"Brace for impact."
Felicity heard the words at least a dozen more times after the pilot had spoken them. Screaming alarms echoed through the helicopter as it spun in circles; the tail rotor completely sheered off.
Felicity's brain was trying to keep up as smells, sounds, and flashing hues of amber flames from the back of the helicopter fogged her brain.
Brace for impact.
She closed her eyes to hold onto some semblance of control. If she was going to die like this, with those three words etched into her brain, well then the least her mind could do was to offer her some memories to call up on.
A mother she would never see again.
A nice, comfortable job that she wouldn't go back to.
A cat that she really hoped her neighbour would remember to feed.
That really nice dress she bought last month on a drunken online splurge but hadn't found the occasion to wear it yet.
Brace for impact.
Okay.
Her fingers gripped tighter to the seatbelt, turning her knuckles white and she could hear Gavin next to her screaming every curse word he knew – some of which, in a lucid moment, Felicity realised she hadn't heard before.
Sorry Gavin.
He had boarded this helicopter because she had asked.
Brace for impact.
This had all been some foolish expedition because she hated mysteries and she thought she could solve this one.
So much for that.
Brace for impact.
So she did.
/four months prior
"Why am I being fired?" Felicity asked as she hot-footed it into the large corner office with the skyscraper view on the 45th floor of the Queen Consolidated building.
"Ms Smoak is it?" Moira Queen replied calmly, and unwavering calm in her tone that suggested a pint-sized IT girl barging into her office in sensible Mary Janes was an everyday occurrence.
"Yes, and I am without a doubt the single most valuable member of your technical division," she rambled as her eyes maintained somewhat of a laser focus. "And that's including my so called supervisor," she paused to take a breath, the enormity of her actions in the moment starting to resonate.
But, she'd already burst in the office like a mad woman, no sense stopping now.
"Letting me go would be a major error for this company."
"I agree," Moira replied gently folding the file on her desk closed, "which is why you're not being fired."
Shit. If she wasn't going to fire her before.
"Oh, I assumed when you brought me up here it was because…," she lingered on the last word before pretending to garrotte herself with her thumb, an overly expressive sound effect accompanying the gesture.
"It's because I wanted you to look into this," Moira said as she pushed a small black case the size of a mobile phone across her desk.
"What is this?" Felicity asked curiously as she collected the case without reservation, her intrepid nature urging her on.
"That's what I'm hoping you can tell me," Moira sighed, glancing her eyes back towards a photo that sat on her desk, Felicity didn't need to see it in that moment to know what it was – it was the same photo that had sat on the CEO's desk for the last 4 years, a photo of Moira's late husband and son.
"About a year after the Gambit sunk, I hired professional salvages to bring it back to me, I thought back then it would bring me some sort of peace. It has taken this long but about six months ago they finally delivered it," she sighed as she ran a slow, trembling finger across her neatly groomed eyebrow. "I needed to rest at night knowing I had done everything I could."
Felicity nodded slowly as she hovered between feet, unsure whether she should stay standing or sit down without an invitation.
"I've had people combing through the wreckage trying to find out what happened and all they could tell me was they didn't know, they couldn't tell," she paused, her painted red lips pulled tightly, "until they found that."
Moira nodded down to the case in Felicity's grasp.
"I'm told the data chips and the fragments of the ship's computer navigation system are useless, broken beyond repair."
"But you don't believe them?"
Moira looked up, her brows softening and her chin lightly dipping to the side.
"I'm a woman that runs a multi-billion dollar company, I firmly believing in testing what people say is impossible, and that's where you come in."
"Me?" Felicity asked, a little more timidly than she would have like to portray in front of this strong-willed woman.
"They tell me you are the best."
"Thank you." Felicity smiled awkwardly, she hadn't expected a compliment of that nature when she had fumed her way into the office minutes before. "But I'm not sure what I can do."
"Just look, tell me if there is anything there, any reason why I lost both my husband and my son that day? Let me close the book on this," she resonated. "Finally," she added in a soft whisper.
