Disclaimer: I do not own nor make any profit off of Arrow. It belongs to The CW, DC Comics, etc.
A/N: AU story set later in Season 2. At least it was supposed to be AU; not so sure after recent episodes... By the way, I think people need to avoid the elevators at Queen Consolidated. Something unfortunate always happens there. A few might recognize this story from my Arrow tumblr blog: HoodSmoaked.
Chapter 1: Revenge
Felicity hadn't the faintest idea why she was… wherever she was.
It seemed ridiculous that she would be anyone's personal ransom bait, and she couldn't see how anyone would know about her connections to the vigilante. Either she, Oliver, and Digg were extremely careful or the people who might have guessed were extremely dead. Or psychotically chasing after their mobster fathers, like Helena Bertinelli. And seeing as any skills she could offer Helena on that front were tied up in her currently useless hands, it just didn't make any sense.
But to somebody, it must have made a sick kind of sense.
Otherwise she would not have ended up hanging by her bound wrists from a ceiling beam too high to see clearly, with a gag covering her mouth. She didn't know why the kidnapper had left her glasses, to be honest, but it was the only comforting thing she could find in her situation.
Catching sight of the camera on the wall across from her for the first time since waking up, Felicity shivered at the idea that this might be more than a ransom demand. She tried not to envision anything worse, until she admitted to herself just how little she knew about her kidnapping or the kidnapper.
All she knew was that a man with strains of a vaguely familiar accent had accosted her with a request for directions on her way into the elevators at Queen Consolidated, getting further into her personal space than anyone needed to be as the doors closed. When she felt the pricking at the back of her neck, Felicity had finally understood why.
Now, hanging just low enough for her toes to brush the floor, and left without anyone to even tell her what she had been taken for, Felicity tried desperately not to let her fear spike. The room was one large, drab, gray warehouse with concrete and steel its only design — a despairingly dead space, empty save the camera and Felicity.
She shivered again at the sight of it, hardly knowing why that camera, more than anything, frightened her half to death.
Squeaking and squealing from rusted hinges behind her startled the IT expert into a near-cry; a sound only stopped when she clamped her lips together behind the gag.
When she could finally see the face of her captor, Felicity recognized the same well-tanned attacker from the elevator.
"Ms. Smoak, how nice to see you awake," the large, dark-haired man greeted her with startling cordiality, the accent no longer a simple strain in his voice, but fully fledged Australian in origin. "Oliver will be glad to see it."
With the gag, Felicity had to rely on her eyes and brow to convey her unasked questions. Why had he brought her there? And why was Oliver involved?
"You're curious, I'm sure," the man continued pleasantly, as if he had not drugged her, tied her up, and hung her from the rafters. "I'm not going to hold back, my girl. I think you deserve the truth as much as I relish telling it to you."
That pleasant tone now tentatively belied arrogance and hate simmering beneath the surface, every word filled with bitter sarcasm. Felicity tried not to flinch back from it.
"You see, Felicity," he took up his story, coming to stand right in her line of vision and ignoring her obvious distaste with the use of her first name, "Oliver Queen had the misfortune of leaving me to die on Lian Yu."
Felicity tried to look unaffected, but the truth was she felt like screaming inside. Another of the people from those horrible five years had come back? Her fear multiplied tenfold, though the blonde attempted to smooth her expression as best she could.
"But first," the man added, seeming almost excited by the 'twist' in the story he was telling, "he stole the woman I loved. She was killed, and after seeing her blown up, Oliver then abandoned me to the fire that ruined my face."
Felicity knew there had to be a fault in his logic somewhere, but Oliver had never genuinely opened up about his island years to her in any real detail, so she really had no idea what was true and what wasn't.
"So," the man went on, seeming oblivious to her inner quarrel, stating quite calmly, "I decided I needed a little revenge. What better way than to take his precious Laurel from him?"
Felicity felt extremely confused now in addition to her fear. If he was going to take Laurel, why did he take her? It didn't make any sense at all.
"But then," he continued with great enthusiasm, scaring Felicity a little bit more, "I realized that wasn't enough. I had to make him really suffer. Simply taking Laurel Lance away would only fuel his anger and his revenge. I want more than that, you see. I want him to know he failed and to grieve that failure; to look back on a choice he made that never truly gave him victory."
Nothing made any sense to Felicity, no matter how many different ways the crazed man explained it. She needed more information; something to work with and help her warn Oliver of the danger Laurel was in.
