AN: Happy Valentine's or Galentine's Day, people!
If you don't have a romantic love to celebrate, the Norman's used to celebrate Galatin's Day. Galatin meant "lover of women" and because it sounded similar, was confused with Valentine's day and the original meaning was lost somewhere along the way.
So pick a female friend and let them and everyone else know how much they mean to you!
Thank you for your kind words, I want you all to know how inspiring your feedback is to me.
Chapter Four
"So, why are you in Starling, Mr Wayne?" Felicity asked.
They were in her bed, thoroughly sated and to her surprise, she was no longer tired. Clearly her lethargy had been mood related and Bruce's honesty was just the boost she needed.
She was lying half on him, their legs entwined and her head propped up on her hand. Her other hand was unconsciously combing through the smattering of hair on his chest.
"So the fun and games are over?" he asked.
"For now but if you're a very good boy, I'll make sure you're properly rewarded."
"You're on," he said with a salacious wink, which made her heart skip a beat. "I took down a criminal a few weeks ago, called Scarecrow. His plan isn't really important but he was manufacturing a truth drug, which he got dosed with. Unfortunately the drug wasn't perfected and could cause brain damage. Before the police got there, I questioned him, since I suspected he wasn't working alone. He seemed to have taken too much though, and he began to ramble. It's a truth drug but according to my contact in Gotham PD, high doses can also have a hallucinatory effect."
"You believe what he told you was real though?"
"I believed that there was at least some truth to his words."
So what did he say?"
"That he was working for a group that called themselves HIVE, that they have something massive planned, and he gave me the names he knew. I can't be sure, but I got the impression that only those at the very top, know everyone else involved. The underlings seem to be working on small parts of the overall plan in cells, only having contact with each other, and the person who hired them. He also said that I have no idea how powerful they are, or the lengths they'll go to. Two days later, he was killed under suspicious circumstances."
"Suspicious how?"
"Thanks to being dosed with his own drug, he was unstable, so was being kept in a padded cell at Arkham Asylum. Someone switched the cameras off, unlocked his cell and injected him with enough insulin to kill him."
"Okay, that is suspicious."
"I came to Starling following Pete Aitkinson, the only name he gave me who wasn't dead."
"The mobster?"
"Yeah, as soon as the people in his cell began to die, he was fearful enough to turn himself into the FBI and betray the Mob, in return for protection."
"So what did he tell you?"
"The only new name he gave me, was Malcolm Merlyn."
"So who did they get their orders from once Merlyn died?"
"He didn't know. The only lead he gave me, was that he collected a consignment of chemicals from a Queen Consolidated warehouse, the one I got the laptops from."
"Isn't it a little sloppy to be leaving laptops lying around?"
"Yeah. My guess would be that Merlyn or his people were using the when he was killed. If someone else did know, they might have thought the place was destroyed in the quake, or that Merlyn put the computers somewhere safe, or maybe in the wake of the investigation into Merlyn and QC, they were too scared to go check."
"There's always the possibility that Moira Queen was involved," Felicity suggested. "She was rather indisposed behind bars, fighting for her life."
"True, I- we don't know enough to draw any firm conclusions," he said.
"So that's everything?"
"That's the basics. It took me two weeks to get this far, I left out the unimportant bits."
"Okay." Her expression became serious. "You do realise that I'm going to have to tell the Arrow that I'm helping you, right?"
"Do you have to? You said he lied to you."
"Just because he lied doesn't mean I have to. I only lie with very good reason. But you have my word, I won't tell him who you are."
"Will you tell me who he is?"
"I don't know who he is, I've never seen his face." She prayed he couldn't see her lie, but then her conscience got the better of her. "All right, I totally know who he is, but no, I won't tell you."
"Then we'd better discuss how much you tell each party," Bruce suggested.
"What about if I arrange a meeting between you two?"
"I work better alone."
"You need me."
He smiled at her point. "True, but for now, I'd rather not meet face to face."
"You don't trust me?"
"I don't trust him. I wouldn't even have involved you if I didn't need your skills."
"I guess I can understand that. I am going to lie to him about knowing who you are though. He has this way of getting me to talk and if he thinks I know your identity, he won't give up until I tell him."
"Well if you ever decide you've had enough of working for the Arrow, you can come work in R and D for Wayne Enterprises."
"As tempting as that sounds, I can't say yes, not yet."
"Is the Arrow the reason you're working as a secretary?"
She frowned, wondering if he had realised that Oliver was the Arrow. "What do you mean?"
"Are you spying on Oliver Queen for him?"
She gave a mental sigh of relief. "He's the reason I work there but I can't tell you why."
"What if Queen Consolidated is involved in this new scheme."
