Chipped Blocks
An Olicity Flash Fic Story

Flash Fic Prompt #41: Amnesia

Chapter Thirteen

In the back of Felicity's mind, even as she moved towards her daughter, she knew it wasn't a good idea to approach Mia. But she couldn't not at least try to touch her little girl, to hold her. It had been a week since she had last seen the sixteen year old, last had that reassurance that Mia was alright. Alive. Not attempting would have hurt more than what she knew the results of her gesture would bring her.

"Back off, hag. You know you're not supposed to touch me. Ever."

She listened. A parent should never take orders from their child, but Felicity also knew that pushing the issue with Mia would only make the situation worse. Perhaps by backing down, by giving in, she was enabling her daughter... or, at least, the deplorable state of their pretty much non-existent relationship, but Felicity felt like she didn't have a choice. Despite knowing better, however, she found herself mumbling, "jeez, you'd think I'm a carrier for the plague. First Connor, now..."

"Wait, who's Connor," Mia interrupted, looking intrigued. Her gaze flickered towards Oliver, and she asked, "are you Connor?"

"Connor's my son."

"Oh, I see how it is," Mia drawled out her words. And Felicity winced. Although she didn't know where her daughter was taking this, she knew it wouldn't be pretty. Silently, she chastised herself for bringing even the idea of Connor onto Mia's radar, and she wished that Oliver would just go. He did not deserve to be subjected to Mia's abuse, and so much for their burgeoning relationship. It was one thing to be warned about Mia; it was a whole different story to see her in action. "You'll tell his son about the two of you, but, if I hadn't interrupted the walk of shame this morning, I would have been kept in the dark."

Perhaps it was Mia trying to play the victim, or perhaps it was the ugly spin Mia was putting upon Oliver and Felicity's morning, but Felicity wouldn't let her daughter make such assumptions. "If you came home... if you wouldn't have run off again in the first place, then I would have told you about Oliver, Mia."

"What, you would have told me that you were sleeping with him, or you would have told me you were fucking a married man?"

At the same time, both Felicity and Oliver started sputtering denials. "I'm not...

"I can't believe you'd think... He's not..."

"Hey, no judgement," Mia cut them off, holding her hands up to ward away their words. Afterwards, however, she didn't drop them back to her sides. Instead, Mia pushed up her long, dark sleeves and started scratching at her forearms. As she scratched, she talked. "I already know you're a whore," she told her mother. Then, to make it even worse, she said to Oliver, "and, frankly, I don't care what or who you do... though I do have a proposition for you."

"No, Mia," Felicity started to yell at her daughter.

But the teenager talked right over top of her. "If you're going to screw around on your wife, at least make it worth the risk. $50 to suck you off, $100 for a quick fuck. If you're into anything kinky, the price goes up."

"Oh god," Felicity exclaimed, face burning with mortification, stomach rioting in disgust, mouth filling with bile. She wanted to cry; she thought she might get sick.

"When you think about it, what I'm offering is a bargain. I'm younger, less... used. After you take this one," Mia indicated Felicity, "out to dinner, and buy her flowers, listen to her incessant nagging for an entire evening, and she's emotionally needy and manipulative, so you know she's going to want to cuddle, frankly, the bitch just isn't worth the time. Plus, look at her. She's a cold fish. She'll screw you three ways to Sunday, but she won't be looking to make you cum."

Felicity couldn't look at Oliver. She just... couldn't. Furious, embarrassed, hurt, and afraid about what this moment meant in regards to Mia's safety and health, the only thing she could focus on was what she had to do next. "Stop it, Mia. Just... stop it." Moving forward and to the side so that she was directly facing her daughter and quite literally leaning down to get into her face, Felicity ordered, "go take a shower. Now!"

"Why?" Smirking, Mia added, "after fucking you, I'm sure Oliver would like it a little... dirty."

