Author's Note: so who else thinks that The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak was the best episode of Arrow ever?! It was so perfect! This damn ship is gonna kill me, guys. Thank god for fanfic - I gotta have something to get me through this season. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited this work. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Oliver had learned a long time ago how to move silently. Yao Fei had taught him how to fight for survival; Slade had taught him how to fight, how to move quickly and gracefully enough to defend his life; and Shado had helped him perfect the lessons he'd learned from her father. Oliver had taken all of those lessons, all of those things that the people that had been better than him had taught him, and refined them until they were weapons. He was a superior archer, and a fierce fighter, and a man who could walk without making a sound.

Oliver was using that ability to move silently at that very moment – to spy on his friends. Well, not spy, exactly; he wasn't hiding, and if either of them turned around they'd see him immediately. He hoped that they wouldn't, though, because from time to time he liked to listen to the conversations they had when they thought he wasn't around. Digg and Felicity had an easy relationship, one that he sometimes envied, and watching or listening to them interact had a strange way of lifting Oliver's spirits. Digg and Felicity reminded him of what friendship was supposed to look like, in a world where he wasn't the vigilante and didn't have to be separate from basic human relationships. In some ways, they even reminded him of the relationship he used to share with Tommy, or Thea.

"Where did you put my Pad Thai?" Felicity asked. Her head turned from one side to the other, blonde ponytail swaying as she did so.

"Your Pad Thai?" Diggle answered. "You didn't get Pad Thai, Felicity. I did."

"I always get Pad Thai! It's my favorite! And I've officially said that so many times it's starting to sound weird. Seriously, though, Digg. Hand it over."

"Seriously. You didn't get any."

Felicity snorted and leaned forward over the desk to look passed Digg. She scanned the takeout containers in front of her, and then looked back to the ones that her friend had set on the other side of him.

"Digg, I'm the one that called in the order, and I've made it a thousand times. Well, Roy's order was new, but still. I know that you have my food." She held up her chopsticks and clicked them together. "It's dangerous to keep me from my food."

Oliver watched Digg grin. "I'm terrified." He handed her the container next to him anyway.

Felicity made a happy, high-pitched sound and shimmied her shoulders in excitement as she plunged her chopsticks into the waiting dish.

Oliver smiled as he watched. Their latest mission still noticeably bothered Felicity, and she kept yelling at her computers under her breath about how they were failing her, but she did appear to be in a better mood. Though Oliver had told her not to hurry back when she'd left that afternoon, she had returned earlier than he'd expected. Felicity had also brought them all food, which was thoughtful. Seeing her with the bags of Thai food in hand had made him smile and think of the way her stomach had been grumbling the last time he'd seen her.

Diggle had arrived as Oliver was helping her unpack the takeout containers. The other man's timing was so perfect that Oliver had thought maybe Felicity had called him. Though Roy hadn't magically appeared, and she would have called him as well if she'd called Digg. Maybe his ex-bodyguard just had impeccable timing.

"You have a noodle hanging out of your mouth," Digg teased. "Did it try to run away or what?"

Felicity held up a finger in the air between them, and then angled it down to point menacingly at him. "I was a little over zealous," she mumbled.

Oliver finally stepped forward, unable to resist the draw of sharing the moment with his friends any longer.

"All right," he said, pulling up a chair on the other side of Felicity. "Which one is mine?"

"Careful, Digg might try to claim it for himself," Felicity warned.

"No I wouldn't," Digg said quickly. "He got that weird chicken thing again."

"Weird chicken thing?" Oliver repeated.

"Oh, yeah, it is kinda weird," Felicity agreed. She gave him an apologetic look. "To be fair, I think it's the texture of the noodles."

"What's weird?" Roy asked from some distance away. His footsteps were loud on the stairs.

"Oliver's Thai food," Felicity answered, turning to smile at Roy. "Grab a chair, your food's right here."

"Guess I won't be sharing my food with you again," Oliver quipped.

"Hollow threats, Mr. Queen, hollow threats."

