Author's Note: Thanks for all of the reviews! I really loved the feedback and the suggestions. Keep them coming.

Chapter One: Dropping Glasses Just To Hear Them Break

"Felicity, what is going on?" Oliver asked, and she almost flinched at his tone. Things between them had not improved since his announcement that he would now be training with Malcolm Merlyn in order to defeat Ra's Ah Ghul. She hated the uneasy distance between them.

She wanted to fix it, to fix them, but she knew that the decision she had made would do anything but bring them closer together. No matter how much she hated it, she had made her choice when she chose to call Caroline to summon Klaus. She had made her bed; now she had to lie in it.

She looked around at Digg and Roy and Laurel and Oliver. They were confused. And frustrated in Oliver's case. She breathed in and exhaled, the usually smooth action shaky. Oliver's brow crinkled further at it, and she knew that if she didn't start talking soon he would not remain as calm as he had been. That formidable self-control that she knew he possessed had nothing to do with the relationship they shared, especially when it came to her keeping secrets from him.

"Okay, I need to just spit this out, but I don't know how. How does someone tell other someones that...this is real? I don't know. I just know that if someone had told me instead of how I found out that I wouldn't believe them. I would...It's crazy. I will seem crazy, but I'm not. Crazy, that is. I'm not crazy. I'm-"

"Felicity!" Oliver's guttural call of her name stopped her babbling. Her tear-soaked blue eyes sought his, and she swallowed the sob that wanted to escape.

"You are really freaking us out here," Laurel softly commented, eyebrows drawn and muscles tensed for the fight the warrior in her sensed.

"I..uh..I..." She stumbled over the words in her head that she knew had to come out of her mouth.

"Spit it out, Felicity," Roy said in exasperation, and Oliver's stony face cut to him in a warning glare.

"Roy-" He murmured in warning with a lethal undertone.

"Vampires are real!" Felicity blurted and four sets of eyes were suddenly on her and the room crackled with tension in the silence. "So are witches and werewolves and hybrids and travelers and..."

"I know," Roy said quietly, and she stopped what she knew was going to be a horrifying ramble about every supernatural creature she had ever heard of. "I grew up in the Glades. Prime hunting grounds for vampires who want victims that no one will really miss. Besides one of the old ladies in our building when I was growing up was a witch. No one messed with her whether they knew or not. You could tell she didn't take any shit."

"Okay," Felicity exhaled in relief. "Okay, okay, okay. That makes things easier."

Before she could continue, Digg's right hand raised off of the arms he had crossed over his chest. Laurel's eyes had fell to the floor during Roy's confession and hadn't left. It was like she was there, but she wasn't hearing anything any of them said. She was lost to the processing of the information. Felicity could understand that. It was like a computer when it needed to reboot after an update. She understood people when they were like computers. She could make sense of it to herself. She could predict it, and in predicting it, she could control it. She always preferred a situation in which she had control.

Turning back to Diggle, she could see it on his face before he added that he, too, knew about the existence of supernatural beings, and she returned the small smile he sent her way. And then she turned her attention to the one person that she didn't want to look at now, the person who always had her attention, the person who she was doing this for in the first place.

"Oliver?"

"I...I sort of knew. I have had some encountered with people that...Let's just say it doesn't come as a shock to me," He settled with and pursed his mouth into a grim line that she knew well.

"Well, I'm shocked. I'm in shock. It was shocking," Laurel spit out, and then her eyes snapped to Felicity's with a ferocious purpose. "Why are you telling us this?"

"Because I did something...that none of you are going to like, but when we discussed working with Merlyn...obviously before Oliver came back and wasn't dead...we decided that the ends didn't justify the means. I never thought they did. Not during the Undertaking. Not when Slade was here. I never thought that us beating them would justify us being like them. I never thought that my mind would change on that, but..."

"I came back and told you that I wanted to train with Merlyn." Oliver filled in at her hesitation, and she tried to tamper down the gnawing of guilt in her belly at the look in his eyes, the anguish in his voice. Then his eyes flashed dark and then darker. "Felicity, what did you do?"

"Wait, I'm not done explaining." She blurted, anxiousness bringing her to flail her hands around as she moved to pace in front of her computer, head almost bowed. She paused, and turned on a dime back to look at the four of them. "Originals! What do you know about the Originals?"

She wasn't talking to Oliver and Laurel anymore, just Digg and Roy. The elegant musculature of Roy's face contorted into pure confusion, and she knew without any doubt that he didn't have a clue what the hell she was talking about this time.

But Digg... his whole body snapped to attention and the low tone of his voice narrowed further to purely come from his throat in a growl that she had never heard from Digg before. "Oh, God, Felicity, what have you done?"

"I backed Oliver's play; the ends justify the means." She said, her voice just a degree off from trembling as she slouched down into her chair, exhausted from the conversation already.

"What ends? What means? What the fuck are the Originals?!" Oliver exploded, his fist coming down hard on the table beside him, arrow heads ricocheting off the metal like tiny bullets scattering across the floor.

"The Original vampires," Diggle said matter-of-factly, his stricken and harsh gaze never tearing away from Felicity. "They are the first of their kind. Hundreds of years old. Strong than regular vampires or werewolves."

"How strong is that?" Laurel questioned, still half in denial.

