"Mysterious Smoak"
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; those belong to their original creators. The way it's all stringed together is of my making. No profit is being made out of this (*sigh* unfortunately).
Manipulations of the cover art/image are mine though.
While the chapters in this story can be seen as separate entries, they all have the same backstory in common. Think of it as each chapter being a "what if" moment for the characters yet with all chapters sharing the same backstory.
Backstory:
- Felicity meets the Winchesters in 2012 (reality; 2011-2012 / verse; 2012-2013) = S9 (verse; 2015-2016)
- Timeline of "Arrow" is pushed forward by 2 years so the ages are the same (therefore Oliver was shipwrecked in 2009 and saved in 2014) = S2 (2015-2016)
Ages: (see first chapter)
REASON why this is listed under "Arrow" only: because of Felicity.
Chapter Summary: [Tag on to 2x17] Not wanting to leave Roy alone after his breakup with Thea, Felicity gives some unexpected insight into his situation.
Inspiration:I was writing this before the previous 3-parter came to my mind.
Spoiler(s): everything up to ep. 9x17 ("Mother's Little Helper") for Supernatural and everything up to ep. 2x17 ("Birds of Prey") for Arrow
Time Frame: This happens at the end but instead of Felicity leaving the lair with Diggle, she stays behind with Roy.
A/N: At the end to avoid additional spoilers. Not beta-ed. This is posted to celebrate the birthday of Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester)!
NOTE: This chapter is no way connected to the previous chapters.
Quick Review Reply to a Guest (Britany; June 19): I don't want to embarrass Felicity. I don't think I do, at least not intentionally. And I agree about the friendship between Olicity being important to them but between 2x13-2x21, Oliver doesn't really treat Felicity as a friend. It seems like she's been downgraded to an employee ever since Sara came back to town permanently [so for the sake of the previous 3-parter, it took place after 2x17 so this treatment of Olicity is shown there]. And when it comes to Felicity's feelings for Oliver, he is either aware and ignores them or he's completely oblivious to them but either way, either option hurts Felicity in some way.
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"Soulless Scenarios (Part 1)"
Roy was watching Thea through the Verdant security cameras. After how he orchestrated the break up, he thought she would have left the building just to avoid him yet she didn't know that he was still in the basement. So he sat at one of the stations and watched as she wiped her tears away every so often as she tried to work through the club's paperwork. He hated what he did but he knew he had to. Oliver was right…he was a danger to Thea.
He was so focused on the video feed that he never realized that Felicity had stayed behind while Diggle had left shortly after gripping Roy's shoulder as a sign of his support. The Mirakuru in him should have picked up how Felicity's scent was still fresh in the air or that he hadn't heard her heels recede as she left the Foundry. He didn't notice any of that…he was too focused on what he had done to Thea. The guilt was drowning him inside.
So when Felicity softly asked him how he was doing, he was startled.
"I've been better." He answered gruffly as he watched the empty feed. Thea had left the premises a few moments ago.
"I'm sorry it had to come to this." She bit her lower lip, contemplating on whether she should say anything else. She caved on that decision, "I know how much you care for Thea."
He ran his hand through his hair yet he never looked at her, "I almost broke some guy's collarbone earlier today just because he bumped into me." He sighed as he shook his head, "I hate it but Oliver was right, as long as I'm with her, I put Thea in danger."
Felicity couldn't help the look of pity she had for the younger man, everything was just stacking against him and it was affecting the one good thing he truly had in his life…Thea.
She quickly schooled her features and walked towards him until she could lean her hip against the metal table. Roy's attention was focused on the bracelet he had given Thea earlier, which now sat on the metal table top.
"Not entirely true but I understand what Oliver is getting at." She stated while she remained standing. She didn't make herself comfortable beside Roy, she didn't know if she was truly welcome in his space or not.
He tilted his head and looked up at her. She could see the slight confusion swirling in his eyes. He wanted her to explain yet he didn't want to outright ask. He was lucky that she recognized that look.
"Like it not, you're a danger to everyone now Roy, not just Thea. You're like a live wire," She gave him a sad smile, she hated having to say it but it was true, "the smallest thing could set you off because the Mirakuru not only gave you these extra abilities but it seemed to tear down a part of you in the process." When she noticed his brow scrunching up out of confusion, she hurried to explain, "Like in exchange for the extra strength and healing, a part of your control was taken away from you to compensate for the new traits, which means the simplest things could now set you off."
Roy blinked at her. He never really thought of it like that before. Oliver and Sara never really explained the Mirakuru like that before. It made him wonder how Felicity could come up with such an analogy when the experts on the team hadn't done so.