Felicity was grinning at him. Oliver tried to keep his face impassive and level her with his best glare, even as she darted out the hand that held her chopsticks and snatched up a piece of his chicken. They were already sitting close to each other, but the movement brought her close enough that Oliver could smell her perfume; he recognized it as the same one that still clung to the sheets of his bed. That smell had permeated his dreams in ways that were anything but platonic. He had slept better than he expected, but woken reaching for the woman who now sat next to him.

Felicity popped the piece of chicken into her mouth triumphantly. Her victory was overshadowed when her face contorted strangely.

"Still weird," she said after she'd swallowed. "Maybe it's the sauce."

Her words pulled Oliver from his thoughts before they could go any farther. Which, if the look Digg was giving him over Felicity's shoulder was anything to go by, was a good thing, because something of them must have shown in his expression.

Roy flopped unceremoniously into a chair on the opposite side of Digg. He reached for his designated takeout container, said a sincere thank you to Felicity, and then dug in.

Some time passed in near silence as they ate. Every few minutes Felicity would check on her various search programs, tweaking them here and there with quick keystrokes before returning to her food. Without a word, she offered some of her Pad Thai to Digg in exchange for a bite of whatever he'd gotten; when they'd managed the trade-off, she made the same offer to Roy.

Intense warmth spread like wildfire through Oliver's chest. The sensation came on suddenly, springing to life as he watched the amiable and wordless exchange of food take place. There was familiarity here, and comfort, and it meant more to Oliver than he could say. Felicity had told Roy that they were a family, and that he was part of it now, and Oliver felt the truth of those words in his bones. These people were more than just his team, or his partners: these were the people that Slade had tried, and failed, to take away from him.

Robert and Moira Queen were dead; Tommy, and Shado, they were dead as well; and Thea was halfway across the world, without him. Despite all of those things, Oliver was still surrounded by people he loved, and who loved him. No matter how the rest of the world saw him – or couldn't see him – down here, he did not have to hide. People like Slade Wilson kept trying to separate them, to destroy the family that Oliver had built by happy accident, and they kept failing.

For all that he had lost, and his inability to see past those losses sometimes, he had also gained something …

Felicity held her Pad Thai out to him, shaking the container a little as if to entice him.

… Remarkable.

Oliver fished some of her noodles out of her container and into his.

"You can keep your weird chicken," she stage whispered to him.

The computer pinged. Felicity jumped on the sound so fast Oliver thought some of the keys might fly off the keyboard.

"Finally!" She did a fist pump and then shook her head. "I have really got to stop doing that."

"What do you have?" Oliver asked.

"Well, since there was nothing usable under the eighty layers of charred husk you chipped off of that thing last night, I just started searching for any purchases of questionable items in the last month. Ya know, anything that seemed a little weird, like bulk purchases of wires or wiring harnesses, or too much bleach, lighter fluid – anything."

"And?"

"And, this." Felicity pointed to one screen. "Is a police report. A convenience store reported a robbery two weeks ago. Apparently, someone stole roughly five gallons of gas."

"Felicity, that happens almost every day," Diggle pointed out.

"True, but gas wasn't all that was stolen. The thief also took a few liters of lighter fluid. Then, this police report." She pointed to a different screen. "Was filed about another robbery that took place on the other side of the city, at almost the exact same time. Only guess what was taken?"

"More gasoline?" Roy offered.

Felicity nodded. "As well as a pair of wire strippers, a common household cleaner, and a roll of speaker wire. Now, I've never tried to make a homemade bomb, but does anyone else think it's strange that both of these robberies happened on the same night, at almost exactly the same time? I mean, this doesn't sound like your usual pre-teens making a late night beer run."

"So there are two bombers." Oliver's face was grim as he stared at the reports on the computer. The only thing worse than one terrorist in the city was two.

"Maybe," Felicity hedged. "Though if there are two of them, it's possible that only one of them actually knows how to make a bomb."

"So a bomber, and an accomplice?" Digg didn't sound any happier than Oliver felt. "That's great, but it doesn't tell us anything other than how many of them there are."

"It doesn't even tell us that," Roy piped up. "Just that there are at least two of them. For all we know, there's a whole terrorist club."

