Work Text:
“Is there anything I could say to stop this?”
He’s in the Arrow suit already, which is not exactly a vote of confidence. But Felicity hears the roughness in his tone, and the creaking of his leather gloves as he clenches his fists. So she reaches out to stroke her fingers across the bare skin of his bicep, as if she’s quieting a wild beast. Just because she won the argument doesn’t mean she has to make it worse for him.
Still, she just says softly, “No.” At the clenching of that stubbled jaw, she adds, “Oliver, I’ll be fine. Really—this is the easiest way.”
“But it’s not the only way,” he says. He’s making an effort not to sound petulant. “We’ve already established that physically breaking through the perimeter would be-”
“Not only a waste of energy, but a red flag that the vigilantes have been here and tampered with the data,” Felicity says, calmly. The others in the van say nothing, having heard this whole argument a few times by now—at a much louder volume. “This way, we’ll not only get the location of the shipment before HIVE can, but I can leave a tracer to their systems once they try to steal the data themselves.”
“If it goes according to plan,” Oliver grumbles, and despite the tension throughout his body, she can hear the defeat in his tone.
“That’s why your plan is still viable as a last resort.”
“Felicity…”
“I can still do things like this,” she says, firmly, and if any of them can sense the trembling in her voice, they’re kind enough not to react. “I need to… This is something I can do. Easily.” She takes a deep breath, as if to re-inflate the confidence that doesn’t come as readily as it used to; she refuses to let Darhk take one sliver of herself away.
In the back of the van, Oliver sits across from her, eyes searching across her face from within the darkness of his mask. She straightens her shoulders, meeting his gaze evenly. Does he see that this means something to her? That she can still contribute to the team this way?
“You’ll leave the comm on the entire time,” he says finally, and she resists the urge to break out into a grin. This is always how he opens his surrender, with demands—and she can give him this much, at least.
“I’ve already modified it to surpass their frequency jammers.” At this cue, Digg reaches over to hand her the earbud, which she has disguised as a miniature Bluetooth headset that cannot be questioned on a high-powered CEO. He gives her a look as he drops it into her palm, the steely nod of one soldier to another, not without a little concern of his own behind the stern expression. She gives him a tiny nod back; she’ll reassure them as much as they need, if they just let her do this.
“And besides, Curtis and I worked up a few prototypes of weapons that…” She can see instantly that this doesn’t reassure any of them, so she falls silent.
“I could still come with,” Oliver says, and when she glares at him, he holds up his hands in their green gloves and adds, “Not like this. As myself.”
“Why would I bring my fiancé to a business appointment?” she says, perhaps a little snidely, before reminding herself that he’s just worried about her—not doubting her. “Thank you, but no, they’re expecting the Palmer Tech CEO… and that’s it. There may be sensitive information exchanged; I don’t think they’d let you into the actual tour and test run anyway. I have to do this alone. And I can.”
It’s a simple statement of fact, not a gloat or an exaggeration, and it feels good to claim this. Maybe Oliver finally sees that, because something in his eyes shifts, and he nods firmly.
“Alright,” he says, as much to himself as to her.
“Your appointment’s in five minutes, Felicity,” Thea says from the front passenger seat. She’s in her Speedy gear, though with the hood down and a coat over it so she doesn’t attract any attention through the windshield.
“Ready?” Digg asks, maybe to her, maybe to all of them.
“Yes,” Felicity says. For Oliver’s sake, she squashes the bubbly feeling of excitement before it makes her sound chipper in the face of his discomfort.
“Okay, Oliver, back up from the doors,” Digg says before he steps out of the driver’s seat, coming around the back of the van.
Before he makes it all the way around, Oliver leans forward suddenly, cradling her face in his gloved hands and kissing her deeply. Felicity gasps at the unexpected move, though it really shouldn’t shock her to be kissed by her fiancé at this point. Still, the smell of the leather, the way the hood tips forward slightly to enclose them, the slight scrape of the seams as his thumb brushes across her cheek… and the Oliver of it all, as his soft lips move a little roughly against her own, seeking reassurances in the claiming of her bottom lip between his.
