Work Text:
“You know, it’s strange, but I feel like something has been following me today, watching me” Laurel mused as she sat the Verdant bar.
“I haven’t noticed anything, what’s been happening?” Olivier asked, wondering which one of his many enemies had been following and potentially harassing his once upon a time flame. For some reason, no matter how often he used the excuse ‘It’s complicated’ he didn’t think Diggle was buying it anymore. Which was odd, he was used to people buying his lies. Maybe it was a benefit of his previous rich-playboy status.
“Not much, but I would swear that CCTV cameras and computers and phones had been acting odd when I’m around technology today.”
Felicity’s head shot up as soon as she realised that sounded very familiar. Hadn’t her uncle Mycroft pulled the same stunt when John had met Sherlock? Except, why would Mycroft been doing the same thing to Laurel? The two of them weren’t close, and they weren’t living together, so why had Mycroft entered into the same spiral?
It begged yet more of an investigation for Felicity; her uncle had promised that he wouldn’t try to drag her back into that life.
Why did all the men in her life lie to her? Did she just give out some ‘help me, protect me’ pheromone? Maybe she should wash her clothes more often? Should she change her shower gel?
“Excuse me” Felicity muttered before excusing herself and hurrying from the empty nightclub.
There was truly nothing more depressing than an empty nightclub in the day.
Pulling out her phone, she dialled a number from memory and waited for the number to connect. She glanced down at her wristwatch and grimaced as she realised that the number showed it was almost quitting time back in foggy London.
“Hello, Anthea speaking how may I take your message” the bored voice on the phone answered her call.
Felicity smiled grimly, as she began to speak “Anthea this week huh? Anthea, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself this week why is my uncle stalking Laurel Lance? What the hell is going on with him? I get that his brother has died, but why does he put all his over-protective instincts on me. I’ve barely spoke to the woman, what is his damage? Answers now Anthea?” Felicity demanded tapping her feet up and down.
“Whoa damage? You’ve been living over there too long if you’re saying things like that.” Anthea obfuscated honing on the very last part of what Felicity said completely ignoring all of her questions.
“Oh, you’ve got to be joking me, you know damn well why I left England in my rear view mirror, now answer my questions why is my uncle so interested in Laurel Lance and stop trying to distract me, it’s not going to work.” Felicity demanded, stamping her foot down, aware at that very moment that she sounded very much life a spoilt brat.
“Look, I know that the two of you are particularly close, but what I do know is that she has been talking a lot about you. To use a colloquial term, she has been talking ‘a lot of smack about you’ can you really blame him for being concerned?” Anthea coolly replied.
“Wait, but why on earth would she talk about me? To her I’m no one, no one important” Felicity tried to understand.
“My work mandated therapist would tell me to pretend to care and give you some claptrap about how brilliant you are” Anthea drawled clearly fed up with whatever she was hearing. It was nice that she was still trying to be a friend to Felicity.
The woman might seem like a complete and utter hard ass but she was always nice to Felicity.
Perhaps ‘Anthea’ understood how difficult it could be to grow up with a Papa like Sherlock and an uncle like Mycroft.
She always exercised and showed a bit of affection when it came to diminutive dyed blonde woman.
Well, the little affection that the normally stoic woman felt comfortable showing.
“Oh, you old hard ass, I’ll talk to you later” Felicity laughed, a brittle sounding laugh as she tried so hard to keep all of her emotions in check. The emotions that were coming thicker ever since her Papa had thrown himself from a roof and her Dad had begun to date without telling her.
It always so much of a struggle trying to keep everything together. Thankfully her friends however didn’t seem to know how much she falling apart inside.
Hanging up the phone, Felicity glanced around her, not sure what she wanted to do next.
Felicity made her way back into the empty club, trying to decide what she was going to do next.
Should she ring her uncle and confront him?
Or should she wait until her uncle came clean to her?
Making her way over to the bar, Felicity spoke “alright, that’s your WIFI set up, is there anything else you need Mr Merlyn?”
“No, no, we’re good, at least until the thing craps out again Tommy replied, only half glancing at her as he did so.
