all_inclusive | when it rains, it pours

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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"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.

"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.

"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?"

"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?"

"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?"

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."

"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?"

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.

"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."

"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.

"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.

"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."

"You wouldn't be a bad choice," Thea muses. "Not that I really need to speculate on my brother's love life or anything, because no, but you're not a criminal and you're pretty put together other than the occasional slip of the tongue. He could do a lot worse than someone who actually has a career and no criminal record."

"It's unthinkable," Felicity responded, echoing the words she'd said to Oliver himself on the beach. "We were able to trick Slade with a fake declaration, and that worked well, but that's all it could ever be."

She thought. Maybe? No. Definitely. It wasn't going to happen and thinking about it was just going to make her slip up even worse next time.

"Maybe, maybe not. I think there's more to him than meets the eye," Thea says. She's confident in thinking that Ollie isn't a party playboy anymore and that he needs a girl who isn't just wham, bam and thank you ma'am. Felicity might be a lot of things but she definitely isn't that.

"I wouldn't be against it, for what that counts for."

"It doesn't hurt," Felicity admitted as she accepted her drink. "But I've really stopped thinking that road leads anywhere. I'm his assistant, nothing more."

Thea sips at her drink and shrugs. "You never know. But I guess hookups aren't the most important thing when we're in some weird hotel with fictional people, am I right?"

when it rains, it pours

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