Hello, there. I am exceptionally late to SmoakandArrow's Tumblr flash fic prompt challenge thingamajig. Over a year late, in fact. But I am very new to Arrow, and this being my first story for the fandom I was pleased to see some prompts to help me focus my writing. Please forgive my tardiness.
The prompt for this story was Into the Wild. I was supposed to write it in an hour, but since I was already so late I figured it was okay to go a bit longer. If it's important to know, I think this is set in season two, possibly early season three.
The things Felicity Smoak has done under the cover of darkness have changed somewhat over the last couple of years. Before Oliver appeared in the back seat of her car with a bullet in his shoulder, night time was spent catching up on Netflix, working on her own special coding projects and going on the occasional date. In college, she'd set herself challenges to hack into the most secure databases she could think of. And when she was a kid, she'd turn off all the lights in the house while her mom walked the floors at Caesars Palace and watch The X-Files and Beverly Hills 90210. In short, she had always been in front of a screen. At no time in her pre-Oliver life did she ever think that she'd greet the moon with a squeal as angry, 'roided up henchmen with guns chased her and her vigilante best friend though the wilderness after they broke into their Madman of the Week's secret lair. She didn't think she'd be called on to hike through dense forest with a tablet in her hand just to get Oliver into a building when she realized she couldn't do it remotely. But post-Oliver, her evenings had a certain spontaneity to them.
They had been running—well, Oliver had been running. Felicity had been stumbling as Oliver practically dragged her—away from the no-longer-secret lair for what the burning in her legs and chest told her had to be an hour now. Okay, fine, it had probably only been about five minutes. But has she mentioned the dark? And the trees? And the fallen logs and rocks and angry, 'roided up men with guns? Because those kinds of stresses tend to mess with a girl's comprehension of time and space.
She is just about to beg Oliver to surrender to the henchmen and let her be shot dead because, God, she can't run any longer, when he slows suddenly, catches her easily when she plows into him, and then pulls her into a sharp right turn.
"Get down!" he tells her in his gravelly, scary—hot? Scary hot?—Arrow voice.
She can't comprehend such a direct order while her brain is suffering from such a deficiency in oxygen. "What?" she gasps.
Oliver drops to the ground behind a giant fallen tree and tugs at her hand. "Get down here!"
Felicity lets him pull her—really, her legs aren't going to keep her standing for much longer anyway—and lands on her knees beside him, bracing herself from face-planting with a hand on the tree. Oliver pulls her closer to him.
"Get on your stomach," he tells her. "The tree will give us cover."
She finally catches on, and flattens herself against the ground, hugging her tablet against her chest. It's slightly damp and softened by a covering of pine needles, except for a rock that catches her under the ribs. She grunts and grabs the rock out from under her, and hurls it away with a harsh expletive. As soon as she settles, Oliver shifts to lie right beside her. Propped up on their elbows, they're glued together from shoulder to thigh. It does nothing to calm her breathing.
"I think I'm going to vomit," she tells him.
Oliver's fingers find hers in the dark and squeeze. "Slow, deep breaths," he says quietly. "You're going to be fine."
She does as instructed until she doesn't feel as lightheaded and the fire in her lungs dies down. It gives her the time she needs to realize that it's deathly silent around them, and she pops her head up to scan the dark. "Where did our friends go?" she whispers.
"Home, hopefully," Oliver whispers back.
She doubts that, but can't help asking, "Do you think we're that lucky?"
Oliver lets out a short breath. She's not sure if it's a laugh or a sigh. "Sometimes. The rendezvous point is about 50 feet that way." He points over their makeshift barricade with his chin. "Let's sit tight until it's time to move."
Lying still sounds like heaven to Felicity at this moment, so she nods as if this is one of Oliver's most sensible plans. She just hopes that by the time Diggle arrives with the Arrow van she'll have regained feeling in her legs. "Did you find the poison?"
"I found something pink in a vial in a lab," he tells her, and she feels him shrug his shoulder. "I took it and hoped for the best."
"It's always a color," she mutters. "I'll test it when we get back to civilization and hopefully I can make an antidote."
"I hope I got enough."
Felicity nudges him with her shoulder. "We'll make do."
