Laurel sits quietly in the passenger seat, straining to hear what she can over the Bluetooth in Felicity's ear. She can't make out actual words, just volume and little bit of tone. Felicity's face scrunches up in frustration as she listens to whatever Oliver is saying. It's actually... doing a lot to earn her trust.

She's been agonizing for hours over whether or not to believe that Oliver is an actual mobster, that Felicity and John Diggle are his underlings. She supposes that the Russian she overheard Oliver speaking in the shop, as damning as it is, is purely circumstantial. It definitely wouldn't hold water in court.

But her gut tells her this is real. That she's onto the truth. She slips her hand into her purse and curls her fingers around her phone. If Felicity, or Oliver, or anyone tries to silence her, she's one press away from alerting her father.

Then Felicity surprises her. "You're going to have to explain to her what's going on with the Bratva," Felicity demands, voice rising. She hardly lets Oliver respond at all before adding. "You have to. This affects her, affects her client, it's even affecting me now. Which is more important to you?" Felicity's tone is steel. "Your secrets or her safety?"

Laurel holds her breath. She's seen the secrets locked behind his eyes for so many months, and she's wanted so much to bring each one to light. Even yesterday, having coffee with him made her feel they were so close—that if only she could make him see that he was safe with her, he might open up?

But Felicity stays silent, listening to Oliver. Laurel can't sense his volume or his tone. Laurel only has Felicity's facial expressions to go by. First she raises her eyebrows, then she purses her lips. Next she nods in understanding, switching to a shake of her head. All of this within ten seconds, but that feels like an eternity.

Laurel speaks up. "Is he worried about my dad?" Felicity glances toward her. Laurel barrels on. "Because I could have taken my suspicions to him last night. And I didn't." At Felicity's widened eyes, she adds, "Tell him that." She won't take them to him yet, anyway. Her fingers tighten around the rubber casing of her phone.

Felicity's lips quirk to the side. "He heard."

"And?"

"He'll talk. He doesn't like it..." Felicity shrugs, satisfied. "But he'll talk."

"Good." Laurel nods. She relaxes her fingers, though she keeps the phone close. "Where?"

"Where would you feel safe?" Felicity asks. "CNRI? Your apartment?"

Nowhere? But outwardly Laurel smiles at Felicity's—or is it Oliver's?—thoughtfulness. "No, the police are watching both of those places. Maybe someplace unconventional. Someplace no one knows about—not the Bratva, not my dad... is there a place like that?"

Felicity listens to Oliver's response, then nods toward Laurel. "I think there's a place. We'll meet him there in an hour." To Oliver, she says, "See you there." She clicks off and removes the Bluetooth earpiece.

Laurel tenses—she's already been away from work for an hour or so.
"Why not right now?" The longer she stays gone, the more likely that the security detail will notice her absence and come looking. So it could be a good thing—but only if she's still in danger. If Oliver is really going to be straight with her, then she doesn't want any police anywhere near. Laurel makes a show of digging in her bag, and pulls her phone out where Felicity can see. She checks her call log. Nothing from Joanna or her dad... yet.

"Well..." Felicity bites her lip. "We kiiiiiiiinda have to ditch this car first."

"Oh." Felicity's black humor cracks Laurel's nervousness enough to her to notice her own shoeless feet—bare after she chucked them at the Bratva thugs. "Before that... could we maybe pick up a pair of flip flops?"


The taxi drops them at a corner a block or two from the meeting place. They hadn't spoken much on the way there, Felicity apologizing for 'a couple tiny things I need to take care of' as she typed nearly superspeed on her laptop. Laurel's not sure what to think of the implication—well, more than implication—that the car Felicity had been driving before was not hers, even less sure about the fact that the clearly-expensive sedan was now sinking to the bottom of the bay.

And somehow Felicity had found (or known about) a spot where she could do that unobserved in the middle of the day.

Through it all, Felicity performed these tasks with an air of disbelief mixed with pragmatism. Like she couldn't believe she found herself in this situation. Yet somehow, she knew just what to do. "So..." Laurel says, breaking the silence as they walk. "...is this an average day for Felicity Smoak?"

Felicity brays a laugh. "For me? Hardly."

Laurel gives her a sidelong glance in return. "You think well on your feet, then."

"Thanks." She shakes her head and smiles at a private joke. "I've had to learn to..." Then she swallows and looks away.

