Felicity rested a plastic tub full of dirty dishes against her hip and blew out a sigh. Working as a waitress was exhausting. She had no idea how her mother, and in six-inch heels no less. She missed the relative simplicity of coding. More to the point, she missed the fact that she could do it sitting down. Thank God her night was nearly over.
Moving to the kitchen, Felicity set the tub of dishes down next to the sink and went to the employee area next to the back door of the diner to get her things and head home for the night.
"Hey Meghan," someone behind her said as she was getting her coat and her purse down from the hooks by the door. It took Felicity a brief moment to realize they were talking to her. She'd been Felicity Smoak all her life, and more recently she'd become Felicity Queen, but now she was Meghan Kuttler, a single mother working extra hours at the local diner to support herself and her son, Jack, after her husband had walked out on them, and even after five months the name was still taking some getting used to. She'd been told that the easiest lies to remember where the ones that had a grain of truth to them, and there was some truth in saying her husband had walked out of them. He had, in a sense. He'd allowed Samanda Watson to haul him off to prison.
She knew Oliver would have lectured her about using her actual middle name as part of her cover identity, but she was still angry enough with him to not give a damn about what he would have thought of it. She knew it was also a risk using her father's last name, but in that case, she was certain that her identity was safe because everyone knew Felicity Smoak as the daughter of the infamous cybercriminal Noah Kuttler, and she wasn't Felicity Smoak anymore, or even Felicity Queen. She was Meghan Kuttler for the foreseeable future.
Felicity turned around and bit back a groan. Standing by the entrance to the kitchen was Rodney, one of the line cooks. He was a known sleaze, who had a habit of harassing the female kitchen staff and slapping the ass of any waitress unfortunate enough to walk too close to him. He'd done it to Felicity once, and she'd almost given him a broken nose for his trouble, but then she'd heard Oliver's voice in her head- Keep your head down. Don't call attention to yourself. And as much as she'd wanted to ignore that voice, it wasn't only her own safety and security that she needed to be concerned with, so she'd done what women had been doing since time immemorial- paused, taken a deep breath, then plastered a fake smile on her face, moved on, and pretended like it hadn't happened.
"What do you want, Rodney?" Felicity asked with a sigh. He stood there, preening in his grease stained apron and ratty T-shirt and jeans, completely oblivious to her lack of interest, and said, with an oily smile he no doubt thought was charming, "You look lonely. You oughta let me come home with you tonight."
"I really don't think I want to do that," Felicity replied coolly.
"Aw come on, Meghan," Rodney crooned. "Don't be like that." He moved to lean against the back door in a deceptively casual pose that was clearly meant to block Felicity's exit.
"Please move out of my way," Felicity said firmly. God, how she missed those not so long ago days when saying that she was married actually meant anything to the assholes that hit on her. "I need to get home. Jack is waiting for me."
"Your boy needs a man in the house," Rodney said, changing tactics at the mention of William, or rather Jack. "To teach him the right way to act."
"Jack is old enough to figure out the right way to act for himself," Felicity retorted, "and he's certainly not going to learn it from someone who's just going to end up leaving him like his father did." She used the distraction of Rodney racking his brain trying to determine whether or not she'd just insulted him to duck under his arm and finally escape the door. She climbed into her intentionally nondescript car and tried not to think about how much she missed her Mini- even the bloodstain on the back seat- as she drove home as quickly as she could before some disaster could befall her.
"Hey kiddo," she said with a tired smile when she walked in her front door and found William waiting up for her. "Shouldn't you be in bed? You have school tomorrow, after all." William shook his head.
"Couldn't sleep," he said. "Nightmares." They'd dyed his hair blond when they'd started their new life, to make it more believable that he was her kid. Otherwise, he looked too much like Oliver. But neither of them could hide the fact that William had his father's eyes, and in that moment, they were so much his father's that it made Felicity's heart ache.
"I'm sorry," she murmured soothingly, taking off her coat and setting her purse on the table next to the door. William shrugged off her sympathy.
"What took you so long to get home?" he asked.
"I got held up at the door," Felicity explained. "Rodney cornered me at the door and tried to convince me to take him home with me." William grimaced. He'd heard the horror stories about Rodney.
"That really sucks," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well, it's just one of the consequences of being Meghan Kuttler," Felicity said, affecting a light-hearted tone for William's benefit, so that he wouldn't have to know how much it truly had sucked. "'I'm married isn't a reason the assholes will listen to anymore," William's face twisted into an angry, pained expression, but whatever was on his mind, he didn't share it. Felicity pulled him into her embrace, resting her cheek against the top of his head. At the rate he was growing, pretty soon he would be tall enough that she wouldn't be able to do that anymore, and she felt a sudden pang at the thought of how Oliver would feel when she saw how much William had grown when next they saw each other, whenever that turned out to be.
"I miss him," William mumbled, his voice muffled against Felicity's shoulder.
"Me too, kiddo," Felicity said. "Me too. But we'll see him again someday. We just have to keep working the system until we can get him out."
"I'm angry with him too, though," William admitted. "For leaving us. For leaving me. He promised me that he wasn't going to do that ever again." Tears stung Felicity's eyes suddenly. Somehow it hurt worse to hear how Oliver had hurt William then to be reminded of how he'd hurt her.
"I'm angry with him too," she said quietly. "But remember what I told you? Everything your dad does, he does for a good reason, or what he thinks is a good reason." William nodded, indicating that he did in fact remember when she'd told him that.
"He thought that handing himself over to Watson was the only way to keep us safe from Diaz," she went on, trying to reassure him as best she could. "He may have been right, or he may not have been, and we have every right to be angry, but what we have to remember is that he was just trying to do what needed to be done to protect his family."
"I know," William whispered. "I just wish things weren't so hard right now."
"You and me both, kiddo," Felicity muttered. "You and me both."