"I'll see what I can do."
Moira thanked her without words.
"I'm your girl," Felicity said as she backed away slowly, counting the steps in her head towards the door.
"I mean, I'm not your girl-girl, I wasn't making a pass at you," she sighed, her face screwing up for a moment when Moira simply nodded. "Thank you for not firing me."
/one month later
For the second time in a few weeks Felicity found herself in that same corner office on the 45th floor with 10pm looming and the City provide a curtain of glimmering lights outside the glass walls, with Moira Queen patiently waiting on what she was about to say.
"So I looked into it, and there wasn't much to find," Felicity started her hands gesturing nervously from side to side.
"Well thank you Ms Smoak, I…," Moira started.
"Wait," Felicity interrupted, thrusting an arm somewhat awkwardly into the air, "I said not much, I didn't say nothing."
"You found something?" Moira asked, an eyebrow perching higher on her forehead.
"The Gambit's navigation system was interlinked with the GSP trackers in the life boats, the radius isn't that great and I can't get exact bearings because apparently that sort of information was judged unnecessary for the recording to keep so it dumped most of it but I found a cache that…,"
Moira held a regal hand up, her other hand tapping a pen slowly to her forehead. "I'm sorry Felicity you lost me, do you think you could just tell me the end?"
"Right, sorry," Felicity said as she took a breath and a moment to compose herself.
Moira smiled, bleakly, the long day and fluttering hope still entrenched in her heart was making this almost unbearable.
"One of the lifeboats was activated."
"Meaning?"
"Someone turned it on. Mrs Queen, at least one person got off that boat before it sunk, alive and coherent enough to turn on the tracker."
"But they looked and they never found anything."
"I tracked where the coastguard looked, I studied the weather patterns, and I had a friend of mine look into the currents and," Felicity paused to catch her breath, slowing her racing heart, "I think they looked the wrong way."
She unfolded the map tucked under her arm and Moira stood in response, leaning over the desk to study the same.
"They searched, here, here, and along here," Felicity said, drawing her midnight blue nail across the red line that she had drawn. "They should have looked here" she lifted her finger and placed it back down in the middle of a green circle. "Most of it is open-ocean and we won't find anything out there after this much time, but this," she tapped on a cluster of small islands in the middle of the green space, "this might be something."
"You think the life boat could be on that island?" Moira enquired, trying her best to keep her voice level and collected, but the shudder in her heart was difficult to ignore.
Felicity plucked her lip from between her teeth and nodded. "I think it's worth looking."
Moira stepped back, one arm wrapped around her slender waist, the other tapping the pen she still held against her sensible grey-pencil skirt. "Have you told anyone else about this?"
"No, I mean my friend the meteorologist, but he didn't know why," Felicity remarked with an off-handed shrug.
She watched as Moira took another lap of the corner area of her office, her shoes making soft tapping noises against the opulent marble floor as she walked.
"Mrs Queen, I really think you should look here, send an army."
"I can't," Moira sighed heavily.
"Why?"
Moira's lips closed tightly, there was more to this than she was telling the young, curious IT girl, but she wasn't sure if they were nothing more than musing of an idle mind; that or she was too scared to utter the words herself; so she opted for something close to the truth.
"I'm afraid that the media will pick up on that, then Thea will get her hopes up only for us to find nothing. Thank you for your help Ms Smoak."
"So you're going to do nothing?"
"You've done an exceptional job Felicity." There was a definite sadness in her strained and deflated voice that didn't go unnoticed by the younger woman. "But I can't live on false hopes, and I won't start that media circus again where my husband and son are vilified on the daily news."
Felicity cringed, she hadn't been in Starling City when the tragedy has struck, but even as far away as Boston, she had seen the way the playboy was maligned by the media and the whispers of the late Mr Queen's infidelity no doubt still bore scars of their own.
"So don't" Felicity remarked, drawing out the 't' as she walked around the corner of the desk, her fingers tapping ritualistically along the lip of it. "I'll go."
Moira looked up, perplexed by the offer.
