'No Smoak Without Fire'

"Felicity?"

As her name was called from the door, the blonde in question looked up from her desk. Golden hair spilled out of a ponytail like a waterfall glistening in sunlight, and the white lab coat she wore covered her dress, only leaving black heels on show. Although she looked vastly different in her new role, the same glasses were perched on her nose, square frames the ones she had worn since college; Felicity Smoak was the same as ever.

Currently she was frowning, the laptop in front of her the source of her fury. For three days she had been trying to decrypt it after Ted had dropped it on her desk - which was piling up with projects to complete. So far she'd loved working at Kord Industries, but it was more work than she was used to and Felicity was starting to look forward to going home and sleeping all night.

She missed spending all night saving the city less here. Moving on seemed to be working a whole lot better away from Starling, but she wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

"Yeah?" she replied, seeing Angie standing nervously in the doorway. Ted's dark haired assistant was a sweet girl, but always seemed to be on the run from something, skirting anxiously around the building and seeming to appear from thin air at times.

"Mr. Kord asked if you'd come to the R&D floor. He wants to show you something."

Felicity shook her head, astounded. "Again? I was down there . . ." She checked her watch. "Well, three hours ago, but still. It seems like I spend most of my time going from one floor to another."

"He likes showing you things." Angie gave a small laugh as Felicity got to her feet, discarding the offending laptop as a tower of files spilled over it, hiding it from sight. As they walked through Felicity's floor, the technical department of which she was now the head, the younger girl went on. "I think he just gets excited, really; he wants to show you every new thing. Ted likes having you around."

"I like being around," Felicity beamed back, trying not to smile at the comment.

"I mean it," Angie said, piping up. "He was always a happy person, but he kept to himself sometimes. I worried."

Felicity frowned, "There was something wrong with him?"

"No, no," Angie backtracked quickly. "I just meant that sometimes he'd be . . . distant. He'd lock himself up in his office all day and no one would know what to do."

"Did he ever say why?"

"I never liked to ask. I don't know him that well, he's just my boss. But since you've been here, we've all seen a difference in him. Mr. Kord needed a friend, I think. You've made the world of difference in him."

This time, Felicity couldn't keep the grin off her face as they stepped into the elevator, pressing the sub-basement button. That piece of information was something she could tease Ted mercilessly over when they got home later. But it was worrying at the same time – she had thought Ted had been acting strangely too, but chalked it up to him changing during the time they were apart.

"Angie," she asked cautiously, glancing across the elevator, "If you notice Ted acting odd again, could you tell me? I don't want to ask you to go behind his back like that, believe me, but maybe if I knew next time . . . I could help. But only if you're comfortable with it."

"Uh, I don't know. I wouldn't want to spy on Mr. Kord like that."

"I'm not asking you to spy," Felicity shook her head, "just . . . keep being his friend too. And if you happen to notice something is up, as his friend, you should want to help him."

She knew it was borderline manipulation, but Felicity had learnt that one from the best. Oliver's influence was harder to shake than she had thought. But she knew that if something was going on, it was better if she knew, and the best way to do that was through Angie – the eyes and ears of Kord Industries.

After a pause, the girl nodded. "Okay. I'll tell you."

"Thank you."

The rest of the descent was quiet, Felicity silently cursing herself for what she had done. Asking Angie to spy on Ted – well, not spying per say, but whatever this was – it was wrong. Once the doors opened with a cheery beep, she and Angie walked into the R&D lab: the most likely place to find Ted at any given moment.

Blue strip lights lit the impossibly large room, which took up the entire foundation of the building, and in the centre of that was a high-tech laboratory, decked out in black cabinets and too many buttons for the average person to use. This level of the Kord building was closed to all but the elite few; a small team of scientists who worked on special projects Ted assigned them – which could be anything from medical research to trying to make a robot which could predict the super bowl scores.

