Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Felicity Smoak dashes across the rain-slicked street, cursing under her breath for trusting someone who calls himself CountV of all things. The initial intel checked out, but she waited at the meet-spot by the loading docks for over an hour, and the joker hadn't shown. Now it's after midnight in a horrible part of town, only two miles away from the yawning crater of last month’s earthquake. The small can of pepper spray jitters slightly beneath her fingers when she flexes them nervously.

She is never this trusting, but it has been so long since she had a solid lead on Cooper...

A shadow separates from the corner ahead. A flickering street lamp chases lightning across silver studs in the thick brow-ridge of the six-foot lump of muscle approaching her. Maybe if she asks nicely and smiles, he'll help her to her car two blocks away. Or maybe he'll tug her into the alley at her right and -- that isn't an option.

Felicity stops that line of thought and makes a quick calculation of velocity and distance. She's faster; the thug is still fifty yards away. She cuts into the alley and picks up her pace.

After one minute, 153 heartbeats, and 202 steps, she dives into the shadow of a ripe dumpster and tries not to breathe. She strains to hear his footsteps over the pulse of blood in her veins, and risks edging a single eye around the corner after pulling her dark hood low across her pale face.

A second later, the man strides past the mouth of the alley, not even glancing this way. His head bounces in time to the apparently frenetic music in his large headphones, and he pauses to shuffle a quick dance step. This guy is certainly unconcerned about his safety in this part of town, but his size and the flash of gunmetal under his leather jacket may lend him some confidence.

Felicity presses her forehead against the cold, scared metal of the dumpster and swears that any future meeting will be set for noon in a nice Starbucks.

She lets the man's footsteps fade before hustling away.

One half block to go towards the security of her Mini Cooper, but a scream of tires and an angry horn echoes off the black buildings and encourages her to stick to the shadows. She darts across this final street and into the alley again. Forcing herself to step quietly and slow her breathing, Felicity is halfway to Ash street before she hears it.

Someone is struggling.

A gurgle bubbles up from a dark doorway. The dull orange sodium lamp hiccups overhead, and she's pretty certain she doesn't want to see whatever is happening behind the crates stamped with “this end up” arrows pointing the wrong way.

Then a voice gasps, “Help.”

And she can't not. It's not in her to run and save herself.

So Felicity peeks around, staying low.

She's just in time to watch the comically large knife plunge down between the silver buttons of the cop's uniform. She's just in time to watch his cap with the large silver badge catch a light like a miner's lamp before it topples off the stunned man's head. She's just in time to catch the officer's eyes as the light behind them dims and his words make final sounds like “Nnnnugh” and “Rrrun.”

And it's probably because she is puzzling over those sounds that she misses the fact that the bald man in the bomber jacket with the bloody knife is turning towards her.

Felicity yelps, peddling backwards, and slips on something foul. She falls on her tailbone because both hands are busy catching the forearms of the mad man lunging at her.

The little red cylinder of mace rolls three feet away. It might as well be miles.

He will kill her. Oh god, this is how it ends.

No.

She bares her teeth.

Felicity goes wild. All pretense at self-defense from her Take Back the Night training flies from her mind in the frantic scramble. She wants to claw out his eyes. She twists her hips. Her head smacks into the cement ground. Her steel-toe boots connect with something flesh, and he grunts, but he is still pressing down. He is so heavy. Her biceps ache. The knife tip is inches from her left eye. The sharp point drops closer even as she arches away.

She manages to buck him off balance and grab at the handle, and they are both clinging to it while her black nails dig into the leather of his gloves. His dark eyes are bloodshot and desperate. His strength is flagging.

She needs to make trouble, be a bother. She will not give up. She stretches sideways, opening her jaw, ready to Mike Tyson his ear off if that's what it takes to keep on living.

And it works!

He jumps off her and starts running. Felicity gapes after him as he plants one foot on a pipe and makes a grab for the ladder on the building's side, scrambling into the iron web of a fire escape until he is only a blur of motion in the flash of blue and red lights.

She blinks. Processing the sirens now, she realizes that is why he ran.

The cops are here.

She is safe.

“Face on the ground! Now!” The commands ring out from behind her as Felicity stumbles to her feet. Her arms fly up in the automatic pose of I surrender.

“Drop it!” A second cop barks. “Drop the weapon!”

Weapon?

The bloody knife falls in slow motion as the cops sweep in, guns still drawn and pinned on her.

“I didn't...” Felicity whispers, only to have the wind knocked from her as a female cop delivers a kick across her knees. Felicity falls on all fours, looking from the knife to the enraged officer shaking his head with a finger pressed to the murdered cop's neck.