He responds with a grunt, and she knows he has nothing else to say on the matter until they know what they're dealing with. She turns her attention to their surroundings and tries to make out the shapes of men with guns. To her relief, she can only see trees. And a bear. Her blood runs cold. Is that really a bear? Do they even have bears in the woods outside Starling City? She has a friend who swears she saw a mountain lion once, and everyone knows about the weird raccoons that hang around in public parks and pick fights with cats, but she's never heard anything about bears. She holds her breath and stares at the large, dark shape about ten feet away until finally her brain makes sense of it. It's just a tree behind another tree, making odd shapes with its branches. She lets out her breath with a whoosh, and finds herself extremely relieved that she didn't alert Oliver to the potential threat. So, sue her. She's never been the outdoor type.
"Have you ever…?" she starts, but miracle of miracles, her brain actually manages to catch her mouth and shut it down before she asks the dumbest of questions. "Oh, God. Shut up, Felicity," she mutters to herself.
Oliver turns his face to look at her, and they're pressed so close together she can feel the change in temperature across her face. "What?"
She shakes her head, sending her ponytail flicking over her shoulder. She feels the ends of her hair catch on the rough bark of the tree, and then yanks her head back quickly to free herself. When she feels the wool of Oliver's hood brush against her temple she realizes that she probably only barely avoided smacking her face against his shoulder, and reminds herself to scrape her hair into a bun the next time she ventures into the wild.
"Ugh! Damn it," she hisses, and pulls a stick out of her hair.
"Felicity."
"Huh?"
"Have I ever what?"
She tries to meet his eyes, but it's dark and his hood and mask are still firmly in place. All she can make out with any certainty is his lips and some stubble. She takes a shallow breath. "Oh. I was just going to say something dumb and ask if you'd ever been camping before. But of course you have."
She watches one corner of his mouth turn upwards. "Yeah," he says, and suddenly he's smiling fully after the tension of the last 10 minutes. "Only once. But it lasted about five years, so…"
Felicity nods quickly, assuring him she is fully across how stupid the question would have been. "Yeah, I know. I just…sometimes I forget you were on the island. I know you never do, but for me…" How the hell can she explain this? "It's just that you're so normal."
He stares at her for a moment, lips parted in surprise, then looks down at himself decked out in green leather. "Really?"
"Okay. Not normal by most peoples' standards," she allows. "Just by my standards."
"I'm your normal?" He sounds incredulous.
"Yes," she replies quickly. But then it hits her that saying so speaks to an intimacy she's not fully comfortable with expressing right now. So she adds a caveat. "These days."
Oliver cocks his head to the side and his lips form a thin, pitying line that may actually be aimed at himself. "I'm worried about you."
"Meeee too," she sings under her breath. She takes a moment to refocus. "I know you deal with a lot in your head. But generally, 80 per cent of the time, you're Normal Oliver. Intense, sure. But normal…ish."
"And the other 20 per cent?"
She shakes her head with faux irritation. "I just want to grab you so hard."
Oliver's smirk spreads so slowly that her body is overcome by tingles of fire before she even realizes what she said. When she does, the tingles evaporate in a nanosecond and she drops her head against the tree trunk.
"I mean your shoulders!" she says in a rush. "And shake them! Oh my God."
He's not put off by her self-flagellating moaning. Oliver is apparently making lemonade out of the lemony 'sit tight' situation they're in. "I'm surprised you haven't grabbed me hard yet," he says conversationally.
Felicity lifts her head only to skewer him with a withering look. "Your shoulders are the size of a minivan, Oliver. It'd be hard to keep a grip."
His smile flares before falling again. "I don't meant to aggravate you, Felicity," he says, and because he's being honest his voice drops to that soft, intimate whisper that always makes the hair on the back of her neck rise. She licks moisture back onto her lips.
"I know," she tells him. "You're just making split-second decisions based on what you think will keep everyone safe."
"Right."
"Except for when you make really bad plans, and then don't like to hear why they might not work."