Ignoring her, Felicity instructed, "while you're getting yourself cleaned up, I'll pack your bag and call off from work. You're going to rehab. Again. Today. This morning."

Scoffing and placing her fists on cocked hips, Mia dismissed, "please. There's no way you'll be able to pay... Oh!" Snorting in realization and sneering in derision, Felicity's daughter remarked, "I get it. Not only is Connor his son, but he's also your student." Mia's left brow arched... like she was looking down upon Felicity despite the fact that her sixteen year old was even more petite than her. "Congratulations, Felicity. You went from whoring yourself out for consulting contracts and software development deals to just whoring yourself out." Peering around her shoulders, Mia spoke directly to Oliver. "I'd be careful if I were you. She'll drain you dry. With you, it'll probably just be your money, so you'll be lucky, but my dad? She literally sucked the life out of him. Killed him."

As Mia kept ranting, her voice rising and rising until the point where she was screaming, Felicity realized that Oliver had moved forward so that he was standing directly beside her. Speaking softly, the deeper tones of his voice slipping under Mia's high pitched shrieking, he asked her, "do you trust me?"

Frankly, she didn't know how to answer him – not because Felicity questioned Oliver's honor or sincerity but because... how, why was he even still there? How could he still care enough for her to talk to her so gently, to actually sound worried that she wouldn't trust him. Why, in that moment, did her trust even matter to him. "What?"

Oliver dipped down, bending his knees, and he forced her to look him in the eyes. "Do you trust me, Felicity?"

"Yeah," she admitted, nodding slowly. When Oliver didn't react, when he just continued to search her gaze, her face, for an answer, Felicity squared her shoulders and spoke with conviction. After everything that had happened, everything that had been said that morning, she didn't feel like she knew much of anything at all. However, the one thing Felicity was unequivocally sure of was Oliver. "Yes. I trust you."

Then, before she could even blink, Oliver had slipped around her. He had no sooner come to stand behind Mia before he was lifting his arms, wrapping them around Felicity's daughter, and then Mia was collapsing bonelessly, lifelessly, to the floor.

Behind her glasses, her eyes widened in horror, in fear. "What... you... Mia?"

"She's fine," Oliver was quick to reassure her.

But his words proved empty in the face of her daughter's crumpled, motionless body. "But she's..."

"Felicity," he snapped. Oliver's short tone was used to center her, not to express frustration. "It's as if she's just unconscious – asleep."

"How... I...?"

"It's hard to explain, but it has to do with pressure points."

For several moments, she thought about Oliver – about what he had just said to her, what she had just witnessed him capable of, the scars she had earlier considered nothing more than just a part of who he was... like a birthmark or a mole. As the pieces started to align themselves, Felicity murmured, "I know you sunk with a boat instead of waking up on one, but, otherwise, I'd swear you were Jason Bourne."

Calmly, rationally, Oliver refuted, "I do not work for the CIA, Felicity."

"Right. Of course," she quickly agreed with him, rolling her eyes like her assumption was ridiculous. Which it was... in an improbable way, though it was suddenly the only explanation that made any sense whatsoever.

"It was ARGUS, though I haven't been an active agent for many years now."

What the hell was ARGUS?! And why was Oliver telling her this? While Felicity was pretty sure that government agencies weren't exactly like Fight Club, they were close enough that she was certain the first rule of Fight Club applied. Did this mean that Oliver was reading her in, or would she now have to sign some confidentiality agreement? And what if ARGUS found out about her – about her past, about Mia, about Cooper, about Felicity's... talents? Maybe she didn't know what (or who) exactly ARGUS was, but Felicity knew she wanted – no, she needed – to stay off the agency's radar.

"Felicity?"

"What," she questioned instinctively. She also attempted to back away, and, in doing so caught a glimpse of an unconscious Mia out of the corner of her eye, and Felicity forced herself to step away, mentally, from the wormhole time-suck that was her own brain but not physically from the man in front of her. "Right." She took several deep breaths and shook her head for some clarity. "Mia. She's not... awake now, but, when she..."

