"'Aren't you afraid of my darkness, my dear?' Hades asked with mischief in his eyes.
'No,' Persephone replied, 'You haven't even seen mine yet.'"
- kfg
Felicity saw Thea get up and start walking forward as if in a trance. She was so shocked that she didn't even try to stop her, though later on Felicity will think perhaps she should have. She didn't notice how most of the all the other people in black filing out of the wide hall either. They were as silent as the shadows they blended with and admittedly, Felicity might have missed their movements even if she had been paying attention. Which she was not. Not even close.
She couldn't hear a thing over the deafening rush of her blood in her ears, as if she was standing too close to a violent river.
Maybe they weren't silent. Maybe she just couldn't-
This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
He'd died. Robert said so. He had stood in Queen Mansion's very polished living room, looked at his wife and daughter dead in the eye and told them that Oliver had died at sea. That he drowned in that godforsaken storm.
He had come into her office…
Felicity felt rage starting to bubble up, irrational and hot in her gut, making her hands shake. God, she'd always known that Robert wasn't the best of men – not even close - and she had known all too well how hard it used to be between him and Oliver, but she couldn't believe he could have been so… so deliberately cruel. If there had ever been even the smallest chance that Oliver had lived, he should have told them. He should have told them! Everything!
But instead the fucker had come into her office, where she had felt safest and most comfortable. He had stepped into her space in broad daylight and lied to her face!
If the people of the great American nation don't put you to death, I will ruin you myself, Robert!
He'd sounded so calm. So fucking sorrowful.
'The last time we talked… the very last time, he spoke to me of you.'
Felicity hadn't been able to bear it then, same as it was pressing on her ribcage too heavy for her to breathe through it now.
'Did he suffer?'
It had seemed so important, somehow… And Robert's eyes, so kind. (maybe they had just seemed that way because she'd tried to see Oliver in them. So stupid. Oliver had never been anything like his father, ever. He would have been so disappointed in her.) Felicity had thought she was able to tell a lie apart from a truth when she heard one, but apparently she'd never met a more ice-veined liar than Robert Queen. Unlike Malcolm, who possessed no feeling and the absence of it was always a scream alerting her to his lies, Robert was something different.
He was very much capable of feeling, and he used honest emotion to do dishonest work.
'No, sweetheart.' A small shuffle of his feet, in a way that was painfully alike to Oliver's. She'd had to look away. She wondered now if he'd done that on purpose, just to unbalance her. 'Felicity… I'm so sorry. I know it's not the right time, but I need your help.'
And she had helped.
She'd been such an idiot. Fuck her MIT degree and her bullshit-meter. She was the most hopeless loser of them all. Such an easy target.
Felicity tried to blink through her tears, tried to shake herself out of it. She pinched herself hard and it hurt! Thea had kept moving. Digg too was getting up, but Felicity just couldn't. She could barely even feel her feet at all, let alone stand on them.
Thea was shaking. Felicity could see it all the way from where she was sitting.
"Ollie…"
He looked straight at his sister's face, right into her wide eyes.
Not to flicker of recognition crossed his.
Felicity felt a cold shiver rip up her spine. A man was standing there, yes. A man with Oliver Queen's face. But she didn't know more than that.
And it was that thought that propelled Felicity forward. She got up a bit too fast, scrambled to her feet and hurried to Thea's side, took the other girl's hand to stop her.
Heavy tears were running down Thea's face, her hand was clammy and she looked pale. Felicity felt like a sand castle herself, shaking in front of the oncoming waves.
"Ollie, it's Thea…" her voice shook and she tried to reach out to him, but both Digg and Felicity tugged her backwards. The look of utter betrayal that Thea send her stung a bit, but Felicity steeled herself against it.
"We don't know what's going on yet, Thea. Let's just…"
Thea tugged her hand out of Felicity's grip, as if those hands that had so often offered solace and comfort were poison now.
"That's Oliver. He's three feet from you and you're still going to deny it?"
