Disclaimer: The Green Arrow and most of its key characters are trademarks of DC Comics. This particular incarnation of the story - the Arrowverse - and this plot line are the property of Berlanti Productions.

A/N: This is my first time writing in this fandom, so I don't quite have all their voices down yet (as will undoubtedly be obvious to you.) So, any discrepancies in characterization is something for which I take full responsibility. I also haven't written a single word for a story in almost a year and a half, so...I'm sorry if the writing is bad in general. I tried, okay? Thanks to my best friend codarra for betaing this for me, so if any other mistakes exist, it is, as usual, my fault. Thanks for reading, and please review!

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks. - Arthur Miller

CHAPTER ONE

She never looked more beautiful than the moment when she broke his heart. She was standing in front of their fireplace, its light making her blonde hair glow even brighter than usual and making little prisms dance on the wall. The prisms were a reflection from his mother's ring, which had taken up residence on Felicity's hand only a couple of days before then. It was now, however, being held aloft between Felicity's thumb and index finger, occupying the arm's length between she and Oliver. The physical distance didn't feel anywhere near as painful as the emotional one.

He didn't know what had possessed him to think he could keep his son a secret from Felicity; he'd never succeeded at keeping anything else from her. But he had tried anyway because he didn't want to see that disappointed expression on her face when she broke up with him. He had known what would happen if he told her - it was one of the few details Barry had shared with him about the original time stream back in Central City. She had found out about his son, they had broken up and then they had all died. And he had hoped - naively, perhaps - that since everything else had turned out okay that maybe this one final change he made would stick. She wouldn't find out, and she wouldn't leave him behind, and he could stay happy.

Barry had warned Oliver quantum physics was a bitch. He really should have listened.

Samantha had called him a few hours previous with the news that someone had taken William. He had promised to come to Central City and be with her while she waited for the police to search. Oliver had quietly gotten up and headed for the Arrow Cave. On the way, he had dialed Barry for assistance, and by the time he was changed into his Green Arrow suit, Barry had run in and was waiting for him.

The child snatcher had turned out to be Damien Darhk, grabbing Oliver Queen's son as a form of either blackmail or ransom, according to his "obligatory bad guy soliloquy" (as Barry phrased it.) Darhk still didn't seem to understand just how fast The Flash really was, as he looked rather taken aback when Barry ran right passed him, grabbed William, ran out the warehouse doors and was back in the room with no child in his arms in less than the blink of an eye. Saving William had taken one hour of searching using the computers at STAR Labs, and less than three seconds of physical altercation. It was entirely too easy by Oliver's reckoning. He was right.

"Finally, a worthy adversary!" Darhk proclaimed, his hands thrusting outward in his jubilation. He didn't seem perturbed by having lost William at all. "You know, I heard so much about the Arrow in our monthly big bad guy meet and greets that I had hoped he'd be a really interesting opponent. But, I've gotta say. I'm really not seeing the big deal. He can't even keep one man's family safe, much less a whole city. I gotta say though, Flash, you're impressive. Almost makes me wish that Central City had what I was looking for because you would be really fun to shake things up with, but well…. Ports are kind of needed in my line of work, and once I can get Oliver Queen to see the light and be a fun mayoral candidate instead of a boring do-gooder, then Star City will be better for me. But, just know...huge fan of you, Flash."

The Green Arrow rolled his eyes. Damien Darhk fanboying The Flash was probably the only time he couldn't find it in him to be jealous of Barry's positive press.

Instead he focused on playing politics with Darhk. "I don't think you'll convince Oliver Queen to back down from helping Star City."

Darhk gave both The Flash and The Green Arrow a winning smile as he stepped closer to them. The fact that Darhk never found he or Barry to be a real threat made Oliver eternally uneasy. The happy smile beneath unfeeling blue eyes didn't help the assessment.

"Oh, I think I can. It's all a matter of finding the right pressure point. For instance, the boy was an obvious nerve I could pinch, but you knew I wouldn't hurt him too much. You've fought with me on this issue before; it's a no-go area. I don't kill children. But he has other pressures. That cute CEO girlfriend - sorry, fiancée - did you happen to see his proposal at the Christmas gala? It was so sweet! - I'm betting she's another good point. I mean, I don't like killing innocent women without provocation, but -" and Dahrk moved so fast that neither Oliver nor Barry saw it coming. Without any outward signals, he reached out both his hands and laid one hand each on Oliver and Barry's chest. Immediately, Oliver felt his life force start to slip away, and he saw as Barry quickly started to turn pale, the blue of Barry's veins sticking out harshly in comparison with his paler skin. "But you also know I will." Darhk released Oliver and Barry, and both superheroes fell to the floor, breathing hard and trying to regain their equilibrium.

Darhk moved calmly for the warehouse door, nonchalantly pulling a mobile phone from his trouser pocket as he went. He never even looked up from the motion of his fingers, and for good reason. Neither The Flash nor The Green Arrow would be moving for the next couple of minutes. It was all Oliver could do to force his fingers to twitch, much less nock an arrow or move his entire body. It took every inch of concentration just to move his pinky fingers back and forth.

