Not All Green Men are Little
An Arrow/X-Files Crossover
Second in 'The Aliens Among Us' Series
By DavidB226Morris
Summary: Oliver Queen had enough on his plate trying to live his double life as newly elected Mayor of Star City and his night job as the Green Arrow. Then he gets a call from the FBI. New media darling Fox Mulder wants to have a meeting. And the information he has will infinitely complicate both his jobs.
Disclaimer: Oliver Queen, John Diggle, Quentin Lance, and everyone else from Arrow are the joint property of DC Comics and Greg Berlanti. I'm actually fine with how he handled these characters, but I think he wouldn't mind what I'm doing with them. Mulder, Scully and a couple of other characters I'm not going to spoil yet belong to Chris Carter and his merry band.
Timeline:
This story takes place around Season 5 of Arrow, just after the Tobias Church storyline but before the Invasion! Crossover. (Just so you know, I have an invasion crossover in mind, but it's a long way down the road. Heh, heh. ) The Prometheus storyline will not happen in this universe, but his recruiting a new team will. He's going to have a whole new set of headaches, though.
Everything takes place about a month after the epilogue of my Supergirl/X-Files crossover Aliens Among Us. My explanation for how the X-Files verse and the Berlanti-verse merge is listed below. You don't have to know the X-Files mytharc to enjoy this story (and honestly if you did, you had a much greater commitment to the mythology than most people) but I'm taking it into a different direction. There is an area where the two worlds meet which I intend to cover.
Ready? Then, let's see where the rabbit hole goes.
PROLOGUE
STAR CITY MAYOR'S OFFICE
"You've been this office twenty minutes, and you can't keep your eyes away from the television," Felicity said to Rene Ramirez. Then she saw what was on the screen. "Actually, that's kind of forgivable."
Rene looked at the screen. "Been watching her do her stuff from a year," he said as he saw Supergirl on the screen. "When I was putting the mask on the first time, my kid asked me IF I was gonna hang with her,"
"Hell, I'd still like to do that," Thea said. "And I'm officially retired from the costume brigade."
"You never hung with her the past year?" Both Thea and Felicity shook their heads. "I thought Ollie was an equal opportunity hero."
"I'm not sure that's the part that bothers him," Felicity said. "I think it may be the whole-visitor-from-another-planet bit."
"It's a little more complicated than that," Oliver Queen, the mayor of Star City, as so often was the case, had managed to enter the room completely undetected. "Our friend from Central City had an encounter with her a few months ago. Was actually kind of glad he had another person who could make him sweat in a race."
"Then why haven't you reached out to her?" Thea said. "Not for nothing, but considering everything that was going down with Damien Dahrk last year, we could've used her help."
"First of all, as you're no doubt aware of, at the time she was trying to save the world from an external threat rather than an internal one," Everybody looked at Oliver. "Hey, I watch Catco occasionally. More to the point, as much as National City is her home base, Supergirl pretty much belongs to the world. She is needed to save the planet from what was literally an alien invasion. By comparison, everything that's been going on here is relatively small potatoes."
"That's the only reason," Thea said, walked up to her brother. "It's not that you're jealous that there's someone out there capable of doing everything you can without breaking a sweat?"
"What? No! No!" Oliver said a little too quickly.
"Oliver always gets territorial when someone's stronger than him," Felicity said slyly.
"And he's always had a problem with strong women," Thea said with a smile.
"You both know better than that," Oliver said a little heavily. "All right, maybe I am a little jealous, but not the way you think. Supergirl shows up, and she's a hero to millions the world over within a year. Public opinion has always been against the Green Arrow within the narrow confines of Star City. Not to mention the fact that she has an entire government agency on her side. You all know very well that there are a lot of people in law enforcement who'd like to see me impaled by one of my own arrows."
"There are a lot of people out there who don't trust Supergirl either," John Diggle had just resurfaced. "She's as much the face of a larger problem that they don't want to admit."
"I'm a little surprised you haven't tried to blame her surfacing on me somehow," Oliver said only half in jest to his best friend.
"Much as I'd like to blame all the problems I've had in the past few years on you, calendar doesn't work that way." John pointed out. "You came back to life in August four years ago. Superman made his public debut in May of 2011. Unless you spent some of those five years on Mars, there's no way in hell he's your responsibility."
"I went through ten different flavors of hell, Dig, but believe me I stayed on this planet when I did it," Oliver said sincerely.
"One of these days you are going to tell us where you were," Felicity said.
"I will," Oliver said. "When we're not so pressed."
"You mean by the fact that there's been a genuine conspiracy for most of the twentieth century to hide the fact that aliens have been walking among us and that our government has been hiding that from us and by the way the invasion could come literally any minute?"
"Man, breathe," Rene said to Curtis.
"And I thought I could fit a lot of words into a breath," Felicity said, half in admiration.
