I wrote about 14k words today. I'm so exhausted, but I'm just super excited to get this story to you guys. I can't sleep because I'm reviewing plot lines in my head. (: Please review!
TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE AND TORTURE
Oliver couldn't breathe. He could hear Diggle shouting at him to calm down, but he couldn't. Not after watching what that monster had just done to Felicity. His Felicity. How could anyone want to hurt something as good as her? As perfect and loyal as her? Oliver slammed to his hands and knees and wretched. There was nothing to come up except water and bile. He stayed there on his hands and knees, convulsing until his throat was raw and his arms shook under him.
"Oliver, are you okay? Come on, man." Diggle was pleading with him.
Looking up, Oliver took in Digg's face. Both of them were covered in sweat, pale, and shaking. While Oliver had been the only one to vomit, John didn't look too far behind him.
"We have to find her," Oliver bit out, spitting the last remnants of bile into the trash beside him.
"Of course, Oliver."
"I want everyone here. We have to find her," Oliver repeated, pushing himself up and returning to the bay of computers. "Call Roy and Thea and Laurel."
"Already done."
"I'll get Malcolm."
"Malcolm? Oliver, are you serious?" Diggle blurted, his face screwed into a disdainful expression.
"He's the only one besides you who can match me physically. We need everyone." Oliver muttered, not taking his eyes off the unconscious Felicity on his screen. Her assailant was out of view for the time being. "We need everyone we can get."
Oliver turned and left the basement without another word. Only half an hour later, Thea, Roy, and Laurel had all gathered under Verdant, and were being debriefed by Digg when Oliver returned with Malcolm. Laurel made to reach for Oliver, but thought better of it at the last moment as he shouldered past. Thea and Roy stared at each other.
"As I'm sure Diggle has told you, Felicity has been kidnapped," Oliver spoke evenly, without emotion, his eyes deadened and hard. "Our only mission is to find her."
"Of course, Ollie—" Thea began, but Oliver cut her off.
"We have reason to believe she's been taken by the same man who killed Katie Johnson. I don't know why Felicity's been targeted." If anyone saw through his lie, they let it slide without comment.
"How do we know she's been taken?" Malcolm cut in coolly.
Oliver looked directly at the Dark Archer, cutting into him with the fire in his gaze. "We have video," Oliver stated simply. The rest of the team remained silent. "A live stream from somewhere. We can't identify it without Fe—" Oliver choked on the last word.
Diggle placed a hand gently on Oliver's shoulder as Oliver gazed at the ground, struggling to contain the emotions threatening to explode from within him.
"We have to find her," Oliver repeated in a whisper.
Thea stepped forward and placed her palm against his cheek. "We're going to get her back, Ollie. We're going to find her."
Oliver made no indication that he had heard. Thea turned to the rest of the team. "Laurel, Roy, I need you out patrolling with John. I need you to find out whatever you can about this guy." She looked at Diggle hopefully to find him nodding his assent. "Dad, you stay here with me. I need your help with back tracking the IP for the feed Oliver mentioned." If Malcolm intended to protest, he hid it well. His only motion of assent was a single jerk of the head.
As they all filed away to their appropriate stations in the basement and around the city, Oliver sank into Felicity's chair and returned to the screen that he had blacked out earlier. He didn't want everyone, especially Malcolm, to see her like that. And if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure he wanted to keep watching her torture. He would, though. Over the next few days, he rarely strayed from that work station, convincing himself that his eyes on the screen somehow kept her safe, kept her strong, kept her from breaking. He had never felt more helpless in his life.
When he had finished his assault, Felicity tried to roll onto her side, but could only shift to the right slightly. Her bindings creaked as she pulled against them, trying to curl up and find the tiniest modicum of comfort. Her attacker let out a harsh, barking laugh.
He reached down and started to undo the bindings at her feet. Felicity was so relieved that she automatically pulled her knees into her chest. When he had freed her arms, she tried to hug her shins, but he grabbed her arm and yanked.
"Oh no. Get up." Felicity whimpered, but didn't move. "I said GET UP!"
He yanked again, this time with more force, pulling her bodily from the mattress and let her fall limply to the floor. With a vice like grip on her wrist, he twisted her arm and yanked again. This time, though, his action was met with a resounding crack.
Felicity screamed. She knew he'd just broken her forearm and cut her defensive arsenal in half. Her eyes immediately filled with tears and her vision flickered from the pain, but she was jolted from the brink of unconsciousness by a sharp kick in her side.
