Disclaimer: Just borrowing them everybody!
Honesty is kind of a funny thing in Quentin Lance's opinion. Lying is such an easy thing that honesty more often than not seems to just sort of fall by the wayside. In the interests of perfect truthfulness, Lance isn't completely sure which side he falls on when it comes to honesty as a subject. Maybe that makes him a bad man, or morally grey, or whatever, but honesty to him has always seemed just a bit more complicated than some people would have you believe.
Because here's the thing, Quentin Lance is a Dad. He's got kids and sometimes having kids means bending the truth a little bit in order to keep everyone happy and safe. Not that he necessarily advocates lying to children, but as a parent you do what you have to do for the sake of your children. Rule one of parenting is taking care of your children. And if that isn't the God's honest truth Lance doesn't know what is.
Honesty with children sometimes just can't be used. It would never have helped anyone involved to tell Laurel that the tooth Fairy really didn't exist before she figured it out for herself. It also never would have helped to tell her that she should give up on dancing ballet because she just wasn't flexible enough to do some of it.
Lance also has no shame about occasionally forgoing honesty with Sara when the subject was at all related to her singing abilities, or the way that that one shade of truly horrible orange she had taken to wearing for a while when the was eleven, preferring to leave the honesty in that case to Laurel. Another subject never to be approached honestly with Sara is the ultimate fate of her pet gerbil Marshmallow.
So yeah, there is some basic avoiding of honesty in the Lance family and in Quentin's life. However, if he had ever felt bad about that about ten years before Oliver and Sara vanished and were believed to be dead and his life got more complicated, all he had to do was look at the Queen family and then he pretty much felt better.
In the Queen family the concept of honesty was pretty much on par with how most families viewed the idea of Santa Clause once all of their children were old enough to know the truth; sweet and a nice idea, but not really realistic.
Moira and Robert Queen avoided honesty everyday. They told their children that they absolutely loved each other and they didn't. They claimed that their family would always be together. They promised Oliver and Thea that they would always be there for them when they were needed. They also told Oliver that Thea joining their family wouldn't shift anything. They said that they would be there more for their kids.
Moira and Robert Queen avoided honesty at all possible turns, and Oliver and Thea took their lead from them.
Thea was the most honest one in that entire freaking family and she still grew to be someone who could subvert it completely after her father died and Oliver disappeared. However, she would at least tell people the honest truth about what she though. Thea never played the game that her mother played with the socialites and upper class of Starling City. She knew how to certainly, and Lance could see her deploy that knowledge. However, she also twisted and mocked that practice at every chance she got.
Thea would lie, but she would tell the honest truth about exactly what she thought of you and what you were doing. Little did Lance know that that ability would one day be used to tell him that he needed help, that he was self-destructing, and that Laurel (who was dead) would never be ashamed of him.
For Oliver it was too late though. Oliver was exposed to all of it for too long. He had caught the terminal bubonic plague of subverting honesty if he could think of any reason to do so. On a level Lance couldn't blame him. With Oliver Queen's life, lying sometimes jut had to be easier.
In the course of Quentin Lance knowing Oliver Queen, he has seen the both the boy and the man lie. And when he says lie he doesn't mean white lie, cross your fingers behind your back, fudge the truth, grey area, kind of lying. He means look you straight in the face, blink the right number of times, heart rate steady, no way to catch it, delivering of perfect false hood. Oliver Queen has pulled that off before.
But Quentin Lance has also seen Oliver Queen be absolutely, completely, heart wrenchingly honest.
Most of the time while Oliver is younger Lance sees him be honest with Thea.
When Thea fell and fractured her wrist when she was five years old Oliver was the one to take her to the hospital and Lance follows later when Laurel told him both where Oliver was and that both of the Queen partners are out of town on business. He didn't leave immediately, instead he called the number of the Queen's housekeeper first. When he found out that it was Raisa's week off he got in the car and got to the hospital as fast as he could without breaking speed laws. Well okay maybe one or two but who really gives a damn?
When he got there he found Oliver and Thea in a private room that he has no doubt was secured using the heavy application of the Queen name. Thea looked even smaller than normal curled up in the middle of the bed and a fifteen year old Oliver was talking to a doctor looking unusually serious for that point in his life. Lance opened the door and went in to the apparent relief of the doctor Oliver had been talking to.
"I'm Detective Quentin Lance of the SCPD. What's going on?" he doctor explained all of it to him, saying that Thea's fall on the playground had resulted in a hairline fracture of her left wrist. Lance noted Oliver clinging on to the doctor's every word over the man's shoulder. "Thank you Doctor," Lance told him. "Now why don't you give me a minute with the kids while you go and get the paperwork so I can get them home and out of your hair?"
