Author's Notes:
I thought of this scenario during the commute one day and typed it up quick. Apologies, it has not been beta'd.
I'm thinking of expanding this into a series of oneshots where I cross Felicity into different fandoms I like. Alternatively, I'm thinking of expanding this into a multi-chapter fanfic that's a little bit dark. If you have any comments, questions, or opinions on any of this, I'd love to hear from you in the comments section.
For general purposes, this is an AU in which I didn't worry about the timelines of anything- release dates, character deaths on the show, what have you.
Thanks for reading!
….
"...so we're expecting a high of ninety three degrees today! If we hit that, Tom, we'll be breaking the record for the highest temperature Starling City has endured on Memorial Day."
"Ugh, tell me about it," Felicity said, rolling over and hitting the power button on the remote, turning the television off. It was only ten in the morning and the thermometer was already closing in on ninety. She was pretty sure she was going to roast to death, and there was no relief in sight. In retrospect, she thought it might have been a wise idea to invest in a window unit air conditioner after all... but Starling City was in the Pacific Northwest. It was supposed to be cool. Wasn't it?
A trickle of sweat dripped into her eye. She huffed.
Flipping onto her back, she lay spread-eagled on the couch, trying to think cooling thoughts. It was no more comfortable than being on her stomach. She doubted she would ever be comfortable again. The heat was brutal, her apartment had terrible cross ventilation, and her one box fan was on its last legs. It was time to go.
Ten minutes later, she was on the road, trying to coax what cool air she could from the overworked AC in her car. Driving on the shady side of the street wherever possible, she headed in the direction of the lair.
In her head, she did the math. Memorial Day = bank holiday, bank holiday = day off of work; company wide shutdown = Oliver going up to the Queen lake house to join his mother and sister for the day + Diggle and Lyla heading to the beach = the two men in her life out of her hair; combine all of the above with the midmorning timestamp... she figured she'd have several hours of aloneness, with the lair completely to herself. More than enough time to unwind a little bit.
As she expected, the place was deserted at this time of day. It would come to life late that night but until then, it was hers. She let herself the back door and then into the hidden door to the basement. The cool air hit her face and she closed her eyes and grinned. It had been far too long since she'd had any time to herself.
Downstairs, all was quiet; the steady hum of the servers and air conditioners was pleasant white noise, and the lack of thumping music above her head was wonderful. Dropping into her chair, she took a deep breath, taking a moment to center herself, to let the walls she carefully maintained within herself come down. After cueing up a playlist, she leaned her head back against the chair, closing her eyes and smiling as she let the music flow over her.
A few songs later, Felicity was calm and cool, letting her thoughts roam aimlessly. She thought about all the things in her life that had brought her to this point- sitting alone in a basement, listening to music in the dark. It never ceased to amaze her how much one person's willpower could change their life. How she had changed her own. She had come so far from what she had been, from what she thought her life would be.
The track switched, and hesitant piano notes chimed in the air. The smile faded from her lips as she recognized the song.
"The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen. A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I'm the queen," she sang, and then chuckled ruefully, thinking about the extent of her own isolation and concealment. No one in her life had so much as a clue. To her friends, to the world, she was Felicity Smoak, IT genius, executive assistant, and sometime crime fighter. None of them knew what she was capable of.
"...couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried." She sighed. She had made her choices and she didn't regret them. But still...
She looked at her hands. Conceal, don't feel, indeed, she thought. Don't let them know. But she was alone now, and there was no one around to uncover her secrets. Why not have some fun?
Don't let them know. She knew how careful she'd have to be. But the door was locked, and no one was going to be opening it any time soon. She grinned. "Well now they know..." she sang, kicking away from the desk and into the middle of the floor.
A snowflake appeared in her outstretched hand. "Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back any more," she sang, admiring her handiwork as she sent it fluttering away from her hand. ""Let it go, let it go, turn away and slam the door." More snowflakes followed, dancing from her hands to the ground. "I don't care what they're going to say. Let the storm rage on..." she laughed, "The cold never bothered me anyway."
Jumping up from the chair, she swung her hands outward, blasting snow and arctic air from her fingers as she danced and hummed along to the music. A flick of her wrist coated Oliver's costume case with icicles; another, and she had decorated the salmon ladder with intricate icy lattice. A stiff breeze blew flurries around the room, and snow drifted and piled in the corners. For the first time in a very long time, she felt free.
"...hmm hmm, never going back... the past is in the past..." Focusing less on the words of the song than on the crystalline sculptures she was creating, Felicity grew giant, shimmering stalactites from the ceiling, which reflected the light from the ice-covered halogen lamps spectacularly. She covered the stairs in ice, and the floor, and the walls, tracing intricate patterns in the frozen surface with the tip of her finger.
"Let it go, let it go, and I'll rise like the break of dawn..." Inspired, she spun around and sent a burst of power at the lamps, which slowly changed colors from white to pink and gold. The colored light streaming through the ice made her feel like she was in the heart of the sunrise. "Let it go, let it go, that perfect girl is gone..." she raised her arms, bringing up a vortex of icy air, letting it swirl around her. She let the power she'd almost forgotten she had flow through her, making her heart beat too fast, making her smile more than she had in a long time. As it raced through her veins, she forgot Oliver, work, crime, the past that she had left behind when she set out for Starling City, everything.
