'Blue and Gold'

Felicity returned to Chicago rightfully angry.

But instead of wallowing in misery like she did last time or wasting energy punching thing like she felt like doing, she decided to put it to good use in the only way she knew how – computers and kicking criminal butt.

Over the next week, she spent every second not at work on her personal laptop at home, dragging an old bean bag she had found in the back of Ted's closet up to the roof. The connection up there was better, and Felicity knew she needed the quiet right then – although Ted would come up every few hours to bring her food or drinks, face pleading for her to come down but understanding her need for distance. He was good like that.

With her comfortable chair and glass of red wine propped on the wall beside her, Felicity's fingers flew over the keyboard with ease. They remembered her old line of work effortlessly, hacking into traffic camera's and business' shady files without her even having to direct them too. It was easy.

That week, ARGUS, the DEA, the FBI and half a dozen other agencies received anonymous tip offs, all wirelessly sent to them from a mysterious good-doer. The Blue Beetle received one.

Terrorist group calling themselves the 'Mad Men' are holding hostages near The Bean.

Ted jumped at the message showing up on The Bug's screen. He had been napping in the control chair as he cruised over the city, knowing his scanners would pick up on any trouble below. It had been a tough week: after their impromptu trip to Starling City, Felicity had been isolating herself and throwing herself into her work. He worried about her, but Ted didn't know what to do.

She didn't need him to fix her: he knew that for damn sure. Felicity would work out whatever was making her heart heavy on her own, but he wished he knew how to make it easier for her, or just how to be there better.

As it stood, he was giving her space by spending all of his time above the clouds.

"God damn," he breathed, reading over the message. After the last communication, he had been worried about his identity so had added to The Bug's security so was surprised to see it hacked again, leaning back in his seat. "Who the hell are you?"

Then he actually read the message and moved like he'd been electrocuted, reaching for the controls and turning The Bug around, "Shit."

Good choice, the message came through as soon as he started moving, displayed on the screen in front of the city as he flew over it. They have some kind of meta-human abilities; they seem to be moving with extraordinary speed and strength. You'll need to sedate them to keep them down, but their guns don't look modified.

Ted blinked. Meta-human? What did that mean?

There are six of them, and half a dozen hostages. The south-west corner is your best bet of getting in unannounced.

Turning on the ships camouflage, he hovered above the square overlooking the Bean and prepared to drop down the ladder from the Bug's belly. Thanks to the mysterious 'friend', he knew the number of assailants and where to head in – it was more than he usually had going into a situation like this.

He landed in an alley on the south-west corner of the square, looking around. "Thank you, whoever you are."

Ted got home to see coverage of the 'Blue Beetle' taking in the Mad Men playing on TV. Felicity stood in front of it, her hopeful smile back on her face. His heart swelled at the sight.

Walking like he wasn't bruised from head-to-toe, Ted crossed the room and slung an arm around her shoulder.

"How is it I always miss all the excitement?"

"Just lucky like that, I suppose," Felicity answered, leaning into it. She still smiled fiercely, not noticing Ted's snort at the comment. "I'm sorry for being so . . . distracted recently. I've just been trying to work some stuff out. You know, figure out where I stand now."

"You don't have to apologise to me," he replied. They watched the news for a moment longer. "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Work this . . . stuff, out?"

"Yeah. I think I have a new way now."

Two weeks later, Blue Beetle got another tip off from the mysterious friend – but this time through a distorted voice speaking out of The Bug's console and causing him to damn near crash the thing into the closest building.

"Beetle?"

Ted had his pride. If he didn't he might admit that he yelped and jerked the controls, only his own stabilising technology avoiding a crash. At least he didn't fall out of the chair this time.

Quickly, he picked up his own voice distortion tool and held it to his lips, pressing a few keys to return to communication, accepting the open line the voice had sent him. He felt almost like a spy with a walkie-talkie, barely stifling a giggle at that thought.

"I don't know who you are – but how in the hell did you manage to get this signal?!"

"You're welcome," the Voice replied, and he could have sworn there was a smirk in it. "For helping you, I mean, not hacking your super-secret Beetle mobile."

