Chapter Text
Nervously Felicity tapped the tip of her pen against her desk, her eyes never leaving the list of people on her tablet while her mind tried to go back in her memory as far as she could.
It had been a little more than two weeks since she had traveled back in time. She still couldn’t quite understand how she had come from the cold floor of a cell in Nanda Parbat in 2015 back into her first apartment in Starling City in 2008. It still felt unreal to be 19 years old again and to have just started working at Queen Consolidated, two weeks earlier than in her first 2008 by the way.
It was strange. And weird.
At least she had been able to save Oliver from going on the Gambit just as she had saved Sara and Robert from doing so. Malcolm Merlyn had been killed, the Undertaking stopped which had saved a lot of innocents’ lives. Unfortunately the thought of how she had managed to do that, who she had asked for help to save the them still made her feel sick. She was probably never going to understand why of all powerful people in the world it had to be Ra’s al Ghul who had helped her defeating Malcolm Merlyn.
Shaking her head she focused her attention back on the list. Although she had added more and more names of people she had to ever save since she had started creating the list three weeks back Felicity was sure as hell that she had forgotten someone or rather several ones. Every time she read the list a little bell in her head started ringing, telling her that she had indeed forgotten people who needed saving.
On the top of the list of course were Slade Wilson, Yao Fei and Shado. Since they were on the island right now they were the ones in acute danger. She had already tried to find a way to save them, but hadn’t come up with anything good yet. Every wrong step could mean their death and she couldn’t risk that.
They had been Oliver’s friends when he had been on the island. He wouldn’t have made it out of that hell alive if it hadn’t been for them. They had helped him and protected him and trained him and even if Slade had turned out to be an enemy in the end he had helped Oliver become a fighter at first. So now she needed to save them before Yao Fei and Shado were going to be killed and Slade was going to turn a monster, assumed that he still was going to become Deathstroke even if Oliver wasn’t there to be blamed for Shado’s death.
After she had made sure that they were save Felicity was going to figure out who should be saved next. There was Andrew Diggle and Akio Yamashiro. Those were the two next on the list because just like Slade, Shado and Yao Fei they were connected to people she really loved.
Then there were all the other innocent people who had been killed or who had suffered, people she didn’t feel as connected to as to the ones above, but still knew she needed to save them by bringing down their killers before they were able to kill them. There was Camille Declan for example whose husband had been accused of her murder when it really had been her boss who had done it. Oliver had brought that to light before she had joined the team.
A team would be what she needed right now, she thought with a sigh, holding her pen between her teeth while scrolling through the list once more. She had no idea how she was going to manage that all on her own. She wasn’t a fighter like Oliver had been and-
“Miss Smoak?” she heard and immediately Felicity’s head snapped up, finding a pair of very familiar baby blue eyes looking back at her. “Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.”
His words made her grin like a Cheshire cat and in reaction to the loving gaze she was looked at with her heartbeat started fastening. No matter how often she had seen him looking at her like that by now, she still felt like a nerdy teenager with a stupid crush on the hot Quarterback or something.
Well, technically speaking she was a teenager because her body was that of a nineteen year old, but Felicity’s mind had aged before her time travel and that hadn’t changed after. Besides Oliver wasn’t as much of an adult as he seemed to be either. Sure, he was older than her, but he had just started to grow up, considering his lifestyle had lacked a lot of responsibilities of a normal adult so having a stupid teenager crush like something going on maybe wasn’t as inappropriate as it seemed at first sight.
“Yeah, of course, I know who you are. You’re-“
She interrupted herself before she could babble about the several dates they had had those last days and how they had kissed multiple times and maybe even about how they had had sex not long before he had infected his friends with a deadly virus and she had traveled back in time. But of course Oliver shouldn’t hear about the last of these things because he wouldn’t understand it and her coworker Sally who was observing them from the corner of her eyes shouldn’t know about any of this.
Hastily Felicity reduced the bright grin to a small and polite smile that was appropriate when you met your boss’ son at the office for the first time. After all it had been her decision to keep whatever they had together a secret. At least at work.