"I don't need to kill her though; just have to introduce something to her that Oliver Queen has been concealing. The truth; it's so rare among politicians. When I first met Mr Queen, I had thought maybe he'd be genuine. I almost relished the fight in the light idea that he's been proposing in his speeches.. It was such a new experience for me! But then I just kept an eye on things, and in less than two weeks, I found a huge lie! Not just from the public of Star City but from his girlfriend! Tsk tsk. Letting her walk down the aisle to him with secrets of that calibre. Well, I might be a bit rough around the edges, but I'm not a terrible person. The poor girl deserves better than to have her heart broken by a sleazy politician. And I can fix that." With a couple of final clicks on his phone, he appeared to finish his mission. "And that, as we say gentlemen, is checkmate. The truth comes out and the not-so-heroic public hero must face the music. She should be getting the photographs of Oliver Queen and William, and the DNA comparisons I was able to put together any second now. I kind of hope Mr Queen is with her when she gets the news! Oh, that would be a punch for the record books!"

He stepped out of the entry, closing the massive metal warehouse door behind him. "So long, gentlemen! It's been fun!"

Oliver continued to lie on the floor, still winded by Darhk's draining of his life force. Barry was back on his feet faster, looking down at Oliver with a mixture of pity and anger. Oliver couldn't blame him. A woman with a heart like Felicity's was hard to come by - literally one in a million - and he deserved every hit that Darhk had just given him, and then some. God, Diggle was going to kick his ass. And then Laurel would. And then Thea. Hell, Sara would probably track him down from wherever she was when she heard and would kick the crap out of him too. And he'd let them. He'd take all of it, and he would even silently thank them for it. Because Darhk, despite his evilness, was right. For all of his talk about doing the right thing - the hard thing - he was totally shit at doing it himself.

Barry helped Oliver to his feet, and then punched him in his face. It said a lot for Barry's training over the passed year that Oliver felt the punch over the entire left side of his face. It felt good in a lot of ways; it was better than the numbness that had started to set in when he realised what Darhk had done.

"Seriously, Ollie. Did you not listen to me at all?"

"Actually, I did. And we still have the same problem."

"Yeah, only because Felicity decided to fall in love with someone with less than half her mental IQ and the emotional range of a teaspoon."

"Not now, Barry. Not now."

"Then when? Cos you just made our work life about a million times harder because you couldn't do the simple thing and be honest with the girl you claim to love. And Ollie, you're my friend and I think the world of you, but Felicity is my friend too and if you think that you lying to her this way doesn't make me want to kick your ass from here to wherever those pictures in your apartment were taken, then you haven't given my friendship with either of you the right amount of thought."

"Good. Hate away. Channel that anger, because you're going to need it soon. Because Darhk will come back stronger than ever when he realises that, no matter what happens between me and Felicity, I'm going to fight that for that mayorship seat with everything I've got. And Felicity would never abandon your fight, Barry. You need her assistance, then she'll still be in the Arrow Cave and available to Team Flash anytime. Her work there was never about me. That was about having purpose."

Barry gave a laugh without any humor.

"Oliver, if you think that you aren't a factor in every decision that woman makes, then you haven't been studying her half as hard as I was thinking you have."

With that, Barry ran off in a flash of lightning. It was another three minutes before Oliver realised his ride had run off without him. He tried to ignore the part of himself that felt relieved.

Three hours later, he was walking into his and Felicity's loft. She was, as he had mentally predicted she would be, sitting on the sofa, a bottle of wine and a glass on the table in front of her. Both were empty and the wine glass had remnants of her dark red lipstick on the rim. He envied her the time to bolster herself with liquid courage. He could use a little bit of that himself, since the real kind of courage deserted him the minute he stood in front of their shared door.

"Well, the Central City mystery has been solved," she muttered softly, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes staring unblinkingly into the fire. "It's strange. I've always hated mysteries; they need to be solved. Unanswered questions fester and the best you'll get from learning to live with them are scabs. Those are what my dad left me and my mom when he walked out - scabs. Because I've never found the answer to the questions his leaving us brought with it. But this... I would have preferred the scab."

Oliver couldn't breathe. She wouldn't even look at him. She didn't sound angry or drunk (which was a miracle considering how little liquor she could hold) or lost. She sounded tired. Sad. Defeated.

Oliver hated himself. Not a new feeling by any stretch of the imagination, but different somehow. Before, he had always more hated the decisions he had made; had distrusted himself. This time, he hated the core of what he was. The coward - so afraid of having his heart broken that he broke everyone else's first. She was the best of all of them - the best parts of himself - and he'd broken her. He knew he'd never forgive himself for that. Worse still, he didn't want anyone else to forgive him either.

"I wanted to tell you," he forced out, his throat feeling like a vice was ensnaring his vocal cords. "I must have started to a thousand times." That wasn't a lie. The confession had been on the tip of his tongue for weeks, the words forcibly making their way from his chest. Keeping the truth to himself had been physically painful - a knot in his chest that wouldn't go away, knives made up of words that he knew would break her heart working their way through him. But he had managed to hold them in, somehow.

"Yeah, then why didn't you? What was holding you back? Did you think I'd have a problem with your son? Do you think so little of me?"

