#wildqueen

She's not sure whether to extend her hand for a handshake, or open her arms for a hug, but after a second William makes the decision for her, putting his arms around her.

“I wasn't sure I'd ever get to meet you for real,” William says.

“This is actually not my first time in a coma,” Thea says, and she tries to say it lightly but her voice is edged with fatigue. Not for the first time she inwardly curses whoever it is that is deciding her fate.

He pulls away for a moment, looking disconcerted. “Really?”

“Yeah, there have been a few times now,” Thea says with a sigh.

“You’ve been through a lot, Speedy,” Felicity says sympathetically.

“But I’m okay now,” Thea assures her, and William too, and he hugs her again.

“Thank you,” he says into her shoulder.

“For what?”

“For trying to save my mom.”

“I'm sorry I couldn't,” Thea says quietly as she moves away and can't quite meet his eyes. “And I'm so sorry you lost her. She deserved better.”

“Hey, you did everything you could,” John interjects.

William nods. “Yeah, Mr Diggle is right. It's not your fault, Aunty Thea. I don't blame you. Especially because you risked your life for her.”

Thea reaches out, finds William’s hand. “Not just her. You too. We're family, William. And I want you to know - if you ever need anything, anything at all, or you need to talk, or you just want to play video games with me, just ask me, okay?”

“Okay,” says William, squeezing her hand, and he adds, “Dad sucks at video games.”

At this Thea laughs. “Yeah, he does. Always has done.”

“I'll have you know, Speedy, that I let you win,” Ollie says, trying and failing to look affronted, but there's this sparkle in his eyes that looks like contentment and Thea’s so glad her brother seems happy for once.

Later, when Oliver, John, Felicity and William leave and Quentin arrives, she's surprised to find at his heels is a little girl of about eight, and behind her is none other than Rene Ramirez. The girl is carrying a bunch of flowers and Rene is bearing what looks like a box of chocolates too.

“Quentin, hey,” she calls, and he comes over and gives her a hug.

“I have missed you, Thea,” Quentin says, and Thea notices that Rene is standing back, holding the little girl’s hand with this quiet kind of smile on his face.

And it hurts her to ask, but she would be a fool not to. “How are you? Have you -”

“- fallen off the wagon?” Quentin says. Thea nods, and to her immense relief Quentin shakes his head. “No. There were times that I came close. Because of, uh, stuff. A lot of stuff. But no. It hasn't happened.”

“I'm glad,” she says sincerely. “And I'm proud of you.”

“Thank you.”

Quentin steps back, then, enough for Thea to get a good look at the little girl. Then she looks up at Rene, raising her eyebrows.

“Is she -”

“I'm Zoe,” says the little girl before Rene can say anything, and she steps forward and hands Thea the flowers.

“Hi, Zoe,” Thea says warmly, putting the flowers on the cabinet beside her bed. “Thank you for these. So I take it Rene is your dad?”

“The one and only,” Rene says with a grin as Zoe nods. He copies his daughter, moving towards the bed and handing her the chocolates. “How are you doing?”

“Considering I've been asleep for six months, I feel pretty exhausted.”

He seems to take that the wrong way, though, and says hurriedly, “Uh, in that case, we'll get out of your hair in a minute. I just wanted to - I wanted to see you,” he says quietly, and Thea can't help but smile.

“Come on, Zoe, let's go and get a hot chocolate,” Quentin says quickly.

“Sure, hoss,” Zoe says cheerfully, and Thea chuckles.

“Wow,” she says once they've left the room. “Like father like daughter. Don't tell me she wears a hockey mask too.”

Rene shrugs, then says, “Well, yeah, she does, but that's because she's in her school’s hockey team. I don’t wear mine in the field anymore. I got my suit upgraded in the meantime.”

“Ah, Cisco made it more badass, huh? I bet he offered to give you a better codename as well.”

But at this he shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. He thought it was a great name. But I can see why he wanted to rename you. Speedy kind of suits his other red friend more than you.”

“I actually wanted everyone to call me Red Arrow at first,” Thea admits. “But, uh, it’s been my nickname since I was a kid. So Ollie told everyone to call me Speedy, and he and Laurel grew up together, so they had always called me that anyway. And when it was just me and John and Laurel in the field, they just kept calling me Speedy.” She laughs. “And I guess it just stuck.”

Rene considers, furrowing his brow. “Red Arrow does make more sense.”

“You never told me you had a daughter,” Thea says after a moment. “She's great, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he says. “She is… the very best part of me. By a long shot. But I, uh, didn't say anything about her to you because it's kind of - complicated.”

“As in, ‘you're not with her mother anymore’ complicated, or -”

“Her mother died, actually.”

