At First, Just A Little, Chapter 3a - Arrow, PG, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Title: At First, Just A Little
Chapter: 3a/8(?)
Pairing: Oliver/Felicity,
Word count: 11,781
Rating: PG-13, rating higher in later chapters
Spoilers: Up to 2x14. But sort of an AUish 2x14.
Disclaimer: Arrow belongs to DC Comics. Birthday Letters belongs to Ted Hughes and whoever published that, I guess.
Summary: Felicity thinks that Oliver thinks she's in love with him. But she's totally not. Also starring Mirakuru.
A/N: Sara and Oliver are moving in together, Roy is getting worse, and Felicity decides to be a bit reckless. Character death, you guys. This shit is about to get real. LJ made me split this into two. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
***
She had too much so with a smile you
took some.
Of everything she had you had
Absolutely nothing, so you took some.
At first, just a little.
~Ted Hughes, The Others
***
Chapter Three
The night she left Oliver and Sara at the foundry Felicity dreamt, for the first time in a long time, about her father.
The dream was a variation on the only real memory she had of him. She was small, about four, and they were walking along the beach by their house in Coast City, picking up seashells and placing them in a jar. Her tiny fingers dug into the wet sand and she looked up, watching as he slowly walked into the surf. The waves rushed in and over his legs while he stood looking out at the horizon.
“Felicity,” he called back to her, his voice unfamiliar, “I want you to know that I’ll always be with you. You’ll never lose me. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded and was surprised to find she had transformed into her adult self. She stood, abandoning the jar of shells, and walked out to meet him. When she reached his side the man that had been her father a second ago had morphed into Oliver. “You’re a liar,” she told him coldly.
His eyelashes were thick with tears and he stared straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to be.”
The world around them seemed to pulse and when it settled they were no longer in Coast City. The sea swirling around their knees began churning dark and grey as the high peaks and forests of Lian Yu came into focus. A menacing shadow formed in the swells of the water and ever so slowly began easing its way in their direction. She knew she needed to warn Oliver, but when she opened her mouth she found she could no longer form words. The darkness picked up speed, spreading around them and she pointed at it furiously, but Oliver wouldn’t look at her. She tugged on his arm desperate to pull him back to the shore, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Felicity,” he said, his eyes locked on the horizon. “I can’t fight what’s coming.”
“We have to go back to shore, Oliver. Please,” she begged, words finally spilling from her lips.
He turned to face her, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “You failed me.”
The shadow swarmed and Oliver’s legs were yanked out from under him, his entire body disappearing into the sea in an instant.
She screamed herself into waking.
***
She had the dream again and again. There were minor changes every time, but the ending never altered. Sara told her recurring dreams were just her subconscious working something out and that the dream would stop when her brain finally found the solution. Each night she placed her head on her pillow with a sense of dread, but she would still close her eyes and tell herself there was no reason to worry.
“You have a good brain, a smart brain. Everything will be fine,” she whispered confidently into the darkness.
Night after night she gave herself the pep talk. The dream came anyway.
***
The night she left Oliver and Sara at the foundry Felicity dreamt, for the first time in a long time, about her father.
The dream was a variation on the only real memory she had of him. She was small, about four, and they were walking along the beach by their house in Coast City, picking up seashells and placing them in a jar. Her tiny fingers dug into the wet sand and she looked up, watching as he slowly walked into the surf. The waves rushed in and over his legs while he stood looking out at the horizon.
“Felicity,” he called back to her, his voice unfamiliar, “I want you to know that I’ll always be with you. You’ll never lose me. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded and was surprised to find she had transformed into her adult self. She stood, abandoning the jar of shells, and walked out to meet him. When she reached his side the man that had been her father a second ago had morphed into Oliver. “You’re a liar,” she told him coldly.
His eyelashes were thick with tears and he stared straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to be.”
The world around them seemed to pulse and when it settled they were no longer in Coast City. The sea swirling around their knees began churning dark and grey as the high peaks and forests of Lian Yu came into focus. A menacing shadow formed in the swells of the water and ever so slowly began easing its way in their direction. She knew she needed to warn Oliver, but when she opened her mouth she found she could no longer form words. The darkness picked up speed, spreading around them and she pointed at it furiously, but Oliver wouldn’t look at her. She tugged on his arm desperate to pull him back to the shore, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Felicity,” he said, his eyes locked on the horizon. “I can’t fight what’s coming.”
“We have to go back to shore, Oliver. Please,” she begged, words finally spilling from her lips.
He turned to face her, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “You failed me.”
The shadow swarmed and Oliver’s legs were yanked out from under him, his entire body disappearing into the sea in an instant.
She screamed herself into waking.
***
She had the dream again and again. There were minor changes every time, but the ending never altered. Sara told her recurring dreams were just her subconscious working something out and that the dream would stop when her brain finally found the solution. Each night she placed her head on her pillow with a sense of dread, but she would still close her eyes and tell herself there was no reason to worry.
“You have a good brain, a smart brain. Everything will be fine,” she whispered confidently into the darkness.
Night after night she gave herself the pep talk. The dream came anyway.
***
On the day Oliver casually mentioned that he and Sara were planning to move in together, Diggle popped in unexpectedly during her lunch hour. He pulled a chair up to her desk with sympathetic eyes and she rolled hers back at him in response. She sometimes really hated the way these two talked about her behind her back.
He hesitated for a moment and then pressed on using the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from him. “So, you okay?”
“I haven’t been sleeping much, but other than that I’m fine.” She said, before adopting his concerned tone. She placed her hand over his. “Are you okay?”
Diggle gave her a side eye. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She smiled and began pulling her food out of the white paper sack it had come in. “My sentiments exactly.”
“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “If that’s how you want to play it, go right ahead.”
Ugh. He was the worst when he whipped out the passive aggression. She really, really didn’t want to ask what he meant by that, but her mouth was a traitor. “What does that mean?”
“You tell me,” he shrugged, taking a sip of the coffee he’d brought with him.
Well, that was infuriating with the benefit of also being annoying. “Look,” she sighed. “I’m not playing anything. It’s not exactly surprising that two hot people have decided to cohabitate. We all know they’ve been having sex. Lot’s of sex. Lot’s of really great and probably very acrobatic sex.”
“So you think, what? This is just easier for them than a booty call?”
She shook her head. “No, Digg. Somehow, I don’t think our friends are moving in together because booty calls are beyond them. They care about each other.” She pulled the plastic wrapped utensils and a stack of napkins out of the bag and placed them next to the white styrofoam container that held her food, but didn’t open any of it up.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Hmph.”
“What?”
He leaned back in his seat. “Nothing.”
“Wait. Are you actually upset about them moving in together?”
“I don’t think it’s the greatest idea in the world, no.”
“Oh, man,” she teased. “You’re not, like, secretly in love with Sara are you?”
He stared at her and then laughed. “You know, contrary to what you or Oliver seem to think, it is possible to spend a little time with someone and not develop a romantic attachment to them.”