Roy swiveled around so that he was facing the petite woman, "You seem to know what you're talking about."
Felicity shrugged while trying to not meet his eyes, "Well, I've been trying to work out a theory but I never wanted to say it just in case I was off base with it. I didn't want to give the wrong impression or any false hope."
He noticed her inability to make eye contact with him, which he thought was odd. It made him feel like she was hiding something from him or she was trying to say more without actually saying more to him. It was frustrating.
Instead of trying to figure it out, he decided to just ask, "Can I hear it?"
Felicity's head snapped up, her eyes wide as she stared at him. It was clear that she hadn't expected him to ask. It was another observation he found to be odd. Why bring up a theory if you weren't planning to talk about it? He wondered as he looked at her.
When she didn't make a move to talk, a surprising first for him to witness, he quickly moved to justify his curiosity, in hopes that it would convince her to share her theory with him.
"I mean if it's just a theory then maybe I could confirm or deny some things since I am the one with Mirakuru in him." He started talking and before he knew it, he was rambling on, "I mean it's not like you're going to ask Slade Wilson about it. Even if you did, I doubt he'd be truthful to you."
Felicity giggled, "I'm not that desperate to prove my theory."
A small smile appeared on Roy's face, "So then tell me."
Her giggles instantly died down and it was replaced with her nibbling on her lower lip.
His smile turned into a sheepish one, "I think it would help me just to hear your take on all of…this." He finished with a sigh.
She gave a sigh of her own. "It's kind of out there and the basis behind it, well you may not believe it." She warned before she hopped up onto the metal table and made herself comfortable.
Roy quirked an eyebrow at the woman (for both the warning and her new position), "I'm not budging Smoak so lay it on me." He leaned back and waved his arms around, as if he was gesturing to her to take the proverbial stage, "What is this theory of yours?"
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Felicity exhaled deeply as she tried to figure out how to explain her theory without losing Roy's attention. She truly believed that there was merit behind her theory...even though she couldn't check other psychology or philosophy books to see if she got the theoretical aspects correct. She was going in blind when it came to this Mirakuru theory of hers and she hoped that Roy would just give her a chance to explain and justify her thoughts.
"It's more of a mashup of theories." She started off slowly, "You see, I have this friend and we used to go into these long discussions about what differentiated us from everyone else…what made us more or less human from another being." She looked down from her perch and saw that he was looking up at her, bemused.
"You had conversations like that?" Roy asked while trying to hold off his smirk. He was intrigued at the idea that Felicity would have such philosophical discussions, although it wasn't completely surprising. Felicity was a smart woman.
"We talk about crazy stuff like that." She waved her hand in a dismissive manner, "Anyways, many of our more recent conversations revolved around a human soul and what it essentially is." She sighed as she thought back on the subject, her eyes glassed over a bit as she looked ahead, "We were basically trying to figure out when it was okay to execute certain maneuvers and when it wasn't. Kind of like the question when is it okay to kill and when is it not okay."
Roy frowned, "Isn't it never okay to kill?"
She waved her hand again, "It depends on the situation and that is beside the point." She looked back down at him, "But you see what I mean about possible discussions from talks like that."
"Sort of," He lifted his hand to the back of his head and he started scratching it, "I'm still stuck on the fact that you actually talked about human souls like it's an actual concept. I mean, isn't it just some religious or spiritual thing that people believe we all have?" He asked; his bafflement evident in his expression.
"Kind of." Felicity exhaled deeply, mentally preparing herself for the words she was about to spew out, "Basically a human soul is a person's essence and without it, the body reverts to its instincts. A soul allows a human to feel all emotions and function accordingly but without it, we might as well be animals." She tilted her head to the side, "Although we'd be animals that can walk on two legs without a problem, but still, we'd be animals nonetheless. And I'm not saying that animals can't feel emotions or anything but it's not like we can know for certain if they feel the same emotions that we humans do." She rambled on until Roy had to actually wave his hands in front of her in order for her to stop talking. The gestures seem to have caught her attention like he had hoped.
She blinked at him and he could see the early signs of a blush starting to form on her skin.
"Hold up," Roy inhaled deeply, "a body can survive without a soul?"
She nodded her head.
"Okay," he exhaled and closed his eyes as he started to rub at his temples, "I'm just going to assume that this is all legit to avoid the headache I'm pretty sure I'm going to get but what's the point?" He looked back up at her, "How is this connected to my situation?"