Then he’s pulling back abruptly, scooting into the shadowy depths of the van as Digg opens the back doors and hauls out the wheelchair—leaving Felicity a bit breathless and scatterbrained as her hands numbly reach for the seatbelt holding her in place. It takes her three tries to undo the clasp, and she can just make out Oliver’s smug smirk in the dark as she smoothes a few loose wisps of hair back into her ponytail.
“I’m trying to look professional here,” she hisses, adjusting her glasses with a glare that she can’t quite manage to keep pinned on those piercing blue eyes—somehow more intense than ever as they watch her from within that mask. His humor has faded, back to that tight-lipped concern, and her own half-baked anger slips away.
“I’ll be fine,” she says again, softly.
“Yes. You will.” There’s a little bit of the man she first fell in love with, grim and unyielding, staring back at her out of the darkness in this moment. If anything happens in there, stopping him from coming in after her will be like stopping an oncoming storm.
And if she’s supposed to fight the fluttering thrill that shivers through her from that image… well, she can’t.
Then Digg is leaning into the van, waiting for her to signal that it’s okay to lift her, and she forces herself to look away from Oliver’s brooding face. She wraps her arm around Digg’s neck, feeling the one arm he slides around her back… and only seeing the arm he braces beneath her knees. She tries not to let it feel strange, Digg holding her, as he sets her down into her chair with gentle efficiency.
Aware that they’re out in the street now and thus visible, she can’t give Oliver the small wave that she wants to—but she tightens her lips in a determined smile as Digg shuts the back doors of the van. The last thing she sees is Oliver’s face disappearing into shadow, eyes fixed on her.
“Is the comm working?” Felicity asks, as she runs her hands across the skirt of her dress, smoothing it into place and tugging the hem down to her knees. The earbud fits snugly into her right ear, hopefully unnoticed—or unremarkable, if seen.
“Yep,” Thea responds, her voice tinny in her ear.
Once he makes sure that she gets up the sloped curb on her own, Digg says quietly, “I’ll keep an eye on him. Just get in and get out.”
“Yes, sir,” Felicity says, and then more loudly for the benefit of the man approaching from the building, “Thank you, John, you may wait in the van. Perhaps it would be better to park around the corner until I’m finished here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Digg says with a solemn nod, and he slides around the side of the van. It’s sleek and black, upgraded enough not to raise too many eyebrows as the new transport for the Palmer Tech CEO. The fact that this one happens to be full of vigilantes is an unacknowledged perk.
Felicity wheels herself along the pavement to meet the man coming to greet her, who is already smiling over-graciously as he tries to look everywhere but at the chair. The representative for the data bank is a balding man in his forties, wearing an ill-fitted gray suit and reaching out a hand to shake hers as he approaches, though it twitches a bit uncertainly when she nears. She’s become all too used to that panicky look in people’s eyes as they try to figure out how to act around her. She has to lean forward a little to grasp it, but she gives his hand an extra-firm squeeze, as if to remind him (and herself) of her strength—and there’s much more of it now, in the defined muscles of her arms, as she propels herself towards the building at the man’s side.
“W-welcome, Miss Smoak,” the man says, giving his name as George. “We were delighted to hear from you—Palmer Tech has created some of our most capable servers, so we would be honored to repay the favor in offering you a reliable, secure database.”
“I’ve heard a lot of things about your data bank, George—and I must say, your firewall is impenetrable.” It takes a lot of effort not to grit that last part out through her teeth, given that she’s only here because she couldn’t hack it remotely. She also doesn’t specify that what she’s heard about their data bank is how they’re sheltering the data of criminal organizations and terrorists from the government, something she couldn’t prove clearly enough for Laurel to get a warrant—damn firewall. But now, there’s something immensely satisfying to her inner hacktivist about getting a chance at cracking open their system.