"I'm sorry, I realize that Star City is a big deal," Curtis admitted. "And that after everything that happened with Tobias Church, we've got a hell of a cleanup. But come on. Aliens among us. Government conspiracy. Independence Day style invasion possible. How is this not at the top of our to-do list?"
"Because unless I've been getting some real bad information from the Star City PD, the biggest problem we're dealing with as Mayor is trying to handle the vacuum that was left when Tobias Church escaped from custody," Oliver Queen reminded him. "We have the work our own problems, not our neighbors, and certainly not the ones from a galaxy far, far away."
"You don't really think this won't be our problem at some point, do you?" Felicity asked.
Oliver heaved a weary sigh, and looked out through the window that gace him the best view of Star City. "Not really," he admitted. He looked around, and then he looked at Rene. "I'd prefer this didn't go beyond us right now."
Felicity found this simultaneously demeaning and encouraging. Oliver should have known by now the purpose of having a team was that you felt the need to confide your darkest fears without any penalty repercussions. Four years working side by side with him, he still seemed unable to learn that lesson. The fact that he was willing to admit as much right now was a step forward.
Everyone in the room seemed to realize this because they all gave assent. Rene just said: "I guess that means I'm part of Team Arrow now."
"I may be learning how to deal with everything as Mayor and as the Arrow, and you all know how much this puts on my plate. And I've dealt with a lot of strange shit in the five years I was gone." Oliver put his hands on his desk. "But I do watch the news. And this, what's going on in National City and Metropolis, what's been all over every media outlet in the country the last few weeks, this is way, way out of my league."
That was a big admission for Oliver Queen. Even when he'd been working as part of a team, he had gone out of his way to make himself an island, that he could handle anything, even if he couldn't.
"Newsflash, Oliver," John said gently. "That goes for everybody in this room. Why do you think Lyla called me back from Kabul?"
"I had hoped it was so you spend more time as a husband and father," Oliver said lightly.
Everyone wished that had been the reason. The fact was about five minutes after the shadow conspiracy had been revealed on CatCo; every intelligence agency in the world was being put under a microscope. That especially meant A.R.G.U.S, whose sole purpose of had purportedly been keeping the country safe was now being torn apart by Congress. Lyla had known that Amanda Waller had kept some pretty shady secrets, and she absolutely refused to believe that a conspiracy of this magnitude could have somehow slipped under her nose. Yet the audit she had been running right now seemed to indicate that was exactly the case. She didn't buy it for a second, and neither did anybody who had the misfortune to breathe the same air as her.
Lyla knew that absent anyone who was actually responsible for this kind of misstep, she was going to be dragged in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee and be reamed out by a bunch of Senators who considered this conspiracy nonsense but wanted to get reelected using this as a campaign issue. In their spare time, Felicity and Curtis had been going through the A.R.G.U.S files line by line, trying to anything that might pertain to this conspiracy. They had yet to find anything, and even though everything in the X-Files had been made public, it had not helped matters that Fox Mulder and Dana Scully had spent the better part of a decade trying to bring these people to ground without even finding a single person's name.
"I don't know how those two did it all those years," Felicity admitted to herself. "I mean, its hard going through all this stuff using the most advanced computers in the world. They were still using flip phones to communicate back then."
"Says a lot for their persistence," John told them. "Didn't exactly help them career wise."
"At least they had each other," Curtis said longingly "Psychologically, I mean. I don't think they hooked up until they were both out of the Bureau."
"They must've blind," Rene said. "Scully must've been a looker back in the day."
"She looks damn good now, all things considered," John told them. Everybody looked at them. "A, I'm married, not blind. B, I know what it's like to ignore being with your soulmate until it's almost too late for you to do anything about it."
"Admittedly, they might have been too concerned with the possible invasion of this planet to do anything about," Oliver argued. "Has Lyla reached out to them yet? If anyone can help her find what rock to turn over, it's them."
"She's reached out to them multiple times. The fourth time, Mulder left a very pointed email. He said, and I quote: 'Funny that I'm only getting government offers now that I'm the flavor of the month. The wolf's been in the henhouse for a very long time, and I have no intention of sharing a meal with them.' John shook his head.
"Not to go against your wife, but considering all the shit they went through when they were in the Bureau, I kind of see their point," Felicity admitted.
"I don't think its anything personal," John replied. "From what Lyla's been hearing, every agency that's reached out to Mulder and Scully from Homeland Security to the Fish and Wildlife association has been receiving similar notifications. Mulder never trusted the government when he first joined the FBI, and given what happened over the last quarter-century, I'm shocked he decided to work with them again."
"Well, if he's got Supergirl in his corner, I can see why he'd flip them off," Rene pointed out.
There was a rap on the door. "May I come in?" Quentin Lance asked.
"You're the deputy mayor, you don't have to ask for permission from me," Oliver said gently.
"I may have to for this."
Everybody was a little perplexed, so Oliver nodded.
Quentin closed the door behind him. "I've been completely compromised the last month," he told them bluntly. "I appreciate your decision to stand by me despite everything that happened with Tobias Church, but you need all of your soldiers to have their heads on straight, and right now I don't."
