A/N: This is my first time writing for Arrow but not my first time writing fan fiction. I have no beta so all mistakes are mine and mine alone but please be gentle. This is my first time writing in almost ten years and I work with numbers all day every day.
I never thought I would want to write fan fiction again, but after discovering Arrow during the Christmas Holidays and while grieving for my Grandmother I found a show I could love this much again, a couple I could love this much again. I really hope someone likes this. I know I do :)
All characters are not my own. They are the property of DC Comics and CW.
They say it only takes once.
Just one time.
One. Numero Uno. Once.
Felicity Smoak found out the hard way that they were right.
One time is all it takes.
And what a difference a year can make.
One year ago she all but emotionally walked away from Oliver Queen and closed the proverbial door of their whatever-this-is-non-existent relationship. Choices he made dictated the direction he had been forced to take in order to save his sister. Killing Ra's al Guhl was one thing (she had all but begged him to) but working with Merlyn was something she couldn't and wouldn't accept.
What a difference a year can make.
One year ago she was working closely with Ray on the ATOM suit. One year ago she was kissing him and his almost pseudo girlfriend/employee/co-worker/confidant
One year ago barely a non-Arrow word passed between her and Oliver. If it didn't involve guns, drugs or thugs her mouth was zipped tighter than Princess Lei's buns.
Buns of hair that is.
Not that buns have hair because they don't but….Because…Anyway…
And Oliver was his usual non-chatterbox self. Really…the man needed to loosen up a little.
Okay a lot.
Where was I?
One year ago Thea was told the secret. Surprisingly it went better than any of them (particularly Oliver) had expected. A lot of light bulbs went off in that brain of hers and like the rest of us when we learned the truth, she processed things her way.
Including a sword fight with her brother once she realized that he had "attacked" her as the Arrow.
One year ago Laurel became the Black Canary (much to Oliver's protesting) and spent months pretending to actually be Sara around her father, Captain Lance, who had a minor heart attack when he finally learned the truth. To this day the identity of Sara's "killer" remains a mystery to him. He only knows that it involved the League of Assassins. Which if you really think about it, is not far from the truth.
Laurel, however was another story. An epic battle of wills and emotions ensued after her and Thea discovered the truth about the night of Sara's murder.
Thea will not so much as touch an arrow now and she practically had to be sedated after her snooping of Felicity's computers showed her the evidence of what she had done - complete with autopsy photos of Sara's arrow-ridden body.
For Laurel the discovery was a test of wills against herself and her reformed torturous addiction. When Captain Lance discovered that his youngest was indeed dead, this time for good, he had his answer as to why for so many weeks Laurel attended more meeting than usual. Sometimes even two a day. Those days Oliver told Laurel to stay home and not report for "night job" duty.
The Black Canary was allowed some down time.
One year ago Oliver trained with Malcolm Merlyn and one month later, met Ra's on the top of the same mountain where he had been defeated only this time to emerge the victor. His sister's life and that of her father's was now safe from the League and life could resume the normalcy that was the Arrow – catching bad guys in Starling City not duelling with Demons in faraway lands.
But there was a catch. Felicity hated to say "I told you so" but she was right. Merlyn couldn't be trusted and using Oliver to defeat Ra's was only the start. He failed to disclose to any of them, especially Oliver that while Nyssa was the Heir to the Demon, any person – male or female – who defeated Ra's in a duel would assume his place as leader of the league. Declining the "honour" wasn't an option.
She might be a master at cracking code and hacking into federal databases but even information like this wasn't available on the World Wide Web. It's not like they have a site for master assassins.
The first time Felicity saw Oliver in what she liked to call his "Death Suit", head and face masked, she felt a chill run up and down her spine. He looked every inch the killer he thought himself to be. Every inch the killer the league would demand that he be.
It was her that stepped in and negotiated with Nyssa for his "release" from the honour of becoming the head of the league. Convincing an international assassin to agree was the easy part – her love for Sara was evident in her eyes. Convincing the Arrow that letting a girl best him was a much trickier proposition. Not that Oliver wanted to be the Demons Head but Nyssa was female after all and his maleness was dead set against it.
That was until Felicity showed him the advantages of having the League on their side if the time ever came. It was the ace up their sleeve if they ever needed it. Not that she hoped they did, because really, assassins have this tendency to kill people and well…that kind of bothered her sometimes.
One year ago John Diggle and Lyla Michaels became husband and wife for the second time in a beautiful and touching ceremony where, even Felicity had to acknowledge, Oliver did his best manly duties with so much heart, it brought tears to her eyes and those of everyone in the room. Including the groom himself and a certain red-hooded vigilante.
Of course there had been the issue of Oliver's chosen plus one for the big day. Just because her mother happened to be in town on the weekend of Dig's wedding and Oliver felt badly that the "poor woman" was to be left alone (which Felicity still didn't believe one year later) because her very own daughter already had a date, does not mean that you take said mother to the wedding as your own date.
"Well, your mom is kinda hot," Roy had offered as an explanation after Felicity and Oliver were overheard arguing about in the Foundry.
Later that night Roy had discovered that making comments like that were bad for his rep when a picture of him in drag magically appeared on his twitter feed. How it got there only one very blonde IT expert knew. And of course her beloved Photoshop program. It was amazing what one could do when the motivation was there.