"GET UP YOU SLUT!" Her attacker screamed, sounding increasingly deranged. But there was no way for Felicity to comply. She was too weak and in too much pain. Finally, out of frustration, he grabbed her ankles and started to drag her across the dirty floor. Felicity felt years of accumulated grit and dust scraping over her back as he pulled her towards a door across the room. She took the opportunity to survey her surroundings as best she could through the haze of dehydration and pain.
The bed was shoved into a corner below a window covered in blackout paper. There was a work sink bolted to the wall next to the bed, accompanied by a small run down stove and a set of cabinets. There was little else in the room except for two doors on the wall opposite the bed and a small corridor leading down to her left. That has to be the exit. Felicity catalogued that revelation and tucked it away for later use. She wasn't sure she could even stand at the moment, let alone run, so she resigned herself to be dragged the rest of the way to the second door opposite the bed.
He wrenched it open and dragged her inside the tiny washroom it revealed. Throwing a washcloth and small towel down onto the floor beside her, he lifted her onto the seat of the toilet, her head lolling as if she were a ragdoll.
"Clean yourself up. You have 15 minutes," He growled before exiting the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.
Felicity flinched, but knew this was an opportunity. Taking a deep breath to clear her head, she looked around the room. There was little to it. He'd left her a toothbrush, a travel size tube of toothpaste, and a comb. She picked up the towels he'd thrown beside her and unrolled them. They were dingy, but clean. There was a single bar of soap in the tiny shower and nothing else.
Trying to keep a hold on her despair, she slid her ruined dress from her shoulders. Taking care not to jostle her injured arm, she let it fall to the floor. Thankfully the elastic in her bra had snapped under the strain of her attacker's ministrations, making it easy to remove without moving her bad arm. Her underwear was nowhere to be found.
With a sigh, she turned on the water. She didn't expect warm water so didn't wait before stepping in. It was freezing and she had to bite back a sob as the water smacked into her tender arm and side. Steeling herself, she stood under the stream and reached for the bar of soap. Carefully, she lathered it up in her hand and began to rub it across her skin.
The soap stung in the incisions on her stomach, but she was glad of the burning. It meant perhaps the soap was cleaning them out, preventing infection. Blood poisoning would kill her faster than her assailant ever could. With no other option, she took the lather from her palm and rubbed it into her scalp. If anything, it did feel good to be getting the man off of her, even if only briefly.
Once she was relatively clean, she shut the water off and stepped from the shower. Drying off was difficult, but she tried to move quickly. Combing her hair was painful as the hair tugged on the tender parts of her scalp where he'd ripped it away when he'd taken her from her car. Sliding the scrap of her dress back on, she looked at the unused washcloth. She had no idea how much time she had left, but knew she had to hurry.
With her teeth, she ripped the cloth into several strips. A massive, dark bruise was quickly forming on her left arm where she knew the bones had snapped. As gently as she could, she took the strips and bound them on either side of the swelling, hoping to stabilize her arm as much as possible. It wasn't ideal and she knew she was putting herself at risk of an embolism, but it was the best she could do.
Just as she finished, the man yanked the door open. He glanced at her arm, but made no comment. Felicity moved without struggle back to the bed, praying he might let her sleep, even briefly. As she walked, he placed a hand on her back and traced the scars there. She heard him mutter "beautiful" from behind her before she turned and sat on the bed.
"Lie down," he said.
When Felicity didn't move, he grabbed her throat and shoved her backwards onto the mattress. "I said lie down."
Above her, his nostrils flared and his eyes were wide with rage. He dragged her farther onto the bed and quickly rebound her ankles and wrists. Felicity did her best not to react, but when he yanked her broken arm above her head, she couldn't help but cry out. He smiled at the sound.
At first Felicity thought that maybe he was done with her for now, but as he leaned back, he reached into the small drawer of the table beside the bed and withdrew a dingy scalpel. She couldn't help the tears that formed in her eyes, nor the uptick of her heartbeat. She couldn't draw a deep breath and as his hand moved towards the skin of her abdomen, she saw the edges of her vision black.
Please. Please let me pass out. She begged her body to surrender to the darkness, just for now—to save her from the oncoming pain.
But her body's survival instinct was too strong and her eyes flew open as she felt the first nick. It was deep and long, the pain flaring across her stomach. The scream that left her throat couldn't have been helped, nor could the others that followed.