She cocked her head and smiled. “Did you just try to burn me? Am I supposed to feel burned? Because I hate to tell you this, but I feel nothing.”
“All I’m saying is that it was around this time last year he tried getting back with the sister. It’s messed up.”
She shrugged. “As Jaime Lannister once said, ‘We don’t get to choose who we love.’”
“Well, he would know about sisters, I guess.”
Felicity’s mouth hung open. “Oh my god.”
Diggle smiled. She leaned over and smacked him affectionately on the arm. “Look at you with the pop culture reference.”
“Alright, that’s enough.”
“I’m so proud right now. I might cry.”
“I can leave, you know. There’s a door right over there,” he said, lifting his hand and pointing at the fire door.
“Fine, fine.” She watched him for a second, nervous to admit to any hesitation about the couple. Everything she said always got blown so out of proportion. “Maybe this whole thing with Sara is just the tiniest bit messed up,” Felicity conceded hesitantly. “But she’s a good egg and they seem happy.”
Diggle interrupted her a little sharply. “Happy, huh?”
He was blowing her mind. Usually she couldn’t get him to gossip about anything, but today he was just going for it. “You don’t think so?”
He swirled the coffee cup in his hands a little. “As messed up as it is for Oliver to put himself back in the love triangle from hell, it’s even more so for Sara to put herself back in that position.”
“What position?”
“Being the other woman.”
“He’s not with Laurel anymore.” Digg shot her a look as if what he was trying to say was obvious. “Sorry. I’m not at all getting what you’re trying to put down.”
“It’s a lesson I learned with Carly. You can’t be with a person who idealizes someone else. You’ll never live up to them.”
She frowned. “If you’re trying to imply-”
He shook his head. “Oh, I’m not trying.”
She laughed. “When has Oliver ever idealized me?”
He smirked. “Sometimes I forget you weren’t around him much when he met you. There wasn’t anything he thought you couldn’t do. There still isn’t.”
“Yeah, well, my kung fu’s the best. Doesn’t mean Sara’s needs to lose any sleep over it.”
Diggle shot her another look. “With the history they have, she’d be crazy not to.”
She shook her head. “Why are we even talking about this? I don’t want things to be like that. Sara and I aren’t the Desperate Housewives of Starling City and I’m not even hung up on Oliver anymore. I like Sara. She's cool. I respect her. ”
He nodded. “Me too. But just in case there was any doubt,” he said, looking at her knowingly, “I’m in your corner.” He reached over and squeezed her hand quickly. “Always.”
She smiled at her friend, a wave of affection washing over her when she realized that he’d forced himself through that entire conversation just so he could tell her that. Men were ridiculous. “Thank you.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You’re too good for him anyway.”
She laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely not his type.”
“And Sara is?”
She nodded. “Oh come on. You put Laurel and Helena in a blender, and Sara’s what you’d pour out.”
Digg shrugged. “I was thinking she was too stable.”
Her phone chimed and she checked the text with a sigh. “Ugh. He’s mad I didn’t bring him lunch.”
Digg lifted an eyebrow towards her. “He’s been in that meeting for hours. I bet all the other assistants brought their bosses some food.”
Her smile was right on the border of sickeningly sweet. “Well, maybe he should hire one of them, then.”
“Speaking of lunch,” he said, looking down at her white container. “What are you eating today, Ms Smoak?” He leaned over and popped the top open, revealing chicken fingers and French fries.
She flushed with guilt. "I swear I’ve got a side salad in the fridge." She did not have a side salad in the fridge. She had a cupcake. It was carrot cake, though, so it was sort of salad adjacent.
He looked at her and shook his head. “You know you’re killing me with this, right?”
She sighed. “Remember when we used to eat Big Belly like, every other day, and you never said a word about not eating the bun? I miss those days."
“No, what I remember is you telling me after the Count abducted you that you wanted to be able to defend yourself. If you’re serious about the training we’re doing and you want to get strong you need to knock this shit out.”
She looked from him to her food and then back. “That’s not fair, throwing my own abduction at me so I sound like an idiot if I argue with you. Besides, this is chicken,” she said weakly, “and last time I checked French fries were potatoes, which are still vegetables. Frying them didn’t alter their genetic makeup.” It was the same theory she had about the carrot cake. They were in a cake, but they were still carrots. It totally counted.
Diggle didn’t respond. He simply looked at her the way she thought a father might look at a child he’d caught sneaking home after curfew. Not that she would know. She’d never had a curfew. Or a father, really. She heard the chime of the elevator arriving at the floor and the gentle hiss of the doors sliding open. “Digg, the whole no sugar, no flour, no McDonald's thing? It’s crazy. It’s totally impossible to live like that,” she said turning to face their approaching visitor.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, striding towards her desk. “I did the caveman diet thing for five years. It worked for me,” he said, flexing his arm muscles a little like the dork he was, but still managing to look like some sort of walking GQ spread.
“Whatever, Oliver,” she mumbled. “I saw you eat a pop tart yesterday.”
He stood next to her and then quickly reached down, plucking the biggest chicken finger from the container. She tried to grab it back, but he shoved the whole thing into his mouth. “Oliver!”
He chewed it for a second and then winked at her. “Thanks for getting lunch.”
She shook her head. “What are you even doing back? You’re scheduled to be doing performance reviews for at least another hour.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. “Thea texted. She and Roy had a fight and broke up."
“Uh oh. What happened?” Felicity asked.
Oliver shrugged. “I don’t know, but she can’t get him to leave the property.” He continued chewing for a moment and then swallowed. “He made a bit of a mess.” He showed them the picture his sister had sent him of the front doors to the mansion. They were off the frame and basically shattered. “Apparently he’s calmer now, but she could still use our help.”
Digg stood up and straightened his tie. “Let’s go.” Oliver clapped him on the shoulder as they began heading to the elevator.
“Be careful,” she called after them lightly. “Try not to let him beat you up too badly.”
Diggle turned and quickly jogged back. He leaned over the desk and slowly grabbed a huge handful of fries.
“Hey,” she cried out.
“What?” He asked, popping one into his mouth. “I thought you said you missed this.” He feigned going back for more and she snatched up the container, holding it close to her body. “Both of you need to get out of here like, right now,” she laughed.
It would be a long time before she laughed like that again.
***
For Felicity getting dumped would have led to a few too many shots of tequila and some ill-advised drunk texting, but for Roy it ended up being a bit more extreme. For three days he tore through Starling City, leaving a trail of badly beaten hooligans and broken bricks behind him. When Oliver and Sara finally tracked him down, he showed no interest in rejoining the fold. They came back to the foundry quite a bit worse for the wear.
Diggle worked on Sara’s ribs while Felicity stitched up the deep cut that had split Oliver’s left eyebrow. “Oh man,” she said, leaning back and staring at the row of uneven stitches she’d just sewn into his skin, “I don’t want to alarm you, but the name Quasimodo keeps springing to mind.”