The Doctor gage him a nod and left the room. Lance looked at Oliver and saw the kid deflate visibly. "They wouldn't tell me anything," he said quietly. "Thea was so scared and freaking out because of the hospital and they wouldn't tell me anything that was going on so I couldn't help and I..." he trailed off and Lance nodded.
Before Lance could speak though, Thea almost on cue turned fitfully and began to whimper. Oliver winced visibly at the sound of his little sister in pain and Lance's heart went out to the kid despite his intentions on staying detached. Queen had after all just begun to date his daughter. Some things just couldn't be helped though, one of them being feeling bad for hurt little kids.
Oliver took maybe half a second to compose his face and then turned around to face Thea. "Hey Speedy," he said. "Try to hold still okay? You gotta keep from moving your arm around for a bit." As he spoke he moved closer and sat on the edge of Thea's bed. "Do you remember what happened?"
Thea shook her head and more tears welled at the corners of Thea's huge brown eyes. "No. Ollie I was playing and then I fell down and then I got scared and then, and then-"
"Hey," Oliver said reaching out and wiping at Thea's face with his sleeve. Lance saw that his hand was shaking a little bit. "It's okay Speedy. You're okay. Deep breaths alright? You're going to be fine. You're gonna be okay. Look at me... Hey Speedy, look at me okay? You're gonna be fine. You are fine."
He waited a few more moments and kept up the same steady stream of assurances, comforting Thea as best he could. Lance was half tempted to hold Thea himself as his instincts as the parent of two daughters kicked in but Oliver beet him to the punch and curled up on the bed, boosting Thea gently up and in to his lap. When Thea stopped crying Oliver said, "Do you want to know what happened now?"
Thea nodded, burrowing her head in to her brother's shoulder. "You tripped," Oliver explained calmly. You fell and you fractured your arm. That means there's a little crack in the bone. But it hurt so much when it happened that you fell asleep so you could start getting better. The doctor's are going to give you a cast but you can have any color you want okay?" Then Oliver looked up at Quentin. "Detective Lance is going to drive us home later and when we get there I'll make you chicken noodle soup with the alphabet noodles you like and we'll watch Little Mermaid."
"Are Mommy and Daddy coming home?" Thea asked in her small little girl voice.
Lance saw Oliver open his mouth to speak, to tell a reassuring lie but then shut it. "No Thea they're not," he said quietly. "They can't get out of their meetings so they have to stay where they are. But Raisa will be back at the end of the week and until then you've got me alright? I'm going to take care of you. It'll be an Ollie and Thea weekend. Maybe we'll invite Tommy to."
"You can come and stay with us," the words were out of Lance's mouth before he could stop to rethink them. "Sara can room with Laurel and you can take the couch while Thea takes her room," he told Oliver.
Oliver looked up at him. "Thank you for coming down and helping us Detective Lance," he said. "But I promised Thea that I would take care of her and that the two of us would be fine together and I was telling her the truth."
When it came to Thea Oliver could be honest.
When it came down to Laurel on the other hand. Lance couldn't quite decide if Oliver was capable of honesty or not. On the one hand Oliver cheated on her. A lot. And on a fatherly level that really made Lance wanna kick his ass from here to Jupiter. On another level, Lance had to not that technically speaking Oliver never lied about any of it.
Lance had the unfortunate privilege of hearing more than one of Oliver and Laurel's multiple breakups. The one thing that he could track about it was that technically Oliver was always honest. When Laurel bothered to ask if Oliver was cheating on her he always said yes if he had been. There were no denials or excuses just truth. The fact of the matter was that more often than not Laurel didn't bother to ask.
That relationship was doomed from the start.
Oliver Queen was also honest with Felicity Smoak. At least, through the point of him having a son. Quentin Lance would still consider that to be the single most boneheaded secret that Oliver Queen had ever kept. And saying that about someone who had almost ruined their life with secrets more than once, that was really saying something fairly major.
The fall out from that particular lie involves two lie riddled relationships which Lance considers just as doomed from the start as Oliver's relationship with Laurel. Nothing dooms a relationship like a double life and Oliver and Felicity both had them. felicity could at least tell Detective Malone that she worked with the Green Arrow but not who the Green Arrow was or hat he happened to be her ex-boyfriend. Oliver could never, and should never tell the reporter he dated for approximately two months that he lived more than one life at once. Her attempted digging in to Oliver's Bratva past was enough to prove that.
