It's not that Felicity has never woken up to the sounds of her computers' alarms going off the morning after being kidnapped. Clearly, this is her life and that is a thing that happens in it. No, the part that surprises her, as she stumbles out of bed a mere five hours after she crawled into it, is that the alarms are blaring on a Saturday morning just past dawn.
Criminal activity happens all the time. Welcome to Starling City. But, statistically - and let's be real here, Felicity has totally run the numbers because she is that girl - Saturday mornings are a lull. It's a break between the chaos that is weekend evenings. Typically, she can count on sleeping far later than is socially acceptable on Saturdays, only shedding her Scooby Doo pyjamas sometime after a lunch made out of vice-filled sugary breakfast cereal to trek back to the lair for the evening. Considering how many days during the week she foregoes sleep in favor of shutting down drug lords and exposing corrupt businessmen and politicians, she actually really needs to crash for an absurdly long time at least once a week.
Just, apparently this week, that isn't going to happen.
Felicity is graceless and mostly lacking wakefulness as she trips across her room toward her computer which is pinging with alerts at a rather alarming rate. It's only after the thing stops, which takes her three tries because her sleep-deprived brain is only bordering on functional, that she realizes her phone is buzzing incessantly, too.
"For the love of Linux, shut up," she growls at the thing, punching the ignore button more vigorously than needed.
She'll check the messages. She will. Barely awake or not, the sheer number of alerts are worrying, even if they are just the sound of her systems picking up on news stories with key words she'd told them to scan for. It's probably actually something that needs attention, but it's not like her facial recognition programs have just located a nest of supervillains or something, so it can probably wait.
Perspective. She has it. Coffee, however, she does not. And… frankly? If her Saturday is starting now, she's going to need like a vat of it. Immediately.
Her taste in coffee is too good for a Keurig but her patience is too thin for espresso, so Felicity's coffee maker is a top-of-the-line programmable drip machine that she has never once failed to have prepped for brewing the night before. This is earlier than the thing was set to brew on a Saturday though, so the elegant programming she'd admired when she'd splurged on the machine is overwritten by manually pressing the start button. Felicity folds her fingers together on the countertop and rests her chin on her hands while she tiredly waits for the first blessed drops of liquid energy to drip into the pot.
The decadently rich aroma of coffee that is absolutely not Starbucks or anything found at the grocery store and miraculously shows up next to her coffee maker whenever Oliver comes by fills the air after a few moments and Felicity wastes no time filling her favorite Star Wars mug to the brim.
The smell alone is enough to make her feel more alert and she sighs a little in satisfaction at the first sip. So... she loves her probably-ridiculously-expensive coffee a little too much, is what we're saying. That this is probably precisely why Oliver keeps buying her more of it goes without saying (or thinking about, if you're Felicity, which she is and therefore actively does not contemplate).
She's fortified and relaxed enough by the time the first half of the mug is downed that the buzzing of her cell phone no longer feels like an annoyance rather than a curiosity and, after refilling her mug, she's ready to make her way back to her computer to investigate. Or, rather, she thinks she's fortified and relaxed enough to face the buzzing and what it means, but retrospectively she'll realize she was not. She was very, very not. There is no ready.
She moves the mouse on her computer as she goes to sit but freezes comically mid-action as her screen lights up and the reason for the noisy alerts becomes horrifyingly readily apparently. News about the Arrow (the Hood, the Vigilante… whatever the media is predisposed to calling him any given week) isn't what you might call rare, but 217 news alerts is an unheard of number. Still, that's not what has her stock-still with one knee on her desk chair and her coffee mug halfway to her mouth with clenched white-knuckled fingers.
No. It's the headlines.
The Woman Behind The Man Behind The Mask, proclaims MSNBC.
"Oh holy hell," she breathes out because the picture beneath the headline finishes loading and right there in front of her is her face, clear as day, with her fingers disappearing under Oliver's hood as he kisses her.
"This…. isn't happening," she whispers to herself, clicking through the next few articles.
