A/N: Sorry for the delay with this one! I went to Georgia for a nice little vacation and could've swooooorn I'd have time to upload a chapter, but well, of course I didn't. I'll do another update on Friday!

"I'm hungry," Felicity whined for the tenth time. She was a lot of things - hungry, scared, anxious - but the hunger was the only one she didn't feel like a huge baby for complaining about.

"I'm sure they could always do the procedures while you're awake, if you're that hungry," Dig commented without looking up from the newspaper he was reading.

"You are so not funny, John Diggle."

She was waiting not-so patiently to get her pre-chemo bone marrow aspiration and lumbar puncture done. Since they did put her under general anesthesia for that, she had been forced to go without food and her stomach was complaining almost as loudly as her mouth.

Her eyes looked to the door as it swung open and she sagged visibly when she saw that it was Roy. Roy and food.

"I know there is no way that you're going to be eating that in front of me right now."

Taking one look around the room, Roy noted a small head shake from Oliver and raised eyebrows from Dig, while Detective Lance was just watching curiously.

Without a word, Roy spun around and headed back outside to finish his egg McMuffin.

"What are you going to want to eat when you wake up?" Oliver distracted her with the notion of food. "I'll make sure it's hot and ready and waiting for you when you get back."

"Pancakes," she replied instantly. It wouldn't still be breakfast time by the time she got back and woke up, but that didn't matter to her. She had been thinking about pancakes and syrup for the last hour and just the mere thought of them being available to her made her stomach rumble furiously.

"Whoa. Pancakes it is. Do you want plain or blueberry?"

"Blueberry," she confirmed, not at all surprised that Oliver knew her preference, even if she couldn't remember the last time she had pancakes, let alone with him.

"I can't believe they haven't come and got you yet. They said you were next on the list…" Oliver looked distinctly torn, wanting to both stay by her side and keep her company and go find a nurse and demand to know what is going on.

"Since when has this hospital ever run on a schedule?" Lance pointed out. "Why don't you go find a nurse while I have a few words with Felicity?"

Oliver didn't have a good enough reason to disagree besides 'I don't want to,' so he and Dig left together after an encouraging smile from Felicity.

"What's up?" She knew there had to have been a reason for him to want to speak to her alone.

"I've been thinking and...I don't know, you might not even…"

"Detective, is everything okay?"

He took a deep breath before getting the words out. "How are you going to tell Sara?"

She froze.

"Is she back?"

"No! I mean, I haven't heard anything, but usually you and our friend know better than I do. Sometimes it takes her a while to reach out to me, but...but I know she said she'd be back before next month. And that's coming up on us quick."

The detective's relationship with his youngest daughter was unique in its own right, but Felicity felt that he was so grateful to have her back that he would never question anything that she told him. She knew that he wasn't entirely sure where Sara had gone off to - even she wasn't positive, but she knew it was League of Assassins business and she knew that it was probably more than a little dangerous. She didn't have a way to contact her and she wasn't going to put Oliver at risk either to try and reach out to tell her something like this anyway.

"I guess so…"

"I just wanted to remind you is all. You haven't had to tell anyone yet."

"I so have!"

"Having Boy Wonder figure out your secret from his personal radiation detector does not qualify as you telling someone," he pointed out. "And neither does telling Moira Queen, even if I might be jealous I didn't get to see her face when she realized you weren't in here for rehab. But maybe you should talk it over with your Arrow buddy. I just don't want to see you get blindsided by this."

He was right, she knew. She hadn't had to actually say the words to anyone that she cared about. She knew it couldn't hold; she was going to eventually have to tell her mother and it was more than likely she'd have to tell others. She had few other friends in Starling prior to Oliver and Dig, and while they weren't really close, they did do occasional dinners and drinks and nights out on the town. Nights that were going to have to be postponed indefinitely now.

"Why is the idea of telling someone so awful?" She wondered aloud.

"You're a good person, Felicity Smoak. You don't want to hurt others."

"And yet here we are. Everyone is in the hospital and miserable with me."

