Title: Pillars of Peace
Summary: After an attempted assassination Felicity discovers a secret her mother had been hiding from her, and that her supervisor Oliver Queen is a part of the Bratva. Suddenly finding herself in middle of a power struggle she has only one option to save her own life: marry Oliver Queen to ease tensions and bring peace. Too bad nothing is as easy as that, especially not when the stakes are this high.
A/N: I have published this story on AO3, and have a few chapters posted there. I will post a new chapter here once or twice a week until I have all 10 chapters posted, then I will hopefully have another chapter written! It will be slower updates after that. But, I hope you enjoy this... and if you pop overt A03 to read the rest I hope you leave a comment there letting me know what you think. Reviews and comments makes a writer very happy ;)
All the days the coffee machine could break on her she figured today was one of the worst possible. With the coffee cup clutched in her hand she pressed the on button as hard as she could, but received no sign of life from the machine. She pressed it again.
"No, no, no!" She groaned, slamming the cup down on the counter, and pressed the heel of her hands against her eyes. The past weeks she had been tasked with updating Queen Consolidated's IT security, and it was due to launch in three days time. Felicity was more than proficient at computers, and she knew exactly what to do. It was just a lot to do. It meant late nights, early mornings, and enough caffeine to make every single cell in her body jittery.
"It broke half an hour ago, they company is sending someone tomorrow to look at it," a passer-by who took enough pity on her to tell her said.
"Tomorrow!?" Felicity was wound too tight for a single thing to go wrong. Her caffeine intake had more than just her not falling asleep resting on it. It had her focus, and the three hundred and fifty separate codes to write, resting on it. There was certainly about a hundred coffee machines across the building, but in her nearly 3 years of working in this building that particular machine had been her trusty companion. She did not know where the other machines were, and she did not desire a treasure hunt to find one.
What would be her fifth cup of coffee that morning was delayed by the unnecessary progress report she had to write up for the day. Oliver Queen the prodigal son of Robert and Moira Queen had returned to Starling City six months earlier after a 5 year long mystical disappearance, and was currently the bane of Felicity's existence. While he certainly was good looking, and disarmingly sweet most of the time, he was a control freak. And he was a control freak who for some explicable reason was her direct supervisor, though he probably wouldn't know what an operating system was without her spelling it out for him in a progress report.
The time she had spent on that report was time she was not getting coffee. Now she was staring down an empty cup willing it to magically fill up with the blessed liquid. It was her gasoline.
She deposited the cup that was now rendered useless into the washing machine, and left for the Starbucks just across the street. Usually she avoided the place because the proximity it had to several major headquarters. The lines were often outrageous in her opinions, and the baristas didn't seem to have a single moment to breathe. After a year in high school spent working at a McDonald's in one of Las Vegas most tourist dense spots the empathy she felt for the workers bordered towards wanting to cry
From time to time she went there. Like when she craved a calorific caffeinated drink and didn't have the time or energy to venture further from the city's business center. Or, in cases like these; when there was a caffeine emergency. She didn't want to consider the many trips she would need to take to survive the day, nor the hole it would burn in her wallet. Now she was in survival mode.
Luckily when she pushed the glass doors open to the coffee shop the line only consisted of four people. Two of them seemed to be assistants of some sort, based on the long list of coffee orders that was scribbled onto a piece of paper, and their constant glances at their phones. She gauged that it would take quite a while before it would be her turn. Now was a good time as any to get caught up on a few e-mails that she knew littered her inbox, but had been moved down the priority chain for the time being.
Nothing in her inbox was particularly urgent. There was a reminder about a meeting that for some reason hadn't been linked to her calendar that she put in manually. Otherwise most people had respected the notification that she wasn't the one to turn to when the computer glitched.
"The line's moving," a deep voice said behind her. Startled the phone nearly flew from her hand, and a yelp that grew into a double-yelp as she had to fumble to regain a grip of the phone. "Didn't mean to startle you." The smirk was audible in his voice. She knew that voice anywhere.
"Mr. Queen." She was still catching her breath, but took a step forward towards the counter. "Didn't expect… that you'd be here." It didn't escape her that he was the reason why she was delayed. That was still something that was very much at the forefront of her mind.
"Didn't think that I'd fetch my own coffee?" If this had been her first encounter with Oliver Queen then that smile might have been as disarming as he intended it to be. Now it was only a little disarming, like a bandaid on her anger.
"Never crossed my mind, actually." She wanted to be snippy, not rambling like she usually was. Because she had just wanted one cup of coffee. The fifth one, to be more precise. "I don't usually think about whether on not my bosses get their own coffees, it's actually good that you get your own coffee, because I'm sure everyone has better things to do than to bring you coffee. Not you, I mean… everyone, than bringing everyone coffee."
"Want to get coffee somewhere else?" His smiled sparkled again, it was genuine but something underneath it that she couldn't quite figure out. His eyes weren't completely on her, like he couldn't quite stand still. It looked like he wanted to bolt out of the coffee shop.
