A.N.: Hi everyone!

bluemoonfireworks was relinquishing some prompts and I chose this one to try to fill. I aways wanted to write something about Felicity looking (or not looking) for her father 'cuz,let's be honest here, the woman is a genius that can find pretty much anyone Team Arrow sets their mind to,so for me she either found him already or didn't even try to search the man. Anyway,when I saw the prompt about something for her past resurfacing, it was too much of a good opportunity to miss :)

As usual,please forgive any mistakes that may appear(bc they will :/)…English is not my first language and I don't have a beta. I'm new to this amazing translating-ideas-into-words universe

Prompt:" Something or someone resurfaces from Felicity's past, reopening old wounds and Felicity doesn't feel comfortable opening up about it to Oliver about it because she thinks its inferior compared to his trauma. post 2x13 or 2x14 if your up for it."

"It's not that she never tried. When she was around ten she snuck into her mother's bedroom to look for any piece of memory of him - clothes, documents, a picture… anything – but she found nothing. When she was in her sophomore year at MIT, she had already hacked into a considerable number of classified databases when the thought of looking for him returned to her mind. She chose a night she knew Addie, her roomate, would be on a date leaving the whole dorm to herself, set the parameters for her searches and stared the screen of the computer for good 10 minutes - finger hovering above the enter button,heart pounding in her chest and a slight lightheaded sensation she got when she was too nervous. Turned out she never had the guts to press the button. Feeling angry with him to have such a hold on her emotions even if he didn't ever bother to stick around and even more angry with herself, for allowing so, she told herself it was not her place to go search for him and turned off the computer. After all, her father was the one that decided to leave, and she had got so far without him. Right in that moment Felicity made a vow to herself to never search for the man who gave up on her mother and a six-year-old little girl.

She never thought about it anymore, not really. But after she began working with Oliver and Digg and saw how often Robert Queen's past and decisions came to haunt his son she caught herself a couple of times wondering what kind of men her father was. Nothing would ever justify what he did, but she had seen enough to acknowledge that the world wasn't all black and white.

Once she put together all the dirty little pieces of Moira Queen's secret about Thea's parentage, she really wish she didn't. Truth is she never trusted the woman, and after the threaten episode, Felicity's level of sympathy for her had dropt to level zero, but seeing the turmoil all her lies caused to her children made Felicity reach a new level of distaste for the Queen matriarch. It was never a pretty view to see a family fall apart, specially a family of someone you're close to. That whole ordeal added with the fear Felicity felt of Moira's words become true left her unsettled. Things like this came too close of all those suffocated feeling she kept buried about the man who did not stay.

She didn't have that much time to drown on those thoughts or feelings though. Slade Wilson came from the dead with his mirakuru army and all hell broke loose in Starling City once again. In the end they did what they had to to save the city the trio tried so hard to keep safe in a daily basis: Oliver, Roy and Sara fought in the same side of Nissa and the League of Assassins, Dig and Layla broke into ARGUS and threatened Amanda Waller among with Deadshot, she and Oliver played his plan to make Slade believe he was the one Oliver loved and take her, she injected the cure that turned Deathstroke in a man again and Oliver finally accepted his true role and became the hero she aways knew he would become.

It wasn't until a few months after Slade's attack to the city, in their new lair, that Felicity's thoughts turned to her father again. They had built an improved place to work their nightime activities and Roy Diggle ,and Oliver were taking advantage of all the new material they had available to train while she was running some searches about Thea's whereabouts. Things got a lot stressful when Roy finally told about the Thea's letter to him, but most of the steam had come off by know and they had joined their forces in order to find her and get her back.

While the programs did their job, Felicity begun to check some news about how the city was coping with its reconstruction from another attack so soon after the Undertaking. Ever the efficiency behind the CEO of QC, she was gathering intel about the projects that could use some financing from the company to help the city. Oliver had got QC back three monthes after Slade and Isabel 's frame. With both dead, Laurel's incisive approach among the shareholder's lawyers and a little help from Felicity's abilities to hack into servers and change documents without leaving any trace, the family company had come back to where it aways belong, and had improved its numbers since them.

