She doesn't go to the choosing ceremony. She never has, not in the three years she's been in Dauntless - even gone so far as to collect a couple of favors so that she didn't have to. (she's only had to do that once. Shado and Laurel cover for her most of the time, even against Nyssa's sharp and prying eyes. And really, for the most part, when it comes to this they leave her alone. Even Laurel's Candor roots take the back seat on this particular issue.)

Right now, as she waits by the net, she idly wonders about who is going to jump first. There's a betting pool on it. Always is - every year. It's easy to bet that it's gonna be a Dauntless-born kid, but there's no good money in easy.

Felicity is usually careful who she chooses - evaluating their personalities makes it a statistics game to figure out who it's going to be. But sometimes she expects a big-brained Erudite transfer to know a scare tactic when they see one and figure out that, Dauntless or not, they wouldn't really ask their initiates to kill themselves on first day, and take that first jump regardless. (figure out the obvious the way she had, back when she had to take that jump. She'd guessed almost before the words were out of Nyssa's mouth. But she hadn't gone to the ledge on purpose back then. Hadn't wanted to make herself even more noticeable than she already felt.)

She's picked the right one two years in a row now.

When he comes hurdling through the hole in the ceiling, blue robes flying and with a scream that is half a laugh stuck in his throat, she bites the inside of her cheek to contain her satisfaction as Laurel curses in the background. Lets make that three years, she thinks without being able to contain the little spark of satisfaction that winning brings her.

"How do you always know?" Laurel hisses and Felicity indulges in exactly one smile before she turns to the initiate.

Oliver Queen: the Erudite-born kid with a fuck-off attitude and everything to prove to literally everyone. Yeah, not really a difficult choice, this one. She'd picked him as first jumper the moment she heard he was among the transfers.

She gives him a moment to just lay there on the net and absorb the fact that he just jumped down a seven stories high building. It can be jarring the first time - she remembers that as she watches him laying there, shaking a little bit, a choked laugh stuck in his throat.

But then the three seconds are over and she grabs the net and pulls, causing him to tumble forward. She extends her arm when he's close enough to the edge of the net. He's still breathless, still smiling and half-stunned, but when she finds his eyes, she's surprised by how stern they are, how insistent. He's pretty and it's easy to notice, in that boring way of handsome faces. But his eyes... his eyes are beautiful. (the thought comes from literally nowhere and it feels so foreign that it's almost as if someone standing next to her whispered in her ear)

He grasps her forearm and she grasps his, helping him down.

His feet hit the ground hard and he's still swaying. She doesn't let go until he has his feet under him.

"Were you pushed?"

"No." but there's a bit of defensiveness in his tone .

Her lips curl a bit on one side.

"No, of course not." He doesn't react to that, though she thinks she can see something move in his eyes before he blinks it away. "What's your name?"

"What, you don't know?" His tone is a challenge, but that challenge leaves his face pretty quickly as her expression rearranges in the hard lines of the patented deadpan stare that she has worn as a second face for years.

Oh, she knows. Of course she knows. (he's not as famous as he thinks he is but there is no way of being friends with Laurel without knowing about Ollie Queen). She knows plenty of things she has no business knowing, but Dauntless is the wrong place for Ollie Queen's I-don't-give-a-shit-ask-me-how attitude and the sooner he gets that through his skull, the sooner his chances for survival are gonna go up.

"Your name, initiate." She repeats, steady; cold now. His face falls out and he straightens. She softens her tone just a little bit. "Chose carefully, you only get to pick once."

He opens his mouth, closes it. Blinks at her. She almost smiles at his hesitancy.

She knows the feeling.

"Oliver." He says finally.

Somewhere in half shadow Laurel snorts. "What, not Ollie?" And there's no missing that harsh mocking note in her voice.

He pinches his lips together, standing straighter when he recognizes Laurel's voice, his face rearranging in determined lines, fists clenching.

"No. Just Oliver."

Felicity allows one nod to that. She raises her voice so that the others can hear. "First jumper, Oliver!"

She doesn't look away from him as she says it, which is why she doesn't miss his startled eyes looking around when the shadows of the building echo his name with cheers. Felicity ushers him forward towards them with one hand between his shoulder-blades. He's taller than her by almost a foot, but it doesn't matter. Here she's steadier than most.

"Welcome to Dauntless, Oliver." She tells him in a low voice that is only meant for his ears, straight faced and steady. He holds her eyes as he nods, just as the second jumper tears the air, her resounding laughter and high-pitched screaming mixing and tickling the walls. Laurel starts towards the net to pick up her sister who rolls to the edge in a flurry of black and white clothes and golden-blonde hair. The dauntless from the edge of the building keep cheering.

Laurel pulls Sara down. Her cheeky smile and the dimpled chin are the first things Felicity notices about her.

"Hey sis."

Laurel rolls her eyes. "Hey yourself, birdie." She says, more warmly than Felicity's heard Laurel sound in a long time. Then she pushes her sister towards her new faction. "Get going."

And that's how Four's third and last class of initiates starts.