The team worked to the whim of their boss, who had been spending insane amounts of time down there in the past week and calling Felicity to see something or see if she could solve a problem they had come up against every few hours. It was mad, but it was fun. Which was exactly what Felicity needed.

"Hey!" Ted called, racing towards them and skidding the past few inches to stop in front of Felicity and Angie, clasping something small and metallic in the palm of his hand. "Hey, hey, hey – look at this. Isn't it cool?"

"Sure," Felicity said, stressing the 'e' out. "What is it?"

"It's a thing."

"A thing?"

Ted nodded vigorously, heading back towards his workspace and motioning for her to follow. "A cool thing."

"And what does it do exactly?" Felicity asked. She rolled her eyes as she walked behind him, nodding with only a hint of awkwardness to the other scientists who had access to be in that particular lab. Still not sure of her place there, she stuck to polite formalities at work.

"Well . . . not a lot right now." Ted pouted as he stopped at his section of the lab, placing the device onto a raised platform and glaring at it. Then he turned to her sunnily, "which is why you're here."

Felicity sighed, raking a hand through the loose strands of her pony tail. "Ted, I've got a billion other things you've set me waiting on my desk. I cannot physically get it all done at once."

"Then give some of the other stuff to your people, that's why I put you in charge," he shrugged lazily in return. "I want you on this until it's done. C'mon, Felicity. This can be our project. It'll be fun."

"It'll be fun," Felicity snorted back, but sat down at his desk anyway. "The last time you said that to me, we almost got arrested."

Ted laughed heartily, and she found herself inclined to join in, passing it off as a huff as he said, "That was one time, and years ago. Let it go already!"

A week later, Chicago almost felt homely to Felicity. She was starting to know the people, had a new favourite coffee shop, and had even tried at the city's most popular club with Ted the night before. It was not the same as Verdant, with a wall entirely flashing lights and no secret vigilante living beneath it (she hoped not, anyway), but they had danced and laughed, so it was what it needed to be. A distraction. Things were starting to look up.

Most days, she drove to work with Ted in one of his cars, but today she walked through the windy city alone. In all the bustle of moving, Felicity hadn't found the time to really collect herself and think about the decision she had made yet. Everything had been go, go, go – she needed to stop. Just for five minutes. Just to catch her breath.

The half-hour walk gave her time to do exactly that, or at least she hoped it would.

Chicago was painfully familiar yet refreshingly new simultaneously, the feeling of the past repeating itself unsettling. Like when she had moved to Starling, Felicity had come to the city looking for a fresh start. The city itself was like any – grey pavements, tall buildings, enough crime to be considered dangerous but nothing on the super-villain scale she had come to judge her life by. There were more people in business suits than out of them and very few of them smiled while the sun was out. The night life provided an escape for the city's inhabitants; or at least most of them.

For her, things here felt . . . slow. Sure, dancing at the club the night before had been so carefree and different than what she was used to, but at the same time, it was dull where it should have been exciting. She was less self-conscious than she would have been doing it a year ago.

Felicity figured that you stopped being scared of ordinary people when you'd been held at gunpoint by psychopaths.

Not that being attacked was her idea of fun – but at least it made her feel something. Scared, yes. But she always felt like she had done something good when their schemes came together and the Arrow put another criminal behind bars.

She didn't miss it. She didn't miss it.

Damn it, Felicity thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as her feet subconsciously stepped quicker, she missed it.

But there was nothing to be done about that now: she had made her choice and would live with it. Out of everything she had learned about herself in that time, the most surprising to her had been her ability to adapt to any situation. This was just another one to learn to live with.

Not that it was all bad. She liked her work better here – she was doing what she was trained for. It was challenging, but worthy.

Just two days before, she and Ted had developed a new operating system for their entire building, a technical PA on every monitor in the entire place which could answer almost anything. It could contact anyone in the building; access any public record within minutes and made security almost impenetrable. The practical uses of it in hospitals, schools or government buildings were limitless; they were just starting to talk about having it sold in the public sector.