Still though, nothing to sort out relationships and personal priorities like invading aliens who scrambled your brains and created false realities. Oliver fell victim to a particularly nasty trick and lay in a hospital for nearly two days before waking up. Later Lance heard him tell Felicity that he woke up by thinking of her. "You weren't there," he told her.
"Those aliens tried to give me what they thought was my idea of a completely perfect life and the thing that was missing was you. They set me up with my entire family and all of my fiends alive and happy but you weren't there. So I knew I had to wake up." Lance saw him take a small step closer to Felicity in the hospital hallway they were standing in and take her hands in his. Felicity was staring up at him like she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "You broke up with me because I lied to you," he stated. "So I'm not going to lie anymore."
Lance noted that he was staring deep in to her eyes and seemed to be focused on absolutely nothing else. Suddenly, Lance understood how exactly it had always seemed that Oliver and Felicity could create their own little world. A large part of it was simply in the fact that Oliver Queen had the ability to take his normal ability to focus on everything at once and narrow it down to exactly one thing and one person.
"I love you," Oliver stated. And it was a statement. He said it like it was a simple fact of the universe. The kind of thing that could never be changed or doubted. "I love you completely and utterly and I will never ever lie to you again even if it feels like it will kill me to tell you the truth I will do it. So, I know you're happy now and I want that for you. But I want to be happy to, and I want to be happy with you. That's the truth, and now I've told it to you."
He lifted each of Felicity's hands and placed a light kiss to each one separately. Then he leaned over and placed a third kiss on her forehead. "I'll be here," he said, pulling back. "Just know that."
That was the end of Susan Williams the reporter.
Billy Malone didn't last much longer and Lance knew why. He could see it coming each time Felicity left in the middle of the night or dropped everything to take a phone call. Something seemed to fade a bit in Malone's eyes whenever it happened. Lance also recognized the look that said Malone was looking for something. Some missing piece that would make the puzzle complete.
It falls in to place when Felicity gets kidnapped and it's Oliver and not the Green Arrow who walks in to get her. It's done at the request of the kidnapper who's really just trying to get at the mayor and doesn't know that Oliver Queen when you take one of his loved ones can be a million times more dangerous than the Green Arrow. The kidnapper was taken down in a matter of seconds by a very pissed off Oliver who honestly wasn't playing anymore and Quentin Lance knows that the security feed they established is going to raise questions upon review about how exactly the Mayor pulled that off but at that moment he really doesn't care.
As soon as Felicity was untied and the gag was out of her mouth she was in Oliver's arms and babbling about how glad she was that Oliver got the cyber messages she had managed to send him by hacking in to a satellite using her smart watch. Oliver just looked like he was never planning to let Felicity farther than arms length from him ever again and for at least the next four hours he followed that plan pretty much perfectly.
Billy Malone does everything he can to help sort everything out and though Lance is pretty sure he has figured out Oliver's Green Secret, he never brings it up and dissuades other police officers from asking more questions. He also still signs on to help take down Prometheus, but that doesn't stop him from exiting from the role of Felicity's boyfriend stage left at the next opportunity.
Honestly, Lance doesn't blame hime. When you should hold the title of "boyfriend" but instead so very obviously hold the role of "the other guy", you don't tend to stick around very long to have your heart demolished.
And so honesty begins to prevail. Despite all odds Oliver and Felicity manage to scrounge together the fragments of their relationship. The truth of Evelyn working with Prometheus is revealed. Diggle gets his name cleared, and Oliver and Felicity together handle the bad press and rumors Susan starts throwing their way. Felicity and Curtis also kick start their own company and Oliver hires Rory to be his PA. Generally, the personal honesty seems to be making life work.
Shocker.
That's Lance's sarcastic voice.
Then there comes to be the day when William Joseph Clayton arrives on the door step of Oliver and Felicity's apartment while Lance and Thea are both there having a bit of an unofficial family dinner. They had started having these sometime just after the whole Prometheus debacle when Lance had finished his rehab and Oliver's mayoral position was finally solid having dealt with the reporter who was trying to dig up dirt. Sometimes they would be joined by Rene, Rory, or Curtis, though Curtis tried to have dinner with his husband as often as possible. The Diggles showed up sometimes but they had their own family dinners to partake in.
Anyway, there was a knock on the door and Oliver answered it. Lance saw a boy standing on the threshold. A boy with slightly floppy sandy blonde hair, wide blue eyes, slightly tanned skin, and gangly limbs that gave the impression that he would grow in to them someday but hadn't done it yet. The boy looked to be about twelve years old and the resemblance he bore to Oliver was unmistakable.