The next evening, Oliver was still staring at the screen. They had learned nothing so far. The dumpster where SCPD found Katie Johnson's body was between a pharmacy and a thrift store. There were no apartments anywhere near it and no other obvious space where someone could carry out the kind of torture Katie endured. Thea had done her best to back track the IP of the webcam feed, but she wasn't Felicity. She managed to find the server in Cambodia where it terminated, but other than that, she couldn't find anything worthwhile.
They'd started taking shifts watching the feed. Everyone except Malcolm sat with Felicity, at least in spirit. Oliver rarely left, eating and drinking only when Laurel and Thea shoved food and water into his hands. He watched constantly, but someone was always watching on a separate monitor with him, scanning for anything they might use to identify her attacker or where he was keeping her. The man had returned once to give Felicity a piece of bread, a bottle of water, and to let her up to use the bathroom, they assumed, as she moved off screen.
"Oliver?"
Oliver jerked around to find Roy standing a few feet behind him. Smart, Oliver thought. Roy managed to sneak up on me. The kid is learning well.
"Sorry, Roy. Any news?"
Roy looked at the ground, ashamed. "No, I'm sorry Oliver. We're looking, I promise."
"I know you are. But if there's no news, why are you here?"
Roy glanced over at Thea who was on shift watching the feed. She took the hint and made an excuse about getting something to eat. Roy looked back at Oliver. "I thought of something while I was out. I was in the Glades trying to find some of my street contacts when I headed past a building I used to know. I used the alley as a spot to cut deals."
"What does this have to do with Felicity?" Oliver snapped. He was exhausted, running on sleep from three days ago, and almost no food. He hadn't been able to keep much down after watching what that man had done to Felicity.
Roy rushed on, "I was remembering that… That building was where I first met Felicity."
"What do you mean 'you first met'?" Oliver asked, boring into Roy with his gaze.
"I didn't truly meet her. It was more… I found her." Before Oliver could interrupt again, Roy let the entire story spill from his lips. About how he had been in the alley, cutting through after a deal, trying to avoid attention. How he had found this girl, covered in blood and dirt at the bottom of the fire escape to the old tenement housing that was now deserted. She was barely conscious and still bleeding freely from the wounds on her back. Roy told Oliver about the car he'd stolen to get her to the hospital. He'd left the car in the emergency room bay, setting off the alarm, praying they'd come and find her. It hadn't been until years later when Oliver invited Roy to join the team, that Roy learned that girl had lived.
Felicity recognized him at once, of course. He had saved her life, after all, no matter how light her head had been from blood loss. She would never forget. They had never spoken about what had happened, except for one evening they were alone in the lair together. Felicity had looked Roy straight in the eyes and whispered "thank you" with such profound sincerity Roy knew it had nothing to do with the headset he'd handed her. He had nodded and put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. That had been the only time either of them acknowledged that shared night, but it had been enough for Roy, until now.
Roy had tried to find a moment alone with her the other day when they'd first been briefed on Katie Johnson and the others. He had no idea if this was the same guy who had attacked Felicity, but he knew it had to be bringing up bad memories for her. Roy had wanted to finally break his silence on the matter and comfort her openly. He was perhaps one of the only people in the world who knew the true extent of her injuries, what she had suffered at the hands of another. Now that she was gone, he hated himself for never being there for her after her attack.
Over the past day and a half, since he had discovered Felicity's kidnapping, Roy had returned to that night over and over again. Had Felicity escaped from the same man who had left Katie Johnson under a burning pile of garbage? Could there be others? Or was this entirely unrelated? I mean, Roy had never seen Felicity's injuries. He had assumed all of the blood on the sheet she'd wrapped herself in had been from the fall from the fire escape, not the attack itself. But now? What if she had had the same monogram etched into her flesh that night he found her that now decorated Katie Johnson's corpse? What if he had missed it?
Roy turned it over and over. How could he have missed something like that? Something so important? Even if he hadn't been in the vigilante business yet, he still abhorred violence against women. The men in the Glades who thought it was funny to add a black eye to their girlfriend were the lowest form of being on the earth to Roy.
He rubbed his eyes, cradling his head in his palms. "I'm so sorry, Oliver. I should have stayed with her. I should have protected her."
Oliver stretched out a hand to rest on Roy's knee. "You did protect her. You did the best you could."
Roy took a few deep breaths before looking up at Oliver. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. It… It wasn't my secret to tell, if you know what I mean."
Oliver nodded.
"Do you think it's relevant? Do you think it's the same guy?" Roy asked.
"I know it is."
