Disclaimer: Arrow characters belong to DC and The CW. Definitely, Maybe belongs to Universal, StudioCanal, and Working Title. Script credit to Adam Brooks.
Absolutely, Probably
"Wait! Stop!" his daughter says, holding up both her hands. "Stop right there. Now, go back."
Oliver sighs, pinching his brow in exasperation. It's been three days of this so far. Three days since his ten-year-old daughter had come home curious about how and when he knew her mother was "the one." He should have been prepared for this the second they told her about the divorce, really. He loves that she's so smart, but sometimes, she's way too inquisitive for her own good. And what's that school starting sex ed so young for, anyway?
"So Helena tells me how I've just got to meet this friend of her's at the baby shower, right?" he repeats, retracing the last bits of the story. "And she leads me through the crowd, and then all of a sudden, people move away like the clouds parting, and I see her. It's Dinah and she looks just as beautiful as she did back in high school when I used to drunk-dial her just to tell her how pretty she was. And she smiles right at me and runs her fingers through my hair and she says…"
"Okay, stop!" Mo interrupts a second time. "Say that last part again."
"She smiles right at me... and runs her fingers through my hair..." Oliver repeats, comically slow.
"There! Right there!" His daughter is nearly ecstatic. "That's it! That's how I figured it out!"
He smiles, honestly surprised that's taken her this long and half-sure she's been messing with him to get more dirt on his behavior as a teen and young adult. Because he's been telling her about the three great loves of his life, and they could not be more different kinds of women: the on-again, off-again high school sweetheart, the posh and professional fuck-buddy and...Felicity.
He's switched up their names to keep her guessing, but he's pretty sure Mo knows her mom well enough to have picked her out of the story by now.
"That's what Mom does when I'm upset," his daughter tells him in a rush, pushing her tiny glasses up on her nose. "She fluffs up my hair and tells me to be brilliant or shine like the sun, and it always makes me feel better. And every time you talk about Dinah, she's always messing with your hair and telling you to be brilliant."
"Sounds like a great mom," he smiles as he sees the woman in question crossing the park over Mo's head.
"She is a great mom," his daughter agrees.
"So you're absolutely positive, 100%, that 'Dinah' from the story is the very same woman walking toward us right now?"
Mo turns to see her mom flash a smile and a wave before whirling back to him with a grin.
"Absolutely." When he makes her sweat it a little, her wide smile falters just a touch. "Is it?"
He grins at her with a little nod and she gives him that smile that always makes his heart squeeze in his chest and flies across the park to wrap her arms around her mother's waist.
"Mom! Mom!"
"Hey kiddo!"
"I'm so glad it's you!" Mo exclaims, and Oliver winces a little.
"Who else would it be?" His ex flashes him the tiniest look of worry, but their daughter covers quickly.
"Nobody."
"Good morning, Oliver." She smiles at him sunnily.
"Hey, Laurel."
"You should practice with me," Felicity tells him eagerly. "I'm really good at that. I will be Laurel."
She's incorrigible, really. They've only been working together at Queen Consolidated for like three months when she finds the ring in his desk. Well, "working together" is a polite term, really, she's been saving his ass left and right since the minute he stumbled into her office with a laptop full of latte. He's just starting on the QC payroll fresh off a few years of "finding himself" after college, during which he bummed around so hard with Tommy that his father finally sat him down in his office and put a stack of Queen Consolidated business cards in one of his hands and a massive diamond ring in the other and told him to get his "fucking act together."
He would have failed outright at at least one of those things if it weren't for Felicity, he realizes. After she was able to salvage his laptop, he kept coming back for more and more inane problems, sometimes because he needed actual help, and sometimes just to sit with her in the IT department with its whirring processors and lack of expectations. Felicity makes him feel like everything's going to be okay, in a way he's not comfortable examining closely when there's an engagement ring for someone else sitting in his desk drawer. He chalks it up to naivete and the fact that her hair looks like sunshine.