“I'm so sorry,” Thea says automatically.

“Yeah, it messed me up, big time.”

“Losing the person you thought you’d spend your life with tends to do that.”

Nodding, Rene sighs. “And after this - accident, Zoe got taken into foster care. But now I do get to visit her. And her foster mom was kind enough to let her spend Thanksgiving with me.”

“That’s good,” she says. “I’m glad. And who knows? Maybe one day she’ll get to come home to you.”

“One day,” Rene echoes. For some reason he seems to be hesitating, and then he says, “Gotta say, I kind of expected you to be more -”

“- judgmental?” Thea says with a slight smile. “Kinda hard to be when you’ve gone through four dads in your life. And when one was so shitty the bar was literally underground.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Four?”

“Oh yeah.” She counts off her fingers. “First was Robert Queen, the guy who I thought was my dad until I was nineteen. Apparently he knew I wasn’t his and still loved me anyway. And I wish that made up for the things I know he did now… but it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, I remember a lot of crap went down last year because of that.”

“Then Walter Steele, my mom’s second husband, who remains the most decent human being on the planet by, like, a long shot.”

“Oh yeah, Oliver said he visited a couple of times,” Rene says.

“Really?” And she doesn’t expect to, but tears appear in her eyes at that, blurring her vision. Quickly she looks away, impatiently wiping her eyes. “I, uh, hadn’t heard from him in a while before Lian Yu happened,” she says faintly, not quite able to meet his gaze. “We kind of… lost touch. After my mom died. But before that, even when I was being the worst stepdaughter ever - he was always there for me.”

“Sounds like a stand-up guy. What about number three and four?”

“Three was... Malcolm Merlyn.” And even now, just saying his name triggers something in her; it’s like she’s back on that horrible island and she can hear the click of that landmine under the heel of her boot and the blast of the explosion as she ran away leaving her father to die. “And I know it’s stupid, because he hurt me in so many ways that he doesn’t deserve to even be on this list.”

“Hey,” Rene says softly, tentatively putting his hand on her shoulder, “I’m not going to pretend that I understand even half of what went on with you and Merlyn. But I know he was your dad. And I know you hated his guts. And, uh, I want you to know, Thea… you don’t have to forgive someone to miss them. And you don’t need anyone’s permission to love someone you hate.”

And now she can feel the tears welling up in her eyes but she still meets his. “You think so?” she whispers.

“I know so,” he says firmly.

She’s not sure why, exactly, but she leans forward, and he meets her halfway for a hug.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“Anytime.” After a second she releases him, just as Quentin and Zoe come back in. Rene turns around, looks at Quentin. “So does that make you dad number four, hoss?”

“I mean,” Thea says when Quentin looks confused, “growing up, Quentin was just my friend’s scary cop dad. But since then… things have changed.” And now she reaches out for Quentin’s hand, and after a moment Quentin steps forward and takes it, squeezing her hand back. “Now - I know him. I’ve seen what he’s been through. And I’m proud of him. In fact, I could not be more proud of him if he were my own dad.”

“I’m proud of my daddy too,” Zoe pipes up, and Thea beckons for her to come to her bedside as well. “He works with the mayor. He’s really important to the city.”

Thea nods, her gaze moving from Zoe to Rene. “Yeah, you’re right, sweetie. He is.”

“Is Daddy your friend?” she asks, and Thea looks up at Quentin and they share a grin.

“Something like that,” Thea says. “Thank you for visiting me, Zoe. It means a lot.”

“All right, we should get back to my place,” Rene says. “Don’t want to miss the game.”

“Please tell me you’re at least a Rockets fan,” she says, and she punches the air when Zoe nods eagerly. “Good. I’m glad. Well, I hope I see you again someday. Keep being awesome, okay, and do I get a fistbump?”

She sees Quentin smile over Zoe’s shoulder as Zoe bumps fists happily with Thea.

“I’m gonna stick around for a bit, Rene, keep Thea company,” Quentin says. “You two enjoy your thanksgiving.”

Rene’s eyes find Thea, and the usual playfulness she expects to see isn’t really there. Instead there’s something soft and kind that she doesn’t quite recognise as he pats her shoulder. “Goodnight.”

“‘Night.”

He turns to leave, his daughter leading the way, and Quentin moves towards her and presses a kiss to the top of her head. Rene is almost out of sight when for some reason Thea calls out, “Rene?”

And of course Rene turns back immediately. “Yeah?”

“It’s - it’s really good to see you.”

When he smiles back, says it’s really nice to see her too, she wonders why her heart skips a beat.

