I'm amazed and overjoyed that so many of you are enjoying this fic so far and willing to explore this new 'verse with me. I cannot thank you enough for your positive encouragement and support. It means a lot to me. There's one thing I feel like putting out there, though: this fic will not follow season one. I've done the rewrite and dealt with all of that and I honestly don't want to do that again. I'll be plucking things from canon, but I'm not following one season.

A huge *hug* to Albiona for okaying this chapter so quickly. She's amazing like that.

Okay, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter, too. Have a great weekend! Love, Jules.


Everybody Likes Italian

Felicity loved silence.

Felicity hated silence.

Both statements were equally true. Sometimes she did both at the same time.

Her base of operations took that love/hate-relationship and made it into a room. The cellar underneath the old steel factory, abandoned by Smoak International, was beautifully quiet. It was calm and gave Felicity the solitude she craved so much.

After the four months she had spent alone on Lian Yu, waiting for a boat to come close enough to rescue her, Starling City felt loud, hectic, and crowded. It also felt intrusive and threatening in very different way from Lian Yu. All those people—staring at her, dissecting her, judging her, expecting something from her, taking her picture without her consent, wanting to get a good look at the rich bitch returned from the dead—made her uncomfortable in a way getting shot at and standing on top of a moving truck couldn't. It was overwhelming at times and she loved getting a time-out, hiding away from a world she didn't fit into anymore.

She hated that she needed that time-out. She wanted to fit in, but couldn't seem to find her place in all of it. Outside of this cave that gave home to the only side of her that made sense at the moment, she felt like an outcast.

Hooding up, she knew what she was doing; she was in charge then, capable. She was doing a good thing, making a difference. People in the Glades, the ones suffering from a mixture of corruption and neglect by the wealthy people of the city, welcomed her actions. They called her, called the Arrow, a hero.

She wasn't, of course.

Felicity didn't have any illusions about that, about any alleged heroism, but taking action felt right. It was what she had come back to do: help people, do some actual good for this divided city, use the skills acquired by doing unspeakable things to trigger a positive change.

Those were the moments when she felt good. Not happy, but somewhat content. She wished she could feel like that without her hood, but the two months since her return and all her awkward interactions with normal human beings had given her more than enough evidence that she basically shouldn't be let out of this cave.

Actually, she shouldn't be allowed to interact with normal people ever, because she only ended up hurting them—literally. Like the poor guy she had attacked—and there wasn't any other word for what she had done—in her mother's office.

His name was Oliver Queen. Felicity remembered because she remembered everything.

And because he had been one of the people she had kept from getting hurt since returning to Starling.

He had impressed her that night; he had been brave, trying to do the right thing. Felicity knew how blurry the line between right and wrong could become in moments of danger. The threat of it hadn't caused Oliver Queen to cross sides and this basic moral compass told Felicity a lot about him. (He probably would have given in later, pain did that to people, but he had tried and that was something. Actually, that was everything.)

She might have kept him from harm during their first meeting (when she had been in charge and under a hood), but she had hurt him on their second (when she had been awkward and wearing a pretty dress that managed to hide all her scars).

Oliver Queen turning around with the screwdriver in his hand had triggered reflexes; she had blindly reacted and taken the weapon from him. She didn't even want to know what he thought about her actions. Hopefully, he believed her to be a little dense or a little crazy or a mixture of both.

She had learned her lesson. Following the sudden impulse to see her mother, to talk to another person, to the only other person she felt like she could talk to, after five hours of being silent and alone in her cellar, had been a mistake. She wouldn't make it again. Instead, she'd have to accept the fact that it was better to keep her distance and stick to what she knew.

And she knew that the gang robbing medical supply trucks hadn't learned their lesson. And thanks to the guy she had bugged and let escape, she knew where the gang's headquarter was. Time to show those guys what happened when they didn't listen to a fair warning.


John Diggle was camping in the south corner of a rundown building, probably making their enemies curse him and his mother. (Oliver didn't know why but mother-cursing was mandatory in those situations and strangely acceptable, if you ended the battle with a complimentary "good game".)