It is, unfortunately, much of the same. From the Starling City Gazette to the Today Show to the National Enquirer, everyone is running the story. Picture after picture of a damningly intimate moment between her and the Arrow scroll by and it all leaves her feeling equal parts terrified, angry and violated. This wasn't theirs. They don't have a right to that moment. And oh my God what the hell does this mean for her life?
The only blessing in all of this - if it can be seen like that and, while Felicity is generally a glass-half-full kind of girl, that's proving a challenge today - is that no one seems to have identified her as the woman in the photos yet. But, it doesn't take a tech genius to see that they will. The photos are absurdly good quality and her face isn't obscured at all in most of the shots. Still… that might buy them some time to figure out how to approach this. Because, right now? Right now she's got absolutely zilch for ideas on how they come back from this.
There's a knock on her door and she's absurdly grateful for it because if she scrolls past one more article headline she just might start hyperventilating. Apparently she's Mrs. Hood or Maid Marian or (in one instance) the "Peta to his Katniss" and, excepting that last one, she's been reduced to a bland, two-dimensional love interest character faster than you can say 'stereotypical gender roles' and she'd sorta like to pass out and wake up in an alternate universe where the last twelve hours of her life didn't happen.
Except the kissing. That part was excellent. As long as we're dictating what she would and would not like to have happened, let's be clear on her alternate-reality-of-choice still including Oliver's lips.
She remains awake and in this reality, though, and there's a soft knock at her door again, so she forces herself to move away from the computer to answer her door, wondering on a scale of one to watching-American-Pie-with-your-mom, how awkward seeing Oliver is going to be this morning. (The movie was way less about wholesomeness and desserts than she'd been lead to believe, okay? She doesn't want to talk about it).
The only excuse she has for what happens next is that she's completely off her game today. Understandably. But, well, that doesn't mean she won't get a lecture from Oliver and Digg about not checking her peephole before opening her front door. And the reason that lecture will happen later? Yeah, that's because in spite of her assumption that the patient knock at her door is her boys, it's totally not.
Instead of Digg's raised eyebrows and Oliver's inscrutable expression greeting her when she opens the door, Felicity is faced with bright white flashes and a cacophony of noise that takes a moment to make sense.
"How do you know The Hood? Where did you meet? Is he here right now?"
"Who is he? What drives his mission?"
"How does your family feel about you sleeping with a murderer, Ms. Smoak?"
It's the last one that jars her into action and she slams the door again with the gaggle of reporters firmly on the other side. Is gaggle the right word? It might not be quite right. Flock? Herd? She's not sure.
What the hell?
Was that actually just real?
They're still shouting questions through the door and, burying any sense of better judgement, Felicity opens the door briefly again to convince herself that - yes, yes, this is actually happening in her life right now. The reporters stir into action again, like fish in an aquarium scrambling toward freshly sprinkled food, and she can't slam the door fast enough.
It's only seconds later that her computer starts going insane with alarms again. Because of course it is. This is the internet age and media is all about getting information out the fastest, so of course the pictures they took of her thirty seconds ago are already on the Starling City Gazette website.
She catches her own reflection in the mirror and starts laughing. She's still gripping her mug, one featuring Darth Vader in profile with the words "Who's your daddy?" written in blocky font, her once-neat ponytail is frizzled and loose and very, very lopsided. And, to make matters worse, she's wearing Captain Planet pyjamas. And, oh God, she can see the snarky forum comments now. She's a breath and a half away from being a one-line joke on Reddit, if she's not there already.
She can't even stand to look in the direction of her pinging computer, which is a first and makes her resent this whole situation so, so much more. So, she does the only thing in the world that makes sense right now. She grabs her phone and dials.
"Felicity?" a voice answers after two rings. "What's up?"
"Digg?" she asks, hating how weak her voice sounds and how close to tears she is but God this is so overwhelming and Digg is solid ground and she didn't realize how much she needed that until she heard his voice.
"What's wrong?" He asks, urgency painting his voice.
"I… there's not really a great way to answer that, actually," she responds with a wet laugh.
"Are you hurt? Where are you?" He asks, and she can hear the shuffle of clothes and she knows he'll be out the door and at her side as fast as humanly possible, but as much as she wants that she doesn't know that that's the best plan.