Rene's first attempts to woo her are generic and bordering on crass -- catcalling is frowned upon at best in her book, especially in front of her brother, who also happens to be the mayor, the city's premiere hero and Wild Dog’s own private Mister Miyagi. But as he becomes ingrained as a part of Oliver's team, Rene changes, matures, and so do his efforts. Thea watches it happen first-hand, only half-aware of how closely she's paying attention.

He came to the vigilante life as a runaway soldier, volatile as his moniker, now he falls into step beside Digg like it's second nature. Now he looks before he leaps and watches to make sure that the rest of the team does too. Now his voice softens when he asks Curtis for help or defers to Felicity with a tech question. Now, he’s part of the team.

His accelerating maturity also means he keeps more things to himself, but Thea still catches him looking. And occasionally, he still asks.

“The new Star Wars is playing at the Starling 16,” he offers one evening when she comes to the the Arrow bunker on City Hall business, and her first instinct is to wonder whether or not he notices how very middle school it sounds. “You wanna go?”

“Why do you keep asking me out?” is what she asks instead, tossing in a little extra bite in case he thinks she's starting to go soft. “I've never said yes.”

“You've never said no,” Rene points out, and Thea frowns openly, trying to remember if he's right. “Once, you said you weren't interested, once that I wasn't your type. Sometimes you just roll your eyes. Figured you were making me work for it. Girls like you--”

“Girls like me,” she interrupts with a scoff. “You think you've met girls like me?”

“If I had, maybe I’d be chasing one of them around like a puppy instead,” he concedes, frustrated but not fierce or angry. Maybe Thea is going a little soft, because when he meets her eyes again, something in her chest swells. “You want me to stop?”

He will if she asks him to, she can tell. The shameless honesty is written right across his face, etched alongside the scars that tell a different kind of story. Her hand twitches when she thinks about smoothing a finger across the mottled skin. She can’t remember when he stood from the lab table where he was cleaning his guns. She can’t remember when he got this close.

Thea’s changed in the last year too, she knows that. She’s no longer putting sleazy guys’ heads through freezer doors (even if they deserve it), no longer feels that sharp, hollow pain in her chest, like there’s a piece missing. And the thing is, there’s something more she's hearing in Rene’s offers these days, like he's asking for an answer rather than a reaction.

The other thing is, sometimes now when he asks, she really, really wants to say yes.

Instead, she quizzes him. “Why Star Wars?”

“Your dad took you guys when they re-released the original trilogy in theaters,” he answers easily, dropping his eyes to look at the floor and Thea just about swallows her tongue. She had been expecting something corny about Han Solo and  heroics, but instead, he calls back a tattered memory from forever ago, one he shouldn’t even know.

“It was supposed to be just him and Oliver, but you begged them to let you go along. You fell asleep halfway through Jedi and cried the entire car ride home because you thought you'd never see Princess Leia again.”

“How did you…” Thea pauses when the answer finally registers, and she makes a mental note to throttle her traitorous brother as her lips twist up in a genuine, unsuppressable smile.

“Oliver bet me one night that I couldn’t shoot the tip off of one of his arrows in mid-flight.” Rene's still grinning, in a way that lets her know without asking who had prevailed in that particular wager.

“And in exchange he had to tell you when he saw Star Wars?”

“In exchange,” he tells her, with a waggle of his eyebrows, “he had to tell me something about you that I wouldn’t be able to guess.”

Thea's not sure what she was expecting to feel when she finally goaded him into laying his cards on the table, but it wasn't this, buoyant and a just a tiny bit seasick. Rene keeps talking, though, and it's fortunate for her tongue, which has found itself a little tied.

“Listen, I'm in this thing with Oliver, you know? I’m on the team,” he tells her unnecessarily, and she’s not sure where he’s going, but he’s somehow softer and more assured than she's ever heard him before. “That means I'm gonna know you, that you're gonna know me, at least a little bit. If that's all you want it to be, that's OK. I'll respect that from now on, I promise, if that's what you're telling me. But if you're not...”

He doesn't actually finish his speech, but he’s said it out loud, and Thea’s stomach is already doing full, twisting somersaults. She finally recognizes it, the needy feeling inside her that's lay dormant for months. Years, she realizes almost bitterly. It's been over a year since she's seen Roy, and even longer since their story was anything but a tragedy

But since then, she's never thought about actually moving on, not really. Not because it felt impossible, more because it felt infeasible. It didn't feel like there was anywhere to go. And this… whatever she feels for Rene isn't enough, not just yet. It's not a destination. But it's something.

“Keep asking,” she decides, with a grin he returns immediately. “Maybe I'm making you work for it.”

He might be changing, softening even, but Thea gets her first real look at Wild Dog’s nougaty center on Christmas Eve Eve, when she accidentally overhears a phone call in the back hallway of the Arrow bunker.