Oliver frowned slightly. “Who’s Quasimodo?”
Felicity paused for a moment and then sighed. She really hoped he was kidding. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame?”
“What's that? More Shakespeare?” He grinned.
Felicity shook her head, not entirely certain if he was teasing or not, and then leaned back in to trim one of the stitches. “Let's just say it’s a good thing you’re pretty,” she mumbled softly, tilting his face towards the light and examining her handy work. It was definitely going to leave a mark. “Although after this patch up job, it might be a good thing that you're rich."
Oliver looked a little panicked and she smiled just a bit when she realized it was his vanity kicking in. He eyed her nervously. “Is it really that bad?” She grabbed a small compact from her purse and angled it so he could take a look. His face went a little ashen and she felt a pang of guilt for having been amused.
“Sorry. Do you want to go see a plastic surgeon?"
“It’s fine.”
“Oh, come on, this isn’t even a tough one to explain on an admitting form. How rare is that?” He took another look in the mirror, clearly weighing exactly how much facial disfiguration he could live with, but she couldn’t tell which way he was leaning. She put her hand on his shoulder. "It might be nice to go to the hospital and have someone with an actual medical degree stitch you up. It's your face, don’t you want it to be all handsome again someday?”
He closed the mirror with a snap and shook his head. “It’s not worth the trouble. Don’t worry about it.”
Preserving that face was totally worth it in her opinion, and probably the opinion of every other woman alive, but compared to the rest of the scars on his body, she could see why it wouldn't faze him. “Oliver, it looks like you got stitched up in a back alley, which isn’t really that far from the truth. You do know that the company pays for health insurance every month, right? It’s like a platinum plan too. People might be suspicious about why you didn’t use it.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “That would actually be a really lame way for us to get made.”
He grimaced and hopped off the table, heading over to Sara. “Felicity thinks I’m ugly now."
Sara grinned up at him, her eyes taking in the jagged new stitches as Diggle continued wrapping her ribs. “Hmm, she's crazy," his girlfriend teased. "I like a man with scars.”
He leaned over and kissed her gently before holding out his hand for the tape and taking over for Digg. Felicity turned away, picking up the bloody debris from the table and making sure it was properly disposed of before disinfecting the table thoroughly. There were plenty of things to do so that she wouldn’t have to watch the two of them. Not that she was avoiding looking. Not at all. She was fine with their relationship. Really. She just didn’t need the front row seat.
Diggle came to stand by her. "Why don't you head home? I think we've lost them for the night."
She looked up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Sara was now sitting on the edge of the table, Oliver standing between her legs with his arms looped gently around her shoulders. The former assassin’s hands were running up and down his sides and they were whispering quietly together.
She nodded. Home was exactly where she wanted to go. Home was where the alcohol lived. "We should talk about Roy, though. I'm worried."
"We all are."
"Tonight was different, Digg. He's been out of control before but he's never just attacked any of us. He could have killed them."
"But he didn't." Oliver's voice was low, but firm as he interrupted. "As bad as it was, he stopped when he realized he’d hurt Sara."
"But he still hurt her," Diggle cautioned, "and you didn’t exactly walk away scot free either."
"It's the Mirakuru, not him," Sara said, gently brushing off Digg’s concern. "He’s upset. We need to figure out a way for him to focus his emotions. He’s got to channel that anger somewhere productive or else, I don’t know,” she sighed. “We might need to play cupid and get him back together with Thea."
Oliver shook his head. "Not going to happen. She thinks he was cheating."
Well, that was interesting in Felicity’s opinion, seeing as Roy really only knew like four other people aside from Oliver’s sister and she and Sara were two of them. "With who?" Felicity asked nervously.
"It’s that girl he and Thea have been hanging around with. You actually know her," Oliver said, turning back to look at his girlfriend. "Your friend, Sin."
Sara cocked her head in surprise. "Sin? Really?"
Oliver nodded.
"That’s weird.” Sara smiled knowingly. “I'm pretty sure Sin's a lesbian."
That was also interesting to Felicity. "Oooh, so were you guys dating?"
Diggle and Oliver turned to her with almost identically shocked expressions on their faces. She didn't know what the big deal was. It seemed like an obvious question to ask since the girl had been the only person Sara trusted when she first came to town. Although, maybe Sin was a bit young.
Sara didn't seem bothered. "No, it's just kind of what I thought."
"Well, that's not definitive, really. I mean, we thought," she lifted a hand and indicated back and forth between her and Diggle, "you were a lesbian, too."
"Leave me out of this," Diggle said under his breath, taking a step away from her.
“What?” She asked him before turning quickly back to Sara. “I’m just saying. I was kind of surprised when you and Oliver got back together, but not because you'd only been back in town for five minutes. It was because, for like three of those five minutes, you sort of had a girlfriend. The whole complicated past thing didn’t cross my mind until later.” She looked at each of them. “Is that wrong for me to admit?"
Oliver folded his arms over his chest, his mouth opening and then closing as if he was trying to decide if Sara's honor needed defending or not. She could understand that it might be an awkward topic for him, but Diggle was looking at her like she’d been speaking in tongues. “What? Am I the only one that remembers the hot assassin ex girlfriend with a serious scorched earth policy and a Cirque du Soleil routine? Because, that was a thing that totally happened." Sara’s eyes narrowed at her a little. "Not that I'm saying you're a lesbian now. Or that you aren't. I don't know how all that works, exactly. But I’m not judging. Sexuality is fluid, right? Oliver could probably get lots of lesbians to experiment a little. Or straight guys, even."
Everyone just stared at her for a moment but then Sara grinned. “Is that true Digg?”
Diggle inhaled sharply. "You ladies have no idea what we get up to,” he deadpanned.
Oliver looked at both of them, seemingly shocked that they would have fun at his expense. “Let’s move on.”
"Okay,” Sara said, gingerly rising from the table. “Leaving the spectrum of my sexuality aside for a moment, you should talk to your sister, Ollie. Tell her you saw Sin here tonight and she was playing for the other team or something."
Oliver shook his head. "I like Roy,” he began, “but I'm not exactly upset that my sister is no longer dating a guy who's been dosed with Mirakuru. I vote we find another way to keep him in line."
Sara placed her hand on Oliver's arm. "His love for Thea is the only way we’ve kept him from spiraling, Ollie. You know that. Love keeps him grounded. We’ve seen that before."
Felicity considered Sara's words. "I wonder if we could just dose him with something that would mimic the emotion?"
"Like what?" Oliver asked.
"I don't know, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin...those are all things that flush our system when we fall in love. It's not an ideal solution, but drugs like Prozac, or something a little less kosher like MDMA, might bring about that euphoric feeling and keep him in line."
Diggle grunted. "I'm saying it right now, just so there isn't any confusion later. The black man will not be the one out there scoring drugs for this little science experiment."
