My dear, beautiful readers,
SORRY FOR THE LONG AUTHORS NOTE, THE STORY WILL BE STRAIGHT AFTER SO DON'T GO ANYWHERE!
PLEASE READ IF YOU ARE A REVIEWER!
Thank you for all of your reviews, I will respond to many here,
WINTERRAIN36 -You are supposed to be confused about Laurel, but all will become clear in this chapter hopefully, let me know if that's not the case. Awesome costume suggestions, they will be taken into account and she was only in crap clothing 'cause she hadn't yet been assigned a costume – definitely wasn't my plan to keep her that way. After hearing your thoughts about the hood, I've gone off my idea of putting her in one, I'm rethinking that choice as I type to you. I didn't want her to kill Daniel, in fact I don't want her to kill, full stop. But her feelings towards that night will become apparent soon… Oh, and Laurel will literally be the LAST person I have know about her secret identity! Thank you so so so much for all your reviews and suggestions – I really appreciate them!
KINDLEFLAME5 – There 'ent no way in hell she's gunna be some weak-ass cry baby, she'll kick ass again (just not in this chapter, maybe the next...?) but her feelings will be explored too so I hope you don't mind.
03-K64 – thank you so much, it means the world to know you're enjoying it!
PALLY THE SECOND – I love bad-ass Felicity too so I'm really glad you agree!
NOW FOR THE STORY !
They don't speak as they make their way to the Foundry on separate motorbikes, nor do they talk when they get down there, changing from their disguises, they also don't communicate as Oliver takes a seat on the medical table and Felicity at her desk. In fact, they've been down there a good hour thinking alone before someone finally breaks the silence.
It's Felicity, "I could have handled that, you know?" When she speaks, it comes out like she's ungrateful that he saved her, when in fact it's the opposite, but she really had wanted to prove herself that night, both to him and herself.
"I know you could have," he speaks back as quietly as her, "but I wanted you to know that you didn't have to."
That's all that is spoken for several minutes, a calm silence falling over the Foundry on what is now almost lunch time on a not-so-quiet Sunday.
In that time, Felicity relives what happened; the way Daniel's dead weight fell on her silky skin, the sight of the arrow in his forehead, and the feeling of both sickness and relief to know that he is no longer after her.
"I loved him," she speaks quietly, not looking to Oliver as the words left her mouth, "I loved him once."
"I know," he replied solemnly, letting emotions run high in their secret lair, where everything spoken was kept quiet.
"I think I only really stopped when I got to Starling city," she continued absentmindedly, "I hated him for what he did, and I've never stopped. But even when I knew he was abusing me, even after he raped me, a part of me still loved him, still belonged to him…" Felicity let the thought trail off, not having the right words to say any more.
Oliver sighed from his place behind her, three or four meters between them, "and I killed him."
"You saved me," she corrected calmly, not giving the oomph she usually did in times like this, "he needed to die, he never would've gave up, I was just saying that it hurt… to see him like that. I kept remembering him as this charming, intellectual heartbreaker, but that wasn't the real him, was it?"
Several emotions flooded Oliver, including a small amount of jealousy which he quickly put to the side. He felt guilt, not for killing Daniel, but for having Felicity not only there to see, but to catch the body, to be covered in his blood. Betrayal that Laurel had been working with Daniel, though he had a feeling there was more to that than what met the eye. He was also confused that he had heard Tommy on the phone, but again put that to the side, they could deal with that later, when she wasn't so vulnerable, so weak, so unlike everything he knew her to be, "that used to be the real him, Felicity. But people change, you and I know that better than anyone."
For the first time since they entered the Foundry, Felicity swung around on her chair, silvery blue eyes catching his more vivid shade, "I'm sorry for running off, I shouldn't have, I knew I wouldn't be able to cope."
Oliver shook his head likely, "don't be, I'm sorry for not believing you about Laurel."
"You have a past," Felicity spoke, getting up slowly from her chair and ambling towards Oliver, "I get it, she'll always be part of your life, just like all these years, Daniel was part of mine, even without me realising it." She sat down next to him on the medical table, only centimetres apart, a motion that was more for comfort than romance.
Oliver tilted his head to watch her lock her gaze on her feet, "I shouldn't have killed him, I should have let you be the one to do that, get some closure."
"I couldn't have, I don't want to kill anybody Oliver," the blonde admitted, moving her eyes to watch him watch her, blue meeting silver.