"If you read the progress report I sent you, which you should've read by the way thank you very much, you should know that I barely have time for this," she gestured with her hand towards the line. "I'm going to get my coffee, and then I'm going to go back to my office and I'm going to write code so the system is ready to go live in three days." She stepped up in the line again.
"I haven't read it yet, I will… with my coffee." He paused. "You write very fast."
"I work in IT, I have to write fast." She stepped up to the counter. "One brewed coffee, venti please, two sugars." Though a caramel latte with a double espresso shot and whipped cream on top sounded wonderful, she had a few bags of gummy bears in her drawer that was already her indulgence of choice.
"I'll pay for hers," he jumped in before she could hand over money to the barista.
"No."
"Yes, consider it an… insufficient thank you for the hard work you're putting in," he said and tilted his head and smiled when she shot him a glare in response.
"Okay, thank you." As good as she was with computer was just as awkward she was with other people. Very awkward. If Oliver Queen had been a computer she would have known what was wrong by now, but now she could only watch as he made his own order. Thanks to the simplicity of their orders, neither consisting of more than one ingredient, she was quickly served.
"I have to get back." She grabbed a sleeve for her coffee, her fingers used to keyboards but not heat.
"Wait, I was meaning to ask…" He trailed off, waiting for her to turn around with her lips pursed tight as she resisted the need to drum her fingers against her elbow as her arms were crossed over her chest. "Is it possible to make this… security system into a product? Because I think with a few tweaks we could market it to banks."
"I guess I could look at it. We would have to make a baseline for the company to review to see if it's even worth it." She shrugged, not really understanding the urgency in needing to ask this now in a Starbucks of all places. "If you're willing to shoulder the project then we can set up a meeting for next week to look it over. Right now I, clearly, don't have time for it." Though she tried not to look stressed, her voice reached a pitch that it only ever reacher when her stress levels started reaching heart-attack levels. She needed to be back at her desk 10 minutes ago.
"Yes, right… absolutely." His coffee order was announced, and he picked the tiny cup used for the fancy espresso drinkers. It was like he meant to brag, she thought, but couldn't even bring herself to feel an ounce of distain for him. "I'll walk back with you."
The door had just swung shut behind them in their so far 10 awkward steps beside each other when he suddenly pulled her to him, and they tumbled down on the ground. She hit the sidewalk with her wrist first, and a sharp pain shot up her arm, and then her cheek hit the gravel. Despite the confusion on why Oliver Queen had tackled her to the ground, and the pain that came with it, she could hear the sounds of bullets hitting the vacant metal chairs that stood outside of the coffee shop. Three shots rung out, and she couldn't see who was shooting because her cheek was pressed against the sidewalk, and all she could see were the scrambling feet of the people who were left inside. Then there was the sound of tires screeching, and a car that sped away faster than the legal limit.
"Are you alright?" Oliver asked, brushing her hair away from her face to get a look at her, and then his eyes surveyed her body. He breathed a sigh of relief when didn't see any blood.
"I think my wrist is broken." Considering that she had survived a drive-by shooting she knew that she should feel relieve to be left with only a broken wrist. But it would but a serious damper on completing the project before the deadline. "Are you alright?" She caught herself in her wallowing, remembering that he was the one who was lying on top of her.
"Yeah, I'm fine. They missed us both." He sat down on the pavement and looked around, and she did the same. No one was hurt that they could see, only some shocked people who straggled around with phones clutched to their ears. Some of them were bound to be on the phone with the police.
"Oh frack. My coffee." God was sending a clear message that she needed to cut down on her caffeine intake. But not even a hail of bullets could stop her, and not god either. The coffee had luckily been knocked out of her hand when she fell, and not spilt on her. Getting burned by coffee would've been the icing on the Rachel Green trifle.
"I'll get you another one." Oliver had clearly not been as lucky as she had, but only one of his grey trouser legs had been stained by the small contents of the espresso he had ordered.
"Thanks," she frowned at him, and then down at her wrist that already had started to swell and take on an ominously blue hue. "Could you also arrange a trip to the ER as well?" She cradled the wrist to her chest, wincing as it bumped against her.
Oliver did not need to do anything, because within minutes both police and an ambulance had arrived with the lights flashing off of the sleek surfaces of the office buildings surrounding it. With a crowd of people that whispered behind their hands she was the only one who was put in the back of the bus. The scraped cheek tattled that she had taken a rough fall to the ground, and had the paramedics concerned about a head injury.
Despite arriving in an ambulance in it took hours before a doctor came to see her. Thanks to perfect memory recall of five random words, and passable answers to the rest of his inquiries, she was sent upstairs for an x-ray. It was another two hours before she got the result of the x-ray, which showed a clear break of her bones. A large cast later she was sent on her way with a prescription of pain meds that were only slightly stronger than the over the counter medicine. While she waited for the result a police officer took her statement, which she could admit wasn't helpful at all.