“It is our greatest asset—invaluable, for your company’s sensitive data,” George says, and after he holds the door open for her, his hands hover near her wheelchair’s handles. “Would you like me to, um…?”
“No, thank you, I’ve got it,” she says. At least he actually asked before just starting to push her around; that was a mark in his favor.
Past the security guards and a bit of awkwardness, given that she can’t exactly go through the metal detector (something she’d counted on for some of her tech; and a big part of this plan, given that being a recognizable VIP gave her special treatment—and made her less suspicious), George launches into the tour and his sales pitch in earnest. Felicity finds herself surprisingly interested as they talk, finding someone who can talk teraflops and processing speed with her without needing a translator.
“I think Felicity is making a new friend,” Thea teases over the comm, and Felicity hears Oliver make a little “hmph” sound.
As the tour goes on, Thea keeps trying to make conversation in the van, and Oliver shushes her quickly. If she wasn’t busy keeping up the façade with George, Felicity would have told him to relax—this is the easiest undercover job she’s ever had. Technically, she’s just being herself, so there’s less chance than ever that she’ll blurt something out and ruin everything.
Of course, being her, she’s halfway through clarifying that when she said she spent her nights giving her fingers a workout she meant typing, because she does a lot of her coding at night, as a busy CEO, that is—when they finally reach the terminal where she can test out the system (she tries to stay focused with Thea snorting in her ear).
“Will you be, um… Do you need any… help?” George says, hovering in the doorway, but she makes her way around the cramped space of the enclosed room. The servers hum and drone as their tiny blinking lights surround her and the monitor on the desk.
“No, I’ll be fine, thank you,” she says. She tries not to sound too dismissive or urgent as she waits for him to close the door behind her. Testing the system for herself, for her own private data, would be an expected practice; but being antsy about it would not.
“I’ll be around the corner in our security office if you need anything,” he says, and then he slowly closes the door and she’s alone.
“Is it just me or is Felicity’s new friend extra… attentive?” Thea asks, and Felicity can tell she’s just goading Oliver. Whether it’s the sort of teasing he needs or the sort of teasing that will only put him more on edge, she doesn’t know, because Oliver stays quiet. It’s not some ridiculous jealousy that she hears in the silence—it’s that omnipresent worry.
But addressing that directly will only rub it in that there’s any truth to the fear at all, with him out there and her in here, and no easy reassurances to be had until she’s back in his sight. So, instead, she just rolls her eyes and says, “He was just being nice. Or, you know, hoping I don’t discover his criminal empire.”
She probably shouldn’t have said that, given the resounding silence. “Don’t worry,” she adds lightly. “He’s not going to kill the CEO of Palmer Tech in his own building, in the middle of the day.”
It seemed like a logical argument to dismiss their concerns… The things she said often seemed like the right thing as she was saying them.
“Are you almost done?” Oliver says, voice taut as a bowstring.
“Almost,” she says, even though she hasn’t started yet. But this isn’t the time to revel in being back in the field, when they’re all on edge—Oliver most of all. It’s also not the time to think about how she might relieve all of his nervous energy and intense focus later when it’s just the two of them… maybe back at the lair… They haven’t done anything there since before everything that happened, and with her back in the field now, a proper celebration might be…
She almost jumps when Thea interrupts her dirty fantasies to ask, “I’m not seeing the connection yet, am I doing this right?”
With a guilty wince, she hunkers down over the keyboard and starts hacking into the servers where the location of the explosives shipment is located. Their intel suggested HIVE may be targeting it next—but not if she has anything to say about it. Because she gets to have a say about these kinds of things, and how badass is that?
“Okay, is the data coming in on my tablet… um, now?” she asks, after a couple seconds. “Because I’ve definitely been working on it for a few minutes. You know, this whole time. All the time.”