"I won't ever put you in the position for you to have to kill, I promise you that," when he spoke, a fire ignited in her eyes as she realised that this man before her, this green leather clad vigilante, would do anything for her, including kill when he hadn't in so long.
"I promised you the same thing… I didn't want you to have to kill again Oliver. But I got myself into trouble again, and you had no choice but to kill him."
Oliver moved the hand closest to Felicity from the edge of the metal table to cup her face, basking in the way she tilted her head into his touch, "Felicity, I would do anything for you, including kill."
A few silent moments passed between them, both enjoying the comfortable silence as Oliver kept hold of his beautiful girlfriend's cheek. Felicity was the one to break the hush, snapping her face away from his touch as she did, "I liked it, you know."
"Liked what?" Oliver asked her, a small smile playing on his face as he noticed the excited gleam in her eyes.
"Saving Laurel," she explained further, "when I got there, he had hit her, that's when I jumped in. I only really went to interrogate her about her involvement in all this, but then he was there, and it felt so good."
Oliver's smile widened at her confession, blue eyes gleaming with the same emotion as the blonde next to him, "it was supposed to be a surprise…" he spoke, trailing off as he finished with a groan.
"What was?" She pressed, inching closer to the vigilante with curiosity, "what was supposed to be a surprise?"
Oliver grumbles what Felicity thinks is something on the lines of giving up and he walks over to the cool glass case where he keeps his costume, he takes an envelope out from the bottom and strolls back over to Felicity, sitting back where he was and handing the brown card to her.
She opens it hesitantly, pulling a single sheet of paper from inside and looking down at the beauty before her, "Sara did the design," Oliver tells her, watching her look down at the page, "it should be here tomorrow."
Felicity wasn't listening, she was busy staring at the piece of paper in her hands. On it was a hand drawn woman, she was faceless and lacking in detail but that didn't matter, what really caught her eye was what the woman was wearing.
On her face, was a pink mask, one which Felicity automatically recognised as her own, and in her hands, was pink nunchaku. The silhouette had blonde flowing hair, no hood to cover the tresses but it was longer than her own, pink flowing from under the blonde from what the note next to it said were clip-in hair extensions, a small disguise from the blonde that was Felicity Smoak.
The woman in the drawing wore black pants, the note said that they were cotton, (something Felicity was very glad about, not caring to know what circulation-stopping leather would be like.) She also wore a top like the Black Canary, strapless and very good at drawing attention to a certain asset that only women vigilantes have possession of, but unlike the Canary's, this one was bright pink, like the mask and nunchaku.
Pink boots were drawn on her feet, lace up ones that came right up to her kneecaps and looked surprisingly comfortable. Then, to finish the look off, a jacket was on the woman, black leather with pink binary wrote into the fabric, from this small image Felicity couldn't make out what it wrote, but she didn't care, she just thought the whole thing was perfect for her.
"Everything pink on there is glow in the dark, Sara thought it may help to distract attention from killing you to watching you, although it won't be very helpful if you're trying to hide, and she's ordered some glow in the dark pink lipstick too," Oliver spoke, pointing at the pink top of the woman as he spoke. "Sara said the writing was the binary translation of some sort of rule thing you guys were talking about, she said you would know."
"The values of a vigilante, I remember," Felicity spoke quietly, eyes not able to tear themselves from the image before her, "this is really mine?"
Oliver could only nod, watching the beautiful woman before him stare intently at the drawing.
When she finally looked up to meet his eyes, she spoke again, "thank you, it's beautiful."
"Like you," Oliver replied almost immediately, both vigilantes cringing at how cheesy the line had been. Moments passed with them only looking at each other, and when Oliver couldn't keep the hundreds of thoughts in his head contained, he was the one to break the silence, "Can we talk about it?" He asked.
"About what?"
Oliver took a deep, shaky breath before continuing, "about what – who – I heard on the other end of that phone call."
"Oliver," Felicity tread the conversation carefully, putting the costume design on the space behind her, "Tommy's dead."
"I know you think I'm crazy…"
The blonde cut him off immediately, correcting his mistake, "I don't think you're crazy, I think you're confused and emotional."
"Even so," Oliver took the correction in his stride, continuing on with the previous topic, "I know what I heard."
"I can't be him, Oliver," Felicity responded sincerely, placing a hand on his shoulder in comfort. She knew what Tommy had meant to Oliver, they had been more than just best friends, before the island they were brothers, they were a family. Oliver had relied on his for far more than making sure he got home safe after drinking too much, or being his wing man when the girl he was chatting up had a friend.