And of course, it doesn't hurt that she's an actual genius. In fact, she had been berating him, emphasizing how far below her intelligence level assembling a PowerPoint presentation was ("you are essentially paying me to be that stupid little animated paper clip, Oliver") while still piecing the thing together with a big smile on her face, when she opened his second desk drawer to search for a flash drive and there it was.
"Whoa there," she gasps. "That thing looks like a Ring Pop."
"A what?" he wonders, dumbstruck by both her reference and the sight of the ridiculous rock his father expects him to put on Laurel's finger by "the end of the third quarter." So incredibly unprepared for corporate life, he had thought Robert was making a sports reference.
"Yeah, you know one of those candy things with the big...the candy's the diamond?" Felicity mimes, actually raising her eyebrows at him like she expects him to know what she's talking about. "Nevermind. When are you proposing? You should practice. Practice on me right now."
When he finally agrees, he regrets it almost immediately as she snaps into an exaggerated character.
"Okay, so hi, I'm Laurel Lance, your high school sweetheart," she says, teasingly. "Is there something you wanted to ask me?
He takes a deep breath, trying to imagine darker brown hair and Laurel's face superimposed over Felicity's sparkling eyes and dark-rimmed glasses.
"Laurel…"
"Wait!" she interrupts him before he can even get to his first thought. "You've got to get down on your knee."
"I'm not getting down on my knee."
"She'll like it. She'll like seeing you down on your knee."
"I'm not getting down on my knee."
"Such a mistake," Felicity shakes her head at him with an eyebrow crooked and a judgmental tone. "Okay."
"Laurel."
"Yes, Oliver," she deadpans, overly serious.
"Don't make me laugh," he warns, grin threatening to crack his serious proposal face. "Laurel, will you, um, marry me?"
"No." Felicity answers almost immediately, in a way he's sure that Laurel never would, and he throws up his hands in exasperation.
"Oh, my God."
"Well, what do you mean, 'Will you, um, marry me?'" Her imitation of him is not flattering. "I've been up to my ears in law school, I haven't seen you in weeks! You don't look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage!"
"You're asking me to give up my freedom, my joie de vivre" she continues, really for her own amusement, "for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you wanna marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda?"
"Oh, my God!" His hands are in his hair now and he throws her an incredulous, pleading look. He should have never agreed to this in the first place.
"You should have gotten down on your knee!"
"Just shut up, okay?" he yells, everything bubbling to the surface. "Here: I wanna marry you because you're the first person that I want to look at when I wake up in the morning and the only one I wanna kiss goodnight. Because the first time that I saw these hands, I couldn't imagine not being able to hold them. But mainly, when you love someone as much as I love you getting married is the only thing left to do. So will you...um...marry me?"
That shuts her up. Hits him a little sideways too, if he's being honest, the way Felicity's big blue eyes go all wide behind her glasses and her bright pink lips open on a silent "O." But she's only frozen for a second before she snaps back into playing her part.
"Absolutely," she says, grinning big, before catching herself with a little frown. "I mean, probably."
"Mom, can Dad come with us to the bird store?" Mo asks Laurel in her sweetest voice that Oliver is horrified to hear starting to sound more and more like adolescent manipulation with every passing month. He is nowhere near comfortable with the idea of his brainy, beautiful little girl as a teenager. It is too damn soon.
"Yeah, if Dad wants to come, sure."
"You know, I love the bird store." Oliver snaps out of his internal panic to toss a grin at his girls, insomuch as either of them are "his girls" anymore.
"Let's go."
"Guess what, Mom?" Mo asks, swinging Laurel's hand as they make their way down the street to the store. "We learned all about sexual intercourse at school yesterday."
"Really?" Laurel shoots actual daggers from her eyes at Oliver at that, but he just gives a shoulder shrug and an eye roll he hope conveys "Hey, I'm as shocked as you are." Ten years and they still have yet to perfect the silent conversational style every other parenting couple seems to have mastered.
"Really," Mo parrots.
"Really," Oliver adds, with another pinch to the bridge of his nose.
"I love the canaries," Mo exclaims when they're finally inside, standing in front of her favorite cage.
"Me, too," Laurel sighs.