Ted rolled his eyes, "I prefer 'The Bug'."

"That's cute. And I actually took the liberty of adding some extra firewalls and facial recognition software to 'The Bug's' mainframe, so . . ."

"Do you expect a thank you?" Ted asked. He sat back more comfortably in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. He didn't think the voice was a threat, but he was still cautious – his identity was on the line, and he had people to protect. "I'm at a disadvantage, you see. You know who I am, but to me, you're just a voice."

"I don't know who you are. Not under the mask, anyway – or goggles, in your case," The Voice clarified quickly. There was something vaguely familiar about the way it spoke, the patterns of it's speech – but the voice itself was too distorted to place. "All I know is that you're trying to help people. And all you need to know about me is that so am I."

"So you figure we might as well do it together?"

"No. But if I have information that I think could help, I'll send it your way. I tried being more involved before and it . . . well, it didn't work out. But I still believe in that ideal, that people will fight for themselves – but they need that beacon of hope first. You could be that."

"That's a lot of faith to have in a stranger."

The Voice laughed, which he didn't understand. "I'll be in touch, Beetle."

"Wait!" Ted called, "What do I call you?"

"Stick with a friend, for now. I'll let you know if I come up with something more than that."

The line went dead, leaving Ted wondering if he had just gained a 'friend' or not. There were a lot of things he worried about these days, and he didn't like having a faceless figure so close to uncovering the truth of who he was. At the very least, he had gained an ally.

That was better than doing this alone.

"You've got a tail on your six," Friend said over the comms, "Take the next left, and there's an alcove in the wall. Duck in it then tail back."

Ted didn't even check behind him. After two months working with them, from information exchanges to conversations in The Bug, eventually setting up a comm system between them three weeks back, he trusted his new 'Friend'. Whoever it was, they had saved his neck a lot of times, and he trusted them without hesitation.

He took the left sharply and side-stepped into the dark shadows, disappearing into the wall silently. Without knowing it was there, he would never have even noticed the alcove among the wreckage.

Ted's pursuers ran straight past him. Laughing a little at it, he kept his breath quiet and stood there for a few minutes, listening. No one else seemed to be following.

"You're clear," the Friend confirmed. Even with their voice still distorted, they sounded stressed. "You need to evacuate this time, Beetle. I know you want to get these guys – I do, too. But not tonight."

Ted shook his head, fingers clenching around his newest toy – an air compressor gun. It shot a blast strong enough to throw people back and even render them unconscious, and kept his conscious clean of killing. "I'm not leaving."

"Beetle, don't be stupid-"

"That's my middle name, fella," he laughed back, slipping out into the corridor. Keeping his back to the wall, Ted glanced around the corner before crossing the corridor, making his way further into the complex. "If I don't make it out, it's on you to tell the cops about these guys. We'll get them one way or another."

"You're getting out! Just leave it for tonight, please."

Their voice was so pleading, Ted almost stopped. It was hard to tell anything about his elusive benefactor, but he could tell when they were getting annoyed or scared easily these days – they spoke more quickly, babbling almost, and that edge was in their tone now alongside a new emotion: desperation.

He hadn't heard that one before. It was to be expected, but shocking all the same – they cared. After speaking almost daily for two months, it was hard not to. They joked while Ted was on missions, the voice in his ear soothing and putting him at ease when before he could have been terrified. They argued sometimes, too.

They were a friend in more than name, now.

"Listen, I was thinking," he said, stalling for time. He hadn't stopped yet, they both knew it; 'Friend' had a knack for hacking cameras to watch his back. "What about Big Brother?"

"What?"

"For your name," Ted clarified with a laugh at their confusion. If anything, he could diffuse a situation with words better than anyone else. "You know, 'always watching' and all that jazz. It fits."

On the comm, there was a laugh; quiet and tinged with sadness, but undeniably there. It was something he had heard a few times now, a sound which could bring light to any darkness. He was starting to enjoy it.

"Big Sister is more accurate," 'Friend' confirmed. And that was news. They were a woman, then. "And you do realise that you would have to call be 'BS' for short, right? Might not work out so well."