“Hey, Ms. Walker, this is Rene Ramirez.” He sounds strangely formal and so falsely cheerful she can almost hear his teeth grind. “Case number six-two-dash-one-three-one-four?” A beat. “No, I’m not trying to make any trouble ma’am, I was just wondering if I could--”

Rene cuts off abruptly, listening, she can hear the tinny echo of a loud voice on the other end of the line. When he speaks again, all of the mirth has been shaken from his tone, like tinsel off the tree.

“C’mon, I just want to talk to her.” This is a desperate register, another one she’s never heard from him before. “Ms. Walker, please. I’m her father. It’s Christmas.”

There's a few seconds of silence, then Thea winces at the somewhat unsatisfying smash of a smartphone against the concrete floor.

She knows she should be polite, or at least play dumb, but he storms back out towards her so quickly -- freezing in place, wide-eyed, when he stops himself just short of actually running into her -- that she panics, blurting it out in a truly impressive Felicity impersonation. “You have a daughter? I mean, you have… you have a daughter?”

Rene looks anywhere but her face for a long moment, like he's weighing whether or not to ignore this entirely and just keep walking. Finally, he resigns, meeting her eyes, and before her, Thea sees someone she barely recognizes. It's easy to forget sometimes, how many lives each of them have left behind, how many pieces of themselves have had to be sloughed off just to stay alive. “She was born when I was overseas. Then, when I got back… and then her mother...”

He trails off without putting any real sentences together and she stays silent, feeling guilty but unable to form any worthwhile words. “I was a good father,” he adds, like Thea won't believe him. She wonders if he's really trying to convince himself and her stomach churns more violently.

“I know.” It takes Rene reacting to the whispered assurance -- a sharp breath in as he briefly lifts his eyes -- to realize she's the one that said it.

“I was drinking a lot right after her mother died and they just... they took her. I screwed things up pretty bad with child services,” he continues his confession softly. “Can't really blame them, right?”

He says that, and Thea does her best to rein in the part of her that already had been blaming the unfair world, and a system that works against what’s best as often as it does in favor. The indignation must be rolling off her visibly, because Rene keeps talking, like he’s trying to reassure her, even though she knows it should be the other way around.

“I'd be no good for a kid, especially now.” Now that he's a vigilante, now that he’s killed, now that he’s been tortured, Thea adds up. He thinks he's not a whole person anymore, she recognizes the self-flagellation for what it is, having watched her brother hone it to perfection and had some practice herself. “And a little girl? Nah, she's better off.”

It's hard to find anything to say, when she's unsure if he can be right and wrong at the same time. But what she finds unbearable is the sight of him pressing his eyes shut and shaking his head like it will Etch-a-Sketch away the memory of a daughter he doesn’t think he deserves.

“I’d like to see her again, maybe, someday,” Rene says after a moment, almost talking to himself at this point. “I don’t want her to think I forgot about her. Especially at Christmas... and her birthdays, you know?”

“Yeah, of course,” Thea finally scratches out.

She doesn’t know, not really, but she understands something about families that have pieces missing, and something about the complexities between fathers and daughters. She gulps down a breath and gives him everything she has to offer. “I can tell you for certain that she’s never given up on you. And she’d never forget you.”

Rene’s eyes lock on hers like they’re searching for something and Thea finds herself wanting to reach out and twine her fingers around his wrist, to hold him in a way that would be both comforting and somewhat permissible, but she can't find the map to that place in her mind. So she rubs her thumb anxiously against her middle finger and defaults, as always, to a quip. “Stuff around here’s always a little Shakespearean, but you’ve really had your own thing going on in the background, huh?”

“It’s not my story.” Rene drops his head to brush past her, and she's still not touching him but she can feel him slip through her fingers. “I’m not the hero.”

Thea smiles in spite of herself, even as her heart aches a little, because it's maybe the nicest thing he’s ever said about her brother. It's just like him to make this kind of moment about someone else.

“I’m not so sure about that.” It comes out like a whisper, but she hopes he hears.

The next revelation comes when Prometheus takes Felicity and Digg at the same time -- the metaphorical severing of both Oliver’s arms and legs.

Her brother shuts down harder than Thea remembers seeing, even in his early days back from the island. She spends most of her free time in the bunker, watching him and Curtis work nearly 24/7 at the computers, searching feverishly for clues. Oliver stops only occasionally to break something or press the balls of his hands into his tired eyes.

Rene practically goes feral at the news, too -- she watches him spar with the punching bag until his hands are bloodied and nearly pace a hole in the floor. It’s the first time she’s really thought of his alter ego as an apt moniker.

“I'm surprised you haven't taken off already.” She says it in jest, a feeble, almost delirious attempt to machete her way through the tension hanging heavy in the room as she approaches him cautiously by the lockers. “You know, guns blazing.”

She means it metaphorically, but Rene skitters back a few steps, catching her eyes with his wide ones and and that's when Thea realizes that he's in deep as well, too caught up in his own mind to wipe the worry off his face.

“He was just getting me warmed up to the idea of teamwork again,” he tells her after clearing his throat, dropping his concentration to fixing the tacky tape on his knuckles. It takes her a moment to realize he’s talking about Digg. “Serves me right. Serves him right.”

“Rene, we're going to get him back,” she assures him, just as Oliver had assured her. She’s surprised at his vitriol and realizes that the two men had grown closer than anyone realized in the months since the new team came together. “There's nothing you could have done.”

“I was supposed to have his back,” he spits in her direction, and Thea understands that this is deeper, some kind of brothers-in-arms thing, another dishonorable act being hung around his neck. “His and Felicity’s too. None of us should have been going anywhere alone. I should have had their back.” Rene’s barely even present in front of her, back to throwing his fists into whatever ghosts are appearing in the heavy bag.

“He's not the only one who trusts you,” Thea tells him, channeling a bit more of Oliver than maybe she’d like to admit. “And he's not the only one you can trust.”

But all her righteousness goes out the window when he turns back on her, fiery and frustrated and foreboding. She almost forgot, he's Least Likely to Respond to a Cheesy Pep Talk of the vigilante new class. “You got it all figured out, mi reina?” He sneers, but the crack in his voice and the lost look in his eyes give him away. He's angry, wildly so, but more than that, he's terrified. “Gonna come out of retirement and get a target put on your back too, huh? You gonna be be next?”

They're standing close enough that she can feel his breath hot on her cheek, close enough that she can see the gash over his eye, suffering permanently embedded in the flesh. His scars are like her brother’s, reminders of mistakes made and lives lost. But Oliver doesn't have one like this, marring his face for the world to see. He has the choice to don a different kind of mask in public, but Rene wears his damage on his face like his heart on his sleeve.

“We’ll go as a team and we’ll get them back,” she tells him, giving into the instinct and bringing her left hand up to cup the side of his cheek, skimming her thumb delicately over the rough skin. “We do this together.”

She's holding his frantic gaze, which snaps shut when her thumb skims down past the scar, but then, out of the corner of her eye, she can see his shoulders unknot. He relaxes, leaning his face into her hand just a little, and she feels downright triumphant.

Triumphant and warm and familiar, like she's known this emotion, even though it seems so foreign. It's not until she glances over to the computer station, and watches her brother drop his crumpled face into his hands for what feels like the thousandth time tonight, that she realizes where she’s seen it before.

When Ollie came back, all those years ago, it was easy to see some of the ways he had changed. He was wild and distant, practically feral. The pieces fell into place when Thea learned his secret, but it wasn’t the vigilante work that ultimately had helped to calm him. It was the blonde in the computer chair next to him.

Since his return from Lian Yu, the only time she's seen her brother truly relax is in Felicity’s arms. The only time she’d seen flashes of the carefree countenance he used to wear like badge of honor is when he's around the bubbly blonde, and Thea knows that return will be lost forever if she is. Felicity pulled Oliver back into the light, and he did the same for her. Back and forth, they've done their best to keep each other out of the shadows even when the road got rocky. They're the example, Thea understands, and something hopeful worms its way through her internal despair and confusion. If nothing else, they've proven that it's possible.

She hangs the hood right back up again once Digg and Felicity are back home safe, but it doesn’t stop fate from calling on her again. If Oliver Queen weren’t her brother, Thea would be the unluckiest person she knows.

She tells herself it doesn't mean anything that it's Rene who reaches her first, lifting her effortlessly in his arms as he runs out of a collapsing City Hall. It's not significant that it's his voice in her ears as she takes what she knows from experience are last dying breaths. But her arguments weaken with the rest of her.

“Stay with me, c’mon, just listen to the sound of my voice.” She knows it's a bad sign when he starts starts to sound both far away and a little desperate.

“Talk to me,” she asks, trying to tether herself in the present. “Tell me something.”

“Your brother’s on his way,” he answers, but it’s not what she needs to hear.

“Tell me something I wouldn't be able to guess.”

Rene’s quiet for a moment, but she can hear his labored breathing. Thea focuses all her energy on listening for the next exhale.“You know we’ve met before?”

“You and me?” she replies, though it comes out all mushed together into two syllables. She’s got her eyes closed but she's seeing his face, wondering what he looked like in the days before eye black and scars and close-cropped stubble. “At the RQCC?”

When Thea was in elementary school, her father had opened a youth center in The Glades named after his mother. Rosalyn “Rosie” Queen was a grandparent Thea had known in legend only, but as a rebellious teen she had gotten quite familiar with the building that bore her name, spending many a mandatory weekend there for the sake of image rehabilitation.

“Yeah, maybe there too. But also, you used to buy shit from my boy Petey down at Three Star Park.” Thea feels the air change. They’ve made it outside. That doesn’t mean they’re safe, she can tell from his pace and his tone. But he's still talking to her, because she asked him to. “You were one of his Wendy Darlings.”

“Huh?” It’s just a sound, but in her cloudy mind, she can sort of place Petey, and searches her memory for Rene in the faces that used to surround the scrappy but mostly good-tempered dealer.

She’s struggling to focus, voice growing weak, but then her sluggish mind catches up to something else he said. “Wendy Darlings?”

“That's what we called the girls like you,” he tells her in between radio calls. He's running now, “Trying to stay young forever, desperate to fly.”

“S’girls like me?” She slurs her words though the coppery taste in her mouth, wondering if he'll remember.

“Back then, maybe.” Of course he does. Her eyes roll shut and she forces them back open. She wants to remember him like this, tearing his heart wide and telling her something true. Something she wouldn’t be able to guess. “Not anymore.”

“Petey always shorted me.” Her voice is starting to fail her and she hopes the squeal of tires that pretty much drown out her memory is a the sounds of a rescue.

“That was probably me, too,” Rene confesses softly as he pulls her tighter against his chest. “I would try and get him to turn you away, but he wasn't having that.”

Before her eyes close again, Thea catches his gaze one last time, and wonders just how many times he's saved her.

Rene's overly cautious with her in the weeks following the bombing, breaking out the kid gloves Thea resents from anyone, but him especially. It's not until he lands himself in the hospital, just a week after she's released, that they get anywhere close to another step forward.

Felicity’s the one that sends her the text when the mission takes a turn, telling her where to meet them in the all-too-familiar medical complex.

Oliver's fine, it's Rene. Thea's stomach twists when she realizes the text was meant to ease her panic. She wonders what it means that it doesn't in the slightest.

He's in surgery for nearly ten hours and all she can think of is a day, almost a decade ago, when a man in a suit showed up at her house to tell her mother that her father was dead and her brother was gone. Thea digs her fingernails into the armrests of the cheap hospital waiting room chair and doesn’t budge until Rene’s resting in his recovery room. She tells herself it doesn’t mean anything that she’s the one at his bedside when he wakes up, but she's getting less convincing.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” he says by way of a hello, and a lump forms in her throat almost immediately so she takes a moment to bask in the sight of him, alive and breathing in front of her, and the thought of a little girl somewhere who has no idea how lucky she got tonight.

“I’m just glad you're OK,” she finally grates out. It’s the only thing she'll let herself confess at the moment, but his eyes crinkle at the corners like he knows there's more.

“Yeah,” he answers with a grin, “me too.”

Through his weeks of recovery, Thea finds herself volunteering for more bedside shifts that anyone else by a landslide, shrugging off arched eyebrows from Felicity and Oliver (and a 360-degree eye roll from one John Diggle that she fully plans to make him pay for). She owes Rene one for saving her from the City Hall attack, she argues weakly, convincing no one.

She can't look too hard at why she feels such a strong need to be by his side. That ends up being easier than it sounds when he turns out to be the world's most obnoxious patient. He's going stir crazy in the sterile room not two hours after he regains consciousness, threatening to walk out before his ribs even get a chance to set.

For the most part, Thea placates him, plying him with morphine (and not just because he's kind of adorable when he's dopey). It's day four before she really takes him to task.

“You need to sit down in the bed,” she warns, even as his eyes narrow, preparing for another go-round over their differing opinions of his care. But today, she has a wild card to play. “You’ve got a call coming in any minute now, and you don't want to miss it, do you?”

“A call?” His brow furrows, but she's saved by the bell as the phone in her hand chooses that moment to ring.

“Sit there and behave.” He pulls a face at her warning but stays put, and she steps out into the hallway, just in case it's bad news. It's not, and she breathes a sigh of relief she hadn't realized she was holding, wasting no time rushing back into the room to hand him the phone.

“Hello?” Rene lifts it to his ear with his good arm and she watches his face for the moment he realizes. His eyes widen and then dart to hers, looking for the confirmation she's all too happy to nod.

“Hey, Zoe,” he says softly, drifting off into his own world as a peace she's never seen before spreads across his face. “It’s good to hear your voice, mija. How are you?”

Thea turns to leave, to give them their privacy, but before she can take a step he grabs her wrist with his free hand -- wincing a little at the sudden movement -- and gives her a look that stops her short. If she hadn't seen him laid bare during their trials with Prometheus, she might not have recognized it, but the fear edged around the wonder and elation in his eyes is unmistakable. So she sits back down in the chair beside his bed and doesn't even flinch when he laces their fingers together.

She listens to him work his way through the initial awkwardness and light, perfunctory questions (and a few half-truths on his part about his whereabouts and daily activities). It's not perfect, but she’s not sure anyone would be able to tell by the look on Rene’s face. Plus, that wonderstruck tone never leaves his voice and her cheeks start to hurt from suppressing the most ridiculous Cheshire smile at the effervescence of his joy.

When their time is up, Rene says his goodbyes and passes the phone back to her, releasing his hold on her hand and scrubbing his palms over watery eyes. Thea thanks the social worker and promises to call her back tomorrow, feeling Rene's gaze on her the whole time. When she ends the call and turns back to meet his stare, she finally understands what people mean when they say someone can look at you like you hung the moon.

Some part of her is immediately hell bent on making him look like that as much as possible, hopefully with a few less mountains to move.

“How did you do that?” His voice has gone dreamy, and she's pretty sure it's not the industrial-grade painkillers.

“I said please,” she shrugs. Off the immediate crook of his eyebrow, she admits, “and I promised the DCS a first look from the mayor during next year’s grant process.”

“I can't believe you did that for me,” he sighs. “Mi reina. Living up to the name and everything.”

Her cheeks flush at the nickname now, it's just something that happens. But his words also bring a little twist to her gut. The thought of her parents, her family name. Thea’s always thought she took more after her father, even after the brutal truth of her paternity was revealed. Maybe even more so then. But perhaps she is her mother’s daughter after all, loyal and ruthless to a fault with a heart that won’t stop aching. “It’s not like that’s a high bar, considering...”

Rene humors her with a grin but doesn't let her off the hook.

“You know even when the city turned on your family I never could,” he tells her and she realizes that they’re holding hands again, but she doesn’t remember it happening. “Between sports and after-school, Rosie Q was my home for over a decade. Your parents may have done some bad things, but they helped keep me off the streets. Maybe that’s something.”

“It is,” she answers, so fast it might be telling. “It is something.” She's only just starting to realize it might be everything.

“You're a good person, Thea Queen. And your parents would be proud.” Rene pulls their entwined fingers up, and presses a soft kiss to the back of her hand as he repeats himself. “I can’t believe you did that.”

It’s a chaste enough moment, but it sets a spark in Thea, and it’s not long before something starts to smolder.

She's still holding his hand, absently feels them pressed awkwardly between their bodies when she stands abruptly from her chair and leans over to kiss him, soft but firm and lingering just a little.

His lips are a little chapped but he tastes like cinnamon and another kind of heat and when he gasps in a startled breath, she starts to pull away. But just like earlier, Rene reels her back, pressing his free hand to her cheek and one more kiss to her lips -- one that lasts long enough that she feels it in her toes.

He follows her with sparkling eyes as she moves to sit back down in the chair next to his bed and Thea can’t help but smile back.

“You staying?”

“I told Dinah I'd take a few extra minutes on my shift,” she admits quietly, like it's the most revealing thing that's happened here, “just in case you needed anything.”

Rene just purses his lips together and shakes his head, eyes grinning -- “I’m good.” -- and Thea knows she’s in trouble, because she already wants to kiss him again.

They carry on in a stalemate for a while after that, both too stubborn and scared to acknowledge anything without a crystal clear sign from the other. As usual, it takes something major -- in this case, Oliver and Felicity’s wedding, take two -- to nudge them further in the right direction.

Thea and Digg stand up for Ollie, while Donna and Curtis fight back tears from their spots beside Felicity. There’s as many people in the audience as there are at the altar, with Lyla, John Jr., Quentin, Rene, Rory, Dinah and Paul making up the rest of their motley crew. It’s tiny and beautiful and quick and absolutely perfect.

Thea’s so focused on not noticing the way Rene looks in his three-piece suit that she almost jumps out of her heels when he and Rory bellow “Mazel Tov!” as Oliver kisses the bride.

Later, she watches her brother twirl his bride around a massive dance floor at Star City’s poshest hotel -- between mayoral pomp and circumstance and the indomitable force that is Donna Smoak, the reception had become quite the spectacle, a trade-off for the intimacy of the ceremony. But it didn't matter how many people were there, Thea was pretty sure her brother hadn't looked anywhere but Felicity since she walked towards him down the short aisle.