“Yep,” Thea answers, seemingly used to any weirdness from her. She’s speaking to the others in the van when she adds, “This really is going to be as easy as she said. We should put her out in the field more often.”
“Just finish up and get out of there,” Oliver practically growls, ignoring Thea’s teasing.
“Thea, give him a break,” Felicity says, not using code names as that would only arouse more suspicion at this point.
And somehow this all makes her feel… normal again. Hacking into some shady company’s system, teasing over the comms, being undercover out in the field—her work in the lair is vital to the team, she never doubts that for a moment, and it fulfills her more than anything else. But there is something triumphant about being able to do this again, even about being alone to do it. She can do everything she used to.
Of course, that’s when everything goes to hell.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she mutters quickly under her breath, as the screen jerks and flickers in front of her, no matter how fast her fingers move to counteract the failing code.
“What? What is it?” Oliver asks.
She stares at the new code scrawling across the screen, at the inert blankness where her input should be appearing. “Come on, come on, don’t do this.”
“Something’s wrong,” Thea says, none of the teasing in her voice now. “There’s some kind of virus or something taking over…”
“Shut down the tablet now!” Felicity calls anxiously through the comms. She’s trying every last thing she can think of to stop the job from spiraling away from her, but it’s all crumbling between her fingers. After a few seconds, she pulls her hands away.
“Felicity, talk to me. What is happening?” Oliver’s voice is sharp in her ear.
For a moment, she considers lying, telling him everything is fine and pretending like there’s nothing going on. That small flutter of guilt and doubt in her chest, that she can’t do this anymore, that she lost more than the ability to walk in the shooting… In the failure staring back at her from the blinking screen, she feels like she’s let them all down.
But it’s not exactly her fault—and that makes everything somehow worse.
“It’s HIVE,” she says, her voice automatically going quieter. “They’re already here.”
Silence. And then Oliver says darkly, “I’m going in.”
“Wait, wait,” Digg says—his tone is urgent, but focused enough to be calm. “Felicity, how do you know that?”
“The virus is clearing out the system after they got the data—they could only have gotten it from inside, like I am,” she says, and she’s looking at the computer in front of her as its data dies with spurts and flashes. “With all the finesse of a battering ram, but still… it’s them.”
“Do they know you’re there?” Digg asks, and Felicity can hear Thea in the background urging Oliver to wait.
“I don’t know,” she says softly. “They might have seen my efforts to get into the system—that could be why they set off the virus. Do you think we got enough of the data downloaded first?”
“That is not the priority right now.” Oliver’s fist slams against something in the background. “John, Thea, get ready to infiltrate.”
“No, wait,” she says, knowing it’s like arguing with a brick wall. “They might not know I’m here, I obviously didn’t know that they were here and if I didn’t see that in the system, I mean that’s a pretty good sign—I can still get out of here without anyone-”
Then she hears the gunshots.
“Felicity,” Oliver barks into her ear, no coddling now for her usual babbling and sentence fragments. “You need to get out of there. Now.”
As much as she wants to stay in the tiny dark room, she knows he’s right… Here, she’s—and it’s an unfortunate turn of phrase—a sitting duck. There’s nowhere in here to hide, nothing to provide cover, even if she crawled out of the chair. But the room is on the first floor, just down the hallway from the lobby… and the gunshots sounded distant, on another floor. Now’s her chance.
The alarm begins to ring out, droning on in a piercing siren, punctuated by the robotic voice indicating lockdown procedure. But her hand still trembles around the doorknob, unwilling to tear open the delusion of safety the enclosed room provides.
“Felicity, now,” Oliver says, and she can hear the breathlessness in his voice. He’s running.
Slowly, she turns the knob, easing the door open a crack to listen in the hallway. The alarm blares out over everything else; the fluorescents along the ceiling have been turned off, with nothing to light the hall but red flashing bulbs spinning above every few doorways. It gives the space an eerie vibe, like a pulsing artery. She can only hope her own blood won’t contribute to the illusion.
