Set during Season 1, Episode 3: "Lone Gunman"

Chapter 1: IT Girl

Felicity Smoak.

That's the name that keeps popping up during his inquiries. Along with the words good, very good, talented, amazing, excellent... oh yeah, and did he forget to mention good?

It's not until he hears the word discreet, though, that he sits up and takes notice.

"She's like The Computer Whisperer or something," Clarissa tells him brightly, sliding a stack of papers across the desk towards him. His mother's EA, she is scarily efficient.

It baffles him that he still has to sign papers for Queen Consolidated when he doesn't work there. (The fact that he has an office of his own on the 38th floor is irrelevant.) All he wants to do is find out what's on this god-forsaken laptop- is that really too much to ask for?

Apparently so, since he's currently being assaulted with paperwork. Boring paperwork, at that. What should have been a five-minute hunt for a decent IT person has instead turned into an hour-long circus. At least Clarissa's efficient (something worth mentioning twice when dealing with QC) and a total sweetheart.

Not to mention very helpful in her opinion of one Ms. Felicity Smoak.

"I took my laptop to her a few months ago and asked her to look at it- thing was totally fried after..." Clarissa trails off, turns bright red. Oliver idly wonders what exactly happened to her laptop, then decides he doesn't want to know. Anything that causes that kind of reaction can't be good. "Anyway. Everyone kept telling me the data was irretrievable and I was gonna have to toss it. Felicity, though? She got all my data onto a new external hard drive in less than 15 minutes! And she was so discreet about it- never breathed a word to anyone."

"Really?" Oliver's tone is casual, but he feels anything but, his muscles tensing under the thin-knit sweater. Discretion is a valuable commodity, one that he means to have for himself. "That's... nice."

"I'll say! She's a good person to have in your corner. Well, thanks for the signatures, Mr. Queen- you're all set! And don't forget- it's Felicity Smoak. S-m-o-a-k."

He's on his way to the elevator when he runs into Dan from Legal. Fortunately, Dan doesn't want anything from him except to share elevator space.

"Oh, you'll want Felicity," Dan says immediately when asked about a good IT person. "Felicity Smoak, though, not Dandridge. Make sure you specify that- Felicity Dandridge couldn't code her way out of a paper bag. Felicity Smoak, on the other hand... she's a genius with computers. And discreet." Dan clears his throat at the last bit, as if suddenly uncomfortable.

Oliver is intrigued. This is the second time the word discreet has been used in relation to Felicity Smoak, and Dan's statement is practically a glowing recommendation- especially coming from a corporate lawyer who's paid to suspect all and sundry of ulterior motives. (Although, it does make Oliver wonder what exactly the employees at Queen Consolidated get up to.) The elevator comes to a halt on the 34th floor and the doors slide open. "Well, this is me," Dan says as he steps out. He gives Oliver a jaunty little wave before making his way down the hallway. It's only when the doors are sliding shut again that Dan suddenly reappears, sticking his head in through the closing gap. "Oh, I forgot to tell you- Mr. Steele's looking for you."

"How'd he know you'd run into me?" Oliver asks, curious.

"Oh, he didn't. He sent out a building-wide message just now and I got to be the lucky messenger. Have a good day."

His day would be better if people didn't keep ambushing him, but whatever. He's dealt with worse. He briefly toys with the idea of blowing off Walter for Felicity before it occurs to him that Walter is currently the CEO. Who else would the CEO use for his computer purposes, if not the best? Besides, if there was one thing he learned on the island, it was trust (or rather, don't trust) and verify. The same name cropping up twice could be a coincidence, but three times? That just might be truth.

He returns Dan's sentiment and travels back to the 38th floor.

Walter Steele's executive assistant looks obnoxiously like a caricature of a cartoon villain. His black hair is slicked back; his thin pencil mustache is waxed and curled at the ends; and his grey vest-and-trouser set is perfectly pressed. His shirt, a shiny lavender weirdly reminiscent of a glow-in-the-dark light, makes Oliver blink. With a sniff, he sticks his nose up in the air and waves Oliver inside.

