Felicity woke with a start, sleep spitting her out as abruptly as it had claimed her. She forced her eyes open and for a moment the world swum before her; then she pushed her glasses up her nose and things fell neatly into focus.
Oliver was sitting up on the med table in front of her while the man she'd met the night before—Dig—took his blood pressure. Though he was pale as a ghost and dark circles shadowed his eyes, Oliver was breathing and talking and doing all of the things not dead people did and for the first time since Felicity had found him bleeding out on the floor of her hotel room, the vice squeezing her heart loosened its grip a fraction of an inch.
Felicity's chair creaked as she unfolded her numb legs from beneath her and Oliver and Diggle glanced around.
"Hi," Oliver said. He had a thick grey blanket thrown around his bare shoulders. A clean white bandage covered his injury.
There were a hundred things Felicity wanted to say to him. During the night, when she thought there was a chance she might lose him, she had made lists of all the things she'd tell him if only he woke up. Now that he had all she could manage was a soft, "hey."
Dig glanced between them, one eyebrow raised. Clapping Oliver slowly on his good shoulder he said, "I'll give you two a minute."
Oliver nodded and Dig disappeared up the stairs, the door clanging shut behind him.
The night before Felicity had been too distracted by the possibility of Oliver dying to pay much attention to her surroundings. Now that he was safely in the land of the living her curiosity got the better of her. She stood slowly, her eyes widening as they flitted around the room.
Felicity knew they were in the basement of an abandoned Queen Consolidated factory but it felt more like the underbelly of a giant metal beast. An exoskeleton of steel beams thrust up from the floor, shadowy and menacing. Pipes ran along the ceiling and walls like metallic arteries. Clouds of steam belched out of a vent in the back of the floor. It didn't help that the only source of light came from a few green tinted industrial lamps scattered around the room.
When Felicity was in junior high school, her mother's boyfriend at the time, Greg, had taken her caving in Great Basin National Park. Out of all Donna's boyfriends, Greg was the one Felicity had hated the least. He'd been a financial analyst and spent most of his time at their apartment reading the Wall Street Journal and drinking chamomile tea. He and Felicity had had a quiet understanding; unlike some of the others who had tried to get her to call them 'dad' or attempted to buy her affection with cheap presents from the gift shop at the Grand, Greg was happy to quietly coexist with her, occasionally asking after her computers and every now and then taking her on excursions like the one to Great Basin. Oliver's lair reminded her of those caves. It was cool and dark and slightly damp. All that was missing were the stalactites and the bats.
To Felicity's left was a long table covered in all manner of pointy objects: arrows of all sizes, small daggers, long hooked knives. Beneath it was a weathered wooden trunk with Chinese characters etched into the top. Felicity wrinkled her nose at setup of Oliver's computer system. It looked like it was from the eighties. And not even the good part of the eighties. Oliver didn't say anything as Felicity wandered over to the weapon-laden table but she could feel his eyes boring a hole into the back of her head.
"I'm going to assume you use these strictly for cooking purposes," she said idly, ghosting her fingers over a hooked dagger that shimmered portentously in the low lighting.
"Careful," Oliver warned, just as Felicity tapped her finger against one of the arrow heads. Instantaneously a crimson bead blossomed from her skin. Letting the blanket drop from his shoulders, Oliver grabbed a first aid kit and slid down from the med table.
"It's fine," Felicity said, "it's barely a cut."
Oliver ignored her, gently taking her hand and inspecting it before swiping the injured finger with antiseptic and deftly wrapping it in a clean piece of gauze. When he was done he didn't let go, staring down at her hand as though attempting to memorize each line that crisscrossed her palm, each whorl of each fingerprint. "You saved my life," he said. His eyes flitted up to hers. "Thank you."
The pipes creaked. Steam hissed up through the grate in the back of the room. For a moment Felicity forgot how to speak, how to breathe. Oliver's eyes were blue, blue, blue. They reminded her of a glacial pool she'd seen in a National Geographic magazine—cold and remote, its depths nearly impossible to tell from the surface. Felicity's mind flitted back to the night of the Burns, to the feeling of Oliver's soft lips moving over hers, and a deep shudder ran through her body. It felt like a memory from another life time. A dream, even. Felicity had the overwhelming urge to recreate the moment but without the crowd of prep students egging her on the prospect seemed far more daunting.