“You’re Mr. Queen” Felicity finally finished her sentence, clearing her voice.
It had been the first words she could have come up with and Felicity briefly wondered if she had traveled in time once again and was now in 2012 after Oliver had returned from the island and had asked for her help for the first time, but she knew she didn’t because they weren’t alone right now, Oliver was younger than he had been when she had first met him and he was wearing suit and tie now just like she was wearing something way more sexy that she had at that time.
“No, Mr. Queen is my father” he answered and Felicity needed to bite her tongue to not burst out into laughter, remembering those words from that first meeting, only with the use of present tense now and he didn’t even do it on purpose because he didn’t know anything about all the years she had lived through already before traveling back in time.
“Right, but you’re his son. So you’re a Queen” she said with a polite smile before she really registered the words. “I mean not a queen as in the Queen of England or something. Of course not… But your father is Robert Queen and you have the same surname so you are a Queen. Not that queen, but… I will just stop babble in three, two, one.”
She rolled her lips into her mouth, pressing them together and cocking her head at Oliver who obviously had to keep himself from laughing at her babble. Just yesterday he had told her how much he enjoyed when she babbled which seemed kind of ridiculous since in her mind it was just embarrassing, but Oliver had kissed her when she said that and had repeated the same words again.
Babbles had become worse it seemed. Felicity was scared that she might just say something that didn’t really fit to the time because there were so many little things she didn’t really remember. A few days back Oliver had asked her what movie she had last seen in the cinema and Felicity had to babble ten minutes until she just said that she hadn’t been to the cinema for years and couldn’t even remember the last movie she’s seen then.
One more reason why Oliver thinking her babbles were cute didn’t really make sense.
“I’m having some trouble with my computer and they told me that you were the person to come and see” he said, handing over his laptop to her. “I was at my coffee shop surfing the web and I spilled a latte on it.”
Funny fact about this very different version of 2008 – it still made her feel like she was reliving a lot of things. Of course there were distinctions because she had changed the course of some pretty big events and she had met people years before she had met them in the original run of time, but there were similarities that just couldn’t be ignored.
Only with difficulty she could swallow the words that were right on the tip of her tongue, ready to be said and she lowered her gaze to the computer which indeed looked like it had been bathing in a latte and wasn’t perforated with bullet holes like the first time he had brought her a laptop.
“Poor baby” she sighed and once again her head snapped up. She could feel the heat rise into her face as she looked at Oliver who had cocked his head and perked up his eyebrows. “I mean the laptop… of course. You’re not a poor baby… because you’re not poor… and not a baby.”
The last words were whispered and Felicity wished she could just take the stapler and staple her lips to one another. Optionally she could also sew them now that she knew that that was actually possible, but since she didn’t have the necessary supplies available the stapler would be the better choice for now. Unfortunately doing that would make her coworker Sally only stare more than she did already.
Sally was a nice busy very nosy woman. Felicity liked her although all her talk about possible affairs in the office and especially in the Queen family always made her feel a little embarrassed. Felicity didn’t want her to tell everyone at Queen Consolidated about this and create rumors so she really needed to switch on her brain to mouth filter soon before things could become even more embarrassing than they were already.
When Felicity dared to look up at Oliver once more, she saw him grinning and could tell that he was biting his tongue to be professional and not say something that would be against her wishes of keeping everything a secret for now. Barely controlling his face he turned towards Sally, saying: “Excuse me, I know it’s not your job, but I still can’t find my way through the company so could you please get me a cup of coffee.”
“Yes, of course” Sally hurried to say obviously being charmed by Oliver’s smile and hurried to leave the small office, leaving them alone. Ever since she had known that the young Queen sprout was staring an internship (that had been the official statement, but Felicity knew that Oliver’s job at QC was more to get to know the company, his future tasks and maybe even find something he could work on for the next years) she had been excited to find out if he was going to take a look to the IT department, too.
When Sally was far away enough to not be able to hear anything they said Felicity threw a short glance at Oliver who was still grinning.
“Why don’t you just deliver me from my misery?” she whined, hiding her face in her hands while Oliver just laughed. “Why am I not able to just say a normal sentence like every other person?”