“You have the right to remain fucking silent, bitch.” Felicity listens to the rest of her profanity ladened Miranda rights in shocked silence. Sticky cement presses against her cheek as the cop digs her knee into Felicity's back and tightens the handcuffs behind her.

“I didn't,” she gasps.

“What was that?” The cop's warm breath stirs the nape of her neck as she leans in to hear.

“I didn't kill anyone.”

A hacking sound proceeds a fat wad of spittle landing in front of Felicity's face.

“Tell it to the fucking judge, trash.”

You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. I am sentencing you to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Life in prison.

You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. Murder in the first degree.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

The words echo through Felicity's head on the first night after the trial, and every night that follows.

Thirty-two nights down. Only a whole life to go.

Felicity rolls over and faces the cinderblock wall, trying to block out the hall lights and find sleep. Mattress springs groan under the thin pad and scratchy blanket. Her cellmate snores blissfully above her, but Felicity will be lucky to get more than a few hours of rest.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you are near death, but that hasn't happened to her. Instead she reviews her life piece-by-piece while the tap drips slowly and Maude snorts and groans.

Felicity runs through the trial, through that night in the alley, through her meetings with her lawyer. It is all so wrong! How did it go so wrong?

She'd dropped out of MIT senior year, and most would call that a mistake. But it was clear no one was looking into Coop's death. He wouldn't kill himself. That was ridiculous. She'd told him she'd give herself up. Maybe this was all just the universe's way of putting this right. She hadn't gone to jail for the crime she had committed, so now she rots away for something she couldn't do in a million years.

The only fingerprints on the knife were hers. No one had looked for the bald man. No one had seen anybody else in the alley. She couldn't even explain why she was in Starling City in the first place. Her own computer safeguards had betrayed her, scrubbing servers when the police forensics guys tried to access her systems and erasing all traces of CountV.

Felicity wipes her silent tears with the back of her sleeve and struggles to find a bright spot in this bleak future of nothing.

She jerks at a clang, distant and dull, still not use to all the night noises of the women's prison. When the rustle of footsteps reach her, she rolls over, curious. Felicity waits, listening to hear which cell they stop at. No one has come this late – early? – before.

Maude snores on, so maybe it is not strange after all.

They are still coming, at least three people. It sounds like they will pass her cell, so she shuts her eyes and pretends to sleep. Felicity has learned that curiosity is not a virtue on the inside.

The rustling stops and metal slides against metal. A key inserted into a lock, Felicity thinks, pleased to have figured it out. Her eyes snap open when she realizes that it is her lock.

Four figures stand in front of her bunk, but none are any guards she knows. One is a man.

Wrong. This is wrong.

The door is open before she can get up. She presses her back into the corner, looking for something to use to defend herself, but there is nothing but a limp pillow.

“Wait. What do you want?” Felicity asks.

“Shush,” a brunette soothes, grabbing Felicity's right hand as her colleague takes the left. “It's over quick.”

But they are not holding her hands, they are pinning her wrists. The man grabs her ankles, and the last woman holds up a large needle.

“No!” Felicity pleads, “please!”

“Shush.”

“Huh, what's the noise?” Maude is awake.

“Go back to sleep,” the man barks.

The needle bites into Felicity's arm and the green-tinged liquid splashes ice through her veins.

“Shush,” the woman said.

“Wrong,” whimpered Felicity.

The blue hall lights dim.

Maude humphs above her, turning over.

Felicity starts to float, with a dark-haired snake woman drifting at her side.

“'Rooorg,” Felicity slurs. “I ddinn't.”

“Shussssssh,” says the snake. “Shusssssssh.”

White.

So bright.

This couldn't be the afterlife. She hurts too much.

Silence.

Her head is full of cotton balls, but her fingers feel linen and leather. She is strapped down.

Felicity's eyes snap open. White on white on white: the white round ceiling reflects the bright white lights set in white tiled walls. The dark strands of her hair streak across her field of vision as she tosses her head up, trying to sit, but leather straps hold her down. Her wrists are cuffed and bands cross her body -- chest, hip, and thigh -- holding her to a white metal hospital bed.

Oh, god.

Her breath rattles out a tattoo of terror as she traces the line of an IV, taped to her arm, running past her head. She tilts her head back, pressing her crown into soft pillows, but she can't see the IV’s source.

She screams then. Screams and kicks and begs and cries. No one comes.

A chime sounds behind her.

So tired.

Her arms are so heavy. It's too bright; her eyelids drift closed.

“Good morning.” The voice holds a smile. It's so nice, deep, and low.

It's morning?

The pressure is gone from her wrists, chest, hips, and legs.

There is an angel sitting at the foot of her bed.

Felicity blinks, but he is still there: a Roman statue in living flesh with eyes colder than the heart of a glacier. Felicity can't decide if he is better fit to Eros or Gabriel, but this angel is dressed in unrelenting black and his sandy hair is cropped close like a soldier. Ares or Lucifer is more like it.

