A/N: I was given this prompt and wrote three different one-shots. Because I can! Mwahahaha. My intentions were to reach for different emotions. This one's angsty.
A/N 2: I own nothing. I'm just playing god for a bit and then I'll put them back.
Prompt (from the wonderful htbthomas): Felicity gets arrested, and this time there's no convenient crisis (and no Lance).
This time, there's no sympathy in the eyes across the table.
She is not here to satisfy one man's curiosity. She is here to pay for the actions of another.
The interview is brief. They've used the time between her first questioning to firm up their suspicions and arrange terms with the DA's office. He silently shows her printout after damning printout, detailing her actions and their direct link to open Hood investigations.
He asks her four questions. Three she answers with silence of her own.
"Are you working with the vigilante?"
Don't admit anything.
"Do you know who the vigilante is?"
Don't endanger the team.
"Do you admit to hacking the FBI database?"
Oliver will help.
The fourth catches her off guard.
"Did you think you were going to get a phone call?"
Yes. She knows her sudden movement, the way her head comes up involuntarily, gives her away. She can see the cold victory in his eyes.
Apparently, she's classified as a terrorist (Hello Gitmo, she thinks hysterically) so the phone call is an option the Starling City Police Department can choose to waive. She's moved to holding, and they take everything that's hers away in return for an orange jumpsuit.
It's not my color.
She hasn't spoken in an hour, maybe two. The words are stuck, lodged tightly in the back of her bone-dry throat. There are no jokes that will ease this panic.
She changes in full view of two female officers who brusquely check her naked body for any hidden items. It's so humiliating that she can't quite accept it as real. She concentrates on breathing and writes short news blurbs in her head.
Feliciy Megan Smoak. Top of her class, summa cum laude. Recruited out of college by three of Starling City's top firms. Turned to a life of crime after meeting the boss's son.
It's not until the bars snap closed and she's left alone in a cell meant for two that she crumbles into deep, heaving sobs. She muffles the noise of her fear in the prison-issue pillow as well as she can.
There is no one to turn to. She's dug her own grave. What had she said to Oliver before everything went to shit? Before the Glades was destroyed, his best friend killed, his mother arrested and his life torn apart once more.
People lie. Computers never do.
Heady with her own prowess, with the urgency and the nobility of their cause, she'd forgotten that. She'd been so careful to cover Oliver and Diggle's tracks, she'd neglected to cover her own.
At least they are safe. After Lance had called her in with information on her work computer, she'd panicked and hacked her own phone records from a public library computer. Now anytime Oliver or Diggle's numbers are supposed to appear, the official report will show calls to her mother, her favorite pizza place, or the nursing home where her father is spending his remaining months in Coast City.
The shout for "lights out" echoes down the corridor, and she huddles into the thin blanket, wishing she was tied up and held at gunpoint by a mob boss, or hiding from some drug dealers. Those are situations Oliver can handle.
She thinks back to those sheets of paper on the interrogation room table. She has blood on her hands, those papers are saying, as much as Oliver. She can recall every time an operation went south, how hard they'd tried to minimize the damage. But the bodies are still there.
Maybe this is the only way to clear that slate.
Starling City needs someone to blame for the vigilante's failures. If she gives them that, can they accept him as the hero she knows he can be?
The lights wink out, one by one. She can hear the buzz of conversation die down as guards hiss orders for quiet. Her mind races through possible outcomes, building and dismantling defenses. Each has a fatal flaw, an easily noticeable reason for a judge and jury to doubt her.
Not one of the defenses can argue that she called the police.
Not when she was asked to break into a security company. Not when she analysed a Vertigo sample. Not when she was held at arrowpoint and forced to hack a federal agency.
This is the law. She has done wrong, and they have found her.
Oliver Queen can't save me now.
