Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. This is a slightly shorter than usual chapter, meant as a Christmas present to my loyal and amazing readers. I freely admit to being half asleep while editing this, so sorry if I missed a bunch of mistakes.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Years to all! (Please God let 2021 be less memorable than 2020-the phrase "may you live in interesting times" was originally a curse, you know).

Stay safe and follow government guidelines! Vaccines are being rolled out, just hang on a bit longer and we can go back to normal. Just a few more months guys!

Chapter Fifteen

Real-life Sleeping Beauty

Captain Quentin Lance would never admit it to anybody, but he let out a sigh of relief when the lead hinting that Laurel might've had some connection to the attack on Felicity Smoak was determined to be wrong. He had hated to even consider it, but since the whole scandal had come to light, he had seen a new side to Laurel.

It was a bitter, selfish side that only cared for her own wants and sought revenge against any slights, real or perceived, against her. She had railed again and again, both in private and in public, against Felicity Smoak for being the card that sent the house tumbling down around her, and even against young William for, well, for existing as far as Quentin could tell. She showed her hidden, cruelty when drunk, and she had been a serious suspect. Much as he loved his daughter, he couldn't pretend to like this part of her.

Quentin persisted in declaring that under no circumstances would she had done something like that while sober but privately, he'd considered her doing so while pissed as a genuine possibility, much as he despised the disloyal thought. Thankfully, a short investigation into Laurel's alibi of 'some bar' that cleared her, after sending some officers out to canvas Laurel's usual haunts. As it turned out, she had spent the best part of the day sleeping off the previous night's binge in the backroom of her favourite bar, Deville, when the bartender failed to reach either Quentin himself or Sara to collect her. Seeing as there was CCTV footage, and a quick check of Laurel's financials proved she was in no shape to rent an apartment, let alone hire somebody to attack the social worker she blamed for her life being ruined, she was soon cleared of any suspicion, much to the Lance family's relief.

As upsetting as it was to learn that Laurel had spent an entire night drinking herself into a stupor, it was better by far than her having no verifiable alibi and becoming one of the foremost suspects in the investigation. Having an alcoholic for a daughter was fixable, having a murderess for a daughter was not.

But as relieving as it was to have her removed from the list of possible assailants, it still left them grasping for a new suspect.

They were pouring more effort than usual into the case for multiple reasons. One was that Felicity Smoak had connections, in the form of being the social worker who facilitated the adoption of Bruce Wayne's youngest adoptive son and only adopted daughter, Tim and Cassandra. The woman must've been one of the most charismatic people on earth, because she had gained the adoration of all eight children, both adoptive and biological, as well as becoming good friends with Wayne and his long-term partner, Silena Kyle too. They were putting pressure on City Hall for the case to be solved, and City Hall was in turn pressuring the SCPD to pull results out of thin air.

The case had also drawn media attention due to Felicity Smoak being a sister to one of the Star's top investigative journalists and friends with another, Linda Park, who, if not for her genuine friendship with the victim, would surely have been having a hell of a time painting the tragic story of her seemingly saintlike friend's vicious attack, and the police department's subsequent failure to come up with any solid leads. As it was, she wasn't holding back, perhaps channelling her hurt and worry out via ripping apart the stalled investigation. Already in the week since the first report, there had been four articles about Smoak's attack, and five on the police department's climbing number of cold cases (not all written by Park herself, Quentin would be gracious enough to acknowledge that). The only silver lining in that was that the reporters were mainly focusing their criticism on the city politicians' lack of aid for the SCPD, drawing outrage from the public at the falling standards. Every statement released by the SCPD made it clear that they simply couldn't afford to hire anyone else or divert more of their slim budget to the forensics department, fanning the flames of public fury all the more. If they kept up the pressure, Quentin thought a budget increase might be in his department's future.

Another, more personal, reason was that Joseph West, although near to retiring from fieldwork, was still a highly respected and admired detective, head of Homicide for more than fifteen years, recipient of multiple awards and a mentor to many of the unis and younger detectives in the department. An attack on his family was an attack on the whole department.