"Miserable? This isn't my miserable face, kiddo. This is my concerned face. The second I start to feel miserable, I'll let you know."

"Promise?"

"Promise. Now, I've got to get to work. I'll try and stop by tomorrow and I'll be with you all day Wednesday."

"No work?"

"Nah, Queen said he has to do some business in the afternoon anyway so I volunteered to come hang out with you."

"I don't always need a babysitter," she protested. She didn't think she had been in the hospital for more than five minutes without someone next to her in any of her trips there since her secret came out. She didn't mind the company in the least, but she was starting to feel like everyone was hanging around her just waiting for something to go wrong. The more they waited and nothing happened, the more nervous she became that something would occur.

"Who said anything about a babysitter? Could I be getting paid for this?"

"Hah hah, Detective. Shouldn't you be eating donuts somewhere…?"

"I'm going, I'm going, but think about what I said. Keep it in mind."

And she did.

In fact, that was all she could think about now that he mentioned Sara's impending homecoming. She had hoped that she would forget about it upon waking up from her procedures but all that she had achieved while shoving her face full of pancakes was thinking about how much Sara liked pancakes.

To his credit, Oliver hadn't asked what Detective Lance had said to her but as he and Dig waited patiently with her before her next round of chemotherapy started, she figured she'd actually take Lance up on his advice and mention her feelings to 'her Arrow friend.'

"Do you...I could try to get word out to her," Oliver told her after she had broached the subject. "I have contacts in East Asia and they would be able to help."

"I could get Lyla to use some of her Argus connections," Dig volunteered. "They try to keep tabs on what the big players in the game are doing at all times. They probably know where she is, at least in generals."

"No, I don't think that's necessary. I don't really want to make her worried, especially if she's in the middle of something. But she's going to be back soon and I feel like so much has changed…"

"If you're worried she won't understand, you have a pretty good reason for keeping this from her." Dig let it remain unsaid that she hadn't had the same reasoning for keeping it from them, but he didn't look bitter anymore, which was something.

"Do you want me to tell her?"

Her sweet, understanding, complicated Oliver. Of course he'd offer. Of course he'd try and take this on himself, like he hadn't been the bearer of enough bad news to Sara Lance in this lifetime.

"I definitely do which is probably why you shouldn't." At his confused look, she elaborated. "It would be really easy for me to let you do this but I think I should try at least. But maybe if you guys were there with me…? I mean, this could all be totally hypothetical too. She could come back tomorrow in which case I doubt a lot of words would be needed as she sees me puking up my lungs as I get chemo."

"Whatever you want, we'll do," Oliver assured her. If only she had any idea what she wanted.

Four hours later and Oliver was grateful that she seemed to be handling this round of treatment better, but his optimism was reluctant. He remembered that it had taken her a few hours into the last time before she got sick. She was definitely responding to it though, as she was curled into a ball in her bed, latched on to his arm as tightly as possible, as if it were a lifeline.

She felt nauseous but it wasn't an urgent need for her to be sick, which she was happy about it. But she hadn't anticipated the absolute exhaustion that she as dealing with. With her first round, she had associated the tiredness with the exertion of being ill for hours on end. This time, there was no sickness but the shakiness inside of her wouldn't quit. It was as if her whole body had been used without her permission for hours on end and now she was too tired to sleep. So she kept her eyes squeezed shut, riding the wave of vague nausea and clutched Oliver's forearm in order to center herself in the room.

Dig looked at Oliver with pity and admiration. He couldn't be comfortable like that, there was no possible way. He was half in the bed with Felicity, his entire left arm disappeared under the blankets with nothing but the back of a blonde head to be seen surrounding it. The chair had been moved as close to the bed as possible but there was no way for him to re-position himself more comfortably without jostling Felicity, and that was a risk he wasn't going to take. Instead, Dig had given his free right hand his smart phone and he responded to a few e-mails and read the news on it. The room had been plunged into darkness again with the light aggravating Felicity's eyes, and both Dig and Oliver's phones were the only brightness in the room to be seen. Occasionally they would trade knowing glances. This was what they had signed up for. This was life in the cancer world.