Felicity looked away from Thea to Oliver. He was so silent and still, looking straight ahead. She wanted her eyes to pound at his face as hard as her thoughts her hammering against the inside of her forehead, 'Look at me! Look at me!' but he didn't. He didn't even blink. He just stood there.
"I wanted you both to be here tonight because I was sure that Oliver would return, and I wanted you to meet again."
"You… You what?" Felicity said, the words falling out of her own mouth as if she didn't grasp them at all. Thea kept calling her brother's name, completely focused on him. Felicity found it was easier to just look at Malcolm.
"I know that you were unaware of Oliver's survival. The moment I could, I wanted to change that."
Felicity narrowed her eyes at him.
Bullshit.
"Why isn't he answering me?" Thea asked, and then stepped closer, her voice growing deeper, more threatening. "What have you done to him?"
"I have done nothing." Malcolm said calmly. "I have only been Ra's for a very short time. Whatever happened to Oliver before I was here wasn't my doing and I had no control over it."
Felicity just shook her head. Her mind was working furiously, piecing all that had happened together trying to find a pattern that would tell her a new story. Something that they had been missing till now, something…
Malcolm spoke and Oliver, along with the men and women at his sides started walking out. Thea gasped and immediately reached for her brother, calling his name again.
Felicity saw it all happening before it even unfolded. It was the kind of bad feeling that one gets when one is too smart not to always guess the right answer.
"Thea, don't!"
But it was too late – they were already on her, grasping at her arms to keep her from touching her brother. The brother that didn't turn when she yelped and then growled at the man holding her. Even though pale and missing the dark makeup she usually wore, she looked fierce as ever. Thea bared her teeth, curled her legs up to gather momentum and then threw her whole weight forward to unbalance the man holding her. She elbowed him in the side, slammed the back of her head hard against his face and broke the arm that had been holding her as she untangled herself. She probably tore at her stitches in the mean time, Felicity noted absently, as Digg took down the other man that tried attack Thea behind her back. They stood no chance. There were too many of them.
Thea screamed Oliver's name and it came back to her an empty echo, as she was shoved to her knees. Her sob as the man behind her pulled at her injured arm crawled right beneath Felicity's skin and singed.
She didn't think. This was a zero sum game anyway, and Felicity had realized that before any of this unfolded. She threw herself on the man holding Thea down and scratched her uneven nails down his face, pressing against the squishiness of his eyes until he screamed.
The last thing Felicity saw before a something very hard connected with the side of her head, was Oliver's half-turned face and the impassive look on it.
Felicity felt the pain before she even opened her eyes. Her head was throbbing so hard she could feel her heartbeat on her forehead, splitting her skull in a straight line from there and down the back of her head.
She groaned, and immediately felt John's hand on hers.
"It's ok," he said, voice low. Felicity tried to nod, but it heightened the sharp hurt, so she gave up on that and squeezed Digg's hand a bit tighter instead. She opened her eyes slowly.
"Where's Thea?"
Digg sighed. "Sleeping. They gave her some sort of sedative after they knocked you out. …I'm so sorry, Felicity."
Felicity sighed and tried to pull herself to a sitting position.
"Don't be sorry for anything John. There was nothing you could have done." She said as she felt the split on her lip. The whole left side of her face felt on fire.
She'd never been hit by someone's fist before.
Felicity eyed the room, Thea's sleeping form beside her in the bed and the black eye that was swiftly swelling up on Digg's face.
She knew what she had to do… but she was scared. So fucking afraid to take that step. There was anger there, crawling along her veins too. At being outsmarted, manipulated. Lied to. Fucking punched unconscious.
But she couldn't hold on to that either. She needed clarity right now.
"There's someone at the door, isn't there?"
Digg seemed surprised by her question but he nodded. "As if we have any chance of going anywhere."
Felicity shook her head. "That's not why he's there."
She swung her legs on the side of the bed. The cold stone made her bare toes curl in.
"Felicity…"
"I have to talk to Malcolm." Felicity said without preamble.