“I thought it was very sweet” he said, stepping around her desk to press a kiss to her hair.
Felicity hastily ducked away. “No kissing at work, Oliver.”
He groaned, sitting down at the edge of her desk while she busied herself with his computer. It seemed like he had more likely bathed it in latte and not just spilled the liquid on it. She could tell from just looking that it was probably destroyed and all she could do was saving the data from the hard drive.
“Could you please explain to me once again why we are not allowed to kiss each other here?”
Felicity glanced at the door, making sure Sally wasn’t on her way back yet and still wasn’t going to hear any of this conversation.
“Because I am new in the company and you are my boss’ son. I don’t want people to think that the only reason I got the job was because I am sleeping with you.”
“We aren’t sleeping with each other so- That was not supposed to be a broad hint” he said hastily when she looked at him. “I understand that you want me to make sure that I figure out who I really am and who I want to be and not just run from one relationship to another. I enjoy spending my evenings with you without sex. I’m just saying that people can’t say you got the job because of sex if we aren’t sleeping with each other.”
“Of course they can, Oliver, and they will” she added with a look at him while working on removing the motherboard from his laptop. “And I don’t want that, not that early after I have started working here and not before we have found out what exactly we are and where this is going to.”
“Okay, then let’s have lunch today and we can define what we are” Oliver said.
Felicity rolled her eyes at him, making him laugh quietly because of course Oliver knew it wasn’t as easy as he had just said. They had just met two weeks ago or at least he had met her two weeks ago and he had wanted to flirt with her and then she had slapped him and then he had wanted an apology. Instead she had given him a mouthful, causing him to cancel his trip with Sara, breaking up with Laurel and accepting responsibilities for his life. He had wanted to go to China with his father, but then the whole crazy thing with Ra’s that Oliver didn’t really know about had happened and they had returned and she had kissed him and ever since they had spent a lot of time together, but still Felicity insisted on taking things slow.
They kind of acted like a couple with their kisses and touches and sweet little messages during the day and the almost domestic behavior when they were at her place and everything, but Felicity hesitated to actually call them anything more than friends. She was in love this Oliver and she needed him close to her which was why she had allowed herself to build anything more than friendship so soon in the first place, but he still had a lot to figure out since he had just started to create a new life and with that a new version of him.
To sum all of that up – things were pretty complicated between the two of them, especially for her since she knew about that past progress of Oliver and what they had had. It was all crazy and none of this was easy. A lunch date wasn’t going to resolve all the problems there were for both of them and considering Oliver’s crunched nose he knew that, too, even if he had no idea how serious the problems there were in the relationship they were working on really were.
After a few moments though Oliver’s lips stretched and his dimples were showing. God, why did his grin have to be so sexy that she felt herself melting by just looking at it?
“I can’t have lunch with you today” she finally sighed with a small smile. “I have to take care of your laptop atop on the usual work I have to do.”
“Dinner?” he suggested.
“Sure” Felicity answered smiling.
There hadn’t been a single evening since the day they had started to watch E.T. with Thea and Felicity had fallen asleep in his arms that they hadn’t eaten dinner together. Sometimes they had been out to small little restaurants, but most of the times he had just come over with take away and they had watched TV while eating or chatted to get to know each other better.
“I would really like to kiss you now” Oliver whispered roughly, making a shiver run down Felicity’s spine. His thumb stroked slightly over her forearm barely touching her at all.
“No kissing at work, Oliver” she repeated her words from before without looking at him.
“I know” he sighed. “I will just have to wait until tonight. How about I’ll take you out to that little Italian restaurant in Orchid Bay I told you about?”
“I’d like that” Felicity answered, looking up to smile at him briefly, but felt her eyes locked on his suddenly. It took her some seconds before she could look away. “Damn, no I want to kiss you, too.”
Oliver laughed at that and was just about to say something more when Sally returned, holding a cup of coffee in her hands.
“Thank you very much” he said to her, took the coffee cup and got up from Felicity’s desk. “I will leave you to your work now. Please just come up to my office if you’re ready with the data, Miss Smoak.”