"Me on Mirakuru and a vampire are about on an even scale," Roy answered.

"A thousand." Felicity whispered.

"What?" Laurel and Oliver spoke at the same time, turning back again to stare at Felicity. Luckily, Digg continued with the story as he knew it.

"They were a family. Their mother was a witch, and from what I understand, to protect her children from werewolves, she cast a spell on them to make them invulnerable. The spell included running a sword through the hearts of her daughter and 4 sons, and they became the undead. Immortal." Digg explained.

"Indestructible," Felicity added, just wanting to get it over with and be done. "The middle brother-Niklaus- soon after his transformation, he discovered he was something else. His father was not his father. He was the son of a werewolf, and a lot of other stuff happened, and now he is the Original Hybrid. He is the most powerful man to walk the Earth. He is truly unable to be killed by any way I know of killing anyone, supernatural or not."

"And?" Oliver prompted.

"I know him. He owes me a debt, and his brother told me once that he trained Ra's Ah Ghul, so he would know how to beat him." She took a deep breath. "He's a killer, a mass murderer who has walked this Earth for over one thousand years. He's dangerous beyond anything you've ever known, but... you and Merlyn haven't been making any progress in your training and I can't lose you again without doing everything in my power to prevent it and...I'm sorry, Oliver, if you are unhappy about this. If you don't want Klaus lose in your city. If you hate me even. But I couldn't do nothing, so I called a friend of mine: a vampire called Caroline. She and Klaus owe me and I need her to keep him on somewhat of a leash, so she is bringing him tonight to stay and help us get you ready."

"In return for what?" Diggle demanded, his eyes becoming hard in a way that Felicity had never seen directed at her, disappointment tinging the glare, his lips set in a thin line.

"I can't believe you wouldn't at least tell us about this, Felicity." Oliver shook his head, and Felicity smirked in pure obstinance.

"Really, Oliver? You're upset that I made a decision and didn't consult you? Imagine that." She replied with pure venom, rising to stand once again.

"What did you promise him, Felicity?" Diggle said again in a louder, angrier tone of voice since she had ignored his previous question in favor of arguing with Oliver.

"He owes me a debt."

"And that's all?"

"Well, no, but any other arrangements between Niklaus Mikealson and I are none of your business," She told him with a cock of her perfectly sculpted eyebrow over the rim of her glasses, daring him to defy her. But, really, Digg wasn't who she needed to be concerned with getting in her business.

Laurel had gone to sit down to finish processing this impossible information, and Roy and Oliver had both remained silent while she and Diggle had it out after she snapped on Oliver, but at her words, they both bristled at the implications.

Oliver jumped to his feet, warningly, "Felicity..."

"None...of...your...business." She reiterated while Oliver just stalked closer to her, closing the distance between them for the first time since their hug after he returned from the dead. She was torn between leaping on him, her thighs wrapping around his hips, leaving his hands with no choice but to grasp her ass in his capable hands, and hitting him, open palmed and angrily beating on his chest for leaving her alone to go off to fight Ra's Ah Ghul in the first damn place, allowing her to mourn his nonexistent death, and every decision he had made since returning.

"Everything about you is my business," He growled at her in return, mere inches separating them now, and she balked at his words, stepping back, anger and pride leaving her exhausted with only hurt to color her voice.

"You're the one who made the decision that I wasn't any of your business, Oliver." She paused, eyes never breaking away from his. Digg's feet shuffled restlessly behind them, but she couldn't spare a glance to gauge his expression right now. Not when Oliver was demanding everything in her with his unfaltering stare. "We've both made decisions here. Good or bad, we both have to live with them. I-I can't keep doing this. And neither can you. There are lives at stake here. Thea's life. Your life."

There was silence in the room because out of the five of them, no one had anything left to say that wouldn't be another round of the same damn fight they had been having all night. The information just sunk in all around them, and the world sort of tilted beneath their feet once again.

But like all peaceful moments, it couldn't last.

The slow, lazy clap of hands alerted them to the presence of the intruders. The man, beautiful with a pouty bottom lip and a hint of curl in his dark blonde hair, swaggered forwarded a few extra feet, his angelic face marred by the arrogance of his smirk and the cunning in his eyes. His hands kept clapping as his mouth drew into a grin.

"Eloquently said, my dear Felicity. Your archer would do well to heed your advice," The man gleamed, and a chill ran down Oliver's back at the purely feral quality of the strange man. "After all, I am here."

The woman, before almost unnoticeable, stepped shoulder to shoulder with the strange man, and with speed and accuracy and a softness Oliver didn't know was possible, nudged the man in his ribs. He accounted his previous lack of attention to the pure danger that radiated off of her companion because she was lovely with sharp, blue eyes and graceful features that could almost be considered delicate if one couldn't see the iron in her jawline. She was no more harmless than her man.

"Felicity, it's nice to see you," She said with utter sincerity and a hint of excitement lingering in her stance, like she really wanted to sweep Felicity into a hug, but she was too afraid to cross undrawn boundaries.

"Klaus," Felicity acknowledged, stepping around Oliver to make her way over to the couple and then she flung herself into the taller blonde's arms. "Oh, Caroline!"

"So you must be the Arrow," Klaus mused.

"And you must be the Hybrid."