Digg's incredulous frown was all too apt, Felicity knew. But she had a reason.
"And say what?"
"We didn't end up here by chance John. I don't believe that anymore. And I have to find out why now." Digg's face was clouded over by confusion, but Felicity took his hand. "Trust me."
"I do. But I don't see how this could help. He's already hurt you twice, I don't want him anywhere near any of us."
Felicity smile joylessly. It hurt. "Too bad we're stuck in here then, huh."
x
He was waiting for her at a table set for two. Felicity wasn't surprised in the least.
"Felicity."
She still hated the way he said her name.
She sat down before he could ask her to. A muscle at the corner of his jaw twitched. Absently she wondered in what creative ways he would chose to inflict punishment now that he had so many variations of it on his hands.
"What do you want Malcolm? Really, this time."
His smile got wider and for some reason, it made him look even more serpentine to Felicity.
"Right to the point, as ever. One of your most charming traits."
Felicity gritted her teeth, tried to keep her composure as if this was just another QC board meeting and she had to present another trimester project for the Applied Sciences Division. But she slumped a little, in a way that she had grown out of years ago, but that would remind him of the impatient teenager she used to be - dressed in black from head to toe, with a smart mouth and an attitude problem that had an attitude problem.
Because if he wanted to play games, so could she. Felicity didn't think she could ever be as good as Malcolm was at them, but she had spent too many years at Moira Queen's side not to have learned a thing or two about manipulation. The fact that there was never much love lost between her and Moira didn't change that.
"I suppose you have already realized that there is a reason you're here."
No shit, Sherlock.
Felicity looked at him a long time. He was waiting for her to ask him what that reason was. Waiting for her to ask the questions, give him the chance to explain her things.
Subtle games of control.
Fuck you.
She'd already asked the only question she needed him to answer.
"You're the one responsible for unmasking Robert and the rest of us," she said instead, the pieces falling into place almost as if the curtain had been lifted. Suddenly she could see it all. "A big risk, considering all the times we were almost killed in the last five days. I know you reached to Moira to offer to keep us 'safe' and it was all to bring me here, so what do you want?"
"It's always been funny to me how you despised me for my arrogance without once realizing you are exactly the same." Malcolm laughed. "Worse even! I know perfectly well I'm an arrogant man. You, my dear stepdaughter, are far blinder."
Pompous little shit.
He only called her that because he knew all too well how much she hated it. Felicity didn't give him the satisfaction of reacting to it. She raised one eyebrow instead.
"You assume that just because I know I'm smarter than most people, I would also assume to be right about most things too."
He raised his eyebrows. "And you don't?"
"Oh, I do. But I trust statistics and laws of probability more than I trust opinion, even when it's mine." Felicity said simply.
Thea and John were both excellent fighters, but Malcolm had plenty here that were even better. It could be because of Diggle's connection to Argus. Felicity had considered it. But it hadn't been Lyla he had dangled in front of them earlier than night, like a chunk of meat in the water.
The thought still burned somewhere between her fourth and fifth rib, relentless. Felicity pushed that anger down.
Calm. Calm and steady.
No this was about her, and the only thing she had to offer that was in such rare supply was her technical skills. Malcolm knew them well.
She wasn't about to explain her reasoning to him though. It would be a waste of time and she didn't feel like sharing an single ounce of herself with him.
"You think I put on all that circus and risked getting my long time friend killed just to get you here? I could have snatched you out of your home any time I wanted."
"I'm honestly surprised that you didn't," she said, as if the notion barely affected her. Personally, Felicity couldn't fathom a reason why he hadn't.
Malcolm tilted his head to the side, linking his fingers together. "I find kidnappings… distasteful."
She barely kept herself from snorting.
Bullshit!