Oliver physically felt Felicity tense next to him. Her good mood disappeared instantly, and she opened her mouth to fire off what would undoubtedly be an angry retort. He knew that neither Digg nor Roy had meant to imply that the information was useless, just like he knew that Felicity would take their comments personally. She had stayed up as late as she could last night, after all, because she'd been so determined to catch this guy.

Before she could snap at the other two, Oliver put his hand over her forearm. Felicity turned her head sharply to look at him and he could see the anger – and hurt – clearly reflected in her eyes.

"Hey." He made sure the word was as soothing as he could make it. "That's more than we knew before. You're on the right track."

The angry retort died on her lips. Felicity blew out a breath, her shoulders visibly sagging, and she nodded once. Oliver rubbed his thumb over the side of her arm reassuringly.

"Did those stores have security cameras?"

The question did what he'd hoped and rerouted her attention to the computers. When Oliver took his hand away from her arm, he caught Digg giving him an appraising look. Which he promptly ignored.

"Since the police reports give me an exact date and approximate time, all I have to do is hack into their security systems and download the footage so I can scrub it. Assuming that they still have the footage anyway. It might take me a bit though, so if you guys are done eating, would you mind giving me some space?"

"Sure," Digg replied.

They cleared away the food containers and then left Felicity alone with the computers. Oliver told Roy to grab his bow so they could get in some target practice and work on his reflexes. As soon as the kid had moved away – Oliver would probably always think of Roy as a kid – Digg stepped into the space next to him.

"Everything okay?" he asked lowly.

Oliver knew that Digg was asking about Felicity and thought about playing dumb. Instead, he shrugged one shoulder. "You guys upset her. She's taking this one pretty hard."

"She's not the only one."

Oliver glanced at the man next to him. "I know."

Roy returned with his bow. Digg didn't follow as Oliver led the kid over the far corner of the room where they had set up a three-D target. Felicity had ordered it for them when she got sick of Roy planting arrows in everything except what he was aiming at. Thankfully, the kid's aim had improved greatly since then.

Oliver mostly watched as Roy fired arrow after arrow. Occasionally he'd call out a flaw in Roy's stance, or a last minute change to the area he wanted the kid to hit just to see how quickly he could adapt. He caught on quickly, and he was definitely improving, but he was still slow on the draw. Oliver had him spend a good ten minutes just reaching behind him to grab an arrow and knock it as fast as he could without actually firing. He wanted Roy to get comfortable with where his quiver sat and what angle the arrows were at. The kid needed to be able to grab an arrow and knock it instinctively; he needed to know exactly where everything was, and perform the motion so many times that it came as easily to him as breathing. The speed would only come with the confidence of knowing that the bow and quiver were an extension of him.

When he was assured that Roy was taking the exercise seriously, Oliver left him and joined Digg for some sparring.

There was clarity of mind that came with sparring that was sometimes hard to find otherwise. Oliver didn't stop thinking when he was facing off with the other man; it was more that his thoughts became more linear, and were easier to follow from one subject to the next. The physical exertion was as beneficial for his mind as it was for his body.

For her part, Felicity didn't hear the chorus of grunts that came from the training mats. She didn't hear the twang of Roy's bow either. Her world had narrowed down to the computer screens in front of her and the lines of information they displayed. The security systems for the convenience stores were easy to get into, and she had both videos playing in no time. She chose which one to start with arbitrarily.

Felicity poured over the videos with single-minded determination. She extrapolated what information she could about the thieves, like approximate height and weight, and then started a search on the third monitor. The search parameters were still too vague, and since there was no way to guarantee that the perpetrators had any kind of previous criminal record, she set it to search passports and the entire DMV database. Then, she went back to the videos and looked for a way to narrow down the search.

There was a full can of coffee in Felicity's purse. She had bought it on her way back to the lair that evening and vowed that she would drink the entire thing if that was what it took to find the person who was responsible for the deaths of those three people. There didn't seem to be a method or reason behind the bombings, and that scared her. Psychos who destroyed things or killed people just for the enjoyment it gave them were the scariest kind, in Felicity's experience. They had to catch the culprit before anyone else got hurt. Daniel and David Slatton, and Harriet Ealy, deserved justice. Felicity would forego sleep without complaint if it meant that the people of Starling City didn't have to worry about being blown up on some street corner.

