Russia, Huh?
s02e06: Keep Your Enemies Closer. After rescuing Lyla from the Gulag, Diggle and Felicity learn that Diggle isn’t the only one who had a connection to Lyla, but that Oliver also knows her already. Combined with Anatoli being in the car as well, some Oliver lore gets dropped on them.
On AO3.
Ships: minor Diggle/Lyla
Warnings: none
~~~
They’re all in the bought police car, driving away from where they have left Deadshot at the side of the road. Diggle’s head is still reeling from the information he’s been given about Andy, so he’s just sitting next to Lyla staring into space.
He gets pulled out of his thoughts when Oliver leans forward, brushing a few strands of Lyla’s hair out of her face to check her black eye. “You okay?”
Lyla smiles at him and for a second Diggle feels a stab of annoyance at the Queen charm that seems to work on everyone. Until Lyla answers: “You know me, Oliver. I’m always good.”
Oliver looks at her critically for a moment, then nods, before he smiles: “Russia, huh?”
That makes Lyla snort, much to Diggle’s dismayed confusion. She agrees: “Yup, Russia.”
“It’s good to see you again.” He puts his hand on her shoulder, turning a more genuine as she pats his hand for a second.
It hits Diggle then that it’s not the Queen charm at all, but that Lyla and Oliver know each other already. “Wait, you two’ve met?” he asks with a frown, unsure why neither of them have ever mentioned that before.
“Yes, we’ve worked together,” Lyla says, sounding as confused as Diggle feels that he doesn’t know that.
With that, Diggle turns his look on Oliver, who just looks at him innocently as if it is totally normal that he hasn’t mentioned he knows Diggle’s ex-wife. He shrugs: “She was my handler after my old one quit.”
“Handler?” Felicity speaks up. “As in being responsible for handling you on missions secret agent style handler?”
Oliver nods, confirming: “I worked for A.R.G.U.S. for a while.”
“When?” Diggle asks, able to make a guess to the period, but needing to know if Oliver worked with Lyla when they were still married. If she kept that from him.
He can understand why she would have, but after witnessing first hand the damage Oliver’s supposed death did to both him and his family these past two years, he can’t imagine her working on this and not showing a singular thing about it at home.
Oliver luckily disregards him of that notion: “It was 2010 that I met Lyla, but I started working with A.R.G.U.S. in 2009. She took over supervising a low contact mission and oversaw my release from service.”
“How did you end up working for A.R.G.U.S. for three years?” Felicity asks. “Aren’t they government? Why didn’t you go home?”
“I only worked for them for two years,” Oliver says.
Diggle can do the math, that means Oliver’s service ended a year before he returned home. He was found on Lian Yu. How did he get there? Did A.R.G.U.S. leave him there? Did Lyla? Did he get into another shipwreck and end up there only that last year?
“Two years?” Felicity is the one that asks the question.
“Da,” Anatoli suddenly mixes himself up in the conversation. “Was in Russia last year. Dropped him back on Lian Yu myself and bribed fishermen.”
“I always wondered how you ended back on Lian Yu after we extracted you from there and why you wanted to go to Russia,” Lyla says. “Can’t say I imagined…” she pauses for a second, looking at Anatoli “…this.”
“It wasn’t the plan, it happened,” Oliver shrugs, giving them as little as possible. Diggle recognizes the attitude from all the other times he was forced to share something from his time away. Sharing is not something that comes easily to Oliver Queen.
Though, it appears that Anatoli has no such inhibitions, happily sharing: “His plan involved ending up tied to chair with bullet nearly in brain.”
“And I am glad you saved me from that,” Oliver sighs fondly. It’s strange to see him interact with Anatoli. There is a camaraderie there that he doesn’t have with Lyla and that he is only just starting to form with Diggle himself. It makes him curious about Oliver’s time in Russia.
Since Anatoli seems to be in the sharing mood, Diggle asks: “Yeah, how’d he end up in that situation?”
“Ah, ah, brothers do not talk,” Anatoli says jovially. “Even to second favorite American.”
“Thank you, Anatoli,” Oliver says with a small grin, obviously feeling comfortable around the man. Then he turns to Diggle and says: “It’s a long story that I might tell… one day.”
“Even if we instate what happens in Russia, stays in Russia?” Felicity asks in a tone that makes Diggle think he missed a conversation.