"Oliver isn't like that."
"But if he was?"
"Then I'd tell you."
"You promise?" He held her gaze.
She didn't flinch from his gaze because she knew Oliver wasn't involved in any way. Others in QC might be involved, like Moira or Isabel, even Walter wasn't looking as upstanding as he once had seemed. And it was possible that a division of QC was involved, without Oliver's knowledge. If that was the case, she wouldn't hesitate to tell Bruce, or Oliver.
"I promise."
Bruce had left at around three AM, explaining that his butler was really more of a father figure and would be worried if he didn't return soon.
So first thing the following morning, Felicity sent a text to Oliver and Diggle.
'I've cancelled our meetings for this morning. Can you both meet me at the foundry instead? F'
Both men texted back to say yes, and both asked what this was about. She didn't reply again but got ready for work and drove to the foundry.
She was at her computers when they entered together, which wasn't surprising since Diggle was Oliver's driver, but they were earlier than she was expecting them.
Before he left last night, she had decrypted the hard drives that Bruce had given her, giving him a copy of the contents on flash drives.
"What's wrong?" Oliver said, entering with purpose.
"Nothing's wrong, exactly," she hedged. "I just have some news."
Oliver visibly relaxed.
"What kind of news?" Diggle asked her.
"I had a visit last night, from the Bat."
Oliver tensed up again and took a step closer. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"
"I'm fine and no, he didn't hurt me."
"What did he want?" Diggle got straight down to business.
"He wanted me to decrypt the hard drives he took from the warehouse."
"I hope you told him no." Oliver snapped.
"I told him yes, because we need that data."
"Felicity!"
"No!" She stood up and raised a hand in a 'stop' gesture. "The fact is, he had what we need, the information on those drives. He had three, while we only had one, I figure we got the best deal because once I'd given him a copy, he left the originals with me."
"Felicity he's dangerous, he could have hurt you."
"You're dangerous too but you didn't hurt me."
They were edging closer to each other, tempers flaring.
"Okay, everyone calm down and take a deep breath."
Felicity smiled at Diggle, who was ever the voice of reason in their group.
"How much did you tell him?" Oliver demanded, albeit in a calmer voice.
"About us? Nothing, but he told me why he's here."
"Why?" Oliver demanded.
"Because he caught a criminal-"
"No," he cut her off. "Why did he tell you?"
"It was a condition of me agreeing to help him and if you must know, he found me because he found out that I help you, so could you please stop being a jerk about this because when you get down to it, it's your fault he came to me. If you'd been honest with me from the beginning, I would have left any trace that could link me to the Arrow for Detective Lance to find."
Oliver looked pained at her words but they had the desired effect and shut him up, at least for now.
"So he found you the same way Lance did?" Diggle asked.
"No, he found me through Oliver's link to Lance. He realised that before incidents where the Arrow is sighted, Lance places a call to my phone."
Oliver began pacing.
"So is this Bat going to introduce himself to us?" Diggle wanted to know.
"No, he wants me to be the go between for now. He doesn't know about you, Roy or Sara."
"That's something, at least," Oliver spoke up.
Felicity ignored him and explained what Bruce had learned from the Scarecrow, and what had brought him to Starling City
"That's incredibly vague," Oliver said when she was finished.
"So was our understanding of the Undertaking," Felicity reminded him. "And this organisation sounds very much like that. Remember the list? How only a few people at the top seemed to have it? The people lower down the chain, like those at Unidac Industries, were kept mostly in the dark."
"So what now?" Diggle asked.
"Now I need to go through the data on all these drives and see if there's anything helpful on these machines."
"Can you do it at the office?" Oliver asked.
"It'll be easier here. I was thinking I'd call in sick and call Roy down here to help me."
"That's a good idea. I'll call Isabel and tell her we won't be in today."
"Oliver, you can't, she knows I'm seeing Bruce so if we both take a day off at the same time, while he's in town, she'll think we're planning something with Wayne Enterprises. In case you hadn't noticed, she isn't exactly a trusting person."
"She's right," Diggle agreed. "You and I need to keep up appearances. Maybe you should fill Sara in on this too?" Diggle suggested to Felicity.
She still felt a stab of pain whenever someone mentioned Sara, but luckily it was a pale reflection of the pain she had felt when she had walked in on then. And she was a kickass hero, they could use her.
"Okay, I'll call her too."
Diggle looked at Oliver in the rear view mirror. He had learned early on in their friendship that if you wanted Oliver to tell you something personal, it was best done when he doesn't have to look you in the eye, hence the car was a perfect opportunity.
"So, do you want to tell me what's going on with you and Felicity?"
"There's nothing going on."