"You see, this is why I need you. Always pointing out the flaws in my dumbass plans."

"Which is what I'm trying to do now," she pleaded. Although Ted had been aware of voices down the hall getting louder as he continued to move through the compound, he paused as she spoke this time and ducked into an air vent. Crouching, he listened and waited. "There are too many of them for you to take out alone. Come back another day, I – I know people. People like you, who can help."

"You work with other masks?" Ted answered, leaning hard against the metal. His laugh was breathless. "Now I'm just hurt, sister."

She was quiet for so long that Ted had opened his mouth to ask if she was okay when his 'Friend' finally answered. "I used to – work with them, I mean – but not anymore. We . . . had a disagreement. I said I was done with all of this-"

"Then why help me?"

"Because I knew I could. That was a responsibility of mine, not anyone else's. I could help people, save lives – and I needed you to do that." She took a sudden breath, as if steadying herself. "That person I used to work with – I cared about them a lot, but it came to a point where I couldn't tell the mask from the man. That's why I tried to be hands-off with you; I didn't want to care again. But I don't want you to die, Beetle. Please."

It was Ted's turn to pause. Crouched in the cramped air vent, the heat alone causing sweat to bead on his forehead and make his goggles itch, he thought about it. He had few friends he could actually count on, and one of them was the voice on the other end of the transmission.

"Alright," he agreed, surrendering. "But if seeing those friends again is too painful, we'll find another way."

"I'm not calling him," she responded in an instant, the relief in her voice singing through. "I'm calling some of his associates. My friends."

"Roger that, then." Ted groaned, thinking about the compound he still had to sneak through to get out of this mess. "Beetle out."

When a blonde chick in black and a kid in red showed up two days later at the compound Ted was scoping out again, he jumped back in surprise. They had arrived without him noticing, he was so focused on trying to memorise the rotation of the guards. From the top of the hill where he crouched with a pair of high-tech binoculars he'd tricked out, Ted looked down on what looked like a series of warehouses on the outskirts of the city below – but he knew what was really inside.

Thankful his face was covered by his goggles, Ted looked the two new people up and down.

"What, was there a sale at the leather store?"

"Play nice, Beetle," 'Friend' said in his ear. From the looks on the newcomer's faces, they were patched into the same comm link and could hear her too. "These are my associates, Black Canary and Arsenal. They're here to help you."

"And you can't exactly talk, lycra boy," Arsenal added, the kid beneath the mask smirking as he looked over. His height and attitude gave him away as being just a kid straight away.

Ted did a stock check of them both, as he was sure they were doing to him. A male and a female, both younger than him – the boy considerably more so, the woman only by a few years; Arsenal had a bow and arrow and the Black Canary carried an assortment of weapons on her person, but held a Bo Staff in her hands.

They were seasoned, more than he was, at least. They had experience. In fact, Ted was sure he'd heard about them on the news.

"You're from Star City," he commented. Ted's regard for them was lifted when he realised they worked with the Arrow, the guy who had saved Felicity – so they were good in his books. "Okay. This could work. Are they filled in?"

"Pretty much," 'Friend' replied in his ear. "Do you have a play for this?"

"Go in hard, take out their communications before they even know we're there. If we can do the entire thing undetected, that would be the best case scenario – but if we're discovered, our first call is to rescue civilians, not make arrests." Ted laid out his plan calmly, looking to see if the other vigilante's would let him take point on this. It was important to him; this case was personal now. They nodded when he finished, seemingly accepting his lead without comment. "I've been watching for a few days – I think I have the guard's rotation down."

"Good," Black Canary answered with the most dangerous smile he had ever seen. "Then let's go – or were you planning on talking all night?"

"Guys-"

"We're only messing, Fe-friend," Arsenal laughed, but he caught himself at the end of the sentence, as if he was going to say something else. Ted realised then that these people knew exactly who the voice on the other end of the line was, and felt a pang of betrayal at the thought. The kid reached back and touched the end of his quiver until he found an arrowhead he was satisfied with, lining up a green-tipped arrow. "Chill. We've done this a hundred times with your help, remember?"