Oliver vaguely wonders if this is Walter's punishment for doing something Moira dislikes. The thought, though brief, fills him with absurd amounts of glee.

Okay, so he might still be holding a grudge against Walter for marrying his mother. Nobody's perfect.

"You wanted to see me?" he asks, dropping into one of the plush chairs situated in front of Walter's mahogany desk. He attempts a smile, but it feels more like a grimace, so he quickly drops it.

"Ah, Oliver." Walter removes his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose tiredly, and gives him a smile of his own. Unlike Oliver's strange smile-grimace, Walter's is genuine, if a little weary. "Yes. Thank you for coming by. I wanted to talk to you about a few things."

With Walter, 'a few things' actually means a few things. Something for which Oliver is extremely grateful.

It's in the middle of their discussion that he notices the file laying a few inches from his nose. The words Felicity Smoak are printed neatly on the tab. Oliver takes the file, holds it up.

"Do you mind if I move this?"

Walter, in the process of scribbling something on a legal pad, barely even looks at what Oliver's holding. "No, not at all."

Oliver begins to stretch his arm out, then checks himself, as if catching sight of the label on the folder for the first time. "Felicity Smoak?" he inquires casually.

His step-father puts aside the file they've just finished reviewing, looks at Oliver. "Yes. I'm currently in need of a computer expert for a project requiring a bit of discretion. Felicity Smoak was recommended to me- quite highly, I might add. Supposedly, she's our very best. That's her personnel file."

"Can I look? I'm having some computer trouble, thought I'd take it downstairs to the IT department."

"Of course." Walter waves a hand. "Feel free."

The file reveals a passport-sized picture along with a stack of quarterly employee evaluations and her résumé, punctuated by post-its scrawled with various notes. At a quick glance, it seems that Felicity Smoak is a model employee- she is pleasant, highly qualified, ambitious, and punctual. (Although, the green post-it from her supervisor notes that she tends to be both OCD and stubborn when it comes to computers and their set-up; so far, she's "disagreed professionally" with said supervisor no less than seventeen times. She also has little patience for the CFO on the 37th floor.) He takes another look at her picture.

She's pretty in a sexy librarian kind of way. Her blonde hair is pulled back from the oval of her face, glasses perched primly on the bridge of her nose. Surprisingly, her lips are painted a violent shade of pink. She has a very straight-forward, no-nonsense way of looking at the camera.

Carefully, he closes the file and places it back on the desk before turning back to Walter, polite smile fixed firmly in place.

"You were saying?"

As Oliver leans back in his chair and lets Walter's crisp British tones wash over him, he reflects on what he's seen so far.

It's telling that his step-father has Felicity's file on hand. If Walter is keeping it on his desk, within arm's reach, it is because he means to use it, and quickly. Felicity Smoak must be even better than he'd dreamed- his step-father may be kind, but he's no fool, nor does he do things by halves.

The thing is, at the end of the day, Oliver does respect- even love- Walter, despite his current resentment towards him. His step-father has always been a fixture in his life, first as Robert Queen's employee, later as a close family friend. In his mind, Robert and Walter are somehow inextricably linked, like two sides of the same coin. Perhaps it has something to do with all the time they spent together both in and out of the office. If Robert let Oliver drink soda in the office, Walter let him play trains under his desk. If Robert let Oliver run around the building, then Walter brought him back. And if Robert chastised him, well... Walter was there to provide a stiff upper lip and bracing support. Walter is warmth and trust and security, and although many things have changed during Oliver's tenure on Lian Yu, this is not one of them. Walter Steele is a good man, an honorable man, one that Oliver continues to trust with an instinct born of certainty.

So if Walter Steele is giving Felicity Smoak his endorsement (whether he realizes it or not), Oliver pays attention. He's not an idiot. (Much.) He knows the signs when he sees them, and the signs are overwhelming.

Looks like he's found his IT girl after all.