"If I can fly close around this area and if the tracker is still active, I might be able to pick something up, bring back some proof." It was a long shot, but she really did hate mysteries and this one was itching to be solved.
"Discretely?"
Felicity nodded assuredly.
"Take whatever resources you need, I'll fly you to China under the guise of visiting our sister company out there," Moira began, the cogs turning in her head. This could work.
"A Gavin would be good," Felicity quipped
The matriarch's eye twitched in confusion. "I'm sorry?"
"Gavin, in the electronics division, a second set of hands would be useful and he speaks Mandarin," Felicity replied as she straightened her skirt and toyed with the lanyard around her neck.
"Then you'll have a Gavin," Moira agreed. "But please, don't call attention to this."
"Scouts' honour," Felicity said as she saluted awkwardly. "Not that I'm a scout, or that they salute like that," she paused, closing her eyes briefly. "I will just…," she pointed back towards the door, "…leave now."
"Ms Smoak?" Moira called, causing Felicity to turn on her heels just as she reached for the door. "Thank you" Moira added genuinely.
"For what? I haven't found anything all that useful yet," Felicity commented with a kind smile.
"For hope."
Felicity bobbed her head in recognition before she slipped from the office. She was going to the North China Sea to look for a four year old life boat in the hopes it could tell her what happened all those years ago.
/four years ago: North China Sea
Oliver poured another glass of wine, his fourth that evening, careful not to spill any as the launch rocked in the turbulent sea. The cocaine coursing through his veins had him buzzing as he took another gulp of the vintage wine, stolen from his parents' cellar the week before. He kicked her clothes across the floor towards the fixed, oak drawers. He wasn't sure how he was going to explain this, and he was not so stupid to assume the truth wouldn't make itself abundantly clear once they returned to Starling in a few weeks.
But, he didn't care.
Or at least that's what he tried to convince himself as he did another line of the powdery drug off the mirror he pulled from the wall.
Fuck it.
Sara appeared from the bathroom, her body wrapped in sinful lingerie and her eyes wide like his own. Pearls dripped from her neck; they had been a present meant for someone else, but perhaps that was part of the allure.
He handed her a glass of wine as she strode across the polished wood towards him.
Fuck it.
A wave crashed against the side of the Gambit, sending both of them stumbling towards the bed with drug-infused laughter.
"She's going to be pissed," Sara purred as she flopped down onto the bed, her arms spread above her head.
"Maybe she won't find out," he answered with a flippant shrug and a coy smirk.
Another wave shook the cabin, more forceful that the others that had hammered against it all night.
"Relaxed," he cooed as he noted the fear trapped in her eyes.
But her answer was lost in a flood of noise, a creak, a bang, the sound of splintering wood and twisting metal.
Then darkness.
Absolute darkness.
/present day
Oliver sat upright, his body drenched in a cold sweat, his brain drilled with the images of water encasing her; deep, dark, and foreboding. Death.
So much death.
The sun was already high despite the early hour and he knew, again that sleep – or at least the restful kind – would evade him once more.
In fact, Oliver hadn't slept a restful night in the past four years since that fateful one, and nothing he'd done since had ever atoned enough for him to believe he ever would.
This was life now.
Stuck between life and death.
Somewhere in purgatory.
As he was pulling on his worn and damaged clothes he heard a sound that he'd spent years imagining; the blades of a helicopter ripping through the air overhead.
He smiled wearily at himself, perhaps a small part of him still believed that might happen.
Only, the noise got louder and closer.
He ran from the place he called home and his eyes darted straight up into the clear and pleasant sky; just in time to see the image of a helicopter driving through the air on the far side of the island.
His chest tightened.
That could only mean one thing.
The amber flames a second later lit the sky up nearly florescent. An inferno of flames trailed behind the machine as it began to drop in altitude and spin.
Oliver grabbed what he needed and ran into the thick forest, into the consuming depths of purgatory.
/
Brace for impact.
Felicity prepared herself as best she could. But, her search for hope wasn't supposed to end like this.