AN: I can't believe I forgot a note last time. I just want to say that, while this was initially inspired by the few role swap stories on this site, it is not a role swap story. Oliver is still the Arrow, he just got there along an initially different road. All other characters are the same as they were in the show save for Cindy, who eventually agreed to live with Felicity and her mother.

I plan to update every Wednesday.

Full Summary:

Harsh circumstances often choose their victims at random, and sometimes the mantle of hero is pushed upon those who least expect it. When Oliver confided in his mother the night before about his plan to go to China with his father, they received an anonymous tip about the Queen's Gambit being tampered with, so they flew instead. Oliver thus made it to China with his father, where circumstances still threw he and Sara into a fight for survival. Felicity, on the other hand, was on her way to China on Ferris Air flight 637 for an overseas job interview. And, with Oliver never on the island, Scylla remained completely operational.

"There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk."

― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana. Good Reads

Alarms were blaring overhead, and luggage was flying by as it was sucked out that hole near the front of the plane. The cockpit had been breached and was vacated of non-strapped personnel quickly as air fled the plane to even pressurization between the two systems of the plane and the outside air. All those poor people seated up front had never stood a chance. Felicity was only vaguely able to hope through her panic that they'd been killed by the blast, that it wouldn't be the long fall that ended their lives. Others weren't so fortunate. Many people seated in close proximity to the breach had been pulled from their seats by the sudden and dramatic change in cabin pressure. There hadn't been enough of a warning for passengers to put their seatbelts back on, and then the plane had been shaken violently by the explosion.

Felicity's only fortune had been her fear of flying. Her seat belt had been firmly in place whenever she was in her seat, and that had probably saved her life as those around her were pulled away. She also had her oxygen mask on almost the instant it had fallen down from its storage space above her head, meaning she could breathe fairly easily while she watched everything around her quickly descend into utter chaos.

She was just removing with great haste the lifejacket stored under her seat when a second more violent explosion shook the plane, this time from the back end, and Felicity fully realized then that this wasn't an accident.

They were being shot out of the sky.

The fuel in the tail had been ignited, but with their swift forward motion the explosion hadn't reached far enough to ignite the tanks in the middle of the plane. That was lucky, or everyone on that plane would've surely died that instant. Then again, maybe that would have been the more merciful alternative. That death would have been quick and thus relatively painless, and now more people were vacated from the plane without anything to help them survive the fall.

She was being pulled to her feet then by a man wearing a brown leather jacket and a life vest of his own, but Felicity couldn't hear most of what the man was saying to her over the screams and the roarous sound of rushing air. She did hear when he said they needed to jump, and, of course, it made sense. If they were being shot at, they couldn't wait for the plane to fall farther because, in the time it would take to plummet the rest of the way, a third shot might ignite the rest of their fuel and kill them all.

But, then there was still the issue that she was being told to jump out of a plane while it was still in the air.

On one side of the plane, a raft was still being deployed over the wing. The other had apparently already gone down, and people were being told to evacuate with vague directions on how to use the parachutes that pairs of them would be given-in retrospect, she probably should've listened. Felicity, noting she was probably going into shock, was pulled in the direction of the door. Fortunately, the air pressure had stabilized, so they weren't being sucked out of the plane, but all thoughts of luck fled Felicity's mind the instant it was her turn to jump with a partner. One look down to the water below-water that was fast approaching as they plummeted from the sky but was still quite a ways away-and she was trying to retreat back into the plane while shaking her head vigorously to say she couldn't do it.

She bumped into Leather Jacket Man, but the panicking people around them were swarming, and they were both pushed from the plane without any further preamble sans parachute. Felicity fell hard onto the wing of the plane, hearing as the man landed beside her, but they both slipped right off.

And then they were in freefall.

Almost 10,000 feet up.

Felicity screamed into the oxygen mask that was still strapped to her face, and she was quite certain in that moment that she was going to die.

Why she thought of her old turtle Quigby in that moment, she had absolutely no earthly idea. She thought of how she had talked to that turtle so much as a child, how she had come home one day to find him gone. She thought of how her mother had told her the turtle had grown to miss the outdoors and had escaped to get back outside. It was years later that she realized turtles couldn't climb the glass walls of a tank and that Quigby had probably died while she was at school. It was the one thing she could think of that her mother had ever done for her that she didn't in some way resent, shielding a little and lonely nerd girl from the death of her only friend.

