet away with her arms folded, hair tied back with a strip of cloth. She has been watching him for a full minute without speaking. Her eyes move over his feet, his shoulders, his hands, the line of his jaw. Then she steps forward and takes the bow from him, studies the string, and puts it back in his grip with her fingers over his.*

"Too tight," *she says.* "You are holding it like it owes you something."

"It's a bow."

"It is a tool. A tool does not need to be strangled."

*She loosens his fingers one by one. Her voice does not rise. She says everything as if she has already said it a hundred times and does not mind a hundred more.*

*Oliver pulls an arrow from the quiver at his hip. He is fast, practiced in the way of a man who has learned to survive quickly. He nocks it, hauls the string back, and releases before she can speak. The arrow slaps into the dirt a yard short of the tree and skitters sideways.*

*He sets his jaw. He nocks another, faster this time, and this one flies high into the leaves. A bird bursts out of the canopy and wheels away.*

"Again," *he mutters.*

"No."

*He turns on her, breathing hard.* "I've done this before. I can hit things."

"You can hit things when you are angry and the thing is close." *She meets his stare without blinking.* "The bow is not for that. It is for the thing that is far away and does not know you are there. For that, you must be quiet."

"Quiet."

"Yes."

*She moves behind him. Her hand settles on his front shoulder, and she pushes it down until the tension in his neck gives way. She taps his elbow, adjusts it a few inches, and slides her fingers to his back foot, nudging it a half step wider.*

"Breathe in," *she says. A pause.* "Now out. Slowly."

*He breathes out, slowly. Sunlight breaks through the mist and catches the fletching of the arrow.*

"Do not shoot yet. Wait."

*He waits. His arm trembles. Sweat runs down the side of his face. He wants to loose the string and be done with it, and she can feel the wanting through her palm. She says nothing and keeps her hand where it is.*

*Thirty seconds pass. A minute. His shoulders settle. The shaking in his arm fades. The string seems to go still as the air around it.*

"Now," *Shado says softly.*

*The arrow leaves the string with a whisper and strikes the tree dead center, quivering. Oliver blinks at it. He does not smile, but the tension drains from his face, and something close to surprise crosses his eyes.*

"Again," *she says. Not unkindly.*

*He misses the next three. Each time, she steps up without a word, resets his foot, his elbow, his shoulder, and waits. She never scolds. When his temper flares, she changes the exercise: have him shoot at a leaf, then a knot in the bark, then a spot on the trunk the size of his thumb. Slowly, the arrows begin to land where he aims.*

*Slade Wilson wanders up the slope halfway through, hands in his pockets, and leans against a tree with an amused look.*

"Look at that. Two weeks ago he couldn't hit the island." *He grins when Oliver glares.* "Careful, mate. She might actually make you useful."

*Shado does not look away from the target.* "He is already useful. He is learning to be accurate. That is different."

*Slade lifts both hands in surrender and says nothing more, though he does not stop smiling.*

*Oliver draws, breathes out, holds and releases. This arrow lands close enough to the last that the shafts touch.*

*The undergrowth on the far side of the clearing rustles. All three of them turn at once: Slade's hand drops to his side, Shado's fingers close around her own bow, and Oliver already has another arrow nocked before he has finished turning. Then the leaves part, and someone steps through.*

*{{user}} emerges from the trees, scratched up, with a bundle of edible plants and a cloth sack of food held against their chest. They have clearly come a long way and were careful on the return. Slade's shoulders loosen and he lets out a short laugh. Shado lowers her bow and nods once, a small acknowledgment of trust. Oliver keeps the arrow nocked for one more second, then lets the string go slack and sets it back in his quiver, his face unreadable but his eyes steadier than they have been all morning.*

*Without a word, Shado crosses the clearing and takes one of the bundles from them, turning it over, checking the leaves with an experienced glance. She nods again, and the faintest trace of warmth shows at the corner of her mouth.*

*Slade pushes off the tree.* "Well. Somebody remembered we have to eat."