"No, no. I'm fine. Stop putting on pants," she says before wincing because apparently even on the most surreal, awkward morning of her life she's going to make horrible unintentionally sexual comments. "Or put them on if you want. They're your clothes. You can wear them if you want. Or be naked. I don't care. That's not a thing I care about when I'm not there. Though, if I were there I'd totally prefer you to be wearing the pants because I love you, Digg, but not like that and I'm just gonna let the words keep flowing out of my mouth until you tell me to stop this morning because I don't really think I have it in me to be self-correcting today-"
"Felicity. Breathe," he orders.
She does.
"Better?" He asks.
She nods for a moment before she realizes he can't see her and so she's basically just not responding.
"No, yeah. I'm good. Thanks," she says with a sigh.
"Good. Now what's going on?" He asks seriously.
"Turn on the news," she says.
"Okay…" he says slowly.
"Just… do it," she sighs. "Any channel."
"Felicity, why am I seeing you with a truly amazing case of bedhead on my TV right now?" He asks.
"Keep watching," she responds, biting at her lime-green nails in a way she hasn't done since middle school.
It only takes a second before she hears him suck in a breath and she knows whatever news station he picked has transitioned from deconstructing what her fashion-sense in nightwear means to the meat of their story.
"I screwed up, Digg," she chokes out after a long moment of silence. "I screwed everything up. What do we do? I don't know what to do."
"We'll figure it out," he tells her with reassuring certainty she's almost sure he doesn't feel. "Don't go anywhere. I'm gonna get Oliver and we will be right over."
"No!" She protests immediately with something like panic in her voice. "No, Digg, you can't. I can't be linked to The Arrow one night and have Oliver Queen and his bodyguard push their way through a murder of reporters the next morning!"
"A murder?" He questions.
"Yeah. Like crows. I thought about it. It's way more appropriate than a gaggle or a flock. They have beady eyes and it always feels like they're stalking you because they are. So, yes, a murder, but the point is you can't come," she tells him.
"Felicity," he says with incredible amounts of patience. "It's not the press I'm worried about. You've been linked to the Arrow. That makes you a target to every two-bit thug and wannabe villain from here to Coast City. I'm not willing to compromise your safety and Oliver won't be either."
She sits at that, a little blindly, barely managing not to spill the remnants of her coffee and she leans against the wall for support, curling her legs under her against the wood floor.
"That thought had… not yet occurred to me," she admits, focusing on breathing which is a weird thing to have to pay attention to. "But I'm not willing to compromise The Arrow's identity because I couldn't keep my lips to myself. What we do is too important for that."
"You think he'd be functional if anything happened to you because of this? Come on, you know him better than that," Diggle points out.
"I'm not saying leave me as a sitting duck," she tells him. "I don't even like ducks. Just, you know, find some way to keep me breathing and out of the press without unmasking anyone. And bring about world peace while you're at it because that's just as likely now that I'm saying this all out loud."
"How about we focus on dealing with the more pressing issues first and work on the world peace plan of yours a little later?" Diggle suggests calmly,
"Well I suppose it's good to prioritize," she responds dryly.
"Felicity," Digg says with a sigh. "I'm not gonna lie to you. This isn't gonna be easy and it'll get worse before it gets better. But, we'll deal with it. We'll figure it out just like we've figured out every other crisis we've hit. I promise."
"This isn't like any other crisis we've had, John," she points out with a hollow little laugh. "And once the cat's out of the bag, even if you manage to get it back in you're gonna be scratched to all hell in the process."
"That's…" John starts, sounding like he doesn't know how he wants to finish his statement.
"Sorry. Something my grandmother says. Oh God, my grandmother, my mom. They're gonna see the pictures. Oh, my day just got so much worse," she groans.
"Reporters are camped out at your door, you're all over the internet in your pyjamas, criminals are suddenly gunning for you specifically and your day is worse because your mom and grandmother are going to judge you for some PG-rated pictures of you kissing?" Diggle asks, some combination of amused and exasperation shading his tone.