Felicity smiled outwardly, the peace and quiet as she walked finally allowing her to think it out. It was helping to ground her. The world was making sense when she thought about it, the remaining doubts about leaving Starling gradually being erased, as the sun did the same to the last traces of night on the sky around her. It was early still, not many people around as she got closer to her new workplace.

The Kord Building was visible from just about anywhere in the city. She could see it from her room in Ted's fancy top-floor apartment; she could see it as she walked towards it, piercing above most of the other buildings around it, a blue needle among the matchstick grey skyscrapers. It was as extravagant as was expected of it, made of glass and imposing, bearing the Kord name – but the colour was the other side of the company; the fun, the Ted-ness of it. It was his heart.

Ted loved his company. It was one of the few things Felicity had learnt in the week she had been there. In Starling, she had been too busy and too caught up in things to even consider how seriously he would take the work when she got there, but after a week working with him, it was very clear how Ted had grown into the role, and his responsibilities. He might spend most of his time in the labs, but he was mostly there when he was needed, aside from a few odd absences she didn't even want to question, and put his soul into his work.

She was proud. Determined not to let him down, she used her new I.D card to let herself into the impressive building when she arrived that morning, nodding to the security guard as she entered.

"Good morning, ma'am," he nodded, tipping his hat to her. "Mr. Kord not with you today?"

"Er . . . no. We went out last night, so, um, he said he wouldn't be in this morning," Felicity answered with a nervous smile, heading for the elevator. "I'm sure he'll be in when he's feeling . . ."

"Sober?"

She laughed, stepping into the elevator when it arrived. "Something like that."

Once she was alone, Felicity reflected on the final new thing about working at Kord Industries – her new position. Ted had made her the head of the R&D and tech departments, with a full workforce answering to her, including Ted himself on occasion, who had been the role's predecessor. Although he claimed that her taking on the job would give him more time to address his CEO responsibilities, they mostly just worked together in the lab, or Ted sat in her office while she worked with whatever blueprints he had drawn up and talked.

It was still odd being respected, but Felicity would be lying if she said she didn't like it – just a little bit.

"Hey, turn on the tv!" Angie skidded into the room in a scurry, heels clicking an impossibly fast beat on the floor.

"Why?" At her desk, Felicity jumped in surprise, the young assistant being the only visitor she had received that day, having seen so sign of Ted yet. When he hadn't been in at lunch, she had left him a message asking where he was, but assumed he was just sick when he didn't call her back. Inside, she tried not to be secretly relieved of a day working in peace. It was late now – past six she saw, when the screen across the room came on showing the day's news.

"The Beetle's back!" Angie beamed happily, walking over with the remote clasped firmly in her hand. She jumped onto the edge of Felicity's desk and sat, eyes intently on the screen in front of them both now, legs swinging. She didn't notice the bafflement on Felicity's face, shushing the other woman when Felicity opened her mouth to ask what was going on. "Shhh, we'll miss it."

Not sure how to react, Felicity turned her eyes to the screen. A blonde reporter stood in front of a burning building, a crew of firemen working in the background to quench the flames. The structure itself was a scar in the landscape, burned an ugly black and falling, reduced to ash and smoke. That kind of destruction did not fit a normal accidental fire.

Felicity felt a kick in her gut. Immediately, she knew there was a problem with this picture – with all of this, and yet it somehow felt familiar, like she'd seen it all before.

The reporter spoke, motioning to the flames behind her. Felicity focused on the words carefully, "Eyewitness reports claim to have seen the Blue Beetle, the hero believed to have retired six months ago, is back in action in the city tonight. After a confrontation with a man calling himself 'Firefist' in the building seen behind me, where I can announce there were no casualties thanks to the Beetles intervention, police tried to take in the former vigilante after he pulled a fireman from the flames, but he used some type of new aircraft to escape. 'Firefist' went missing from the scene, and a fire crew are still battling the flames here downtown."

