"Felicity?" she heard Oliver ask as she slipped away into the crowd. She quickened her pace, trying to pretend that she hadn't heard him.
"Fe-li-ci-ty," Oliver said, carefully enunciating each syllable. He put a hand on her elbow and gently guided her off to the side.
"What is going on with you?" he asked. "And don't say-"
"Nothing," Felicity interjected.
"Don't say nothing!" Oliver continued. "The truth please." Felicity looked into his eyes and knew that she couldn't lie to him. Not when he was looking at her like that.
"You might have noticed that I talk a lot," she said, deflecting for the moment.
"It has not escaped my attention," Oliver replied with a small smile.
"You might have also noticed that I don't talk a lot about my family," Felicity went on.
"I have noticed that," Oliver said, instantly serious, the smile vanishing from his face.
"My mother is... she's-she's my mother," Felicity said, to which Oliver responded with a knowing nod, "and I don't really know what my father is because he abandoned us. I barely remember him, but I do remember...how much it hurt when he left." She paused, seeing that familiar crease of confusion between Oliver's eyebrows. When next she spoke, it was through a clenched jaw, her voice quavering as she struggled to hold back tears. "And just the- thought of losing someone that important to me again-"
"Hey," Oliver cut in, reaching out and putting his hands on her shoulders. "You're not going to lose me. Whatever it is that's bothering you. Is it- is it about your family?"
"No," Felicity whispered. "It's about yours." She glanced over at the podium where Moira was standing, side by side with her daughter. She took a deep breath to steady herself before turning her gaze back to Oliver, who was looking at her with a question written on his face.
"Your mother used Tempest to make a large wire transfer to a Doctor Gill," she said.
"That's the doctor who delivered Thea," Oliver said, frowning, and Felicity nodded. "But that doesn't make any sense."
"That's what I thought too," Felicity said. "Until I remembered her testimony."
"She had an affair with Malcolm Merlyn…" Oliver said, trailing off.
"A year before Thea was born," Felicity finished for him, nodding.
"Felicity," Oliver said. There was something dangerous in his voice. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying Malcolm Merlyn is Thea's father," Felicity replied, voice trembling. Whatever Oliver had told her, now that that secret was out in the open the fear of losing him loomed ever larger. "And your mother paid the doctor for his silence in order to cover it up. I... confronted her about it, because I thought she deserved a chance to tell you herself. You should have heard it from her. But she...refused to tell you anything, and she said that if I told you, you-you would- you would hate me. You would blame me for tearing your world apart."
Oliver's features hardened with anger, though when he turned toward the podium next to which his mother stood, Felicity realized that anger wasn't directed at her. She felt a rush of relief, followed immediately by guilt. Oliver turned back toward her and pulled her into a hug. She gasped in surprise when she collided with his chest.
"I'm sorry," he murmured in her ear. His voice was gentle, soothing, but still with an undercurrent of anger. He was gone before she had time to react, stepping up to the podium to applause from the crowd. She watched him give his speech to introduce his mother, only half listening to what he was saying. Her focus was on the tension in his shoulders, the shadows behind his eyes, the way he gripped the edges of the podium so hard that his knuckles were white. They were subtle, the signs that he was struggling to contain seething anger. If you didn't know what to look for, you wouldn't know that there was anything wrong.
Oliver locked eyes with her through the crowd. He paused, a long, awkward silence stretching out, and she caught her breath, thinking that he was about to say something about what she had told him, and out his mother to everyone there. Then she saw his eyes flick sideways, toward Thea, and continued on as if he hadn't stopped speaking at all. As he moved past his mother to trade places with her, he leaned over and whispered something in her ear. Moira's face fell, just for a second before she caught herself, but Felicity knew there was only one thing Oliver could have told her that would get that reaction out of her- that he knew the truth.
Oliver leaned over Thea, his hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the top of her head, and though his mouth was turned upwards at the corners, his overall expression was one of anguish and sorrow so intense that it made Felicity's heart ache in sympathy. When the event was over, Oliver tried to slip away into the crowd the same way Felicity herself had done not too long before.
"Oliver!" she called, racing after him, cursing his longer strides.
"Oliver," she said again, catching up to him. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed his hand. He jerked to a stop as though he'd been yanked at the end of a tether. He turned to face her, his movements stiff and tense.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, tilting her head up to look him in the eyes.
"My mother and I need to talk," he replied bluntly, through his teeth.
"And then?"
"I don't know."
"Oliver," Felicity implored when he started to move away from her, pulling him back. "Are you going to tell Thea?"
"That her entire life has been a lie?" Oliver asked bitterly. "I don't know." Felicity could see him putting up his walls,fixing an emotionless mask over his face. This time, when he pulled away, she didn't stop him. She watched him disappear into the crowd, her fingers curling around the empty space where his hand had been just a moment before.