Oliver waited until everyone else had left the lair. Felicity grew tenser as each of their friends left with a softly worded farewell, knowing that he wasn't going to leave it alone. He was going to want to…
"Can we… can we talk?"
"I don't know, can you?" When he winced, she sighed. "Ok, that might have been a little… necessarily passive aggressive."
"Did you mean 'unnecessarily'?"
She looked up from the screen and pinned him with a direct look. "No."
He bit his lip and took a seat in the chair next to her. "Hmmm. Felicity, I want… I want to tell you what happened, if you'll listen."
"Sure you don't want to run it past anyone else first? Barry? Thea? Malcolm Merlyn?"
He closed his eyes, pained. "Felicity…"
"That might have been necessarily passive aggressive again."
His lips quirked into a brief smile that reminded her painfully of their first year. He saw the look on her face and sobered immediately. "I know it doesn't change… anything. But I want you to know what happened. I want to explain."
She folded her hands in her lap and gave a sharp nod.
"I didn't know, about William, until we were in Central City to help Kendra. Barry and I were getting coffee and he ran into me. I just kind of watched him go back to his mom, and then I… I recognized her. Samantha."
He ran his hands over his thighs as if his palms were wet. She waited. He swallowed hard and then continued, not quite looking at her.
"We knew each other in college. We hooked up, once…" he shot her a quick glance, looked away again, "her first… And she had called me to tell me that she was pregnant. I was terrified. The only person I told was," he bit his lip and his mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. "My mom. She told me that we would figure out what to do, and then a few days later, Samantha called me and told me that she'd miscarried." He heaved a deep breath. "I was devastated. And relieved."
Felicity nodded. "Go on."
"When I saw them in the coffee shop, I just… I did the math, and I realized that she could have lied. That he might be mine. So I confronted her. And she told me his father was someone else." Another deep breath. "But while I was there, I picked up a hair. And I asked Barry to run the DNA."
Felicity shook her head. "See, I don't understand. Why didn't you come to me then? I could have run the DNA. We could have found the answer together, Oliver. You had to know I wouldn't blame you for not knowing you had a child."
Oliver shook his head. "I don't know. I just… needed to process it. Privately."
"So you told Barry."
"No, I told him that it was related to Damien Darkh…"
"So you lied to Barry, too." She shook her head immediately. "Nevermind, this isn't about lying in general, we do that all the time. But Oliver, this isn't like lying to me that you didn't invite my mother to dinner. This is like lying to me about going every week to visit a secret second family."
Oliver paled and then scrubbed his hands through his hair. "I don't know what you want from me, Felicity. I'm trying."
It was like the words set off the final fuse in her frustration, and she exploded with it. "You know what I want? I want the man who stood over me and threatened me when I locked him in the Foundry. I want the man who flipped over a table because we weren't fast enough to save someone. I want the man who, who … was so jealous of Barry when he was in a coma that I almost punched him! Not this… this facade, with nothing behind it."
His eyes flashed and he straightened his back. "You want me to be an asshole?"
She threw her hands in the air. "I don't want you to be an asshole, Oliver. I want you to be real. That man? That man was real. Those emotions, those reactions? They were real."
His head came up fast at that. "My feelings for you are real! How can you doubt that, after everything we've been through?"
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, grasping for control. Her voice shook when she spoke. "Oliver, I know that you love me. But I don't think that you trust me, not really. Ever since… ever since you came back from your duel with Ra's al Ghul, ever since you decided to work with Malcolm Merlyn," she spat the name with all the venom she could. "You've been hiding from me. You've lied to me, the big ones, more than once. And somehow in there, you got used to it. You got used to, used to… excluding me. If you truly trusted me, truly believed in us, you wouldn't feel you had to do that. You'd want to talk to me, even if you knew I'd disagree with you, because that's what being in a real relationship is about."
"Felicity… I wanted to tell you about William. I really did. I begged Samantha to let me tell you."
He was truly the stubbornest man in the world.
"Oliver! Do you seriously not understand this? You had choices that didn't include lying to me about it! Setting aside that, if you had brought the hair to me instead of Barry, I would have already known before you confronted Samantha. Setting aside why you thought you owed a woman who you met, like, twice ten years ago more allegiance than me, the person you said you wanted to marry, and setting aside how you thought letting me know could possibly result in William being in danger from anyone, all you had to say was that you'd made someone a promise, and that you would need some time to get past it. Or, tell me that you're not ready to discuss it. Tell me that you just learned something big about your past and that you need to process it a little before you can tell me about it. Tell me it's a secret that's not yours to tell! But don't lie to me about it!" She was out of breath at the end.
He stood up and started to pace, steps jerky. "There's more to it, Felicity. It's not all so straightforward. Barry…"
"Barry!" Of course, back to Barry.
"Barry… There was a second timeline, Felicity, where you found out almost as soon as I did, and Barry said we fought, and that you ended us. I tried, I swear, I tried to convince Samantha to let me tell you, but when she refused… I just wanted enough time to talk her around, so that I wouldn't be betraying anyone." He was still convinced that he'd made all the right calls, she could see it in his face. He felt guilty as hell, but held to that conviction.
"But Barry knew."
He nodded, but she held his eyes until he said it. "Yes."
"And you learned that Malcolm Merlyn knew."
"Yes."
"And Thea found out."
"Yes."
She felt the tears start to form as the hurt rolled over her all over again. "And still, after all of that, you thought that telling me would be the deal breaker, Oliver? Really? How the hell am I more of a threat than Malcolm goddamned Merlyn?"
He stared at her, wordless.
"I am so angry with you right now, Oliver. I understand that you wanted to protect your son. I understand that his mother was telling you that you had to keep your parentage a secret. I understand why you made the choices that you did. What I don't understand is why you decided, from the very beginning, to make all of those choices by yourself." She brushed the tears off her cheeks roughly. "Somewhere, you started thinking of me as your girlfriend, and you stopped thinking of me as your partner. And until you can treat me as your partner, completely, then I just can't be with you. I want all of you, Oliver, not just the facades." She stood on shaky legs and gathered her purse. "I think what really breaks my heart is that you forgot those two things I told you in the clock tower."
She stood on shaky legs and gathered her purse. "You weren't alone, Oliver. I believed in you."
This time, he didn't watch her go.