"Now, the question on a lot of people's minds is whether the hero is back for good," the reported said, putting on a smile too flirtatious to be taken seriously. "And if he's out there somewhere right now – thank you. The people of Chicago are behind you all the way."

"Wow," Angie breathed. She watched the screen, mesmerised, and Felicity could remember that feeling back when the vigilante was a new thing in Starling – the hope that there was somebody out there looking out for all of them. "He's back. I can't believe it – we all thought . . ."

"So who is this?" Feicity asked, voice edging on demanding as she got to her feet and took the remote from Angie, switching the TV off and standing in front of the younger woman with her arms crossed.

This was hitting her too close to home, leaving her thinking there was no way this was a coincidence that the two places to goes to, there just so happens to be a god damn superhero. Nu-huh, no way.

"Oh right, you're not from here," Angie blushed awkwardly, "I'm sorry for busting in. The set in the break room is broken and I heard something had happened."

"I don't care about that. But please, just tell me what this is."

"The Blue Beetle," the younger girl shrugged innocently. Her feet still swung against the desk, hitting it with a hollow thump every few seconds, but Felicity was so zeroed in on the impossibility of it all that time seemed to have slowed; she heard only her own hammering heart beat. Angie went on, "He used to be here all the time, but he . . . he went away. Nobody knew why. H-he's a hero."

"It can't be . . ." Felicity whispered to herself, turning away. "Not again."

"Miss Smoak, are you alright?" Angie asked. She nervously got to her feet and shuffled closer, face concerned now. "Would you like me to get you a glass of water?"

"No, no, no," she replied quickly, "I'm fine. Rreally. It's just . . . this is . . ."

"Impossible?"

"Yeah. Like, way to impossible to even think about right now."

Angie let out a small laugh, pushing her glasses onto her nose, a habitual gesture. "I'd have thought you were used to that. Don't you have a vigilante in Staring City, too? When you came I had to fill in your personnel file, and there was a police report attacked – he saved you, didn't he?"

"I-I guess," Felicity stammered out. She didn't know that such a file existed, but was going to be having words with Detective Lance about it. If anyone worked out her connection to Oliver because of a police file, she could be in real danger. "The Arrow. I just thought . . . that I was past all of that."

"Everywhere needs a hero, I guess."

Angie smiled at her once more before leaving, a hopeful upturn of lips and light in her eyes that wasn't before. Trying to keep calm, Felicity forced her own mouth into the same position and nodded as the other woman left, although it looked more grim than gleeful. It was like looking into a mirror of herself three years ago: believing in heroes, that things could be changed by a handful of people who blindly believed what they were doing was right.

Yeah, right. She was older now, less naïve. Felicity Smoak knew the score with superheroes – it just ended with pain and heartbreak; the hope was just its way to get a foot in the door of your life, then screwed you over. Faith never got her very far – it was only the times she had been ruthless that things had gone her way.

"No, thank you," she said aloud to herself, slamming the remote onto the table in the centre of the room. She had been there once before, and look how that turned out. "Never again."

Felicity left her office dark that night, pointedly ignoring the burnt out building as she crossed it on her way home, head held high and turned away from it. She wouldn't look back. That wasn't her life anymore, it wasn't her place.

She made it to the end of the street before she caved, looking towards the husk of the building and just for a second wondering how long it would take her to find this so called 'Firefist' and bring him in.

Blue Beetle might have been Chicago's hero – but he wasn't it's only one.

A/N: I know, I'm awful. In my defence, I had a massive drama exam and a lot of uni interviews in the past few weeks, and my stress levels have been off the charts without having to think about writing, too. But things have settled. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, please do review and give me motivation for the next one. That one will be Team Arrow (minus it's moodiest member) visiting Felicity, and spanning the duration of her first summer in Chicago - and the first few times she met the Blue Beetle.