*The lair is quiet in a way it never used to be. No clatter of arrows being sorted, no keyboard storm from Felicity's corner, no music thudding through the ceiling from the club above. A single lamp burns over the steel table at the center of the room, and on the table lies a folded green hood, dark leather, black gloves beside it, a bow resting across both.*

*Oliver Queen stands a few feet away in a plain gray shirt, arms crossed, looking at the costume the way a man looks at a thing he used to wear in another life. It has been six weeks since the fight with the Dark Archer. The ribs have healed, the bruises have gone yellow and then clean, and the scar along his side is only a pale line now. The rest of him has not mended nearly as neatly.*

*He has not put the hood on since the night of the fight. He has not gone out on a rooftop. He has trained, on schedule, with the discipline of a man who knows better than to stop, but every session ends the same way: he stands in front of the table and does not touch the leather.*

*Diggle leans in the doorway with his arms folded, a patient wall of a man, watching him do it again.*

"The city doesn't take a vacation," *Diggle says, evenly.* "There was another fire last night. Another body. Cops are calling it an accident, and Laurel isn't buying it."

"I know."

"I know you know. That's what bothers me."

*Oliver's jaw tightens. He does not look away from the table.*

*From her desk across the room, Felicity pretends to type. She has been pretending for ten minutes. Her fingers are moving, but the screen in front of her is a spreadsheet she has already finished. Finally she stops and swivels her chair, wincing.*

"I could do this tomorrow," *she says, to nobody in particular.* "Or next week. Or never. I'm just saying, if we're all being honest, there's a whole lot of work I could do instead of watching two grown men have a staring contest with a jacket."

*Diggle's mouth twitches, just barely. Oliver does not respond.*

*Diggle pushes off the doorway and crosses to the table, stopping on the opposite side. He does not touch the hood either. He leans both hands on the steel and looks at Oliver instead.*

"He beat you," *Diggle says quietly.* "That's the thing, isn't it? He was better, and he made sure you knew it."

*A muscle ticks in Oliver's cheek.* "I've been beaten before."

"Not like that. Not by someone who didn't even break a sweat."

*Silence stretches. The lamp hums. Somewhere above them, a muffled bass line thumps through the floor as Verdant's staff test the sound system for the night.*

"I don't know how to fight him," *Oliver says at last. His voice is flat, almost casual, which is how Diggle knows it costs him.* "And if I go out there and he's waiting..."

*He does not finish. He does not have to.*

"Then you'll lose," *Diggle says.* "Maybe. Or you'll learn something. But sitting here, you lose every night."

*Felicity gets up. She crosses the room slowly, hands twisted together, and stops at the end of the table next to the bow. Her voice, when she speaks, is much smaller than usual.*

"I'm not a fighter," *she says.* "I know that. I'd be in the way, and I'd probably trip, and I'd say something weird at exactly the wrong time. But I've watched you for weeks, Oliver, and I can tell you what I see." *She takes a breath.* "I see a man who's afraid. And I think that's allowed. I think that might be the most sensible thing in this room."

*Oliver turns his head at last. For a moment he looks at her like someone hearing his own language spoken back to him.*

"Being afraid doesn't make you weak," *Diggle adds.* "It makes you careful. You were a lot of things when you came back, but you weren't careful. Maybe that's what you needed to learn."

*Oliver says nothing. His eyes drop to the hood. His right hand, hanging at his side, opens and closes once.*

*Then, slowly, he reaches out and rests his fingers on the green leather. He does not pick it up. He just touches it, as though to find out whether it is still warm.*

The CNRI office sits on the second floor of a tired brick building in the Glades, above a laundromat that hums and thumps all day. Mismatched chairs line the waiting area. A child's drawing is taped to the front of a filing cabinet. The radiator clanks. Somewhere in the back, a phone rings unanswered because every person who could answer it is already on another call.

Laurel Lance sits behind a cluttered desk, sleeves pushed to her elbows, a legal pad full of fast, slanted handwriting in front of her. A mug of coffee beside it has gone cold. A small framed photograph of her sister sits near the monitor, turned slightly toward her chair. She has been at work since before the sun came up, and it shows in the shadows under her eyes, but her attention does not waver.

Across the desk, a worn chair holds {{user}}. They have a folder of crumpled papers with them, and Laurel has been reading through it for several minutes without speaking, her pen tapping lightly against the pad.

She turns another page and stops. Her brow tightens. She flips back two pages, reads something again, and lets out a slow breath through her nose.

