…Thea…

Thea didn't know how to do it. She held the knowledge that would irrevocably change the future of two people she loved. She had two options in front of her. She could keep the knowledge that was burning a hole through her brain to herself for a few hours – a few hours that would seal two fates, and one of those would ensure Felicity peace, love, and a lifetime of happiness. She knew Felicity better than she knew herself. If she kept this to herself, just for a short time, she could ensure that the world would be at laid Felicity's feet. But her fingers shook as she held on to the brass doorknob and she had to wipe the slick sweat off on her grey satin dress. She steeled herself and let the door swing open with a turn of her wrist.

Felicity sat on a bench, her image reflected back at Thea through a mirror. Her darkened eyes turned upward at the intrusion. Thea couldn't help but smile at the sight. Felicity looked stunning. Her hair swept up and loosely tied at the base of her neck with small white feathery flowers interspersed. White buttons dotted their path down the white lace that covered her back. The bench hid the rest of the dress, but Thea could see it in her head. After all, a maid of honor's job includes help picking out the dress.

Felicity's eyes were furrowed as she looked back at her. In a quick flourish she was up and at Thea's side. "Are you okay?"

A moment passed and Thea shuddered involuntarily. "It's just a little cold in here."

"Was it Moira?"

"Hm?" Thea picked up the bouquet on the table, pulling out a few flowers and plucking away at a few leaves so they sat just so. She remembered picking out the flowers. She would have pegged Felicity for something bright, eccentric, and endearing, much like Felicity herself, but instead an arrangement of white lilies from Felicity's favorite flower shop sat in her hand.

The flower shop sat at the edge of the Glades. The wedding had no budget and could have been on quite a grand scale, but Felicity had put her foot down and made sure the money was given to businesses that needed it and that it did not end up in the pockets of someone who had already filled theirs with millions. This is what Thea loved about having Felicity for a best friend; she always managed to keep everyone around her grounded. Money and high society did little for her and Thea thrived in the realism that Felicity brought to her life. She didn't know what these past five years would have been like without her and she owed her so much; she had to stay strong for a few more hours because Felicity deserved that much.

So, when she answered her question properly, Thea did so with a smile on her face. "Yeah, it was mom. Just wondering when I'd be home."

"Oh. Well, the civil ceremony shouldn't take more than 30 minutes, but if Moira needs you back I'm sure we can rustle up another witness."

"Are you kidding? I'm not letting you get married without your maid of honor. Whatever it is can wait an hour. Now come on, let's get you married and off on your honeymoon."

"Ha. The honeymoon is going to have to wait. The IT department at QC is in an abysmal state and I'm saying this with a heavy heart because god, I love Walter, but the man has no knowledge of what an IT departments needs to run efficiently. He hires ten poor technicians where he could have hired one great one, and now your favorite IT girl has to go and fix the mistakes of the idiots who can't tell apple from android, forcing me skip out on all honeymoon happenings!"

Any other day, Thea would have listened to Felicity's ramblings with affection because the girl made her laugh like no one else, but today all she could hear was the forceful beats of her own heart and her mother's words telling her an impossible truth. Her heart ached and she yearned to be elsewhere and at the same time, nowhere else. She sat down on the bench Felicity had vacated, unaware Felicity had stopped talking minutes ago. She tried desperately to bring herself back to the here and now, but she was conflicted and hurt and overjoyed and scared and everything all at the same time and then again, she felt nothing at all.

"Thea," came Felicity's steady voice as she placed a hand on Thea's shoulder. "I know that this isn't how you expected things would play out and I know I'm asking for a lot. It's a difficult spot to put you in so I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you being here and doing this. Married or not, you will always come first."

Thea pulled Felicity into an embrace and held on to her tightly as she let out a deep sigh. "God, I love you so much. He really doesn't deserve you, but then again I'm not sure anyone ever would."

Felicity rolled her eyes. "You have to say that, you're my maid of honor."

"I don't have to say anything. It's just the truth. Anyway here, I brought these, I figured these shoes would go with the dress much better than the silver ones."

"Oh those are perfect! Help me will you? This dress makes it impossible to bend… at any joint. One day you will have to remind me why I picked this one."

"Because you look stunning."

"I guess not being able to sit without fear of tearing the fabric is a small price to pay."

Thea let out a snort. "You'd never cut it in my world you know that? You're just lucky you found someone who doesn't care… much."

Thea quickly flicked her eyes upward and mentally chided herself. Sometimes Felicity's lack of filter was contagious.

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to imply that he would mind if you couldn't…"

"Hey, don't worry about it. You are right. I'm all left feet and whatnot. I get it," Felicity interrupted, the warm smile on her face letting Thea know all was forgiven.

A sudden draft in the room caused them both to swing their heads toward the doorway. In it stood Tommy Merlyn looking disheveled with one hand on the doorknob, and the other holding Felicity's phone.