The hall is empty, one wall a row of tinted windows that look out on the street, where she sees a few people gathered and gaping at the otherwise nondescript building that is now a scene of chaos. She hears shattered glass somewhere above, and sees a man in black gear thrown to the pavement outside in a rainfall of glass shards. He might be HIVE or he might be one of the data bank’s security officers; she doesn’t look any closer to figure it out.
Right now, the fight is elsewhere. This is the only time to make it out.
She opens the door the rest of the way, wheeling herself out into the hallway, head whipping back and forth once past the shield of the door itself. The flashing lights make the shadows at the distant end a bit disorienting, but the corner turns along the blank white walls, and there’s no one there. At the other end, she can just make out the widening marble floor of the lobby; it looks empty.
Ignoring the way her sweaty palms slip a little against the wheels, Felicity starts pushing herself frantically towards the lobby… and hears a door burst open not far behind her.
She peeks back over her shoulder as she continues hurling herself forward. Two men in heavy gear spill out of what she didn’t realize was a doorway to the stairwell, looking around through the openings of their ski masks.
They spot her quickly.
The sound she makes, strangled in her throat, somewhere between a whimper and a grunt of exertion and a sob, must cut through the alarm on the comms because Thea and Digg both call out her name in concern, asking what’s happening. From Oliver, she hears nothing, until she can make out the sound of his own furious growl and the familiar sounds of him fighting.
She can only focus on pushing herself onward as fast as she can, not thinking about a bullet exploding the back of her head at any moment, trying to block out the sound of pounding boots against the tile floor closing in—
Until the wheelchair is jerked back by a firm grip and the momentum spills her forward. She sprawls over the ground, barely catching herself on her hands before her face smashes into the linoleum. Her feet are caught up in the bottom of the wheelchair, legs tangled and limp, as she twists her upper body rapidly around to face the men standing there.
“Felicity? Where are you?” Digg says urgently, his voice taking on the slightly echoing quality that tells her he’s wearing his helmet.
But she can’t take the time to answer him, as she stares up at the two hulking man standing on the other side of the wheelchair. Above the thick padded vests, and the crossing straps of rifles hanging against their backs, their eyes watch her through the cutout of the wool masks; they’ve both pushed their dark goggles up onto their heads, to see better in the low light. One is pale with blue eyes and a narrow nose; the other dark-skinned with brown eyes beneath graying eyebrows. She can see the laugh lines crinkling around the blue-eyed man’s gaze, as he takes in their catch lying helpless on the ground.
He doesn’t realize he already made a major mistake. His catch is far from helpless.
As the men both take a step towards her, Felicity tenses her stomach muscles to hold herself as upright as she can—and pulls her left arm in front of herself, her right hand going to the chunky black watch on her wrist. A bit unfashionable, perhaps the guards thought, but something a tech CEO might wear.
She doesn’t have time for any finesse, pressing the buttons rapidly around the clunky edges, as the men pause. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turns the watch so the broad round face is pointed towards their confused gazes… just as it emits a piercing white light that cuts through the dark red hallway like the flash of a blade in the dark.
“Fuck!” shouts the brown-eyed man, clasping a glove over his eyes as he stumbles back. He falls to his knees, entire body sluggish as he clutches his head.
The blue-eyed man collapses to the ground instantly, knocked out by the particular wavelength of light Curtis discovered could induce unconsciousness through the optic nerve.
“Where. Are. You?” Oliver grunts in her ear, louder and more biting in the wake of her silence. They must not have heard any of her encounter on the comms, or she’d expect a bit more interrogation on her status. She resists her own urge to check in with each of them, unfortunately all too used to hearing them fighting for their lives and having to bite her tongue. They’re all still panting and cursing and clearing rooms—silence would be far more terrifying.
