Gone and Forgotten
Chapter 2: Gone Dark
"Felicity, are you ready to go?" Oliver called, letting the back door of the beach house swing closed behind him. He listened for a minute. Nothing except the sound of running water coming from upstairs.
She's probably still in the shower. He set down their bags in the kitchen and took a single step into the living room before freezing. The front door hung open, broken off its hinges. Instinct kicked in as Oliver crouched low, retrieving the combat knife from the waistband of his shorts. He surveyed his surroundings and moved towards the stairs. Running water still echoed from the upstairs bathroom, and Oliver could feel the heaviness of steam permeating the upstairs hallway.
Slowly, he made his way up the stairs and around the corner to the master bedroom. Clear.
Felicity's swimsuit and maxi dress from the beach were in the hamper, still damp. Oliver inched towards the bathroom door, but it was wide open and easy to see Felicity was not there either. He turned off the rushing water and searched the other two upstairs rooms. Making his way back downstairs, an awful knot began to form in Oliver's stomach. She was gone.
His heart stopped when his foot landed in a small puddle of something warm and wet near the front door. Warm, wet, and sticky. Blood.
There isn't enough here to be from a fatal wound, he rationalized. Although thinking about any harm coming to Felicity had him simultaneously panicked and murderous. It might not even be hers...He was grasping now, head spinning. That last thought snapped him back to reality and he turned to inspect the room once more when he heard a familiar, muffled tune.
Frantically, Oliver rummaged through Felicity's beach bag, afraid the ringtone would stop before he found the source. After what felt like forever, he found the phone. He took a steadying breath and answered it, struggling to keep emotion from leaching into his voice.
"Hello? This is Oliver Queen." Something about the way this was all happening made him sure this call was not for Felicity. His identity as the Arrow was not the best kept secret these days.
"Ah, Mr. Queen. Just who I was hoping to speak with." The voice on the other end was distorted, grainy. Oliver recognized the trick right away – his days as the Arrow had given him plenty of experience with voice concealment tech.
"What is this about?" He asked, surprisingly smoothly, despite his pounding heart. Whoever this was already had the upper hand; he would not give them the satisfaction of knowing how distraught he was, too.
Seconds ticked by. Oliver could feel his pulse in his hands, his neck, his head. His grip on the phone tightened, but he waited. Footsteps echoed in the distance, and he heard a chair scrape against...concrete? No, wood. Definitely wood. He memorized each little detail he heard.
"What are you doing, you sick psychopath!?" Felicity's voice was rough with tears, but there was still a bite in her tone that Oliver had come to know very well. She was strong.
"Felicity?" Oliver all but shouted into the speaker, the worry in his voice betraying him.
"Your companion is very feisty, Mr. Queen. We shall have to do something about that." The voice chuckled and a sickening crunch, followed by a scream had Oliver shaking with anger.
"What do you want?" Oliver demanded, clenching his jaw.
"Return to Starling and we shall see. Good day to you, Mr. Queen."
Click. The line went dead.
Everything burned. Her eyes, her throat, her foot, the places on her wrists where she was zip-tied to the chair, her scalp where her hair had been pulled and torn out, her knees and elbows where she'd been thrown to the ground.
Felicity could barely keep the contents of her stomach down. Blood trickled down her nose and into her mouth, making breathing difficult. She looked down at her foot, swallowing hard as she remembered the sensation of the sledgehammer coming down on it minutes before. The pain itself was not that bad, but the sound...the sound kept reverberating in her brain. Oliver had heard it, too, which made her even more sick to her stomach. Eventually she lost that battle, and heaved all over her broken foot.
"You're a nasty little creature, ain'tcha?" A man's voice broke through the fog surrounding Felicity's brain. She could not quite place his accent. A gloved hand reached out and grabbed her chin despite her attempts to pull away. "Oooh, whatcha gonna do? Bite me with that pretty little mouth o' yours?"
"From what I hear, that mouth earns its keep. Just ask Oliver Queen!" Another voice joined in, followed by laughter.
There must be at least 4 or 5 of them from the sound of it. Focus on your surroundings, like Oliver taught you. What do you see? Her mind tried to push away the slimy feeling of the men around her and what they must be thinking.