Sara nodded. "I could probably find some MDMA upstairs. I'm sure someone's got to be selling."
Oliver shook his head. "As the owner of that club, I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that. Felicity, check in with the lab at QC to see if they have anything we can work with before we make plans to score drugs off the street."
Felicity nodded and then walked over to her computer. "I'll see what's available to us, but I don't know how I'd justify requisitioning anything like that from the lab. And the stuff they sell on the street isn't exactly what we'd be looking for. You never know what it's cut with. I’m sure I can find something better once I start looking into it, though.” She sat down, pulling the keyboard towards herself. “Of course getting him to take whatever we find is a whole other issue. We might have to break out the tranq darts again.” She thought of Barry for a moment as she began typing. He’d been a very good sport about them knocking him out, but Roy would probably not be. Oliver came up behind her and watched quietly for a few minutes, which he knew drove her nuts. She turned and gave him a look. “Can I help you?”
"What are you doing?" He said, leaning down to look more closely at the screen.
She was going on the deep web, but Oliver wouldn't even understand what that meant. "Don't worry about it."
“Are you hacking into the QC lab’s system?”
“No. And I wouldn’t call it hacking if I did, seeing as I helped design it. That would just be checking in.”
“So what’s this?” He pointed at the screens that were basically just computer code. “Some sort of hacker Google?”
“You know that doesn’t exist, right? Like hacker Google is not a thing. Everyone just uses Google.”
His voice had an edge to it. "Felicity."
If it hadn’t been so late she might have walked him through it all. But it was way past her bedtime and she just wanted to go home. She’d tell him another time. "Don’t worry, Oliver. I've got this."
***
The thing about the deep web was that every interaction was risky. You could be talking to a fellow hacker, but you could also be talking to the FBI, a pervert, or a drug dealer. That part would be helpful in finding the MDMA if they needed it, but the drugs weren't the reason she was there.
It had only been about a week since Roy had attacked Oliver and Sara, but Felicity had been researching Mirakuru on the less family friendly side of the internet since the very first time Oliver had mentioned it. Not wanting to attract any attention, she’d been excessively careful. For months she'd been treading lightly, just sort of poking around casually to see if there was any information on it at all. She’d read though page after page of leaked documents from militaries and pharmaceutical companies around the world, looking for any sort of super soldier like programs or side effects. There wasn't much, but there were enough breadcrumbs to let her know the information was out there waiting if she ever decided to step out of the shadows.
The call from Officer Lance that afternoon had forced her to accept that the need for an answer finally outweighed the need to remain undetected. A man in a red hood had been involved in an incident at the pier the previous night and there’d been a fatality. The dead man was a bad guy, some sort of drug dealer who also dabbled in human trafficking, so Felicity wasn’t exactly torn up about it when she erased the surveillance footage, but it still left her uneasy. Murder was murder, there was no way around it.
The way she saw it, Roy was not getting better. No one really wanted to talk about it, but it felt to her like he was slipping away. Not that any of them had seen him long enough to make that kind of call. Oliver was frustrated, his spoiled rich boy side rearing its ugly head as soon as he realized he couldn’t just command Roy to appear. He and Sara had been fighting almost nonstop about what to do. Sara still thought Roy reconciling with Thea was their best hope, but Oliver wasn’t willing to use his sister. Now that there was a body count, Felicity couldn’t help but agree.
She kept her mouth shut, though because she didn’t have a better solution to offer. She slowly began to wonder if her caution had forced the research to take too much time. If she’d been a little less paranoid, she might have found something to help Roy and maybe he wouldn’t have killed someone. She couldn’t help but feel partly responsible. Every night Diggle, Sara, and Oliver went out looking for him, but they always came back empty handed or battered. She needed to get them something they could use, something that would make a difference when they found him again.
There had been one source, a hacker she’d been curious about for quite some time now. He seemed to know a bit more than he was letting on about Mirakuru in the few exchanges they had. She’d been able to do a bit of a background check on his handle and he appeared to be a standard anti-government nut job, who had gotten lucky when a source started feeding him classified materials from Japan. They hadn’t spoken in a while, but her gut was telling her that he had the answers she needed.
She reached out asking if he’d ever come across any information about successful treatments or even a cure for someone that had been given Mirakuru. 48 hours later there was a message waiting for her.
"Living in purgatory is no fun. You have 30 minutes to claim the solution you seek. Come alone."
It was a little heavy handed for her taste, but she’d always appreciated a hacker with flare. Diggle, Sara, and Oliver were all out chasing after Roy and it seemed silly to call them in just to meet with this dude. The address was in the Glades, she could be there and back in an hour or so. She wrote the address on a post it and stuck it on the corner of her computer monitor just in case, but she figured there was no need to gather the troops.
She left without telling anyone.
***
The meeting place was a warehouse much like the one Oliver had turned into Verdant. It was dark and damp, with poor lighting and lots of corners to hide in. She shivered inside her black and white polka dot dress, wishing she’d worn a coat. Or pants, actually. The more she mulled it over the more sense pants made. Always wear pants to a clandestine meeting, she thought with a smile. She would definitely add it to the sidekick rulebook she'd been compiling for Barry. Not that Barry would really need to know that rule. He probably wore pants to every meeting, clandestine or not. Still, it was best to be thorough.
A man stepped out of the shadows and as soon as her eyes settled on him she realized the magnitude of her mistake. He was big, bigger than the computer geek type she’d been expecting. In fact he was built just like Oliver and Diggle were, and walked as if each muscle was a weapon he knew exactly how to use. That wasn’t what really scared her, though. No, it was the creepy, angular, gold looking mask and full body armor he was wearing that set off the alarm bells. It suddenly seemed incredibly stupid to not have told Oliver where she was going. She reached into her purse, trying to find her phone.
“Hello, Miss Smoak.”
He had some sort of accent, but she couldn't quite place it. She raised her chin as her finger’s wrapped around the plastic case of her cell. “How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you. Everything about him.”
She willed herself to remain calm. “Him who?”
“Our friend the Hood. Or is it the Arrow now? I’ve always just called him Oliver Queen. He’s an old friend.”
Felicity swallowed nervously. “Oliver Queen is my boss, but what does he have to do with any of this?” She turned on her heel, trying to remember exactly how far the exit was, and pulled the phone from her bag. She tried to unlock it, but she mistyped the passcode.
The man was behind her before she could make a second attempt, his hand wrapping around her own tightly. He moved in close, the mask cold against the shell of her ear. “Now, now. That’s no way to treat someone who’s trying to help you.”
She spun around, pulling her arm from his grip. “Is that what you’re doing? Because it feels more like you’re threatening me.”
His head cocked. “Beauty, bravery, and brains.”
“So you are threatening me then?” She swallowed nervously. “Because I'm not someone that always needs to be right.”
“I don’t see it as a threat at all. I want to give you what you’re looking for, but I need something first.”
Her heart pounded erratically in her chest. "What?"