The blonde was skimming an article about a support group when the name caught her attention "..says Daniel Smoak, resident of Heathridge Hill suburbs that was with his family in downtown Starling celebrating his son's acceptance at SCU" she murmur to herself, feeling that same lightheaded feeling and numb limbs as recognition wrapped around her words seemed to be shouted at her "his family", "his son" She could feel all the years of suffocated feelings clogging in her throat and all the uncried tears burning the back of her mind was going a mile a minute, but her curiosity was on it's the vow she did to herself,Felicity Smoak started a search about her father, and what she found make her feel like that six-year-old girl who cried every night for almost a month waiting for her father to come back home and kiss her good night.
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It was the next day that bought Oliver the certainty that something was off with his tiny and Diggle had noticed how quiet and distant she was when they came out from sparing with Roy on the mats to end one unusually quiet night for Team Arrow,but when Digg asked her if everything was ok she tried a smile that didn't really reached her eyes and said it was just a had no idea how was the healthy amount of time someone could work in front of a computer,but Felicity exceeded that amount by a long shot that's for ,something inside him did not settle with that excuse, and he made sure they followed her to her townhouse to make sure she got home alright,even if it was under protest.

When they arrived at the QC the next morning, the were greeted with a vision of her desk full of papers and a distracted Felicity looking pointedly at a folder in her hand. It took her a secondo or two to acknowledge their presence and she gave a deep sigh before giving them a too excited good morning that had none of the man day was filled with meetings for him and Felicity to attend,and in each one of them Olive could see her biting the tip of her pen and some of the he had caught her head down,looking at her tablet without really seeing it,thoughts anywhere but the conference room.
It wasn't until after office hours that he had the time- or space- to talk to had to stay longer to organize the papers an folders to a huge auditorship that was going to happen the next week and to which they decided it was really important for Oliver to show he was up to date with. John was spared of staying that much longer and had head home to stay with Layla. Oliver was signing some papers and had just lifted his head to relax some muscles when he saw Felicity lost in thoughts again, like she had been a lot of times during the day,but what really caught his attention was the huge pint of ice cream placed in her desk – he could bet his entire company it was mint chip flavored.

Feeling more bothered by Felicity's demeanour than he should've been,he lift from his chair and went to her, loosing his tie a bit more and wearing a concerned look on his face."Hey…" Even though his tone was low and soft, it still startled her, making her drop the empty spoon she was holding. "Oliver! Wha… do you need anything?" she said after a big gulp of air bending down to reach for the spoon that was on the floor. He never answered, and when she came back to her normal sitting position, Oliver was kneeling in front of her, trapping her by putting his hands on her upper arms. " I need you to tell me what's going on…" he said looking for her gaze,only to find her shifting in the chair and looking anywhere but him "Nothing…" she tried, but he wasn't buying that ."The truth, Felicity…please don't lie to me."And just then her mind went to a very similar situation, lot so long ago, when she told him the truth about what his mother was hiding. She notice the worry and the apprehention in his face and was quick to reassure him that this time it was not his world falling apart. "No, no..it's nothing like that. It's not whi… it's nothig for you to worry about, ok? " That did absolutely nothing to calm him down. "How can I not worry when whatever it is that's happening is bothering you that much?" That made her look straight in his eyes. She had no idea he could read her so easily, that usually happened the other way around. Her face must've shown how astonished she was, because he was quick to answer the unasked question " Yes,I've notice, Felicity. How you were quiet yesterday and how distracted you were the whole time today…" his tone was firm but still soft, and it was making so much more difficult to get a hold on her frazzled nerves. She could feel her throat burning with the effort to hold back the tears, and she knew that soon they would just pour out without her permission "…I've noticed you biting the tip or your pens and how your mind seemed to be completely elsewhere, and that you're eating ice cream in the office and I know you do that as a way to cope with something that's stressing you so please…tell me what's bothering you so i can fix it." That broke her more than anything and she could feel her face getting wet. Here in front of her was a man whot had been through hell and then some, a son that had seen both of his parents die in front of him the most stupid deaths, a brother that had lost Tommy buried in pieces of his crumbling city, because of the lies and plots of their own parents' crazy minds, and that had to deal with not knowing about Thea's whereabouts, a hero that fought night after night to save his city from all the scumbags and mad mens. This man was here saying that besides every single one of his ghosts and problems, he still had noticed her, her distress and wanted to fix things for her. How could she share something so small as her father not wanting her with someone who had lived through such bigger, horrendous things? Someone that carried much heavier burdens? She was embarrassed to share this with him, so tried to put some distance between them, to get out of her chair, but he just didn't let her. How could he when she was so clearly upset?! After some minutes of tense silence, she decided it was better to tell him already and sounding defeated she spoke "There's no fixing, Oliver. And it doesn't matter anymore. I fou… I found my father." The hold he had in her arms tighten a little bit and he waited to see if she was going to elaborate,as she did. "He lives here in Starling City,you know? Moved as soon as he left us and opened a small computer store. Met Mary Ann Brooks soon after and marry her two years after that. They have two ki…kids…" she was sobbing now,but he knew she had to let it all out, and just stared at her,rubbing circles in the skin of her arms to try to give her some sort of support "…the girl is the oldest. She's three years younger than me… and the boy was recently accepted to SCU to take computer Science. Guess it runs with the family…" She gave a humorless smile that sounded more like a scoff and tried to dry some of the tears that were dropping from her chin now "Except I'm not part of has the perfect family,Oliver…How could he? Why didn't he…" Before she could finish he had stood up, pulling her to him in a tight embrace, one hand in her back and the other holding her head while trying to soothe her, feeling her body shake with the sobs.