When she'd been through the in-store footage of the robberies two dozen or so times, Felicity retrieved the footage from the parking lots and front doors and started going through that. She'd watch a chunk of the footage and then rewind it, focus on some new part of the video, and then watch it again. Over and over again she did it, until the pounding in her temples became so loud and harsh that her eyes started to cross.

"Take a break."

Felicity looked away from the computer monitors and up into Digg's familiar face. He had stripped down to a tank top for his sparring session with Oliver, and she was reminded of how ridiculously huge his arms were. Digg was undoubtedly the sweetest man she knew, but he was not a man she would want to meet in a dark alley. She was enormously glad that he was on her side. Or was she on his side? Either way, Felicity was grateful that they were on the same side.

"Right," she said as she stood. "Break time it is."

Felicity headed straight for the coffee pot. Diggle's footfalls were heavy behind her.

"Break wasn't a code word for coffee."

"Sure it was," Felicity retorted lightly. "Everything is a code word for coffee."

"Felicity -."

"Digg." She shot him a pointed glare before setting to work on making a pot of coffee.

"You won't help anyone by running yourself into the ground."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not running myself into the ground, isn't it?" Her tone was dry and curt.

Digg didn't miss the silent warning to let the subject drop. He waved at it as it passed and then forged ahead. "It looks to me like that's exactly what you're doing. Did you even go home last night?"

Felicity didn't answer. Someone had been kind enough to fill the carafe full of water for her and leave it next to the pot, so all she had to do was pour it in and replace the filter. She concentrated on her movements as if she had never made a pot of coffee before.

"That's what I thought," Digg grumbled. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You don't need coffee, Felicity, you need a full night of sleep. You need to take care of yourself."

"I need to find whoever is leaving bombs all over the city," Felicity snapped. "That's my job, John. That's what I do. I find the bad guys – who they are, where they are, what they're doing and how to stop them. I find them, and the rest of you go get them. You can't do your part until I do mine, and no one else is going to die because I decided that sleep was more important than the information that could have saved their lives."

"That's my point." Digg kept his voice even as he took a step closer. "There are three of us, and only one you. If Oliver gets hurt, Roy and I can step in and do the job for him. But you're irreplaceable, Felicity. None of us can do what you do."

"And that's why I can't sleep, Digg." Felicity turned away from the coffee pot to fix her attention on her friend. The headache behind her eyes was fierce and made her feel irritable. Digg wasn't wrong, because it was barely past nine in the evening and she could have lain down on the cement floor at that very moment and slept for the next seven days straight. But she could not, and would not, do that. "I have to find this guy. Girl. These people. Ugh, whatever. I promise, when this is all over, I will lock myself in my house and sleep for a month, okay? Just … just let me do this first."

Digg forgot, sometimes, how alike Oliver and Felicity were. She understood herself and her limits better than he did, but never hesitated to stomp all over them when it was necessary. Digg couldn't tell who was rubbing off on whom more; every time he thought Oliver had learned one of Felicity's healthier habits, she turned right around and presented her own version of one of Oliver's less than healthy habits. They were quite a pair, especially since they weren't really a pair at all. Not the way that Digg knew they both wanted to be.

John Diggle was convinced that he was the only person in the basement with a lick of sense.

"Okay," Digg agreed grudgingly. "But, just so you know, I don't like it."

Felicity offered him a small smile. "Noted."

Digg left her to her coffee brewing. Oliver was standing a few feet away, close enough to have heard everything but far enough away to give the illusion of privacy. He arched an eyebrow at the other man as if to say, "look what you've done, this is all your fault".

"You're the one always reminding me that Felicity makes her own choices," Oliver muttered when Digg was close enough.

"Yeah, I just wish they weren't starting to look so much like yours. Seriously, you two are perfect for each other."