"Nothing you'll give."
He raised his fist and the world went black.
Chapter: 3a/8(?)
Pairing: Oliver/Felicity,
Word count: 11,781
Rating: PG-13, rating higher in later chapters
Spoilers: Up to 2x14. But sort of an AUish 2x14.
Disclaimer: Arrow belongs to DC Comics. Birthday Letters belongs to Ted Hughes and whoever published that, I guess.
Summary: Felicity thinks that Oliver thinks she's in love with him. But she's totally not. Also starring Mirakuru.
A/N: Sara and Oliver are moving in together, Roy is getting worse, and Felicity decides to be a bit reckless. Character death, you guys. This shit is about to get real. LJ made me split this into two. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
***
She had too much so with a smile you
took some.
Of everything she had you had
Absolutely nothing, so you took some.
At first, just a little.
~Ted Hughes, The Others
***
Chapter Three
The night she left Oliver and Sara at the foundry Felicity dreamt, for the first time in a long time, about her father.
The dream was a variation on the only real memory she had of him. She was small, about four, and they were walking along the beach by their house in Coast City, picking up seashells and placing them in a jar. Her tiny fingers dug into the wet sand and she looked up, watching as he slowly walked into the surf. The waves rushed in and over his legs while he stood looking out at the horizon.
“Felicity,” he called back to her, his voice unfamiliar, “I want you to know that I’ll always be with you. You’ll never lose me. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded and was surprised to find she had transformed into her adult self. She stood, abandoning the jar of shells, and walked out to meet him. When she reached his side the man that had been her father a second ago had morphed into Oliver. “You’re a liar,” she told him coldly.
His eyelashes were thick with tears and he stared straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to be.”
The world around them seemed to pulse and when it settled they were no longer in Coast City. The sea swirling around their knees began churning dark and grey as the high peaks and forests of Lian Yu came into focus. A menacing shadow formed in the swells of the water and ever so slowly began easing its way in their direction. She knew she needed to warn Oliver, but when she opened her mouth she found she could no longer form words. The darkness picked up speed, spreading around them and she pointed at it furiously, but Oliver wouldn’t look at her. She tugged on his arm desperate to pull him back to the shore, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Felicity,” he said, his eyes locked on the horizon. “I can’t fight what’s coming.”
“We have to go back to shore, Oliver. Please,” she begged, words finally spilling from her lips.
He turned to face her, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “You failed me.”
The shadow swarmed and Oliver’s legs were yanked out from under him, his entire body disappearing into the sea in an instant.
She screamed herself into waking.
***
She had the dream again and again. There were minor changes every time, but the ending never altered. Sara told her recurring dreams were just her subconscious working something out and that the dream would stop when her brain finally found the solution. Each night she placed her head on her pillow with a sense of dread, but she would still close her eyes and tell herself there was no reason to worry.
“You have a good brain, a smart brain. Everything will be fine,” she whispered confidently into the darkness.
Night after night she gave herself the pep talk. The dream came anyway.
***
The night she left Oliver and Sara at the foundry Felicity dreamt, for the first time in a long time, about her father.
The dream was a variation on the only real memory she had of him. She was small, about four, and they were walking along the beach by their house in Coast City, picking up seashells and placing them in a jar. Her tiny fingers dug into the wet sand and she looked up, watching as he slowly walked into the surf. The waves rushed in and over his legs while he stood looking out at the horizon.
“Felicity,” he called back to her, his voice unfamiliar, “I want you to know that I’ll always be with you. You’ll never lose me. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded and was surprised to find she had transformed into her adult self. She stood, abandoning the jar of shells, and walked out to meet him. When she reached his side the man that had been her father a second ago had morphed into Oliver. “You’re a liar,” she told him coldly.
His eyelashes were thick with tears and he stared straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to be.”
The world around them seemed to pulse and when it settled they were no longer in Coast City. The sea swirling around their knees began churning dark and grey as the high peaks and forests of Lian Yu came into focus. A menacing shadow formed in the swells of the water and ever so slowly began easing its way in their direction. She knew she needed to warn Oliver, but when she opened her mouth she found she could no longer form words. The darkness picked up speed, spreading around them and she pointed at it furiously, but Oliver wouldn’t look at her. She tugged on his arm desperate to pull him back to the shore, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Felicity,” he said, his eyes locked on the horizon. “I can’t fight what’s coming.”
“We have to go back to shore, Oliver. Please,” she begged, words finally spilling from her lips.
He turned to face her, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “You failed me.”
The shadow swarmed and Oliver’s legs were yanked out from under him, his entire body disappearing into the sea in an instant.
She screamed herself into waking.
***
She had the dream again and again. There were minor changes every time, but the ending never altered. Sara told her recurring dreams were just her subconscious working something out and that the dream would stop when her brain finally found the solution. Each night she placed her head on her pillow with a sense of dread, but she would still close her eyes and tell herself there was no reason to worry.
“You have a good brain, a smart brain. Everything will be fine,” she whispered confidently into the darkness.
Night after night she gave herself the pep talk. The dream came anyway.
***
On the day Oliver casually mentioned that he and Sara were planning to move in together, Diggle popped in unexpectedly during her lunch hour. He pulled a chair up to her desk with sympathetic eyes and she rolled hers back at him in response. She sometimes really hated the way these two talked about her behind her back.
He hesitated for a moment and then pressed on using the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from him. “So, you okay?”
“I haven’t been sleeping much, but other than that I’m fine.” She said, before adopting his concerned tone. She placed her hand over his. “Are you okay?”
Diggle gave her a side eye. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She smiled and began pulling her food out of the white paper sack it had come in. “My sentiments exactly.”
“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “If that’s how you want to play it, go right ahead.”
Ugh. He was the worst when he whipped out the passive aggression. She really, really didn’t want to ask what he meant by that, but her mouth was a traitor. “What does that mean?”
“You tell me,” he shrugged, taking a sip of the coffee he’d brought with him.
Well, that was infuriating with the benefit of also being annoying. “Look,” she sighed. “I’m not playing anything. It’s not exactly surprising that two hot people have decided to cohabitate. We all know they’ve been having sex. Lot’s of sex. Lot’s of really great and probably very acrobatic sex.”
“So you think, what? This is just easier for them than a booty call?”
She shook her head. “No, Digg. Somehow, I don’t think our friends are moving in together because booty calls are beyond them. They care about each other.” She pulled the plastic wrapped utensils and a stack of napkins out of the bag and placed them next to the white styrofoam container that held her food, but didn’t open any of it up.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Hmph.”
“What?”
He leaned back in his seat. “Nothing.”
“Wait. Are you actually upset about them moving in together?”
“I don’t think it’s the greatest idea in the world, no.”
“Oh, man,” she teased. “You’re not, like, secretly in love with Sara are you?”
He stared at her and then laughed. “You know, contrary to what you or Oliver seem to think, it is possible to spend a little time with someone and not develop a romantic attachment to them.”