"My grandmother will be thrilled to an unbearable degree," Felicity says, dropping her head to her hands. "I need a TARDIS, John. Can you get me one? Maybe Lyla can help. A.R.G.U.S. would have a TARDIS, right?"
"I don't even know what that is," John tells her.
"Blasphemy," she mumbles.
"Look, I need to get moving. We don't want Oliver finding this out from the media before I get there. There's no telling what he'd do," Digg says plainly.
She'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little anxious about how Oliver was going to react to all of this. Last night she'd been sure that they would go forward like nothing had happened. But today their very repressed feelings were very much on display and there were consequences to be dealt with.
"Tell him if he apologizes for kissing me I'll do a tell-all interview with Barbara Walters criticizing the Arrow's kissing skills," she tells him. "Not that it would be true. Obviously. His kissing is fantastic. Ten out of ten. Makes my brain short-circuit and my toes tingle. Ugh, but that's not something you need to know. Just… he doesn't get to apologize for kissing me, okay? Make sure he gets that memo."
"I thought you said it was you that couldn't keep your lips to yourself?" Digg says, his voice smiling.
"Takes two to tango," she says, thudding her head back against the wall.
"How about I remind you both of that at regular intervals for the near future?" Digg suggests. "Like the next time you tell me you screwed up. If you don't want him making apologizes for what happened, maybe you shouldn't either."
"Fair enough," she admits with a sigh.
She's been ignoring the intermittent knocks of the media at her door for quite a while now. It's been surprisingly easy to do. She's sort of gotten used to it, the muffled din of voices and the repetitive raps on her door. So, the sudden absence of them is jarring.
"Digg?" She says in a nervous voice scarcely above a whisper. "It's super quiet all of the sudden. They're not shouting questions at my door. There's no knocking."
"Find a weapon and hide," he orders with no preamble. "I'm on my way."
"You think there's-" she starts, her eyes going wide as she scrambles to her feet.
"I think there's very few reasons the media would stop asking you questions right now and it's better safe than sorry," he says reasonably.
A hard knock, different from the impatient rapping of before, echoes on her door and she jumps, grabbing the nearest thing she can find to use as a weapon.
"Felicity Smoak, this is the Starling City Police Department. We need you to open up. We have some questions for you."
It's Captain Lance's voice and Felicity is relieved for a long moment because this fully explains the media's sudden quiet, but then she realizes there's a whole different set of problems that she has yet to even consider.
"Digg, it's the police. It's Lance," she says into the phone currently cradled between her ear and her shoulder. "So I'm just gonna put down this… weapon and answer the door."
The 'weapon' is less a lethal tool of self-defense and more a four-inch stiletto she'd failed to put away the night before, but she's not going to tell Digg that. If he asks, she'll say her weapon is totally killer. Because it is. Just not in the way he'd mean for it to be.
"Good," says Digg.
"Really?" Felicity questions with disbelief. "Good? Because I'm pretty sure I'm about to be dragged down to the police station and grilled about my love life like a teenager sneaking in the house the morning after prom."
"You'd rather some hitmen had just taken out the press and were about to beat down your door to kill you? Because that was sort of where my head was at," John responds.
"Yeah, no. On second thought, I'll take the innappropriate questions that are none of their business," Felicity gulps.
"You feel free to remind them of that," Diggle tells her.
"That I prefer their questions to assassination?"
"That it's none of their damn business."
"Right."
"Ms. Smoak, this is the SCPD. Open your door."
"I'd better go, Digg," she sighs.
"You'll be fine. We aren't going to let anything happen to you, Felicity. We'll handle this," he tells her firmly.
"Yeah. Let me know when you get Lyla to hand over that TARDIS," she responds.
"I'll be in touch," he says and she can practically hear him shaking his head at her as the line clicks and he disconnects the call.
She sighs and thuds her head against the wall behind her, her phone on the floor next to her on one side and a now-cold mug of coffee on the other. It's tempting to just stay here. Surely the police will leave eventually if they don't have a warrant or probable cause to enter. The media might take longer to disperse, but… her fridge is well-stocked and there's plenty on Netflix to entertain her, right?
Tempting…
But no.
Felicity has never been one to hide from her problems and she's not going to start now, daunting as they may be this time.