"You traced the call didn't you?" He asked, "where did it go to?"
"Some private island," she spoke calmly, "a remote place off the coast of Italy."
Oliver thought it through for a moment, remembering back to when he was twelve. He and Tommy had walked into their father's having a conversation about islands, Malcom Merlyn had just brought one… off the coast of Italy.
"Was it called Strega Isola?" He asked the blonde next to him, the widening of her eyes giving him his answer, "Malcom Merlyn owns that island."
"What?" Felicity asked, lying in far too many unanswered questions, "So what we're saying here is Tommy's alive after a building crashed down on top of him, he was working with my abusive ex-boyfriend who was trying to kill me and Laurel was going behind our backs to help them, which we're not sure she did willingly or if she was forced to do so. Is that all?"
"We also know that Malcom Merlyn's alive, if Tommy was on his island then I wouldn't be surprised if he's in on this," Oliver spoke bluntly as Felicity rose from her place on the medical table to pace in front of the Arrow.
"Oh, my, God," she spoke between breaths, exasperated with the amount of confusion she was feeling, "Why don't we bring your mother back from the dead and arrange a nice 'should be but isn't' dead party for you all!"
Oliver didn't take her joke as that, despite the tone she spoke being as completely serious as his reply, "if Tommy's alive as I wouldn't be completely shocked if it turns out my mother is too."
"No way," Felicity spoke, stopping her pacing to turn to Oliver and point a finger at him, "I cried at her funeral, I refuse to acknowledge that she could be alive."
"You cried at her funeral?" Oliver asked, jumping up from the table to lean against it.
Felicity dropped the finger pointed at him and began her uneasy response, "yeah I did, I mean the tears weren't for her they were for you, but tears still technically left my eyes during the aftermath of her death."
They took a moment to look between one another, a silent question being asked as they shared gaze, 'what do we do now?'
Oliver was the one to reply aloud, conveying the answer they were both contemplating, "I think we should go have a conversation with Laurel, see just how much she knows."
"Agreed," Felicity spoke, "and I want to know if she stabbed us in the back on her own accord, or whether Daniel was pulling her strings like a puppet."
Laurel's apartment is quiet when she lets Oliver and Felicity in through the front door, fake smiles in place all round. They follow her into the kitchen, taking a seat on the opposite side of the breakfast bar to her, the smell of cleaning supplies fills the air, from the obvious scrubbing the brunette had been doing previous to their arrival.
Silence radiates through the apartment, putting everyone on edge for the conversation that's about to arise. And in the end, it is Oliver's merciless voice that breaks the hush, "I take it the police removed the body."
Laurel nodded to him in response, eyes unmoving from the counter between them as she twiddles her thumbs just for a distraction.
"What did you tell them?" He asks in return, making her look up at him through overly mascaraed eyelashes.
A ghost of a smile makes its way onto her lips and she speaks quietly, like the victim to Oliver's protectiveness could hear her every word, "that he broke in, wanted to know what was valuable and slapped me when I wouldn't tell him. Then I said that the Green Arrow came in and I hid in here and rang them, I told them I didn't see anything else until they came knocking on my door and I left here to answer. I didn't tell them about the woman, I gather she wanted her identity to be kept a secret so it was safer not to. Do you know who she is? She was pretty damn kick-ass."
Felicity felt some pride in hearing Laurel of all people speak such out of place words about her, and she decided that to keep up appearances, she'd have to play along, "what woman?"
Oliver was the one to answer her, keeping up the secret as she did, "blonde hair, pink mask, she was the one I was telling you about, remember? Who was helping me with bringing down Daniel Phillips."
"And it was Daniel Phillips that you killed?" Felicity played dumb, asking Oliver the question.
"Not before this other girl could get in a few good hits, it was pretty epic," Laurel answered instead, leaving a proud smile to swipe over Oliver's face.
Felicity nodded in approval, "she sounds bad-ass. She got a name?"
"Pink Binary, apparently she's a genius too." Oliver answered, directing it more to Laurel than the blonde next to him.
"Awesome name," Felicity sounded out, then turning her attention to the brunette sat over the counter to her. "But Laurel, we didn't come here to exchange information on this new vigilante, we wanted to know why Daniel Phillips was in your apartment."
"I told you," Laurel answered, shifting her weight nervously on her chair, "he knew me from my being his lawyer, he was looking for something to steal and he came here for anything valuable he could get his hands on."