Here I stand, in the light of day. Let the storm rage on-
"The cold never bothered me anyway," she whispered, as she sent one last snowflake spinning away from her fingertip.
"Felicity?!"
She whirled around, her heart shuddering to a dead stop. Oliver stood at the bottom of the stairs, both hands gripping the rail, shoes skidding over the ice. His eyes were practically popping out of his head.
"Oh, shit," she breathed.
"Felicity... what is...?"
"Well, it's completely not what it looks like, I mean, it kind of sort of is what it looks like, which, I guess, is a blizzard in a basement on one of the hottest days of the year. But it's not bad. Well, it has nothing to do with the Arrow or crime or crimefighting, so there's no bad guy or mad scientist that detonated a winter bomb in here in an attempt to sabotage us, not that anyone would, even if we did blow up the Applied Sciences building and some scientist's life's work probably went up in flames..."
"Felicity."
She cut off her rambling with a startled, strangled noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a cough. She wondered what she must look like through Oliver's eyes- hair down, glasses askew, wearing shorts and an old t-shirt in the middle of an ice cavern. An ice cavern that shouldn't exist.
In the heavy silence that hung between them, and icicle broke off one of the lights and fell at Felicity's feet with an echoing plink. They stared at it for a moment before she tried to subtly brush it aside with the toe of her shoe.
"Oliver. I can... I can explain. Hold on."
Quickly, she crossed over to her desk, and dug her bag out from under a drift. Reaching inside, she pulled out a long object. Oliver glanced at it- a stick of some kind? Turning away from him, she waved the stick (a wand, he realized) towards the lair's wintry decoration. He heard her mutter a couple of words under her breath- meteolojinx recanto, evanesco- and the snow and ice all disappeared. The gentle breeze stilled and the temperature in the room rose to something more bearable. He blinked as she turned back to him.
"You see, Oliver, I'm a witch. One with a particular talent for wandless weatherwork, might I add, which I almost never get to indulge in because there is always someone around to report me, and then I get summonses from the Ministry for disrupting weather patterns-"
"Ministry?"
"-and then the Muggles get all bent out of shape that things are weird, and I get accused of being a major contributor to the climate change crisis, which, for the record, I have nothing to do with, even if I was the best in my year at weather magic, and that iceberg was totally in the way of where we were going on that field trip-"
"Climate change?"
"-so the point I'm trying to make is I have no outlet for any of this, not anymore, which brings me to my next point: what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be anywhere near here. It's supposed to be just me, and my wand, and some alone time, and now you know..." She stopped abruptly, wondering if that comment about the wand counted as innuendo, and snapped back into reality as he put his hands on her shoulders. He looked at her intently.
"Felicity, this changes everything."
She felt her heart starting to sink.
"With your powers, we could take the mission to new levels. We'd be able to do so much more than we're doing now. It will make everything so much easier. Don't you see?"
"Hoo boy." She thought about how the Ministry would react if she decided to magically back a Muggle vigilante. That was one giant pile of nope, right there. They'd throw her in Azkaban for that, and she'd never see the light of day- or a computer- again. Well, maybe they'd let her have a computer, but they probably didn't have wifi that far out at sea...
"Throw you in where?"
She realized she'd said that out loud. Whoops. "Wizard jail. Listen, Oliver, I'd love to work with you, but I can't. We're not allowed to mix the magical and the mundane. I'd explain the International Statute of Secrecy to you, but it's a long story. I mean, I could tell you if we got married, or if we had a kid together and it turned out to be magical, but in general? And using magic to advance criminal Muggle activity? Forget it. In fact, this has gone on a little too long for my liking." She huffed in frustration and stepped back from Oliver.
"I feel like I'm wasting a perfectly good opportunity here. Like, I should totally kiss you or something. But I don't see much of a need to draw this out."
"Look, I know your secret now, although I wish you had told me before, but... wait, kiss me? What?"
Felicity raised her want.
"Obliviate," she said.
Oliver's face went blank. He blinked slowly a few times, looking at her but not really seeing her, and she used the opportunity to put her wand back in her bag and plop down in front of the computer.
"Felicity?"
"Oh, hi, Oliver," she said, smiling as she turned the desk chair around. "I thought you were out of town. What are you doing here?"
"I left some paperwork I wanted to look at. I could ask you the same question, though."
"I don't have AC at my apartment, and it's nice and cool down here, so I figured I'd camp out for a bit." She swung her foot back and forth.
"Oh, well, I guess." He frowned, glancing at the floor and shaking his head. "I feel a little bit fuzzy, sorry. I must be having a little bit of an allergy attack." Suddenly he looked at her. "Hey. Do you want to go see a movie or something? Movie theaters are pretty cold, and we don't have to be here 'til later."
"Sure, we've got to work on keeping you up to date on pop culture anyway. Have anything you'd like to see?"
"I've heard that the animation has gotten a lot better since I was away. There's that new Disney movie, it's been out for a while now, but it's still playing... I can't think of the name. Um... Snow Princesses? Frosty?" He pondered. "Frozen. It's called Frozen."
Felicity grinned. "Sounds good. But you're buying the popcorn."