The memories of her first waking in this horrible white room rush back, and Felicity rolls from the bed. She can’t contain the “Oouf” of air as she hits the hard, white floor, but she quickly spins onto her back, scuttling backwards until she hits a wall, reluctant to lose sight of this gorgeous, dangerous man.

“Who are you?” she demands.

“I'm not going to hurt you.”

Which is no answer at all.

He hasn't moved. He merely tilts his head and holds up empty hands, trying to placate her.

“What is this?” she tries again, her waving hands encompassing the circular white room with the bed in its center. There is a door behind him. The bed, the empty IV stand, and his chair are the only furniture. She needs information before she can act.

“You're not in prison any more.”

Well, obviously. He speaks slowly, as if to a child. If he really is the immortal incarnation of lust or God's judgement, then that's fine. But Felicity's head is slowly starting to clear, and as nice as his shoulders look in that fitted black suit jacket, he is flesh and blood and he can seriously stop patronizing her right about now.

He stands up slowly placing his palms flat on the mattress. His gentle smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “The world thinks you're dead.”

“What?”

“Suicide.” He nods, moving around the bed. So much for that barrier, but Felicity isn’t going to circle with him, not if it puts her back to the only door in the room. So she stays on the floor and tracks his movements as he closes in.

He smiles again, and his teeth are too perfect between his too perfect lips. “This is your funeral.” He passes her a 8 by 10 glossy print in black and white, still warm from the inside of his coat. Felicity shakes off that sensation and that of the brush of his fingertips across her hand. She focuses instead on the picture. A row of white headstones march across a lonely field.

“Mom.” Felicity's voice breaks as her fingers touch the small blond woman at the edge of the frame. It's the first time she's seen Donna Smoak in three years and her face is buried in a giant handkerchief. However, the black mini-skirt is a dead giveaway.

“Row 8, plot 30,” the angel says helpfully.

Felicity glares at him. He is unfazed, so perhaps she should work on her death gaze.

“We've decided to give you another chance,” he says. He smoothes his lapels as he stands straight and gestures to encompass more than this tiny room. “This is where you'll train. This is where you'll learn. After two years, if everything goes well, you'll work for us.” Again he smiles and again it doesn't reach his eyes.

He is too, too pretty. It's a shame he's insane. Play along, Felicity.

“Why me?” She presses her back to the cold tile wall and tries to look small.

“A woman with your looks and genius who can kill in cold blood...”

Why will no one fucking believe her?

“I didn't!” Felicity screams. It’s too much. “I didn't kill anyone!”

He looks disappointed and unimpressed as she sobs. His sympathy has been feigned from the start. He turns towards the door. He's going to leave her alone in this cold hell.

Rage shoots through Felicity. Heat sweeps her from chest to cheek, and her fingers flex. She moves without thought, bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. Her hands close around the bar of the IV stand, swinging it in an arc aimed right at the back of his smug head.

He spins faster than a top, catching the metal pole with a twisting motion which breaks her grip in an instant. One hand answers her swinging arm while his leg hooks her knee and he brings them crashing to the floor in a controlled takedown.

Now his body presses into her from chest to thigh. The fresh mint of his breath washes over her face, and his blue eyes pin her mind as easily as his hands hold her forearms to the floor.

He is so close to her. Stubble dusts his perfect jawline, and a stray wisp of desire makes her want to lick it off. She bites back an hysterical giggle. He focuses on the action of her teeth and lower lip, and they both make eye contact again, but this time it's softer. When he starts to speak, she finds herself lifting her head to be closer to his deep voice, even though she can feel the rumble of his words through the vibrations of his chest, echoing through her bones.

“Felicity,” he tastes the syllables of her name on his lips with the smallest flicker of his tongue before he continues. “When you attack someone from behind, go for the kidneys. It disables and they can't fight back.”

Smooth as sin, he rolls off her as his meaning sinks in, and she feels the warmth of a blush flood her cheeks even as the rest of her chills at the loss of his body.

He straightens his sleeve. “Consider that your first lesson.”

Struggling against humiliation and confusion, Felicity pushes up from the floor. “You can't keep me here.”

“We start tomorrow morning.” He is unconcerned and unmoved as he adds, “Five am.” The door is already half open, and there is only darkness beyond.

“Wait.” She’s really proud that the word comes out without a ‘please’ attached.

But Felicity is amazed when he actually stops. Again she refuses to beg. “Tell me your name.”

He tilts his head slightly, and her imagination puts a glint of humor in his eyes though his mouth stays flat. “You can call me Oliver.”