"Yeah." For the first time, Ted heard nostalgia in the voice on the end of the line. There was a deeply rooted sadness in it; again, he felt out of the loop. "I do, Arsenal. Let's do it again with no problems."

The kid nodded, looking eager to go. "Damn right."

"After you, Bug Boy," the Black Canary added, turning to their point of entry – the roof of the building across from them. They just had to take out the guards posted there first; all eight of them armed. Easy.

Ted jumped off the edge of the building, "Follow me."

Two weeks after that, Ted made a decision. He had been thinking about it ever since meeting Black Canary and Arsenal; they had taken out a trafficking ring together with surprisingly good teamwork, working as a unit with their guiding voice with them all of the way.

But he was still the odd man out.

The two other heroes left to meet her afterwards. Ted had known it; he wanted to go with them but held his tongue. His Friend has asked for anonymity and he respected that. But after hearing the way they joked about with her, their closeness clear from just a few hours on the comms together, he wanted to be a part of that too.

The 'Friend' had become more than just an empty voice or an informant. And he wanted a team. A partner.

On the day it happened, he was sitting in The Bug with nothing to do. It was a sunny Sunday, with just enough breeze to make it bearable, boats gliding on the shore of Lake Michigan and just the kind of day that made even the criminals of the city too lazy to act. It was a brief but appreciated reprieve.

He sat with his feet on the dash and smiled at the scene below him. "I wish there were more days like today."

"Boring? Quiet?Too warm to bear?"

"Peaceful," Ted corrected, not unkindly. "Days like this are what I live for, you know? If this were every day, I'd pack it all up in a heartbeat: the mask, the fighting – The Bug, even."

"Why do you do this?" Friend asked curiously. "You never said."

Images of blood and dust filling his eyes, the place collapsing around him as the light left the eyes of a friend passed so fiercely over Ted's eyes for a second that his breath caught. Blinking them away, he shook his head and answered shakily, "I promised a friend I would look after the city. That I would take the name and make it a legacy."

"I don't understand . . ."

"I'm not the first Blue Beetle. There was one before me – Firefist was my first case, actually. Before that, the name belonged to a good friend of mine."

"What happened to him?"

Although tears filled his eyes, Ted kept his voice steady as he answered. "He died."

"Oh," A beat. "I'm sorry. But I know how that sounds, and I've lost friends in the same way so I know it doesn't make any difference. Eventually you get tired of hearing it. I understand, is probably the best thing for me to say. Or at least I hope it is."

"It definitely is," Ted let out a small laugh. "It's hard to forget how much relief something as simple as someone understanding all of this is. Before . . . before you, I was doing this alone and honestly – I didn't have a clue what I was doing half of the time. Thank you for that."

"You don't have to thank me. You're the one who does all the hero-ing!"

He waited, trying to think of an excuse not to say it. But his mind was blank and his lips formed the words before he could contain them, pushing them past his teeth and leaving them hanging heavily in the air. "I want to meet."

At the silence his request was met by, Ted felt his stomach plunge twenty storeys. Immediately he tried to explain, "I trust you, okay? You've helped me and I'm so grateful for that. I trust you with my identity, and I'd like it if we could meet and I'll show you where I work – hell, you can come for a ride in The Bug and-"

"No," the voice said quietly. For a moment, Ted prayed he had misheard her, but his hopes were dashed. "I told you from the beginning, this only works if I don't get attached. I'll admit: I failed on that one. But I can't do all that again."

"After everything we've been through, you still don't trust me?"

"It's not that I don't trust you," she replied. "I can't. If you don't accept that . . . we can't continue."

"So that's it?" Ted asked, feeling anger brew quickly in his veins. He sat up straight in his chair, not used to the bitterness. None of this sat with him right. "I keep putting my life in the hands of someone I've never even met, I keep pretending to myself that I'm not alone and that I have a 'Friend'" he spat the last word out bitterly, "– or you leave?"

She didn't answer for a second, but when she did, it was with a restrained, forced tone. "Yes."

"Fine," Ted replied coldly. "But if you really don't want to be my friend, stop pretending. Enough talking and joking like we are. You don't get to have it both ways, that's not fair – good day."