Anatoli lets out a loud laugh: “Ha! What happens in Russia, stays in Russia. I will remember that.”
Oliver seems less amused by the comment, tersely saying: “No, Felicity, even if we reinstate that, I am keeping it to myself for now.”
“But Lyla mentioned extracting you from Lian Yu, but you were working with A.R.G.U.S. before that, but you’ve mentioned first getting to Lian Yu before, so you must have been there. So, did you complete missions for them there? Or did you get shipwrecked there twice? You know I can’t do mysteries,” Felicity says.
Diggle watches as Oliver sighs, before giving in, because he has never been able to say no to Felicity. Sometimes it is really frustrating to be their friend, but Diggle is too tired to make a comment right now. Oliver says: “They got me off Lian Yu to do a mission, then dropped me back on Lian Yu to do the last mission.”
“Very rudely I might add,” Anatoli says.
Next to Diggle, Lyla cringes and agrees: “Not our finest moment.”
“Okay, kind of worried if the Russian mob boss and the American secret agent are agreeing,” Felicity voices an opinion Diggle shares.
Both Anatoli and Lyla turn to Oliver, neither want to say something without his approval. It is strange to see Oliver interact with those he’s worked with before. Diggle is used to him and Felicity being the two in a room who know the most about Oliver, the ones that are closest to him. It’s a strange thought that Oliver is capable of working together with people other than them.
With everyone’s eyes on him, it seems that even Oliver isn’t entirely immune to peer pressure (or he knows Felicity is going to bug him and he will crack so he’s saving himself the embarrassment), because he says: “Waller cornered me in a bar, spiked my drink and I woke up on a plane over Lian Yu where they forced me to jump out at gun point.”
“What?” Diggle chokes out in shock. He knows best of all what that island has done to Oliver and he can’t imagine A.R.G.U.S. not knowing after a year of employing him, the fact that they drugged and threatened him to force him back there is proof of that.
Instinctively his eyes go to Lyla, again questioning if she was involved in that and where her morals lie. He’s so relieved to see her alive, wanting to keep her close and ensure himself she is okay, but these moments remind him of why they divorced.
“Lyla got involved later on,” Oliver says, as if he can read Diggle’s mind and wants to assure him – a kind of emotional awareness Diggle didn’t realize he was capable off. “She was the one who debriefed me and got me out of there. It was appreciated.”
“I’m glad,” she smiles at him, seeming relieved that he said it.
Diggle immediately feels guilty for doubting her. She’s just been through hell and is now stuck in this car getting judged by him. He pulls her to his side, insides fluttering in a familiar way when she snuggles in closer.
The conversation has come to an end by now. Oliver has already answered more questions than he ever has before – no matter how many new ones have arisen – and neither Anatoli nor Lyla comment more. So Diggle and Felicity drop it as they say their goodbyes to Anatoli and spend their last night in Moscow before flying back, Lyla hiding out so Isabel won’t spot her.
In fact, it doesn’t come up until after their first night back on American soil. The fear of nearly losing the other and being back in fighting conditions, not to mention what led to Lyla being in Russia in the first place, all boiling over together into them falling into bed together.
As they’re lying in the afterglow, Diggle suddenly asks: “Would you’ve ever told me about working with Oliver if he hadn’t acknowledged it first?”
Lyla thinks about it for a second, then apologetically shakes her head. “You know us A.R.G.U.S. agents, we close ranks around our own. And Amanda can be particular about what secrets she wants to be kept. I don’t know what kind of brief Oliver got from her about it. We try not to jeopardize someone’s mission or orders.”
Now it’s Diggle’s turn to consider her words. In a way he can see and understand why she’d do that, has even seen it mirrored in Oliver with how he keeps his secrets.
He now wonders if Oliver wanted to come and help rescue Lyla because A.R.G.U.S. closes ranks around their own, or because he wanted to help Diggle. Then he decides it doesn’t matter. Oliver showed up when he didn’t have to and he opened up about his history with Lyla, when he knew that keeping it to himself was an option with the way A.R.G.U.S. operates.
So, he just tugs Lyla close again and says: “I get that,” reveling in the way she smiles back at him.
~~
A/N:
This started as wouldn’t it be funny if Lyla and Oliver already knew each other and Diggle is going ?? bc neither of them ever mentioned it and then I realized Anatoli is also in the episode where they officially met and it spiraled into Oliver dropping Lian Yu lore, bc I live for that.