“Sure, Mr. Que- Oliver” she corrected when he raised his eyebrows at her and he blinked at her before leaving.
Felicity watched him stroll down the corridor. The greatest difference between this version of Oliver and the version she had met after the island was the number of smiles and laughs they showed a day. This Oliver kind of smiled all day and he made jokes and he teased her and he was very sweet and still he was in some ways the same Oliver she had fallen in love with in the first place.
And that made it just harder for her to talk herself out of starting a relationship with him right away. She knew already that she wasn’t going to be able to hold on to her self-control for too long and would probably soon throw away every good intentions she had because fact was that she needed someone in her life to balance the tasks she had decided to undertake from the Arrow and she felt so close to Oliver that-
“Didn’t I tell you he’s hot?” Sally suddenly asked.
Felicity threw her a short look before she shrugged her shoulders and answered: “I don’t know. He’s okay I guess.”
“Okay?!” Sally almost screeched, making Felicity wince and glance towards the door to make sure nobody had heard her. “He’s not just okay, Felicity. And according to the way you practically undressed him with your eyes and babbled like you’ve never said a full sentence in your life, you know that he is more than just okay, too.”
“Okay, maybe he’s hot” Felicity replied, knowing that Sally was going to bug her about that until she agreed, but still blushed at her words.
Sally said some more things Felicity didn’t listen too much to before her coworker headed off to whoever’s office needed an IT specialist.
As soon as the door was shut behind Sally Felicity took a deep breath. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a second, trying to relax after that short time of exhaustion. She had never thought that working at Queen Consolidated while dating Oliver could be a problem, but it felt like it was. Well, maybe it was less of a problem and more of a very exhausting something.
Shaking her head she grabbed her tablet and opened the file to take another look at her list.
Yes, Slade, Yao Fei and Shado still were the ones to save first and since she hadn’t anyone for field work and even if she had the island was a way too dangerous place to just send a handful of people there. No matter how good they were trained, to fight off Fyers and his people on the island there was an army needed.
And the first thing to find out which army was going to be the best to fight them off, was to collect all possible information about the island, the people that were there and the weapons they had. After that she could decide on how she could go on with that.
Putting her tablet away she turned off some securities on her computer and started to hack into the A.R.G.U.S. server. She soon realized that their servers had much better security than those of the Merlyn Global Group. Of course they had, she thought with a sigh. They were a secret agency that did terrible, terrible things that needed really good security to prevent the state’s enemies from getting even as much as a sneak peek about their plans.
Felicity tried hacking into that server for some more minutes before she closed all windows and gave up. The computer here just wasn’t as good as the computer system she had set up in her apartment after Oliver had helped setting up the furniture or rather after Oliver had set up all the furniture and she had watched the play of muscles in his arms and back. Even if he wasn’t as muscular as he had been after the island his body was still nice to look at. But she was drifting away with that. Anyway, fact was with everything she knew about the future she had been able to set up a pretty good computer system.
Hastily she shook her head to get the image of Oliver’s naked chest out of her mind. She needed to think her plan through if she really wanted to save Shado, her father and Slade. And she did want to.
So after work she would head straight home and try to hack into the server from her computers there. She had done some upgrades, using her knowledge of the future to give her even better technologic equipment. Once she knew what exactly was planned and how they tried to achieve their goals she could decide on what to do.
All of this would be so much easier if Oliver had just told her more about his time on the island. If she knew more about the island and everything going on there she could maybe act sooner. But she couldn’t because Oliver hadn’t talked to her about it.
She knew the pain was going to come even before her chest started hurting. Since she had traveled back in time she had tried to not think too much about her Oliver back before her time travel. The hurt because of his betrayal was still there and it was still deep inside of her, right beside that other spot in heart her that missed her Oliver so much it hurt. So she tried to think less about that and more about this Oliver who had been a jerk at the beginning, but was a very nice and cute guy now.
“Still thinking about Oliver?”
Felicity winced at Sally’s words. She hadn’t heard her return to their office, but now she was there, grinning at her teasingly.