"Me, three," Oliver agrees, glimpsing the bright yellow birds hopping around in the cage, but mostly watching his daughter's face.
"Did you know that some birds mate for life?" Mo asks them. Sometimes Oliver calls her "Encyc-Mo-pedia," which always earns him a "Dad that's dumb" look. But he thinks it's worth it. It's pretty fitting. "Penguins, I think."
Laurel hazards another worried glance at him over Mo's head at this. Their daughter's been handling the divorce really well, maybe too well, and they keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe she's giving it to them in a metaphor?
"Although, Mr. Diggle told us that sometimes the husband and wife birds get separated 'cause of their migraine patterns," their daughter continues, oblivious to her parents' concern.
"Migratory," Laurel corrects her gently.
"Migratory, right," Mo says, taking a breath and adjusting her glasses. "Well, sometimes they're apart for years, but they almost always find each other. And do you know what the husband and wife penguins do when they find each other after all that time?"
"What's that?" Oliver asks nervously.
"They throw back their heads, flap their flippers, and sing as loud as they can!" Mo mimics, flapping her tiny wings and letting out a squealing cry that raises ire in some of the nearby cages.
Oliver and Laurel just laugh in relief as he scoops her up over his shoulders, clamping a hand playfully over her mouth.
"Okay. All right, Mo. Let's go!"
Once they're back out on the street, Oliver realizes that it's his absolute least favorite time of the week, time to say goodbye. This is the only part of the divorce he regrets, he thinks. All three of them are happier with him and Laurel apart, everything in their lives is better, save for this major robbery of time spent together.
"Hey, monster, that was fun today," he says to his daughter around the lump in his throat, kneeling down to her level. "I'll see you on Wednesday, okay?"
"See you on Wednesday," Mo nods solemnly.
She starts to walk to Laurel, but whirls back towards him before he can even stand up.
"Dad!" She nearly tackles him in a hug, squeezing him tight and whispering in his ear. "Thanks for telling me the story."
"You're welcome," he pulls back and smiles at her, before remembering, "but hang on Momo, you asked about the happy ending, and I forgot to tell you."
"What is it?"
He looks at his little girl, beautiful like her mother, trouble like him, smarter than both of them combined, and he can't regret any part of the journey that led him to this moment. "You."
Her nose crinkles under the bridge of her glasses at that, and he mentally punches himself in the face for even bringing the hint of tears to those big blue eyes. "Thanks, Dad."
"Hey, I love you." He kisses her head once more and moves to stand.
"I love you, too," she whispers, and he misses her already.
"Go catch up to your mom, okay?"
He watches her run to Laurel, watches his ex brush under her eyes with a bit of worry, but turns away on a wave, before he can watch anymore. Mo's better at damage control, anyway.
That first proposal doesn't work out, best laid plans and all that, but he finds his way back to Laurel a little over two years later. Of course, it's just one week after he meets his ex again for the umpteenth time at the baby shower that he's in a used bookstore in Central City and he finally finds it. A copy of The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth, with a handwritten inscription that reads "To Felicity," followed by a mess of ones and zeros.
He stands in the bookstore for maybe an hour, in shock, remembering the exact moment he caught a glimpse of Felicity's first IT office at Queen Consolidated, maybe a month or so after they had started "working together." He remembers being certain the executive broom closets on some of the top floors were bigger, but she had still managed to cram a desk, a couch, and two massive bookshelves in to the tiny room, and the pride she clearly had in the space buttoned his lips.
"Wait a second," he had frowned, looking at the top row of books on one of the stuffed shelves. "These are all Volume One."
"Yeah, my dad, um, left me a copy of it when I was little. He he wrote a message to me in binary on the inside page and I figured it out in less than twenty minutes," she had told him, soft but proud. "When he left and we had to move, we lost a box of books and...it was just gone. I always look for it in used bookstores and vintage shops. Sometimes I buy a copy."
He buys the book, her book, he can't believe it, and walks next door to a pub to get roaring drunk, eventually finding himself outside an apartment that's not his and not Laurel's.