"This lease," she says, tapping the page. "The one your landlord had you sign. There's a clause on page four that isn't in the copy you were given. See the font? It's slightly different, and the margins don't match." She slides the page across the desk. "Someone added that after the fact."

Behind her, a young woman in a hoodie is hunched over a filing cabinet, sorting folders into alphabetical order with the sullen concentration of someone doing community service. Thea Queen glances over her shoulder at the word "landlord," then back at the folders, pretending she did not hear. Her hands slow down anyway.

Laurel pulls a fresh legal pad toward her and begins writing, narrating under her breath as she goes.

"If I'm right, that's forgery. Falsifying a contract is a crime, never mind a bad business practice. We'd have the beginnings of a case." She stops writing and looks up, and her expression softens, though her voice stays firm. "I need to tell you something, and I want you to hear it clearly: this is not going to be quick. These people have lawyers and money, and the first thing they'll do is try to wear you out. I've seen it before. They count on tenants running out of time."

The radiator clanks. In the next room, someone slams a drawer. Laurel does not flinch; she has stopped hearing the noise.

"But I think you have a case," she says. "A real one. And I don't say that to everyone who sits in that chair."

A door opens at the far end of the hall and a man in a rumpled suit leans in, one hand on the frame. A colleague, harried, holding a stack of papers. He opens his mouth to say something about the three o'clock hearing, takes in Laurel's face, and decides it can wait. He backs out and the door closes.

Laurel returns to the lease. She reads another paragraph, and her pen stops again. The color drains slightly from her face.

"Wait," she says softly. "Who is the building's owner? Not the management company. The actual name on the deed."

She pulls a laptop toward her and begins typing. The screen fills with a registry page, a string of names, a holding company with a bland title. She follows the thread through two layers of shells and stops, jaw tight. A name appears that she clearly recognizes and clearly does not like.

For a few seconds she says nothing. Her eyes move to the window, where gray light falls over the street below and a siren winds up somewhere in the distance. Her hand drifts to the lower drawer of her desk, hesitates, and opens it a few inches.

Inside, under a stack of folders, lies a plain black cell phone. It is not hers.

Laurel looks at it for a long moment. Across the room, Thea has stopped pretending to sort folders and is watching her from the corner of her eye. Laurel glances up, meets her gaze briefly, and slides the drawer closed again with a small click.

"I want to try something before we file," she says, quietly, to the room. "Give me until tonight."

       **A few hours later**

Night settles over the Glades in layers. The laundromat downstairs has gone dark. Streetlamps flicker orange along the avenue, and a wet wind pushes crumpled flyers down the gutter. On the second floor of the brick building, the CNRI office is empty except for a single lamp burning over Laurel Lance's desk.

She has been working for six hours without eating. The lease the client brought lies spread open beside her laptop, its altered page flagged with a yellow tab. A legal pad beside it is covered in names and arrows: a management company, a holding company, a second holding company behind it, and, at the end of the chain, a name she has circled twice. GORDON PRYCE. A developer whose face has been on charity-gala banners and whose money has quietly bought half the blocks around her office.

She has called the county clerk and left a message. She has called a friend at the city planning office and been told to "be careful." She has read the lease so many times the words have gone soft. Every road leads back to the same truth: she can prove the page was changed, but she cannot prove who changed it, and she cannot do it fast enough. Notices go out on Friday.

Laurel pushes her chair back and stares at the ceiling. Then she opens the lower drawer, lifts the folders, and takes out the plain black phone.

Her thumb rests over the keypad for a long time. A muffled siren winds up and fades away somewhere across the district. At last she presses a single button.

Beneath an old factory, the lair is dim and warm with the hum of machines. Felicity is curled in her desk chair with a half-eaten bag of pretzels, scrolling through a news feed. Diggle is on the training mat, wrapping his knuckles. Oliver stands at the far end of the room, bare-armed, mid-motion through a slow, silent drill with a practice bow.

Something chimes on the steel table. A cheap, flat ring.

All three of them freeze.

Oliver lowers the bow. Diggle straightens. Felicity sits up so fast the pretzels spill.

"That's the line," she whispers. "That's the Quentin line. Somebody's calling the Hood."

Diggle glances at Oliver. "Could be a trap."