"Are you my Father?" were the first words out of the boy's mouth.
Oliver stared at the boy for a second. Two matching sets of blue eyes were locked together and Quentin could see on Oliver's face that he was drinking in the sight of his son standing right in front of him. "William," he started to stay then he stopped and swallowed. "Yes," he said. "I am."
William seemed to deflate in the same way that Oliver always seemed to when he had questions answered and suspicions confirmed that he had had for a long time. "Okay," he murmured. "Okay," this time he was louder. "Yeah alright that's good," he rubbed his eyes tiredly on the sleeve of the overlarge sweatshirt he was wearing. "I've never needed a dad before it's just always been me and my Mom, but now my mom is dead," he rushed on before anyone could say anything. "She was killed and she gave me her compute and told me to come here so I think-" he swallowed. "I think I need my Dad."
Lance saw Oliver take a deep breath and then nod. "Come in," he said, reaching out and taking William's shoulder to guide him through he door. The boy sagged sideways in to him and Oliver caught him, supporting his weight. "Do you want to sleep? There's an empty room. Or some food..."
William forced himself to come back to upright. "Uh, bed I think. I haven't slept since it happened and I just wanted to get here before everything started getting complicated and people started asking about family so I got on a bus and now I guess I'm here," he heaved a shuddering sigh. Then he looked at the other people in the room all of whom had been completely silent since Oliver had opened the door. Then he looked back at Oliver. "I'll meet everyone tomorrow if that's okay?"
Oliver nodded and took William through to the guest room, returning a while later. "Uh," he said. "He's asleep for now. I think he's had a long couple of days what with Samantha and... everything." Oliver then turned to Thea. "This is going to be tricky with the public. I don't know how they are going to react to me having a son but I think he's here to stay and I- I want him here."
Thea nodded and got up. "I'll log some late hours at the office and try to figure out how to do this." She walked up to Oliver and leaned up to give him a hug which Oliver returned looking only a little bit numb which Lance found pretty impressive. Then again, shock probably existed on a bit of a different level when you were a masked vigilante whose family revolved around secrecy and grand reveals.
"Hey," Thea said drawing back. "This can be good Ollie. I have a nephew to spoil!" With that she left.
Felicity was the next to move. She got up and took Oliver's hand. Oliver looked at her. "Is this all going to be okay with you?" he asked quietly. "I know," he drew in a shaky breath. "I know that all of this might bring up a lot of things."
She shook her head. "Oliver, you're not lying to me about it. You're being honest about all of it. You son is here and I know about it and you've been honest about the fact that you want him to stay." She leaned up and kissed him. It was quick and sweet and Lance almost wanted to look away because it looked like the kind of private moment that other people weren't supposed to see.
"Now," she said drawing back. "Go sit with your son. I'll clean up dinner. When he wakes up and has had some time and we've worked out everything with the official paperwork and the police we'll all have a long talk about how this is all going to work, how we're going to work as a family. We're going to be open and honest and you will be able to raise your son in a better family than the one that you and Thea got. But none of that is going to happen tonight. One day at a time."
Oliver leaned down at kissed her again. "Okay," he said. "Okay. One day at a time."
"Completely honest?" Felicity prompted.
"Completely honest," Oliver confirmed.
Then Oliver vanished back in to the guest bedroom where his son was sleeping and Lance helped Felicity clean up before heading out to join Thea at the office. Breaking things to the public was going to be difficult, but Lance resolved to do his damnedest to make sure that nothing blew up too badly. Oliver, Felicity, and William were attempting to form a family and they were trying to be honest about it. No nosy reporter or snot nosed consumer of gossip news was going to twist that in to anything else.
Honesty possesses a strange quality, but it is a million times more powerful when you are used to hearing or telling lies.
Time for the public to get a little dose of Team Arrow brand honesty on the subject of the people that Oliver Queen loves.
Well one thing was for sure, if honesty became more powerful with rarity then this could prove to be the most powerful mega shot in the world.
A/N: I'm so sorry! I've been in my senior year and applying to schools and been in the middle of my school play and three AP classes. Today has been the first time I've had time to write at all in about two months! Anyway how did I do? I have a feeling it might be a little rough but I have no problems making edits if you guys have suggestions. I wanted to try to fix things so here was my attempt. I also have something written that's a bit different which has to do with how William wound up on the doorstep and I'll figure it out the rest of the way if you guys are interested but it's not Lance's point of view so I didn't put it up at first. Anyway, review for me! I'll try to write again soon. Review! Review! Review! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox