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Chapter Four

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When Stiles tells her what Peter had done, her first instinct is to call Oliver and tell him. Her first instinct is revenge. It should taste bitter in her mouth but it only tastes right.

What stops her isn't love or affection for Peter. Felicity had never liked her uncle. No, what stops her is the look on Derek's face. That haunted look.

"We killed Peter... It didn't stick, because his backup plans have backup plans. How did he even know Lydia was a banshee? Does she smell different or something?" Stiles says, turning to Derek at the end when he asks his questions.

And then it hits Felicity.

We killed Peter.

Stiles, this kid, this sarcastic brilliant kid, helped her brother kill someone.

"You... you killed Peter?"

Stiles looks down at his hands, flexing them oddly. But when he looks up there is no shame in his face.

"The night we killed him, he bit the girl and left her to die. He kidnapped me, showed me his dead nurse's body, and made me find Derek by hacking Scott's GPS. He threatened to bite me, and then he bent my car keys so I couldn't go after him. I don't regret helping Derek kill him. I only regret that he didn't stay dead."

Derek is staring at Stiles when she turns to look at him, and she can't place the strange look on his face for anything. It's something she doesn't recognize and... it makes her feel so out of place.

"The girl he bit... did she survive?" Felicity asks, trying not to focus on all the other wrong things in what Stiles had said.

"Yeah. She's a banshee now though."

"A banshee," she asks incredulously.

"Our pack isn't very... traditional," Derek says with a hint of a smile.

"I'm getting that impression... Now, tell me what really happened after Peter... died..."

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It's nearly eight in the morning by the time Stiles and Derek are done telling her about the Kanima and the Alpha Pack and the Darach. It feels like she's listened to all the terrifying fairy tales her mother had told her growing up, and she hates that these are things that happened to her brother, to the cute little hyperactive kid she used to teach how to rebuild computers on her summer semesters home from college.

She hates that these things really happened, that they happened here to people she likes and loves, and that she never knew what was happening back here in Beacon Hills while she was playing around with Oliver and the Hood and... and everything else in Starling City.

"You should head out. Scott will get worried if you don't show up to first period," Derek says before they even broach the subject of what happened after Derek and Cora left Beacon Hills.

Stiles gives Derek a strange look, but he nods.

"Thank you..." Stiles says softly, before throwing his hoodie back on and slipping into his tennis shoes.

"I'll be back after school," the teen says as he makes his escape out of the loft.

"What was that about?" Felicity asks, concern lacing her tone. Derek doesn't speak for several long minutes.

"What do you remember about mom's stories about kitsune?"

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The word feels heavy in her head. Nogitsune.

She understands then, why Derek gave Stiles an out. Something like that... cannot be easy to talk about. To remember. Something like that would eat away at you long after it was gone.

Maybe she was right to think that something about Stiles' smile reminded her of Oliver.

They're eating just after eleven as they sit on Derek's couch when his phone goes off. He stares at it for several long minutes, his sandwich still in his hand several inches above his plate.

When he looks up at her, his eyes look so unbearably sad.

"I... Stiles thinks I should tell you... about Kate Argent," Derek says as he looks back down, setting his sandwich on the plate on his lap, "and I think he's right."

"The hunter Peter killed for starting the fire?" She asked, swallowing hard over the words.

"My girlfriend."

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Felicity wishes, in that moment, that Kate Argent was still alive. That she could point Oliver in her direction and watch as he took her down.

It makes her a little sick to think that. That she could be capable of wishing death upon two people, enough that she would be willing to break the code that Oliver set himself.

She pulls her brother into a hug, holds him as tightly as she can manage. It's one of those moments where her heart feels like it's been torn apart and she just wishes so badly that she had been there for Derek. Through all of this, and before.

She wishes she had asked for deferment when Paige died... would Kate have been able to dig her nails into him then?

She's pretty sure she's crying, and she's also pretty sure her brother might be too.

They stay like that for a long time, lunch long abandoned.

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Felicity is in the middle of a conversation about going to school at MIT when Stiles lets himself into the loft just after two thirty.

"School isn't over yet, Stiles," her brother states with a raised eyebrow. Stiles just smirks.

"So I skipped study hall. Big deal. So, Lissy, are you all caught up on our local hellmouth now?" Stiles answers, sitting on Derek's couch with a thump.