“First floor,” she huffs out to end her own silence, collapsing back onto her elbows as her stomach muscles protest. If she can push herself up onto her ass, she can usually find the balance to stay sitting, but the twist of dulled nerves at the base of her spine makes that harder than it should be. “By the lobby.”
First, she looks at the man still awake, leaning against the window. Outside, emergency vehicles have started pulling up in front of the building, clearing the pedestrians from the sidewalk. The man himself doesn’t seem to be getting back up any time soon.
Though, she has to admit she’s not sure that she’s getting up either, with her feet still hooked over the footrests and the seat of the wheelchair looking a mile away from where she is now. But more HIVE agents could emerge from the stairwell at any moment. The door was only two down from the office she was in; she’s sure they would have started their search and found her quickly. So at least, in all this, she can console herself with the fact that coming out into the hallway wasn’t any more risky that staying put.
Unwilling to just lie on the floor waiting to be found, Felicity faces the task of getting herself back into her wheelchair with a deep breath. She pulls her entire body back on her hands to detangle her feet, followed by the arduous task of crawling towards the chair. Everyone else on the comms is in the middle of running and fighting, so her own grumbles of effort go unnoticed.
“Just over here taking out HIVE agents by myself, being badass as usual,” she mutters to herself as she reaches for the handbrake on the chair, to stabilize it for her climb. There’s something about the unconscious man splayed out next to the wheel that fills her with a pride she maybe should feel a little guilty about. But she’s going to hold onto that while she’s struggling to lift her entire body up into the chair, unable to tip the balance of her weight upwards enough to…
“What?” Oliver’s voice is low, gasped out between breaths.
Oh, frak, she didn’t realize she’d said that out loud.
“Nothing, nothing, focus on the fighting please,” she says lightly, finally getting her grip so she can lift herself up on slightly shaking arms—though even she’s impressed with the muscles rippling beneath her own skin as she lifts her own weight. Under her breath, she says, “Fancy salmon ladder, suck on th--”
The gloved hands closing around her throat from behind her cut off her words—and her air, making her cough and gasp out a strangled shout as she’s hauled up from the ground. Her hands automatically leave the grip on the chair to scratch at the fingers digging into her windpipe, but her nails are catching only on the thick black gloves.
“Felicity? Felicity!” Oliver and the others are shouting, but then she can’t hear them over the pounding heartbeat in her ear, the sounds of her own choked gulps of air.
It’s strange, how every signal in her brain is screaming at her legs to kick and thrash, to lift herself onto her own weight, to hurl herself away from him… and how nothing happens, not even a twitch of her toes. Instead, her stomach muscles clench as her body jerks and writhes in desperate survival, but her lower body merely hangs like an anchor she can’t feel.
With her entire weight carried by the man’s grip around her neck and her own grasp on his forearms, Felicity finally forces her instincts to stop trying to use her body and instead uses what she does have—her arms. The built-up definition of her biceps makes the elbow she throws back against the man’s side a far stronger force than it had ever been before. Mostly, the flat of her elbow just smacks against the vest he’s wearing, but he does jolt under the impact, fingers twitching around her throat. There’s not much satisfaction to be had in that when she can’t breathe.
The watch only had one charge. Her other tech stashed in the lining of the wheelchair is out of reach. And though she can just hear Oliver’s frantic voice over the comm, he’s not there.
Maybe this was all a mistake… a fatal one.
She should’ve stayed in her place, should’ve known this part of her life was over. She is nothing but a liability now. A weakness. A victim.
Except that’s something she’s never been.
And she isn’t going to start now.
There’s one decidedly non-tech weapon left, because the guards didn’t search the VIP CEO in the wheelchair, and didn’t find the switchblade strapped to her thigh. One trembling hand reaches back to feel along the man’s arm, pretending to be clawing wildly but really judging the location of his face… the hole in the mask where he, too, left off his goggles…
Her other hand lunges down to reach up her flared skirt to grab the knife, flipping it open and clutching it tightly in her fist.
