Arrow: Fanfic: The price of freedom

[m_findlow]

Title: The price of freedom
Fandom: Arrow
Characters: Moira Queen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 868 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "any, any, not guilty" at fic_promptly
Summary: Moira discovers that she's traded one brand of guilt for another

Not guilty.

The verdict had quite honestly shocked her when they first announced it. There was no way she was going to be exonerated for her involvement in the undertaking. She'd known that. Maybe she'd also known that despite everything, she'd rather go to prison than unlock an even more terrible secret.

She was amazed by the information that came to light during a criminal trial. So many things that had been buried and forgotten long ago, would now force their way to the surface. And she was even more amazed that Laurel had come forth and admitted it. She had nothing to gain from forcing Moira off the stand, except to avoid having to cross examine her, now as the lead counsel for the state. Such a trial could have ensured her a prominent place in the states attorney office, elevating her career into the stratosphere.

They knew about her affair with Malcolm Merlyn. If she testified, Laurel was going to have to use the evidence they'd gathered and question her about it. It was completely irrelevant that it had happened nearly twenty years ago, the simple fact that it had was enough to damn her for all eternity. No juror would believe that she was scared for her family given her previous relationship with the man she claimed she now feared more than anything. Merlyn had disappeared, dead, so she became the public scapegoat for the entire undertaking.

And she did fear him, but not for the reasons that everyone else thought. Laurel knew about the affair, but she didn't know the other half of the story. She didn't know that their brief interlude had resulted in a child.

She wasn't even prepared to admit the affair, lest she further hurt her family. So ashamed she was to have let Merlyn lead her down the path of destruction. When Robert had been murdered she should have ended the association right then and there. She should have taken it as a sign. Instead she let Merlyn use her to preserve the secret that would ruin them all. Had it not been for the vigilante coming to take down the names on the list, perhaps she could have faded away into obscurity, letting Malcolm forget that she had ever been involved in such a diabolical design. But he'd toyed with her, and convinced her that it would all come to ruin if they didn't follow through. That she'd stooped so low as to let him kidnap Walter was almost unthinkable. She had only his word that no harm would come to him, and in silencing Walter's investigation, she'd given Merlyn the leverage he needed to keep her in line.

In the end she knew she had to bear the lesser of the two evils. Confess her affair with Merlyn to her family and preserve her children's belief that they were safe. Thea could never know the real truth.

And perhaps that was what swung the verdict for her. Did the jury see a desperate mother, caught up in her husband's ill deeds, and held hogtied at the mercy of a vindictive former lover? By the time the trial was over, paperwork sorted, and the media cleared from the courthouse, she could finally draw a line under the whole thing. Gliding home in the car, she'd convinced herself that must have been what it was. That she truly wasn't guilty for the crimes that had been committed.

What a shock it was to be pulled over in a disused parking lot on the outskirts of the city and to see him standing there in the flesh, very much alive. It did nothing to quell the tension building up inside her to know that he'd survived and gone to ground, apparently still thriving despite his new status.

It also did not bode well that he knew perfectly well she had used him in her testimony to get herself off the hook. Only the cunning acts of bribery and the connections of a man whose employ ran deep and wide had earned her emancipation.

At least she thought she had. If it wasn't enough of a shock to discover him alive, it was even more of one to be told that he had orchestrated the entire trial and it's outcome. For all the power a dead man could command, once more she found herself in his debt. And worse still, he too had discovered the bigger secret that she'd kept hidden all those years. He knew Thea was his daughter.

Merlyn had new leverage over her. He wanted Thea. As the price to pay for her freedom it was far too high to agree to. But like all good businessmen, you never walked away from a negotiation when you knew you had the upper hand. She was still a powerful woman, and she could deny him and stall his efforts for a time, but eventually the pressure would build, and a counter offer would be made.

Merlyn would be back to take what was his, one way or another.

She may not have been guilty of the undertaking, but she was now guilty of putting her family in every greater peril.