"Right." Dig's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "That's why you followed her on her date, that's why the two of you can hardly say a civil word to one another, and why resembles a kicked puppy every time she looks at you."
Oliver sighed and Diggle waited patiently. Each time Diggle looked in the mirror, Oliver was staring out of the window, his gaze fixed in the middle distance.
"I did something that I lied about, and Felicity found out."
"Are you talking about Sara?"
Oliver's shocked gaze snapped to Diggle's. "Does everyone know?"
"I thought it was just me; I found a pair of women's underpants thrown behind the weights, but I didn't tell anyone. I couldn't…"
He was going to say, 'I couldn't be the one to break her heart,' but that was unfair.
"She saw us, apparently." Oliver explained.
"Well that explains why she's been acting odd. It doesn't explain why you've been weird."
"This guy she's seeing, I don't trust him. She shouldn't…"
"Shouldn't what? Date? See other people? Have sex?"
Oliver glared for a moment, then turned to look out of the window.
"Look, Oliver, I know you don't want to start things up with Felicity and that's your choice, but you can't then turn around and expect to have any say in her personal life. Mistake or not, it's Felicity's choice."
"I just…"
"You just want to have your cake and eat it, that's what you want."
"Not helping, Diggle!"
"I'm not sure anyone could help you two," he muttered. "Look, I've got Lyla, Roy has Thea, you and Sara have each other; Felicity deserves a personal life too."
"I don't have Sara, we both agreed that it was a mistake."
"Then why'd you lie to Felicity about it?"
"Because… I knew… I knew it would hurt her."
"And you didn't want to be the one to hurt her?"
"I just…" Oliver have a long sigh and when he spoke again, he sounded defeated. "I don't want to lose her, Dig. I've lost so much, now this thing with my mother and Thea… I can't lose Felicity too, it's too much."
"I'm sorry, Oliver," he said kindly, "but that's not your choice to make. Even if you did start something with her, you can't stop her from leaving. People doing that is why the courts invented restraining orders." His attempt to lighten the mood went down like a lead balloon.
"What do I do?" Oliver asked, and when Diggle looked in the mirror again, he could see the pain in Oliver's eyes.
"I don't think there's any easy answers when it comes to relationships, and lord knows I don't have the best track record, but I think you just have to be the best version of you that yourself can, and hope that's enough."
"I don't want to hurt her."
"Then don't."
Oliver's expression hardened.
"Look, I know you like to torture yourself and you think that you aren't worthy of love, especially her love but she's not a child, Oliver. She's already seen the horrors of this world and she's seen you on your worst days, but she's still here. That says something, doesn't it?"
"She's still here, but for how long?"
Diggle didn't know, but he had a bad feeling that Oliver was right and one day soon, they were going to lose her, or perhaps more accurately, Oliver would drive her away.
They pulled into the parking garage under QC which signalled the end of their conversation for now, Diggle just hoped that when the dust settled from all this, his team wasn't minus one blonds IT expert.
Felicity was in her element and watching her decrypt her printouts was a sight to behold. She was focused and determined, with a mind like a steel trap. Once she had hacked the hard drives, she discovered that the data was also written in some kind of code, which had taken her two hours to decipher by hand. Sara and Roy also tried but without success.
Now that the list had been decoded, it appeared to be inventory, and Sara and Roy were looking up the items on the list that Felicity wasn't familiar with, such as 'bromopentane'.
Sara looked up as Felicity spoke.
"Hi," Felicity said into her phone. "I got into the files and the data there was written in code too, but they only used a substitution cipher, so it wasn't hard to crack."
Sara and Roy glanced at each other. "Wasn't hard?" Sara said softly.
Roy shrugged. "Is that Oliver?"
"Probably."
They looked back to Felicity when she spoke again.
"Yeah, I was wondering if you knew the formula for the truth serum you got from the Scarecrow?"
"What truth serum?" Sara asked Roy.
"What Scarecrow?" he replied.
"Yeah, I think we're looking at a lot of little parts of a big picture. The inventory spans two years and has everything, from car parts, to computer chips, and chemicals. Some of the things listed could be used to make a truth serum, such as thiobarbituric acid, which is used to synthesise Sodium Pentothal. I thought if we could cross off the items that we know the use of, it might help us discover what some of the other things are being used for."
Something about this felt odd to Sara, but maybe that was because she couldn't hear Oliver's side of the conversation.
"No, I called in sick this morning… This is a little more important that filing memos."
"That isn't Oliver, is it?" Roy asked.
"No, you can't come here… I'm not at home, and you can't come here. I'll email you the inventory and you can reply with the chemical composition of the serum."
"No," Sara agreed. "It must be the new vigilante, and she's very friendly with him."