She knows this move well.
With one rapid motion, and all the strength she can find in her newly strengthened muscles, Felicity swings her arm up and thrusts the knife back into the man’s eye.
The hands spasm and release her as the man rears back, howling in pain—while she collapses forward in a limp heap, her legs folding beneath her, like a puppet cut from its marionette strings. All she cares about, though, as she half-lands on the wheelchair and ignores the punch of the footrests digging into her stomach, is dragging in deep rasping breaths between coughs.
Her vision blinks with black spots as her head swims, the comm is dislodged from her ear and barely hanging on, and every breath through her bruised throat aches. It felt like long agonizing minutes, but it was really only seconds… otherwise she’d be unconscious. She supposes she should be grateful he felt like strangling her rather than breaking her neck or shooting her in the back.
But as she rests her forehead against the seat and wonders how much throwing up would hurt through her constricted throat, gratitude is not exactly on her mind.
Caution should be, though, as the man stumbling around in pain seems to be lumbering towards her in some effort at further violence—
At least until the arrow pierces through his leg and he falls to the floor.
Felicity doesn’t pay much attention to the brief sounds of the man being incapacitated before he can reach for his gun, focusing on turning herself around and evening out her harsh breathing.
Then Oliver is there, kneeling beside her, hand reaching out to hover over his neck as his wide eyes sweep across her frantically. He sets his bow down on the ground, the darkness of the mask making his panicked blue eyes stand out even in the dim red light of the hall.
“I’m okay,” she croaks, hand landing on his outstretched forearm. “Other than the…” She goes to twist back her head and reveal her neck rather than finish the sentence, which proves equally as painful as trying to talk, the muscles in her neck twinging as she winces.
“Don’t, don’t,” he says softly, and his hand slides around to cup the back of her neck. The other is moving to her waist, pulling her towards him so he can cradle her in one arm.
As his hand slides gently down her back, his face leaning in with a tense, concerned expression on his face, Oliver takes a shaky breath himself. She’s spent enough time on the other side of the comms hearing him fight for breath, especially in the last months with Darhk, that she knows how terrifying it can be to think you’ll hear the last breath of the one you love gasped out in pain. But now is not the time to comfort each other, and this is not the place.
Oliver’s eyes zone out as he must be listening to something on the comms; Felicity can barely hear a low buzz from the earbud still clinging to the shell of her ear. Then he says tersely, “I’ve got her. Back at the van in three.”
He slides his other arm beneath her knees, lifting her effortlessly into his arms. With his eyes closed, he leans his head forward, as if to press his forehead against hers.
“Wait,” she whispers, because he’s close enough to hear her even over the continued alarm, and it hurts less. “Cameras.”
He flashes her a look that says he doesn’t care, but they can both see through the windows to the emergency personnel rushing into the building. And even if she can erase the footage later, there’s no way of knowing who might be watching now. Seeing the CEO of Palmer Tech kissed by the Green Arrow.
“You have to leave me,” she hisses as loudly as she dares.
“No.” His hands tighten around her; she can only feel the pinch of his fingers against her waist, but she can see his gloved hand readjust beneath her knee.
“The police are here. Go.” She flattens her hand against his heart, beyond tempted to slide her hand up and stroke her fingers along his jaw in comfort, but that’s too intimate a gesture for anyone who might be watching. Even this long, tender hold is too much.
His gaze searches her face, and she swallows even past the pain to stare back firmly.
“I’ve got this,” she says.
And even though she sees the way his shoulders tense and his lips tighten, she can also see the calculations behind his eyes—the footsteps of the incoming SWAT team, maybe even the voice of Digg and Thea yelling in his ear—and maybe, just maybe, the three men she has already defeated lying in various states of injury around his feet.
So, slowly, carefully, he sets her down into the wheelchair, roughly kicking aside the HIVE agent still lying unconscious to clear her path.