Felicity got her wish sooner than she had anticipated.

She was happy that she didn't get nearly as violently ill with this round of treatment as she did with the first; she wasn't sure she could have handled that. She had gotten sick a few times on the second day but mostly it was the bone-deep lethargy that kept her down. By Wednesday she felt good enough to be up and talking with Detective Lance, and she was happy to note that he was still the same excellent company he had always been. He had plenty of snarky comments on Oliver and the private room but she knew that there was no longer any heat behind his words. If nothing else, her cancer had brought together two men that she thought would never be able to tolerate each other in the same room. Now, here they were, Wednesday night, having a civil conversation. She was almost happy about that if not for the fact that she was the topic of conversation and they didn't seem to care about that.

"I rescheduled this meeting three times, I can't miss it," Oliver told the detective. "Are you sure there's nothing you can do?"

"I have my time planned out pretty strictly. I could maybe be here for an hour or two, but I've worked it out so that I can take my time in the beginning of her treatment, like today. Two days in a row is pushing it for me. Why can't your bodyguard be here? You really in that much danger at QC?"

"He has to do something with...his girlfriend. He'll be here in the afternoon. And Roy is in Central City right now picking up a vendor shipment for Verdant. He could drive all night and be here by the morning but that's kind of pushing it…"

"Or, I could be okay here all by myself!" Felicity practically shouted in an effort to be heard over the testosterone in the room.

Oliver whipped around. "Felici-"

"I'm tired, Oliver. I'm tired now and I'm probably going to be tired tomorrow. And I can manage being by myself in a hospital room watched by three nurses for a few hours. So you are going to go to your investor meeting with Walter. And you're going to stop making Quentin feel bad for having a job too. Which he is also going to go to tomorrow. No questions. Is that clear?"

"Yes ma'am," Detective Lance nodded.

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be really bossy?"

"You didn't answer the question, Oliver."

"Yes. We are clear. I will suffer through this awful meeting. Fine."

"Is he pouting?" Lance asked Felicity, unbelieving.

"He considers it brooding, but yeah. He's totally pouting."

"I am not- I am going to go take a shower. Then we can order some food. Are you staying, Detective?"

He shook his head. "Got a meeting with an informant in a bit. I'll see you later, okay?" He dropped a kiss on Felicity's cheek. "Keep him in line, okay? If you want me to arrest him, just let me know."

"I will keep that in mind."

After Lance left, Oliver poked his body out of the bathroom door. Felicity ignored the spike in her heart rate machine when she took in Oliver's bare chest.

"You know there's not any charges that he could bring against me that could stick, right?"

"I could open that parking ticket back up from 2002 that I cleared for you."

His jaw dropped. "You wouldn't!"

"Try me."

"Fine. Choose some dinner. And then you can help me prepare for this damn meeting tomorrow."

She woke up the next morning when Oliver kissed her forehead goodbye as he headed out to be a productive citizen of Starling City, and she was surprised when she found that she couldn't get back to bed. It was only around 9 in the morning and she realized with delight that she had the next few hours to herself. Really and truly to herself. She had physio appointment with Steve later that afternoon, just to make sure that her lack of exercise these past few weeks wasn't causing anything to go wonky, but until then - the world was her oyster. Well, the hospital. Okay, actually just her room.

Well, that wasn't going to work.

After about an hour she was bored. If she sat too much, her mind ran away with her and she started thinking about Sara and her mom and the guilt was becoming almost too much for her. She had read most of the books on her tablet and even as she tried to reread her favorites, her mind insisted on wandering to dire topics.

"You look like you're 'bout to crawl outta yo' skin!" Her favorite nurse Mary commented as she took her vitals and checked her port.

"I need to do something, but I don't know what!"

"If you're up for it, you can come a couple floors down with me. I'm 'bout to check on the little ones before I go on break."

"Little ones? Like babies?" Was it too soon for her to be in the maternity ward, surrounded by other people's babies that she might never get the chance to have?

"Nah, no babies. Pediatric oncology unit. I like to check on some of the little ones doin' the battle. If you're feelin' like an adventure, maybe that'll help."

