To the outsider Donna seemed like a carefree, perpetually happy, ditzy blonde. A fact she knew all too well and knew how to use to her advantage. Working as a cocktail waitress, the tips were better when the costumers liked you. Her patrons surely didn't go to a casino to gamble away their money because they were happy and satisfied with their lives, no. Not were she worked at. But those customers needed somebody to be happy for them, somebody to listen to their problems. And who better to trust with your secrets and problems than some blonde, who probably didn't even graduate high school. What damaged could some cocktail waitress like her cause? Not much, if you took into consideration what some of her patrons confessed to her.
Life may have screwed Donna over more times than she wanted to admit, but she learned how to use her looks and personality to her advantage.
Now it had finally started to looked as if she and her daughter would get their fairy tale, their happily ever after, but just as she started to believe that all their hurt and disappointment of the past would pay off and destiny had a kinder fate in store for them, it all came crashing down. Like the houses Felicity liked to build out of the coasters and cards when she was younger and still visited her at work.
Their life was in ruins again. While in the morning it still had seemed as if all Donna had ever dreamed of would finally become true, the day's events left her reeling. After years of barely keeping in contact, her relationship with her daughter was stronger than ever and they were both happy, the men in their lives respecting them and treating them right. At least it had looked like that. Never before had she been so disappointed.
By know she should know better. Life wasn't fair. At least not to them. And for every moment of happiness and joy they got, they were made to pay with hurt, disappointment and despair in spades.
Maybe, she sometimes thought to herself, it was her own fault. How many times had Felicity warned her about jumping headfirst into the next thing and she had never listened?
She should have known it was all too good to be true. The way Oliver looked at Felicity, as if she were his everything. Finding the ring. Him wanting to make their relationship as official as it could get. Felicity getting approving of - and already knowing - Quentin. From there on history should have taught here that it could only get worse. First there was the kidnapping. Which she was left to deal with on her own, both Oliver and Quentin went off to do who knows what. She could have forgiven that, seeing as they got Felicity back in one piece and Oliver subsequently proposed to her baby girl on national television. She was over the moon for them both. Felicity deserved it. She would finally get the happily ever after her little girl had stopped believing in after her father left them both.
And as usual it all came not how she expected, how she wanted it to go.
As she sat in the waiting room, waiting to hear whether or not her little, bubbly girl would live or not, she thought about all she had done in her life. She tried to remember if she ever hurt somebody so deeply, wronged somebody so badly, that she and her daughter would deserve this fate. Maybe she was one of the worst people there ever lived in her former life? That's the only explanation she could think of why life had decided to screw her over again.
Donna didn't know how long she had sat in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, staring straight ahead at the wall, is if it could answer all of her questions and prayers. While at first she had clung to Oliver, whether to lend him some strength or leaning on him, she wasn't entirely sure, now she only saw what was going on through a long tunnel. Thoughts were racing through her head and everything seemed so far away. She noticed Oliver and Diggle in a heated discussion, not caring what it was about, only realizing they were talking because Quentin had let go of her to join them. She didn't care what was going on. All she wanted was her baby to be safe, to survive. Life owed her at least that much.
Hours, or was it days - it certainly felt like days, later, a doctor finally came to talk to them.
Felicity survived. She was a fighter, the doctor told them. As if it were anything new to her mother. She survived. That's what Donna clung to in the hours that followed, while they still weren't certain if Felicity would ever be able to walk again.
Upon hearing the news, she clung to Oliver's side. Needing her to hold herself upright.
And then he left.
He simply left.
Donna didn't understand.
And he couldn't explain.
Something about mayoral duties. About trying to find who did it.
She didn't understand.
How could he just leave her baby girl alone?
How could he abandon her like that?
Didn't he know what that would do to her daughter? His fiancée?
Didn't he know that Felicity's fear of being abandoned by the people she loved were still there? And who would have held it against her? First her father, second, if she were honest to herself, she also abandoned Felicity in a time when the little girl needed her, but they also needed the money and therefore Donna spent so much time working, that there wasn't enough time to try and mend her little girl's broken heart, then came Cooper and when Donna saw her daughter and Oliver together, saw the way he looked at her, as if she were his light, she thought they finally got their happy ending.
That's why she couldn't understand how he could just up and leave when her daughter needed him, barely kissing her cheek when they first got to see her, before he took off, John at his side, doing whatever he thought was more important than staying at her daughters side when she needed him the most.
Oh, Felicity would easily forgive him, Donna knew for sure, seeing it in the way she already started making excuses for him. But she wouldn't. Not for leaving her side. Not for not being there when Donna needed help making decisions for her daughter. No. Donna wouldn't make it easy for him. He would get to know her other side. The not so happy-go-lucky side. Smoak women were forged of steel, and she would show him just what that meant. Nobody got to hurt her daughter.