"The alerts on your phone wouldn't stop. I thought it might be important so I checked. And…"

Thea's heart clenched. It was too late. She should've checked for the phone. She should've found a way to keep Tommy out of the loop too. But she wasn't thinking. She had tunnel vision and all she could think of was Oliver.

"What's going on with you two?" Felicity asked, taking the phone from Tommy's hand.

Thea watched as Felicity opened her alert tabs and almost dropped the phone in the process as she scanned the headlines. Long ago, when she was studying at MIT Felicity had sent up alerts for Oliver Queen, knowing that if they went off, he would need her and she would be there. Felicity was not only intelligent, but a brilliant friend too. But those alerts had not gone off in more than four and a half years and Thea could practically see the gears turning in Felicity's head.

Thea's vision began to blur, her eyes a glistening mirror of Felicity's.

"Is this true?" she asked, the question pointedly directed toward Thea.

And it was. Oliver Queen had been found. Oliver Queen was alive.

…Felicity…

Starling City General was a modern building with paneled glass and brushed-steel beams. The Queen Family Wing had been originally donated for purely PR purposes so as to distract the people from Oliver's infamous public urination scandal. The wing had served its purpose.

Felicity could still picture the photographs from Oliver's public attrition. The photographer had managed to catch a particularly candid moment of Oliver making the children in the cancer ward laugh. She remembered wishing that more people saw Oliver the way she saw him – as a kid who was lost, but who had what mattered most, a good heart. It was then that hospitals, a somber and dreaded place for most people, had become a place of hope.

So as she stood there on that day, she couldn't help but marvel at the serendipitous turn of events. She watched as Thea and Tommy sat on the plastic benches as they waited, the former with fists clenched in her hair and the latter obsessively checking his watch, and for the first time, in what seemed like a very long time, she was filled with hope.

"Can I see him? What did they say? Is he okay?" Thea had vacated her chair and rushed toward Moira before Felicity could even process the events.

Felicity had never seen Moira Queen cry; not even when Robert Queen and her son had disappeared somewhere in the South China Sea, but the woman's eyes were glazed over as she responded to her daughter, and Felicity imagined that this is the closest she would ever come to seeing the Queen matriarch cry.

"He's been through a lot."

Felicity waited with baited breath.

"But he's okay. He's coming home."

Felicity let herself go slack against the wall behind her and let some of the tension drain from her shoulders.

As Moira let Tommy know, in no uncertain terms, that this was a special time for the Queen family alone, Felicity's eyes once again shifted toward Thea.

It was a struggle to recall a time without the dynamic brother and sister duo. They had crept in like fog in the night and cemented themselves in her life like no others before them. First Oliver, then Thea, and finally Tommy, Laurel, Sara had trickled slowly through the walls she had built up and they integrated themselves so deeply into every aspect of her daily life that to remove one thread would be to unravel the tapestry of her life. That's the closest explanation of the last five years that Felicity could ever come to – an unraveled life. They were all threads seeking to become whole – to find some rhyme or reason to their lives. Missing Oliver meant missing their most basic and fundamental stitch.

In truth, they had all eventually found their own ways of existing without him, but none of them could truly live without him. Life had continued on, albeit a colorless version.

Thea soon disappeared behind the double doors after Moira, but not before a reassuring hug from Felicity. She held on to the emotionally wrecked teenager for a few moments whispering encouragements before she let her go.

"I know this is hard, but you can do this Thea."

Felicity cupped Thea's face with both hands, meeting her eyes unflinchingly and hoping to give her as much strength as she could muster.

"Thea Queen you are one of the bravest and strongest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. You can do this and I'll be there if you need me, just say the word. Okay?"

With a nod of her head and a quick hug from Tommy, Felicity watched Thea disappear behind the doors that housed Oliver Jonas Queen.

…Tommy…

Soon after, Tommy and Felicity found themselves at a café down the street from Starling City General, neither of them wanting to be too far away should Thea need them. They picked a spot by the window in view of the main doors, where throngs of media had congregated to catch a glimpse of Starling City's prodigal son. Felicity and Tommy stood guard with mugs of coffee in their hands, neither of them knowing quite what to say to the other – companionate silence would have to suffice.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed until he finally broke the silence. He had been lost in thought for much of the day, but Felicity's ring bare hand had not escaped his notice.

"You're not wearing your ring, Smoak," Tommy remarked, his eyes never straying from the doors of the hospital.

"Not sure I have one to wear anymore, Merlyn."

Tommy shut his eyes tightly as he replied, "Please tell me he didn't call off the wedding because of Oliver."

"Thea must have seen this coming from a mile away. I think that's why she was waiting to tell me until it was over and done with," Felicity wagered, her cool composure unflinching.

"I am really sorry Smoak," Tommy offered sincerely, reaching out with both hands to grasp hers.