"Digg, you're on fire tonight, the epitome of IMBA," Oliver complimented his best friend. Eyes fixed on the TV, his thumbs on the sticks of his controller, he steered his soldier up a staircase—only to run into an enemy. Red blots appeared on the edges of his screen. Before Oliver could react, he was down. "Son of a bitch!" Oliver cursed (his killer's mother) and waited to be resurrected.

"Man," Diggle's voice came out of Oliver's headset, "pull it together. Your clan needs you."

"Don't worry, I'm coming to killstreak the hell out of those suckers."

Oliver Queen would be damned if he ended up being the weak link in this clan war. It was their ritual Wednesday evening game of Call of Duty. John Diggle took a two-hour-timeout from being a soldier to… fight a virtual war. Oliver sensed the ambiguity of that, but Digg said playing CoD and being out in the field where two very different things and only one of them was relaxing. Last week Diggle hadn't made it—the real war always came before the fake one—but he had managed to log in (from the always telling location of 'classified') tonight to go up against their rival clan, called 'Paint the town RAD' (those lame jackasses from Coast City).

Oliver directed his virtual soldier past run-down buildings. His fingers moved quickly. He pressed the fire button. "Got'cha!"

"Got the flag," Myron, Oliver's old college roommate, informed his clan mates.

"Nice," Digg complimented while Oliver's virtual alter ego jumped unnaturally high from the first floor down to a plaza, eliminating an enemy as he did so.

"Bastard!" Myron shouted suddenly. Obviously, he had lost the flag again. Myron really was a nice dude—and really good with Arithmetic circuits—but he sucked at not dying at least once every minute.

"I'll avenge you," Oliver declared with pathos—and was put down himself.

"Awesome, dude," Myron said, sarcastically. "Really glad you fought for my honor—all those two seconds."

A huff was Oliver's only reaction. Staring at the numbers counting down on his screen, Oliver flexed his hand. It had hurt since his encounter with Felicity Smoak last week. Not all the time, but after an eight hour work day filled with typing plus two hours of holding his controller, he felt the spot on his wrist where she had hit him.

Back in the CEO office he had been too shocked to grasp what was happening. It had started to sink in once he was back in the IT department but only really hit home the next morning. Standing in front of the mirror after his shower, he had seen the round, purple bruise on his sternum.

No wonder all the air had been knocked out of him.

The countdown on the screen was up and Oliver back in the game. He pressed his thumb against the stick on his controller, his solider started running. Oliver saw the familiar scenery and knew not to go right, because somebody was always camping there, waiting for a target to appear. He turned his soldier left.

His eyes were on the TV, but his mind was on the blonde who only reached his shoulder and who had… overpowered him.

Oliver was the first to admit that he wasn't exactly athletic… or fit in any kind of way. The big pizza box resting on the coffee table (self-made out of Legos) was proof enough. Oliver had nearly emptied it—only saving two slices for breakfast tomorrow. (Breakfast pizza—the best thing ever, in Oliver's opinion.) But, still, he couldn't blame his quick defeat on his lack of fitness. Or on the fact that she had startled him in every way imaginable.

Her punch and her slap had been perfectly effective, efficient. She had called it a 'reflex.' It actually might have been, but it wasn't a natural one. A natural reflex was blinking against sunlight or raising your hands to protect yourself from an object (such as a ball) flying toward you (sadly, Oliver spoke from experience).

What Felicity Smoak had done were trained reflexes. That was something else entirely.

His own trained reflexes failed Oliver in that second: his virtual soldier was put down yet again.

"Queen!" Diggle chided his best friend.

It made Oliver feign annoyance and determination. "That dude's going down." He stopped lounging on his worn-out couch and sat up a little straighter, tightening his grip on his controller, waiting for his resurrection. He couldn't mess up when they were fighting their arch-enemies. He reentered the game shooting, killing an opponent. A celebratory "ha!" escaped him and he moved his solider out of the building he had appeared in.