She wished she could thank her mother for it, but it didn't look like she would ever get the chance.

Someone grabbed her elbow then, and Felicity couldn't help the shriek that escape her as she turned to find it was Leather Jacket Man who had taken hold of her arm. Frozen in terror, she could only watch as he flipped her over to put her back towards the water and then flipped himself to mirror her. The plane was no longer above them, she noticed, as Leather Jacket slung her arm through his and tried to say something to her through his own oxygen mask. She couldn't hear him, though, even for how close he was, so he just held his free arm and his legs out wide as if to demonstrate what he'd tried to say. Felicity caught on quickly enough. She'd taken physics in high school and had rather enjoyed it-happy nerdism at work.

At terminal velocity, the two of them had less than a minute before they would hit the water, and they needed to slow down as much as possible before then. A greater surface area meant greater air resistance, hence the spread-eagle posture.

She mirrored the man beside her, praying that he at least knew what he was doing and that maybe this wouldn't be her last day alive afterall. She was glad she couldn't see the water approaching because she probably wouldn't be able to think straight if she could.

Then Leather Jacket was counting down from five on his fingers. She could only assume it was the time to their landing and braced herself, but then he reached 'one' and tilted them forward instead. With his feet together, he pointed his toes and brought his free arm in, and Felicity barely had the sense about her to mirror his posture, noting they had fewer than ten seconds until they hit the water. The last thing she did was remove her glasses and clutch them to her chest, otherwise she surely would have lost them to the sea.

And then they hit the water as a wave reached up and broke apart to greet them.

Felicity jumped up with a muffled shout, her mind alive with fright, and it was only after she noticed the deafening muteness of her surroundings that she realized she was in her quiet room in her warm bed in her grounded apartment. She breathed in deep and hung her head, running her hands through her sweat-soaked hair, and she pulled her knees up to her chest to rest her forehead on them.

That was how she was found a moment later: seated upright on her sheets-damp with the perspiration from her nightmare-in the fetal position. The light in the hall turned on, and then there was a hesitant knock on the door.

"Felicity?"

Said blonde glanced up to find the girl's dark brown hair was mussed and lacking its usual styling product, and her blue eyes expressed openly her concern. This was the second time she'd been awoken by Felicity that week alone, and the blonde sighed, feeling guilty.

"Sorry I woke you up, Cin."

"Nah, it's fine," the girl was quick to dismiss her guilt, as per usual. "Are you okay?"

Felicity offered her best attempt at a smile. It probably wasn't very, if at all, convincing.

"No," was her small answer.

She looked at the clock on her bedside table then. 3:47. It would be another hour yet until her mother's shift ended, and there was still plenty of time before Felicity had to report to QC. But, she would be getting no more sleep that night-although she'd actually gotten more than her usual three or four hours already.

Sighing, Felicity slowly unfolded herself from her ball to stand from her bed-she would need to wash the sheets again for the sweat drenching them-and she noticed Cindy was, as expected, eased none at all by her answer.

"But, I will be," she assured as she approached the girl. "Go back to sleep." Felicity put a hand on her young friend's shoulder as she passed by her to step into the hallway. "I'm just gonna' grab a shower and then do some homework."

Cindy seemed wanton to agree, but, seeing as Felicity then retreated into the bathroom to get a start on that shower she sorely needed, the formerly wayward youth eventually gave in and returned to her own room.

October 26th, 2012:

Felicity doesn't sleep much. As it turns out, even the soft of her mattress can't make the nightmares go away. At first, she'd tried using that time to focus on her heavy homework load from MIT's online program, and it did work most of the time. But, as a computer sciences savant, she's often still left with quite a bit of free time every day even considering all the time she puts into her studies and her job. She doesn't like it when her mind is idle. It tends to… wonder. Usually to things she rathers not to dwell on.

It had all started one day out of mild and somewhat bitter curiosity. She'd started digging into ARGUS's databases. While she doesn't much care for the agency itself, it has ultimately been their enemies, their 'Most Wanted' files, that have captured a good deal of her attention. That's why she'd started embedding internal triggers into the SCPD's case database that will warn her in the event that one of their MO's comes up.