"Thanks. I'll talk to you later, bye."
"They sound more like old friends than someone she met last night," Roy agreed.
Sara didn't contradict him, and the fact that Felicity had called the Bat before Oliver also bothered her.
Felicity was smiling as she hung up the phone, then she placed another call and her smile faded as she talked.
"Oliver, I thought you'd want to know that I cracked the code. We have a list of all the items that went through the warehouse over a two year period, and I'm trying to narrow down their uses now… I will," Felicity said into the phone, then ended the call without any pleasant goodbyes.
Something told Sara that things on Team Arrow were about to get very complicated.
A few minutes later, Felicity stood and with a printout in hand, began to list chemicals under the heading 'Truth Serum' on the marker board, crossing them off the inventory as she went.
Isabel breezed into Oliver's office.
"I heard your secretary was out. It must be hard, sharing her with Bruce Wayne."
Oliver looked up from his screen. "I see you have your claws out today, Isabel."
"They're always out, Oliver, they're just not always as easily visible."
This was the last thing he needed and if he didn't get rid of her soon, he might lose his temper. "What can I help you with?"
"I want you to fire Felicity."
"No."
Isabel looked incredulous. "You can't honestly expect us to keep an employee on who is sleeping with the competition!"
"What she does with her personal life is none of our business." Now if only he could make himself believe that.
"She's making a fool of you, Oliver."
Oliver got to his feet. "No, you're making a fool of yourself. Felicity is the most loyal and trustworthy woman I know and you make yourself look petty and vindictive when you start hurling unfounded accusations about her around."
"If there's nothing to her selling secrets, where is she today?"
"She's sick."
"Really?" Isabel laughed. "I thought you were a lot of things, Oliver, but I never took you for gullible."
"Felicity hasn't had a day off sick since she joined this company and the only vacation she's taken, was to track me down and tell me your plans for this company. You can insinuate anything you want but that doesn't change her character, nor my appreciation of it."
"Yes, I'm sure it's her character you admire."
Oliver curled his hands into fists.
"I'm leaving early today." He had to, she wouldn't leave and if one of them didn't, he'd end up assaulting her, which was never a good thing when you were business partners.
Isabel's mirth fled. "We have a board meeting this afternoon."
"And I'll send my apologies. The board knows what a two-faced pit viper you are as well as I do, I'm sure they'll sympathise with my desire not to be anywhere near you."
He strode out of his office and she followed, her ridiculously high heels clacking with each step.
"Oliver! Oliver, you get back here!"
He opted to take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator, she would never catch him on stairs in those heels, but she might snap her neck trying, which was a comforting thought.
Felicity was deep in printouts when Oliver and Diggle got there, and in full on Mad-Professor mode. From somewhere, she had found another two marker boards, and was walking between all three, making lists and crossing items off.
"Felicity?"
She didn't hear him.
"Felicity?" Oliver touched her shoulder, making her jump.
"Oliver, sorry, my mind is on a hundred and one things right now."
"How's the search going?" he asked.
"My head hurts," Roy complained.
Felicity ignored him. "Good." She told Oliver, and handed him a stack of papers, bound together with a clip. "Can you and Diggle look through this and see if any of the components make something."
"What kind of something?" Oliver asked.
"Like that," she pointed to the marker board. "Those are five out of eight chemicals needed to make a truth serum. It's a defective truth serum but the criminal who was manufacturing it worked for HIVE. If we can put enough of this inventory together, we might have an idea of the plan."
Oliver looked through the inventory he'd been given.
"There have to be over a thousand things listed on here."
"I know, and most of them are run of the mill stuff, but I highlighted the unusual ones, like the radar, and there's a large shipment of a mineral called Gallium from China, that's used to make high performance microchips but QC doesn't manufacture nearly enough technology to account for the volume used, it would take fifty years to use at QCs current rate."
Diggle was browsing a copy of the inventory too. "On page five, this is a guidance system," he said.
"That doesn't sound good," Oliver noted.
"Understatement," Felicity added. "There's also ingredients to make a few different types of explosives, although each of the compounds listed could have other applications."
"So, have you heard from our friend in black?" Oliver asked, although it seemed to pain him.
"I have, he gave me a copy the spectral analysis on the truth serum. I also told him what we were doing, trying to use this list to determine the plan."
"Did you tell him I want to meet him?"
"No, and I won't until he changed his mind about meeting you."
"Felicity, we know next to nothing about this guy."
"I knew next to nothing about you when I gave you the list I got from Walter, and that turned out okay."
"Let's just get to work," Diggle suggested.
"Hey, you guys are early," Felicity noticed the time on her computer. "Something wrong?"