He cut off the link, severing the connection with a brutality he had not shown to her before. This was not how Ted had wanted the conversation to go – he had thought that after all this time, after they had grown to trust one another, especially after he learned she had worked with others closely, that she trusted them – he just thought he could have a real person to hold on to in all this madness. The loneliness was hard to bear sometimes.

All Ted had wanted was a real friend.

Even as enraged tears slipped down his cheeks, a thought struck Ted and he sat up in his seat. He did have a friend. A busy one, sure, but there was one person he trusted with this, someone he knew he could turn to.

Face taking on a smile and glint of mischief, Ted made a call.

Felicity was having what she would call an average day. For most people, it would be straight up 'rough day' material, but she had learned to expand her boundaries after being literally shot and terrorised on a daily basis.

It had been three days since her – or should she say 'Friends' – argument with the Blue Beetle. Every time she thought about it, Felicity felt sick and tired. The guy had sounded desperate. She did understand how tough a gig it was, and how much just one ally could help . . . but she couldn't do it again.

Or at least that's what she told herself.

It would have been easy to say yes and trust him. The Beetle was nothing like Oliver – even on serious missions, he kept his air of humour, never once becoming dark, only more focused. He was a good man, and she had come to think of him as a friend for the months they had worked together.

But after everything that went down with Oliver and the Arrow, it was hard for her to trust anyone. Especially anyone who wore a mask.

She felt shitty, going down to the apartment that night and just hugging Ted when he got home; putting every piece of comfort she needed into the embrace. He held her back just as tightly, like he needed it just as badly as she did, and they had taken the next day off and just gone down to the lake and hung out like the old days. Funnily, it made things better, if only for a while.

With the Beetle unavailable ever since, she had fallen back to old habits and spent time with her roommate 24/7. The last few months she had been getting more independent at work and home, with her new job as the Beetle's eyes in the sky, so she had gotten slightly out of touch with her actual friend and regretted that a little, although Ted seemed the same as ever, if a little worn down by something.

She was going to his office for lunch when she heard something strange coming from behind the door: laughter.

Ted's laughter, lighter than she had heard it recently. It echoed from underneath the door into the room where Angie worked, loud and brash and filled with an immense relief. He had always laughed in an odd way, it was one of his most defining traits, but it took a lot to get Ted to laugh like this. Beside it, there was another laugh, matching his in volume and spirit. It was a man's; deeper in tone, but there was a warmth behind it.

Puzzled, Felicity knocked once before entering. She pushed the door open to see Ted stand in front of his desk, still bent over with laughter, and a strange blonde man with a hand on Ted's back, two peas in a pod. At her friend's joy, Felicity felt her own lips twitch up, being at all jealous not even crossing her mind – why should she be? Anyone who could make Ted laugh like that was a good person in her books.

As she crossed the room, Ted straightened and beamed in her direction. "I was just about to call you!"

"It's no bother," Felicity confirmed, still unsure of herself as she make her way over. When she stopped a foot away, Ted put one hand on her arm and one on the other man's grinning and looking between them blissfully. The connection seemed odd to Felicity, but she smiled unawares anyway.

"I've heard a lot about you," the blonde man grinned in a cheesy fashion, extending a hand. "You must be the famous Felicity Smoak."

She took it and shook cautiously. "Well if Ted's been telling stories, I wouldn't trust any of it," she said. It was a joke, and the other man laughed again. "I'm sorry – I didn't catch your name?"

"This is my buddy B-Mikey," Ted explained quickly. "He might be sticking around town for a little while. You don't mind if he crashes, do you?"

"Er, no of course not," Felicity said. Something about the meeting didn't seem real, like a desert mirage or lucid dream. She turned to the blonde, "I'm guessing 'Mickey' is short for Michael?"

"It's just one of my nicknames," the man agreed, meeting her eye in an odd way. He nodded. "My name is Michael Jon Carter, and I'm sure we'll be the best of friends."

A/N: Hopefully you all know who MJC is. Old school Blue&Gold, but also I guess Felicity is the 'Gold' too because of her hair?