Myron cursed his own death in Oliver's ear while John Diggle whooped his next kill. Oliver, too, eliminated another opponent. Good! This was much better.

Oliver knew he should be freaked out by what happened with Felicity Smoak—and part of him was. But mostly it made him curious. What had happened to her on that island in the North China Sea that it had ended with her having reflexes like that?

Looking at her picture on her mother's desk, he had always found her intriguing. Turns out she was even more so in real life. And she was even more gorgeous in real life, too. In her blue dress she had looked so—

"Man!" Diggle's annoyed yell cut through Oliver's thoughts. "Get your head in the game!"

Oliver couldn't even act like he cared. "Sorry, guys. I'm not in the mood tonight."

"What?" Diggle sounded aggravated. "We're going against the RADs and you're not in the mood?!" A hint of sarcasm had vibrated in his voice, but it was replaced by suspicion when he added, "Did anything happen?"

"Just work stuff," Oliver dismissed.

"Guys," Myron chimed in, "this is a clan war—not a tea break!"

"Right," Diggle answered. "We'll skype tomorrow, Oliver. Now pull yourself together. We have to put the RADs down."

That was easier said than done.


Stubbornness was a character-trait of all Smoaks.

Felicity was aware and couldn't exactly bring herself to think of it as a flaw, because she knew that it was part of what had kept her alive during her five years away. (Another part was dumb luck.)

But she definitely thought of it as a bad thing when it came to her mother. Because the older Smoak woman outranked her daughter when it came to being strong-willed (which had a nicer ring to it than 'pig-headed', even though the latter was a bit more accurate).

Donna Smoak-Lance was the General of Stubbornness while Felicity was a mere Captain. Okay… maybe a Major.

For one week, Donna had pressed Felicity to give a mother-daughter lunch another, a second try. She had asked her daughter to come by her office and "brighten up my workday with your pretty face." That was direct quote.

For one week, Felicity hadn't let herself be pestered into doing that.

This morning Donna Smoak-Lance had told Felicity that she expected her daughter to be at her office at one o'clock with take-away food and a positive attitude or Donna would send Rob Scott—Smoak International's head of security—to pick her up from wherever she was ("and he will find you!") to pull her to Smoak Tower, kicking and screaming. Donna had also added that she hadn't forgotten about Felicity's promise to put herself out there more—a promise Felicity had very much not kept until now.

Having lunch with her mother felt like the better of the two options.

With ten minutes to spare, Felicity Smoak entered Smoak Towers, carrying a bag filled with delicious-smelling take-away food. The elevator ride to the thirty-ninth floor took forever. Felicity willed the damn thing to move faster, to bring her to the top floor, away from the people trying to subtly look at her and failing (did that count as putting herself out there?) and to one of the few people she could actually talk to without feeling weird. (The other was, surprisingly, Quentin Lance. It didn't make any sense to Felicity, but she liked it too much to analyze.) While standing in the elevator, she also prayed to God she wouldn't run into Oliver Queen, because he most definitely added a lot of weirdness.

A sigh of relief threatened to leave her lips when the elevator stopped at her destination. Next time she would have the security guard call the executive elevator for her—what had she been thinking, declining? Acting like a normal person was futile, she should have accepted that by now.

The plastic bag filled with Styrofoam boxes swinging by her side, she headed down the hall toward Gerry Conway's desk. It was empty. Getting closer, her red high heels clicking on the marble, she saw Gerry through the glass wall, standing in the CEO office, tablet in hand, watching Donna Smoak-Lance putting a coat on. Frowning, Felicity pushed the glass door open, entering. "Mom?"

"Felicity, you came." A smile lit up Donna's face, but vanished nearly instantly. "Damn it! That's really bad timing. Sweetie, I really want to have lunch with you, but I can't. I have to put out a fire." She reached for her Birkin. "And I'm not even being metaphorical. There's an actual fire. In Bludhaven. Somebody torched our offices."