She cocked her head and smiled. “Did you just try to burn me? Am I supposed to feel burned? Because I hate to tell you this, but I feel nothing.”
“All I’m saying is that it was around this time last year he tried getting back with the sister. It’s messed up.”
She shrugged. “As Jaime Lannister once said, ‘We don’t get to choose who we love.’”
“Well, he would know about sisters, I guess.”
Felicity’s mouth hung open. “Oh my god.”
Diggle smiled. She leaned over and smacked him affectionately on the arm. “Look at you with the pop culture reference.”
“Alright, that’s enough.”
“I’m so proud right now. I might cry.”
“I can leave, you know. There’s a door right over there,” he said, lifting his hand and pointing at the fire door.
“Fine, fine.” She watched him for a second, nervous to admit to any hesitation about the couple. Everything she said always got blown so out of proportion. “Maybe this whole thing with Sara is just the tiniest bit messed up,” Felicity conceded hesitantly. “But she’s a good egg and they seem happy.”
Diggle interrupted her a little sharply. “Happy, huh?”
He was blowing her mind. Usually she couldn’t get him to gossip about anything, but today he was just going for it. “You don’t think so?”
He swirled the coffee cup in his hands a little. “As messed up as it is for Oliver to put himself back in the love triangle from hell, it’s even more so for Sara to put herself back in that position.”
“What position?”
“Being the other woman.”
“He’s not with Laurel anymore.” Digg shot her a look as if what he was trying to say was obvious. “Sorry. I’m not at all getting what you’re trying to put down.”
“It’s a lesson I learned with Carly. You can’t be with a person who idealizes someone else. You’ll never live up to them.”
She frowned. “If you’re trying to imply-”
He shook his head. “Oh, I’m not trying.”
She laughed. “When has Oliver ever idealized me?”
He smirked. “Sometimes I forget you weren’t around him much when he met you. There wasn’t anything he thought you couldn’t do. There still isn’t.”
“Yeah, well, my kung fu’s the best. Doesn’t mean Sara’s needs to lose any sleep over it.”
Diggle shot her another look. “With the history they have, she’d be crazy not to.”
She shook her head. “Why are we even talking about this? I don’t want things to be like that. Sara and I aren’t the Desperate Housewives of Starling City and I’m not even hung up on Oliver anymore. I like Sara. She's cool. I respect her. ”
He nodded. “Me too. But just in case there was any doubt,” he said, looking at her knowingly, “I’m in your corner.” He reached over and squeezed her hand quickly. “Always.”
She smiled at her friend, a wave of affection washing over her when she realized that he’d forced himself through that entire conversation just so he could tell her that. Men were ridiculous. “Thank you.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You’re too good for him anyway.”
She laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely not his type.”
“And Sara is?”
She nodded. “Oh come on. You put Laurel and Helena in a blender, and Sara’s what you’d pour out.”
Digg shrugged. “I was thinking she was too stable.”
Her phone chimed and she checked the text with a sigh. “Ugh. He’s mad I didn’t bring him lunch.”
Digg lifted an eyebrow towards her. “He’s been in that meeting for hours. I bet all the other assistants brought their bosses some food.”
Her smile was right on the border of sickeningly sweet. “Well, maybe he should hire one of them, then.”
“Speaking of lunch,” he said, looking down at her white container. “What are you eating today, Ms Smoak?” He leaned over and popped the top open, revealing chicken fingers and French fries.
She flushed with guilt. "I swear I’ve got a side salad in the fridge." She did not have a side salad in the fridge. She had a cupcake. It was carrot cake, though, so it was sort of salad adjacent.
He looked at her and shook his head. “You know you’re killing me with this, right?”
She sighed. “Remember when we used to eat Big Belly like, every other day, and you never said a word about not eating the bun? I miss those days."
“No, what I remember is you telling me after the Count abducted you that you wanted to be able to defend yourself. If you’re serious about the training we’re doing and you want to get strong you need to knock this shit out.”
She looked from him to her food and then back. “That’s not fair, throwing my own abduction at me so I sound like an idiot if I argue with you. Besides, this is chicken,” she said weakly, “and last time I checked French fries were potatoes, which are still vegetables. Frying them didn’t alter their genetic makeup.” It was the same theory she had about the carrot cake. They were in a cake, but they were still carrots. It totally counted.
Diggle didn’t respond. He simply looked at her the way she thought a father might look at a child he’d caught sneaking home after curfew. Not that she would know. She’d never had a curfew. Or a father, really. She heard the chime of the elevator arriving at the floor and the gentle hiss of the doors sliding open. “Digg, the whole no sugar, no flour, no McDonald's thing? It’s crazy. It’s totally impossible to live like that,” she said turning to face their approaching visitor.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, striding towards her desk. “I did the caveman diet thing for five years. It worked for me,” he said, flexing his arm muscles a little like the dork he was, but still managing to look like some sort of walking GQ spread.
“Whatever, Oliver,” she mumbled. “I saw you eat a pop tart yesterday.”
He stood next to her and then quickly reached down, plucking the biggest chicken finger from the container. She tried to grab it back, but he shoved the whole thing into his mouth. “Oliver!”
He chewed it for a second and then winked at her. “Thanks for getting lunch.”
She shook her head. “What are you even doing back? You’re scheduled to be doing performance reviews for at least another hour.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. “Thea texted. She and Roy had a fight and broke up."
“Uh oh. What happened?” Felicity asked.
Oliver shrugged. “I don’t know, but she can’t get him to leave the property.” He continued chewing for a moment and then swallowed. “He made a bit of a mess.” He showed them the picture his sister had sent him of the front doors to the mansion. They were off the frame and basically shattered. “Apparently he’s calmer now, but she could still use our help.”
Digg stood up and straightened his tie. “Let’s go.” Oliver clapped him on the shoulder as they began heading to the elevator.
“Be careful,” she called after them lightly. “Try not to let him beat you up too badly.”
Diggle turned and quickly jogged back. He leaned over the desk and slowly grabbed a huge handful of fries.
“Hey,” she cried out.
“What?” He asked, popping one into his mouth. “I thought you said you missed this.” He feigned going back for more and she snatched up the container, holding it close to her body. “Both of you need to get out of here like, right now,” she laughed.
It would be a long time before she laughed like that again.
***
For Felicity getting dumped would have led to a few too many shots of tequila and some ill-advised drunk texting, but for Roy it ended up being a bit more extreme. For three days he tore through Starling City, leaving a trail of badly beaten hooligans and broken bricks behind him. When Oliver and Sara finally tracked him down, he showed no interest in rejoining the fold. They came back to the foundry quite a bit worse for the wear.
Diggle worked on Sara’s ribs while Felicity stitched up the deep cut that had split Oliver’s left eyebrow. “Oh man,” she said, leaning back and staring at the row of uneven stitches she’d just sewn into his skin, “I don’t want to alarm you, but the name Quasimodo keeps springing to mind.”
