The darkness of the current lair of the Starling City vigilantes was broken only by the illumination provided by Felicity's tablet screen as Oliver walked into the room, shrugging off his green vigilante jacket and draping it over the back of a chair thoughtfully as he watched his wife of thirteen years, knowing that she was probably oblivious to his presence.
At over 40 years of age Oliver Queen had maintained his high level of fitness, his body still just as muscular as it had been when he was 27 and recently returned from Lian Yu, although he would be the first to admit that he was no-where near as fast as he had been fifteen years earlier, and when he was injured it took a lot longer for the pain and swelling to go away. In the cold weather his knees and shoulders ached from what he'd put them through in the past, and standing under the spray of a nice hot shower didn't quite do as much for him to loosen his muscles as it used to.
Felicity, in Oliver's opinion, was a beautiful as ever, a pen tapping thoughtfully at the corner of her kissable mouth, her focus fixed on whatever she was looking at. Oliver smiled inwardly at her actions, knowing that throwing her focus into cases was just one of her coping strategies.
It was, however, getting very late, and Oliver knew for a fact that Felicity had a meeting to attend in the morning with Ray Palmer, a mutual friend and business associate of the couple for a long time. Despite having not liked Ray at first, the man had come to grow on Oliver, and now Oliver considered the other man a friend and ally.
"Felicity," Oliver spoke, trying to avoid startling his wife. Felicity, however, obviously had been deep in her thoughts, because she still startled violently, almost falling from her chair. She took a moment to steady herself, before she leveled a glare at Oliver.
"Sorry," Oliver apologized, "but it's getting late, and we should head home for the day."
Felicity frowned and glanced at her watch, visibly cringing when she saw what time it was, "Oh, damn, Sorry," Felicity apologized, beginning to pack up and switch off her screens. Oliver frowned and approached her, not liking for one minute how flustered and generally strange Felicity was being. He was used to her quirks, but something about her behavior concerned him.
Oliver understood Felicity's behavior, however, when he caught a glimpse of her tablet screen, and saw one of the files relating to Robbie and Alex's kidnapping fifteen years earlier.
Despite the fact that so many years had passed since that night Oliver still felt his chest tighten as he saw the photo of his nephews attached to the digital file Felicity had been looking at. The fact that one of the few cases Oliver hadn't been able to solve over his long years serving the people of Starling City was the kidnapping of his own nephews was a definite sore spot for him.
Oliver felt Felicity's hand touch his shoulder, and he blinked, forcing himself to look away from the now darkened tablet screen.
"Sorry," he shook his head, "I just…zoned out for a bit."
"It's okay," Felicity told him, setting the tablet aside and rising to her feet, cupping her hands over his cheeks, "I know you miss them...I know that you want to find them and get some sort of closure, either way."
Oliver nodded silently, thinking about the dwindling number of people who believed that Thea and Roy's twins were still alive. Oliver was one of them, Roy and Thea were as well, although Oliver wasn't sure what Felicity thought. Diggle had confessed to Oliver that he'd given up on hoping that the twins were alive years earlier, and Sara, jaded and more realistic after her experiences with the League, had admitted that she'd given up before the twins had been gone for a year. Oliver had stopped asking his friends what they thought about on the matter after that. Seeing the pity in their eyes as they shook their heads was just too painful to witness...and Oliver wasn't even the twin's father. He had no idea how Roy and Thea had managed to hold it together for so long.
"It's been fifteen years, I know I should just let it go, but I can't…they're my nephews."
"Nobody expects you to let it go, Oliver, disregarding how much time passes," Felicity told him sternly, grabbing her laptop bag and her purse, before taking his hand in her on and leading him from the room, flicking the lights off as they left. Oliver was silent as Felicity drove towards their home, not protesting when she took his car keys from him on the way to the car park, his mind still dwelling on the reminder of his twin nephews, taken away from them so long ago.
It didn't take long for them to reach the apartment they shared, located only a block from the loft that Thea and Roy lived in, the very same one that they'd brought the twins home to the day they were discharged from the hospital. Oliver walked over to the windows, gazing out at the city below as, behind him, Felicity put her things away and went into the bedroom, presumably to get changed into something a little more comfortable.
The twins would be 16 now, old enough to drive. Oliver smiled to himself as he remembered the day that he had offered to help Roy teach the boys how to drive when the boys had only been a few months old. Oliver and Roy had been babysitting while Laurel and Thea dragged Felicity and Sara out for a shopping trip, and had spent the day watching baseball while the twins lay on the floor, sucking on their toes and generally just keeping themselves occupied unless there was something they needed.