"Hellmouth? Really, Stiles?" Derek asks and Felicity can't help the laugh that spills out.

"What? The nemeton is supposedly a beacon for everything that goes bump in the night. It's like the perfect name for it."

"He's right, Derek." Felicity says, her smile wide on her face. Stiles' eyes are bright and he seems genuinely happy for the first time since he'd come into the loft in the early morning hours.

"She knows everything, Stiles," Derek answers finally with a fake sigh, his own lips twitching up to match theirs.

"What has the great and honorable Christine Felicity Hale been up the past seven years?" Stiles asks, and immediately the easy atmosphere of the room vanishes into something tense and dark.

"I... My name isn't... Christine Felicity Hale died in the fire, okay?" She swallows hard, before taking a deep, calming breath.

"What's your name?" Derek is the one to ask, and she wants nothing more than to wrap him in a blanket and read him stories, to go back to being fifteen and excited to tell him about what she'd learned and...

But she can't go back. None of them can.

"Smoak... Felicity Meghan Smoak. I... I couldn't... I know it's not the best identity change, but I couldn't... I couldn't lose everything."

Felicity wants to cry again. A part of her feels like it's happening all over again, like she's being stripped of her identity and strapped into a new one that doesn't fit.

And maybe she is. Maybe she's losing part of Felicity and getting part of Hale back in the process.

"Do you have a job? I've been telling Derek he should think about applying to be a deputy under my dad instead of stalking teenagers all day."

Her brother glares at Stiles before looking up at her curiously. She'd made mention of having a job in IT, but beyond that they hadn't spoken much about it.

"I work for Queen Consolidated in Starling City. I was in IT and tech support for a few years, but I... I'm a personal assistant now." She doesn't want to look at her brother, too afraid to see something disappointed in his face. It implies something, going from tech support to secretarial, implies that she's nothing more than...

"How'd you go from working in IT to being a PA?" Stiles asks, no sign of caring about the implication on his face.

"Well... Oliver needed a lot of tech support, and it just... went from there." She admits, trying not to reveal anymore about the situation if she could help it. It wouldn't do to just tell everyone Oliver's secrets.

"As in Oliver Queen? The billionaire?" Derek asks, surprise in his tone that has her looking at him. His face seems just as surprised as his voice.

"Well, he's not exactly a billionaire anymore." She blurts out in response, and she's thinking through a good cover when it hits her.

She's about to lie to Derek.

She spent so long with an ache inside her at the fact that she was lying to Oliver regularly about who she used to be, and she's about to lie to her brother about who she is now. What does that make her?

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"What do you know about the... vigilante... in Starling City?"

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While Stiles seems to know quite a bit more about the Hood than she'd expected (which, she really should have expected more-this is Stiles, even as a kid he was obsessed with comic books and caped crusaders), Derek knows next to nothing.

Stiles takes over the bulk of the explaining, but it's only when she interrupts him to make an interjection about how a situation actually went, when she can see Derek get it.

"You said you were still in IT. Last night. You work for this... Hood... don't you?" He asks, and she nods.

"The Arrow. I... I work for the Arrow."

Stiles is stunned into silence, and she can't even begin to place the look on her brother's face.

"Derek-"

"How? He's basically a hunter, Felicity. How could you...?"

She thinks that Derek is right to be angry. She knows how angry she'd been when she found Oliver Queen bleeding in her backseat, how easily she rejected his offering to join his vengeance seeking team.

But she remembers Walter Steele. She remembers finding out she'd helped rid the streets of Vertigo, and she remembers being part of something bigger.

She remembers five hundred and three people who died. And she remembers, vividly, how many more she helped to save.

"Oliver has done more for Starling City than anyone will ever know, Derek! He's not the same man as he was when he first put on that hood. He's a hero, and I..."

And I love him is what runs through her head before Stiles cuts her off with a strangled and loud, "Oliver Queen is the vigilante?"

It takes a minute as she stumbles over that thought, as she thinks about the fact that she just outed Oliver as the Arrow for the second time, as she wonders if Derek will forgive her for what she's a part of.

"Yes, he is. Derek, please-"

"Just... give me a minute," Derek says, and he's off towards his bedroom without another word.

She tries to pretend her heart isn't breaking a little when the door slams shut but-judging by the look on Stiles' face-she doesn't think it works.