Felicity withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap.

"Can't really blame a guy for wanting to call things off when his bride-to-be is running off on their wedding day to be at another man's side."

"Felicity…"

"I think… I think that, even if I knew well in advance that he would call the whole thing off, I would have still made the same decision."

When Tommy began to give her a pitying look, she cut him off once again.

"Thea and Oliver will always come first. He deserves to be with someone who will put him first and as much as I thought that I could be that person, I can't."

Tommy frowned as he allowed himself to process what Felicity was saying. He wasn't surprised by her answer. Thea was like his sister too, she would always come first. He was however surprised that Felicity had finally allowed herself to acknowledge that Oliver was up there too. This was definitely new.

Quick short buzzes made him turn his attention to his phone which lay on the table, Thea's face plastered on the screen.

"Thea? What's going on?"

"Is Felicity with you?" With a few taps on the screen Felicity connected to the call.

"Yeah she's here."

"I don't think I can do this. I want to come home," Thea cried out, between heavy sobs.

"Thea… It's Oliver…" Felicity began.

"You don't get it. When I walk in there… the old Ollie will be gone. Whoever is in there will be a stranger. I'm… I'm never going to get my Ollie back and I'm not ready to lose him, not again," Thea explained, her voice thick with ache.

Tommy's heart broke as he listened to Thea; she put into words what everyone was feeling. The difference was that Thea didn't get to process her feelings before facing her fears.

"What can we do Thea?" Tommy asked.

"Please just let me come home for one more night. And tomorrow I'll go back and be what everyone needs me to be, but right now I just want to come home."

It didn't take very long to get Thea out of the hospital without attracting any attention from the media. Tommy and Oliver had spent enough time together engaging in less the becoming activities to figure out the ins and outs of flying under the radar and avoiding significant amounts of media scrutiny. It was hard to imagine what the public opinion would have been had they not developed ways of hiding the majority of their likely illegal and definitely scandalous escapades.

When they finally made it back to Felicity's townhouse no one was surprised to find Tommy spending the night as well. This had become a common occurrence in the years after Oliver had been lost at sea and presumed dead.

At first, it had been just Felicity and Thea as they sought comfort in each other. He didn't know much about what went on during that time, but from what he gathered Felicity had lost her very best friend and Thea had lost not only a brother and father, but her mother as well. Moira had shut herself off from the world, which included her own daughter. As weeks went by, they were both, in their own ways, untethered and lost, and when the time came to legally declare Oliver's demise, they found the strength they needed in each other.

While Felicity and Thea had each other Tommy had no one. For the world, Tommy had lost his partner in crime, or at best, his best-friend. But the few that truly knew him understood that he had lost much more. He had lost his whole world. His mother had been taken from him when he was young, whereas his father left willingly to seek something else, which Malcolm supposedly found when he disappeared for a few years after. All Tommy had was Oliver.

After Oliver was legally declared to be deceased, the media attention shifted to Tommy's spiral into oblivion. Surprisingly, it was Felicity that reached out to him. Thea had been lost to her own grief and Felicity, as she had once said, could only think about how much it would have hurt Oliver to see the people he loved so utterly broken.

Tommy resisted at first. He and Felicity had spent little time together in the past. He knew of her, they had gone to high school together after all, and he knew that she and Oliver had been somewhat close, but that was where his knowledge of Felicity ended. Despite what little Tommy knew of Felicity, he always held close the suspicion that his Ollie wasn't her Oliver. They were two different people entirely and he would have been lying if he said he hadn't been jealous of their closeness.

But as time went on he learned things about Felicity Smoak, the first of which was that the woman was relentless. She found a way to always show up when he needed her (to bail him out of jail) and even when he wanted nothing to do with a world in which Oliver Queen did not exist. He couldn't count the number of times during the first year after Oliver disappeared that she found him in the back alley of a club covered in the stench of his own sickness, took him home, cleaned him, fed him, and gave him a place to lay his head.

Sometimes in the morning, he would see Thea asleep in Felicity's spare room, but he never questioned it. In fact, he didn't speak to either of them for weeks – after all, there was nothing left to say. So, he would shut the world out and find himself in another club and at the bottom of another bottle.

Eventually, he stayed for breakfast. A few months after that, he began to frequent Starling City's nightclubs a little less and visit Felicity and Thea a little more. He didn't know when it happened, but it struck him one night as Felicity and Thea sat on either side of him painting their nails and watching a show about a man and a travelling telephone booth, that somehow, together, they had found a way to move forward.

Thea and Tommy had spent many nights sleeping over at Felicity's in the past, but tonight no one slept. And when the pink of a new morning sun began to creep into Felicity's living room, they knew they had all run out of time. It was time to brave whatever Oliver they may find – and if grief for their lost Oliver is what lay ahead, then they would face it as they had before – together.