"No, Felicity, never!" It was suddenly so important that she knew that his silence had never been about her. The fact that she would ever think that it could be ruined him, confused him, threw his world off axis. Surely she knew after all these months together that she was the only thing in the world that made sense to him, that accepted him completely? She was everything good in his life; everything good in the world.

"Really? Cos the only other option for why you'd keep something this major from me is that you weren't thinking of me at all. You lied to me! And this isn't some little side lie like insisting you took out the recycling when you obviously didn't. This is huge! You have a son - a person who is half you and half another person - and when I asked you what was bothering you, you insisted it was 'nothing.' It's not nothing, Oliver! It's a person!"

"But I did tell you, Felicity! And you didn't take it well!"

"When? Cos that's a conversation I'm pretty sure I would remember having!"

"Barry said," he started, and Felicity gave an inelegant snort. "Barry said when we were in Central City that he had run so fast that he had reset time, by around 24 hours. When he told me, he said that in the original time stream, you found out about William and we broke up, and then everybody died."

"Really? In this fight, what did I say? Did Barry give you specifics? Cos I got to tell you, Oliver, it wouldn't surprise me if the fight we were having is a lot like the one we're having now. Do you really think I would be upset that one of your flings from half a decade before we met had your son? Really? You must think so very little of me if you really think that's what our fight was about in that timeline. I believe there's more empirical evidence to suggest that what you did then is EXACTLY what you're doing now. You kept it from me, I found out about it, and I was faced with the truth of how little you know me."

"Felicity, that is not true. I know you better than anyone in the world - "

"For real? You're going to make that argument? Before today, I thought the same thing about you. I thought you were the greatest man in the world." She stood up from the couch and walked in front of him, cupping his stubble riddled chin in her palms. "I thought I knew every part of Oliver Queen that really mattered - the man who loved his city, who would fight for the very people who want to put him behind bars, the man who would move hell or high water to get Diggle to always see him as a brother, the man who would give away his soul to save his sister, the man who showed me everything that I could be. But I didn't see one vital part of that man until today - the man who would propose to me with THIS kind of a secret hanging over our heads."

Oliver could barely think, much less argue with her. How do you argue with truths? Each one was a weapon and she was an opponent who knew exactly where to aim. He, as with all his enemies, had underestimated Felicity Smoak. And now he was paying for it. And it was costing him everything in the world.

"I am so sorry, Felicity. Samantha said I couldn't tell anyone."

"You still should have told me!" she argued back. "Before you stuck this...ROCK... on my hand -" she removed her hands from his face and she took the ring off," you should have been honest with me. You should have trusted me to understand; I might have been hurt initially, I might have needed a few minutes to come to grips with the change and the expectation of what our family unit would look like, but I would have come around. Because I loved you!"

"...Loved?" He heard himself ask the question. Heard the disbelief. But he couldn't feel it. Numbness had set in. How had he lost her already? How could her love have fled so fast?

"Oh, Oliver, don't you see? I'm still desperately in love with the Oliver Queen who proposed to me. But he doesn't exist. Not really. He was just another mask, put on for another audience. And you finally got good enough at lying that I fell for it."

His hands reached for her, his long fingers cupping her face, in a move so reminiscent of the hospital hallway where it all started that he ached. Her hand still held the ring between their bodies.

"Please..." He wasn't sure what he was begging her for - to give him another chance, to forget that this lie had ever existed, to let him convince her.

"You don't love me, Oliver. Because you don't know me. You don't trust me." Felicity had a large tear go down her cheek and Oliver found himself brushing it away with his thumb, hating himself for making her cry again.

"Yes, I do. I do trust you. I do know you. You are everything, Felicity."

Oliver felt a traitorous tear make its way down his cheek. He would do anything to make her understand, to make his feelings crystal clear to her, but he couldn't think. Everything inside of him felt scrubbed out and blistered and raw. How many hours had he been awake? Had he told Felicity he loved her this morning before she left for work? He couldn't remember, and it suddenly seemed so important that if today had been their last day as a couple that she have something tangible of his love to hold onto. Some words, some meaning. But, he realised, she wouldn't believe those memories now. He had tainted them with his silence, and nothing he said would ever convince her.

"I love you, Oliver Queen. But the man I was introduced to today, by a VILLAIN of all people? The man who lies to me with a straight face? I don't know him at all, and I don't want to."

And then, just as she had done a year and half before, she moved her head from between his hands and walked away. He couldn't bear to watch her leave, so he kept his back to the door, allowing the hot tears to work their way from his eyes. He heard a small chink as she put her now removed engagement ring in the small key holder beside the door.

He had always assumed that having your heart broken felt like a piercing pain, like Ra's sword had felt to him. Or like a throbbing, a bruise that hides beneath your ribs and pulses with each heartbeat. But it was worse than that. It felt like a great, expanding sheet of nothingness. It was a blackness that swallowed everything and dragged him down. It was drowning, without a care that he was drowning.

He had thought breaking Felicity's heart and having his own broken would hurt, but it was worse. It was an apathy. He didn't fear pain from anything anymore; the only two things that mattered had already broken.