Chapter Text
It appeared as a warm caress on the small of her back. She felt it only because it’s appearance seemed to slow her racing heart as she walked toward the doors. It seemed like a shield against the eyes that followed her path–eyes filled with apprehension and rejection. For it was only on paper and in the movies where child geniuses inspired wonder and appreciation.
Thousands of miles from a home she couldn’t get away from fast enough. Amongst classmates at least five years her senior. No triple digit IQ was needed to tell her she was a pariah. A lost soul with no island of misfit toys in sight.
But there was someone. A soulmate.
And as she contorted in front of the mirror that night in order to glimpse the mark upon her back, her fears ebbed back. Because while she didn’t yet have sight of the shore, at least she had a tether.
And that was enough to survive.
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Felicity wasn’t quite sure when Cooper noticed the marks as he remained silent on the subject. However, she could feel his hand purposely move around each—she was gaining them with more frequency lately–as if touching them might irreparably scar him. But like a petulant child the marks would ache for attention and on nights when Cooper was gone, Felicity found herself on the roof of the dorm running her fingers over the pale brown numbers–as unassuming as a birth mark. They varied from ten to eleven digits total, but they were never more than a couple inches in length. As she ran her fingers over them in the silence of the Massachusetts night, she could swear that she could feel a warm hand being laid on her shoulder.
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After Cooper’s death, the marks followed the path of her thoughts and faded into almost nothingness. Not that they would have been noticed under her new iron mask of died hair and conservative clothes. Graduation came and went and everything--every emotion, every mark--remained buried under the babbles and sentence fragments that were the new Felicity Smoak.
Yet it seemed that the bond was unfazed by her grief and efforts, for the marks continued to appear--faint though they were.
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Despite their increased frequency, Felicity didn’t give them a passing thought as she ran circles around her superiors, gaining a spot on the CEO’s radar. Not even their sudden halt registered with her, although it was difficult to focus on much lately in the sudden frenzy at work that hearkened the miraculous return of the prodigal son.
It wasn’t until she was struggling to carry that same prodigal son into a dingy warehouse basement that she even remembered their existence. She had never been more thankful for the sight of blood, for it kept Mr. Diggle from noticing her sharp wince as a searing pain burned across her own shoulder. The pieces began to fall into place as continued to help stitch up the broken vigilante that laid on the table before her, silently cataloging the location of each scar on his body. Each one a physical mirror to the imperceptible digits on her skin.
Coordinates.
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When the building shook and the city that she had fallen in love with slowly fell apart, Felicity wished to go back to a time before her revelation. Before the universe had all but built a neon sign to announce that Oliver Queen was her soulmate. That a man who was desperate to save his city whatever the cost was her soulmate.
Because perhaps if she was still ignorant, she wouldn’t feel as if half her heart was running around outside her body facing certain death. And so the tears tumbled down her cheeks until she heard the crackle of his voice across the comms confirming that he and John had made it out of Merlyn’s hell alive.
Although she couldn’t forget, when he ran back to the place of his own hell she sure as hell tried. Tried to get back to a normal life. Tried to ignore the fact that she could find exactly where Lian-Yu was by looking on her own body. Tried to forget that she even had a soulmate.
The operative word being tried . . . because three months later she found herself jumping out of plane and calling her hero back to Starling City with a handful of reasons, not one of which was the truth.
< ————————————- >
And so began the first of months full of lying, ignoring and trying. She almost thought herself successful--after all she had learned from the best about concealing things under a mask--especially after Russia and Barry, she was finally in the clear. He might be her soulmate, but she had accepted the role as his friend, his girl Wednesday, his guide through the streets.
Except he had to open his mouth and tell her that he needed her, that she was his partner. Words that had her in and out of a tattoo parlor getting a design that was half impulse buy, half resignation to the hand the universe had dealt her.
It was a mark that she became so accustomed to that she almost didn’t recognize it when he stood in front of her asking her a question that failed to register. The small arrowhead was a pale brown--the color of her own marks--not the emerald green of the one on her own hip. But the design was unmistakable.
Once again, she was forced to tamp down her gasp as the universe hit her with a second undeniable truth. Oliver Queen was her soulmate. . .
and she was his.