Invisible Heart 2/?
Title: Invisible Heart 2/?
Rating: NC-17
Summary: She's invisible, a ghost, untraceable...but he sees her. AU
Notes: Another clarification which I forgot to include, Chapter 1 is a few years after the prologue. Thanks Gen for editing. And my beautiful banner was made by kc_2009. And thank you everyone for the reviews. I haven't been able to respond to any, but I promise I'll be much better this time around.
“Cyborg to Arrow.”
“Cyborg, go ahead.
“Arrow, someone’s trying to access our feed.”
Oliver stopped at the corner of the building, the darkness hiding his form. Bruce said the video had been cut right before the blur made its entrance. It could have been timed, but it would have been much simpler if the unknown intruder had their own person in their ear, running the show as Victor did. “Let them.”
“What?!”
“Let them, and start checking for any other feeds in the area. I have a feeling our unknown intruder communicates with someone just the way we do. Let me know when they break through.”
“Affirmative. Cyborg out.”
“Canary, Impulse, Speedy. Keep the conversations brief. We’re going to have some company.” Their affirmatives came through his ear again, and then he was moving, scaling the wall. With the alarm cut, opening the window was easy, and gave way with little trouble. “I’m in.” Maneuvering over the windowsill he crouched low, surveying what appeared to be a rather lavish bedroom.
“Cyborg to Arrow.”
“Go ahead.”
“Our new friend worked through my firewalls quicker then I thought. You’ve got ten seconds.”
“Affirmative. Everyone else, let’s get moving. Check everything. Arrow out.” Oliver counted ten seconds from his last word, knowing it was sufficient time from when he last spoke to Victor. “I know your there.”
Silence, he expected as much. Moving through the darkened room he started at the desk. “You’re pretty good from what I hear. Didn’t take you very long at all. Sounds like I need some well-deserved hardware and software upgrades. Must be out of date.”
Finding the desk empty he moved to the wall, eyes narrowing at the pictures there, his glasses looking for any abnormalities in the wall. “You did a number on poor old Batman, shook his confidence a bit. That doesn’t happen very often. So you must be good, you and this Blur you have working for you.”
The walls were clean, with a frown he moved to the closet, but quickly found it to be empty of anything useful. Of course he got the spare room. The knob to the bedroom turned easily and he exited the spare bedroom into a darkened hallway.
“Why so quite? Scared?”
“Scared? Are you going to call me chicken next?”
Oliver stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t the fact that this unknown person had responded, or the humor in the voice; it was the voice itself, a female voice, a rather attractive sounding one at that. “Well it got a response, didn’t it?”
“I couldn’t help myself. Your conversation skills are astounding.”
At the tone of her voice he knew without a doubt that the woman on the other end had rolled her eyes.
“So am I right? You did try to put Batman out of his favorite past time?”
“If you mean I saved him a few bruises at the hands of those petty criminals, then yes.”
He rolled her words over in his head a few times as he entered another room and frowned. Bathroom. So he knew it was one of two things. Either she didn’t like criminals, or she thought herself a much better criminal. “Well there aren’t any criminals hanging out here tonight, just me.”
“Really? Just you?”
The humor in her voice was obvious, she knew for a fact that it wasn’t just him. “Scouts honor.”
“Hmm. The Green Arrow and his honor? I don’t know...A while back I seem to remember a few antiquities going missing, a few men with bad plans finding their way into the hospital roughed up. Started out as kind of the anti-hero don’t you think?”
“We all have our off days.” He grumbled sourly and turned the corner. “But what about you. I know so little about you, it hardly seems fair.”
“Which puts me in a much better position don’t you think?”
“Perhaps. And what about this other friend you have, sweetheart? The one who took care of the eight petty criminals as you called them and disappeared with the mysterious safe?” Trying another door he had to withhold a sigh of relief as he found the office.
“Sweetheart? I don’t think I’m the type of girl to give up her secrets with a little bit of sweet talk.”
“Oh trust me, I can sweet talk anyone.” He stopped at a set of filing cabinets and scrunched his face when the words left his mouth. What the hell was he doing? In the middle of a damn mission he was flirting with a voice, that had hacked into his feed and could possibly be a criminal. He needed to get out more.
“Not this time.”