"Only a board meeting. Given everything that's going on, I thought irresponsible Oliver could put in an appearance and we skip out early"
"If you keep referring to different sides of your personality in the third person and by different names, you'll wind up with a split personality," she warned.
"Very funny." She was making an effort to improve their tense relationship and he was tempted to play along, perhaps tap her head with the inventory, but he was afraid she might misinterpret any gesture he made.
"Where's Sara?" Diggle asked, noticing that she wasn't here. Oliver noticed as soon as he came in but daren't ask the reason for her absence.
"She went to get coffee," Roy explained. "Don't worry, I texted her to get you guys some as well."
"What's wrong with the coffee upstairs?" Oliver demanded.
""It's undrinkable sludge," Roy Explained. "Your family might be billionaires, but their taste in coffee sucks."
"I'm going to work-out for half an hour, then I'll get started," Oliver explained; he had to work off some of his anger at Isabel, although he left that detail out.
He did need to train but a small part of him also wanted Felicity's attention, and she usually liked watching him work-out. Unfortunately he was a disappointed, because today she only seemed to have eyes for the problem she was solving.
By nightfall, everyone except Felicity was raring to hit something. She didn't really understand it but she supposed if the tables were turned and she had spent the day hitting things, she'd be dying to get back to her computers by now.
Unfortunately, they hadn't made any progress as to the possible uses of items on the inventory, because even the rare items had multiple uses. To make matters worse, she knew they didn't have the whole picture since three of the eight compounds necessary for the truth serum, weren't on the inventory. They must have been shipped through a different warehouse, or perhaps bought locally.
It felt like putting a five thousand piece puzzle together, with only 50 pieces. Felicity loved puzzles but her determination to solve them could lead to her becoming very frustrated. Once, she had even thrown a mug against the wall. Her Mom had been furious with her that day.
She took a break and turned her chair to listen to the other's conversation. They were alternately wondering where they could uncover more information, or who they could beat information out of.
Felicity got a text on her phone and smiled as she read the name of the sender. Bruce had been sending her little messages all afternoon and honestly, that was probably the only reason she hadn't gone all 'Hulk smash' on the Arrow cave yet.
This one was different though, no pleasantries, only 'check your email'.
She duly did and found something from Bruce. She opened the attachment.
"Uh, guys?"
The discussion behind her stopped and she transferred the blueprints to the large display.
"The Bat just sent me these, they're a prototype for a new kind of smart bomb. Small, very powerful and with cutting edge AI, very unstoppable."
"AI?" Roy asked. "Isn't that science fiction?"
"The technology is in its infancy but it does exist and we do already have computers that can learn from their mistakes."
"So what does mixing that with a bomb do?" Diggle asked.
"It makes a smart bomb."
"Don't we already have smart bombs?" Sara asked.
"They're called smart bombs but that's because they're high tech, they aren't able to think for themselves. The design of this suggests that the bomb is manoeuvrable and able to arm itself."
"How do you mean, manoeuvre?" Oliver asked.
"Well it has helicopter blades, like the ones you might get on radio controlled toys but way better, it also has thrusters to change direction swiftly, a parachute for a soft landing and wheels to travel over land. It has cameras, facial recognition, and AI. Basically, if you give this thing a target, it will find them, or die trying."
"But it's a prototype, right? No one has actually built this?" Oliver clarified.
"One was built, sans explosives, for demonstration to the Army but it was never commissioned because of the high cost. Apparently the military bigwigs would rather use cheap and sloppy weapons, than precise and expensive ones."
Diggle grunted in agreement.
"So this HIVE are trying to make it?" Sara asked.
"I don't know, nor does the Bat, but he ran the inventory through the patent database, which is brilliant actually, I should have thought of it, and this popped out as having 61 percent of its parts on that inventory, higher than for any other patent filed."
"I'm not seeing how this helps."
"Ever the optimist, Roy," Felicity teased. "It helps because as well as using items from our inventory, this uses one piece of hardware designed by Merlyn Global."
"Merlyn's dead," Oliver reminded her.
"True, but his business isn't and the Bat has discovered that a company called Sagittarius has been buying up divisions of MG, including the R&D subsidiary."
"Sagittarius made Merlyn's arrows," Oliver reminded her.
"Which makes it even more suspicious," she agreed.
"We assumed that Merlyn was the top man, but what if he wasn't, what if he was acting on orders," Diggle asked.
"Or more likely, had a partner," Oliver suggested. "Merlyn worked with my Mom, there's nothing to stop him working with someone else, and maybe that someone now has other plans."
"I'll get started doing background checks on all the Sagittarius staff," Dig offered.
"And we should pay the R&D division a visit," Oliver said to the others.
