Author's Note - I am incredibly horribly behind on replying to reviews. Huge apologies for that, guys. I'm trying to hit 50k words by the end of the month and I've been spending as much time as is possible writing. I read every single review and I appreciate them all hugely. I'm very sorry for those I haven't gotten back to. But... in part because I haven't taken the time to do that... have a chapter!
"Queen Consolidated isn't safe enough," Oliver says, looking around the wreckage of the apartment.
"Shouldn't we go to the police?" Sandra asks, still stroking Connor's hair. "Can't they keep us safe? That's their job, after all."
"The police can't deal with this. They're relying on us," Oliver informs her with gravity, wincing as he realizes that he's going to have to be the one to tell Lance that Al Mobaath has grabbed Laurel.
Sandra looks - understandably - not at all comfortable with the notion of the police relying on them. She is, quite literally, a soccer mom. Her life revolves around her job and her son. The most dangerous part of her day, normally, is probably her morning commute to work. She isn't equipped to deal with this.
"We need somewhere for you four to lay low while we deal with this," Oliver tells Thea, Felicity, Sandra and Connor.
"How about, uh… your other office?" Thea suggests with a pointed look.
"No," Felicity says immediately. "Tommy knew about it and knew where it was. Al Mobaath just proved pretty decisively that he remembers Tommy's life. Or, parts of it anyhow. It wouldn't be safe there."
"I don't understand any of this," Sandra says. "What happened to Tommy? Why is he after Connor? Why is he after any of you?"
"We can talk about that later," Felicity tells her. "A lot. All of the talking. We'll have plenty of time for that. But first we need to get somewhere safe… with excellent computers and internet access because I'm not giving up the role of Oliver's tech support just because I can't be at… the other office."
"I can help, Ollie," Thea tells him, stepping forward, glass crunching under her designer shoes. "I've spent nearly a year running from the League and I'm tired of running. I don't want to be that person anymore. I've trained. I can fight and shoot. I can help."
"No," Oliver tells her decisively. "You can't."
"Ollie-" she starts again.
"You hesitated, Thea," he counters and she freezes at his words. "You can't hesitate in the field. And you did."
"Are you blaming me for being reluctant to shoot my brother?" Thea asks him with an angry and disbelieving edge to her voice.
"No," Oliver tells her. "No… I'm not blaming you. But I am saying you shouldn't be in the field. Not yet. And besides, he's after you. Leaving you in the open is a bad tactical move."
Thea doesn't look appeased. At all. But she does stop arguing her point and that's enough for Oliver. For now.
"So what's our move?" Felicity asks, looking up at Oliver.
"We have two options…" he tells her, stretching out some of the tension in his neck as he speaks. "Waller or Anatoly… and I'd much prefer not owing Waller any favors."
"Who are Waller and Anatoly?" Sandra asks uneasily.
"Waller is the head of ARGUS," Felicity tells her as if that explains everything.
"And ARGUS is…" Sandra asks, voice trailing off as she speaks.
"Super secret spy agency. Or, well, I guess not-so-super-secret spy agency since we're talking about it," she muses in reply. "They've got the resources to keep us safe from Al Mobaath and the League and they definitely have the computers I'd need, but Waller is tricky. She already told Oliver that she didn't have any inclination to help with our League problem. And even if we could talk her into giving us sanctuary, she's not exactly what you'd call reliable as an ally. She's too 'big picture' for that."
"And Anatoly?" Sandra asks, looking like she's not sure she wants the answer.
"He's the Pakhan," Oliver tells her.
"Of the Bratva?" she asks stunned.
"What's the Bratva?" Connor asks.
"It's…" Oliver starts, but finds he can't answer his son.
"It's the Russian mob," Sandra says, with no such reservations. "Oliver, how can we possibly count on the mob to keep us safe? It's the mob."
"I need you to trust me," he tells her gravely, which isn't an answer at all.
It's dead-silent for a moment, Sandra watching Oliver across the ruins of the living room and him staring back, all piercing eyes and tense frame. The room is a wreck, the trail of destruction continuing well beyond the confines of Queen Consolidated, and a high-pitched echoing wail of sirens drifts up from the city streets below the blown-out window.
But they're still standing.
"I'm trying," Sandra tells him finally.
"That's all I can ask," Oliver replies.
There's nothing but an unnatural breeze whistling through the room and the distant sirens filling the air for a moment. The near-silence is unsettling. Wind swirls powdery bits of plaster and insulation around their feet and Oliver tries very hard not to think about the destruction of the relative-quiet of his life being so vividly demonstrated.
"I thought Anatoly wasn't in town until tomorrow?" Felicity asks, filling the awkward silence.
"He's not, but he has people here," Oliver says.
"The people he's coming to rein in?" Felicity asks hesitantly.
She has a point. He knows this. But their options are slim.
"I know who to lean on," Oliver tells her. "And without Anatoly there, they'll follow my directions. When he does show up, he'll back me up."
Oliver's sure of this. Fully. Anatoly takes the idea of the brotherhood very seriously and very literally. And there is nothing Anatoly won't do for family.
"Besides," he adds, "they know he's coming because they messed up. It is absolutely in their best interests to make a good impression on him and helping me does that."
"Okay," Felicity agrees. "But there's two issues with that. One of them is in a drugged sleep and the other is… occupying the bathroom. I'm not sure how we get them out of the building undetected. Or at all. Because, I mean you're all muscly and all and I have no doubt you can fireman-carry her, but if Nyssa wakes up while you're doing that I'm pretty sure it ends badly for you."
Oliver huffs a laugh. She's not wrong.
"I'll call Lyla to keep an eye on the two of them while we relocate you guys. Nyssa should be awake soon, anyhow," Oliver tells her.
"This would be so much easier if Barry were available," Felicity sighs. "We could just zoom everybody to Star Labs and go into lockdown there. Even if Al Mobaath could track us there and get in, it would take him a while to get back to Central City."
"Zoom to Star Labs!" Connor asks, standing a little straighter, excitement practically vibrating in his little body. "Like the Flash? Do you know the Flash? Is his name Barry? He's so cool. Do you think I could meet him?"
Felicity winces because… obviously a ten-year-old kid from Central City is going to put those pieces together and be fully aware of who the Flash is. She's going to have to tell Barry she accidentally sort of gave up his identity to an elementary schooler. Oops?
But Oliver's reaction nearly makes that worth it.
He just sort of looks at Connor and… blinks rapidly. Because of course his kid is a Flash fan. Felicity's pretty sure that Oliver has never wanted to out his identity more than in this moment. He wants his son's approval, wants him to have that look of excitement and pride for him, and it strikes Felicity how very far Oliver has come in accepting this boy as his son in such a short time.
"Tell you what," Oliver offers. "Promise to keep all of that a secret and I'll make sure you get to meet him after all this is over, okay?"
Connor literally jumps with excitement, bouncing on his toes with bottled up energy and anticipation.
"Mom! Did you hear that? I'm gonna get to meet the Flash! I can't even believe it!" Connor says grinning hugely before turning and barrelling toward Oliver, hugging him for all he's worth.
Oliver's breath catches in his throat and, after a fraction of a second of surprise, his arms close around the boy.
"Thanks, Oliver… dad," Connor says against his chest, testing out the word in a quieter, mumbled voice.
Oliver's eyes slam shut at that, too many ill-defined emotions welling up in him at his son's acknowledgement and affection. He doesn't know how to deal with this. Didn't know he wanted this. Not this much. But it means so very much. It means everything.
"I'd do anything for you, Connor," Oliver tells the boy, his voice quiet. "Anything at all. Introducing you to the Flash… that's easy. Okay? Just… stay safe. Listen to your mom and Felicity and when this is through we'll meet him together."
"Okay," Connor says, face still pressed against Oliver's middle.
