A/N: Next update should be March 31st.

Tommy Merlyn gets a sister for Christmas. It's not the puppy he asked his mom for when he was six, but it's damn close. He sits in the Queen's living room with Thea and Oliver, and he watches as Thea opens the envelope with trembling hands.

His heart is beating so fast with nervousness that the time Thea spends perusing the envelope's contents feels like an eternity. After a few moments, she leans over to Oliver, holding out the paper, and quietly asks, "Does that mean what I think it means?"

Tommy feels sick. Thea's eyes are filled with tears, and Oliver's face is stony and unreadable.

"You're my half-brother," Thea whispers, and Tommy's secretly glad that's how she phrases it. Malcolm is my father would have been much harder to hear.

(Malcolm is gone, he reminds himself. He may have been able to hurt Tommy, to hurt Rebecca, but he cannot and will not ever be able to hurt Thea.)

While Tommy's first impulse is to lunge forward and sweep Thea—his sister—up into a hug, he stamps it down, waits. Oliver's arm is around Thea's shoulders, and she leans against him as she cries softly. Tommy wishes he knew the cause for her tears, happiness or sadness or just being overwhelmed, but he feels like his normal ability to read Thea Queen like a book has been broken. He's never seen these pages before.

Anxiously, Tommy rubs his hands over his knees and stands up. He hates himself for pacing, but there's too much energy and emotion built up inside him to sit still.

After a few moments, Thea walks up to him shyly, which is an odd look on Thea. She doesn't lift her face to meet his eyes, but she steps right into his personal space, wraps her arms around his ribs, and holds onto him tightly.

Effortlessly, Tommy returns the hug, dipping his head down to kiss the top of her head affectionately.

"I'm sorry you won a mass-murdering father in the mail today," he tells her.

His only answer is a sob that evolves into a laugh halfway through.

"I guess that makes me your consolation prize."

Thea backs away then, pokes him in the chest with her forefinger, and says, "You are grand prize material and grand prize material only."

"So are you," he says. "I mean that."

"You've been a great older brother my whole life," Thea says. "I like that it's official now."

"Me too," he agrees.

In the end, it doesn't change all that much. Tommy and Thea are, in all the ways that matter, still them. But it does alter the connection between them, and not in a bad way. Thea asks questions about Malcolm, about what it was like growing up with him.

Tommy doesn't sugarcoat things. In no world is he allowing Thea Queen to believe anything untrue about their biological father. It leads to him opening up about things the world doesn't know regarding what really happened behind the closed doors of the Merlyns' house. Thea learns some things even Oliver doesn't know.

It strains Thea's relationship with Moira. All Tommy knows is that the confrontation between the two women on the subject ends with Thea storming out of the house and sleeping on his couch for a week.

They reconcile, but Tommy thinks their relationship will likely never be the same again.

Oliver's more inclined to forgive Moira, but then, Oliver wasn't the subject of Moira's lies and omissions this time.

Thea sleeping on his couch for a few weeks means that he has the perfect opportunity to pester her to come running in the mornings. Tommy usually meets up with Sara and Felicity to take a jog around the park, and when he can, he drags Thea along with them. If she thinks it's weird that he's running around with Oliver's current girlfriend and Oliver's recently returned-from-the-dead former flame, she doesn't say anything about it.

"You all training for a marathon or something?" Thea asks the first morning while they wait for Felicity to fix the ties of her shoes.

"Something like that," Sara says, with a bit of an impish grin.

Tommy's the one Felicity talks to about Sara. Well, he has a sense that Diggle is another one of Felicity's major confidants, but Tommy doesn't really know what Felicity confides in Dig compared to what she confides in him.

But Felicity, like the rest of the world, is aware of the history, and as Tommy very well knows, history can be a very powerful thing. He suspects she talks to him because he is one of the people who was there when it happened, and of the four of them, he's the one with the least emotional attachment to the situation.

"What do you want to know?" Tommy asks, leaning back in the lair's spare desk chair and propping his feet up on one of the tables. Oliver and Dig are in the field, and Felicity has their side of the conversation muted.

She shrugs. "I don't even know what to ask about?"

"Well," Tommy tries, "Something must have happened that made you want to bring it up?"

"I just was thinking," Felicity says. "Sara is… better suited for this."

"Better suited for running the very sophisticated comms system you have got going on here?" He gives her a skeptical look.

"No," Felicity closes her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her temples. "No. I mean—" She gestures to the room around them—the weapons and computers and equipment strewn about the room. "She's better suited to handle this. This life. These choices. I'm just…"

He waits for her to find the words she wants.

"I'm shaking in the Count's arms and trying to remember basic self-defence. Which is ridiculous, because I've seen Miss Congeniality like twenty times now and I know the whole SING acronym and everything and I still choked, Tommy. Sara would have hit the guy in the Solar-Plexus-Instep-Nose-Groin without even hesitating."

"You're not Sara," he points out. "And I don't think Oliver expects you to be."