"You're welcome," Felicity managed finally. She hesitated, biting her lip. "Oliver—"
He cocked his head in question.
Felicity chose her next words with care. At least, with as much care as could be reasonably expected from someone utterly lacking in the brain to mouth filter department.
"I don't know much about what you're doing down here with...all of this. In the paper they say that the Vigilante—that you—target the rich. They call you Robin Hood. And that's honorable and everything, I mean Robin Hood is one of my favorite anti-heroes of all time. I have the movie poster on my wall at home—the 1938 one with Basil Rathbone not that new one with the guy from Gladiator—but I just... have you ever considered that there might be another way to help people that doesn't involve secret identities or underground lairs? I mean, your family has some pretty amazing resources and you have your whole life ahead of you. You could make a real difference by investing in the right places and—"
"That kind of change takes time," Oliver said in a low voice. "There are people in this city who need help now."
Felicity nodded slowly. She had a feeling that arguing with Oliver would be like butting her head against a steel wall. And in a way, he wasn't wrong. Development through the proper channels could only do so much. But it also had a benefit of not getting you shot at—at least not as much as vigilantism seemed to. Felicity was too tired to press the point at the moment. She'd let the issue lie. For now, anyway. "Oliver?" she said again.
"Hm?"
"I'm going to hug you now. I'm just telling you cause you seem kind of edgy and I don't want you to karate chop my head off or something... okay?"
Oliver looked taken aback for a moment but then his face softened. "Okay."
Felicity wrapped her arms around his waist and gingerly laid her head against his uninjured pectoral. "I'm really glad you're not dead."
For a second Oliver stood stiff as a statue, as though the years away had stolen his knowledge of the mechanics of a hug. Then he slowly slid his arms around her as well, his chin coming to rest atop her head. He huffed softly against her hair, and melted against her. Hugging Oliver, Felicity discovered, was rather like hugging a furnace... a 6'2" furnace with six pack abs and arms she seemed to fit into as though they were made just for her.
"You're really hot," she murmured. She grimaced against his chest. "I mean, temperature wise, obviously. Not that you're not attractive because you are. I mean if you look up the golden ratio in the dictionary I'm pretty sure you'd find a picture of your face—"
Oliver pulled away, though he kept hold of Felicity's hand. He was giving her that cocky half-smile that always managed to make her feel simultaneously sheepish and proud. "Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."
He led her over to the computer station—she was going to have to do something about that; it really was horribly constructed—picked up a small notebook from beside the keyboard, and handed it to her.
"You said you don't know much about what I do. This is it. My father left me this list; everyone on it has failed Starling in one way or another. Bribery, extortion, murder. These people are poisoning this city and I'm going to take them down, Felicity. All of them. Doesn't matter how long it take."
Or whether it kills you, Felicity thought. She slowly opened the notebook. In the low lighting Felicity had to squint to make out the hastily scrawled handwriting.
Adam Hunt, Frank Bertinelli, Justin Adkisson. Lester Buchinsky. Warren Patel.
It went on and on. Most of the people she had never heard of.
One of them she had. His name was on the top of the third page, undifferentiated from the dozens of others in all ways except for the fact that it was as familiar to Felicity as her own. Felicity's heart dropped into her stomach. Of course he was on the list. She should have seen this coming from a mile away.
"Oliver," she said anxiously, "there's something I need to tell you."
Oliver's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to speak but Dig chose that moment to come clattering down the stairs. "We have to go," he said.
"What's wrong?" Oliver asked, his eyes still trained on Felicity.
"The school noticed you two are missing from the hotel. Your mother just called me wanting to know if I knew where you were. She's about two seconds from sending the police out looking for you."
Oliver swore under his breath.
School? Felicity thought dumbly. She had all but forgotten about why she was in Starling to begin with. The field trip... the visit to Star Labs felt as though it had been days ago, weeks even. In reality it had been less than 24 hours.
To Felicity, Oliver said softly, "Can it wait?"
"Um..." No, her mind shrieked, tell him now. Instead she nodded. What difference would it make if she told him now or when they got back to school? "Yeah." She handed him back the notebook. "Later."
Dig tossed Oliver a clean shirt and Oliver pulled it over his head, wincing as the movement tugged at his injury.
"I'll drive you back to the hotel," Dig said, shepherding them toward the stairs. "You two better start brainstorming excuses."