It had been a good day, one of the few where Oliver had let himself forget about his role as Starling City's guardian, and instead let himself be "Uncle Ollie" and relax with Roy and the twins. Oliver was certain that a few photos taken that day, both by Roy and himself, and by Thea when she got home to find Roy and Oliver sound asleep on the floor, each with one of the twins sleeping on top of them, still existed, probably on Felicity and Thea's computers, and, maybe, in paper format in the photo albums that Thea had that were devoted to her little boys.
Perhaps what hurt Oliver the most about the twin's kidnapping was the pain Roy and Thea went through, and still had to deal with every day. Oliver himself had helped Roy pack up the nursery furniture that had been in the twin's shared room when it became obvious that, even if the twins were recovered alive and well, they'd be too old to continue sleeping in cribs. Even though it wasn't a sign of giving up on the twins, Oliver still had noticed how much Roy had cried that day…and Thea had locked herself in her room, hiding from the world, although they'd all been able to hear her mournful crying through the walls.
While the passing years had helped numb the pain, Oliver knew that Thea and Roy still missed their children deeply. Mother's day, Father's day, Christmas, and the twin's birthday were all especially hard days, with both of them spending those days with just each other, trying to cope with their loss as well as they could.
Whenever they had dealings with children or more recently teenagers, Roy could be counted on to look after them and get them back home, although it would often lead to the younger man spending time brooding quietly. Thea threw herself into charity work, taking special interest in funds for orphans in the glades, or children whose lives had been affected by crime. Thea's interest in such charities had led to a lot of speculation by the media that she and Roy would adopt in order to fill the empty places in their hearts, but Oliver knew that Thea and Roy had no intention of ever adopting a child. The twin's kidnapping had simply proved how dangerous it was for any of them to have such innocence in their lives.
It was the due to the very same reason that Oliver and Felicity had never had children. Although there had never been any evidence that the twins had been taken because of Oliver's secret Identity, or because of Roy's duties, or of anything else related to the Arrow and Arsenal, it didn't take an IQ like Felicity's to guess it was why the twins had been taken. None of them had wanted to risk something similar happening again, so Thea and Roy had decided not to adopt, and Oliver and Felicity hadn't even considered the option of having children of their own.
Diggle and Lyla still had Arabella though, and after everything that had happened they were all very protective of her, perhaps more protective than Arabella herself would like, but Diggle and Lyla had greatly appreciated their efforts.
Arabella was finishing off her junior year of high school now, and would both turn 18 and start her senior year in the fall. Felicity had already offered to help her with her college applications, although Oliver suspected that Arabella wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and join ARGUS, not that the teenager had ever admitted as much to him. Diggle had similar suspicions, and Oliver knew that nothing scared Diggle more than his only child being in the situations that he and Lyla often found themselves in.
Malcolm, despite his best efforts, had found no clues as to where the twins had been taken, or who it was who had ordered their kidnapping, although it hadn't been for lack of trying. He had searched the world almost continuously for well over five years following the kidnapping, despite the fact that the league very much still wanted him dead. He had, however, had been aided, in that regard, by Nyssa, who had used her influence within the League to manage to shift their attention away from Merlyn, knowing how important his current job was to Sara and the rest of the team. It had all been for naught, though.
As for Sara and Nyssa, they were still going strong. Ra's had permitted Sara's departure from the league, freeing her up to help Oliver and his team in Starling City, and Nyssa came to Starling City as often as she could to be reunited with Sara. She'd become one of Oliver's closest allies, and Oliver was glad to have her around.
Laurel too had played a pivotal role over the years, serving initially in an advisory role, and then doing more hands on work as she was trained by Oliver, Roy, Sara and Nyssa. She worked well with the team, becoming a sort of pseudo older sister to Thea and Felicity when they needed it, something that had happened fairly often in the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping, and if Thea had a bad day she was more likely to go and talk to Laurel than anyone else.
Sara and Laurel's dad had been a valuable addition to the team, providing information to them so that Felicity didn't have to find so much of the information herself, in additional to his knowledge to some of the more longstanding players in the Starling City criminal underbelly. He also, when needed, provided a little cover to prevent them being caught, although these days there wasn't barely any interest in the Green Arrow being caught and charged for his crimes. Oliver's strict no killing unless it's absolutely necessary rule was primarily responsible for that turnaround, as well as Captain Lance speaking publically about the Green Arrow and highlighting the positives, while at the same time acknowledging, but at the same time not focusing on the bad things that had happened that were the vigilante's fault. Occasionally it caused issues, but for the most part Lance's allegiance with Team Arrow hadn't caused significant problems for any involved party.