"Was anybody hurt?" Felicity walked toward her mother.

"Thankfully, no."

A fire was a good reason to cancel lunch, Felicity had to admit that, but… she frowned. "And now you want to go to Bludhaven and put out a fire? In a not metaphorical way? Don't you think the firefighters have it handled?"

"Okay, maybe I wasn't that literal," Donna admitted.

Gerry glanced up from his tablet. "I just got word from the scene: the fire is out. We really need to get there."

Donna sighed. "As CEO I have to make an appearance ASAP." She stepped to her daughter and put her hands on her shoulders. "I'm very sorry, sweetie. We'll manage to have lunch together. I promise. I'm glad you actually came today."

"I didn't have much of a choice, did I?"

"You always have a choice, Felicity. Never forget that."

Felicity nodded dimly, tugging a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. "Guess, that leaves more pasta for me."

"You shouldn't eat alone," Donna decided and glanced past her toward the glass wall, giving an inviting wave of her hand.

Felicity had noticed somebody moving behind her, had been aware that there was another person outside of her direct line of vision, but only as she turned around did she realize that her silent prayers hadn't been answered.

"Mrs. Smoak-Lance," Oliver Queen said, standing in the opened door, holding on to the metal handle, "there's a problem with your computer?" To Felicity it sounded like there was an unspoken 'again' attached to the question.

"Yes," Donna confirmed. "Somehow everything's Chinese."

Oliver blinked, and Gerry said, "She's being literal. She switched the language settings on her PC. I'd fix it myself, but we really have to get to Bludhaven now." The last part was clearly directed at his boss.

"Yes," Donna said and fixed her eyes on Oliver. "Setting the thing right can wait 'til after lunch. My daughter brought Italian for two."

"Mom," Felicity felt her face heat immediately, "he's got better things to do than eat with me."

The CEO stared at her daughter. "Really? I can't think of anything better. Have lunch, practice your small talk, have some human interaction with somebody around your own age. It's what the doctor…. No, it's what your mother prescribes." She turned back to the man in the short-sleeved white shirt and the black tie, still holding on to the metal handle of the door as if it helped steady him. "You like Italian, right?" She added a dismissed gesture to her next sentence. "What am I even asking? Everybody likes Italian. So, Mr. Queen, next on your agenda: work lunch with Felicity Smoak, then teaching my computer English. Don't let my daughter talk you out of it." She kissed her daughter's cheek and whispered, "Please, try to have a normal conversation with somebody who's not your family. You promised me and this is as casual as it comes." Her eyes drilled into Felicity. "You promised me, so do this." She added a small smile and stopped whispering. "Bye, sweetie."

Felicity watched Donna rush out of the office, followed by her EA, and couldn't help but wonder if her mother had set this up. She wouldn't put it past her, but at the same time she couldn't imagine her mother burning down a company building—or any kind of building, really—to make her daughter talk to somebody who wasn't in some fashion related to her.

But why did it have to be Oliver Queen?

She turned to the man who had taken only two steps into the huge office and who was still staring where his boss had disappeared, his hand so tightly closed around the handle that his knuckles protruded as white knobs. He clearly dreaded doing this and after their first and last encounter in this exact room, she really couldn't blame him. She wanted to keep her promise to her mother, but not like this.

Felicity cleared her throat, getting his attention. "I'll just leave the food with you," she told him and walked toward the sitting area to her right. "I hope you like Linguine di Mare."

She felt his eyes on her as she walked. He sounded confused, asking, "What?"

She put the bag on the coffee and headed toward where he stood by the door.

Her attempt to walk around him was stopped by him finally letting go of the handle and blocking her way. "I'm sorry, but my boss ordered me to have lunch with you—and not to let you talk me out of it."

"That's ridiculous," Felicity decided. "My mother can't put me on your to-do list." It took a second for the echo of her statement to register within her. She flinched.

"I don't think having Italian and a nice conversation is unreasonable labor," he told her before she could say anything. He walked over to lift up the food-filled bag and gestured to the adjoining conference room. "Shall we?"