Oliver frowned slightly. “Who’s Quasimodo?”
Felicity paused for a moment and then sighed. She really hoped he was kidding. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame?”
“What's that? More Shakespeare?” He grinned.
Felicity shook her head, not entirely certain if he was teasing or not, and then leaned back in to trim one of the stitches. “Let's just say it’s a good thing you’re pretty,” she mumbled softly, tilting his face towards the light and examining her handy work. It was definitely going to leave a mark. “Although after this patch up job, it might be a good thing that you're rich."
Oliver looked a little panicked and she smiled just a bit when she realized it was his vanity kicking in. He eyed her nervously. “Is it really that bad?” She grabbed a small compact from her purse and angled it so he could take a look. His face went a little ashen and she felt a pang of guilt for having been amused.
“Sorry. Do you want to go see a plastic surgeon?"
“It’s fine.”
“Oh, come on, this isn’t even a tough one to explain on an admitting form. How rare is that?” He took another look in the mirror, clearly weighing exactly how much facial disfiguration he could live with, but she couldn’t tell which way he was leaning. She put her hand on his shoulder. "It might be nice to go to the hospital and have someone with an actual medical degree stitch you up. It's your face, don’t you want it to be all handsome again someday?”
He closed the mirror with a snap and shook his head. “It’s not worth the trouble. Don’t worry about it.”
Preserving that face was totally worth it in her opinion, and probably the opinion of every other woman alive, but compared to the rest of the scars on his body, she could see why it wouldn't faze him. “Oliver, it looks like you got stitched up in a back alley, which isn’t really that far from the truth. You do know that the company pays for health insurance every month, right? It’s like a platinum plan too. People might be suspicious about why you didn’t use it.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “That would actually be a really lame way for us to get made.”
He grimaced and hopped off the table, heading over to Sara. “Felicity thinks I’m ugly now."
Sara grinned up at him, her eyes taking in the jagged new stitches as Diggle continued wrapping her ribs. “Hmm, she's crazy," his girlfriend teased. "I like a man with scars.”
He leaned over and kissed her gently before holding out his hand for the tape and taking over for Digg. Felicity turned away, picking up the bloody debris from the table and making sure it was properly disposed of before disinfecting the table thoroughly. There were plenty of things to do so that she wouldn’t have to watch the two of them. Not that she was avoiding looking. Not at all. She was fine with their relationship. Really. She just didn’t need the front row seat.
Diggle came to stand by her. "Why don't you head home? I think we've lost them for the night."
She looked up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Sara was now sitting on the edge of the table, Oliver standing between her legs with his arms looped gently around her shoulders. The former assassin’s hands were running up and down his sides and they were whispering quietly together.
She nodded. Home was exactly where she wanted to go. Home was where the alcohol lived. "We should talk about Roy, though. I'm worried."
"We all are."
"Tonight was different, Digg. He's been out of control before but he's never just attacked any of us. He could have killed them."
"But he didn't." Oliver's voice was low, but firm as he interrupted. "As bad as it was, he stopped when he realized he’d hurt Sara."
"But he still hurt her," Diggle cautioned, "and you didn’t exactly walk away scot free either."
"It's the Mirakuru, not him," Sara said, gently brushing off Digg’s concern. "He’s upset. We need to figure out a way for him to focus his emotions. He’s got to channel that anger somewhere productive or else, I don’t know,” she sighed. “We might need to play cupid and get him back together with Thea."
Oliver shook his head. "Not going to happen. She thinks he was cheating."
Well, that was interesting in Felicity’s opinion, seeing as Roy really only knew like four other people aside from Oliver’s sister and she and Sara were two of them. "With who?" Felicity asked nervously.
"It’s that girl he and Thea have been hanging around with. You actually know her," Oliver said, turning back to look at his girlfriend. "Your friend, Sin."
Sara cocked her head in surprise. "Sin? Really?"
Oliver nodded.
"That’s weird.” Sara smiled knowingly. “I'm pretty sure Sin's a lesbian."
That was also interesting to Felicity. "Oooh, so were you guys dating?"
Diggle and Oliver turned to her with almost identically shocked expressions on their faces. She didn't know what the big deal was. It seemed like an obvious question to ask since the girl had been the only person Sara trusted when she first came to town. Although, maybe Sin was a bit young.
Sara didn't seem bothered. "No, it's just kind of what I thought."
"Well, that's not definitive, really. I mean, we thought," she lifted a hand and indicated back and forth between her and Diggle, "you were a lesbian, too."
"Leave me out of this," Diggle said under his breath, taking a step away from her.
“What?” She asked him before turning quickly back to Sara. “I’m just saying. I was kind of surprised when you and Oliver got back together, but not because you'd only been back in town for five minutes. It was because, for like three of those five minutes, you sort of had a girlfriend. The whole complicated past thing didn’t cross my mind until later.” She looked at each of them. “Is that wrong for me to admit?"
Oliver folded his arms over his chest, his mouth opening and then closing as if he was trying to decide if Sara's honor needed defending or not. She could understand that it might be an awkward topic for him, but Diggle was looking at her like she’d been speaking in tongues. “What? Am I the only one that remembers the hot assassin ex girlfriend with a serious scorched earth policy and a Cirque du Soleil routine? Because, that was a thing that totally happened." Sara’s eyes narrowed at her a little. "Not that I'm saying you're a lesbian now. Or that you aren't. I don't know how all that works, exactly. But I’m not judging. Sexuality is fluid, right? Oliver could probably get lots of lesbians to experiment a little. Or straight guys, even."
Everyone just stared at her for a moment but then Sara grinned. “Is that true Digg?”
Diggle inhaled sharply. "You ladies have no idea what we get up to,” he deadpanned.
Oliver looked at both of them, seemingly shocked that they would have fun at his expense. “Let’s move on.”
"Okay,” Sara said, gingerly rising from the table. “Leaving the spectrum of my sexuality aside for a moment, you should talk to your sister, Ollie. Tell her you saw Sin here tonight and she was playing for the other team or something."
Oliver shook his head. "I like Roy,” he began, “but I'm not exactly upset that my sister is no longer dating a guy who's been dosed with Mirakuru. I vote we find another way to keep him in line."
Sara placed her hand on Oliver's arm. "His love for Thea is the only way we’ve kept him from spiraling, Ollie. You know that. Love keeps him grounded. We’ve seen that before."
Felicity considered Sara's words. "I wonder if we could just dose him with something that would mimic the emotion?"
"Like what?" Oliver asked.
"I don't know, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin...those are all things that flush our system when we fall in love. It's not an ideal solution, but drugs like Prozac, or something a little less kosher like MDMA, might bring about that euphoric feeling and keep him in line."
Diggle grunted. "I'm saying it right now, just so there isn't any confusion later. The black man will not be the one out there scoring drugs for this little science experiment."
Sara nodded. "I could probably find some MDMA upstairs. I'm sure someone's got to be selling."