Interesting.

"What about you?" Felicity gestures to Laurel's jacket and the strands of blonde wig hair poking out of her bag. "There a lot of call for undercover missions in pro bono work?"

Laurel blushes. Then chuckles. "You got me there."

"That's the two of us," Felicity muses, shrugging. "Grace under fire." She lets out a self-deprecating laugh. "Or in my case, 'trying desperately not to spaz' under fire." They turn a corner, and Felicity points ahead to an empty-looking office building, with an almost-empty parking lot. A plain white two-door car sits alone in one of the spaces. "There it is."

"He's already there?"

Felicity nods. "Him and John, yes."

"Oh." She'd forgotten that John Diggle would probably be there. She'd always appreciated him before, knowing he was protecting Oliver. She guesses he really is protecting Oliver, in a way. Him and his secrets.

Felicity stops, puts a hand on her shoulder. "Is that going to be a problem?"

Laurel thinks for a moment. Is it? "No," she decides, a bit amazed that Felicity seems to be giving Laurel all of these outs, trying to make sure she feels safe. But if she leaves now, what will happen to Sonya?

If she leaves now... she's no closer to the truth.

When they get to the entrance, John opens the door for them. The gesture is gallant, and doesn't jive with the picture that's trying to form. She nods a thank you, and he returns it. "Oliver is back there." He points to an open door behind the dusty reception area.

Felicity lets her walk ahead of her and Laurel quietly stops in the doorway of the room. It's an office—there's still a desk, a green metal and laminate relic of the 60s, along with a few mismatched chairs. The blinds are angled mostly shut, and that's where Oliver stands wearing one of his tailored suits, staring out the window at the empty street. She wonders what he's thinking about—past trauma, present problems or an uncertain future?

She starts to feel uncomfortable after a few moments, just staring at him. She opens her mouth...

"You can sit wherever you like," Oliver says without turning. His voice is bleak, toneless. Like he's reached the end of a road with a chasm at the end of it.

She doesn't move. "Oliver..."

"Laurel." He turns then, eyes focusing on her face.

She gasps a little before she can control it. Gone is the easy smile she'd been seeing the last few weeks when he greeted her. Gone is the friendly concern from last month, or even the barely-concealed brokenness of the first days he was back from the Island.

These eyes are dead.

He holds her gaze like that for almost longer than she can stand, then he breaks eye contact and looks down at the ground. "You're afraid of me now." A pause and he looks back up. "I don't blame you."

She stumbles forward, propelled by something she doesn't understand, though she stops short of taking one of his hands in hers. "Then help me not be afraid. Tell me the truth."

He presses his lips together. "But you see, that's what I'm afraid of."

"Because the truth will put you in jail? Because the truth will get you killed?"

"No. I don't care about either of those things." And he truly seems to mean that. "Because the truth will change our relationship forever."

This time she does take his hand, threading her fingers through his surprisingly calloused ones. "It doesn't have to."

He lets out a humorless laugh. "Doesn't it? Ask Tommy how he feels about me right now."

Another confirmation that his falling out with Tommy was about these deeply-held secrets. But Laurel is not Tommy. She works with the law, and those who break it. She's defended the hopeless against the lowest of the low. She's lived with a father who presses on against the evils of Starling City, who is driven to fight it despite the cost to himself, to his family.

Even if Oliver is part of these evils, or scarred by them, she can't imagine being shocked by anything he has to tell her. And she wants to believe in him so much—she has to admit that is part of the fear she's been feeling.

She glances behind her, where Diggle and Felicity are hanging back beside the door. Felicity nods encouragement. Laurel is suddenly very grateful that there's someone to facilitate this conversation. She has a feeling that Oliver would never have given up the truth without it.

So Laurel pulls Oliver over to sit in a chair beside her. "Believe me, the truth can't be any worse than what I've been imagining for the past twelve hours."

He blinks, then sighs. The deadness recedes into something more vulnerable. "Let me tell you a story." He stands and removes his jacket, then turns his attention to slowly unfastening the buttons on his shirt.

Felicity clears her throat behind them, and Oliver pauses, halfway down.. "Uh... should John and I... you know..." Laurel turns back to see a blush creeping up Felicity's cheeks. "I mean it's nothing I haven't seen before... I mean we haven't... unless you're not planning to stop with the shirt..." She actually clamps a hand over her mouth.