His attempt to appear calm was very obvious—and he obviously wasn't. The way his thumb brushed over his index and middle finger was a clear sign of aggravation. He was visibly nervous. She made him nervous, she realized and again her thoughts snapped back to her taking the screwdriver from him. Her own experience told her she had most likely left a bruise on his chest. He still carried visible evidence with him, on him, that told him to stay away from her. The nervousness was a sign of his survival instinct. But he wasn't listening to it, didn't take the out she was offering him. Again, Felicity couldn't help but be impressed.

That and the promise she had made to her mother (and failed to keep until now) made her ignore her own bad feeling and the voice inside her that told her she had very good reasons to keep to herself.

With a nod she walked toward the conference room. "Do you like lobster?"

"I do," he confirmed and followed her.

An unfamiliar sense of uneasiness claimed Felicity—and she hated that such an ordinary thing was such an obstacle to her. She felt her heart beat faster, sinking down in the swirly, black-leathered chair at the head of the table. Oliver placed the bag on the desktop and offered her one of the two plastic containers. She forced herself to smile a silent thank you, taking the food, the plastic cutlery, and a bottle of water from him. He placed his food to her right and sat down. "Bon apatite", he offered and Felicity hurried to nod, "You, too."

Her discomfort spiked. In an effort to hide it, she reached for her fork while wondering why a phrase like 'bon apatite' didn't come naturally to her anymore. It was a basic form of politeness that her mother had instilled in her—and despite all her pre-island antics involving indecent drunken fun, even back then Felicity Smoak had had politeness and table manners down. Back then, Felicity had been the queen of small talk. Talking for the sake of talking to strangers definitely didn't come easy to her anymore, though.

Silence surrounded them and it was highly uncomfortable. Felicity didn't know what to say to this stranger she had accidentally attacked, giving him a firsthand glimpse at what she had become in the previous years. Somehow sitting in this posh, impersonal room, that was all she could think about. Oliver Queen was a nice guy; he worked hard and was obviously very good at what he did. He was kind of cute, actually, and surrounded by a distinct good-guy aura. And suddenly this good guy was forced into a room with… her. With a woman who knew twenty-five different ways to snap a man's neck.

That thought brought her to her feet. Jumping up was an involuntary reflex. The fancy, comfortable chair rolled away from her. "I'm sorry," the words fell out of her mouth. "This is a mistake. I shouldn't be here. With you. I shouldn't pretend I can do this."

He frowned up at her. "Do what? Have lunch?" Slowly, she saw understanding take over. He nodded slowly, "Yeah, sure. I'm sure I don't exactly fit in with your crowd."

"What?" Now she was the one frowning.

"I know we don't run in the same circles. But you should know that while you were away nerds became somewhat of a thing."

She stared down at the man who obviously didn't understand anything. "We don't run in the same circles because I don't have a circle. I don't even have… a line."

"A line?" he repeated.

"Yeah—as in a geometrical form smaller than a circle."

"A line isn't a geometrical form."

Felicity stared at him. "Seriously? That's what you took from that sentence?"

"I believe in spreading knowledge."

"That's pointless. I had a D in tenth grade Algebra. And I wasn't talking about not wanting to have lunch with you. I just can't have lunch with you, because I suck at interacting with people. And you of all people should know that." The words tumbled past her lips and she bit them in the next moment. There! The one topic she shouldn't have addressed and she just brings it up. She squeezed her eyes closed.

Opening them again, she found Oliver's blue eyes on her. "Your mother was serious about you needing practice with your small talk, huh?" The barest shrug followed. "To be honest: I never got the hang of it myself, so… I'd say we can count the last minute as… decent interacting."

"Decent?"

He lifted his right shoulder in something that could be considered a shrug. "Could've been worse."