Everyone was now a little worried. "You're not here to tender your resignation, are you?" Oliver said concerned. "Because I can tell you right now, I wouldn't accept it."
Quentin shook his head. "Officially, I'm going on vacation for the next two weeks. If an emergency comes up, I have a number where you can reach me. "
"Given everything that happens around here, you may not get two free days." When everyone shifted their attention to Curtis, he shrunk a little. "Sorry. Clearly not the time for levity."
"You going to rehab?" Thea asked gently.
"Sort of. Two years after Sara went missing; someone I trusted reached out to me. Told me about a special kind of facility for cops who've lost family members. He helped me get clean eight years ago, I think he can help me now with…" Quentin couldn't finish the sentence.
"Given everything that's happened the last few years, you think you can trust this man with what you're going to need to tell him?" Felicity asked.
A brief smile twitched across Quentin's face. "Believe it or not, he was more qualified to understand my circumstances than anybody in this room." He looked at Oliver. "You okay with this?"
"You have to even ask?" Oliver pointed out. "We'll hold down the fort. You just concentrate on getting better."
Everybody – even Rene, who had more of a reason not to trust Lance in general – offered their best wishes.
"Try not to blow up the city while I'm gone," Quentin said with a trace of his old wryness.
"Relax. It's only September. We don't start having those problems until April at the latest." Felicity reminded him.
She didn't have to mention that those kinds of problems tended to start building over time, and they were more than overdue for another bad man to stake their claim.
They were right about that. Just wrong about the gender.
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
"Hello, Mr. Church."
The former drug kingpin of Star City tried to look around after the blindfold was pulled from his head.
His memories had been fuzzy for awhile. He knew the van that had been carrying him to Iron Heights had been run off the road. He'd seen the three guards accompanying him shot point blank in the chest. He was about to shout out in defiance, and then he'd been injected with something – and that was the last thing he remembered clearly.
"I understand you have questions. Rest assured that none of them are going to be answered."
He could barely see the figure in the background, but even with his head still foggy, he could recognize that it was a woman doing the talking.
"The truth is, Mr. Church, most of the ones your inferior mind could come up with would be utterly irrelevant to your situation right now."
Even given the precariousness of his situation, Church had hated being talked to this way. He started to struggle again.
"I realize you're a strong man, but you're wasting your energy. The bonds holding you have been crafted so that entire species would be unable to break free from them. A mere criminal like you, doesn't stand a chance." A deliberate pause. "At least, not yet."
Church was a smart man, but even a man far dumber than him would have been an idiot not to suspect that there was a deal coming. He stopped struggling.
"I will admit, your little stint in Star City was impressive. You were giving the Green Arrow a run for his money until the end. There does seem to be something passing for a brain in there. You just overextended yourself a little."
Church's voice finally managed to work. "You know who he is, don't you?" he said.
"An associate of ours gave us his identity weeks ago."
"Then why the hell didn't you take him out yourself?"
"Because what Oliver Queen does in Star City is irrelevant in the long term," the woman said. "The problem is, he knows too much about what our plans could be. As long as he's distracted with the minute problems of trying to raise his pathetic home out of the muck, he's not focused on the more important issues."
"So I guess you figured I was enough of a distraction to rate," Church said.
"Using just your street smarts and brawn, you were able to keep him busy for nearly a month. Imagine, Mr. Church what you could accomplish if you had resources."
"And you're willing to offer them to me. In exchange for what: my immortal soul?"
A chuckle. "We're intelligent people, Mr. Church; let's not bring something as ludicrous as theology into this."
"I was being funny, lady. There was no God in the street."
"I'm willing to offer you what you were trying to get in Star City. Control. I will give you power, and you will have control. We merely want you to keep Mr. Queen and his merry band busy long enough so that by the time he sees the danger, it will be too late for him to do anything about it."
"You don't want him dead."
"Don't misunderstand. With what we're going to give you, you'll be able to kill him whenever you please. We just want you to wait for us to give the word to snap his neck."
Church smiled for the first time in a while. "You need me to sign in blood?"
"Informed consent, Mr. Church, is critical to what we do. I take it I have yours."
"Ready and willing."
The woman made a gesture, and two men in lab coats appeared. "This is going to take a few minutes. I'd say you won't feel a thing, but that would be a lie."
The woman walked out of her laboratory and got on the phone. "It's amazing how easy it is to get people to do something when you make it think it's their own idea."
"You'd better be right on this, Lillian," the woman on the other end of the phone said. "Queen didn't even have to break a sweat to handle this man."
"There are two ways this turns out, Monica," Lillian Luthor said. "Either Church kills Queen, and were rid of our problem, or Church distracts Queen for long enough to get the rest of the operation started. In either case, he won't have enough time to start looking."
At that moment, there was a loud scream of pain that no one in Star City could have expected would come from this gangster.
"My children of the night," Lillian said with a smile. "What lovely music they make."