when it rains, it pours

[speedy_queen]

Thea Queen hasn't had the best time of it in, well, years. First her brother and father were missing and presumed dead and then Ollie pulled a Lazarus and showed back up with a bunch of scars and a badass attitude and Thea hardly knew who he was anymore. A vigilante has been saving/terrorizing the city for the better part of a year and the father of the guy she's crushed on forever tried to bury half the city under rubble.

Oh, and, she's actually the daughter of that maniac and not her actual dad and she only found this out after her mom barely escaped prison time. It's been a hell of a ride. She's been kidnapped, cheated on and just about everything in between and while she's a rich girl, she's by no means sheltered. Any and everything that could happen to a person before the age of twenty has happened to her and Thea isn't sure if she wants to deal with it anymore. That's why she decides to go with Malcolm Merlyn. She's not doing that great in Starling so she might as well take a chance on something different, right? Thea Queen isn't working out for her so well so maybe being someone new is the right way to go. Maybe disappearing and turning into someone else is the best thing for her right now.

As she pulls open the car door, a strange thing happens. Instead of crawling into the backseat of a car to sleep while she escapes to God knows where, she tumbles into a closet and hits her head on a doorknob. That's...weird. What else is weird is that when she tugs open the closet, she's inside what looks like a hotel lobby instead of anywhere she recognizes.

"What the hell is going on?" Thea is aware this is rhetorical and, frankly, not even a really good rhetorical question. She basically lost her skills to make witty quips along with shooting her biological father and discovering that everyone important to her in her life has lied to her so she isn't really running on all cylinders. She's running on...less than half. It's not ideal.

"Anyone?" While part of her hopes she's in Starling so she has a chance to orient herself another part of her hopes that she's not in Starling and, instead, she's somewhere that she can get a blank slate. Thea wants to be anyone but Thea Queen right now and she thinks if she's outside of her old stomping grounds, she might just have a chance to start over new again.

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[three_two_one]

Thankfully, for whoever or whatever, ran this place, Felicity had found her room just the way she left it. All her notes and equipment were just where she'd left them months ago. Well, it felt like months. For the creepy hotel, it was as if only a few days had passed. Another weird in a long line of it.

Still, she was settling back into being here and picking up her research where she left off. It was with that in mind that she headed out of her room with her ancient laptop in one hand, checking the mapping program she'd written. If she could figure out how big the place was, that was a start. Or something.

She didn't look up until she heard a familiar voice call out.

"Thea?" she answered back.

[speedy_queen]

Thea isn't sure why her brother's personal assistant is in this weird hotel lobby but she is someone from Starling and a friendly face at that. Thea isn't about to turn that down.

"Felicity? Where is this place? I was getting into a car to leave town and I showed up here."

[three_two_one]

"Now there's a question that I'd love to be able to answer," Felicity snorted out, "but can't because no matter how hard I look, I can't find it anywhere. And believe me, I've looked."

She gave the laptop a little shake, frowned at it, then set it down. "Okay, near as we can tell it's some kind of confluence area that pulls people in from all sorts of alternate universes and timeline. We're here from ours, some are from places that sound like Starling but aren't, some from different times, some from really different places, you name it. But here we all stay until whatever runs this place, spits us back out again."

[speedy_queen]

"Okay, you're going to have to slow way down and explain things on a not so honors classes level. I cut most of my classes senior year," Thea says, trying to parse all that with very little success. It makes no sense whatsoever.

"Alternate universes? That's not even possible."

[three_two_one]

"Yeah, well," Felicity shrugged and held her hands out to the side to indicate the hotel around them. "You tell me how we're in a place that's also home to a few vampires, a couple of Norse gods and Ichabod Crane? Not to mention a few battle-weary place from some kind of future that scares me green, if the tech they came with is anything to go by. If you've got another way to describe it, I'm all ears."

[speedy_queen]

Thea hasn't encountered any Norse gods or fictional characters and while Felicity is a little high strung, she's never thought she was crazy. Thea frowns a little.

"None of what you're saying makes sense. Are you sure you didn't get turned around at a comic convention or something?"

[three_two_one]

"Okay. Hang out a the bar for a few days and you'll see what I mean. I had to try and teach Jordan Baker how to use a cell phone. Believe me, that wasn't even the weirdest thing to happen to me here."

Felicity broke that tirade for a second and then looked closer at Thea. "What's the last thing you remember from home before you arrived here?"

[speedy_queen]

"You mean, after my mother's funeral, being held hostage and discovering I'm actually Malcolm Merlyn's daughter? No, that's about it," Thea says, feeling more than a little unsettled by all of this. Some weird world where fictional characters rub elbows with flesh and blood? It's all a little Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to her.

"Ring any bells?"

[three_two_one]

Okay. Well. Apparently coping skills are strong in the Queen family. Not that Felicity was one to talk, or that they hadn't all been through several gauntlets in a short period of time. And Thea, apparently, still didn't know about Roy. Better and better.

"Yeah, it rings a few. I just wanted to make sure because some people come here from different times as well as different places. When I first got here, Oliver was already here but he didn't remember a lot of what I did." She blew out a breath. "I know, it sounds about as crazy as it is. But since we're stuck here, there's nothing much to do but live with it."