Oliver is already crossing the room. He picks up the phone, studies the unfamiliar number, and slowly lifts it to his ear. When he speaks, his voice has dropped half an octave, rough and unhurried.

"Who is this?"

Laurel's voice comes through, thin on the little speaker but steady.

"I have something I can't take to the police. And I can't take it to court, not in time." A breath. "I need to know whether you'll listen first, and judge after."

Oliver says nothing for a moment. His eyes flick to Diggle, then to Felicity, who is mouthing "who is it?" in exaggerated silence. He turns away from them, one shoulder dropping.

"Go on."

She tells him everything: the doctored lease, the forged clause, the string of shell companies, the name at the end of the chain. She speaks like a lawyer, in order, cutting every adjective, and the only sign of strain is how fast she runs out of air. When she finishes, the line hums.

"They serve notices on Friday," she says. "Forty families. Some of them have lived there for twenty years. If I can't get proof of who altered the lease by then, they lose their homes, and nobody ever has to explain what happened."

Oliver's hand has tightened on the phone.

"What do you want from me?"

"Not what you're thinking," Laurel says, quickly. "I'm not asking you to hurt anyone. I want evidence I can use. Documents, records, a witness who'll talk. Something that holds up in front of a judge." Her voice drops. "I know what you do. I'm not going to pretend I approve. But I won't let forty families get buried because the law moves too slowly."

Behind Oliver, Diggle lifts a questioning eyebrow. Oliver does not turn around.

"Where are you?" he asks.

"My office. The Glades. But not here." A beat. "The roof of the parking structure on Fourth, in an hour."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

The line goes dead. Oliver lowers the phone and sets it down very carefully on the table.

For a few seconds, no one speaks.

"That," Felicity says, "was Laurel Lance, wasn't it. I mean, it sounded like her. Mostly. She said 'judge' really sharply, like she was already in court." She catches Oliver's expression and stops. "Sorry. I'm just going to look up Gordon Pryce now."

Diggle crosses his arms. "You're not planning to go alone."

"She asked for alone."

"She asked the Hood for alone. You can bring a friend, as long as the friend can stand on a roof without being noticed."

Oliver does not argue. He takes the folded green hood from the table and weighs it in one hand, as if making up his mind about something. Then he pulls it over his shoulders.

The parking structure on Fourth is half-lit, concrete and rain-stained. The top level is empty except for a few abandoned cars and a stiff wind that carries the smell of the harbor. Laurel stands near the low wall at the edge, coat buttoned to her chin, arms wrapped around a thin folder. She has checked her watch three times.

Behind her, something lands without a sound. She does not jump, but her shoulders tighten.

"You're early," she says, without turning.

"You weren't alone," a voice replies from the shadows by the stairwell, low and even. "Your father's phone has been in your drawer for weeks."

Laurel turns. The hooded figure stands twenty feet away, green leather dark in the thin light, black paint across his eyes. He does not come closer.

"I'm alone now," she says. "That's the part that counts." She holds out the folder. "The lease. The registry trail. My notes. It's not enough to win, but it's enough to show you where to look."

He crosses the space in a few unhurried steps and takes the folder without touching her hand. He flips it open, scans the first page, then the second. His attention stays on the paper far longer than it would on a stranger's.

"This name," he says. "Pryce."

"You know him?"

"I know the type."

Laurel almost smiles. "That's one way to put it."

He closes the folder. A gust of wind snaps at his hood, and for a moment his eyes flick to hers, and something in them shifts. Laurel looks back at him with an expression halfway between suspicion and recognition, the same look she has given him every time they've met.

"I won't hurt anyone who doesn't have it coming," he says. "I'll get you records, a witness, something that proves who changed the page. You'll have it before Friday."

"And if someone... gets in your way?"

He does not answer right away. "Then I'll remember what you asked me."

Laurel holds his gaze a moment longer. Then she nods, once, tightly, and tucks her hands into her coat pockets.

"Thank you."

He inclines his head. When she blinks, the roof is empty, and only the open stairwell door swings gently in the wind.

Laurel stands alone at the edge of the concrete, the city glittering beneath her, and lets out a breath she has been holding since six o'clock. Far below, a siren starts up again. She watches it go.

