A/N: Ah, it's been a while hasn't it? I can never give this story fully up, yet I cannot bring myself to finish it in a single sitting either. My apologies for any frustration and lengthy suspense.

This chapter is a bit of a filler, in case of another lengthy wait - there is no particular plot point or cliff hanger. It's a soft installment about character development and marks the middle of the story.

As a point of encouragement, I do want to let you all know that most of the story is written up, it's just... Incomplete. And whenever I sit down it grows longer, and not always from the place that would be the natural next chapter. It might be a while yet, but eventually I hope to reach the happy ending.

As a side note, it was the "Prophecy" from Taylor Swift on loop with a healthy dash of Turkish dramas that got me back to this point and helped push this chapter out.

Whoever is still following this - I hope you enjoy and I hope it warms you at least a little bit.

Chapter 30 – Love lost, and love found

The space between them felt unnatural. To his eyes she looked forlorn – gazing out the car window, drowning in the folds of his coat. He read torment in the hunched lines of her body – like she was wrecked with aftershocks of the memory of the day.

"Laurel," he whispered, reaching for her shoulder gently. She leaned in his touch, and he took it as permission and pulled her closer. Compulsively he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. As he held her nestled against his side, he thought, I'll protect you.

She buried her head against his chest as she ended up snuggled in his arms. The car moved along at a slow, steady pace. They left the graveyard behind them, and the city streets soon spread ahead. She gripped the lapels of the coat he'd given her like it was the last thing she had to hold on to in this world.

It was a strange, vulnerable emptiness that she felt now. It made her think of the night she had first climbed into his car. She'd not cared for a single thing then. And now she did. It ached like a bruise to realize that she cared about so many things that she had forgotten about that night on the bridge.

She cared for Tommy's legacy, she cared for her family, her friends, her life. She cared for the future. Her future. There was a tiny sprout of enthusiasm in the corner of her heart about the power of her voice. There was fresh hope about to spark within her and for a second it felt like a betrayal to all the pain she had suffered before. Like it would be wrong to move on. As if moving past it would make everything that had happened before somehow less true. Or the losses suffered less tragic.

But so close to Slade, with his warmth seeping into her – from her forehead down to her toes - she recognized the irrationality of her own thoughts. Every counterargument she could imagine had his voice. You apologize entirely too much – that's what he would say. Unapologetically. And with his heartbeat next to her ear – it felt like the beating drums of a defending army marching beside her. The sound kept her grounded, let her feel her pain and release it. She was safe here. It was a truth she felt right down to her bones.

She had always thought this was something only Oliver could give her.

The thought made her breath hitch, sharp pain striking on the left side of her ribs, but she found Slade's hand, clutched it in hers and let his warmth chase that ache away too.

Fresh tears rolled past her cheeks as she turned her face in Slade's chest, soiling his shirt. Oliver. She hadn't loved Tommy well enough, because there had always been Oliver, but she had loved Tommy. It hadn't been wrong to love him either.

It was not wrong to take comfort where it could be found. It was not wrong to get better. To love more.

Oliver had been a part of her since before she knew what love is. And he'd been a gaping wound long after. It would always be a part of her – the scar of everything she'd experienced. He would always be a part of her. But that didn't mean that her heart had to become a haunted manor with the memory of his immature love as the resident poltergeist. It wasn't fair to either of them. And there was so much space in her - she knew she could care more. Do better. What was it that people always said to her?

Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world. She had to start with herself.

Slade felt tension slowly ease out of her. She became softer in his arms, her tears slowed, her breathing evened out. He sensed the moment she fell asleep. He wiped her tear-stained face lightly as he quietly ordered the driver to keep on driving in circles so her sleep wouldn't be disturbed.

His arms felt like they didn't belong to his body. With Mirakuru cursing through his veins he could bend the metal of this car into scrap, but he held Laurel softly. She was precious to him, and it was a disheartening realization. She had already affected his plans more than he ought to have allowed and he knew she would continue to do so with her mere existence.

He had never meant to care for her. She'd factored in his plans, of course, as he still remembered the picture of her face that Oliver had carried on Lian Yu - the same way some people carried images of saints. He'd saved her because he wanted to use her to hurt Oliver. He'd bought her apartment and her things so that he'd know her better, so that he'd have an advantage over her. So that he could manipulate her. And yet all of it had turned into a trap for him.

He'd let her out of his sight in Chile just to give himself some breathing space. And the moment she'd returned he'd risked being seen by Oliver to have her in his presence, to know that she was unscathed.

"You should have let her jump," the voice was sharp, like the edge of a knife.

"Shado…," Slade breathed her name like it was air punched out from his lungs.

"You could have held me the way you're holding her if not for Oliver Queen," Shado was glaring at him through the rearview mirror from her seat in front of the car.

"He will pay," Slade whispered as loud as he could afford.

"Will she?" Shado asked pointedly, her eyes burning as they turned to Laurel's sleeping form.

He shook his head, denial in his body before it was in his words. "She had nothing to do with what happened. She's like you."

"About to be sacrificed?" Shado snarked before Slade's vision cleared and she was gone once again.

Rage flamed in him at the implied threat. He wanted to reach out and choke someone. But Laurel was precious cargo in his arms, so he smothered his anger instead. It felt like lead going down his belly.

The driver did not glance from the road – well used to the eccentricities of his employer.

IKYWT

"Ooooh, crap," Felicity breathed and then quickly looked around to make sure that she was truly alone in the Arrow Cave.

Oliver had tasked her to find out who were the vigilantes that he'd run across in the courthouse and it had taken some boring hacking of city traffic cameras as well as agreeing to a date with a guy from convenience store to get the records from his shop, but Felicity had the recordings and as she went through them… "Shit. Fuck."