He seems reluctant to let go now that he's accepted Oliver as his dad, taken that first step towards a connection between them. But, then, so is Oliver. Felicity and Thea look on with pleased smiles. Sandra bites back her own smile, but sniffles and swipes at unexpected tears clouding her vision.
She hadn't expected this. Ever. Hadn't thought Connor would ever even know who his father was, much less have the two of them form any kind of relationship. It means more to her than she'd have thought to see this happen for her son.
"We need to get moving," Oliver says reluctantly, resting his hand on Connor's shoulder as the boy pulls back slightly, but doesn't step away. "Felicity, if you could call Lyla?"
"On it," Felicity confirms, pulling out her phone and stepping to the side.
"After you're done with that…" Oliver starts, then sighs and stretches his neck, thinking things through. "After calling Lyla, give Pamela a call, please?"
"I was already planning on it," Felicity informs him. "What's first on your to-do list?"
That's a toss-up, really. Anatoly, the local Russian contacts, or Lance. Oh man he doesn't want to have this conversation with Lance. The choice, ultimately, is taken away from him though when the elevator dings from down the hall and Lance and Bryce appear in the rubble of the blown-out doorway.
"What the hell happened here, Queen?" Lance asks bewildered, his gun drawn and eyes skimming the room with practiced precision.
"Detectives," Oliver sighs as Felicity steps into the other room to call Lyla, shooting him a sympathetic look as she goes. "You'd better take a seat."
It's dark when she wakes up and the terror that grips Laurel slides down her spine like ice water.
She's tied up and blindfolded, she realizes after a moment when she tries to stretch her arms and can't. She doesn't know where she is. The last thing she remembers is zipping through the air dozens of stories from the ground and rapidly closing in on solid glass window. It feels like a dream, like a nightmare, but there was Tommy… Tommy but not Tommy… and she can't process that, can't make that make sense.
And yet… and yet even in the dark she knows it happened. Her body aches from the impact with the window and she's pretty sure she's got a few cuts from the glass as it shattered. Nothing feels broken, which she should be grateful for, but the sense of panic that blooms in her gut overwhelms everything else.
"Tommy?" she asks, her voice quiet and wavering under the weight of hope and fear.
"I told you," comes a painfully familiar voice from her left, "I'm not Tommy, sweetheart."
"Who are you then?" she ventures boldly, setting her jaw and tilting her head in the direction of the voice.
For a moment, she thinks he's not going to respond. In fact, she starts to wonder if he's just left her there, in the dark tied to a chair. But then there's a rustle of fabric and she can hear his breathing. He's close to her, so close, and maybe he's not entirely Tommy but she saw his face. She knows. He's not entirely not Tommy, either. And, whole or not, his nearness, the life in him, it's enough to make something ache deep in her bones.
She jolts when fingers skim her face. They're rough and calloused, not the hands she remembers, but she scarcely has time to think about that because those unfamiliar fingers pull away the blindfold and she's left face-to-face with her captor.
The breath she sucks in rapidly turns into a sob and she tries to reach for his face instinctively before remembering she's still tied to the chair. She can't reach him - physically or otherwise, it seems - as he stares at her impassively, seemingly wholly unaffected by the way she's choking on her own breath and tears are welling up in her eyes.
"I am Al Mobaath," he tells her. "Not your Tommy. Tommy is dead."
"I don't understand… I don't understand," she says shaking her head in disbelief. "How… It's… I know those eyes. I know you."
He doesn't back up at all, just tilts his head as he watches her, his eyes calculating and cold. And that, more than anything, tells her there's some truth to what he's saying. Tommy was a lot of things, but unemotional was never, ever one of them.
"I am born of the waters of the Lazarus Pit and molded by Ra's Al Ghul to serve the League of Assassins, to bring the pain of retribution to Al Sa-her before ending him," he informs her. "I might house within me some echoes of memories from this body's previous life, but I am Warith Al Ghul, heir to the demon. There is nothing left of your Tommy."
"Then why did you take me?" she challenges.
He blinks a little faster, the first sign of some kind of emotion from him that she's seen so far, and in spite of herself, a bit of hope wells up at that.
