The shrill sound of her phone startles her awake. It's early, she knows that much because if there's anything that she can keep track of it's her truly inconsistent sleep cycle.
"Hello?" Her voice sounds sleepy and her tone is crabby. She can't find it within herself to care that much about the current situation if she's being perfectly honest with herself. She likes her sleep and tends to detest anything that that means she doesn't get enough.
"I'm sorry." The voice is crackly, poor connection type crackly but even then, she recognises it. How could she not. It was the voice that she had wanted to hear in person for, well she doesn't want to think about that.
"Sara?" she chokes it out, finding the words and the breath to do so with a strength that she didn't know she possessed.
"I can't tell you what I'm sorry for, not all of it anyway, but I guess I'm mostly sorry for not being there for you," she knows that voice as well as her own and can hear the tears choking Sara's voice.
She takes a moment to try and compose herself, willing herself out of this nightmare. She's had it before, dreamt of what her best friends' final moments had been like before the boat had gone under. She didn't know the full details, nobody did but that wasn't to say that she wasn't adept at making things up in her head.
She silently begs the grief to not overwhelm her. It's a battle she's already lost. "Sara where are you?"
"I'm safe for now. That's why I can call you. I just wanted to hear your voice."
"Come home."
"You know I can't."
"I need you here, with me! We were meant to be tackling this adult thing together remember? That was the deal." The longer she spends on the phone the harsher her voice becomes and the quicker the fire starts to burn in her heart. "Have you spoken to your family?"
The line crackles as Sara remains silent.
"Sara?" The anger disappears the moment the thought of her best friend leaving her again enters her mind. She doesn't want to go through all of this again.
"I love you, Smoaky," Sara says, her voice filled with the tears that she imagines are running down her blond-haired friends face.
"Love you too, Sar-Bear." They're ridiculous pet names used for nothing but relentless teasing but they belong to them and them alone. It's a small comfort that even in death they share this one thing.
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"Don't miss me too much." The line goes dead and Felicity is left with nothing but the dead silence on her phone and a screaming baby in the next room.
She meets Oliver Queen for the first time formally on a Wednesday. She's imagining life anywhere but at work, doing anything but the boring software updates her boss had instructed her to do.
He comes bearing a charm filled smile and a bullet ridden laptop and it's then that she can't help but understand her best friend's actions just a little better. If a billionaire had smiled at her life that when she was 20 then of course she would have gotten on a yacht bound for China on a whim.
"Felicity Smoak?" he double checks, glancing down at the name plaque.
"That's me!" She says all too brightly for someone who has had maybe three hours of sleep in the last forty-eight hours.
"Great!" He says, turning the charm up on her just a little more. "I'm Oliver Queen-"
"I know, you're kind of my boss, Mr. Queen," the words leave her lips before she can even comprehend her response.
"Mr. Queen was my father-"
"Except he's dead, which is so insensitive I'm so sorry!" Saying she was mortified would perhaps be the biggest understatement of the year. "So, right, what can I help you with, not dead Mr. Queen." Would a punch in the face be too much to ask right now, or being swallowed whole could help also? She wasn't fussed.
"I was wondering if you'd be able to help me, see I have this laptop and it's not working and I was just wondering if there would be anyway for you to salvage any information off it." To Oliver's credit he's non-pulsed by her blabbermouth and continues despite her complete stupidity.
He hands it out to her as she studies it further. "How did you end up with bullet holes in it?"
"My coffee shop is in a rough neighbourhood," he deadpans, face settling into one of complete calm. It unnerves her for a moment, not expecting anyone who had been through what he had to be so convincingly okay.
She glances back at her computer where the latest patch is downloading and then back at him and then the laptop in his hands. "It's going to take a while, because, you know, I've got a day job but after that, sure I'll see what I can do. It will take a while though. One time I spilt OJ all through this PC that I had built in like junior year or something and boy I have never seen that much smoke or fire come from one hard-drive. Not that this is in anyway like what I just said, just that computers and liquids especially the milky kind are never good for computers. You know what I'm going stop talking because every time I open my mouth bad words seem to fall out."
"It's fine. I didn't have a whole lot of people to talk to me when I was on the Island. It's a nice change just to hear someone else's voice," his eyes darken considerably and he seems to take great interest at his feet. "Here's my number, so ah, call me when you've finished or when you've sort of found something or whatever."
"Okay, will do." She smiles at him, placing the card in her card older that usually just help her post it notes.
He gives her one final smile before walking back out the door again. She pretends she doesn't notice the way he looks back at he once final time. She also ignores how her heart flutters a little at the thought.
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Tommy meets her at the closest Big Belly Burger to her house when she finishes work that evening. She'd spent the better part of the afternoon working on Oliver's laptop project all the while ignoring the hinky feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"I met your best friend today," she says by way of geeting.
He laughs through his milkshake. "Hello to you too Smoak."
"He's different then I thought, all serious and brooding," she swipes a fry as she says it laughing at Tommy's betrayed expression.
"If you want food go and order it yourself."
"But someone else's food tastes so much better!"
She excuses herself for a moment to place her usual order, before going back to her and Tommy's table.
"So, what did my best friend want?"
She pauses, "he wants some help readjusting to society."
Tommy raises an eyebrow. "Oh really?"