"I'd like... I'd like to take her with me," Oliver interjected uncomfortably.

"To where," Felicity ineptly inquired. "Your house?"

Without directly addressing her question, Oliver explained himself. "I think I can help her, Felicity. Mia's angry. She's so angry that she's self-destructing. And I know what that's like. She needs a target..."

"You mean other than me," she offered self-deprecatingly.

" … a release for that anger. I can give that to her."

Helplessly, she folded her arms over her chest. "While Mia was wrong about so many things earlier, Oliver, she wasn't wrong about my finances. I'm broke. Although I never had any intentions of asking you for money, I also didn't know how I was going to pay for her to go to rehab this time. My credit cards are maxed, my credit score is pretty much non-existent, and my mom barely makes ends meet, so she couldn't help. My idea was just to get her there and then worry about the money later. But it's not like rehab's ever worked before for Mia. I just don't know what else to do for her."

"Does this mean that you're willing to consider..."

"Are you sure about this, Oliver," Felicity interrupted his question. Because she was more than just considering his offer. There was so much she didn't know about him, but that didn't scare her. Her temporary panic about his secret agent background aside, as she had realized before, Felicity trusted Oliver. She trusted him with her past, with her heart, and, most importantly, she trusted him with her daughter.

He chuckled humorlessly. "No." Before she could react, he rushed to clarify. "I mean, yes, I'm sure about helping Mia. What I'm unsure of is what helping her will mean for me, for us." If Oliver was worried about Connor, about how his helping Mia would impact his son, then... "Felicity, I have a lot of secrets," he erased her assumptions with his confession. "And they're not just about those five years I was away."

"So do I, Oliver."

Shaking his head in argument, he insisted, "they're not the same."

Felicity shrugged. "Maybe not. But a secret is a secret. You wouldn't be human if you didn't have some, and I can't fault you for yours if you don't hold mine against me. I haven't told you everything about my life yet, Oliver. We're still getting to know one another. But you've proven to me that, when it matters, you'll tell me the truth, and that's all that I should ask of you, but I'm about to ask more."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't tell Mia the truth about her dad – about his suicide," she beseeched him. "No matter what happens while you're trying to help her get clean, I need you to keep my secrets for me."

For several seconds, Oliver was silent and still – so much so, in fact, that Felicity started to believe that he would refuse her request. But then he shocked her. "After the Gambit went down, my dad and another crew member made it onto a life raft. They fished me out of the ocean." His voice in its confession was soft with the grief of memory, raspy with regret. "But there wasn't enough water for three of us to survive. Or even two. My father shot the crew member, and then he shot himself. So, no, Felicity, I won't tell your daughter that her dad was a coward and killed himself, because I'll never get the sound of my own father dying out of my head, and I wouldn't put that same burden on anyone else's shoulders."

Which meant that, for the past almost twenty years, Oliver had been living with that burden alone. He'd never told his mother or his sister the truth. Yet, he told her.

Of course she trusted him.

As Oliver bent over, sliding one arm beneath Mia's knees and the other around her shoulders, he told her, "please don't think this is me pulling away from you, Felicity. In the past, I ran away from every serious relationship I even came close to, but I'm not running from you."

She walked with him towards her apartment's door, not speaking until she had it pulled open for him and he was standing in the threshold, cradling her daughter in his arms. Against Oliver, Mia looked even smaller, even more fragile, even more broken. "You're trying to help my little girl. Even after all the disgusting things she said to you, you're still willing to be there for her. For me. And you already care about her, because she's mine. So, no, I don't think you're running away from me, Oliver; it feels like you're running towards me."

His forehead came to rest against hers, their noses brushed together, and Oliver sighed with relief against her mouth. "I'll call you with an update as soon as I get her settled," he promised. And then, with the barest hint of a goodbye kiss, he – with a still unconscious Mia in his arms – was gone.