[speedy_queen]

"I need a drink," Thea says. It's a little dramatic but she thinks she's probably entitled at this point since she's had about as much as she can take and she can't take any more.

"I need...several drinks. One after another."

[three_two_one]

"And you're in luck, because whomever brought us to this place had the good grace to provide us with a great bar," Felicity nodded and waved a hand in the general direction. "We might want to stop by the front desk before we get completely incapacitated. Get your room key and phone," she laughed. "Oliver's going to want to know your number and probably check on you every five seconds."

[speedy_queen]

"Ugh, family. I don't really have family anymore, remember?" Thea says. She doesn't know how she's going to get out of seeing Ollie and, honestly, she loves her brother. She's frustrated at having been lied to for so long but she loves Ollie more than she can possibly say, especially after having lost him for five years.

"Can we just keep it secret for right now?"

[three_two_one]

Felicity dropped her head to the side. "Yeah, I'm not great with secrets, and I'm especially not great at keeping them from your brother. In fact, I'm pretty much an epic failure at it no matter how many times I swear I'll hold back, it just babbles out anyway." She sighed. "I won't search him out, but if I see him, all bets are off."

[speedy_queen]

"Well, just try," Thea says, hoping that Felicity can avoid Ollie long enough for her to get her head on straight. "I just want some time to decompress. It's just been a lot of shit, one thing right after another, and I just need some time to be not Thea Queen for a moment."

Or Thea Merlyn or whoever she really is.

[three_two_one]

"All right. I'll do my best," Felicity responded with a half-shrug, because given the recent events Thea probably didn't know about, that was going to be even harder. Or maybe not, given that she usually found herself trying desperately hard to not talk about the really large elephant in the room when they were together these days.

The fact that she couldn't seem to evict Oliver's declaration from her head certainly didn't help. Like at all.

[speedy_queen]

"We're just...two girls out on the town, right?" It's a little half-hearted and lame but Thea can't summon up much more pep and vitality. She gives it her best shot, though, and flashes a quick smile while looping her arm in Felicity's.

"Is there anyone else from Starling here?"

[three_two_one]

"I've only ever seen Oliver, and now you, but that's not saying anything. The way this place works, with all the doors that lead to fun or stupidly dangerous places, there could be others that I just haven't seen yet." She smiled at the gesture of friendship. "How about we two girls go find that drink?"

[speedy_queen]

"Cosmos it is!" Thea thinks possibly she should worry about getting carded since this isn't Starling but since Felicity isn't saying anything about it, she guesses she'll just go with it.

"So uh, how is Ollie? Since we're on the subject?"

[three_two_one]

Do you understand? Was she ever going to have that moment stop playing in her head? Somehow she didn't think so, not for a very, very long time.

"Better make mine a double," Felicity commented under her breath. "Or not. I've been drinking way too much since we came back to this place." She inhaled, exhaled, and conveniently forgot Thea's stated desire to not be Thea Queen for a while. Her relationship with Oliver had been rocky at times, but it was one she'd admired. Probably because of her own lack of siblings.

"He's fine. Better than he was the first time, scars healing and not as hermit prone. That's progress anyway."

[speedy_queen]

"Yeah, I guess. We Queens don't do well with emotional damage. Too much turning the anger inward and making it hurt ourselves."

Thea knows a lot about that and self medicates to compensate for it. She snags her drink and sips lightly at it. "But you're taking care of him, right?"

[three_two_one]

That makes Felicity snort, somewhat indelicately. "As much as Oliver lets anyone take care of him, yeah. I think he'll be all right now that he's seen Slade locked away and saved the city from being leveled. He's not as prone to broody as he was, and I've even seen him crack an almost smile and near joke."

We both did.

Felicity took an overlong drink from her glass.

[speedy_queen]

"Ollie? Joking? Blasphemy," Thea snorts. It's been a long time since her brother has been truly happy and Thea isn't sure that he ever was. Ollie's just always been good at faking it for the masses.

"You must be a good influence."

[three_two_one]

"More likely, I'm like the splinter in his finger that just won't go away and keeps annoying him until he pulls out of me, pulls me out," she corrected automatically, the followed with a little mutter about hating her brain. "But yeah, he cracked a joke the other day."

When they were back on Lian Yu and she was just about the expel another dose of verbal mess all over him while he just stood there and smiled and waited for her to shut up.

[speedy_queen]

"Slip of the tongue or wishful thinking?" Thea has never really known when to let sleeping dogs lie and Felicity's slip of the tongue is more interesting to think about than the mess that's her own personal life. Maybe it's a cheap shot but if Ollie's found someone he likes, Thea isn't going to complain about that.

[three_two_one]

"Wishful thinking," Felicity answered and wished she could blame the drinks, but they hadn't arrived yet. Instead, she just shook her head. "Believe me, there's nothing there. It's just sometimes my brain gets its wires crossed when he's rattling around in there and I say things I shouldn't, or wouldn't normally. He's used to it by now and usually just gives me that little smile until I reboot my brain."