Upon taking her seat at the large, round bride and groom’s table, and glancing at the neighboring name card, Thea had shot her new sister-in-law a capital-L Look of a different sort. Felicity just shrugged like she didn’t really understand what she was being accused of, but she was also the only other person who knew about the kiss at the hospital. Thea’s just about certain her innocence in this case is 100% feigned.

She and Rene haven’t even talked about it, really, but when he catches her eye as he crosses the room, she can still feel the press of his lips against hers, can see the way he looked at her under the harsh fluorescent lights. It’s no easier throughout dinner, as Thea's hyper aware of his presence to her right, dedicating far too much brainpower towards not knocking elbows or knees or any other part.

The other part of her concentration, of course, is focused on reveling in the happiness that's practically emanating from her big brother and his new wife, but somehow that -- along with a line from Digg’s best man toast about “finding your own family” -- only sends her thoughts twisting back to the man beside her.

Rene’s been asking her for months, in all different kinds of ways, baring his soul and convincing Thea to share bits of her own at the same time. Ultimately, it just comes down to an outstretched hand as the band starts up a ballad.

“Didn’t picture you as much of a dancer.”

“Didn’t think I was a--” His eyes widen and he scoffs, retracting the hand to press against his chest in mock offense. “I’m Dominican and Puerto Rican, mi reina. I can’t not dance. Just don’t always get up for the slow songs, that's all.”

“And you're ready to make an exception?”

“Are you?” He gives her a look that means more than he's trying to let on and she freezes for a second. It’s a good thing she’s fast, good thing she remembers everything they’ve ever said to each other. It means you’re not my type. She would have doled that out to any and all inquiring back then, her defenses were so high she could barely see who was on the other side. He’s the only one that kept asking.

Thea takes Rene’s hand and brushes at her skirt nervously as she stands, avoiding eye contact. He’s also the only one that made her want to say yes.

If there's anything she's learned from watching her brother and Felicity find their way back to each other, it's that love isn't easy for people like them, who spend their lives fighting. It's hard to find someone who can understand, and even harder to find someone who can stay.

Thea's not sure she ever started looking, but when she meets Rene’s eyes on the dance floor, threading her hands around his neck as his splay around her waist, some part of her is so certain she's found it.

Someone in the banquet hall taps their spoon against their glass and soon the whole room follows suit. She and Rene stop swaying along with the rest of the couples and watch as Oliver leans over to press another kiss to Felicity's lips. Thea grins at the megawatt smile on her brother’s face, matched only by the one his bride is beaming back at him. She heaves a sigh full of relief that's heavier than she realized, and then gasps again when she turns back and Rene’s eyes are closer than she remembers.

“Is there a rule against other people kissing when they do that glass thing?” His nose is practically pressed to hers, and Thea doesn’t understand why he suddenly sounds conspiratorial, but her stomach is already swooping, even as the corners of her mouth twitch back up.

“I don’t know,” she answers on a breathy laugh. “Are you seriously asking me about rules?”

“Yeah, good point.” He drops his hands from her waist and slips out of her arms before she knows what’s happening, darting to an abandoned nearby table and tapping a spoon against a mostly empty wine glass.

The room follows again with a collective chuckle, and before Thea can turn to see Oliver and Felicity’s reaction, Rene’s back. And back in a big way. One hand returns to her waist and the other reaches up to cup her cheek as his lips land on hers, soft and insistent.

If their kiss at the hospital had been a thank you (that’s what she’s been telling herself), this one is a promise. Her tongue brushes against his and the embers inside her roar to life when his hands flex against her body. She takes a step closer even though there’s really not one to take, fingers brushing against the stubble along his jawline, tracing to the back of his neck.

Thea pulls back as soon as she realizes the crowd has died down, though it might be a bit longer. She takes a quick sweep around the room to see if anyone's noticed them but finds herself spectacularly unable to care. “Wow.”

“I thought it might be a good distraction,” Rene grins, just as carefree. His hands are back on her waist and hers drop to his shoulders in a lazy slow dance.

“It was.” Thea licks her lips, pretending not to notice as he watches intently. “Just kinda sprung it on me there.”

“Hey, what goes around comes around.” He’s got a point. She did kiss him first. But this one felt like so much more and she’s somehow certain that they both know it.

“Good point.” Rene's beaming at her now and this is it, the moment of truth. It's not nearly as scary as she thought it might be. “Now I owe you another one.”

“Is that how it's gonna work?” he asks, never dropping his smile or his gaze from hers. Thea wants him to look like this forever, almost as much as she wants to kiss him again, so she nods with a slightly wicked smirk.