He sits on her stoop for a while, before a kind old lady offers to hold the door if he's waiting for someone and the scotch rolling around in his gut takes it as a sign.
"Felicity!" He pounds on the door that he's 70, maybe 60% sure her remembers is hers, oblivious to the fact that it's nearly midnight.
When a tall handsome guy with dark hair answers the door in a half-buttoned flannel shirt, all his energy shifts immediately to hoping that he's got the wrong place. But he's already come this far.
"Does Felicity live here?" He probably looks like a crazy person, and he's sure he smells like a barstool. But he's got the book clutched tight inside his jacket, he's at least got to take the shot. Right?
"She does," Tall Dark and Handsome answers protectively, moving to block the doorway a little. "But she's working late tonight. Who are you?"
"I'm, uh..Oliver…"
"Queen?" The guy finishes, eyes brightening. He holds out his hand and, not for the first time, Oliver notices that the guy actually has the nerve to be an inch or two taller than he is. "It's great to finally meet you."
"And you are?"
"Ray," TD&H, or Ray, answers. "Ray Palmer."
He vaguely remembers an email about a new boyfriend. If he's honest, he probably stopped reading after those words. "The same Ray she told me about a few months back?"
"I hope so," Palmer chuckles. "Unless she's got a stockroom around somewhere."
"Ray Palmer. Of Palmer Technologies," Oliver realizes finally, scotch-soaked puzzle pieces mushing together in his head. "Heard you guys were coming to town."
"We sure are." The guy gives him a cocky grin that frankly, Ollie Queen would have punched off his face. But he's got to be someone else, now.
"She's working for you?"
"Ah, I wish." Palmer says wistfully. "I wouldn't have kept her this late. Nah, she's busy setting up shop."
"She's at a new company?"
"She's running one," Palmer answers, going a little heavy on the proud boyfriend tone for Oliver's tastes. "She just opened up her own private securities firm."
"She's...she's running...that's great." He might as well be speechless, for all the good that sentence did him.
"You want me to tell her you stopped by?"
"No, that's fine," Oliver chokes out, stumbling back towards the elevator bank. "Don't uh, don't tell her. Thanks."
The week after that, he asks Laurel to move in. When she tells him she's moving to Central City, he goes with her. When she tells him she's pregnant, he's ecstatic. When she tells him yes, she'll marry him, there's one person on his list who doesn't get an invite.
He stands outside of Smoak and Fyre Tech for a long while before he musters up the courage to go inside. This time, no kindly old ladies make the decision for him.
"Hi. I'm looking for Felicity...Ms. Smoak." He clears his throat at the reception desk, feeling genuinely nervous for the first time in a long time. And not just because meeting with CEOs always makes his palms sweaty.
"Check that they have legal representation, okay?" He hears her voice before he sees her and his hearts skips a little beat at the familiar sound. She's on the phone when he rounds the corner to her stunning corner office, but she waves him in with a smile as she finishes the call. "Right...okay, great. Thanks Gerry. Talk soon."
She hangs up and fully turns to him and his lungs stop working for at least ten seconds. "Hey, you."
"Hi Felicity," he huffs out. "This place is remarkable."
"Thank you, for remarking on it," she gives him a bright smile and he's 24 again, thinking about kissing her when there's an engagement ring for someone else in his pocket. Except now he's older and there's nothing in his pockets except for some change and that friendship bracelet keychain that Mo made him at day camp.
"Quite an office." He's just working in half-sentences now, praying he doesn't blurt out anything about kissing her or engagement rings. He's treading so carefully, so aware of the voice in his head that's fairly screaming at him. This is it, the voice says. Don't fuck this up.
"Yeah, big step up from that broom closet at QC, huh?" she laughs a little. "Nice part about the 'up-and-coming' neighborhood, we got a bunch of office space on the cheap. Which means, hello, nice big office for the CEO."
"Congratulations on that by the way," he says, feeling like he's repeating himself. "This is incredible."
"Thanks again."
"You still live downtown?" He's not-so-expertly swerving around the things he actually wants to say like a half-drunk stunt driver.