However, she was sorely disappointed by the man stepping back from her, "I'm afraid I can't explain anymore now, Felicity. We just have to wait for Oliver to find my little greeting card. Then I can explain in full detail. For now, I have to leave you. Don't go anywhere."
Felicity could have spat in his face had she not been gagged. He seemed to understand her desire, for he grinned despicably as he walked out of sight behind her.
An age must have passed after that. Felicity's arms became a bed of pain she could not ease. With her feet lifted off the ground, there was no way to relieve the pressure and strain on her arms and neck. Her head filled with aching tension as the time crawled by in her looming gray cell. She tried not to imagine what Oliver and Diggle were going through trying to find her, but it looped through her weary, frightful mind all the same. No doubt the purpose of such an empty, bland room was precisely that; to make the captive focus on their own mind until they went crazy.
Just when Felicity thought she would indeed lose her mind with worry and fear and doubt, the door creaked behind her.
The dark-haired man's footsteps were quicker this time, almost eager, until he came to stand before Felicity once again with a satisfied expression more terrifying than his earlier grin.
"Oliver moved rather quickly," he told her, a hard glint in his brown eyes. "You must mean more to him than I thought. Let's have a chat with him, shall we?"
Felicity noticed her kidnapper holding a remote, her fears about the camera confirmed when the screen blipped and Oliver in jeans and a black pullover took over the screen. He stood in a warehouse not dissimilar to the one Felicity and her captor occupied.
From the way Oliver paced the room, fists clenched and shoulders tight, Felicity could easily tell just how angry he was.
"Hello, Oliver," the kidnapper spoke into the small microphone he held.
Oliver spun around to face the camera, and from way his eyes widened, Felicity knew he could see them the same as they could see him. That was the point of the camera, she now understood.
"Slade!" Oliver growled, his voice coming in a little distantly.
"Step a little closer, Oliver. We can't hear you very well," the man named Slade retorted, stepping back to stand right beside Felicity's hanging form.
"What is this about, Slade?" Oliver asked with seeming calm once he had stepped close to the camera. His blue eyes, however, flicked over to Felicity often enough to prove just the opposite.
"Revenge, of course," the Australian man responded condescendingly. "Did you honestly think I'd let you just run free after you betrayed me?"
"Felicity has nothing to do with that!" Oliver argued, growing visibly angrier by the second. "Just let her go."
"The fact you want me to grant her freedom is exactly why I'm keeping her!" Slade growled back.
"Why?" Oliver shouted in return, plainly having reached his wits' end in just a few short sentences. "What does this accomplish?"
"Everything!" the large man snapped, lunging forward a step as if to get in Oliver's face. Felicity flinched at the venom in his tone. "I was going to just kill your darling Laurel, but I saw you with your sweet assistant by chance one day. Lovely little thing, isn't she? All porcelain skin and sparkling eyes, brilliant and innocent and untainted by your shadows. Not your usual type, but then that's just it. There's something about her. Something that means a lot more than you're willing to show. But I can see it. And after I've destroyed that, you'll regret ever meeting her."
"I'll find her, Slade. I'll find you." Oliver threatened with every ounce of the vigilante coming forward to mix with the emotions of the man in one powerful persona. Felicity had never seen him quite like that before and it equally intimidated her and made her proud. "And I swear to you, it will be you who regrets meeting her!"
"You may want to consider who else you need to save," Slade said with a swagger in his step and smug confidence in his voice.
Oliver blanched the same as Felicity, the blood draining from his face.
"What are you going to do?" he asked cautiously, voice low and harsh to cover the very real fear underneath.
"It wasn't enough to just take your precious lawyer," Slade informed Oliver mockingly, "You need to suffer more deeply than that. So I'm giving you the perfect choice. Save Laurel from the triad… or save Felicity from me."
Oliver inhaled sharply, his eyes pivoting to Felicity in one sharp snap. No matter how much she wished to, the IT expert could not conceal the wave of helplessness that flooded her gaze.
Laurel would always come first.
There was no way around it, Felicity admitted to herself with an ache in her heart. Oliver would always choose Laurel.
"I'll kill you," the billionaire threatened Slade simply, his jaw clenched with unchecked anger. "I'll kill you!"
Slade only snorted at the threat, adding one last taunting piece of information as he turned to gesture at Felicity, "Remember her porcelain skin and those sparkling eyes, Oliver… You know how well Billy and I always did with knives."
Before the screen cut to black, Felicity could hear and see Oliver roaring with outrage, his face unrecognizable through the fury overshadowing it.
A/N: To be continued...