She flattens her feet to the cool ground as she looks up from her place on the floor. “What happens if I refuse, Oliver?” Because this is insane, and she can’t; she won't.

“Row 8, plot 30.” The clipped response punctuates by the slam of the heavy metal door.

Pressure locks hiss behind him as Oliver moves silently down the dark corridor and slips into the room next door.

A tall man with dark skin stands observing Felicity through the array of monitors that watch over Intake. His massive arms cross over the front of his black tee, and his mouth is set along a disapproving line. Oliver ignores the stance as he moves to a wall unit and taps a sequence into the keys, bringing up the relevant research files.

“It’s not right.” John breaks the silence after less than a minute.

Oliver’s lip quirk at the predictable nature of Section One’s master-at-arms. “It’s standard procedure.”

“I don’t care what this girl scores on an IQ test; she’s not Section material. Her adrenaline is spiked to hell and back even with all that crap they pumped into her. She’s not a fighter. Who the hell approved her recruitment?”

“Doesn’t matter now.” Oliver refuses to turn and engage with the man he silently agrees with. Instead he studies his new trainee closely.

Felicity has drawn into herself, her narrow arms wrapped around her knees, her tar-black head resting on top of them. Under the thin white tank top, a shuttering ripple moves down the fragile curve of her spine. She is crying. Perhaps her facade of confidence was a fluke.

“Of course it matters!” John invades his peripheral vision. “I’d like to crack open their head and see what stupid looks like.”

Oliver smirks.

John continues, “Look at her, man. How are we gonna teach a little goth pixie to march to Section’s drum?”

“Her attack wasn’t too bad,” Oliver offers. “Only ten percent of recruits use the pole.”

John snorts. “Yeah, because most recruits are idiots.”

“I take it you were one of the ten percent?”

“Son, I threw the bed.”

Oliver looks fully at the older man and only years of training keeps the surprise from his voice. “It’s bolted down.”

“Well, yeah. Now.”

Oliver inclines his head in new respect.

“But look,” John pulls up a video on a sub-screen, rewinding to the point of Felicity’s attack. “She’s swinging a wide arc at the top of your head. At best, that would disorient for a few seconds. This girl has no combat sense at all.”

Oliver counters with the file he’s been examining: crime scene photographs saturated with red. “She gutted a trained man almost twice her size.”

John’s eyes dance in disbelief between the file and the monitor feed. John’s thoughts play across his face until his lips tighten and his eyes dart darkly toward Oliver.

Oliver nods slightly enough to go unnoticed on any security feed, but he silently confirms John’s conclusions. Oliver follows it with a casual shrug, shutting down the case history files and bringing up the initial physical profile.

“You’ll be taking charge of Felicity’s combat training.”

John balks. “You’re normally a lot more hands-on with your new material.”

Oliver meets his gaze calmly until John breaks the contact and rubs his hand over his eyes and forehead. “Okay,” he agrees wearily, “what does she need?”

“Begin with self-defense and strength-training.” As he speaks, Oliver activates John’s clearance on the relevant files. “Build up her reflexes, hone her agility. Teach her the targets for subduing a larger opponent.”

John snorts at the last instruction. “All things covered in the basic group lessons.”

“From which the low performers are culled within a month.”

John stands silent as Oliver methodically closes all subsidiary windows until Felicity’s hunched body fills the wall of monitors. Oliver’s face betrays no emotions.

“You really think she can hack it here?” John asks.

Oliver closes his eyes for the space of one breath before looking back over his shoulder at the other man. “Help her, John. Help her survive.”

The request set John back on his heels. He nods his acquiescence, gaze falling on the screen with new wonder, but his questions remain unspoken as he leaves the room. Before the door falls shut, he sticks his head back in.

“Oliver?”

“Yes?”

“I was in the field when you were brought in. Heard you made it into the corridor. Only one to ever get that far.”

“Yes.”

“How did you do it? Did you use the pole?”

“No.”

“Then how —”

“— I struck from behind and snapped the trainer’s neck.”

“Shit,” John breaths.

“He got sloppy.”

“Right. Forget I asked.”

Oliver nods absently, already focusing back on Felicity as the door seals shut behind John.

All this time, Felicity has been curled in a ball, occasionally shaking, but she is still now, her head raised an inch above her knees. Slowly, she crawls to the side wall and the faint outline of an access panel. With greater speed and a glance towards the obvious camera, Felicity darts to the bed and works free the metal needle of the I.V. She makes short work of the small screws and begins to manipulate the electronics behind the wall.

Oliver finally lets loose the smile he’s fought since she first opened her eyes as he slowly cheers her on. He knows that she can not overcome the guards outside, can not access sensitive systems from the closed loop of Intake, but this is a side he always looks for and so rarely finds.

It takes one to know one, but Felicity Smoak is a survivor.