"But I'm also not…" More hand waving. "Dig keeps taking me to the gun range, and Sara's been helping me whenever she can, but I don't feel like I'm picking up what I need to, or that I'm even picking up how to handle myself in those flight or fight situations. I'm not their level of badass."

He hums. "You don't have to go through five years in hell to become a badass, Felicity. And you are one."

"I just…" She shakes her head. "They both walked through something together that I will likely never fully understand. And I don't need to understand it, I really don't. And I'm not jealous." She draws in a deep breath and slowly exhales. "I'm just… wondering if they're better for each other because of that. Oliver doesn't worry about losing Sara."

"Excuse me?" Tommy raises an eyebrow. "Like hell he doesn't."

Felicity holds up a finger, taps two keys on her keyboard, then says, "Robbery on Tenth and Spruce. Oliver, you're closest."

Another few taps and her attention is back on Tommy. "What do you mean?"

"I mean just because he goes into battle with her doesn't mean he's not scared she won't come back alive." He lets his feet drop off of the table and scoots his chair closer to Felicity. "Trust me. He worries about all of us. He can't not. But just by being you—by going to the gun range with Dig and sparring with Sara and running all around the town with us at the crack of dawn—you're reassuring him that you're going to do everything in your power to keep yourself safe. I don't think Oliver takes that for granted."

She looks thoughtful. They're sitting facing each other, and Tommy reaches across the space between them to take her hand. "It's Oliver, Felicity. He'd die for any one of us indiscriminately. You know that."

"I hate that."

He gives her a look. "Okay," she relents. "I actually love that about him. Except for the dying part. I'm not fond of that."

"Me neither," Tommy says. "But we're all trying to help him past that. It just takes all of us doing it in our own different ways."

She smiles at him. "You're smart," she says. "I like it."

There's a snappy retort on his lips, but it's at that moment Oliver meets up with his purse-snatcher. The villain flees, and Felicity gets dragged into eye-in-the-sky navigation while he pursues. After the interruption, the conversation moves in another direction, but Tommy doesn't quite stop turning it over in his head as the weeks go by.

Then the Clock King strikes. And Tommy's never seen Felicity so rattled.

It's mostly that he beat her, Tommy concludes. He got into her head and he got into her system. In hindsight, it really shouldn't surprise him that Felicity's response to this is an ill-advised foray into the field. It ends with her taking a bullet in the shoulder for Sara Lance and Tommy watching anxiously as Diggle carries her down the Arrowcave's stairs in his arms.

The three men—Tommy, Oliver, and Dig—turn away while Sara helps patch up Felicity.

Felicity's slurring something about always wanting to take a bullet for someone when Oliver pulls Tommy aside and asks, "I have to finish up here. Can you get her home?"

Silently, Tommy nods. After Sara finishes the stitches on Felicity's shoulder, Tommy waits while Oliver walks over to Felicity. The two exchange a few words. Tommy misses the first part, but he clearly hears Felicity say, "I'm just—you're my guy, you know—and… I'm really glad that you're my guy."

Oliver puts his hand to Felicity's cheek, and she closes her eyes and nods, nuzzling her face against his palm. "Me too," he says, and Tommy can hear the amusement in his voice.

"You'll always be my guy," she tells him, and Tommy's helpless to stop his smile when she starts quietly singing You're The One That I Want from Grease. She's adorable.

She's adorable, and she makes Oliver happy. It's a winning combination, really. "And you'll always be my girl," he tells her with a quick kiss to her forehead.

Oliver looks back to Tommy with a wink that tells him it's time to swoop in.

Tommy moves to stand beside Felicity. "You ready to go home?" he asks her.

She nods, then looks to Oliver. "Tommy's going to take you," he says. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"C'mon, Felicity." Taking care not to jostle her too much, Tommy helps her to her feet. "Let's go."

Getting her up the stairs is tricky, not because she's in pain, but because she's so loopy. She wants to dance suddenly when they're halfway up the steps, and only Tommy's quick thinking is enough to snap an arm around her waist keeps her from falling.

"How many aspirins did Dig give you?" he wonders, scooping her up beneath the knees and carrying her up the stairs the rest of the way.

"Not sure," Felicity says, hiding her face against his chest. "But I feel good."

Her words are slurred. "I'm sure you do," Tommy says.

He runs through a drive through on his way back to Felicity's townhouse to pick up food. He's not sure what she'll even eat, but he's not surprised when she skips past the french fries and goes right for the chocolate shake.

She falls asleep in the car, the styrofoam cup held between her knees. After he pulls the car into her driveway and climbs out, Tommy jogs around to the passenger's side, puts her shake in the center cupholder, and reaches across Felicity's body to unbuckle her seatbelt. She groans softly as he twists her body around, pulls her feet out of the car and carefully tugs her forward. "C'mon, Felicity," he mutters, looping her arms around his neck. "Let's get you inside."