She picks herself up and dusts herself off. Literally. Its apparently been too long since she did things like clean her baseboards but honestly when her priorities include things like preventing mass murder and thwarting drug trafficking rings, the importance of household chores drops dramatically. Still… if the press might be plastering another picture of her in her pyjamas across the internet, she'd prefer not to have dust all over her butt.
Besides, Captain Planet deserves better than that.
With a sigh, she squares her shoulders, holds her head high, walks over to her front door and pulls it open. Captain Lance is standing there, fist raised to knock again on the door, and he actually looks a little startled that she's answered. The press, she realizes quickly, is nowhere to be seen. There are at least two other officers down the hall though and she winces a little internally at the idea that the SCPD apparently thinks she's someone they need to have backup to bring in for questioning.
"Ms. Smoak, good morning," he greets her.
"Not so far," she replies. "And right now I don't really see it getting any better."
There's a sympathetic grimace on his face at her words but there's also annoyance and something that may or may not be judgement.
"You know I've gotta bring you down for a few questions, right?" He asks, having the grace to actually look a little ashamed about it.
"Is kissing a crime now?" She questions. "How does that work, exactly? Misdemeanor for closed lips and a felony for tongue?"
"Aw, come on. Don't make this harder than it's gotta be," he tells her, wincing.
"I'm not really sure I've got a reason to make it easier," she rebutts, folding her arms across her chest defensively.
"Cause it'll be over faster? This is too high profile. Questions have gotta be asked. Our mutual friend know this is going on yet?" He asks.
She glances back at her cell phone sitting silently on the floor next to her coffee mug.
"Nope," she says. "Definitely not."
"So he's… he's not here then?" Lance asks warily.
"Is the Starling City Police Department seriously asking if I have the Arrow in my bed right now? That's really a thing I'm being asked?" Felicity grits out, because god there's a mental image she doesn't mind but doesn't want to have while talking to Captain Lance, thanks.
"No, SCPD isn't asking; I am," Lance clarifies, which does nothing to smooth over Felicity's readily apparent annoyance.
"I'm on your side, Ms. Smoak. You know that," Lance tells her, his voice dipping in volume a bit. "But if he's here, there ain't no way he's gettin' out without bein' spotted and none of us need that. So, take a deep breath, try to remember I'm in your corner on this one and answer the damned awkward question that I don't actually want to know the answer to. Please."
"He's not here," Felicity relents, feeling a little bit of tension seep out of her at Lance's words. "It's not like that, anyhow."
She's not lying.
Maybe.
God, they're gonna ask her questions she doesn't even know the answer to, aren't they? She's about to be grilled by the police about an ill-defined relationship that she doesn't actually understand and oh my god the level of ridiculousness that embodies this morning is absolutely off the charts.
"Good," Lance replies, oblivious to her internal moment of hysteria (which is a nice change of pace, really, because generally her mouth starts talking before her brain is even done thinking). "That's one thing going right this morning, anyhow."
"What happened to the media?" She asks, because she doesn't want to debate if the Arrow not being in her bed is a thing that's going right this morning or not.
"Pushed 'em back to the street, but I'm sure they're still out there. Not a whole lot we can do 'bout that," he tells her.
"Well, you can at least give me a minute to get dressed before dragging me down to the station," she says. "I'd prefer to avoid a skit on SNL about me two-timing the Hood with Captain Planet, if we could avoid that, please."
"Sure thing, kid. Be ready in five, k?" Lance asks her.
She likes Captain Lance. She does. But she takes ten minutes to get ready. Because she can. And really? Any control she can exert over her own life today seems like a good choice. Regardless of that moment of defiance, soon enough she's being ushered into a police car through a murder of reporters lined up like the world's worst game of Red Rover ever.
How is it only eight in the morning? She's exhausted already. But she holds her head high, because damn it she's refuses to make it seem like she's embarrassed or ashamed about kissing the Arrow.
She's not. Not even a little. She's proud of the Arrow, of the good they've done together, everyone else's judgement be damned. And maybe, she thinks, maybe that's something Oliver needs to see.