"I'm in that development in the New Glades, actually." She hands him a business card and he flips it over to see a personal number and address scrawled on the back.
"Always on the cutting edge." He pockets the card and smiles up at her, striving for nonchalance. "Dating?"
"Not at present. You?"
"I got divorced."
"I know," she presses her lips together on a frown. "I heard. I'm so sorry."
"Why?" he asks on a chuckle. "You always said marriage was overrated."
"Yeah, and you never listened to me," she teases. "You were always with the rings."
Oh god, rings. At least she said it, not him. "Is that why you and Ray never…"
"Oh God, Ray. No. Ray…" She laughs off the thought, but drops her eyes from his. "Something always seemed to be missing with Ray. I don't know. It's weird. We were so...compatible, but it was never quite right. You know?"
"Yeah," he breathes, just looking at her looking at him. She's still so beautiful, maybe even more so.
"It's good to see you."
"You, too," he replies, because it really is. Then, for the first time since he's walked through the doors of the building, he remembers what he's holding in his hands. "I have something for you."
He hands her the book, and the next few minutes are pure magic. She's like a kid at Christmas (Hanukkah, he mentally chastises himself) when she tears open the wrapping paper, but that expression changes to something else entirely when she realizes what it is. She throws him a look that's happy and sad and so fucking hopeful all at once before she dares to open the front cover.
When she sees what's written inside, her eyes snap shut for a second and all he wants to do is hold her.
"Thank you...so much," she breathes, fingers tracing over the inscription, over the ones and zeros written just for her.
It was such an easy thing, he thinks, such a nothing action that she's thanking him for. But the air around them is heavy with meaning and he knows he's not the only one that feels it.
"How did you find it?" She asks when she finally looks up from the book to meet his eyes. "I mean, where did you find it?"
And the thing is, it would be so easy to lie right here. He's thought about it. In his daydreams (and sometimes just regular dreams) about this moment, sometimes he tells her that he just found it and he ran all the way to her office to give it to her and it's romantic and they're happy and everything's perfect. But he's never really been able to lie to her.
"That's the difficult part to explain," he says instead. "This is gonna sound bad."
She waits, eyebrows twisting to a frown.
"I've had it for a while," he admits.
"How long?"
"Years," he huffs out. "Many years."
The whole mood in the room shifts then, he feels it, the hope in his chest rushes out of him like air from an untied balloon.
"Years?" she asks, confusion tipping over into concern.
"I meant to…" He's just stammering now, like a damn fool. "I meant to give it to you. I wanted to give it to you. I just...I couldn't. And I don't know why."
She's still just staring at him, and his heart drops like a rock into his stomach. But his mouth just carries on.
"I dropped it off once. I mean, I tried. Ray was there and…" She's still just frowning and the last of his hope slips through his fingers. "Hey, there is no excuse, and I'm sorry. It's inexcusable."
"I think you should go, Oliver," she says softly when she finds her voice. He can barely make it out and prays he misheard her.
"Felicity..."
"I think you should go."
"Where is he? Where's Ollie?" The voices echo after him as he bails out of the bar, stumbling away from his impromptu party. "I don't know. I was just talking to him."
It's his first birthday back in Starling since he moved away to Central City with Laurel, and everything's wrong. His mother's dead, his marriage is crumbling, he's fucking up as a father, plus, he's puking in the gutter like he hasn't done since he was 14 years old.
"You missed your birthday cake," a voice reaches him and of course, there she is. The only person he wants to see and probably the last person he should be around right now.
"Uh-oh."
"And I baked it."
"You baked it," he narrows his blurry eyes at her and she gives him a funny little nod.
"Well, I told the baker how to bake it anyway."
He laughs and stumbles at the same time and she catches him, looping an arm through his.
"Whoa, there. Somebody had too much to drink."
"No, I didn't," he insists and the word tastes funny in his mouth. "I didn't, I didn't. I didn't."
"Yes, you did." She giggles and he's a goner.
"I did," he admits, pulling his arm away and turning to face her, giving her his biggest grin. "God, you're beautiful."