So far, they had eliminated several suspects other than Laurel (mostly parents or guardians whose abuse or neglect of their child was discovered by Felicity), checked and confirmed that the young boy, a teenager named Craig Abbott who attended Garfield High in the Glades and was the foster son of Joan Baez, who worked as a special needs teacher at a local nursery school, was most definitely not the target.

His parents had died in a robbery gone wrong when he was two, leaving him with pretty much nothing, and his frail grandmother had been in a nursing home since her stroke three years past, leading to Craig going into care. The entire family had been as law-abiding as any Glades' residents could be, and Craig himself was spoken of as a good student, in line to become captain of the basketball team after the current captain graduated next year, with only a single detention for tardiness. His foster mother, too, had no reason to be targeted.

Harsh as it sounded, it was apparent that the unfortunate boy had simply been collateral damage.

There was a knock at the door, and McKenna Hall, one of the department's rising stars, about Laurel's age, stuck her head around the side. She looked pale and nervous, never a good sign when it came to briefing a superior.

"Sir," she greeted him respectfully. "I think I've found something on the Smoak case. It," she hesitated then exhaled. "It could be big Sir."

"What do you mean?" Quentin asked warily, gut twisting. It had been warning him about this whole case since the start, and now it might as well have been doing jumping jacks inside his stomach, so eager was it to alert him to the coming bad news.

Hall slipped inside the room and shut the door firmly behind her, before holding out a slim file out to him silently. Quentin swiftly grabbed it and scanned it once, mouth dropping open before he re-checked the evidence. The words on the page didn't change.

McKenna was wrong. This might not be big, it would be huge.

It took the best part of two weeks for Felicity to wake up from her coma. The doctors assured her distraught family that it was to be expected. After everything she had gone through, her body needed some time to rest and recover, and the coma was her body's way of doing so. In some ways, the coma was even a good thing, Caitlin insisted, trying to keep them as hopeful as possible. She wouldn't be moving around, trying to do stuff she wasn't physically well enough to do yet. After all, she had joked weakly, unable to hide the strained look in her blue eyes, they all knew what a nightmare of a patient Felicity was.

Cecile had let out a watery laugh that sounded more like a sob when she agreed. Joe had given the slightest shadow of a smile possible before it disappeared again as his gaze returned to Felicity's form. She had always been small, making up for her lack of height with ankle-breaking heels. Lying in the hospital bed, connected to a heart monitor, a monitor for her brain activity, and two IVs, one for a blood transfusion and one for nutrients, she looked like a fragile porcelain doll.

'Fragile' had never been a word used to describe Felicity Meghan Smoak. She'd had it rough her whole life and she had clawed her way out of the gutter, kicking and screaming. She was tough, stubborn, and determinedly optimistic, as if by letting the pain she'd suffered get the better of her, she would lose her mental war against her past tormentors.

Despite the doctors' initial optimism, the more time that passed without any sign of Felicity regaining consciousness, the more concerned their expressions grew.

The family rotated shifts so she was never alone, though Iris was limited by her pregnancy and toddlers, and Joe spent a lot of time taking full advantage of his position as the well-respected and liked Head Homicide Detective to get as much information on the case as possible. Meanwhile, Felicity's colleagues also popped in frequently to see how she was doing, bringing gifts and supplies for both the patient and her family, and mentioning the regular requests for news from Felicity's kids, all of whom were distraught and anxious to see her. All of those requests had been refused, of course. Their guardians, the social workers temporarily in charge of their cases and the Wests all agreed that it wasn't a good idea. Felicity wouldn't want them to see her in her current state, and it would only upset them all to realize how injured she was.

But finally, ten days after the attack, Cecile was sitting by her former foster daughter's bedside, reading documents related to a case without properly taking in the information, when a bleep from one of the monitors caught her attention. She quickly switched her attention, half-rising and reaching out to grab the alarm button.

When she looked down at Felicity's face, she saw that her daughter's eyes were half-open, glazed and unfocused, but open.

"Oh thank God," Cecile breathed out, tears filling her eyes as she covered her mouth with a hand to keep the sobs from escaping her.

"Mm Mom?" Felicity mumbled bemusedly, eyes darting around the room in confusion. "Wuh, what h'p'ned? Wherem I?"

"You're okay, you're okay," Cecile sobbed in response. "Oh, thank God Felicity! You're awake, you're going to be alright!"