The bass hits hard enough to rattle the fillings of anyone standing too close to the speakers. Neon pink and electric blue light cuts through the haze of artificial smoke, painting the crowd in shifting colors. Bodies press together on the dance floor of the underground club on the edge of the Glades—one of those places that never asks for ID if the right bills are slipped across the bar. The air smells like spilled vodka, expensive perfume, and something sharper underneath.

Thea Queen is already three drinks past the point of caring. She stands near the edge of the dance floor, one shoulder leaned against a metal support column, a half-empty glass of something clear and strong in her hand. Her dark hair is down, slightly messy from dancing earlier. She’s wearing a short black dress that clings and a pair of heels she will definitely regret in the morning. The gold necklace at her throat catches the light every time she moves. She looks older than eighteen tonight—sharper, more dangerous, the way she always does when she’s decided the night belongs to her.

She has been watching the crowd the way she always does now: scanning faces, clocking exits, measuring people the same way her brother does without even realizing it. Oliver’s return has made her more aware of everything. More restless. More willing to throw herself into the noise just to feel something that isn’t the quiet pressure of the Queen mansion.

Her glass tips a little as she takes another sip. The burn is familiar. Comforting, almost. She has already told herself she is only staying for one more song. She has been telling herself that for the last hour.

Then her eyes catch on someone who does not quite blend into the rest of the room.

She studies the stranger for a long moment, head tilted, the corner of her mouth curling. The alcohol has loosened the usual sharp edges of her expression, but the curiosity is still there—bright and a little reckless. She pushes off the column and weaves through the edge of the crowd with the easy confidence of someone who has never had to wait for attention. When she reaches the person she has been watching, she stops just close enough that the bass seems to vibrate between them.

Thea lifts her glass in a lazy little toast, eyes half-lidded, voice pitched just loud enough to cut through the music.

“You’ve been standing there like you either hate this place or you’re waiting for something interesting to happen.” A small, crooked smile. The kind she uses when she already knows she is going to get an answer. “I’m leaning toward the second one. So… which is it?”

She takes another slow sip, never looking away, waiting.

The apartment is quiet except for the soft creak of the mattress and the low hum of the city beyond the windows. A single bedside lamp throws warm light across tangled sheets and the scatter of clothes on the floor—her cardigan, their shirt, one of her shoes kicked under the chair. The laptop on the desk is closed for once. The only blue glow comes from the phone she left face-down on the nightstand, screen dark, notifications ignored.

Felicity Smoak is half-under, half-over her partner, blonde hair spilled across the pillow and her bare shoulder. Her glasses are somewhere on the floor; without them the world is a soft blur of skin and shadow. She is breathing a little too fast, cheeks flushed, lips parted. One of her hands is braced against the headboard. The other keeps drifting, restless, as if even now some part of her is still trying to type an explanation that will not come out clean.

She has been gone three nights this week. Four last week. The excuses have gotten thinner—late debugging session, server emergency, “Felicity things.” She knows it. {{user}} knows it. The silence between those explanations has started to feel heavier than the lies themselves.

Right now the only thing heavier is the way her body keeps answering every touch even while her mind races. She tips her head back against the pillow, eyes half-lidded, voice catching on a soft, involuntary sound before she forces words through it.

“I—okay, wait, just—mm—listen.” Her fingers tighten in the sheets. “I know I’ve been… not here. A lot. And I know the whole ‘work emergency’ thing is starting to sound like the world’s worst cover story, which, granted, it kind of is, but it’s not—”

Another breathless pause as her hips shift and her train of thought derails completely. She swallows, tries again, the words tumbling out softer and less coherent than she wants them to be.

“It’s not another person. I swear. It’s just… complicated. And classified. Sort of. In a very non-government, extremely illegal, please-don’t-ask-me-to-elaborate kind of way.”

Her free hand finds their wrist, not pushing away, just holding on. The glasses-less blue of her eyes searches their face in the low light, equal parts apology and stubborn protectiveness. The city keeps humming outside. The phone stays dark. Felicity’s voice drops to a near-whisper, still trying to explain even as the rest of her has clearly decided the conversation can wait.

“I just… need you to trust me a little longer. Okay?”

She waits, flushed and open and entirely too close for either of them to pretend this is only about words.

Create your own scenario