Oliver shakes his head, eyes still down, a small grin appearing and then disappearing almost as quickly. "No, please stay. I want all of you to know."

Laurel fights to control her surprise. He's going to tell a story that even his closest confidants don't know? Just how close has he kept these secrets?

The two come in and sit to either side of Laurel, a small but interested audience.

"On the Island... as I've told all of you..." Oliver resumes his slow work of unfastening the buttons. "I wasn't alone." He slides the shirt off one shoulder, then the other. "Some of these were inflicted against my will." He lightly traces a few of the scars as he talks. "Some of these I earned in battle." His fingers move to the Chinese characters running vertically down his abdomen. "Some are tributes to comrades in arms." Finally he ends with the Bratva star. "This is the mark of a grateful man. An enemy turned friend."

Laurel doesn't dare ask any questions yet. He's already told her more with four simple sentences than he has in months.

"It wasn't the first year I was there, nor the last. I was... alone again. Fighting to survive against odds that seemed stacked against me worse than when I first arrived. I'd... had some help at first. Later, once again alone, I found it harder to go on. I just wanted to give up, worse than ever before. I could see no end to the days of scraping by, no chance of ever seeing anyone I loved again. No point in living anymore."

Laurel glances at Felicity. Her eyes are gleaming, the lenses in her square frames magnifying the glimmer of tears threatening to fall. She herself is almost too worried that she'll break the spell of the words that keep coming if she even draws a breath.

"Then I would remember the reason I was alive and on the island in the first place. Because my father gave his life for mine. I couldn't bear the thought of seeing him in the afterlife, knowing I couldn't handle his gift... Whether I believe in an afterlife or not, it didn't matter. It felt as if I were already living one... Lian Yu, the name of the island, means 'purgatory' in Chinese."

She glances at Diggle next. He's not looking at Oliver, his eyes far away as he listens. His expression is almost one of... understanding. She wonders what sort of life he has lived up to now to make that so.

"So I would pick myself up again, stumble through another few painful months of solitary, meaningless life, and then one day, I met him. Anatoli Knyazev. Leader of the Solntsevskaya Bratva." Oliver brushes his fingers idly across one part of the tattoo. "It doesn't really matter how it happened—but from the moment we first saw each other we were locked in a battle of wills and survival. And I suddenly had purpose again."

At no point during this explanation does Oliver look up. Is it because it's too hard to keep eye contact while remembering? Or too painful to doubly relive the memories through their reactions?

"I found that if I just pushed everything aside—all feeling, all memory, all thought—it was easy to become a weapon. After all... I had killed before. Many times over." His lips thin into a grim line at the admission.

The words don't stun her, at least not as much as she expects. Somewhere, deep inside, she must have known he had killed. That he could not have come away from the Island with as many scars as he had without being the victor. Maybe it was why she had been able to leap to the truth that Oliver was Bratva with ease. After all, killing changes a person—she'd seen it with her father, with her clients who had been charged with manslaughter, when she was unable to stop wrongful execution. It explains so much about the brokenness Oliver is unable to completely hide.

"But he was cunning, ruthless, every bit the weapon I was becoming—and he had a lot more experience at it. And then somehow, I don't know how—was I just lucky or had I crossed into a level of skill that gave me an edge?—I found myself holding his life in my hands."

His hands clench and unclench, causing the muscles in his arms to flex in response. And Laurel is excruciatingly aware of how muscular he is now, so much more than before he left. He hasn't let himself go like he could have in the months since he returned. Only last week she would have assumed he was keeping in shape for some vain purpose, but now she wonders, is it because he no longer remembers any other way?

"I could have killed him, I wanted to. But in the instant before, I saw something in his eyes, something of my father. A man, not an enemy. I couldn't. And he could have decided I was weak, no longer a worthy adversary, and killed me instead. But he didn't. We became brothers in survival. He taught me Russian, new... ways to survive. He saved my life as many times as I saved his. And at the end of it..."

Oliver pauses, a lot longer than the other times. Laurel almost thinks it's over, looks toward Felicity to see if she agrees, but then he sighs and her attention is back on him again.

"...well, before the end of it... He inked this tattoo himself as a thank you, telling me that for the rest of my life, even if we never saw each other again, we would not just be brothers in arms, but brothers in The Brotherhood."