Felicity sighed, "Well, without a soul, the person would have no moral compass…no filter. They would not feel the simplest of emotions like sadness, anger, joy or happiness and instead they function on pure instinct. All their actions would revolve around what they wanted, with all consequences be damned." She sighed again as she shook her head in disappointment, as if the very thought saddened her, "So with that in mind let's apply it to you."
"Please do before I get that headache." He could already feel one creeping up on him.
Felicity held her hands out before her, kind of as if she were balancing a scale. "Pre-Mirakuru-You would be the soulful version of you. Right?" She stated as she held her left hand out.
Roy blinked, "…Right."
"And a No-Soul-You," she swapped her hands so that her right one was now out and closer to him, "would be you without any restraint whatsoever. If you wanted to kill someone, you would without hesitation and you'd feel nothing for it."
Roy cringed at the thought but he did notice the two ends of the spectrum that she had just displayed for him.
"If you broke the law, you'd feel no guilt over doing so. If you wanted sex," she couldn't help but blush when she brought it up, "you'd go out and get it but you'd only feel the physical gratification it would give you…basically a no-strings attached hook-up for soulless you." She struggled a bit at the end.
Roy smirked at her while hoping that she didn't notice his own discomfort when she started talking about sex. He loved Felicity but talking about sex with her was just…weird.
Ignoring his amusement, Felicity pushed forward, "If you were part of some celebration, you wouldn't feel the happiness that everyone around you was experiencing in that moment. It would just be a party for you that would give you free food and possible sex." She swallowed nervously at the end; it was completely weird for her to talk about sex with Roy. Either way, the way she understood it was that a person without a soul could be thought of as a terminator or a replicant; she remembered vaguely that Dean had used those comparisons at some point when she asked him long ago. "At least that's my understanding of it," she muttered a few moments later.
Roy signed, "So No-Soul-Me would be an immorally dangerous douchebag?"
She nodded, "Basically yeah. No-Soul-Anyone would be like that to some extent if they don't go insane first." She thought back to when Dean had told her about how vicious Sam had been when he had no soul. He'd hurt (maybe even killed) anyone that got in his way and there was a time where Soulless-Sam was willing to kill Bobby (the man he viewed as a second father to him) to save his own ass. Felicity was just glad to hear that Dean had stopped Soulless-Sam before it was too late to save Bobby.
"But where does that leave Mirakuru-Me?" Roy's nose scrunched up in thought, "Somewhere in the middle?"
Felicity nodded again as she shifted in her spot on the metal table, "Precisely. The way I see it, gaining inhuman abilities from the Mirakuru caused some of your human soul to strip away but not all the way since you can still obviously feel but the filter and restraint you had before, it seems to have somewhat deteriorated which is why you're having trouble controlling your emotions therefore leading to controlling issues over your new skill set." She explained quickly as her hands flew all over the place.
Roy's nose scrunched up again as he tried to process the analogy. "So like in a video game," he asked a few moments later, "the Mirakuru switched out a few necessities that I had in my usually full yet solid inventory?" It was the only comparison he could think of. He could remember playing video games at the youth center when things were too tense at home. He remembered how some games required his player to collect items yet he could only hold so much with him at one point. There were times where he had to plan which items to keep with his avatar in order for him to advance to the next level.
Felicity gave the comparison some thought. "I guess you can think of it like that." She hopped off the table and headed towards her work station, "Or like with a full computer tower." She called back to him before she opened up one terminal for Roy to see.
When she turned around and noticed that he had followed her to the terminal, she started pointing at the different components in her system. "In order to fit in a new drive with the latest updates you'd have to swap it out with a drive that was already in the tower but taking out that drive meant losing some valuable software." She explained as she made the gesture of pulling out a drive and swapping in another without actually touching the terminal pieces.
Roy nodded; it made sense to him, "Any way to fix it?"
She pursed her lips together, "You'd need to learn 22-years' worth of self-restraint all over again." She suggested as she closed the computer terminal and walked back to her computers to take a seat.
Roy blinked with a thin-lipped expression on his face, "Which currently doesn't help me with Thea."
"In the long run it would though," Felicity pointed out in hopes of uplifting the current mood. When it didn't look like her comment had the effect she had hoped, Felicity sighed.
Roy turned his head slightly to look at her; he didn't have to move much since she was sitting while he was standing this time.
"I mean, I get that you didn't want to break her heart but whether or not you broke things off with her, Thea would still be in danger because of Slade and for being a Queen." Felicity gave him a sad smile when she saw his eyes widen by her words.
She hated saying those words and yet it felt good for her to say them. It seemed like it was something Oliver hadn't grasped yet about the situation.