He doesn't quite get the best grip on her, but she wakes up enough to cooperate a little more, tightening her arms around his neck. He changes his goals and manages to carry her up her front steps bridal style, but then he has to set her down again to get her front door unlocked with the keys he'd fished from her purse. She sways on her feet, and he gets the door open as fast as possible, practically dragging her inside.

Getting her upstairs to the bedroom seems impossible, given the circumstances, so Tommy settles for the sofa in her living room. It looks comfy enough. He doesn't really want to help her undress, but there isn't another option, and what she's wearing doesn't look comfortable. Maybe if he just gets her the clothes she'll sober up enough to change on her own?

Tommy runs up the stairs but stops short at the entryway of Felicity's bedroom. He can't make himself go in. But the door to the right appears to lead to a laundry room, and that doesn't feel as much like an invasion of privacy. There's a basket of folded laundry on the floor, and Tommy carefully rifles through it. The best thing he finds is a large tee shirt. It looks like Oliver's. He figures it will work and grabs it.

Downstairs, Felicity is sprawled across the sofa. She's on her back, and Tommy worries that when the oxycodone wears off, she'll wake up in pain because of how she's sleeping.

He perches on the edge of the sofa cushions and gently rubs her good shoulder. "Felicity."

A moan.

"Felicity?"

She stirs a little more, and he helps her roll over. "Tommy?" she slurs.

"Yeah, honey." He catches himself quickly, bites his tongue. He's called her that a few times during their friendship, but always before she started seeing Oliver. "I'm here."

She hums. "Hi."

He smiles at her, and she reaches forward to touch her fingertip to his nose. "You're here."

"I am," he says. "Right here."

"I like your nose," she tells him, pressing her palm to his face, letting her fingers spread out. "And your eyes. Your whole face, really. It's so nice. You have a nice face."

"Thank you," he tells her, maneuvering her hands to the buttons on her shirt in an attempt to get her to undress herself. She does, almost out of habit. Tommy averts his eyes as he helps her pull the shirt down her arms. Once it's off, he drags the shirt over her head—cautious of her injured shoulder—all while she keeps telling him how pretty he is.

"You think I'm pretty," he says, as he coaxes her into lying on her left side, off of her injury. Grabbing a throw pillow, Tommy carefully slides it under her head. She snuggles into it and nods a little.

"Unfairly pretty," she says.

Tommy grabs the blanket resting across the back of the couch and drapes it over Felicity, tucking it around her shoulders. "Goodnight," he whispers.

"Goodnight room," she tells him, eyes closed, halfway asleep already. "Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over..."

He bends down and kisses her temple, smoothing back her curls. Running a hand through his hair, Tommy checks the Glock at his belt. He does a quick perimeter sweep of Felicity's house, front door, back door, all the windows. When he's finished, he settles into her recliner and braces himself for a long night.

Oliver shows up five hours later, looking dead on his feet. Tommy lets him inside and the two of them re-check the perimeter. When they return to the living room, Oliver kneels beside the couch and brushes back Felicity's hair. "She okay?"

"She's mostly been asleep," Tommy tells him, scrubbing his hands across his face as he sits back down, bracing his hands on his knees. "Everything else has been quiet."

Tenderly, Oliver kisses Felicity's temple. Tommy looks away. "Thank you for staying with her," Oliver says. "I probably shouldn't have asked—"

"I was glad to do it," Tommy says. "Besides, you can't be everywhere at once. You gotta let people help you, Oliver."

Standing up, Oliver moves to the armchair opposite Tommy's, leaning back and kicking his legs up on the ottoman. He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

"There's too many of us for you to protect all of us," Tommy tells him. "You have to let us all protect each other."

Oliver gives him a weary look. "I don't like the idea of putting you all in danger."

"You're not the one putting us in danger," Tommy points out. They're approaching the edge of a disagreement they've been having lately. "We all live in this city. We all know what that means. Together we can keep each other safe."

"I still don't want you in the field," Oliver snaps. "I need… I need you untouched by this."

Tommy hooks his fingers in his shirt collar and pulls it to the side, exposing the skin of his shoulder, and the white, puckered scar from the piece of rebar that nearly killed him. "I'm very far from untouched by this, Oliver."

Oliver closes his eyes, tips his head back and sighs. "I know."

Tommy studies him, the exhaustion around his eyes and the tension in his shoulders. He glances back at Felicity, at the way she's taking slow, easy breaths. "She's gonna be out for a while. Why don't you sleep, Oliver? I'll wake you if anything happens."

Tiredly, Oliver nods. "Okay," he says, and Tommy doesn't know how to comprehend that level of trust—not when it's shown towards him. "Thank you."

Tommy nods to acknowledge the gratitude. Oliver shoves a throw pillow behind his head, and Tommy notices that he angles himself in the chair so that he's in the best position to see Felicity. It takes only a few minutes for Oliver's eyes to drift shut. In another ten minutes, the rhythm of his breathing has changed, and Tommy feels himself relax, knowing that they're both asleep. That they're both safe.

Picking up one of the technology magazines Felicity keeps stacked between her armchairs, Tommy flips through the pages and watches over his friends as they sleep.