“Very well, I sent the bill to your account and left an invoice in the office, if there’s any more trouble don’t hesitate to give me a call, you guys have my number” Felicity replied before Laurel cut in.
“Wait, why are setting up for WIFI in a nightclub? People would usually come here to get hammered, not check their emails, maybe do a little dancing.”
“Hey, I don’t care as long as I get paid, Mama has her eyes on a new processor. Can I leave now, I need to get back to work?”
“Where do you work anyway?” Laurel asked trying to find out more about the mystery blond woman in front of her.
“Oh, I work at Queen Consolidated, I’m nothing more than a meaningless drone in the IT department, where I save the world one over-privileged CEO looking up porn at a time.”
“Your overly sarcastic side is showing Smoak, what’s wrong?” Tommy laughed inquiring.
“It’s nothing, but I mean do they expect me not to have seen porn because NEWSFLASH I have to deal with computer illiterate jackasses downloading viruses and not expecting me to know where it’s come from. Do I look clueless and overly innocent?”
“Maybe you should come work over at CNRI; we could always use another IT girl” Laurel jokingly offered.
“HA! No, I’m sure you lawyers are lovely people, but I don’t want to work with you, fine people. Nah, I’m just going to go to work and then drown my sorrows in mint chip ice cream and red wine. See you later!” Felicity waved over her shoulder as she made her way out of the nightclub.
Opening her car door, while grumbling under her breath, she didn’t like mysteries, and her uncle had just dropped her into a mystery. What the hell was going on? Didn't it look like she’d solve this one easily? Hearing the beep of her tablet, Felicity sat in the driver’s seat and attempted to sort through some of the mess.
Pulling out the tablet, Felicity scrolled through the information presented before her; it didn’t make any sense, who was Mary Morstan? And why was she on an old file from ARGUS?
She was going to have to do some hacking tonight if she wanted any answers. Sigh, she had hoped she would be able to get an early night.
After a long day of work, Felicity poured herself a nice glass of wine, Queen and Diggle could go screw themselves if they thought that she could leave well enough alone, even for one day. They should be able to handle themselves for one night. At least that was how long it should take for her to rip through some flimsy as tissue paper on some random ass alphabet agency. Seriously, there were only 26 letters in the English alphabet, did someone just go around making up fun little acronyms? Still, at least she hadn’t come across an agency called A-S-S or some other complete irritating snigger-worthy initials.
Normally, when Felicity got home from work she would have a glass of wine (it was quite frankly astonishing that she didn’t have an alcohol problem by now) and go and check the internet, wanting to see what she could find. But a feeling in her gut told her that she wanted to remain alert and not forget anything. So pouring herself a glass of cold water, Felicity turned on one of her (many) computers and settled down wanting to make herself comfy.
The time Felicity spent staring at the screen and grumbling to herself about the difficulties she began to encounter in breaking through some of the firewalls. This agency, this ARGUS, seemed to be black-ops, at least judging by some of the security measures in place, they were good.
Gasping to herself, Felicity wondered when she had become one of those stereotypical people that continued to labour under the delusion that nobody else was good enough for her parents.
Still, at least she hadn’t found a personnel file, with the name ‘Mary Morstan’ listed so at least there were still some small mercies.
Though, why were the personnel records always the easiest to crack.
On a strange level, Felicity found it equal parts comforting and concerning, were these files simple dummy files? Designed to make her stop hacking in?
If Felicity had been any less skilled and more naïve she would have assumed that the files in front of her were real. But her inner bibliophile recognised the names and smiled recognising them for fakes. Not good enough.
Sometime later, Felicity felt that she had hit ‘paydirt’ when she found a file under the name of A. Waller briefly referencing one ‘Mary Morstan’ and some kind of group that went by the initials A-G-R-A, what in the hell was going on?
Glancing, at the small clock, Felicity realised that she would need to head to bed, not particularly wanting to spend all day sleeping. The mysteries wouldn’t keep her awake, well they wouldn’t keep her awake any more than usual.
Maybe, things would make more sense in the morning.