Felicity and Oliver shared a look, but Felicity was the one to act upon it, "we know you've been working with him, that you switched the arrows in the lair and hacked into our system to get personal information for him. We just want to know why."
Laurel began to chew nervously on her bottom lip, hands still doing anything they could to remain busy, but eventually she realised that she had to talk, to tell the truth. "He told me he was an old friend of Felicity's, that he needed to send something to her desk while she wasn't there, so I found out when you'd both be in a meeting for him, I thought it was going to be a nice surprise, I didn't think he was going to shoot an arrow in there… I guess I should've realised when he made me switch the arrows, but again I thought it wasn't anything bad, I thought he really was an old friend and I wanted to help him to show you both that I'm happy that you're happy.
"After I found out what he did, I called him out on it and he hit me, told me I had to continue to do what he said or he'd kill me, so I did. He wanted your personal information, so I told him where I could get it from, he wanted to know where you lived and I told him, I told him everything I already knew about Felicity, everything he didn't already know. He's been doing surveillance on you for months now, finding out where you live, where you eat, and what you spend your evenings doing. I was scared and I'm sorry."
By the end of her explanation, she was breaking down into tears, yet neither vigilante made a move to comfort her. But Felicity did feel something; she knew what it was like to be a victim to Daniel's rage, and so, with that in mind, she spoke to the tearful brunette, "did he do anything other than hit you?" she stepped on the subject lightly, "he didn't take it any further did he?"
"Like what?" she asked in reply through sobs, wiping her eyes with the back of her jumper.
"Like, did he rape you?" Oliver corrected, knowing that Felicity wouldn't be able to ask, too many memories flooding back in that moment.
Laurel shook her head and despite Felicity not being her biggest fan, she couldn't help but feel relieved. Then Felicity thought it through, Laurel had been his lawyer in the case of getting his sentence for abuse and rape shorter, these tasks that he had inflicted on her and only her, so when she asked her next question, her voice was shallow, "did you know what he had been charged for?"
"Of course," Laurel replied, her eyes almost dry now, "abuse and rape in a relationship.
Felicity nodded, already knowing the answer to that question but needing it to lead into the following, "do you know who he was in a relationship with?"
"No," the brunette replied, "we had to refer to her a 'woman x' for the sake of the trial, why? Do I know her?"
Oliver and Felicity both came out with the reply of "No," simultaneously, then leading onto Felicity continuing, "I just wondered, that's all."
She felt Oliver's hand squeeze her thigh in comfort and felt a tremendous amount of relief at the touch. She felt even more grateful when Oliver changed the subject slightly, deferring it from her past to an element of his, "Laurel, do you know if Daniel was working with anybody?"
"Not personally," she replied, "he was always on the phone to someone but he never said who, it was the same person you picked up to yesterday, he only had one contact on his phone. I looked on it once when he left it here, they were put under the letter 'M' and I wrote the number down," she took a break to rummage through the draw to her left, pulling out a sticky note with a group of numbers on, "here," she spoke, handing the paper to Felicity. "Did you say something about Tommy to him yesterday?"
Oliver's head snapped up, forgetting that Laurel had been present for that conversation, "yes… the man on the other end sounding frighteningly alike Tommy."
"You don't…" Laurel trailed her thought off for a moment, deeming it silly, but with one look at Oliver she knew she had to ask, "you don't think it was him do you?"
"No," Oliver replied sharply, "A whole building fell on him Laurel, not to mention that it was on fire, he's dead. Nothing could bring him back."
"Not even Mirakuru?" She asked.
Oliver thought for a moment, leaving his seat, "Not even Mirakuru. Now if you'll excuse us, we have to go."
When they got back to the Foundry, it was just as quiet as when they had left. They hadn't yet called Diggle, Roy or Sara to tell them about Daniel's death, so it was just another Sunday to them, they wouldn't be here in until that evening, ready for patrolling the city like they usually did. Felicity knew that they should call them, tell them exactly what's happened and everything new they know, their Tommy theory included, but right now, she had something else on her mind.
She was tapping her fingernails along the glass of her desk, not bothering to sit at the chair there. Oliver was the opposite side of the medical table to her, fiddling with some arrows as he broke the silence, "how do you feel?" He asked her, turning his attention from the arrows to the blonde.
"Confused, overwhelmed, anxious, thrilled, upset, tired…" she trailed off, only turning to meet his gaze as she finished her list, "so many complex feelings."