A moment of silence followed and Felicity couldn't help but wonder if her not attacking him (yet) should really be counted as a win—and if he was referring to that. A ghost of a smile tugged on the corners of his lips. Hesitance was written all over his face and radiated from his body language, but she understood his unspoken invitation to sit back down and try again to have a conversation that resembled ones normal people had.

She gave in to the longing deep within her. She listened to the urge that had told her constantly for two months that she wanted normalcy, that she needed human contact that wasn't her mother or her mother's husband. She just wanted to talk to somebody. Felicity pulled the chair back to the table and sat down. "Yes," she continued, "it could have been." She reached for her fork and looked him in the eyes. "I thought of an opening for small talk."

"Oh? Do tell."

"How's your pasta, Mr. Queen?"

"Please," he answered, "call me Oliver." He hesitated before adding, "I probably shouldn't have said that. You're my boss's daughter. That's probably violating social rules or something."

Felicity couldn't keep a smirk from showing on her face. "Wow, we really suck at this. Two socially acceptable sentences seem to be our limit." The smirk turned into a smile. "And, Oliver, my name's Felicity."

"Felicity," he repeated and the smile stayed on her face, because the way he said her name sounded so… nice. He cleared his throat. "My pasta is very good, thank you for asking. How's yours?" he asked, gesturing toward her spaghetti, knocking her water-bottle over in the process. It fell off the table, but Felicity caught it before it could crash onto the ground. Oliver's eyes settled on her. "You really have good reflexes."

Placing the bottle back on the table, she nodded. "Yes." That was all she wanted to say about her reflexes and why they were as good as they were. Their eyes met for the briefest moment and he answered with the hint of a nod.

He brought his fork back to his food. "So, Felicity, with reflexes like that: have you ever considered playing CoD?"

"What?"

"CoD, Call of Duty…." She should practically see uneasiness claim him, read it from the way he shifted in his seat. "A video game. I'm sorry, I should have known that's not your thing." He caught himself. "But since we're practicing small talk: what do you like to do? For fun?"

Fork in hand, she stared at him, contemplating that question. Nothing came to her, nothing but, "Shop?" As soon as the word left her lips, she grimaced. It was a pre-island answer and somehow it didn't feel right anymore, she wasn't that kind of girl, the girl whose hobby it was to spend money on clothes and other pointless stuff. She wasn't and she didn't want to be. "At least, that's what I'm supposed to say," she added, truthfully. "I don't…. I haven't had a lot of time for fun lately."

Again, he nodded slowly. Bringing his fork filled with spaghetti up, he said, "Maybe you should go and find yourself a new hobby. Do something that's fun to you now that you're back."

It was a suggestion spoken without any hesitation. Her last statement, the hint at her island-time had slipped her lips before she could stop herself. Normally, people reacted with pity or uneasiness and that managed to turn every conversation uncomfortable. But Oliver simply accepted the information. If anything he looked curious. He didn't make her feel awkward about her time away, maybe because he was a little uneasy himself.

A small smile showed on her face. "Yes, maybe I should do that." Something other than shooting arrows at people. "Do you have any suggestions? Apart from video gaming?"

Chewing slowly, he thought. "It's not exactly a hobby," he finally answered, "but going to the movies is always fun. There's a new Avengers in theatres."

"Avengers?" She frowned.

"Okay, maybe you should make brushing up on pop-culture your hobby for now." He forked through his spaghetti. "I could make you a list of must-sees." His blue eyes snapped from his pasta to her. "Even though you should probably ask somebody cooler. My list would be pretty nerdy."

"That's fine with me," she said. "I hear nerds became somewhat of a thing in the last five years."

He chuckled and a warm tingle rushed through Felicity. Something, a knot she hadn't even realized was there, loosened in her chest, untied by that unfamiliar sound. She had made somebody laugh—in a positive way. He wasn't laughing at her, but… for her. She turned back to her food, and finally noticed what she was doing. She was smiling—and it wasn't the first time in the last five minutes. All thanks to the man next to her, busy twirling spaghetti with his fork, freckling tomato sauce over his white shirt. She sent him another smile. Never had normal felt this good.