That's how she catches wind of one 'Deadshot' operating in Starling City. Sharpshooting hitmen are rare. Sniper hitmen who lace their bullets with curare poison are nonexistent save for the one. The moment she learns that a dangerous sniper is local, Felicity starts digging around for information that might lead to his whereabouts or potential targets. As it turns out, intelligence agencies don't like to share their information with each other because, while ARGUS's files on Deadshot are limited to not much else other than his handle, Interpol has acquired a good deal more.

Floyd Lawton.

An address.

Felicity knows she's hardly a cop, but she doesn't trust intelligence agencies like ARGUS or Interpol, so she won't go to them with the intel she's found. She also doesn't want the police to scare him off, as he would surely notice their approach were they to come knocking. All she knows is there's a dangerous gun-for-hire in the city in which she lives, and he has to be stopped. It's this that brings her down to the apartment complex the night she learns of Lawton's current residency in Starling.

It isn't the first time she's done something like this since her return to the States. She'd caught a rapist once. He'd been an idiot and hadn't put up much of a fight at gunpoint. He'd confessed. She'd left him outside a nearby police station with the taped confession duct taped to his chest and his intended victim as a witness.

That has still been one of the few times her… vigilante-ing has ever brought her into the field-vigilantism, that's the word. Usually, it's only digging around on the internet and sending what she finds to the police as an anonymous source. This current task, however, brings her back out onto the streets under the cover of night, and chasing a deadly sniper is admittedly the most dangerous situation she's found herself in.

Well, the most dangerous since her return, that is.

Squatting against the brick wall of the building in the alleyway-donned in her usual field gear of a black hooded jacket, dark pants, sneakers, dark-lensed goggles, and a face mask that admittedly has her feeling a little like an American ninja-Felicity has her laptop propped on top of her bent knees. It's her 'field' laptop, stripped to the studs and perfect for anonymous hacking. Fortunately, at this end of the Glades, few people have the funds to procure a laptop of their own. Even fewer have any kind of firewall protecting their files. That means the laptop she's currently hacking into is most likely Lawton's.

There isn't much there. It seems he scrubbs it frequently, and she would usually say that raised a person's intelligence to above that of most others'. Of course, in this case, it also makes it easier to find what she's looking for. Or rather, what he's looking for.

The Exchange Building.

Normally, Felicity would have to do more research. The Exchange Building, after all, is booked for any number of events every week. Finding out which one has the Sniper's attention is the challenge of this mission. Or at least, it would've been if the event hadn't been all a-buzz at QC for the past couple weeks. Lawton's last victim had been involved in the auction as well, and that's all the connection Felicity needs to know someone at the Unidac Auction will be his next target.

But, that's when Felicity's system alerts her that Lawton has detected her hack. She shuts her laptop an instant later and hastens to her feet. As she's moving, a window is thrown open several floors above her head, and she knows it's time to run. She takes off down the alley, an odd sort of gunfire following her in her wake-not quite a machine gun but not a handgun either. Her survival instincts kick in, and it's the resulting vacancy of her mind allotted by these instincts that saves her life.

Five years ago, she would've died in a situation such as this. She would've stopped running to hunker down in a fruitless attempt to hide from the bullets. Now, she doesn't stop, not even when she reaches the bicycle that she left waiting for her just around the corner.

Felicity doesn't stop pedalling once until she's a couple blocks from QC, in the parking structure where she'd left her car and borrowed the bicycle-hopefully, no one has noticed it missing or needed it while she was away-an hour ago. She discards her head gear and jacket into the hidden compartment in the trunk of her red mini, laying them over the pistol and tactical ninja sword already sitting within, and dresses in the backseat of her car back into her work clothing.

She's already making plans about what to do now that she knows Lawton's target by the time she drives the car out of the parking structure to head home after 'working late at QC'.

A.N.: So, 've decided to try something new with this story. Scenes from Felicity's point of view will be in present tense while scenes from anyone else's POV will be in past tense. This is supposed to indicate Felicity's continual avoidance of and inability to deal with what happened.

Fun fact: Because of terminal velocity, a landing from 10,000 feet is essentially the same as a landing from 1500 feet. With the higher fall, you have more time to prepare. Also, open waves break water tension.

AN: Please review if time permits.