It was so easy for Felicity to forget that she wasn't the only one waging a war within her body. She was kept fairly isolated in the hospital and only saw other patients when she was headed down for procedures or tests or checking in. Maybe if she saw other people, kids, going through what she was, then she could give herself a little perspective. If nothing else, she knew that it would take her mind off of things.

"Yes! Please! Get me out of here."

She didn't have much experience with kids but she didn't let that dampen her excitement of getting out of her room. She had no idea what to expect but the activity room on the 7th floor was nothing like she had imagined.

Mary pushed her wheelchair into the room and the nurse was barraged with greetings and smiles from all the kids in the room, totaling about 6 or 7. They weren't as young as Felicity had anticipated, but apparently Mary had brought her to the 'young adult' room. There was another room for younger children down the hall that had more age-appropriate toys and activities.

She smiled at the teens and felt an unfamiliar ache in her heart. Was this was everyone felt when they looked at her? She saw these humans that had to have been average, typical kids at one point but were now all in various stages of sickness. Only two had any hair on their heads and they all were pretty frail. But they were all happy.

"Miss Mary, I think this tablet is busted!" A tall, lanky black boy with huge, bright eyes was spinning a tablet between his hands and grinning at the nurse.

"Do I look like the IT department, Trey?" She turned to Felicity. "A local company donated a lot of their old tech before they were bought out completely, but half the time we can't get it working right!"

She had an idea of which company donated it - a recent acquisition of QC, if she had to guess - but she perked up at the idea of being able to help.

"Do you mind if I take a look at it? Trey, was it?"

He shrugged and handed her the tablet. "You on Miss Mary's rounds too?" He asked as he rocked back on his heels near her. "You look a little old to be on her shifts."

"I will take that as a compliment," Felicity said with a smile. "And I have a private room upstairs. She helps out every now and then."

"Oh, so you're the one who stole her from us!"

She looked up, concerned that he was actually angry with her, but his eyes were sparkling and he was still smiling at her.

"Guilty as charged." She opened up the tablet's firmware and spotted the problem instantly. She updated a line of code and figured that she might as well make it a bit more secure while she was at it, and finally she handed the tablet back to the boy standing next to her. "Good as new. Better, actually."

"Whoa," he tapped it a few times, delighted when the apps opened seamlessly. "You are good. You got 'the little c' too?"

"Um - 'the little c?'"

"Well yeah. Everyone around here is always calling it 'the big c,' but we don't think it deserves the attention. Word like cancer doesn't get a capital letter."

She instantly loved this boy's enthusiasm and zest for life. She certainly could use some of that in her own.

"I like that. And yeah, I guess I do have 'the little c.'"

"What kind?"

"Uh, lymphoma." She hadn't exactly expected him to ask something like that, but she knew he wasn't being rude, just curious. "And you?"

"Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer man, it's a bitch."

"Trey!" Mary was across the room but she had ears like a hawk.

"Sorry! It's a bummer. This is my second time with it and I've just about had it with this shi- stuff."

"How old are you?" He was easily the tallest kid there, but she knew that didn't mean oldest.

"17. Frankie over there is 16, she's got leukemia, but I think it has to do with her lymph nodes too, like you." He went around the room, pointing out various kids and naming their ailments. "Alex is 14, she's got Medulloblastoma; Casey has astrocytoma, she's 13, and this is like, her third time with it. Cedric is 14 and has Wilms' tumor in his kidneys, and that's Lucy, she's 13 and has a type of leukemia too."

She didn't know what to say. She wasn't oblivious to the plight that was cancer and childhood cancer was an extension of that, but somehow, seeing it all right in front of her, seeing these kids that were such kids as they laughed and shouted around her and played video games, she was just...it was hard to put it into words. She suspected the kids didn't see it like she did, didn't see how special they were, only saw themselves as kids that drew the short straw, but it was just incredible, these lives in front of her.

"So are you like, a tech genius or something?"

"Or something," she said with a smile.

"How good are you?"

"Is that a challenge?"