"Thank you," she blushes, but then he's stared too long because her modesty turns into discomfort. "What?"
"The thing is, Felicity…" he trails off, collecting himself. He's really going to do this. Why the fuck not. "The thing is...is that I like you. I don't like anything right now and I like you. I've always liked you."
Her eyes go wide behind her glasses and her lips part, but no words come out, so his dumb drunk mouth goes full steam ahead.
"Like," he scoffs at himself. "That's pathetic. It's so puny. 'Love' on the other hand...you'd run away from a word like that."
And he just said it, for fuck's sake he just said out loud what a bad idea this is. But everything's shot to shit anyway, right?
"I love you," he breathes. "I'm in love with you, Felicity."
"What?" She's just staring, a hint of a smile on her face like she still thinks he's kidding.
"I have been, I think for a while now." Forever, his brain counters, but he's got just enough control not to say that out loud. "Maybe forever." Okay, maybe he doesn't.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"Come on, Felicity." He pleads with her, like she's supposed to know the answer, which is stupid. Even he doesn't know the answer. "I, you...You never felt the same way about me."
"You're an idiot," she says, her eyes finally snapping from dreamy to serious.
"Yeah?" he counters, obstinate in that special way that comes with four drinks too many. "You're not even the first girl with a ponytail and glasses to tell me that today."
"Stop it," she says, dropping her eyes to the ground and huffing out an exasperated breath.
"What?"
"Don't do this like this."
"Like what?"
"Look at you, Oliver, you're a mess," she sweeps her eyes up his frame and he realizes with regret that everything she's waving her hands at is disheveled and sloppy. "Why couldn't you have told me when you had your shit together?"
"My shit is together," he fires back angrily. "I mean, other than the impending divorce, my shit is great."
"Your shit is a mess," she repeats. "You're a mess. And also, good point, it's still somebody else's mess."
He calls after her as she walks away, but he knows she's not going to turn back. She wouldn't be Felicity if she did.
"You never gave it to her?" Mo asks incredulously, when he tells her later about the book fiasco later that week. "After all that time?"
"I know," he hangs his head, unable to meet his daughter's disapproving glare.
"But it was from her dad." Sometimes, she sounds so much like his mother he forgets which one of them is the ten-year-old. It's probably the one with chocolate sauce on her face, but even that's not a very good indicator.
"I know. I know."
"And then you just left?"
"Yep."
"How come you changed all the names except hers?" Mo asks. Her brain works so fast it gives him whiplash sometimes.
"What do you mean?"
"In the story, you know, like Mom became Dinah, and Helena's that Isabel lady who works at Palmer Technologies. But you didn't change Felicity's name. Why?"
Because there's nothing else to call her, his brain offers, she's just Felicity. He tamps down the stupid thought, aware of how meaningless it sounds. But it's the truth isn't it? That's who she's always been. And he's never wanted her to be anyone else. But there's not a great way to explain that feeling to a ten-year-old, even one as smart as his.
"Why are you so concerned with all of this anyway?"
"Because I want you to be happy."
"You know, Mo, I'm happy."
"Trust me, Dad," she says, matter of fact. "You're not happy. And I know you said that I'm the happy ending, and that's great, but you have to get another one. Because I'm not here all the time."
His heart breaks a little at that fact, and her acceptance of it.
"Okay, so I'm just supposed to get another one?" he asks, incredulous. "How?"
"I think you know how."
"It's not that easy, Mo." He's just dragging his feet now, knowing where this is going. Mo's been hinting at Felicity since the story started, and that's probably his fault for how he told it. But it's true, he thinks. He got a real shot at happiness with the other two. But Felicity...
"It's not supposed to be easy, Dad," his daughter sounds exasperated. "Aren't you always saying that the best things are worth fighting for?"
And something about his brilliant ten-year-old being so sure about it snaps whatever's left of his resolve and rationale.
"Put your coat on."
"Okay!" she says excitedly, grabbing his phone off the counter. "I'm calling an Uber."
They fly down the stairs hand-in-hand, and Mo squeezes his when they get to the curb, like she can tell how his heart is racing.