"No!" Felicity argued. "We tipped Merlyn off by getting too cocky, we thought we knew his plan and I planted a Trojan in his system. Instead that alerted him to our plans and we missed the fact that he had a second machine. We have to play this one cool until we have our evidence."
"So what do you suggest we do?" Oliver asked.
"Are you up for a little B and E?"
Oliver smiled. "What did you have in mind?"
"The Directors of the R&D division. I'll get you their names and addresses and we can bug their homes. I should be able to hack into their phone lines from the office."
"What is the Bat doing?" Oliver asked.
"I don't know, he didn't tell me."
"What if this is a trap?"
"It's not," she assured him.
"How can you be so sure?"
"I trust him."
"I don't!"
"Haven't we already had this argument?" Felicity snapped. "I don't get it, you tell whoever you like, regardless of the risk to us. Roy has anger management issues to rival the hulk and you let him into the team, no offence, Roy, but I can't even work with someone I trust, someone who has proven himself not to be a killer and who found out about all this before us? I haven't told him anything about you or anyone else on Team Arrow and do you know what? He trusts me too! Now please, clime down off your high horse for long enough to remove the stick that's up your ass."
She turned and headed for her desk, scooping her laptop and tablet up.
"I'm working from home the rest of the night."
And with that, she was gone.
"I think Mommy and Daddy are fighting," Roy said, earning himself a glare from Oliver.
Bruce's suite door was opened by a middle aged gentleman, with grey hair and kind eyes.
"May I help you, Miss?"
Add a British accent to that and this was clearly Alfred, Bruce's butler.
"I'm looking for Bruce."
"I'm afraid he's gone out for the evening, can I take a message?"
"Just tell him Felicity Smoak stopped by, thanks."
She turned to leave but Alfred's next words stopped her.
"Of course, miss, he's been expecting to hear from you. Would you like to come in and wait?"
"I don't want to put you out."
"Oh, it's no trouble, Miss, he shouldn't be very much longer."
"Thank you." She stepped into the plush penthouse and wondered what it would be like to spend your days surrounded by this kind of opulence. She'd be terrible at it, constantly worried that she would spill something and ruin a lovely carpet, or smash an expensive vase.
"Can I get you something to drink, Miss Smoak?"
"No, I'm fine, thank you." She wondered how much Alfred knew about Bruce. He had to be in on the secret, right? You couldn't live with someone and keep them in the dark.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee, or juice? It's no trouble, miss."
"Okay, coffee if you have it, please."
To her surprise, he led her into the next room of the suite, and she discovered that not only did the small bar contain a coffee machine, but that Alfred was also quite adept at using it.
"So, do you know where Bruce is?" Felicity asked.
"I believe he's beating the living daylights out of a couple of mercenaries who are hiding out in the Glades."
Well that answered that the question of how much he knew. "Just for kicks, or a particular reason?"
Alfred smiled. "Master Bruce usually prefers to have an excuse, it salves his conscience. These particular gentlemen were responsible for stabbing Mr Aitkinson earlier this evening."
"The mobster? So not even the feds could protect him?"
"Yes, it would seem that HIVE have a very long reach. Do you take milk?"
"Please." Felicity wondered what that meant for her, if HIVE ever discovered that she was chasing them.
Alfred slid a cup of coffee in front of her.
"Try not to look so worried, Miss, Master Bruce is very well trained."
"Call me Felicity, Please."
"Very well, Miss Felicity."
She smiled at him, but it quickly faded. "It doesn't worry you, what he does?"
"It worries me very much, but there is nothing I can do to stop him. Believe me, I've tried."
"Why does he do it? Because of his parents?" Everyone knew that they had been mugged and killed in front of him.
Alfred leaned against the bar. "Are you familiar with Mr Wayne's story?"
"Only in very general terms."
"So you know about his parents?"
Felicity nodded.
"Were it only their loss he was dealing with, we would probably not be here today. Do you know of his fiancé?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Her name was Julie Madison. They were high school sweethearts but then they lost touch for a while; she was busy becoming a doctor, while Master Bruce was busy drinking himself through college. They met again in their early twenties, about five years ago now, and it was love at second sight, you might say. He proposed after four months, and she accepted."
"What happened?" she asked quietly, almost afraid to hear the answer.
"For the final year of her education, she got her first position at a hospital, I believe they call it an internship in this country."
Felicity nodded.
"She wanted to specialise in mental illness and found a position at Arkam Asylum. Not long after she began working there, she discovered that some of her patients were being given an experimental drug and worse still, not something that was used to treat their conditions. They were test subjects for a new drug, some kind of truth serum. Unfortunately, while the drug was effective, most test subjects died soon afterwards. Julie investigated the troubling deaths and presented her findings to the hospital management. Two days later she was found dead, injected with an overdose of insulin."