There might things he found distasteful, but taking hold of someone's person and agency like that was not one of them. Malcolm lived for that kind of shit. But he was also familiar with her stubbornness. She wasn't naïve enough to think that that would have stopped Malcolm from hurting her to get what she wanted. Nor was she so convinced of her own endurance to fancy herself unbreakable. Working for Robert the past year had taught her a lot about the persuasive power of pain and fear. But Malcolm knew her well enough to know that he couldn't hurt her and then to put her in front of a computer without grave consequences to his person. Punishing her, when she had been a teen in his care with a mother who traveled too much for her job, had only led to raging retaliation and bitter resentment. He knew Felicity well enough that she was exactly the kind of petty to sign her own death if it also meant his.
Which meant that he needed her full compliance beyond any doubt for whatever he had planned. And what better way to ensure it than this? He had half her family under his roof right now.
The more Felicity thought about this, the more she became convinced that, though the plan had been by far too complicated, the theme throughout it mirrored who Malcolm was perfectly. Whenever he wanted something but needed someone else to do it for him, he made it so that the goal was shared. Either mutual benefit, or – preferably – mutual destruction. He had found the perfect way to make sure she worked for what he wanted as if she wanted it as hard herself.
There were only three reason why Felicity would do anything at all for Malcolm.
Well… four, actually. Four people. Two of them were waiting for her in a shared room. The third was halfway across the world, loved by a woman who was a literal force of nature and who would keep him safe from anything. Even from Malcolm.
And the fourth… she'd thought he had died years ago but apparently, not. He was god knew where inside this labyrinth of a fortress, and didn't seem to be any more alive now that he had been to her days ago. It didn't really matter who was wearing Oliver's face though.
Malcolm had probably known that too.
"It is unprecedented you know, having guests like you and your friends in this mountain. But I allowed it, for the sake of the long time friendship I share with Robert, and my fondness for you and Thea both… no matter how unappreciated. After all, I did once call you daughter."
Felicity couldn't hide her disgust. "I thank god I was never your daughter every time you cross my mind, Malcolm."
He laughed. "Yes, I imagine you do."
She hated the way his eyes glinted as they fixed on her face. Hated the mocking tilt of that smile that had taught her to mistrust everyone who ever smiled her way.
"I've always liked you Felicity. You have spirit. I prefer obedience, but you can be quite amusing."
Amusing…
Felicity took a deep breath. Waited him out. She had lived through years of him putting Tommy down and mocking him. She knew him too well to rise to such an obvious bait… through she did imagine clawing his eyes out as she looked at him.
"There is this one nuisance that I need to take care of, and for which I need your unmatched skills. I think that small service is a fair exchange for your safety here." Malcolm finally said. His smile stretched wider, knowing eyes fixed on hers, glinting in the firelight. "And for that other thing you're now about to ask me."
Felicity gritted her teeth.
She never stood a chance, did she?
"I want you to let Oliver go. Forever."
Malcolm huffed, and for the first time the amusement on his face was real. "What makes you think I'm keeping him here against his will?"
She pretended she didn't even hear him. (she couldn't afford to give into fear, that little whisper at the back of her head that told her there was nothing there left to save. His eyes had been so empty she hardly recognized them on his face…)
"Neither you nor anyone related in any way shape of form to you or this place will ever contact him again. And if you don't, or if I get the sense that you're going to double cross us, while I hack into whatever it is you want me to hack, I'll send a nice little message to Amanda Waller with the exact coordinates of this hellhole." Felicity tilted her head and smiled. She couldn't hide the way her hands were shaking, or how emotion made her eyes shine but she would see this through. "You know the Wall's preferred method of dealing with a nuisance, don't you Malcolm?"
She would blow this whole mountain sky high because the Wall didn't give a fuck about anything other than neat solutions.
"There is no need for threats here, Felicity." He smiled as if the notion alone amused him, but his eyes were cold. "As I said, I'm perfectly willing to give you what you want, if you do the same."
"No, what you're willing to do is let me know that you can hurt me if you want to, because you know how." She wasn't going to let anything be lost in translation here. "But you misunderstand Malcolm: that was no threat. That was me reminding you that I know how to hurt you too."
"I doubt it."
She hated him so much she would have gladly slit his throat right there. "You shouldn't. I learned from the best."