The laughter continued, followed by some more banter that Felicity thankfully was able to tune out. There was only the dim light of a single overhead bulb, with the men standing just outside its radius.
Yes, definitely 5. This room can't be that big, the echo would give that away.
What else, what else?! She wracked her foggy brain to grab onto anything else she could use to her advantage.
No windows. So we must be underground? Or at least in an interior room.
She listened as footsteps receded into the growing darkness. A key scraped in a lock. A door opened. Heavy, metal. Then steps on metal stairs going...up?
Only one exit. Shit. Felicity swore to herself and tried to sum up her findings. She was tied to a chair and vastly outnumbered. There was also the fact that whoever had taken her had grabbed her right out of the shower, so she wore only a hastily wrapped bath robe with nothing underneath. She shivered at her vulnerability.
For a moment, she let herself believe that Oliver was coming for her right now, that he had pinged her phone and was on his way, would rush in and save her. Except he wouldn't, because it was Felicity who always located the hostages, or the bombs, or the bad guys. She navigated the Arrow – no, Oliver – to where he needed to be. In her current state, she was completely helpless. Her head began to throb in time to her foot. Felicity had let herself close her eyes for a minute, and when she opened them, she could not hide her fear.
One of the men had stepped forward and was starting to circle her chair, staring at her like a trophy. Or a piece of meat. Her breathing quickened and a sense of dread filled her whole body as he stepped behind her, resting his hand on her shoulder. She tried to shrug it away, but he held on tighter.
"What's the matter, sweetie?" The voice crooned. Both hands were on her shoulders now and Felicity went stiff.
No. No, no no. Please, no. She shut her eyes tight and tried to speak, but what came out was barely a whisper.
"He'll kill you if you..." She couldn't even finish the sentence. Tears had welled in her eyes. Dammit, when did I become so weak? This is not me. This is not Felicity Smoak. The inner pep talk was failing miserably as the man slid his hands down her collar bones towards the neck of her robe.
"Now, now, deary. Play nice and I won't be too rough." The man's voice had something sinister in it, something deranged that Felicity couldn't quite put her finger on in her current state. He bent down and rubbed his cheek against her hair. She noticed that the other men were strangely silent; she had expected them to jeer and egg the pervert on. Instead, it was as if they disappeared.
The man parted the neck of her robe and slid his hand down, roughly grabbing her left breast. Felicity bit her lip. I will not give you the satisfaction of seeing me break, she thought to herself. When she did not react, he took her nipple between his fingers and squeezed mercilessly, causing her to cry out in pain. He just laughed and dug in his fingernails.
"Keller, man...we're not supposed to do anything to her without the OK. That's the orders." A voice spoke out of the darkness, uneasy.
"Shut your mouth, little prick." The man released Felicity and straightened. She winced as he let go, knowing that he had definitely drawn blood.
Keller opened his mouth to say something more, but instead of words, dark red blood sputtered up and gushed out. He fell face first onto the floor, lifeless. The other men came into view, eyes wide. Felicity craned her head as much as she dared and saw that there was a single arrow sticking out of Keller's back. It must have pierced his heart. She knew very few people with enough skill with a bow to pull that off.
Felicity's heart leapt as she swiveled her head all around, searching for her Arrow. But instead, a cloaked voice spoke from the shadows, only the outline of a man visible in the low light.
"You are precisely correct, Felton. I did order nothing to be done to Ms. Smoak without my explicit order." The man stated coolly. There was no hint of intonation at all.
"Y-yes, sir." The voice belonging to Felton replied shakily.
"Unfortunately, and it does pain me to do this, but the inability of you and your...comrades...to prevent Mr. Keller from violating my orders equates to carrying out the act yourselves." Felicity thought she picked up on a hint of venom in the word "violating", almost like the shadow man cared.
"No, please, sir..." Several voices pleaded in unison. One set of footsteps running for the only exit. The swift and lethal whoosh of a single arrow to the back. Or perhaps the head – it was very dark. And silence.
Felicity closed her eyes just in time to hear 3 more whooshes, followed by as many thunks against the floor.
I was right, there were 5.
Thank you or reading, and please remember to favorite, review, etc. Especially if you would like to see more chapters. - A