'Just like the Scarecrow,' she thought.
"Is that's why he took down the Scarecrow, he was looking into her death?"
"Indeed. He was largely unaware of most of this until recently. Julie had confided some vague fears of unauthorised testing at the time, but Master Bruce had been under the impression that she had been given an overdose of recreational drugs."
"So how did he become the Bat?"
"After her death, he spent six months with a bottle as his companion, until a police officer, Detective Gordon, came to see him. Gordon had discovered a string of unusual death at the hospital and suspected that Miss Madison's death was related; he wanted to know if she had confided in Master Bruce. Quite what was said during that meeting, I never knew but he packed a bag that evening, and that was the last I saw of him for four years."
Alfred's eyes were shining with tears as he spoke; clearly he cared very dearly for Bruce and was far more than his butler.
"I hired detectives to track him but after the first year or so, they were unable to follow him, he became too good at concealing himself. I went almost three years with no word from him at all and at times, I feared he was dead."
"Until he turned up six months ago," Felicity finished.
Bruce's return didn't merit the same headlines as Oliver's had, because Bruce had never been declared dead, but it was still big news.
"Indeed," Alfred agreed. "Quite where he learned his new skills, I don't know. He spent a lot of time in Asia but also, from what I can gather, in Africa and Russia. He doesn't like to talk about it very much."
"He came back to find her killers," Felicity guessed.
"I don't know if that was his plan and it certainly didn't start out that way, but when he encountered Dr. Jonathan Crane, he realised that he had been behind the experiments, and that he was responsible for Julie's death."
"Doesn't telling me this break some kind of butler code?"
Alfred smiled. "I'm sure it does but while I began life as Butler to his parents, they left custody of him to me in their will."
"You raised him."
"I did. He's a troubled young man, more so since his return than after his fiancé was killed, but his heart is in the right place."
Felicity stared into the depths of her rapidly cooling but as yet, untouched coffee.
"Drink up." Alfred pointed to the cup, so Felicity took a sip.
"Why are you telling me this, Alfred. Can I call you Alfred?"
"I'd like that, and I'm telling you because he won't, and because since he met you, he's started smiling again."
"I think that's quite enough secrets for one evening, Alfred."
"Of course, Master Bruce. If you'll excuse me."
Felicity watched as Alfred walked away, then turned, shocked to realise that Bruce had heard them.
She expected him to be angry, or at least feel betrayed that they had been talking about him behind his back. Instead, all she saw in his eyes was sorrow.
Still, she stiffened as he approached and almost flinched as he bent to kiss her on the lips.
He pulled away, giving her a questioning look.
"You aren't mad?" she asked.
"No. Alfred was right, I wouldn't have told you all that, but you needed to know. He's a terrible butler, but a very good friend."
"I heard that!" Alfred called from the next room.
Bruce smiled.
"How long were you listening?" Felicity asked.
"I think I caught most of it. I'm only sorry I couldn't tell you myself."
"No." Felicity smiled. "What's important if that you wanted me to know, not that you told me yourself."
"So, what brings you to my not very humble abode?" he teased, trying to inject some much needed levity into the mood.
"I had a fight with-" she's been about to say 'Oliver'. "The Arrow. He wants to meet you and he's not very pleased that I won't make it happen."
"He doesn't trust many people, does he?"
She shook her head, 'no'.
"But he trusts you." It was a statement, not a question, but she nodded nonetheless.
"How does he feel about your feelings for Oliver, and his feelings for you?"
"Oliver? I don't-"
"Please don't lie to me."
Felicity took a deep breath. "Okay, so I have a crush on him. As far as I know, the Arrow is unaware of it and it doesn't matter anyway, because no matter what you think, Oliver doesn't feel that way about me. Now can we please stop talking about my boss, I'd much rather talk about you. I'll even talk shop if I have to."
Bruce smiled, then leaned down to place a tender kiss on her lips.
After planting the bugs, Oliver had decided that getting drunk was the way to go so he had invited Sara for a drink. She had tried to beg off but Oliver was insistent, telling her that she sounded like a teenager when she claimed she had to be home by a certain time.
Reluctantly, she had agreed and gone with him, more because she was worried about his erratic behaviour than because she wanted to.
He had picked a seedy sort of place, with low lighting to better hide the illicit goings on but she didn't feel she could leave him, because he was acting very unlike himself. Or perhaps more accurately, he was behaving very much like the old Ollie.
He was drunk by 10pm so with some difficulty, Sara dragged him out of the bar and into a cab, intending to take him home. Although he was petulant and argumentative, she somehow got him inside his apartment but before she could leave, he grabbed her and kissed her.