She sounded so sure. Give him two minutes with her face-to-face and-. Oliver quickly shook his head and pulled open the filing cabinet. He didn’t just need to get out. He needed to get laid. “So what about your friend? Not so lucky this time?” She laughed and involuntarily his mind tried to put a face with the laugh, tried to imagine what she would look like…
“Sorry sweetheart. It isn’t luck.”
Oliver couldn’t resist grinning at her use of the word ‘sweetheart’. “He is fast isn’t he?”
“He is.”
“I guess we’ll have to find out how fast he is then.” Nothing in the drawers. The whole mission was getting ridiculous and he was beginning to wonder if it had even been worth it. But she was there, listening in for some reason, even if he didn’t know why.
“Oh? You mean in comparison with your friend? Impulse?”
Oliver stilled in his walk to the desk.
“If my calculations are correct Impulse is faster, but there are some places he just can’t go.”
“Confidence is pretty tricky,” Oliver said carefully. “It makes people trip up, reveal too much.” There was a pause, and for a moment he thought she had put a halt to their conversation.
“Perhaps, but finding out his identity will do you very little.”
“And yours?” She laughed again, but this time he caught something darker behind it.
“Trust me, you won’t find me. You can’t trace something that doesn’t exist.”
Stopping again in his search he considered her words, trying to make sense of them, but having little success. She was confident, that was for sure, but she was smart also. Which led him to believe she wouldn’t have been confident in her anonymity unless she had a very strong reason to be so. With what he knew so far he’d tried to find her identity, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he would turn up with nothing.
“Besides, your not the one I’m after and you’re not the bad guy. For all intents and purposes we are on the same team.”
“And what are you?” Oliver asked, wondering if she would even answer.
“I’m not the bad guy either.”
“How do I know that?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
Trust a strange voice that hacked into his earpiece...he wasn’t so sure about that. The door swung open, followed by a red blur that suddenly took the shape of Bart.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bart whispered, having heard, like the rest of the team, the verbal sparring Oliver was going at with the strange hacker.
Oliver waved Bart off. “My trust is usually earned. And hacking into our comms and snatching what we’re looking for right from under our noses us doesn’t exactly leave me with a feeling I would describe as trust. On top of the fact that you know much more about me then I know about you.”
“We all have our disguises. And you’re right; you have every reason to distrust me, but my information about you Arrow, only goes as far as your exploits. As it stands my resources are better than yours and when it comes down to it, if I have the chance to get my hands on the intel before you, I will.”
“So I guess we’re at a stalemate.”
Nothing, just silence. Wondering if the somber tone their conversation had taken had driven her away. Bart motioned Oliver out the room, reminding him of their mission, but somehow he couldn’t focus on it, grateful that the others were there to continue the search.
“No...we’re not. Checkmate.”
He stood there in confusion, not quite sure what she meant until Dinah’s voice came over the comm loudly.
“He’s in the house. Impulse! Front entrance!”
And then Bart was gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mission complete and went off without a hitch...somewhat. Chloe sighed and leaned back in her chair, counting down the seconds until Clark’s return. The entire time she waited, her conversation with the Green Arrow running through her head. He was searching for answers, of that much she was certain. Chloe wasn’t foolish; she had gotten through his firewalls too quickly. The Green Arrow’s team had a lot of resources. Technologically, they seemed just as advanced as she was. He too had someone running intel from behind the scenes. Although she had no confirmation yet, Chloe highly suspected the one that called himself Cyborg was in league with the Green Arrow. Included in that list were Speedy and Impulse. Their allegiance with the Green Arrow had been easy to determine.
Her hair blew around her neck, signaling the arrival of Clark.
“What the hell was that about?”
Chloe sighed and spun in her chair, standing up and walking towards the safe that Clark had dropped to the ground with a resounding thud. “I know it isn’t heavy to you, but it could probably crack the floor.”
“Chloe? The Green Arrow?”
“I was feeling him out.”
“Really?” Clark looked at her wide-eyed. “What happened to just listening in?”
“They caught me,” she said with a shrug and kneeled down. “Open this will you?”
“Caught you? They caught you. That’s saying a lot.” He walked around to the front of the safe, allowing Chloe to move out of the way before he grabbed the knob and pulled. When it yanked off he sighed. The same thing had happened with the last safe.
