A/N: I was so pissed off by Felicity's line to Samantha in the S5 finale, like? Where does she get off? As the child of a single mother, I can tell you, hands down, that shit doesn't fly. So I fixed it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Arrow. DC Comics and the CW do.

"- Not that I was consulted."

Samantha frowned, bemused. "Why would you have been?"

Felicity made an aborted noise, flustered. "Oh - uh - I just meant -"

Samantha felt an old, familiar anger rise up in her. It never stopped - the moment people found out she was a single mother, they all had opinions, all thought they had some say in how William was raised, because for some reason, she clearly wasn't enough.

"William is my son," she snapped, icy polite and unyielding as years of fighting alone for her and her son's right to be had made her. "My son - and Oliver's. The two of us are the only ones who have any say in his life."

Felicity flushed, her babble coming to an abrupt halt. There was a mulish spark in her eyes at being talked to so brusquely, but Samantha hadn't gotten where she was by letting other people tell her what to do with her son.

She'd done it exactly once, when she was young and scared, and that was more than enough. Felicity Smoak had nothing on Moira Queen.

"I just thought, with the kind of life Oliver lives -"

Samantha bit back her instinctive 'who gives an actual damn about Oliver' because that wasn't fair to Oliver at all, and instead snapped, "You thought? With what authority, exactly? Your vast experience as a single mother, raising a little boy in suburban American? Go ahead, tell me, what gives you the right to say anything about how and where I raise my son? Or is this your extensive background in witness protection programs talking?"

"Hey, no need to take my head off," Felicity snapped defensively, "I was just trying to help!"

"No, you thought that because you had a relationship with Oliver, you were entitled to everything he touched," Samantha corrected harshly. "But let me be clear - if I had my way, you wouldn't know William existed. Those were my terms, which I, as the woman who raised and protected William for the past ten years, have the right to set. Because this? Where we are right now? Is what happens when people in Oliver's life find out about him."

"That isn't Oliver's fault!" Felicity protested, and at least she had that right.

"And I don't blame him," Samantha agreed, "Adrian Chase is a sick man. But that doesn't change the fact that you still have no say in what Oliver and I decide for William. You're a non-entity as far as William is concerned, and that isn't going to change once we get off this Hellhole - so I suggest you get used to that fact."

Samantha shut her mouth with a sharp 'clack,' choking back her anger and sharp words before she said something out of line, too. William was, understandably and justifiably, one of her hot-button issues, but she wasn't the kind of person who took out her pain and fear on others - and she refused to let this nightmare change that.

She turned away from Felicity before she could she the look on the blonde's face, her own thoughts already returning to her baby. All she could focus on was finding him, holding him in her arms again, and never letting him go. Everything else was just noise. William -

William was all that mattered.

A/N: And then Samantha survives and S6 is all about William getting his biological parents together and everyone lives happily ever after the end.

Thoughts/comments/concerns?