"She said something was missing with Ray, which means it might not be missing with you," his daughter gabs excitedly as they get in the backseat of the towncar and he gives the driver the address of Felicity's new place. "Which is good news, right?"
"Could be."
"Did you know that 25 people try to jump off the Glades Memorial Bridge each year?" Mo tells him as they cross over into the up-and-coming parts of town. "Most because of broken hearts."
"Thanks, Momo," he deadpans. "I'll keep that in mind."
The Uber driver drops them off in front of her building and this time, it's his daughter's hopeful eyes that push him towards the front door.
"Hello?"
He sighs in relief just at the sound of her voice over the intercom.
"Hey. Hi." He answers back dumbly. "It's me, Oliver."
There's silence for a few long minutes, so he tries again, pressing the button a little harder.
"Felicity?"
"What are you doing here?" She answers this time.
"Uh…"
"Go on, tell her," Mo urges from her spot behind him.
"Who's that?"
"That would be my daughter, Mo."
"That's kind of cheating, isn't it?" she says. It sounds like her voice is shaking a little, but it might just be the intercom. "Bringing your daughter? What am I supposed to do now?"
"Well, you could let us in," he tries, but the long pause makes him turn back to Mo with a sad smile. "I don't think she's gonna let us in."
"I think you're wrong."
Damn her youthful optimism. They wait for another full minute or two before he turns back again.
"Come on, Momo. Let's go."
"A little while longer," Mo urges "She's going to let us in."
"Okay, kiddo, here's the deal," he says on a sigh, turning around and crouching down. "I'm gonna count to 30, okay? And if she doesn't let us in, we're gonna go home, and we're never gonna talk about this again. Deal?"
"Yeah, okay," she agrees with a skeptical side-eye that looks just like her Aunt Thea.
"Ready?
"One, two, three, four five six," they count together. "...14, 15, 16, 17…"
"If she lets us in," Mo interjects excitedly, "tell her the story like you told me. And then she'll know."
"Know what?"
"I can't explain," she says, shaking her head. "She'll just know."
"...25, 26, 27, 28, 29…"
"Twenty-nine and a quarter," Oliver continues, his heart already a stone in his lower abdomen. "Twenty-nine and a half."
"Twenty-nine and three-quarters," Mo works out before turning to him, looking uncertain for the first time all night. "What comes after that?
He sighs in resignation. "Time to go."
"But this wasn't what was supposed to happen."
"I know," he takes her hand in his and turns back towards the street.
"I really thought she would have heard through the intercom and let us in, or run down the stairs and said…"
"What story?" Felicity's voice sounds behind them, not through the intercom, but like she's standing right there.
And he turns around and...she's standing right there.
"What story?" She asks again, hopeful eyes locked onto his.
"I kept the book…" He starts, because that seems like the best place to begin.
"Yeah?" Her lips are pursed and a challenge flares up in her gaze and her voice.
"...because it was the only thing that I had left of you. And I couldn't let you go, Felicity."
He sees her face drop all of its pretense for just one second, and then he can't see her anymore, because she's wrapped around him. Arms and legs and her face buried in his neck and it's everything he's ever wanted. Until she kisses him.
She kisses him deep and fireworks go off behind his eyelids. But it's just for a second until he feels her tense up in his arms.
"You must be Moira," Felicity's face flushes as she slides back to her feet, deferring to the little girl behind him. She pulls back, but Oliver refuses to let her go completely, keeping hold of her hand until she laces her fingers through his.
"You can call me Mo," his daughter answers with a grin. "Everybody else does. You must be Felicity."
"I sure am." Felicity smiles quickly at Oliver, sending a bolt down his spine, before she turns back to his daughter. "So, what happens now?"
"You invite us inside," Mo tells her, no nonsense, "and we tell you the story."
"Okay," Felicity nods, matching her serious tone. "Let's go."
Mo makes her way towards the front door, and Oliver moves to follow, but Felicity's hand in his tugs him back to face her and then he's kissing her again and thinking, not even for the first time today, how his daughter is the smartest girl in the world.