She had no idea how long they stayed that way, Oliver holding her in his arms, hands going through her hair,whispering calming words and kissing her forehead every once in a while. But at some point the knot that her heart had become loose a little and she could feel like breathing again without falling apart. She took a step back but did not lift her head to him,too ashamed of the breaking down she just went through. He took her hand in his and went to sit down in her chair, bringing her to sit in sideways in one of his legs. After giving her another kiss in the forehead he tilt her chin up and looked in her eyes, trying to tell her without words that he was listening if she wanted to continue a couple of minutes composing herself,she did . "Yesterday I was looking at some articles about the glades and the support groups that came up after everything that happened. I thought i would be nice to choose some of them for QC to help, like we've talked about…" he just nod understanding "…one of them took statements of participants and his name was there. Daniel Smoak. Apparently his wife was stuck in their car because of a collision and had some trouble coping after that so they participate of the group for while." Her voice was trembling lightly now and she took a deep breath to continue "…I had vowed to myself that I wasn't going to look for him. But after knowing he lives here, in the same city as me… I just had to get over with it. So I started some searches… it was really simple, nothing compared with what I have to do to find the bad guys, you know? And there it was… the perfect picture of a perfect loving family. A happy marriage and two kids to be proud of." She was crying again but softly this time,without the previous turmoil,she sounded beaten and tired "I aways thought he left because he didn't want to have a Family. That he had runed away from the responsibility of raising a child… But that wasn't the case…I just wonder why he did it. Weren't we enough? Did he tel his Family about me? Do they know?" She sounded more hurt that he ever wanted to hear her sound, and his instinct was to bring her to lay in his chest as he leaned back in the chair, his face buried in her locks,and wrapping her in the warmth of his arms as well as their position allowed in an attempt to comfort her.

It did calmed her down some, and after a while the crying stoped. When all that broke the soothing silence they were in was Felicity's soft sniffles, Oliver spoke in a tender voice "Do you want to contact him?" in the same tone she answered "I don't know… I don't know if I want any kind of relationship with him. I guess.." She sighted deeply "…guess I just wanted to know why he never bothered to look for me. I'm not sure if I want to hear what he has to say, though…" He held her a little tighter in his embrace breathing the sweet smell of her shampoo " Whatever it is that you decide, I'm here for you." She snuggle her head further into his chest, curling a little bit more into him and drawing strength from him. "I know". She was aware that at some point she'd have to make a decision to either confront the man who left her behind so many years ago or just leave it all behind, but she didn't have the heart to even consider any one of these possibilities yet. All the pain she had felt as a little girl and manage to suppress somehow over the years was thrown at her at once, and everything felt really raw now to deal with, but of one thing she was certain: she had her own hero to help her find the way through all of this mess she was feeling.