The last thing she feels of him, as cops rush into the hallway from the lobby, is his hand sliding across her shoulder and squeezing briefly. Then his own footsteps are disappearing behind her, and she sits calmly as the Star City police finally arrive to rescue her.
This is why she relies on vigilantes.
For the next ten minutes she is handled with extra care and solicitousness by the police, who help usher her out to the sidewalk outside, not even asking her questions until Captain Lance arrives for their VIP. He orders her drawn over to a more private area beside his own vehicle, though he insists a medic look at her neck.
As soon as could be reasonably explained (and no doubt spending the entire time arguing with Thea and Digg, who she can hear through the comms as they all assure each other they’re all right—and now properly hidden from the police), Oliver “arrives” in cargo pants and a gray t-shirt that must have been packed in the van. He shoves through the clumps of cops and confused office workers with a grim expression, scattering anyone who sees him with alarmed haste, until he reaches her.
She doesn’t fight him when he immediately reaches down to haul her into his arms, throwing her own around his neck as he lifts her. He buries his face in the curve of her neck, pressing whisper soft kisses against her throat.
Lance shuffles uncomfortably for a moment, and then mutters something about paperwork and walks off.
“I’m okay, it’s okay,” she murmurs, her voice stronger now, as she strokes her hands up and down the back of his neck. She sighs. “You know… as plans go, this really wasn’t a very good one.”
His rough breath of laughter spills over her collarbone, his arms tightening almost painfully around her.
Then he lowers her back into the chair, following her down with a crouch, and she sort of envies the people behind him who can see the precise way that tightens the cargo pants around his ass. He reaches out to rest his hands on her thighs, and even though she can’t feel it, she settles her hands atop his and lets him entwine their fingers.
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things like this to be a part of the team,” he says after a moment, looking at her with his heart in his eyes. “You will always be part of the team, no matter what.”
“I know that,” she says, one hand moving up and down his forearm. “This was for me. And all things considered, I kind of kicked ass.”
His fingers twitch against hers, but he just says, “Mmhmm.”
“I did.” She leans forward, and he moves towards her instinctively. They can kiss in broad daylight all they want now, when he’s just mayoral candidate Oliver Queen and she’s just Palmer Tech CEO Felicity Smoak. Okay, so maybe the photographs of them outside the emergency situation make some local tabloids, but she doesn’t care.
She detangles her hands to slide up around his jaw, feeling the rasp of his stubble against her palms as she tugs him towards her, pressing her lips softly against his. After a long, tender moment, she pulls back; and she sees, rather than feels, how his hands have clenched in the fabric of her skirt.
But he lets her go, standing when Lance returns with Laurel at his side, ready to discuss the files they’re seizing from the data bank and whether anything can be recovered. If so, there are a lot of criminals that could finally be pinned down. George is walked past in handcuffs, gaping at Felicity with a look somewhere between guilt and fury. She barely resists the urge to gloat, as Oliver hovers like some fierce bodyguard at her side, quiet amidst discussions of subpoenas and types of viruses.
For everything else they need to do to finish the job, to recover the shipment before HIVE can, she’ll do her part safely behind a computer screen.
Right now, she has absolutely no problem with that. It may be where she belongs.
It’s not, however, the only thing she can do, the only place she can be. Every little bit of her former life that she can reclaim, every new triumph she can grasp, every limitation she can prove is meaningless… They’re pieces of herself coming back to her—or maybe simply being rediscovered from where they’d been forgotten by the world.
She’s still her.
And that means, as always, she’s a badass.
“Badasses can still take long bubble baths, right?” she asks, voice still a little creaky, starting to feel the sore muscles in her arms as she and Oliver move back to the van where Digg and Thea wait to go back to the lair.
He finally lets a small smirk twist his lips. “Not alone.”
She grins.
“Now that’s a plan we can both agree on.”