"You were convenient," he tells her dismissively after a beat.
"I don't believe you. I refuse to accept that," she breathes out, her words ghosting across his face as he has yet to back out of her personal space.
"Believe what you want, sweetheart," he tells her tauntingly. "You're important to them. All of them. You're leverage."
"You could have grabbed anyone in that room," she points out. "Sure, you'd have had a bit of a harder time getting at Thea or Felicity or… the kid."
"Oliver's son," Al Mobaath supplies. "Connor Hawke."
"Okay… or Connor," Laurel acknowledges. "But the woman in the corner? Connor's mother, I presume? You could have easily grabbed her before I even got there. So why me?"
He doesn't answer, just stares back blankly, those beautiful eyes she knows so well boring into her, cold and empty.
"You don't know why, do you?" she breathes, excitement welling up in her as she realizes she's right.
"You make a great mistake if you attribute any of motivations to some lingering sense of affection," he tells her with the barest hint of defensiveness in his voice.
"I don't believe that," she tells him, simultaneously terrified and excited as a flicker of anger shades his eyes.
It's emotion. It's something. She can work with that. She's a lawyer and a damned good one.
"You remember," she reminds him. "You already told me that. You can't convince me that those memories didn't play a part in why you took me."
"I remember Tommy looking through the window while you fucked his best friend," Al Mobaath points out and Laurel flinches. "I remember Tommy dying to save your life even after that."
"Yes," she agrees in a quiet voice, even though it hurts to hear those words out loud. "Because even after that he still loved me. If you think I don't know that you remember that too, you're wrong."
"He was weak," Al Mobaath says gruffly, which in no way contradicts her statement. "I am not."
"He was the best of all of us," Laurel counters proudly.
"You're infuriating," he grits out.
"You used to say that before, too," she points out. "But the context was usually a little different."
His nostrils actually flare at that and she can see the muscles of his jaw twitch. Something in her thrills with a sense of victory at that. She's reaching him, on some level. It's everything she dares to hope for.
"You can't tell me you don't remember that, Tommy," she pushes. "Like that time we went to France for a weekend just because you wanted to buy some wine and we ended up never even leaving the hotel room. Or that time we went dancing at that club in New York and I wore that blue dress with the slit up the side and you just couldn't help sliding your hand up-"
"I'm. Not. Tommy," he interrupts, practically hissing it in her face.
"Prove it," she commands, leaning forward so their noses are nearly touching.
There's a growl of frustration in his throat and Laurel's not entirely sure that she's not in over her head, but if she's going to drown in this then so be it. She will let this swallow her whole if that's what it takes to get Tommy back.
She knows he's going to kiss her before he does. He might not be fully Tommy, but there's enough of him there to be familiar. She knows what it means when his pupils go wide like that and his breathing speeds up, shallow and too fast.
When he does, it's hard, punishing, a fierce kiss the likes of which Tommy has never had with her. But his lips are familiar and the way his hands tangle in her hair to coax her head to tilt just so echoes of a thousand kisses before. His lips might say he's not Tommy, but everything else about him contradicts that. And, brutal or not, the force of that kiss pulls her down, drags her away in the undertow.
She wouldn't have it any other way.
She's dazed when he pulls away, but even with the post-kiss haze that's muddling her brain, she can see the confusion he's trying to mask. He doesn't know why he kissed her. She's sure of it.
"If that was supposed to prove there's nothing left of Tommy in you, it didn't," she tells him.
Something flashes in his eyes again but it's not entirely anger. Not now. There's other, more familiar things in his eyes as his gaze lazily drifts down towards his kiss-stung lips.
"I'm not the man you think I am," he says, catching her gaze again.
"Maybe. But you're not the man you think you are either," she counters.
He doesn't respond to that, instead standing abruptly and and hastily striding out of the barren room. Something in Laurel's very soul crows with victory at that.
She might be the one unarmed and tied to a chair, but he's the one left vulnerable.