Oliver got revenge on Roy's behalf when he distributed to the other team members a baby photo of Felicity – one which could only have been procured from his wedding date. Baby photos were usually oohed and awed over but not when they were naked baby bath time photos.
Weeks later Thea had still been singing the Rubber Ducky song from Sesame Street every time she saw Felicity. It almost made Felicity call a certain Demonness to take care of the younger Queen.
One month after the memorable wedding, a disgruntled employee of Palmer Technologies stormed an Applied Science division meeting with an automatic weapon and opened fire. And unlike the last time Felicity had been attacked while attending a meeting in the boardroom of what used to be Queen Consolidated, no one had been there to save her and she went down taking three bullets, one lodged very close to her spine and another obliterated her spleen.
Four days later she struggled out of a surgery and drug induced sleep to find Oliver asleep in the chair beside the hospital bed. And then began a new phase of their relationship. A deeper friendship and closeness that would forever outweigh any romantic entanglements – past, present or future.
Letting go of the past hurt and disappointments had been easy for him, he had said, when faced with the possibility of not having her in his life, in any capacity.
Ray, however, had not been as understanding of the shooting that had almost left her without the use of her legs and minus a spleen. After his loss of Anna during the siege and his inability to protect someone else he had been close to, he made the difficult decision to move the headquarters of his company to Coast City. The Applied Sciences division would remain in Starling – a gesture that made her feel like he was taking pity on her, but one that he insisted was a smart business decision and nothing more.
As head of the division they spoke regularly and every other month she was required to travel to meet with him in person. There was no denying that things were strained between them on a personal level, but he couldn't emotionally commit to her with the guilt of the shooting hanging over him.
Trust her to find yet another man with a hero complex who couldn't deal with his feelings.
Oliver for his part had not been as forgiving as her when it came to the "incident", as they later came to call it. According to the nurses the two men had come to blows in the hallway outside her room after the Doctor had announced that until she woke up, they wouldn't know if she would walk again.
"It was sooooo romantic," one of them had gushed to her.
According to Diggle, it had been a civilized disagreement that ended with Oliver's hand around Ray's throat threatening him in his Arrow Grrr voice.
The hospital discharged her two weeks later with orders from the Doctor to regularly attend rehab to strength her legs and back. It also came with specific instructions about her return to work – day or night related. No work for one month. Rehab, resting, and all the relaxation she could get to allow her body time to heal. The "team" never required time off for a battle scar. A couple of days at home and she would be ready to resume her dual life.
But as she was reminded, she almost died.
No one in the team wanted her back to her duties behind the computer more than her. Or Oliver for that matter. Roy was absolute rubbish with her programs and other than email and basics, Laurel was hopeless. Thea had showed promise but her eye tended to wander to online shopping a little too often.
Dig and Oliver were the only ones with any sense of tech savvy. And if you'd ever seen them behind a computer you would know that praise like that was highly overrated.
I mean, Oliver didn't even know what Twitter was for goodness sake. Three years with her and he still has this idea it was an actual bird. Thea teased him about it constantly.
So she rested, and relaxed and went to rehab four times a week and through almost all of it Oliver was there by her side.
He didn't talk much, or ask questions or nag her when she reached for her tablet. He was just there. He was Oliver Queen, former Billionaire Playboy turned poor man with a hero complex. He was the Arrow. He was her friend.
And like the Arrow he watched over her, like he did with the city, quietly and with intent that no one and nothing would hurt the innocent or those that he cared about.
He would just be there at her apartment every morning, making coffee and toasting her favourite bagel from The Great Starling City Bagel Company – cheddar cheese smothered in herbed cream cheese. While she was in the shower, he would be making her bed and hanging up yesterday's clothes. She even woke up from a nap her first week home to find him folding her laundry.
At night after Arrow business was taken care of he would be there again, bringing her take out from Big Belly Burger or a salad from her favourite restaurant when the rehab specialist informed her she had gained fifteen pounds since the shooting.
Sitting quietly they would flip through channels on the TV and the horrors that were late night television, commenting on the vast array of infomercials and their products you were guaranteed not live without.
Sometime he would come by just to make sure she didn't need anything. Those days she felt irritated because what she needed, what she wanted was to be back at work – in the lair hacking into satellites and helping take down bad guys.
Her day job was being handled by a team of people who couldn't wait for her to come back and take control. She hadn't wanted to admit it at the time but the job held less and less appeal for her since the shooting. Knowing Ray was gone and that their work on his suit would be his alone, depressed her somewhat. She had invested time and a lot of brain cells into making it work for him.
The inevitable happened and the month flew by. She was strong and back to wearing her dresses and heels instead of sweatpants and socks. She was back at work, doing what she loved for the people she cared about and the city that had become her home.
She was back baby!
That first night back in the lair held none of the awkwardness or trepidation she expected she might feel. Instead it was like coming home. Yes, that exactly what it was. The lair, the foundry, the Arrow cave, whatever you wanted to call it, it was home to her.
And nothing was ever going to change that.
At least that's what she thought until months later when she found herself staring at a stick with a telltale plus sign smack in the middle of it.
She was pregnant.
It only takes once.
Yup. Only once.