"Now Trey, I didn't bring Felicity down here so she could hotwire your X-Box or whatever it is you want her to do," Mary chastised lightly.

"No, no, it's okay, Mary. I want to help. Is there something else that needs fixing? Something that has a microchip?"

"Can I show her, Mary? Please? Imagine if she could fix it!"

"Fine, but don't be disappointed if she can't. I don't want your hopes to get up."

"If it's a computer, you can let your hopes get a little bit up," Felicity stage-whispered. She was confident in her abilities and hadn't had a chance to do some of the little IT duties she had fun doing at QC in so long. Ever since she had become Oliver's EA her time had been spent on other, more worthwhile endeavors. She hated to admit that she kind of missed fixing malware and rootkits like she did in her previous job; it was a soothing activity for her, one that helped to clear her head.

She left her wheelchair in the activity room and allowed herself to be lead down the hall to a small computer room.

"We use it for homework, since most of us are homeschooled. Or our parents can use it. Hey, Miss Cassidy," Trey waved to a woman in her mid-thirties that was using a computer towards the door. "That's Casey's mom. This is Felicity, Miss Mary brought her down. She thinks she could help fix one of our PCs!"

"You're not from the pediatric ward, are you?"

Felicity laughed as she stuck out her hand to shake her's. "No, I'm not. Just came down to help. I'm in a room upstairs."

"Well, the kids would love it if you could help us with this computer since there's only a few of them here, but I'm not sure how much good it'll be. I used to work at Best Buy and I couldn't get myself to fix it," she shrugged. "I'm Stephanie, by the way."

"I'll see what I can do."

Trey showed her to the computer one down from Stephanie and upon booting up was the infamous blue screen of death. It had been a while since she had to deal with this, but Felicity just cracked her knuckles as she sat down before it. It was a lot different from hacking into Iron Heights, but within a few minutes everything came back to her and she was clicking away, working within the system to discern the problem. It took no longer than fifteen minutes before she got the computer up and running again.

"Hah!" She said proudly when the logon screen was prompted. "If you weren't a kid and we had bet on this and you had actually made the unfortunate decision to bet against me fixing a computer, you'd owe me five bucks, Trey."

"Whoa! You are seriously cool. Mind if I go ask the others if they have anything they need done?"

She shrugged her acquiescence. She liked fixing things and if it could help these kids get through their hospital stays a bit easier, she was happy to do so.

"What did you say you did again?" Stephanie asked her, clearly impressed.

"I dabble in IT."

"Dabble, huh? I guess I should've mentioned I just did customer service at Best Buy!" They shared a laugh at this and Felicity could sense that Stephanie didn't get a chance to talk to many other adults. "The kids will really appreciate this though. Thank you for helping."

"No problem, I'm happy to do it. So you're Casey's mom? I know Trey pointed her out to me but it was kind of fast, I'm not sure I'd know her if I saw her," she apologized.

"Yeah, she's a spitfire, that one. 13 and this is already her third bout with cancer. They told us she didn't have that much longer to live - only about a year, but that was two years ago. She keeps defying the odds, I've stopped trying to understand the statistics."

"Wow, that's incredible."

"Is this your first time…?"

"Oh, yeah. I was just diagnosed two months or so ago. I'm here for my second round of chemo but I haven't been out of my room in days so I was going a little stir crazy. My nurse, Mary, suggested I come down here and...here I am, fixing computers and tablets!"

"You mentioned a room upstairs? Is that the adult ward? I thought that was the floor below us."

"It's actually a private room," Felicity confessed, feeling a little self-conscious. Stephanie was clearly a single parent and the fact that she was in here using a crappy donated computer instead of a personal laptop or smartphone made it painfully obvious that she was not in the best financial situation.

"That must be nice," she replied genially. "Or, I mean, as nice as it can be, being in a hospital. And having cancer." She flushed, embarrassed, which helped to make Felicity feel a little less awkward.

"Are you from here?"