"Your break-up just eliminates one threat from her life even though I think she's the one person who could anchor you." Felicity continued while keeping her eye contact with Roy, "And at least if you were with her then you could provide an obstacle for Slade because he'd have to go through you to get to Thea and I know you'd do anything to protect her."
Roy couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So you don't agree with Oliver?"
She lowered her gaze as she shook her head, "What Oliver fails to see is that just because you break up with someone and keep your distance, it doesn't mean the target is off their back," she exhaled deeply, as if she was preparing herself for her next words, "The only way the target will go away is if they are physically removed from the situation," she shifted her gaze back to him, "you know the whole 'out of sight, out of mind' thing or if that person truly has no hold over you." She choked up a bit at the end, which only had Roy thinking that there was more to what she was saying.
And there was.
For Felicity, that mantra was a nasty reminder for her. When Sam and Dean had rescued her from the Leviathans, she had wanted to stay with them in the beginning. She wanted to help and learn about the supernatural so that she could better protect herself from that world but the surviving Leviathans soon realized that Felicity was part of the Winchesters' inner circle. Once they learned that, they started targeting her like they had done to Bobby. They wanted to use her to get to the brothers and since they had lost Bobby to the Leviathans in that manner (which happened long before the brothers had met Felicity), they didn't want that to happen to their new friend. So Felicity agreed to uproot her life and go into hiding and since she was a technical genius, she didn't mind having to change her records around. Eventually, Felicity was a forgotten face for the Leviathans and as long as no one knew of her connection to the Winchesters, she was safe. She hated that she couldn't be there for Sam and Dean and yet she understood why she had to stay hidden.
Felicity shook herself out of her thoughts and cleared her throat. "Take Oliver and Thea for example." She continued as if she hadn't been lost in her thoughts, and Roy let her, "Even though Thea is in the dark about Oliver's nightly antics," she waved around the Foundry to make it clear just what she was referring to, turning her away from him in the process, "she can still be used against him because she's his sister. Even Laurel could be applied to that conclusion -" Roy raised an eyebrow at her at the mention of Laurel and she never noticed his reaction, "- because even though they aren't romantically involved anymore, Laurel still has a special place in Oliver's heart which makes her a target to his enemies." She turned back to look at the younger man, "Does that make sense?"
Roy tilted his head to the side, "You seem to know a lot about the situation." He understood alright, there was a lot more to Felicity Smoak than he initially thought.
Felicity shrugged, "Like I said, I know a friend and let's just say that he and his brother deal with a lot of the same things that we do." Roy quirked an eyebrow for her implication, she just sighed. "The only difference is," she stared him down and he could see behind her glasses this sadden look within her eyes, "that they don't make as many attachments with people as we seem to do."
"Is it easier that way…the no attachments thing?" He couldn't help but ask. He always thought of himself as a lone wolf but ever since he joined up with Team Arrow, he couldn't see any other way to function than on that team. Mirakuru or not, he didn't think he'd want solo missions after experiencing the support and teamwork he got from the Arrow team.
Felicity looked away as she gave it some thought. "When it comes to the job, yes, but personally, it's lonely," she started with a sigh. "At the end of the day, it's just the two of them against the world and whatever friends they have left that are still alive. Even then, all those friends are scattered around so their support is given from afar." She looked up and gave him a meaningful look.
It's not like what we have here.
She didn't have to say it for him to get the message. And he understood it loud and clear. Whatever these brothers did, Felicity commended them and yet she was worried about them too.
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A/N #1: I am so sorry for the month long wait! That wasn't my intention at all. I had more planned for this idea but since I noticed that today was Jared Padalecki's birthday, I decided to post the first part today. Anyways, this was the first time I really got to write Roy so I hope I portrayed him correctly. The whole concept of the human soul is MY understanding from what the SPN-verse has presented to us. So what did you think about this first part? Did it work for you guys? Did you like it/hate it? Believable/Ridiculous? Please leave a review!
Teaser for part 2: Felicity gets a call from a Winchester with some news!
Question: Based on the theory that Felicity gave Roy, where in the spectrum do you think Oliver was at when he was rescued from the island in 1x01?
A/N #2: Once again, thank you so much for all the hits and reviews! I still can't believe that you guys are still with me. I truly thought that a SPN/Arrow was something very few people would be interested in. Your support has truly amazed me guys! THANK YOU!
A/N #3: I don't know about you guys but I'm excited about the Comic Con panels for these shows next week (July 24-27th)! I can't wait to see what season previews they give us for SPN (demon-Dean!) and Arrow (especially for Olicity!).
Originally Published: July 19, 2014 (Happy birthday Jared Padalecki!)