Then, finally, finally, he lifts his eyes to hers. They are shining more brightly, their blue deeper than she's ever seen before.

"So, yes. I am Bratva. Forever." The intensity and emotion slowly fades, and he says, "But I swear to you, I have never committed any crime here in Starling City in the name of the Bratva. I'm sorry I lied before. I just couldn't tell you. What happened is so deeply personal, and I haven't even scratched the surface."

She finds herself nodding forgiveness without thinking. She knows he's not spinning her another story, if not by Felicity and Diggle's reactions, then by her gut feeling, something that has rarely steered her wrong in her career as a lawyer. In fact, she's never seen him so honest, not before the island, and certainly not since. "Ollie..." she says, putting all of the multitude of emotions behind the nickname.

Felicity rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's about time." She digs a half-used tissue from her pocket and dabs at the rest of the wetness as she gets to the point quicker than Laurel would have. "Now why were you meeting with your contact then?"

"Yes," Laurel says, "And why did I hear you speak my name and my client's name?"

He begins to put his shirt back on with spare movements, frowning. "I heard about what happened last night."

"From the Bratva?"

He shakes his head. "From Tommy."

She chuckles that it's so obvious. "What about the bad blood between you? I thought you two weren't speaking."

"When it concerns you, there's no such thing as bad blood."

"Oh." She blushes. It both touches and embarrasses her to find that's still true.

"When I heard, I went straight away. I told them you and your client are off-limits."

She's more concerned about her client than herself. "Are they going to leave Sonya alone?" Laurel asks, half a plea, half a demand. "She's refusing to testify because of something that happened in jail!"

Oliver nods. "Alexi wasn't happy."

Diggle speaks up. "I'd say it was a bit more than that."

Oliver nods. "He disapproved of me getting involved. It's against the Bratva code." He reaches a hand toward her to run a finger down her cheek. "But your safety is more important to me than a code."

The finger almost burns her with its intimacy. She pulls back, feeling awkward. "Thank you," she says, trying to cover.

He gives her a sad little smile. "Of course."

She looks away, unsure what to say next, and sees Felicity standing there watching them. There's a touch of something on her face, something wistful. When Felicity catches Laurel's eye, she snaps out of it, fussing with her glasses. "So. I'd better get back before they miss me. Or more than they usually do. I can't even use you as an excuse this time—they might start asking questions..."

Laurel avoids raising an eyebrow. So missing work because of Oliver is a regular occurrence...? Her original suspicion yesterday that they might be secretly dating gets stronger. Felicity's wistful look takes on another layer of meaning—does she wish she and Oliver could go public? And why haven't they, anyway?

So Laurel feels terrible in asking, "I left Joanna's car back in the alley beside the garage where I found you. Do you think it's still there?"

"I'll make a call on the way over," he assures her, and then chides her sternly as they walk toward the entrance again. "That was a very dangerous thing you did, Laurel." He takes Felicity in with a gesture. "Both of you! What if they'd gotten their hands or you—or worse—before I could stop them?"

Laurel stops short, annoyed. "Excuse me? Seems that all of that could have been avoided if you'd told me at least a tiny bit of the truth yesterday."

"Or answered your freakin' phone," Felicity adds.

Diggle laughs and holds open the door to the parking lot. "The ladies have a point, Oliver."

He frowns at being outnumbered. "Better get you both back," he says instead, and walks past them out the door toward the car.

Laurel gives Felicity a sidelong glance, and finds her openly smiling. Laurel breaks into smile herself.

In a low voice, Diggle comments, "You might want to enjoy your victory on the way?" He nods toward where Oliver is already getting into the back.

Sharing a grin with Felicity, Laurel says, "Got it."

She rides shotgun so that Felicity can take the back seat.


Notes: So, finally a chapter without a cliffhanger! Enjoy it while you can. ;)

Of course, everything about how Oliver got the Bratva tattoo is pure speculation on my part... I'm looking forward to finding out how it really happened. Season 3, perhaps?

I also have an interesting theory about the Chinese tattoo on his abdomen. But it really didn't fit in this fic. Anyone interested in a separate one-shot (perhaps with animated GIFs on Tumblr) at some point after this fic is over?

Note 2!: (7/12/2013) I will not be updating again until probably July 24-26, because I've been busier than usual, and then will be out of the country for most of next week. Look for it then!