"Oh, yes. We live in the Glades, about an hour from here. Not the best area, but you know - after the quake, things got a little hairy. Our last apartment was demolished so we got a new place at the edge of town. We mostly stay here for her treatments though, and we've been having a real hard time keeping her white counts up, so...here we are. Week three."

"Wow," she murmured sympathetically. "I can't even begin to understand what it's like, watching your child go through something like this…"

"I'm sure it doesn't get any easier, no matter the age of your child. Your mom is probably going through the same thing. You just take it day by day. And when it gets bad, you take it minute by minute."

Trey interrupted them then, hands filled with various electronics - mp3 players, handheld gaming systems, a few tablets.

"Do you think you can help?"

"I think I definitely can," she said resolutely. "But, I am gonna need an assistant. I can't do all of this on my own, and you are clearly quicker at getting around than I am."

He knocked on his tibia, grinning. "They gave me metal bones. I'm like, the bionic man."

"You interested in helping?"

He gave her a hesitant look. "I ain't really good with math."

"Who said anything about math? You look like you're pretty good with your hands, and half the battle with these things is taking them apart. And I'll tell you something, you learn how to do that, you can get a job straight out of here. People pay big bucks to have someone know what they're doing when they're performing electronic surgery."

"Oh yeah? I'm pretty good with my hands. I bet I could help. And I do like to mess with some tech every now and then."

"Don't let Trey fool you, Felicity - that kid is smart as a whip, and he knows his computers."

"Well, good. Go get me some screwdrivers - I think I saw some in that other room next to the bookcase. Then come back and we are gonna fix these things right up."

She couldn't believe it when she looked up to see that four hours had passed. She had been steadfastly fixing the various ailments of the assortment of electronics Trey had brought her that she didn't even realize it was past lunchtime. She had been teaching him the different parts of the motherboards that they were looking at (she scoffed at his interpretation of being bad at math - the kid clearly understood more than he thought) and was happily chatting with him and Stephanie the entire time in between 'lessons.'

"This is the last one, your very own," she placed the very outdated iPod in Trey's hand. "You did a really good job with that one. If you want, next time, I could bring in some supplies. We could put in extra memory in some of those things, up the song limit and quality."

"You can do that?"

"Yup," she popped the 'p,' delighting in the fact that she was able to not only be helpful today but also enjoy herself. "And I'll teach you so that you can do it too."

"Always cut out the middleman," he fist-bumped her. "I like it."

"I don't know if that's always a great solution, but-"

Suddenly the door burst open, slamming against the wall, and a very large, very intimidating Dig stood in the frame, his hand underneath his jacket and clearly on his holstered gun.

"Dig! What are you doing!"

"Felicity!" He visibly sagged with relief at seeing her.

"What? Didn't Marcus tell you I was going down a few floors?"

"Marcus told me you left four hours ago."

"I stayed a little bit longer than I meant to, yeah, but-"

"And you didn't take security!"

"I stayed inside the hospital!"

"Homegirl's got security?" Trey whistled. "You work for the NSA or something?"

"No, my 'or something' is that this bonehead is over-protective!"

"Did you just call me a bonehead?" Diggle was slowly shifting into his relaxed mode now that he saw Felicity safe and sound and not in any danger. "And did he just call you 'homegirl?'"

"I kind of like it," she laughed. "I'm sorry I worried you. I didn't take security because it wasn't necessary so don't you dare yell at Marcus." She took in his look. "You need to apologize to Marcus."

"What I need to do is get you upstairs before Oliver gets here. Plus, you missed physio."

She winced. "Fair enough. Trey, I'll see you later; Stephanie, it was wonderful talking to you."

They reciprocated and she left the room with Dig, who slung an arm around her shoulders. She instantly melted into him, not realizing how tired she was. She also hadn't ate since breakfast and she could feel the effect of that now more than ever.

"I made friends today," she told him happily.

"I saw. I had heart palpitations today."

"Good thing we're in a hospital."

"Anyone ever tell you that need to get better jokes, Felicity?"

A/N2: Oh, Trey. I love him. And hopefully you will, too. It's important for Felicity to see/deal/befriend others that are battling the same thing she is. Trey's kind of the best. Promise.