“What?” Felicity asked – a word she had used way too often since her travel back in time because she constantly felt like she lacked some information which should actually be impossible considering that she had knowledge about the future that nobody else had. Nervously she wondered whether she had said something while thinking about Oliver that could have led Sally to the conclusion that she had been thinking about him.
“Well, you smile like a woman deeply in love” Sally grinned exaggeratingly. “I guess Mr.-call-me-Oliver has charmed his way right through to you.”
Felicity stared at Sally for a few seconds before both of them burst out into laughter.
When she had met Sally – in the lack of a better word – originally they had become friends soon. Because even though Sally was nosy and even annoying from time to time she was a really easy person to like. In two months she was probably going to be offered a job in Gotham and would leave to work for Wayne Enterprise at least if things were going to go the way they had before.
“How would you feel about going out for a drink tonight?” Sally asked.
Felicity was about to say yes because she knew that making friends even if it was just for a short of time was probably a necessary thing to do if she didn’t want to cling to Oliver all the time or even worse end up pushing everyone away like her Oliver had done in benefit for his crusade.
She wanted to live up to Oliver’s legacy by recreating it. She wanted to save people just like he had, but she was going to do it her way. She was going to use her own weapons, her technological genius, to find the one hurting people and use her computers to take them out. But the greatest difference between how Oliver had done things and she was going to do them was that she wasn’t going to let her life be consumed by what she did.
Although she knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, she wouldn’t let her will to save people stop her from being with Oliver – if that was what he wanted – and she wouldn’t allow it to take over her whole life, letting it take away the things she wanted to have. She wasn’t going to sacrifice every bit of happiness she could have by that.
“Sorry, I can’t” she replied nonetheless, remembering her date with Oliver. “But we could go to lunch tomorrow.”
Sally nodded. “Sure.”
For a while both of them worked in silence. Working on saving the data of Oliver’s abused laptop – something she was definitely going to say a few things about when they had dinner tonight because abusing laptops like that hurt her deep in her soul – she tried to make out a few more things about how she was going to get Shado, Yao Fei and Slade off the island.
Certainly this was going to be one of the hardest things she would have to accomplish. She had been helping taking out criminals during her work for Team Arrow so she wouldn’t have too much problems to continue that even if she had to do the work alone, but this was something completely different because they were so far away and her opponent wasn’t some poor criminal or whatever, but a whole army.
“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” Sally asked, interrupting her thoughts. “I can work better with some music in the background.”
“Yeah, music would be nice” Felicity replied without looking up.
What she needed was some kind of easy case to get warmed up or something. Okay, that sounded weird even in her head because this wasn’t sports or something, but still she needed something to… she couldn’t quiet vocalize it, but she needed something that was going to give her back the feeling of what they had done. The last weeks even before her time travel had been very different from the normal night work because with Oliver not being there to help them but instead to fight them they hadn’t had that much time to do actual work against crime and the criminals they had had arrested had been little thieves or something, nothing to be too excited about.
Felicity sighed, making Sally look up, but she just shook her head and nodded towards her computer, rolling her eyes. Sally smiled, believing Felicity was just frustrated about whatever she was working on.
Sometimes she wished that whatever higher powers had sent her here could just give her a sign of what she had to do. Although she didn’t quite believe in destiny and all of that, Felicity refused to believe that she had been send here without any purpose. And if saving people was the purpose for her being here, then those higher powers could at least give her a sign of what she had to do.
“…for the third time in only one week. Until now he has gotten away with stolen goods presumably worth of several thousand dollars. Victoria Dylan was the second fatal victim after Xavier Tompson who had been shot at the second robbery two days ago. At his first robbery a dog was shot while its owners weren’t at home at the time of the crime. Detectives of the SCPD describe the criminal who hadn’t been identified yet as highly dangerous and assume that he will keep robbing private houses. A press conference is planned to…”
Frowning Felicity lifted her gaze to the ceiling almost expecting a golden light shining right on the radio. She had wanted a sign, she thought, and it looked like she had gotten one.
Whoever was planned to be the next victim, she was going to save them.