Oliver is going to go batshit when he finds out… She bit her lip as she watched the two masked women climb into a car and the other open tab on the same split screen that proclaimed that the license plate of said car belonged to Dinah Laurel Lance.

She threw another nervous glance around the empty Cave. Oliver's going to go batshit… if… he finds out.

It was almost compulsive how she went about deleting the video and cleaning her recent actions from the system. It was more of a feeling than a decision, but as her breathing calmed, she realized that this was a decision that she could live with. She kept Oliver's secrets. She had spilled enough of Laurel's. I owed you, now we're even.

Of course, just because she'd deleted the records didn't mean that Oliver wouldn't eventually find out on his own. They really need to be more careful. And Felicity had never been a girl that just sits around and waits for a better outcome. Time to pay my debt in full.

IKYWT

It was late when Laurel woke – sleep hazed and still tired. The car driving loops around the city. She was abashed at having slept so long, at being an inconvenience, but Slade brushed all her concerns away. He held her as if cradling her underneath his wing as he led her back to their home.

With long yawns she relied on him far more than pride would have otherwise allowed.

"Thank you," she whispered – her eyes still held the shine of tears, but her face was clear of anguish. For the first time she noticed that she had to tilt her head up to look at him. He had never seemed imposing to her before. He didn't seem so now either – it was more like - she felt that he was a pier, holding the sea at bay and keeping the water around her calm. She felt safe.

"My pleasure, love," he replied, his voice gruff – words seemingly caught in his throat halfway as if he hadn't been sure what he'll say.

The elevator dinged, indicating the penthouse and their stop. Laurel divested herself from his arms and his coat. Still languid from sleep, she moved to her room to pursue it further. He watched her go mesmerized by his own fascination. It was a while after the doors to her room closed that he finally hung up his coat and moved further into the living space.

The world seemed to be tilting in an unexpected way. Because…

Slade was angry. He had been angry for years – it was thrumming in his blood with every beat of his heart. He'd been angry before Mirakuru. Even before the island. When he looked back – it seemed that his whole life he had been walking on a path that had led him exactly where he was now.

He'd been a happy kid. He had tried to be a kind teenager, but he'd gotten into far more fights than anyone should have. He couldn't have helped it. He hadn't grown up in the best neighborhood, and kids could be mean. It's not that he was a bully – he just couldn't stand those that were. He had never been able to walk past someone in trouble, and that's how more often than not - he hadended up in trouble. He had tried to fix the world one fight at a time. That's what had led him to joining the military.

And he'd been good at being in the military – he was strong and quick, and he didn't mind getting his hands dirty for the greater good. He'd been a star soldier – always obeying orders and doing what needed to be done. That's how he had ended up on Lian Yu. That's how his best friend had had the chance to betray him. And he hadn't mourned - then or now – he'd just got angry. That anger had helped him survive until he met Oliver. And Shado.

Then everything spiraled out of control. And for a while he forgot about anger and survival.

Shado used to have this air around her – like she was peace personified. The fact that she was also a lethal killing machine just enhanced her features. When she was near – he used to feel like that stupid, happy kid that he had once been. Like the teenager that fought on principle not because of orders or because he was good at it.

But of course, nothing ever lasts. Shado died. Oliver betrayed him worse than the friend who'd tortured him, and Mirakuru taught him a new meaning of anger. With Mirakuru his anger was like a living thing roiling under his skin. He felt it like a fierce, relentless burn. And finally, he understood.

The world was not a fair place. It could not be fixed – whether it be in one fight or a thousand fights. People were stupid and traitorous.

A single thought of Oliver Queen could raise him to a spitting rage. There hardly were words to describe the lowliness of his short-time friend. A stupid, rich kid that had never had any drive, vision or talent – who had survived by the grace of those who died for him. Like a circus animal, Queen had learned to imitate what had been done to him. The boy was a fumbling idiot and Slade was too angry to ever find that endearing again. Once he had seen Oliver as something between a younger brother and a son. Not anymore.

Slade was almost amazed at the presumptuous self-righteousness that the man who - once couldn't attack someone who aimed to kill him - now exhibited as he hunted people around his home city. As if that was improving anything.

And Slade had quite a few opinions about Starling city itself. It was full of criminals and their syndicates – it was a cesspool of crime, decadence and frivolity.

And then there was Laurel. The girl that Oliver Queen loved endlessly, but not enough to be faithful to her. Slade had imagined her to be a brainless diva – just like the boy who had claimed to love her. He had barely spared her a thought beyond a passing sense of disgust as he'd made his plans for Oliver.

And then he'd met her.

And then he'd held her.

And she scared him. She made the world stand still, be silent. She made the colors more vibrant, the sounds sharper. She was like Shado, yet different. Those were thoughts and comparisons that Slade was afraid to examine. He had been living with his rage for so long, he did not want to part from it. Yet he could no longer deny it and there was no point in pretending.

Once again, he loved a woman who was Oliver's.

Except for as long as he'd known her, Laurel was very much her own person not a blessed saint from a tarnished image. And her history with Oliver was as ridden with betrayal and heartbreak as his own. And as he felt the stiffness of salt on his shirt where her tears had dried – he knew that there wasn't an excuse in the world that would stop him from burning this city down if anything came to harm her.

It wasn't sensible whichever way one wanted to look at it – Laurel was younger, she was an innocent - because for all that she had suffered, she still had no idea of the darkness that lurked in the world. And she was the love of Oliver's life. She was the perfect weapon for Slade to destroy his nemesis.

And as she went to sleep in the second bedroom of his hotel apartment, he knew that he could never use her that way.