Even though she's not looking at him, Felicity can feel the weight of his epic side eye. And she can't blame him, really. She doesn't know why she's bringing it up now, given that one of those split-second decisions of his back at the lair probably saved her tired ass. But nevertheless she lets the comment hang there and clicks her tongue nonchalantly a few times as she avoids his gaze. She hears Oliver take a deep breath, and when he speaks again he has summoned his patient voice.
"Monitoring things from a distance, while extremely important," he adds carefully, "is not the same as being in the middle of the fight."
"I know, Oliver," she replies just as patiently. "But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you making plans to bring down generic bad guy on your own, and then being, shall we say, reluctant to consider other strategies—"
"I'm not reluctant," he cuts in.
She turns her head slowly, deliberately, to look at him, and raises an eyebrow. "What would you call it?"
He takes a moment but finally answers with a straight face. "Discerning."
Words fail her.
"I need my team to trust me," Oliver moves on.
"We do," she assures him, although it's entirely unnecessary. They show their trust every day. "But sometimes you could trust us a little more. We all want the same things, right? Bad guy gone, innocent people saved, Oliver home safe."
"Two out of three ain't bad." The smirk is back, so she plays along to make nice.
"Why do you want the bad guys to stay?"
A smile passes between them. Their disagreement, such as it was, is over.
"How far away is Digg?" he asks.
Felicity feels for her tablet and pulls it up. In a few swift swipes she has a map up with a red dot moving across the screen towards a green one. "Best guess, about five minutes," she tells him.
Oliver moves his head closer to look at the screen. She catches the familiar smell of wool and leather over earth and pine, and it makes her stomach do a little flip.
"Okay," he says, and turns his face to hers. He's only a few inches from her now, and the light off the tablet allows her to see his eyes as they drop to her lips and pause there for a few moments longer than they should. "What's your plan for getting to the road safely?"
"What do you mean?"
Oliver points vaguely in the direction of the road. "It's 50 feet down a steep hill that's covered in rocks, fallen trees and generally uneven ground."
"Yes."
"And we should assume that our friends from before—there were four of them—have taken up position in the vicinity."
She's beginning to understand why he thinks safety might not be guaranteed. "Right."
"There are dozens of trees between us and the road," he goes on with maddening calm. "They could provide cover, but they could also knock you unconscious if you run too fast and lose your balance. So, what's your plan for getting down to the road without being killed?"
She purses her lips as she thinks. She knows he's enjoying testing her, but she also believes that he wants her to think of something great.
"How many arrows do you have left?"
"Just two."
"Any nunchuks or throwing stars, or…?"
The tablet lights his face as he smiles at her with affection. "Fresh out. But I have a knife."
She nods and forms a haphazard plan. "Okay. So, I run for it, draw their fire, you take out two with your arrows, they spin and fire at you while I make it to the car and tell Digg to start shooting. Meanwhile, you've ducked back down to keep yourself safe until Digg drops the other two."
Oliver nods along. "Okay. Sounds good. But you're assuming that I'll hit two guys in the dark on first try."
"You never miss."
"And you're assuming that the remaining two will forget about you and aim for me."
Felicity shrugs. "I expect they'll want to avenge the deaths of their co-workers. I mean, wouldn't everybody?"
"Not as much as you'd think."
"Hmm." She puts a thoughtful finger to her lips. "Awkward conversation for the Arrow Christmas Party this year."
"How about this? You get in touch with Digg now and tell him that as soon as we see his headlights, we're going to make our way with deathly silence and impressive stealth down to the road."
Felicity snorts. "Well, that plan falls apart immediately, because I've never done anything with silence and stealth."
That earns her another affectionate smile. "I believe in you," he tells her, but there's something in his tone that tells her he's making fun of her. Just a little bit. "If our evil henchmen start firing, you're going to tuck yourself into a tiny ball and not move while I rush the closest shooter, take his gun, and return fire. Then we'll both moonwalk down to the road and wait for Diggle."
Felicity frowns. "Seems like that's just your plan rather than an amalgamation of mine and yours."
Oliver opens his mouth to argue, then thinks better of it. He pointedly looks away from her, and Felicity sighs and digs into her pocket for her phone. She fires off a quick text to Digg to inform him of Oliver's plan, then closes her tablet and tucks it back down the front of her jacket against her chest.
After a quiet few seconds she asks, "Do you really know how to moonwalk?"