"Not like that you fool, technology wise. You should have seen this brick of a laptop he brought in to me. Like I can fix something that comes from the Jurassic age. Which I can because I'm a certified genius in every conceivable way." She takes a breath. "That was totally not the point of all of that. But yeah he wanted help. I'm giving him help."
"Oh bless, my two best friends being friends by themselves."
"I wouldn't call us friends. I do work for him after all."
"You will be."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know you both better then you seem to think."
"Right. Gotcha. You're feeling psychic."
"Damn straight I am."
The pair fall into companionable silence, eating their meals both lost in thoughts.
"Hey," Tommy startles, "where's your mini me tonight?"
"She's at soccer practise until 8 and then Leah's mom is bringing them here for ice-cream." She checks her watch for the time, realising she only has fifteen minutes left of peace before there's 15 rambunctious five year olds swarming the counter.
"That's a bit late isn't it? Isn't her bed time 8:30?"
"It's a one off because they've got to matches on the weekend to work out who gets into the finals. I wasn't really paying attention to be honest." In fairness, she's pretty sure that she's kinda winning on the mom front given that her kid is a straight A student. She can't be expected to keep up with sport. Even the thought of it makes her skin crawl. She just doesn't like sports.
Tommy laughs at her reaction, having been forced into taking her daughter to two thirds of her soccer games over the last two years. "So, you remember that you have that spa voucher that I gave you for Christmas last year still tucked away unused."
"I know. But between a full time job and a kid I don't have time to be pampered Tommy. Someone has to pay the bills."
"Settle down, I was merely suggesting that you accidentally disappear for a little while during during on of the games and get a mani-pedi, a full body massage and maybe a hair treatment because not only are your roots showing but your ends are looking a little worse for wear."
Automatically her leg jolts out to land a kick against Tommy's shin, uncaring of the damage in the process. He's not wrong though. The last time she'd tried to do her hair, well, there was a temper tantrum and bleach in her eyes and a trip to the emergency room along with a very embarrassed call to Detective Lance. Not one of her best moments, of that she was absolutely sure. And the mani-pedi sounded divine.
Would her daughter really begrudge her for missing maybe three hours.
The answer was fairly simple. Yes. Yes she would.
Unless. "If you invite Laurel to watch the game with you then she might not care that I'm missing."
Tommy frowns at her. Even though he'd grown accustomed to their friendship over the last five years, he always felt unsettled by the fact that upon her death, Sara Lance's older sister had taken her best friend under her wings. Not that he would admit it to anyone but himself, but the idea that the two most important women in his life were like sisters honestly scared the crap out of him.
"That's all it would take to win over the littlest Smoak?"
Felicity laughs. "Tommy considering you've been in her life since before she was born I think it's going to be a pretty safe call that you've already won her over."
"Hey! Don't judge! I'm just hedging my bets for when she reaches puberty alright?" The very thought of her daughter reaching puberty strikes the fear of god into both of them, something that between herself, Tommy and Laurel they've discussed at length.
She checks her watch as the front door swings open and the sound of children chattering away reaches her ears.
"Showtime," she mouths to Tommy while pulling a face of complete disgust, causing him to half choke on his burger.
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She almost considers not calling him when she finally finishes up with his bullet ridden laptop. But then curiosity gets the better of her and suddenly she's dialling the cell phone number that he'd given her two days ago. He answers on the third ring, his voice gruff and anger filled.
"Hi, it's Felicity Smoak, you left your laptop with me a few days ago and I was just wondering if when you wanted it back," the words come out slightly more jumbled then she would have preferred but she guesses that she can't really help it now.
There's a deep shuddering breath on the other side and she can already feel herself tensing up at the sound of it. "Oh, right, thanks," his voice is back to normal, "when are you free?"
"Well, um, I'm not particularly swapped at work right now, or any day really that suits. I do work for you, remember?"
He laughs quietly, more a chuckle then a laugh but it's something. "I'll be right down." He hangs up before she has a chance to say anything in reply, leaving her alone at her desk wondering what on Earth she's just done.
He gets to her office in what has to be record time, a bright, businessman smile on his face. "Felicity!" he exclaims up upon seeing her. "How are you?"
"Good!" Is all she can reply as soon as she lays eyes in him. His eyes are darker then they were the other day, as if there was an anger belaying the businessman like exterior he wore around QC.
He stares at her expectantly when she doesn't elaborate further.
"Right, the laptop. Gotcha. Good news is that I was able to save most of the hard drive from being corrupted by the bullets-"
"Coffee," he corrects with a smirk.
"Right coffee. What I've done is move all of the brainy parts of your laptop into a newer, coffee proof laptop so it shouldn't happen again. And everything else, well I've put on a USB." She holds both out too him. "Look, I don't wanna get involved in any family drama but perhaps, but the Unidac acquisition is a really big deal around here and it's taken a lot of good people a lot of hard work to get a handle on it."
He looks confused for all of five seconds before his expression smooths back to businessman. "It's for a friend."
"Right." Except for the fact that he's been on an island for the last five years and how many friends can he have? The look she levels him with must ask a similar questions because he has the decency to look down at his feet rather then talk to her. "Look, I won't say anything just please don't be doing anything stupid."
"I'm not. It's complicated."
"Okay." She doesn't have the energy to debate the point with him, but the feeling in the pit of her stomach, the unease she'd felt constantly for as long as she could remember, close to disappears when Oliver Queen is around. She doesn't know what that means for her, or for him, but it does mean something.
"Okay." The smile he gives her melts her heart just a little.