She allowed it to happen for a moment, hoping he would let her go but he didn't.
Three swift moves had him lying on the floor but she hadn't seriously hurt him. Holding her hand out, she helped him to his feet.
"Come on, Ollie, you need to sleep it off."
"I need you, we were good together, Sara."
She sat him on the sofa and took the chair opposite. "Which parts were good for you, Ollie? The lying? Nearly dying? Running from Ivo?"
"We're the same, you and I, we need each other."
"No, we don't. We're toxic together."
"Sara," he leaned forward but she shook her head.
"I have to go to the rehab facility tomorrow, Ollie, and do my best to try and reconnect with Laurel. I can't keep doing this, seeing you behind her back, lying to her."
"Then don't lie, we'll go public."
"And she'll never forgive me if I do that. I'm sorry, Ollie, but I can't be your comfort blanket any more. Besides, you're a grown man now you can't keep using other people to make yourself feel better."
"I don't-"
"You do. People aren't toys that you can just pick up and play with when you want to, then put away and ignore them when it's inconvenient. And I know how hard it is adjusting to normal life but somehow, we both have to find a way."
She got up to leave but paused when he called her name.
"Sara."
She turned back.
"I need you."
"I don't know what you need, Ollie, and I don't think you do either but whatever it is, it's not me."
She left. She almost felt bad but he needed to hear the truth, as unpleasant as it was.
"So, are you going to tell me how you managed to find that smart bomb?" Felicity asked. "At minimum you'd need a hacker and a damn good processor, not to mention, how the hell did you think to check the Patent Office in the first place?"
"I have my sources," he answered reaching for the pair of wine glasses on his bedside table and handing her one.
"You can't tease me like that!" she argued, accepting the glass and taking a sip. "Although if you keep plying me with wine this good, I might forgive you."
"Wayne Enterprises has a huge R&D section with an awful lot of gizmos that aren't cost effective, but are pretty helpful if you're waging a one man war on crime."
"And no one notices that your company designs happen to be used by the Bat?"
"They haven't yet, probably because we're a private company and our records aren't public."
"But someone in that department must have noticed?"
"The division is run by a mad genius type. Half his ideas are insane, a third unfeasible."
"And the other seventeen percent?"
"A gold mine for the company." He smiled. "And the unfeasible ones are the ones the Bat uses."
"If he's that clever, he must have noticed."
"I'm sure he has. I'm equally sure that he doesn't want to know. He's a big comic book fan and has spoken a couple of times, in comic book terms, about how the Bat must keep his identity secret. I assume he's warning me off telling him too much because he wants plausible deniability."
"So, do you have, like a hideaway, or a Bat Cave! That's such a cool name, so much better than the Arrow Cave."
"He calls it the Arrow Cave?"
"No, I do. He actually doesn't have much of a sense of fun."
"Well Bat Cave makes sense because bats can and do live in caves. Arrows don't live in caves. You should call it The Quiver."
"That…" She frowned. "Is a good idea, I actually like that better."
Bruce smiled. "And while I couldn't bring the Bat Cave to Starling, I do have a base of sorts here."
"I thought so."
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "You're psychic now?"
"As fun as that might be, sadly no. You came back from beating on mercenaries in your jeans and sweater, neither of which had a spot of blood on, ergo, you keep your costume somewhere else."
"Costume?" he spluttered. "That is a military grade, super thin, Kevlar suit with mobility enhancements."
"Wow, pretty special then." She played along.
"Yeah."
"Okay, it's not a costume… but you have to admit, the pointy little bat ears and the cape kinda make it look like Halloween outfit."
"It's a god job you're holding a glass of red wine."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because if it didn't mean sleeping in a wet patch, I would tickle you mercilessly for your impertinence."
Felicity gave him a smug smile, took a long sip from her glass, then turned to put it on the bedside table behind her. The look in his eyes as she turned back around, made her shiver with anticipation.
"You're a brave woman, Miss Smoak." He too took a final sip from his glass and set it aside.
Alfred shook his head as Felicity's shrieks of laughter reached his ears in the living room and with a long suffering sigh, he headed to the kitchen to make himself a pot of tea.
The small smile at his lips did not mean that he approved of their antics. Oh no, he could never approve of such uncouth behaviour, no matter how much he liked Master Bruce's new friend, or how good he thought this development was for his ward.
A.N. Starting tomorrow and for the nest week, one of my bestselling historical romances is on sale in the kindle US and UK stores, for just 0.99. The book is 'Hope for Tomorrow', so go to Amazon and search for the title, or Catherine Winchester. There's one of my books on sale for 0.99 for the next three weeks, so if you liked 'Hope', keep checking back for more bargains.
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