Chapter Text
“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
Summer of 2013
She’s been staring at this screen for weeks, and it’s not getting any easier. Usually projects like this thrill her, usually it’s exciting to wait and watch and hack. This time, however, this time it’s not.
Something’s different about this project, this search. Something makes it harder to not let her mind wander, ton to be absurdly frustrated every time a result pops up as negative. Something is making her more emotionally attached to this than she should be. And she doesn’t know what it is.
“Lies.” A voice says, one that sounds a lot like her own. And it must be really late, Felicity thinks, and she should probably go to sleep and stop watching Doctor Who, because she should not be hearing voices. “You know exactly why this one’s different.”
Maybe Doctor Who is the reason she so readily accepts an image of herself that is not quite her reflection staring back at her. Maybe she’s just too tired for her conscious to fight against the woman sitting on the plush chair near her bed who looks just like her. Shorter hair, slightly tanner, but still most definitely her.
“Who are you?” she asks, anyways, slowly looking up from the screen of her laptop in the 3 a.m. darkness of her room, trying to blink away the woman staring back at her.
“You. Er- me. Well, us, I guess. Can’t tell you too much because space-time continuum and all that. Ray was pretty clear about that."
Felicity shrugs it off as some hallucination caused by her latest caffeine crash and the fact that she hasn’t slept in three days. She sighs, giving in to the craziness of it all and playing along. Might as well get some answers out of her future self before she wakes up from this stupid dream.
She raises an eyebrow. “And what exactly are you suggesting makes this different?”
Older Felicity fixes her with a look that says are you kidding me right now? before answering simply, “Because it’s him.”
It’s true and Felicity knows it. She’s been trying to ignore the fact for a month, going through the procedure as she would to look for any generic missing person. As if this were just another job. Just another mission. As if he were still here.
She looks away from the heavy stare of the woman across from her, up at the ceiling. The same ceiling she’s been staring at late at night ever since he disappeared and left her with too much money and not enough answers. She’s been considering taping a world map on her ceiling, at least that way she can keep thinking when she’s not sleeping. She could keep trying. It’s the least she could do for him.
“Him,” she begins, with an exhale, before shutting off the television and letting her neck rest against the rim of the couch. “What did I ever do to deserve him?”
“You took a job in California when you had a better offer from Wayne Enterprises.”
Felicity laughs, and it’s too dry for the amount of wine in her system. Apparently this mirage of herself knows more about things than she does right now. “Oh yeah. Why did I do that again?”
Other Felicity just smiles. “You missed your family.”
Well that was a truth bomb. A true truth bomb, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t punch her in the chest and make the space behind her eyes throb.
"Well, I guess I have a new family now. If you can consider someone who seems to care about you and then leaves you all alone with a million dollars and no answers. Except, you know what? That actually sounds a lot like my father minus the money so that's fantastic. Because that means I’m in love with my father so…”
She gets an eyebrow raise in response before what she’s just said fully hits her. There’s a long pause as she contemplates what this means
“I’m in love with him, Felicity lets out a bitter laugh. “Well that makes a whole lot of sense.”
“Yes, you are.” Her reflection smiles.
“I’m so screwed, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.”
“What do I do?... With all this? Should I keep looking? Does he even want to be found? Did I spend all that money re-designing the foundry for nothing?”
“No spoilers.”
“You know, just because you’re being all River Song doesn’t mean you have to act like it too.”
“How drunk are you?”
“Drunk enough to know that you’re not real.”
“But not quite drunk enough to forget it if I tell you where he is, huh?”
“That would be nice. Telling me where he is. Because he’s not here, I can tell you that. Whatever lie he told Walter and his mother about skiing in the alps is false, because he’s not there, or in Italy, or at any of the numerous estates the Queen family owns, even the ones off the record that his father apparently liked to use to screw interns. None of which I can tell him, by the way, not just because he’s too stubborn to ever hear the cold hard truth about his family, but because I CAN’T FIND HIM!”
So great, now she’s screaming at a hallucinated reflection of herself who, of course, has shorter hair just a slightly different shade of blonde and is wearing the kind of dress she’d love to own but never has because everyone knows dresses that look that well made cost much more than her salary, because she obviously hates herself too much to even imagine herself correctly. Correctly being the mess that she is, with her unwashed hair up in some disfigured braid-bun thing, her back aching from the hours she’s spent hunched over her laptop in her bed, and her nails currently bare of polish and bitten to stubs from stress.
“You remember those rich boys? The ones who would come into the the casino when mom was working, and they would order fries and burgers and shakes and buy the tourist crap but everyone knew they were rich because they wore Rolexes and tipped too much and you asked her about why they'd go to a run down casino outside of the strip and she said..."
"Because all rich boys want sometimes is to get away from their parents money." Felicity finishes. "But, he could be anywhere then. Everywhere is away from his family's money."
"But he doesn't know everywhere..."
"He knows the island..." she whispers. "He's at the island, isn't he?"
She looks back to where the image of herself was standing, but instead she finds something more akin to a mirage. Little parts of her fade in and out of existence until she just...fazes out.
Felicity rubs her eyes and tells herself it's time for her to go to bed. She can call Dig with the good news in the morning.