Oliver shook his head. "As the owner of that club, I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that. Felicity, check in with the lab at QC to see if they have anything we can work with before we make plans to score drugs off the street."
Felicity nodded and then walked over to her computer. "I'll see what's available to us, but I don't know how I'd justify requisitioning anything like that from the lab. And the stuff they sell on the street isn't exactly what we'd be looking for. You never know what it's cut with. I’m sure I can find something better once I start looking into it, though.” She sat down, pulling the keyboard towards herself. “Of course getting him to take whatever we find is a whole other issue. We might have to break out the tranq darts again.” She thought of Barry for a moment as she began typing. He’d been a very good sport about them knocking him out, but Roy would probably not be. Oliver came up behind her and watched quietly for a few minutes, which he knew drove her nuts. She turned and gave him a look. “Can I help you?”
"What are you doing?" He said, leaning down to look more closely at the screen.
She was going on the deep web, but Oliver wouldn't even understand what that meant. "Don't worry about it."
“Are you hacking into the QC lab’s system?”
“No. And I wouldn’t call it hacking if I did, seeing as I helped design it. That would just be checking in.”
“So what’s this?” He pointed at the screens that were basically just computer code. “Some sort of hacker Google?”
“You know that doesn’t exist, right? Like hacker Google is not a thing. Everyone just uses Google.”
His voice had an edge to it. "Felicity."
If it hadn’t been so late she might have walked him through it all. But it was way past her bedtime and she just wanted to go home. She’d tell him another time. "Don’t worry, Oliver. I've got this."
***
The thing about the deep web was that every interaction was risky. You could be talking to a fellow hacker, but you could also be talking to the FBI, a pervert, or a drug dealer. That part would be helpful in finding the MDMA if they needed it, but the drugs weren't the reason she was there.
It had only been about a week since Roy had attacked Oliver and Sara, but Felicity had been researching Mirakuru on the less family friendly side of the internet since the very first time Oliver had mentioned it. Not wanting to attract any attention, she’d been excessively careful. For months she'd been treading lightly, just sort of poking around casually to see if there was any information on it at all. She’d read though page after page of leaked documents from militaries and pharmaceutical companies around the world, looking for any sort of super soldier like programs or side effects. There wasn't much, but there were enough breadcrumbs to let her know the information was out there waiting if she ever decided to step out of the shadows.
The call from Officer Lance that afternoon had forced her to accept that the need for an answer finally outweighed the need to remain undetected. A man in a red hood had been involved in an incident at the pier the previous night and there’d been a fatality. The dead man was a bad guy, some sort of drug dealer who also dabbled in human trafficking, so Felicity wasn’t exactly torn up about it when she erased the surveillance footage, but it still left her uneasy. Murder was murder, there was no way around it.
The way she saw it, Roy was not getting better. No one really wanted to talk about it, but it felt to her like he was slipping away. Not that any of them had seen him long enough to make that kind of call. Oliver was frustrated, his spoiled rich boy side rearing its ugly head as soon as he realized he couldn’t just command Roy to appear. He and Sara had been fighting almost nonstop about what to do. Sara still thought Roy reconciling with Thea was their best hope, but Oliver wasn’t willing to use his sister. Now that there was a body count, Felicity couldn’t help but agree.
She kept her mouth shut, though because she didn’t have a better solution to offer. She slowly began to wonder if her caution had forced the research to take too much time. If she’d been a little less paranoid, she might have found something to help Roy and maybe he wouldn’t have killed someone. She couldn’t help but feel partly responsible. Every night Diggle, Sara, and Oliver went out looking for him, but they always came back empty handed or battered. She needed to get them something they could use, something that would make a difference when they found him again.
There had been one source, a hacker she’d been curious about for quite some time now. He seemed to know a bit more than he was letting on about Mirakuru in the few exchanges they had. She’d been able to do a bit of a background check on his handle and he appeared to be a standard anti-government nut job, who had gotten lucky when a source started feeding him classified materials from Japan. They hadn’t spoken in a while, but her gut was telling her that he had the answers she needed.
She reached out asking if he’d ever come across any information about successful treatments or even a cure for someone that had been given Mirakuru. 48 hours later there was a message waiting for her.
"Living in purgatory is no fun. You have 30 minutes to claim the solution you seek. Come alone."
It was a little heavy handed for her taste, but she’d always appreciated a hacker with flare. Diggle, Sara, and Oliver were all out chasing after Roy and it seemed silly to call them in just to meet with this dude. The address was in the Glades, she could be there and back in an hour or so. She wrote the address on a post it and stuck it on the corner of her computer monitor just in case, but she figured there was no need to gather the troops.
She left without telling anyone.
***
The meeting place was a warehouse much like the one Oliver had turned into Verdant. It was dark and damp, with poor lighting and lots of corners to hide in. She shivered inside her black and white polka dot dress, wishing she’d worn a coat. Or pants, actually. The more she mulled it over the more sense pants made. Always wear pants to a clandestine meeting, she thought with a smile. She would definitely add it to the sidekick rulebook she'd been compiling for Barry. Not that Barry would really need to know that rule. He probably wore pants to every meeting, clandestine or not. Still, it was best to be thorough.
A man stepped out of the shadows and as soon as her eyes settled on him she realized the magnitude of her mistake. He was big, bigger than the computer geek type she’d been expecting. In fact he was built just like Oliver and Diggle were, and walked as if each muscle was a weapon he knew exactly how to use. That wasn’t what really scared her, though. No, it was the creepy, angular, gold looking mask and full body armor he was wearing that set off the alarm bells. It suddenly seemed incredibly stupid to not have told Oliver where she was going. She reached into her purse, trying to find her phone.
“Hello, Miss Smoak.”
He had some sort of accent, but she couldn't quite place it. She raised her chin as her finger’s wrapped around the plastic case of her cell. “How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you. Everything about him.”
She willed herself to remain calm. “Him who?”
“Our friend the Hood. Or is it the Arrow now? I’ve always just called him Oliver Queen. He’s an old friend.”
Felicity swallowed nervously. “Oliver Queen is my boss, but what does he have to do with any of this?” She turned on her heel, trying to remember exactly how far the exit was, and pulled the phone from her bag. She tried to unlock it, but she mistyped the passcode.
The man was behind her before she could make a second attempt, his hand wrapping around her own tightly. He moved in close, the mask cold against the shell of her ear. “Now, now. That’s no way to treat someone who’s trying to help you.”
She spun around, pulling her arm from his grip. “Is that what you’re doing? Because it feels more like you’re threatening me.”
His head cocked. “Beauty, bravery, and brains.”
“So you are threatening me then?” She swallowed nervously. “Because I'm not someone that always needs to be right.”
“I don’t see it as a threat at all. I want to give you what you’re looking for, but I need something first.”
Her heart pounded erratically in her chest. "What?"
"Nothing you'll give."
He raised his fist and the world went black.