“I told you I thought they were working with Cyborg. He probably picked up on me.”
“And what?” Clark grabbed the side of the safe and pulled, opening up enough of a gap that he could slip his hand between it and the door. Once he had a hold of the door he pull, snapping it easily off its hinges. After dropping it to the ground he stood up and turned to her. “You decided to have a conversation with him?”
“I wanted to feel him out, Clark, see how much he knew. It’s never a bad idea to get more intel.”
“Oh really?” Clark asked knowingly, wondering if that had been her only reason in responding. He had heard the conversation and he knew Chloe. She had been amused. Something in her conversation with the Emerald Archer had sparked her interest.
Stepping forward to the safe Chloe turned to Clark, eyebrow cocked at his challenge. “We now know that Batman saw you, that the communication between Batman and Green Arrow is stronger than I suspected. The Green Arrow’s real life personality is a cocky flirt and most likely a womanizer. He doesn’t trust easily, he’s pretty smart, good at planning, and is leading this team. I’ve practically confirmed that Cyborg is working with them and that their technological capabilities are most likely as good as ours. With more time Cyborg might have been able to crack my firewalls and access our comm signal too. The only reason I was able to was because I had planned ahead unlike him having to at the last minute and I had the element of surprise.”
“You got all of that?” Clark asked, almost skeptically.
“Yes,” she responded simply and turned away from him to kneel down in front of the safe.
“This isn’t like you. Just exposing yourself so easily.”
“So what. They have my voice on tape. Even if they have the resources to try to search they’ll find nothing, because there is nothing to find. I’m gone, don’t exist.”
“Okay, let’s turn this around then. They’ll know you don’t exist, they’ll know you have resources just as equally compatible to theirs.” She pulled something out of the safe and stood up, turning to him. “You practically confirmed that it is two of us working together and it isn’t much of a stretch for them to assume it may be Superman that’s working with you. Then the next thing I know I have them hunting me down.”
“Figured all that out on your own did you?” Chloe said with smirk. “I’m so proud.”
“Chloe...”
“Look Clark, I’m not worried. Even if they are quick enough to find out who you are so what? If anything it will confirm that we are the good guys. If Superman is doing it, well then it must be the right thing.” With a wink she stepped away from the safe and headed back towards her computers. “Dispose of that, will you Clark?” Stopping mid stride as a stray thought came to her she turned to face him with confusion. “What did you do with the other two?”
He held up a hand, pointing up.
“Oh!” She exclaimed and nodded, slightly impressed. “Good idea.” Turning away from him she took a seat in front of her monitors and plugged into the hard drive.
“Chloe, Superman doesn’t steal. Which is the idea behind me doing this in the old black costume.”
“Stop talking about yourself in the third person Clark. Having all these identities has made you crazy.” Her tone was light hearted, but then she saw the encrypted information fly across her screen. “Damn.”
“Not it?” He asked, forgetting about their disagreement and coming to stand behind her.
“No. Just more encrypted information. I can’t believe I can’t crack this. If our source is right, the key is out there.” Even as she said it she had to wonder. Chloe was devoting a whole lot of resources to something she wasn’t even sure was worth it. For all she knew someone could be leading her on a chase with no end, the only means to draw her attention away from something else. Not only that, they were exposing themselves. Chloe much preferred to work in the background, keep their team hidden. Now things were starting to change. Batman was aware of another player now, and worst of all the Green Arrow was aware of her. The precautions were in place to protect her identity, but they had resources, and lot’s of them. How the Green Arrow’s team was funded she wasn’t sure, but it was funded well.
“Hey.”
Chloe turned at the sound of Clark’s voice, her train of thought faltering. “Yea, sorry.”
“I’ve gotta get going. Some of us have a nine to five job the next day.” Chloe only nodded in response, barely seeming to register what he said. “Let me know what you come up with. But Chloe, I think if we run into someone again searching for this thing...we are going to have some problems.”
“Yea I know.” With a sigh she shook her head and smiled brightly. “You do the leg work Clark, save the world, let me worry about the logistics. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”
He smiled at her self assured attitude, and then pushed off the ground.
With a sigh of irritation Chloe readjusted her hair from the gust of wind.
Previous Next