Not long after the kidnapping Oliver and Thea had sold their shares in Queen Consolidated to Ray Palmer, who now ran the company, renamed Palmer Industries. Felicity was still heavily involved in the organization, though, and Palmer himself often talked business with Oliver, keeping him up to date with the inner workings of the company his parents had spent so much time building into one of the top companies in the country.
The sale had left Oliver free to devote his time to searching for the twins, and also made it easier to serve Starling City as the Arrow. In hindsight Oliver knew that selling Queen Consolidated was the best thing he could have done, for the company, for Thea, and for himself, and he was pleased with his decision. Even Walter Steele had commended Oliver on this practical, mature and logical thinking the last time they had met a few years earlier. It had helped Oliver find the balance he had been searching for ever since his return from the island between his public identity of Oliver Queen, and the version of Oliver Queen that served the city as the Green Arrow.
After so many years under the protection of team Arrow, as Felicity was known to call them, Starling City was finally flourishing, crime and corruption were at all time lows, and poverty was at an all time low level in the Glades. Unemployment was low, and there were a number of programs being run that was effectively keeping young people off the streets and out of trouble. Both Oliver and Thea were involved in a couple of them, and Roy was involved in more than a few, never forgetting his own history in the Glades. It was only luck and how much Roy and Thea loved one another that had prevented him from just being another statistic.
Oliver was pleased to see the city become the hopeful beacon it had become, the one his father had wanted him to help it turn into after the Queen's Gambit had gone down. It felt like all of the hard work, not only his, but Felicity's, Roy's and Diggle's and Laurel's, Sara's and Captain Lance's, and Thea's, and Ray Palmer's too.
His only regret was, however, that two of the ones they'd all been really fighting for hadn't ever seen the place the city where they'd been born had become. Robbie and Alex had never seen how safe the Glades were now, had never seen how much hard work their parents and extended family had put into making the city a better place, not just for them but for the other children as well. Every time Oliver looked at statistics showing how much of a better city Starling City was it was like a kick in the stomach, knowing that his own nephews had been taken from them before it had happened. It felt like he'd saved the city, but he hadn't been able to save his own blood. Oliver knew that Roy felt the same, and Thea as well…Felicity too sometimes. He saw it in the way they turned away from the statistics, often with tears shining in their eyes.
Oliver's friends and family were not the only ones who remembered the twins. Every year, on the twin's birthday, the hospital where they'd been born released 100 pale blue balloons into the sky, and Roy and Thea would be inundated with letters from the public, expressing how sorry they were that the boys wouldn't be spending this birthday with their parents. The mayor had renamed a central city park the Harper-Queen Memorial Playground in memory of the lost twins, and there was a memorial there with the twins' names, date of birth, and the date of their kidnapping on it. In the same cemetery where Oliver's mother and Tommy had been buried there was a plaque in a garden dedicated to Robbie and Alexander, probably the closest thing to a grave there ever would be. The plaque was rarely without flowers, or little soft toys, left there by Starling City people who wanted to commemorate the boys' loss. At least a few times a year an article would appear in the newspapers discussing the case, speculating if anything could have been done differently, and often the authors wrote about how the Queen family had banded together following the tragedy and had used the tragedy to inspire themselves, often mentioning the numerous charities they, and in particular Thea, had devoted themselves to after the kidnapping.
Most of those among Starling City's people who commemorated the twins' birth, and their kidnapping, were ones who had been helped by one of the numerous charities set up in the twins name by Thea. There was the charity that provided financial support for disadvantaged families whose newborns needed to spend time in the NICU, just like Robbie and Alex had, that Thea had set up only a few months after the twins had been born, as well as a couple of scholarships for children and teenagers from the Glades who excelled academically to attend the same private school Thea had gone to, along with a few others that worked with parents of missing children, orphans in the glades, and children whose lives had been affected by crime.
Although they were not quite as wealthy, or as influential as they had once been, Oliver was sure that his family had never been so popular in the eyes of the people of Starling City, thanks to Thea's charity work, especially since everyone in the city knew how much the charities meant to Thea on a personal level. It was oddly soothing to know that the people of Starling City were so supportive of his family, especially when Oliver vividly remembered how hated they were after the earthquake, although Oliver was fully aware of the fact that it would never fully ease the pain of losing the twins, not for him or Felicity, or any of their friends, and especially Thea and Roy.
Nothing would ever completely heal that particular wound in all of their souls.