The words had been chosen carefully. Digg delivered them easily, even flippantly, as if they carried neither meaning nor weight. The opposite was true, of course: he had picked the phrase carefully and for a particular reason. Felicity called it "dropping a proverbial bomb".

That was what John had done. He offered his words up like a sacrifice and then stepped back to watch the effect. And there was definitely an effect. As soon as the words registered with Oliver, the other man's jaw clenched. He stilled in that preternatural way that John sometimes still had a hard time understanding, the lines of his shoulders pulling taught with sudden tension. Digg had come to recognize that reaction: it happened whenever Oliver had to exert an unexpected amount of control over himself or his reactions. The action always put Digg in mind of a wild animal, tensed and waiting for the environment to tell it whether to fight or flee.

Digg was an astute observer. Felicity was an open book and she knew it, but Oliver was not as unreadable as he seemed to think he was. When they were together – as in, within ten feet of each other – they were so transparent that Digg felt like he was looking at them from behind a magnifying glass.

In that regard, Felicity was mostly unchanged. Oliver, however, had lost much of his opaqueness in recent weeks. The two of them were like polarized magnets: they moved together automatically, and filled the room with a tension like the pull of opposites when they were apart.

So John picked his words carefully and then tossed them into the air so he could see how the pieces fell. The picture the pieces created was familiar, because he had already seen it before, in a nice Italian restaurant on the other side of town.

Oliver was saved from making a reply by Felicity's approach. She had a steaming cup of coffee in one hand.

"You okay?" she asked, looking right at Oliver. "You look tense."

"Fine," Oliver answered quickly. He hoped she didn't notice the look Digg gave him. "Coffee again?"

"Yeah. You're not going to yell at me, are you? Because I should warn you that Digg already tried that, and it didn't work."

"No yelling," Oliver promised.

"Well then in that case, would you like a cup?"

Oliver glanced down at her cup. "Let's start with half a cup. I don't have your tolerance."

"That's probably a good thing."

Digg doubted that Oliver wanted a cup of coffee as much as he wanted to get away from him and his not-so-careless comment. He waited until Oliver and Felicity had moved away to shake his head in exasperation.

"I know you heard what I said to Digg." Felicity's voice was calm as she watched Oliver prepare a cup of coffee to his liking. She had once vowed to never bring him coffee, but she still knew exactly how he liked it.

"Then you know I'll hold you to it," Oliver replied. "A whole month of sleep."

The teasing was gentle and masked a real current of concern, but Felicity smiled. She appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood a little. He had known she was upset earlier – was still upset – and it was nice of him to make an effort.

Which is why she decided to tease him back. "What are you going to do, chain me to the bed?" Well, apparently she wasn't going to tease him so much as flirt. In a ridiculously sexual, embarrassing sort of way.

The moment the words were out of her mouth Felicity's cheeks caught fire. She couldn't decide whether to be horrified or laugh, because how in the hell did she manage to get herself into these situations?

Oliver's stomach swooped dangerously. His eyes, which had been trained on hers until that moment, flicked down to her lips reflexively. Oh, he could think of plenty of ways to make sure Felicity stayed in bed for a month, but most of them didn't involve sleep.

He could have let her comment go. She had made many such sexually charged comments in the past, all of which he'd let slide, and he could do that this time as well. He could ignore it completely, or change the subject, or even just walk away.

Oliver could have done any of those things, but he didn't. Instead, he grinned wickedly and leaned closer than was necessary to pick up his coffee mug.

Quietly, suggestively, he responded, "If I have to."

Felicity's mind went straight to the image of Oliver, that same wicked smile on his face as he leaned over and …

She swallowed audibly and tried not to stare at his lips. "Good thing I don't have bed posts." She hadn't meant to whisper.

Oliver opened his mouth to respond and then thought better of it. He was standing too close, and she smelled wonderful, and he had the sinking suspicion that if he started kissing her then it would be a long time before he stopped. Instead, he winked at her.

No one had to know that Felicity spent the rest of the night cursing herself for not buying a four post bed, or that Oliver had thought of at least a dozen ways to get around that particular obstacle before an hour had passed.