"No."
She aims a suspicious look at him. "Really?"
"You know me," he says, turning back to look at her. "I can't dance."
"You told me that, but I'm not sure I believe it."
"Why not?"
"Because you're so physic—ahh!" Her cell phone screen lighting up with Digg's response gives her a scare, and she ignores Olive sighing her name as she reads it. "Digg says he's approaching from due west and hopes that's going to work. ETA two minutes."
Oliver holds out his hand to her, and after a moment of indecision Felicity hands over her phone. "Be gentle with it."
"It's in safe hands."
She bites her tongue. As Oliver types his response, Felicity's mind wanders back over their conversation. "Where are we going to have the office End of Year Celebration?"
"The what?"
"Not all of us celebrate Christmas," she reminds him.
Oliver nods. "I know, but why are you worried about planning the Queen Consolidated Christmas party right now?"
She waves her hand as he misunderstands. "No, the Team Arrow one. And we should have one because we all made it through another year without dying."
Oliver hands her phone back. "Ladies' choice," he decides, and then waits a beat. "We'll ask Digg."
"You're going to regret saying that," she sings at him.
"Only if you tell him."
They lie in comfortable silence for the next 90 seconds until the lights of the Arrow van—God, she really hopes that's the Arrow van—peek through the trees. Felicity makes to get up, but Oliver stops her with a heavy hand in the small of her back.
"Wait for my go," he tells her.
So Felicity waits, her muscles tensed and ready to propel her forward. She hopes her thighs won't give out as soon as she stands. The headlights come closer and closer, and Felicity looks around their hiding spot. She can't see anyone moving, but she holds her breath all the same.
When the van is just about right in front of them, a blinding spotlight on the roof switches on and sweeps across the landscape. Oliver grabs Felicity's arm and almost pushes her to her feet.
"Go!" he hisses, and Felicity scrambles to her feet. She makes it over the fallen tree truck and hears the whoosh of Oliver's bow being pulled taut behind her. The spotlight sweeps into her eyes and she stumbles, suddenly blind, but she catches her balance on a tree and keeps running gracelessly down the hill. She hears a crack behind her and cringes, waiting for either the sound of gunfire or the burn of a bullet in her body. But she keeps moving, keeps running, until she sees Digg's face in the driver's window. His arm is out the window, holding a gun at the tree line, and he doesn't take his eyes off the woods as he yells at her.
"Felicity, get in!"
She reaches for the door handle and yanks it back, sliding open the back door. But before she gets in, she turns and looks for Oliver. He's just three steps behind her and he doesn't even pause as he grabs her around the waist and throws both of them into the back of the van. As Felicity lies sprawled on the floor, Oliver slams the door and Digg hits the gas. Tires spin against gravel before finally gaining traction, and then they shoot forward into the dark.
"Oww!" Felicity cries as her kneecap smacks into something metal and pointy under the seat.
Oliver looms over her, sans hood, and braces one hand against the back of Digg's seat to keep his balance. He holds the other out to her. "You okay?"
She takes his hand and lets him pull her into a sitting position. "Figures that after all that the only injury I get is from the car ride home."
He gives her a full, wide smile and rests his hand briefly against her cheek. "I'll get you some ice later," he says, and then climbs into the front passenger seat.
"Are we good?" Digg asks.
Oliver reaches into his suit and pulls out the vial of pink liquid they came for. "We're good. With any luck we'll be able to use this to create an antidote."
"It's not luck," Felicity says, rubbing her knee and wincing. "It's science. And of course we'll be able to create an antidote. As soon as we get back to the foundry, I'm going to get right on that."
"Have a drink first," Digg suggests.
Felicity nods at the excellent idea. "Yes, I am going to have a drink, and then I'm going to get right on working on an antidote."
Oliver looks back at her. "You might want to have a shower. We're both pretty filthy."
"Right, shower," she revises. "Then a drink, then work."
"I could really go a giant pizza right now," Digg throws in, and Felicity's stomach grumbles on cue.
"Shower, then pizza, then drink, then work," she decides. "Solid plan."
And then tomorrow, she would definitely hit the gym to work on her cardio.
Or not. Whatever.