"How can I help?" Oliver asked, dropping the arrow in his hand and making his way to his side of the medical table.
Felicity leisurely made her way towards her side, until only the metal table separated them, "make me feel something less complex, something simple."
"Like what?" he asked teasingly, picking up on her sultry tone of voice.
She cocked her head to the side, staring at him intently, "like lust…" she suggested, "or need?" she implied, then she finally settled on a correct feeling, one she desired to feel more than anything else, "Like hunger."
Before she could take another breath, Oliver was around her side of the table, picking up her legs and wrapping them around his waist as he sat her on the cool metal. She stops thinking of the past and can only think of the present.
His mouth suddenly takes her without hesitation, kissing her in the shadows of the lair. Everything around her feel trivial, the cool of the metal under her, the ache in her arm from early that morning, the paper of her costume design hitting the floor, all meaningless against the feel of Oliver's hands running wild along each crevice of her body, his erection pounding into her thigh, his rough lips engulfing hers with every movement.
He is hungry for her, she can feel it in the way he moves.
She is hungry for him, she can feel it pooling in the pit of her stomach.
He doesn't ask permission, wait for her to let his tongue roam into her mouth, he takes, pulling her lips apart with the momentum of his tongue piercing through her, now fighting in a battle for dominance with hers, she eventually gives in to him.
Calloused fingers slip into her golden tresses, forcing her head back to present the skin of her neck to him, a throbbing vein running down so prominent against the white of her. He takes this opportunity to sink his mouth to that spot, sucking at the vein as it pulsed faster at his touch.
His hands release themselves from her hair as he knows she'll behave, still granting him undying access to her throat, neck and shoulder as he pulls her jacket down her arms to release such skin. Hands delving down to pull at her top, only breaking his attention from her neck long enough to remove the garment.
Her legs are still wrapped around him, pulling him in close until she can feel his hunger pulse against her own as she knows she's wet for him. She jolts forward into him, a dangerous growl leaving his lips as she realises what she's done.
This isn't her Oliver.
This is the Green Arrow.
She made him resort to this animalistic urge with only her words.
She didn't care.
With a gasp, he hauls her off of the table, twisting her so she's bent against the cool metal instead, the cold on her stomach the perfect contrast to the heat she feels inside. Her toes barely touch the ground but she doesn't care, she knows that even in the predator state of mind, he'll catch her before she falls.
He gives no warning, in fact she's not even sure when he had dropped his pants and boxers before delving inside of her. But that's where he is, strong and hard and fierce. All she can think about is how much more she wants, how much faster she wants it and how many times she can before she'll faint.
He takes her, there is no two ways about it. She doesn't get a say, she doesn't meet his thrusts, he's pounding into her so hard she can't remember her own name, but she remembers his, and takes every opportunity to moan or scream or sigh his name, letting the word echo throughout wherever it is they are – she can't remember.
They fall into a state of feeling, nothing else matters except the way they're fitting together as he thrusts into her from behind, feeling how tight and wet she is and how big and hard he is.
His hands are on her hips, leaving bruises as he uses his grip to thrust her into him as he does the same, taking control of the entire situation, not leaving her with even the mind capacity to think. He is touching her core, her body writhing beneath him in utter bliss and she can do nothing but scream every syllable of his name like it's his own melody, urging him on as she falls over the edge into ecstasy. Then he is gone from behind her.
She thinks it is over.
She thinks he's done.
She doesn't know if she can take any more.
But next thing she's aware of, she's lying down on the cool metal of the table, his bright blue eyes staring intensely at her as he repeats the notion again, just as fast, just as fierce and just as sensational, watching her spill his name from her pink lips mindlessly as a whisper, unable to form anything more coherent.
And he takes her a third time, just as wild and reckless, just as brutal, just as extraordinary.
And again, this time carrying her to the cot and taking his time to pleasure her with his tongue, just as merciless and breath-taking.
And then for a fifth time, expecting nothing in return as he gives her a fifth and final orgasm – something she was yet to experience and he was yet to give. Not as ruthless, not as ferocious as the other times, yet still just as astonishing.
And then she lays in his arms, worries and complex feelings forgotten as she feels an overwhelming sense of pleasure as aftershocks relish her body as his hands do, tracing the pattern where her bruising will show. She feels nothing but concern as to whether she'll be able to stand when the others show up that evening for arrow duties.