By the time she was discharged it was dark outside. Since she had arrived to the ER in an ambulance her car was still back at Queen Consolidated, meaning she was reliant on a cab to get her home. The chill in the air betrayed that it was still early spring, despite the warm weather during the day. She was definitely not dressed for this.
As she fished her phone out of her purse someone called out her name. It was a man, but it wasn't Oliver. She twisted around on her heel, careful not to topple over and break her other wrist. She caught silver hair and a shadowed figure slightly taller than the average man.
"Yes?" With a voice in her head screaming rapist at her she took a step forward to get a better look at him. From where she stood in the bright glare from the spotlights outside of the ER she couldn't see anything in the shadows. He took a step forward at the same time, and she could see his face.
She knew that face. It was one that would look over at her as he showed her how the computer he was building worked. Now his hair was grey instead of brown, and age had worn his face down from the smooth planes she remembered her father's cheeks having.
"Dad?" The last time she saw him he'd been typing on his keyboard and she had given him a good night kiss on his cheek. When her mother woke her up the next morning with bags already packed her father had left for work. She was 7 years old, and even though she didn't understand why her mother was taking her across the country and telling her that her surname wasn't Kuttler anymore, she understood the look on her mother's face.
"We need to get out of the street." He didn't say hello, didn't say anything about why he didn't come after them. As she got older she knew that he could've found them if he wanted to. He had the knowledge, the intelligence to figure it out if he wanted to.
"That's all you're going to say?" She didn't move an inch either way.
"Felicity, I'll explain everything to you, but right now we need to get out of here before someone tries to kill you again!" She would've described his voice as roaring hadn't his voiced strained to keep as quiet as possible.
"Kill me? You mean… the shooting… they were at me?" That she was still not budging didn't help the frustration that was shining out of her father's eyes. "Why?"
"I will tell you everything if you just come with me." His hand reached forward, and he beckoned at her to come.
"That's impossible." She blinked rapidly, and shook her head as if she could shake off what she was being told. It wasn't impossible, impossible was just highly improbable. Especially since there was no reason why anyone would want her dead.
"They're going after you because of me." He sighed. "And it's my responsibility to keep you safe. So come with me." His hand twitched as he held it out again for her.
"Fine, but you have a lot of explaining to do, okay?" In her mind she was aware that she sounded more like a mom scolding her child than a daughter, but she didn't like being in the dark. Especially not the kind of dark where she can't even imagine the truth that was behind this. Who was her father? And why the hell did that put her in danger?
He took her to a motel room by Star City station. It smelled of mold, and the walls were infested with smoke. It was obvious that it wasn't where he slept, because the room was completely bare save for a single computer that he placed on the bed when they walked in. The sound carried from another room, but she couldn't place which one, of some people arguing. When the two of them stood there next to each other in silence she could almost make out the words. Wait, she thought, they're not arguing. It was definitely rent by the hour.
There was a desk with a chair that had probably seen the 80's, and for the long day she had had she decided that chair was hers to sit in. The silence that stretched between them was heavy and uncomfortable like an ill-fitting boot. She'd worn enough of ill fitting boots to recognize the feeling.
"So, want to tell me why I'm here? Why people want me dead?" She crossed her legs, and watched her father — that she was in the same room as her dad was something she would just have to process later.
"I'm in Bratva," when he saw her confused face he added, "the Russian maffia. I joined before you were born." He opened up the computer and turned the screen to face her. "I got ordered to write a code for a program a few months back, which caused instability, and that has triggered a power struggle and that is where you come in. Some thinks I have too much power now."
"So killing me is a power move?" she frowned. "That doesn't make me feel nearly as important as how I felt before when you said… Wait, that doesn't matter. Won't they try to kill me again, since they were clearly not successful?" She watched the numbers on the screen, revealing little about the sort of program he had written. She was too far away to see the code it contained.
"Probably, but their son seems to not share his parent's idea on how to deal with all of this, he was the one who saved you today." He shut the computer and sat down on the bed next to it. "Which is a good thing, for both of us."
"Wait, the Queens, my employer, are a part of Bratva, and they want to have me killed?" Her eyebrows knotted together as she turned the idea over in her head for a few seconds. "That's very stupid of them. And I don't mean stupid as in that I'm so arrogant that they couldn't kill me, because let's be honest they wouldn't have to try very hard for that one. I mean, I'm two days from launching a security system that could save them millions of dollars, so why would they do it today, and not say… this weekend?"
"Power struggles tend to be messy, and they also become inconvenient. They probably thought they would gain more by asserting their power in the family," he shrugged. "For owners of a tech company it's strange that they don't appreciate the work we do for a living." He stood up and reached for her purse that was standing on the floor, and before she could voice her protest he had dug her phone out of the bag. "But it's a good thing that Oliver Queen didn't agree with the decision, that gives us leverage."
"I'm not a pawn you can use to gain power," she shook her head. "There has to be another way."
"I think Oliver Queen might be the answer to that." He handed her the phone. "Call him, tell him to meet us at the plaza, he will know what you mean. He is the key to saving your life Felicity."
A/N: Hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think!